U.S. Is the Enabler to Europe’s Dependency

The news last week from the European Union summit in Helsinki that the Europeans will create a 50,000- to 60,000-strong force capable of taking military action independently of NATO evokes mixed emotions. As Dr. Johnson is once alleged to have remarked on observing dogs bouncing balls on their noses, the remarkable thing is not that they do it well, but that they do it at all.

The welcome aspect of the European decision is that at long last the Europeans are getting serious about their scandalous military under-performance. Hand-wringing about this has been a staple of European summits for at least a decade. But obscure ideological debates, usually pitting the British against the French, have held up progress. Last December, however, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac met to lay aside their differences. Their agreement provided the momentum--much accelerated by deep European embarrassment over their technical inadequacies exposed during the Kosovo war--for the Helsinki announcement.

Does this mean the U.S. can breathe a sigh of relief and adjust its own dispositions in Europe, confidant that Europe will take care of future Kosovos? Far from it. While European rhetoric is on the right track, European defense spending is tending in the diametrically opposite direction. This is particularly so in Germany, where military resources receive little priority in the general cutback of public spending made necessary by Germany’s tottering public finances. The trend is similar elsewhere in Europe. Public opinion simply will not permit Europe’s leaders to back up their expansive military ambitions with real resources. The elite may wish to bestride the world, but ordinary voters are quite content to remain military pygmies.

Only the U.S. can change this unsatisfactory state of affairs. The chronic European military shortfall is not simply an example of old world hypocrisy; it also involves a shrewd European calculation of U.S. intentions toward Europe based on an analysis of American behavior in the Balkans since 1990.

The analysis goes like this: In its public diplomacy, the Clinton administration sold American actions as a series of disinterested, humanitarian interventions in response to gross human rights violations. For the Europeans, however, something much more elemental was at stake. For them, it came down to the penetrating question: Which is to be master?

They saw that, when the U.S. brushed aside their efforts in 1992-94 to settle the Bosnia problem through classic compromise, the U.S. was signaling that it was not ready to let Europeans run Europe. In a profound sense, the U.S. conducted the Bosnia war to show the Europeans that, for all their success in forging political and economic union, the U.S. was still military top dog. Bosnia revalidated the U.S. droit de seigneur.

As a policy this was amazingly successful. By the time Kosovo came around, Europe had abandoned any pretense of autonomous action. Its leaders were queuing up to take instruction from Washington. But there is a significant downside. The American assertiveness reduces Europe’s incentive to take charge of its own affairs. The Europeans calculate that, even if they put together the means to settle crises such as Bosnia, the U.S. will second-guess and undermine them. Their sensible conclusion is not to bother with such things but to get on with improving their economies.

So long as this U.S. approach continues--and the Clinton administration shows no signs of abandoning its attachment to the concept of the U.S. as a European land power--the Helsinki project will be stillborn. The Europeans will go through the motions but nothing more. The prospect? Endless American deployments wherever trouble arises.

This makes no sense. The unraveling situation in Kosovo shows that the U.S. cannot and should not micromanage Europe. As a strategic balancer, the U.S. has a very honorable record in Europe. It should return to that role. Obsession with minor matters drains attention away from the main game, specifically the U.S. relationship with Russia.

Helsinki has given the U.S. the opportunity to break the gridlock. The U.S. should signal to Europe that it takes it seriously. A good way to do this would be to launch a new drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe. When Europeans see GIs boarding U.S.-bound planes, they will finally get serious. But not until then.