Europeans in Washington? Oh No, Another Summit!
If in the New York Times you find “all the news that’s fit to print” (as the newspaper’s slogan goes), then clearly the recent E.U.-U.S. summit isn’t among such news.
During the brief White House press conference, officials exchanged the usual civilities - U.S. President Barack Obama congratulated the European Union on the final approval of the Lisbon Treaty by all member states, expressed gratitude for the E.U.’s humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and stressed the need for cooperation between Europe and the U.S. in an effort to make Iran stick to its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, in turn commended Obama for having instigated change in the climate of discussions on climate change in the U.S. Javier Solana, the E.U. High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, modestly declared he had nothing more to add. Obama perked up and joked that the E.U.’s first diplomat (one of Solana’s last appearances in that role) clearly needs more “practice,” because “in Washington, even when you have nothing more to add, you need to spend some more time explaining it.”
The stream of European politicians – Barroso; Solana; the E.U. Commissioners for External Relations, Energy and Science and Research; the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister of Sweden; German Chancellor Angela Merkel; Czech President Vaclav Klaus; former German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs (Merkel, Klaus and Genscher are in the U.S. to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall); the Foreign Affairs Minister of Poland and others – caused hardly any stir in Washington. The New York Times buried “the news” in their article on Merkel’s speech on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even the photo opportunity with Barack Obama was so brief that instead of taking place on the White House lawn, the Commissioners had to give interviews “on the go” in the streets of Washington to the large swarm of journalists who accompanied them.
Obama’s joke, however, reveals a lot more about relations between the E.U. and the U.S. than do various press statements, which usually underline how both sides are achieving significant progress on one global issue or another. The case in point on this occasion was the global struggle against climate change. The script usually goes like this: E.U. officials expect a commitment from the U.S. without taking into consideration the current domestic political climate, but become annoyed when they are themselves asked to commit to anything that goes against the bulk of European public opinion. This week, the E.U. delegation attempted to wrestle a more definitive statement out of Obama in support of more binding measures to combat climate change. That is, however, a lesser priority for the Obama administration as it faces the far more serious problem of what to do next in Afghanistan. Moreover, any U.S. decision on climate change is almost entirely dependent on China because if Beijing does not join the effort to curb dangerous emissions, the U.S. Congress would never vote into effect anything like the European climate change legislation.
European politicians complain about having been left out of discussions on further actions in Afghanistan, while the only suggestion that came from the E.U. delegation was the action plan adopted last week to increase humanitarian aid to the country. This action plan mentions nothing about how to get out of the impasse in that “death trap for great powers.”
The hope that after Obama’s election the E.U. would stop being seen by the U.S. as some strange organization is, of course, relegated to the imaginations of Brussels bureaucrats, and not only because of the curious nature of “Brusselese” (“What? Fourth Regional Roundtable on Institution-Building?! What roundtable? What building?”). At least George W. Bush’s team, toughened by the years of the Cold War, openly showed hostility to the old continent.
Bush’s successor openly declares that the 21st century will be led by the U.S. and China. This leads to speculations that Obama might actually dislike Europe – perhaps because of his father’s arrest years ago by British rulers in Kenya (and this is among the weaker conspiracy theories). An unnamed diplomat present at the meeting of the E.U. Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers, which deliberated the results of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh in late September, said later that most of the discussions centered on indignation with the American president’s lack of knowledge of European political structures.
According to Columbia University Professor Steven Sestanovich, this attitude is not new. The trick of American presidents has always been to listen to their European partners and then ignore their counsel, writes Sestanovich in Foreign Policy. Obama is no worse than, for example, John Kennedy, in that respect. Others believe that Obama is so pragmatic that he neglects former partners for the sake of short-term goals. At least, even when he’s not neglecting them, he doesn’t waste time with superfluous clarifications, as was illustrated by the abandoned plan for an anti-missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Obama is certainly no worse than any of his political role models, including Ronald Reagan, who also liked to listen to his allies, crack a joke here and there, and then proceed with his administration’s pre-existing plans.
Assistant Secretary Philip Gordon told Capital that there is no drama – the U.S. will do what is necessary in the climate debate, even though that might not be as much as Europe would expect, and Europe will continue to support the U.S. in Afghanistan, albeit not with as much commitment as Washington would like to see. But according to Jim Quigley, co-chair of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (an organization for American and European businesses), the differences are often exaggerated. “After all, the transatlantic market has a value of four trillion dollars. Seventy-five percent of European direct investments come from the U.S. In America, 50 percent of direct investments have a European origin,” says Quigley. He believes the European feeling of neglect is due to the enthusiasm American companies show for massive growth in China and India; in Europe, by contrast, everything is quiet and predictable. It is a proven fact that American companies make massive investments in China, but most of their money comes from Europe. For example, even miniature Belgium has made more investments in the U.S. than China has. General Motors refused to give up its European division, Opel. Most of the vehicles that G.M. sells in Latin America, Russia and China have in fact been designed in Germany.
In the latest report from the European Council on Foreign Relations, Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney are asking why Europe and the U.S. cannot cooperate in the areas of foreign policy and security as much as they do in the economic arena. Microsoft, for example, is much more strictly regulated out of Brussels than it is in Washington (and American officials seem to accept European decisions with relief).
According to Shapiro and Witney, Europe needs to finally realize that the rules of the global game have changed: The U.S. refuses to be omnipresent and is looking for partners to cooperate with. “Europe, however, wants to build cooperation, not to do business with the U.S.” European countries continue to complain about being neglected rather than offer solutions. Despite all the criticism of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, no European government has managed to offer a more robust solution. From Washington’s point of view, wrote Shapiro and Witney, European policy is almost infantile. Every time they feel neglected in some way, European governments light a candle in the name of transatlantic partnership, recite their past services to the U.S., sign one or two checks to buy themselves more goodwill, or, when all else fails, call for yet another summit.
During a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski advised Eastern European countries to stop making alarmist statements about Russia, to seek solutions within the E.U. framework and not to seek independent relations with the White House. “We can only look at Europe as a whole because the U.S. will have enough problems on its hands in Southeast Asia in the coming years,” said Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Adviser.
Shapiro and Witney believe that European countries need to drop their blind faith in the U.S. because their security has long ceased to depend on their transatlantic partner’s military might. For Washington, it is better to have partners who can clearly state their interests (just as in the economic sphere), rather than allies who bring more burden than assistance.
How the European Union and the United States Talk and Act*
Europe’s Confused Tactics
1. Lighting Candles in the Name of the Transatlantic Relationship: Constant talk about shared history and values with America makes Europeans unable to see the change in U.S. policy.
2. Soft Siege: Attempts by more than one European country or by Brussels to entangle Washington in a net of forums, meetings and consultations, despite the American government’s evident dislike of this sort of discussion, which is usually fruitless.
3. Paying the Friendship Tax: Automatically participating in initiatives that are important for U.S. interests and incorrectly portraying those initiatives as Europe’s own. The war in Afghanistan is a case in point.
4. Currying Favors: Attempts to extract concessions or direct actions from Washington on the basis of past favors. Many countries like the U.K., which hoped to have access to military technology, or Poland, which hoped to have visa requirements dropped for its nationals because of helping out in Iraq, realized that the U.S. is not in the habit of paying favors back.
5. Setting a Good Example: That’s exactly what the E.U. is hoping to do in relation to climate change. While it is shouting from the rooftops about its global leadership to combat climate change, the E.U. gradually starts to recognize that the U.S. has interests of its own and acts in accordance with them, rather than in tune with European “leadership.”
Favorite U.S. Tactics with Regard to Europe
1. Neglect: Most obvious in the example of China. Despite European attempts to claim a certain geopolitical role in the West’s relations with Beijing, the E.U. is being openly ignored.
2. Circumvention: On matters such as Iraq and the Middle East, where the E.U. has a strong position and is an important player but has interests that differ from those of the U.S., Washington seemingly involves Europe, but in the end marginalizes and circumvents it while pursuing its own goals.
3. Inclusion: On topics such as Afghanistan and Iran, where, to a large extent, there is a consensus among European countries and the matter is of strategic interest to the U.S., which needs assistance. Washington is inclined to involve Europe through various channels such as NATO, the E.U. or bilateral agreements, depending on which of these guarantees the best result for the U.S.
4. Divide and Rule: On matters such as Russia, where European participation is key but there is no consensus among European countries, this is the most common U.S. approach. A case in point how the U.S. maintains different visa regimes for individual E.U. countries.
* According to the European Council on Foreign Relations report “Towards a post-American Europe: A Power Audit of E.U.-U.S. Relations.”
During the brief White House press conference, officials exchanged the usual civilities - U.S. President Barack Obama congratulated the European Union on the final approval of the Lisbon Treaty by all member states, expressed gratitude for the E.U.’s humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and stressed the need for cooperation between Europe and the U.S. in an effort to make Iran stick to its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, in turn commended Obama for having instigated change in the climate of discussions on climate change in the U.S. Javier Solana, the E.U. High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, modestly declared he had nothing more to add. Obama perked up and joked that the E.U.’s first diplomat (one of Solana’s last appearances in that role) clearly needs more “practice,” because “in Washington, even when you have nothing more to add, you need to spend some more time explaining it.”
The stream of European politicians – Barroso; Solana; the E.U. Commissioners for External Relations, Energy and Science and Research; the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister of Sweden; German Chancellor Angela Merkel; Czech President Vaclav Klaus; former German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs (Merkel, Klaus and Genscher are in the U.S. to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall); the Foreign Affairs Minister of Poland and others – caused hardly any stir in Washington. The New York Times buried “the news” in their article on Merkel’s speech on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even the photo opportunity with Barack Obama was so brief that instead of taking place on the White House lawn, the Commissioners had to give interviews “on the go” in the streets of Washington to the large swarm of journalists who accompanied them.
Obama’s joke, however, reveals a lot more about relations between the E.U. and the U.S. than do various press statements, which usually underline how both sides are achieving significant progress on one global issue or another. The case in point on this occasion was the global struggle against climate change. The script usually goes like this: E.U. officials expect a commitment from the U.S. without taking into consideration the current domestic political climate, but become annoyed when they are themselves asked to commit to anything that goes against the bulk of European public opinion. This week, the E.U. delegation attempted to wrestle a more definitive statement out of Obama in support of more binding measures to combat climate change. That is, however, a lesser priority for the Obama administration as it faces the far more serious problem of what to do next in Afghanistan. Moreover, any U.S. decision on climate change is almost entirely dependent on China because if Beijing does not join the effort to curb dangerous emissions, the U.S. Congress would never vote into effect anything like the European climate change legislation.
European politicians complain about having been left out of discussions on further actions in Afghanistan, while the only suggestion that came from the E.U. delegation was the action plan adopted last week to increase humanitarian aid to the country. This action plan mentions nothing about how to get out of the impasse in that “death trap for great powers.”
The hope that after Obama’s election the E.U. would stop being seen by the U.S. as some strange organization is, of course, relegated to the imaginations of Brussels bureaucrats, and not only because of the curious nature of “Brusselese” (“What? Fourth Regional Roundtable on Institution-Building?! What roundtable? What building?”). At least George W. Bush’s team, toughened by the years of the Cold War, openly showed hostility to the old continent.
Bush’s successor openly declares that the 21st century will be led by the U.S. and China. This leads to speculations that Obama might actually dislike Europe – perhaps because of his father’s arrest years ago by British rulers in Kenya (and this is among the weaker conspiracy theories). An unnamed diplomat present at the meeting of the E.U. Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers, which deliberated the results of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh in late September, said later that most of the discussions centered on indignation with the American president’s lack of knowledge of European political structures.
According to Columbia University Professor Steven Sestanovich, this attitude is not new. The trick of American presidents has always been to listen to their European partners and then ignore their counsel, writes Sestanovich in Foreign Policy. Obama is no worse than, for example, John Kennedy, in that respect. Others believe that Obama is so pragmatic that he neglects former partners for the sake of short-term goals. At least, even when he’s not neglecting them, he doesn’t waste time with superfluous clarifications, as was illustrated by the abandoned plan for an anti-missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Obama is certainly no worse than any of his political role models, including Ronald Reagan, who also liked to listen to his allies, crack a joke here and there, and then proceed with his administration’s pre-existing plans.
Assistant Secretary Philip Gordon told Capital that there is no drama – the U.S. will do what is necessary in the climate debate, even though that might not be as much as Europe would expect, and Europe will continue to support the U.S. in Afghanistan, albeit not with as much commitment as Washington would like to see. But according to Jim Quigley, co-chair of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (an organization for American and European businesses), the differences are often exaggerated. “After all, the transatlantic market has a value of four trillion dollars. Seventy-five percent of European direct investments come from the U.S. In America, 50 percent of direct investments have a European origin,” says Quigley. He believes the European feeling of neglect is due to the enthusiasm American companies show for massive growth in China and India; in Europe, by contrast, everything is quiet and predictable. It is a proven fact that American companies make massive investments in China, but most of their money comes from Europe. For example, even miniature Belgium has made more investments in the U.S. than China has. General Motors refused to give up its European division, Opel. Most of the vehicles that G.M. sells in Latin America, Russia and China have in fact been designed in Germany.
In the latest report from the European Council on Foreign Relations, Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney are asking why Europe and the U.S. cannot cooperate in the areas of foreign policy and security as much as they do in the economic arena. Microsoft, for example, is much more strictly regulated out of Brussels than it is in Washington (and American officials seem to accept European decisions with relief).
According to Shapiro and Witney, Europe needs to finally realize that the rules of the global game have changed: The U.S. refuses to be omnipresent and is looking for partners to cooperate with. “Europe, however, wants to build cooperation, not to do business with the U.S.” European countries continue to complain about being neglected rather than offer solutions. Despite all the criticism of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, no European government has managed to offer a more robust solution. From Washington’s point of view, wrote Shapiro and Witney, European policy is almost infantile. Every time they feel neglected in some way, European governments light a candle in the name of transatlantic partnership, recite their past services to the U.S., sign one or two checks to buy themselves more goodwill, or, when all else fails, call for yet another summit.
During a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski advised Eastern European countries to stop making alarmist statements about Russia, to seek solutions within the E.U. framework and not to seek independent relations with the White House. “We can only look at Europe as a whole because the U.S. will have enough problems on its hands in Southeast Asia in the coming years,” said Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Adviser.
Shapiro and Witney believe that European countries need to drop their blind faith in the U.S. because their security has long ceased to depend on their transatlantic partner’s military might. For Washington, it is better to have partners who can clearly state their interests (just as in the economic sphere), rather than allies who bring more burden than assistance.
How the European Union and the United States Talk and Act*
Europe’s Confused Tactics
1. Lighting Candles in the Name of the Transatlantic Relationship: Constant talk about shared history and values with America makes Europeans unable to see the change in U.S. policy.
2. Soft Siege: Attempts by more than one European country or by Brussels to entangle Washington in a net of forums, meetings and consultations, despite the American government’s evident dislike of this sort of discussion, which is usually fruitless.
3. Paying the Friendship Tax: Automatically participating in initiatives that are important for U.S. interests and incorrectly portraying those initiatives as Europe’s own. The war in Afghanistan is a case in point.
4. Currying Favors: Attempts to extract concessions or direct actions from Washington on the basis of past favors. Many countries like the U.K., which hoped to have access to military technology, or Poland, which hoped to have visa requirements dropped for its nationals because of helping out in Iraq, realized that the U.S. is not in the habit of paying favors back.
5. Setting a Good Example: That’s exactly what the E.U. is hoping to do in relation to climate change. While it is shouting from the rooftops about its global leadership to combat climate change, the E.U. gradually starts to recognize that the U.S. has interests of its own and acts in accordance with them, rather than in tune with European “leadership.”
Favorite U.S. Tactics with Regard to Europe
1. Neglect: Most obvious in the example of China. Despite European attempts to claim a certain geopolitical role in the West’s relations with Beijing, the E.U. is being openly ignored.
2. Circumvention: On matters such as Iraq and the Middle East, where the E.U. has a strong position and is an important player but has interests that differ from those of the U.S., Washington seemingly involves Europe, but in the end marginalizes and circumvents it while pursuing its own goals.
3. Inclusion: On topics such as Afghanistan and Iran, where, to a large extent, there is a consensus among European countries and the matter is of strategic interest to the U.S., which needs assistance. Washington is inclined to involve Europe through various channels such as NATO, the E.U. or bilateral agreements, depending on which of these guarantees the best result for the U.S.
4. Divide and Rule: On matters such as Russia, where European participation is key but there is no consensus among European countries, this is the most common U.S. approach. A case in point how the U.S. maintains different visa regimes for individual E.U. countries.
* According to the European Council on Foreign Relations report “Towards a post-American Europe: A Power Audit of E.U.-U.S. Relations.”
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