The Ties That Bind U.S. to Europe Are Beginning to Look a Bit Frayed

The debacle in Bosnia serves as a symbol of the much broader American estrangement from Europe--and of Europe’s progressive loss of confidence in the United States.

It is a long-term phenomenon, one that has been accelerated by the inability to combat Serbian aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina but is much broader and deeper than that. At least in terms of interest and emotions, U.S. foreign policy is gravitating, slowly and inexorably, from the Age of Europe to the Age of Asia.

The estrangement is nowhere clearer than in Europe itself. The immediate example, of course, has been the wrangling over Bosnia; in the past 10 days we have had the spectacle of the British, French and Americans pointing fingers at one another and calling names while Serbian forces advanced. At one low point, French President Jacques Chirac compared British Prime Minister John Major to Neville Chamberlain, who acquiesced in Adolf Hitler’s aggression in Czechoslovakia.

What was once merely feared has now already happened. Over the past two years, we have gone from worrying that Bosnia could produce serious splits within NATO to having those divisions become a staple of daily life. We have gone from fretting over whether America would lose its leadership role in Europe to seeing that loss become an undeniable fact.

In Europe these days, there are other, less dramatic examples of the estrangement besides Bosnia.

Europe is preoccupied with the building of Europe. Leaders here are understandably spending time on questions of European integration: whether there should be a common currency; how much governmental power should be handed over to the European Union. American diplomats here note, with some exasperation, that they doubt the United States will be able to get much attention in Europe next year because all of its leaders will be preoccupied with the Intergovernmental Conference on the future of the European Union.

Meanwhile, America devotes ever increasing energies to Asia. Over the past few weeks, the news from America, at least about foreign policy, has been dominated by Asian concerns. The Clinton Administration made its trade deal on autos with Japan. America finally normalized relations with Vietnam. The military junta of Myanmar released Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Most of all, there’s news about China, which this year is suddenly starting to get the sort of unending attention that used to be reserved for the Soviet Union. It is being treated like a superpower, even if it isn’t one yet.

Pick up the International Herald Tribune, which has long served as the main newspaper for America overseas, and you’ll find the front page dominated by Asian stories, to the exclusion of almost everything else but Bosnia. The paper, which is based in Paris and sometimes used to reflect a sort of Eurocentric view of the world, now often seems to think Asia is more interesting than its home turf.

Moreover, Asia’s commercial possibilities deepen the divisions between the United States and Europe. This month, while the Clinton Administration was going through one of its roughest periods with China, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl welcomed Chinese President Jiang Zemin to Bonn with open arms, saying China had a right to its own ideas of human rights. And Leon Brittan, the European trade commissioner, announced plans for a broad expansion of ties between the European Union and China. The Clinton Administration has talked about developing a united front with Europe in its policies toward China but more often than not has failed to do so.

There are a number of factors underlying the estrangement between Americans and Europeans.

First, at the global level, it is obviously an outgrowth of the end of the Cold War, which bound America and Western European nations together for their own defense. Moreover, global economic trends are propelling Europe toward integration, and that process not only takes time but involves a bit of distancing from America.

Secondly, to Americans, Europe no longer seems to represent change and excitement in the same way that it used to. The past generation of American political leaders and diplomats were swept up by great issues of the Atlantic, by the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War. Now, the greatest changes and fastest development in the world seem to be across the Pacific.

Thirdly, some Europeans blame the estrangement upon the changing demography of America. America’s population has become more heavily Latino and Asian, they note, and its foreign policy is following suit--just as America became more oriented toward Europe after the waves of European immigration at the beginning of this century. One Italian diplomat admits he was stunned by America’s lack of interest in celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. He thought beforehand that the event would symbolize the continuing close ties between Italy and America. He judged wrongly; an America preoccupied with diversity had enough mixed feelings about Columbus’ arrival that the celebration was muted.

Finally, at the most fundamental level, Europeans can see the reduction in U.S. commitment to Europe. Three decades ago, they saw John F. Kennedy pledge to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship . . . to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Now, they see Bill Clinton adamantly refusing to put American ground troops in Bosnia even in the face of several years of atrocities. No doubt Clinton is merely reflecting the views of the American public. But to Europeans, that’s precisely the point.

The Clinton Administration’s response to the process of estrangement has been essentially twofold.

The first is rhetorical: to deny that it is happening. “In the absence of a single unifying threat, and at a time of understandable focus on domestic concerns, some argue that the ties that bind us are fraying, and that America and Europe will inevitably drift apart,” asserted Secretary of State Warren Christopher in what was billed as a major address on Europe in Madrid last month. “I absolutely reject that view.”

But he had trouble explaining exactly why Europe and the United States now have a “common destiny.” He was obliged to fall back on the past (the ties of World War II, German reunification) and the questionable present (“the work we are doing together for reform for the former Soviet Union”). It was hardly convincing.

The Clinton Administration’s second response to the estrangement from Europe is to take a leading role in the expansion of NATO. That may be an ambitious, worthwhile endeavor. But it is also a risky, uncertain process, one that may in the end turn out to have less impact than Bosnia. For now, it remains unclear whether the United States is willing to give security commitments to a wave of new nations in Central Europe--and what those security commitments will count for if war should break out.

In a recent interview in the newspaper La Stampa, Italian Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli was asked whether European stability was being threatened by the “leadership crisis in the United States” and by the health problems of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

“By all means, but I would not say that relations between Clinton and Congress, or the hospital bulletins on Yeltsin’s state of health, are at the bottom of it,” she replied. “It is basically a problem for Europe itself to assume an identity and avoid suffering further humiliations.”

That exchange sounds so normal and logical you have to step back to wonder at how revealing it is. Clinton’s stuck in Congress, Yeltsin in the hospital. America, the supposedly victorious superpower, is just another big outsider, equated with the superpower that collapsed. And Europe increasingly sees the need to stand on its own now.