Nothing to Fear

The better option today is to pursue strategic partnership with the EU. It has made significant progress toward a more unified foreign policy and inspires more loyalty among its members than does NATO. In important areas such as trade, sanctions, and foreign assistance, the EU is already a coherent foreign policy actor with significant means at its disposal. To be sure, the EU is a slow, cumbersome bureaucracy, where national vetoes often delay or prevent decisive action. That is why Washington should support integration rather than resist it: if the United States starts to treat the EU more seriously, it might develop into a more serious and effective partner. Atlanticist allies will find it easier to work with the United States if their cooperation is seen to be enhancing the EU at the same time.

Some Americans, echoed by Cimbalo, worry that the EU will become a counterweight to U.S. power. That danger exists, but the best way to guard against it is actually to support the European project and give Europeans a stake in close U.S.-EU relations. Notwithstanding the damage done to U.S.-European relations over the past four years, a large majority of European governments still value cooperation with the United States for the very same reason Washington should seek Brussels' support: because they can best advance their goals together.

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESY

Opposing EU integration along the lines that Cimbalo suggests--because it is allegedly anti-American--risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy: Europe would unite against the United States but in part because Washington helped push it in that direction. The result could be to deny the United States needed political legitimacy, valuable reconstruction partners, and useful military allies in the future. A successful EU will not mean the emergence of a military competitor: it requires an amazing feat of imagination to conceive of issues or areas in which the EU might act against U.S. interests. On the contrary, most potential EU military missions--such as those already initiated in Bosnia, Macedonia, and the Congo--are in areas where the United States was reluctant to get involved, and thus they should be welcomed as examples of burden-sharing.

How to get started? As a first step, the administration could directly engage and seek to empower the new European Commission president, Portugal's Jose Manuel Barroso, and the new EU foreign minister, Spain's Javier Solana, both of whom are Atlanticists and true friends of the United States. An enhanced role for them can only be good. Next, regular U.S.-EU summits, not very useful in the past, could become forums for genuine strategic discussion. The United States would also need to ensure top-level representation at the EU. The EU has just sent a significant political figure--former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton--as its ambassador to Washington; if the U.S.-EU partnership is going to be strategic, the U.S. ambassador to the EU should also be a person of significant stature, influence, and foreign policy expertise.

A strategy based on these building blocks would set the stage for reconciliation across the Atlantic. German leaders, anxious to restore transatlantic ties but still committed to the EU, would warmly welcome it. Europe's Atlanticists in London, Rome, The Hague, Copenhagen, Warsaw, and elsewhere--who have all felt caught between Paris and Washington--would be pleased. France would face the choice of either joining a rapprochement with Washington or being isolated and losing influence within the EU.

To be sure, differences with the Europeans would not magically disappear. Nor would common ground on contentious issues emerge immediately. But Washington would be creating the structures needed for the world's two richest, most democratic, and most powerful entities to work together toward common goals.

The new Europe, like the old one, will remain the United States' principal partner in the world. Its success will contribute to our own.