The United States and Europe, their relationship in crisis over the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, must take concrete steps to ensure the split does not permanently damage the trans-Atlantic alliance, American and European experts warned on Friday.
The Council on Foreign Relations, in a new report, argued against US unilateralism and predicted that if Europe defines its identity as countering US power, the world likely will return to a pre-World War One balance of power system "with the same disastrous results."
The report, authored by a 26-member task force headed by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, said the allies must find a "common sense of direction" as they had during the Cold War and be prepared for compromise.
"An alliance only has meaning when its members adjust their policies to take into account their partners' interests - when they do things that they would not do if the alliance did not exist," it said.
The report was released as the United States and many allies are beginning to work more closely on post-war Iraq.
That is not the case with Spain, where al Qaeda is suspected in train bombings in Madrid last week that helped elect a new Socialist prime minister who has vowed to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.
This development "obviously puts back front and centre the question of the cohesiveness of the Atlantic alliance and its ability to hang together as it fights terrorism," said Charles Krupchan, the council's director of European Studies and director of the report.
"I think the recent election in Spain and the statements of Zapatero indicate how crucial it is that both sides of the Atlantic struggle to stay on the same sheet of music vis-à-vis the Middle East and combating terrorism in particular," he told Reuters, referring to incoming prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
The report blamed the Iraq war for bringing trans-Atlantic strains "to the point of crisis."
This situation was influenced by domestic politics, personality, miscommunication and unfortunate circumstances.
But its roots are in the fall of communism when the urgency of maintaining a common front diminished and the United States and Europe went separate ways on defence spending, social priorities, the efficacy of military force and the optimal configuration of the post-Cold War world, the report said.
This was compounded when the September 11, 2001, attacks caused the "most sweeping reorientation of US grand strategy in over half a century," including a US decision to attack extremists, and regimes harbouring them, before they could act.
To ensure that history's most successful alliance continues to flourish, Washington and Europe must "work together to ensure that the Iraq crisis becomes an anomaly in their relationship, not a precedent for things to come," the task force said.
"Americans must recognise that they cannot succeed alone" and Europeans "need to acknowledge that the post-9/11 world is by no means safe for trans-Atlantic societies (and) the dangers that make it unsafe do not come from Washington," it said.
The report urged the formation of common policies toward the use of military force, "irresponsible" states, the Middle East and the role of multilateral institutions.
The Council on Foreign Relations is a membership organisation of foreign policy experts and also operates a think tank.
Comments
Comments are closed.