Military

UNITED STATES PRIORITIES IN EUROPE
Europe Subcommittee Hearing
Opening Statement

March 13, 2003

Today the Europe Subcommittee will hear from Assistant Secretary of State, Elizabeth Jones, and Assistant Secretary of Defense, J.D. Crouch, II, on U.S. policy priorities in Europe.

It is no coincidence that the first hearing of this Subcommittee for the new Congress would focus on the U.S. priorities in Europe, and integral to that subject, the American view regarding Europe and vice versa. By any measure, the relationship between the United States and the nations of Europe, "old or new," is one of the two or three most important foreign relationships we have.

No two regions in the world share a history, a common set of values and a global vision as much as do the United States and Europe. In Europe our core national interests are fully engaged. Not ignoring Australia and Japan, but for the most part our traditional and closest allies are in Europe. Our economy, and our systems of trade and security are integrally linked with the European continent. With our European partners we share a wider range of interests and a higher level of cooperation on issues ranging, for example, from counter-terrorism, to stability in the Balkans, to peace and unity on Cyprus, than with any other region in the world. Between the United States and Europe, we possess the greatest ability anywhere to address solutions to transnational issues such as organized crime, drug trafficking, proliferation of WMD, communicable diseases and money-laundering.

Today I must admit that I am very concerned for the state of the transatlantic relationship. For example, there is a high level of disagreement between the U.S. and a few other countries that have been in the past or recent years (especially France, Germany, and perhaps Belgium) our closest allies in Europe. The harsh rhetoric we hear on both sides of the Atlantic in varying degrees, has poisoned the overall relationship between American and these countries and could result in long-term damage. The dispute over Iraq, a major current issue, could result in unintended, but extensive collateral damage to the overall transatlantic relationship as we have seen in NATO, there the good will and cooperation which generally prevails in that institution has been harmed or as it has been damaged, too, in our trade and investment relations, our cultural ties, and the attitudes of our general populations. WE noted this by observing the anti-American undercurrent in the anti-war rallies in Europe and through the anti-European (or at least anti-France) rhetoric here.

Whether the difficulties we are having with some of our European friends - and again, I must emphasize some of our European allies - over Iraq will be simply a "one-time, one-issue" phenomenon is not yet clear. Will the dispute over Iraq somehow basically affect the very structure of the transatlantic relationship, and intensify the difficulties we have had all along with Europe? Whether it will result in long-lasting consequences is yet to be determined. No doubt we have entered a very difficult period in relations with some European countries like France and Germany.

In December of 2001 at an address I gave on the campus of the National Defense University, I said that:

"For some years now, I have been concerned about a widening perception gap between the United States and our European partners, and about our increasingly divergent views about issues and about America’s actions and values. For example, on an increasing number of issues, it seems that in certain areas the European notions of what are legitimate U.S. national interest, and our actions to defend them, are fundamentally different than the views of the majority of Americans."

In the same month I wrote those words in 2001, there was an interesting article in the Washington Post by an American professor serving as a visiting fellow at the Cambridge Centre of International Studies in England. The headline of the article reads: "Allies in War [on terrorism], Not in Perspective." Dr. Peter Feaver of Duke University in that article warns: "President Bush, and the American public he leads, should not assume that our allies see the world in the same way we do." (He places the primary cause as the less objective media news coverage in Europe.) (Washington Post of 12/02/01)

American Stanley Hoffman cogently wrote in the New York Review (October 10, 2001) that:

"We [Americans] have tended, in the last ten years, toward a form of self-congratulations that can be grating for others: we are the ‘indispensable nation’...

‘benign American hegemony, we often say, provides a modicum of order without threatening anyone. And yet a powerful country can both attract and repel... We need not only to protect ourselves better at home..., but also to understand why even non-terrorists sometimes feel smothered by America’s cultural, economic, political, and military omnipresence."

For these reasons and for others, I believe that we must examine whether fundamental differences have emerged. Most troubling are increasingly apparent differences of opinion regarding our global, or at least regional, responsibilities and differences on how those responsibilities should legitimately translate into American foreign policy vis a vis the foreign policy of individual European nations and such multinational institutions like the European Union.

The U.S. is the world’s sole remaining superpower. That is a fact - a fact not to be trumpeted proudly; with that status comes responsibilities not to be shirked or neglected either. Indeed, throughout our history, Americans as a people have often been reluctant to see their country take up the mantle of leadership that circumstances have thrust upon us. Our revered Founding Fathers after all had warned us to avoid foreign entanglements, and those words still resonate in parts of our electorate - yes, even in this era of globalization. During the last decade our Government and people, on occasion, acted as though our superpower status was an unwanted and inconvenient burden distracting us and draining our resources from domestic priorities. A great many Americans were impatient for "the peace dividend" at the end of the Cold War. But September 11^th may well have largely put an end to that ambivalence or identity crisis, as well as ending any misbegotten sense of homeland invulnerability.

Our superpower status means that, quite frankly, our world-view is somewhat different than that of many Europeans. We are the force of last resort, drawn upon when other avenues of conflict resolution fail. As such, Americans are more suspicious about international efforts that would set limitations on our flexibility in using our power.

The next point I would raise to explain the widening European-American gap is the fact that Americans are highly protective of national sovereignty. In part that is because of geography and in part it is because of our history (pioneers carving a nation out of the frontier). When we deploy forces overseas, we expect that the rules of engagement for our military will serve U.S. interests, and will be drafted in Washington and not, for example, in the United Nations.

Americans always have reserved the right to use military force to protect our vital national interest and honor our treaty commitments. This is a right, we believe, that does not require the prior approval of the United Nations or any other international body. Certainly, when the United States (or any nation) engages in military operations, the support of the United Nations in the form of a resolution is highly desirable. But still most Americans probably believe and feel quite strongly that the absence of such support does not prevent American action to defend our national interests, or to meet our treaty obligations (certainly including the NATO Treaty), or to roll back an aggressor nation. A Security Council veto will not deter us. Americans tend to believe, if the cause is just and our motives are good or benign we can act unilaterally, if we must, to defend the security of our citizens or our allies.

Also, certainly, American attitudes and policies are influenced by our history and culture, and, of course, the same is true for Europe. Because of Europe’s unique history, its geography, and the close proximity of so many strong nationalities - with all of their history of bitter wars and changing alliances - Europeans naturally have a predisposition today to support multilateral initiatives and institutions that limit the unfriendly or detrimental actions of individual nations on their neighbors.

This gradual embrace of multilateralism in the 20^th Century has generally served Europe well, resulting gin a level of integration and cooperation that Europeans’ forefathers could not have imagined. It has also helped the smaller, less powerful European states act collectively to reduce the unilateral options or use of power of the larger European states - and to attempt to harness or limit the power of the United States as well. Some Americans certainly do see U.S. membership in multilateral institutions or treaties as foreign efforts to put limits on American powers to protect our national interest. Of course, such views neglect the full array of positive impacts that American also receives from such memberships or treaties. But some Americans’ greater skepticism about multilateralism and the resultant limitation on our ability to effectively pursue our national interests increasingly are a major cause of the fundamental differences of opinions between Europeans and Americans. This factor, growing in importance, should not be underestimated.

While Europeans don’t like to hear such words, the nations of the EU have given up increasing elements of their national sovereignty on a day-to-day basis and have accepted a higher level of regulation and standardization than would be acceptable to the American public - ever or at least for the foreseeable future. The protection of American sovereignty rings strongly in the American consciousness. But as Philip Stephens writes in his Financial Times column of November 23, 2001: "Here [in Europe] governments have few hang-ups about pooling sovereignty in the cause of greater security or a cleaner world. They do it every day in the European Union."

The difference in attitudes on the importance of national sovereignty and multilateralism is a big, big reason for the increasingly divergent attitudes and actions between European nations and the United States. These attitudinal differences are growing every day, too.

I do have other very specific concerns regarding Europe which I will mention briefly in closing, including the very unfortunate recent collapse of the U.N.-sponsored peace negotiations designed to resolve the Cyprus problem. The U.N. Secretary General worked very hard, along with others, to try to bring an end to the division of the island. I hope we can somehow salvage that matter where Mr. Denktash appears increasingly to be blocking the will of the majority of Turkish Cypriots. Also, I am troubled with the inability to make more progress in the Northern Ireland peace process and in the Ngorno-Karabagh dispute which seems to be at a standstill.

In the Balkans, the slow pace of development in Kosovo and the resumption of talk about Kosovo independence is problematic. Yesterday’s assassination of the Prime Minister in Serbia may raise concerns about the political stability and the strength of the rule of law in that nation.

Furthermore, in the Caucasus, continued instability in Georgia and the disappointing way recent elections in Armenia were handled present challenges to our policies.

There are other areas of interest to this Subcommittee which hopefully our hearing today will address. That will help us to better understand and more precisely define our foreign policy goals as they relate to Europe.

I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses.