One Europe: The Dream of Unity : Insider : Looking at a New Partnership : Despite diminished influence, the United States needs to play a role in Europe, experts argue.

The way Washington’s top Europe-watcher, Thomas M. T. Niles, sees it, the new foreign policy assertiveness of the European Community is altering the transatlantic relationship in a way the United States should welcome--even though it marks the end of almost half a century of American dominance.

“This is one of the positive consequences of 45 years of U.S. policy toward Europe,” said Niles, assistant secretary of state for Europe. “Now we have a partner that is prepared to join with us in dealing with problems around the world.”

Niles, who began his present job last October after two years as U.S. ambassador to the European Community, is the U.S. government’s acknowledged expert on European unity. He concedes that Washington’s relationship with Europe will be different in the years to come but suggests that some analysts are going overboard in depicting the eclipse of American influence on the Continent.

“There is absolute unity--east, west and central in Europe--about the necessity for a continued role for the United States--militarily, politically and economically,” Niles said in an interview. Even the French, for decades the most outspoken critics of U.S. power on the Continent, “tell us that we should remain engaged,” he said.

Nevertheless, the U.S. presence in Europe is diminishing. With the end of the Cold War, thousands of U.S. troops are being removed, and those that remain will no longer be regarded as an indispensable shield against Soviet aggression. The U.S. Treasury, which virtually financed the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, is no longer able to afford the game of dollar diplomacy.

And after years in which Washington set the agenda for the West--sometimes over the grumbled objections of European leaders--the United States is no longer even trying to call the tune all the time. For instance, the Bush Administration has virtually abandoned the field in Yugoslavia, leaving the diplomatic lead to the European Community.

European leadership “is something that we have sought from the beginning,” Niles said. “It relieves part of the burden on the United States at a time when that is appropriate.”

At the same time, Niles noted that the Europeans have fallen into line behind U.S leadership in the Middle East peace process, a subject that once caused friction between Washington and major Western European capitals. The European Community sent its representative to the U.S.-sponsored peace conferences in Madrid and Moscow, where they played a supporting role to the United States.

Asked if the United States and the EC have divided up world problems, with Washington taking the Middle East and Europe handling Yugoslavia, for instance, Niles replied: “It is an ad hoc arrangement. There is no agreement on the sharing of responsibility . . . but the United States and Europe have similar interests and they should be working together and sharing the burden.”

Non-government experts generally agree that the U.S. role in Europe will change but will not wither away.

“We have no choice but to be a major European power,” said Robert E. Hunter, director of European studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It will be different. We’re not going to be able to set all the rules the way we used to. But if we are going to protect our interests, we need to have a relationship as close as in the past. It will depend more on diplomacy and suasion than on raw military power.”

Hunter, a former National Security Council staff specialist, said the Administration has not done a good job of explaining its European policy.

“We want to continue to run things without paying the money for it,” he said. “And we’re going through a difficult adjustment process.”

Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former National Security Council expert now a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said there is no doubt that the American public is growing increasingly skeptical about U.S. involvement around the world. But he said the public attitude concerning European nations is more favorable than it is toward some other countries, such as Japan.

Both Hunter, who served in the Carter Administration, and Sonnenfeldt, who was part of the Nixon and Ford administrations, agreed that Niles is the right man to head the European bureau at a time when the most significant issue is European Community integration.

“He is an able guy and an experienced guy,” Sonnenfeldt said. “But the (European) bureau itself is still in flux with all kinds of personnel changes.”

“I thought it was a brilliant choice,” Hunter said. “He comes most immediately from that part of European affairs that will define the future,” referring to his post as ambassador to the European Community.

The only question, Hunter added, is whether “the State Department leadership will let him do his job.”

So far, there has been no evidence that Niles is being second-guessed by Secretary of State James A. Baker III or anyone else. Nevertheless, sources say Niles does not seem as close to Baker as was his predecessor, Raymond Seitz, who guided the U.S. response to the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe and played a major role in the negotiations that preceded German reunification.

Of course, Baker and Bush exhibited far more interest in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the events that followed it than they have in the far more complex and much less emotional issue of European integration. Seitz, now U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, held the Europe job at a time when so many things were breaking in Washington’s direction that overall success was almost guaranteed. There is no such certainty now.

A career Foreign Service officer who was also ambassador to Canada, Niles, 52, previously served in lower-level jobs at U.S. embassies in Moscow, Brussels and Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

For the immediate future, Niles said, the U.S.-Europe relationship will be defined primarily in terms of economics.

He said that U.S. Commerce Department outreach programs, meant to educate American business on the implications of European Community efforts to create a single market by the end of this year, “have been fairly successful.” The fact that the United States enjoys a trade surplus with Europe “shows we are doing something right. By and large, I think we are doing pretty well.”

Despite a sometimes acrimonious dispute over subsidies to Europe, especially to the Continent’s inefficient farmers, Niles said there are more areas of agreement than disagreement on foreign trade.

“The disputes that we have with Europe are in the areas where the (international trading) rules are weakest--agriculture and subsidization,” Niles said. On other matters affecting foreign trade, he added, the United States and Europe are often far closer to each other than either is to Japan or the emerging economies of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

“I don’t see competition with Europe in trade as an antagonistic factor,” he said.