Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

The United States and Europe: Mars and Venus?
The events of 9/11 pushed the US to action, but would it act alone or with
its closest allies, its fellow liberal, capitalist democracies in Western Europe?
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The initial response post-9/11 was ambiguous. On the one hand, rather
against expectations, President Bush did not respond to the outrage in knee-
jerk fashion, as President Clinton had done to the African Embassy bomb-
ings; that is, by unilaterally spraying cruise missiles at alleged Al Qaeda
centres (destroying an apparently innocent pharmaceutical factory in Sudan
and some empty tents in Afghanistan in the process). Instead, he went to
the UN and achieved a Security Council resolution authorizing action in
Afghanistan and, equally important, a quite strong resolution attacking the
financial power of the terrorists. On the other hand, the US actually refused
NATO offers of help in the Afghanistan campaign, preferring instead to
work with a mission-led coalition of the willing. But again, once the cam-
paign was (more or less) won, NATO and the EU became involved, the for-
mer providing much of the security in Afghanistan, the latter providing
diplomatic and nation-building expertise.
This ambivalence was to be a feature of subsequent US–European
relations – sometimes close, sometimes distant – but with the Western
Europeans increasingly seeing things differently from both the US and the
British and East-Central Europeans. These differences came to a head over
the Iraq War of 2003, where France, Germany and Russia played a very
active role together in thwarting Anglo–American attempts to achieve a
UN Resolution authorizing action. The war was fought by another coalition
of the willing, again including the UK and Australia but also with contribu-
tions from Poland and a number of other East Europeans although without
explicit UN backing. The official British legal advice was that existing
UN Security Council resolutions provided the necessary cover. At the time
of writing (Autumn 2004) the rift created between the US and much of
Europe by this sequence of events had not healed, and it seemed unlikely
that it would until the key actors – Presidents Bush and Chirac, Chancellor
Schroeder – had passed from the scene. As well as this diplomatic rift, a shift
in popular opinion took place; in Europe (including to a great extent the UK
and other American allies such as Spain and Italy) the sympathy generated
by 9/11 was soon replaced in many quarters by hatred of the alleged war-
mongering of the US, focused in particular on President Bush, but manifest-
ing itself in a generalized anti-Americanism, while in the US contempt for
the Continental Europeans, especially the French, was widespread – French
fries being renamed ‘freedom fries’ is the stupidest example, reminiscent of
the British re-christening of German Shepherd dogs as Alsatians in the First
World War. In the months after the war the US returned to the UN and
achieved resolutions that partially legitimized what had been done, but the
differences remain.
What is happening here? Is a genuine rift between the US and Western
Europe taking place? The more apocalyptic versions of this division are
implausible; the US and Europe are too closely tied together economically
US Hegemony and World Order
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for a complete break to take place, and in any event, pace President Chirac’s
desires, the possibility of an effective anti-American alliance emerging in
Europe is effectively nil. Neither the material basis nor the will to create
such an alliance exists. Still, the differences are real. One popular version of
these differences is offered by Robert Kagan, an American neoconservative,
and echoed by Robert Cooper, a British Foreign Office official currently
working for the EU in Brussels (Kagan 2004; Cooper 2003). In a nutshell,
on this account, Europeans have in the last sixty years finally achieved
a solution to the security problems that have plagued them for cen-
turies; they have set up an international system where the use of force is
inconceivable – the old power centres of Europe are now fixed within the
European Union and settle their differences by diplomacy, with money
replacing military power as the key diplomatic tool. ‘Speak softly and carry
a big carrot’, as Cooper wittily summarized this diplomacy in a Chatham
House talk. The problem, according to Kagan, is the Western European
belief that this extraordinary achievement is transferable to other parts of
the world – the instinctive European response to a predatory dictator such
as Saddam Hussein is to attempt to buy him off – but, sadly, this policy is
ineffective. The old Machiavellian saw that arms are preferable to money
because with arms one can always get money remains valid beyond the par-
adise that Europeans have created for themselves. In this harsher environ-
ment, the more military minded America (Mars) is needed to protect the
softer Europeans (Venus). In the Afterword to the paperback version of his
best-seller, Kagan acknowledges that the Europeans do have something real
to offer the Americans, namely legitimacy via multilateral international
institutions – quite a concession – but the original thesis is still interesting.
It should be said, however, that an aversion to traditional military values
is common to most ‘market states’, to use Philip Bobbitt’s term (Bobbitt 2002).
Although some parts of the US, for example the ‘Tidewater South’, remain
supportive of military values, most of the country is unwilling to accept the
level of casualties characteristic of wars in the old international system –
hence the reliance, where possible, on the genuine ‘warriors’ who make up
US (and British and Australian) special forces. An illustrative vignette: at
one point during the Afghan War it was announced with no apparent irony
that a combination of local allies and US special forces had made Kandahar
Airport safe for the US Marines to be flown in – once upon a time the idea
that the Marines needed to have an airport made safe for them would have
produced disbelief followed by outrage. Still, the Mars and Venus metaphor
makes some sense, although it may also be the case that the different US and
European mentalities here may, in some circumstances, be complementary.
Michael Ignatieff’s account of Empire Lite (2003) makes the point that the
American willingness to use force may be a precondition for the Europeans to
exercise their skills at nation-building, and vice versa, since force is effective
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in the medium run only if followed through. In any event, this division of
labour is quite common; in Former Yugoslavia EU money followed
American warplanes in Bosnia and Kosovo, while in the Arab–Israeli conflict
the Americans exercise influence by trying to restrain the Israelis, and the
Europeans finance the Palestinian Authority and try to prevent corruption –
in neither case with much success, it should be said.
In summary, although the relationship between the US and Europe is, and
will remain, fraught with difficulties, it is unlikely to become completely
hostile – both sides need each other, albeit in different ways, and both sides
have an interest in not allowing short-run conflicts to get out of hand. Much
the same is equally true of US relations with the rest of the OECD, includ-
ing Japan and South Korea, but as between the US and the rest of the world
things are rather different and potentially far more conflictual.