Transatlantic Partnership Between EU and U.S.

Why is Europe absent from the presidential candidates’ discourse in the United States? Senator Clinton has shown that she is incapable of pronouncing the name of the newly elected Russian president. Senator Obama, despite presiding over the Senate committee charged with European issues, has never made a diplomatic visit to Europe. And Senator McCain urges friendship between the American nation and Europe, but the militaristic language he uses in regards to Iraq does not fit well with the European vision, in the words of Talleyrand, “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake”.

What should the next American president’s policy be regarding Europe? There are big possibilities for a renewal. The architects of European hostility in regards to the intervention in Iraq, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, have pulled back from the political scene. The British, French, and German leaders – Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel – insist upon their pro-Americanism. Sarkozy will be in London tomorrow on an official state visit. Will he be able to define a new “Euroatlantic” strategy with his British counterpart?

Last year, the European Union experienced stronger economic growth than the United States. Productivity in Europe also increased rapidly, while inflation stayed low and the strength of the stock market surpassed that of the United States for the first time since 1945. During the Bush years, the Americans witnessed a double decline of wealth and the international reputation of their country, without precedent in history.

Europe can gain nothing from an unstable, protectionist, and isolationist United Sates. Likewise, a Europe that continues to perceive America through an obsolete lens of Gaullism or leftism as an adversary or a menace, can only divide the Democratic world, to great benefit of the states who reject that model. At the time when America prepares to turn its back on President Bush, will Europe know to propose a new era of Euroatlantic relations?

For Germany, there is a risk of becoming a ‘Clausewitzian’ nation anchored to the 21st century: to accept a presence that includes military action.

For London, this implies that the military-industrial complex that NATO obsesses over, drops its instinctive suspicion towards continental Europe. The United Kingdom must become an incontrovertible interlocutor, no longer a follower, in political matters such as European defense and security.

For France, the question is the reintegration of NATO so as to show the world that a more solid European military is not anti-NATO but could open itself up to parallelism and the decoupling of roles.

The United States is guiding itself towards a new post-Iraq paradigm, one of a Euroatlantic alliance of democracies working for the stability and the security of the world. From now on, the question is whether or not the political parties in Paris, London, and Berlin can relieve their defiance. If the Lisbon treaty offers more potential, only real leadership can succeed in effecting it.

Some people object; Europe has its own problems to deal with. The United States suffers from the absence of an efficient health care system. Europe itself needs a policy of credible growth, founded in markets and liberal enterprise. Europe must be able to confront the questions brought about by immigration and demographics: the birth rate isn’t sufficient enough to replace subsequent generations. It must realize the challenges that Islamist ideology poses, operating in clear distinction between the religion of Islam and the Muslims who practice their faith, and Islamism on the other hand, a reactionary ideology and its followers. The misogynistic, homophobic, Liberticidal, and anti-democratic doctrines of this ideology jeopardize European values. The same Islamists feed into the new anti-Semitism that is asserting itself in Europe.

If the United States came from Mars and Europe came from Venus, maybe it is time for the couple to reconcile and give birth to a policy that fuses soft and hard power? Peace is not possible without security, whether this be in the Near East, Colombia, Pakistan or Africa. Between the European nations, the North American members of NATO and their allies, like Japan or Australia, there are more than a billion people who share common values: rule of law, free elections, freedom of expression, rights of women, homosexuals… More than ever it is time for Europe, the United States, and other democracies around the world to promote and defend their common values. This necessitates the institution of a policy of containment according to George Kennan, by rejecting Donald Rumsfeld’s logic of confrontation.

This necessitates the need to confront Putin’s extortion which is leading Russia down an authoritarian path, straying farther each day from the natural course of events of this great European nation. This necessitates the investment in a modernized Keynesian policy founded on free trade and social justice. And this obligates a rethinking of our manner of consuming the planet’s energy sources.

20th century Europe experienced the tragedies of communism, fascism, racist imperialism, and the inconceivable Holocaust. The new Europe of this century is supported by complex interdependency and reciprocal obligations defined by the conventional laws of the European Union, on its skill to spread the democratic model through a kind of osmosis, and on its refusal of putting socials rights after economic rights.

America can turn the pages of its history without going back. Europe has, like Janus, two faces that simultaneously look towards the past and the future, without knowing full well what the future has in store. Ideas are abundant, but leaders who are capable of persuading the proud European nations to think of themselves as a continental power, and not only as an agglomeration of vain and rivaling entities, are not. Perhaps the next American president will understand that by joining Europe and adhering to a new Euroatlantic partnership that would be able to contribute to peace, but also a roof, a job, and rights for all, they demonstrate confidence. The manner of achieving this should be distanced from the methods used by the Europeans last century and by the Americans at the beginning of this century. The next American president must learn to speak the language of Europeans, like certain predecessors from Truman to Clinton, knew how to do. This would be the best way to restore the place of the United States in the world.