In today's
Financial Times you have the following bombshell:
The German leader said, in comments delivered on his behalf to a security conference in Munich, that
Nato had ceased to be "the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and coordinate" the most important strategic issues of the day.
Mr Schröder (...) made clear that he would use a summit in Brussels next week with President George W. Bush to propose the establishment of a high level panel to review the relationship, reporting to Nato and EU leaders by next year. (...)
However, the substance and the timing of the chancellor's idea shocked Nato loyalists because it appeared to suggest the need for a fundamental rethink of the organisation's role as the primary forum for transatlantic relations just when great efforts are being made on both sides to heal the wounds caused by the Iraq war.
NATO is the only European-centered institution controlled by the US...
Despite Condi's speech, and
Rumsfeld's cute attempts to make nice:
This year, however, the European tour of Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, had clearly infected those gathered, and even the combative Mr Rumsfeld was in an unusually conciliatory mood. "When I first mentioned I might be travelling in France and Germany, it raised some eyebrows," he said, noting that one colleague worried there could be a repeat of past fights. "I thought for a moment and then I replied: 'That was Old Rumsfeld'."
Europe and the US are still miles apart. As even Americans acknowledged, the new conciliatory tone is purely superficial:
But underneath the bonhomie, tensions remained. Mr Rumsfeld refused to back away from his formulation that future conflicts will be managed by ad-hoc coalitions, rather than by the UN or Nato, a stance that caused consternation among German parliamentarians in the session.
He also pointedly differed from Ms Rice by failing to embrace further European integration, prompting one senior member of the US delegation to quip: "The speech was New Rumsfeld; the question-and-answer was Old Rumsfeld."
"[Mr] Rumsfeld's words played better than they read," said William Cohen, former defence secretary and Mr Rumsfeld's immediate predecessor. "The tone was different but the music is the same."
There are serious disagreements over Iran's nuclear plans (see that same articles for more background), where the Europeans still want to give diplomacy a chance. There are disagreements over Europe's plan to give up on its arm embargo on China. There are hidden, but real, disagreements about the European Union's increasingly serious efforts to build military capacity of its own (including its own military headquarters).
This translates into a weakening of the main Atlantic institutions:
- NATO is seriously threatened by the EU's growing military assertiveness
- the OSCE is in direct competition with the Council of Europe, a Europeans-only organisation which deals with the same issues AND has teeth, through the European Court of Human Rights which has the right to impose its decisions on all governments (including even Russia) - and which has the moral authority so that these decisions are usually implemented by the governments it shames.
- Europe is busy building its own high tech infrastructure, including the Galileo satellite system (a direct competitor to the GPS), its own transportation capacity with the Airbus A400M; and of course it dominates the commercial rocket launcher system with the Ariane 5.
So, you've probably heard on your side of the Atlantic "Europe is just not relevant to the US anymore, the focus is more on the Pacific, China, India, and now the Arab world".
Well, guess what, the Europeans are increasingly saying the same: "the US are not so vital anymore to Europe, we are increasingly able to bear our burden and to assert our own interests".
It's a slow process, it's not going to happen overnight, but the two continents are really drifting apart.