U.S. Warms to a Cohering Europe

In this capital of the work in progress that is Europe, this citadel of bureaucracy echoing with 20 languages, words are important. And so is symbolism.

As a result, President Bush’s decision to meet here Monday with leaders of the European Union, the first such visit by a U.S. president, represents a big step in transatlantic relations. Bush already made a major gesture during his State of the Union speech by uttering two words he had rarely spoken: “European Union.”

“I was very struck by that first speech after his reelection,” said Franco Frattini, a vice president of the EU governing commission. “When you speak about the European Union, it’s a clear reference to the European institutions, not to a geographical dimension. This shows a commitment, along with the decision to visit the commission ... a willingness to regard the EU as a single, united interlocutor.”

The Iraq war exacerbated stark ideological and cultural differences between the United States and Europe, leading some commentators to warn of a growing “civilizational split” in the West. The turmoil also revealed fractures and contradictions within Europe, whose economic integration has steamed ahead of its political cohesion.

But European leaders say recent signs of a transatlantic rapprochement have been accompanied by increasing unity in the EU as it confronts crucial tests of its aspirations to become a bona fide world power.

“The atmosphere is very positive” between the U.S. and Europe, Frattini said, citing a new consensus on the Middle East. “Today, I think these internal divisions in Europe have been overcome.”

Symbolism will have to produce substance if the mood is to endure, however. And like Americans, Europeans still grapple with hard questions: What exactly is the EU? Do Americans, or most Europeans, for that matter, want a strong Europe? Can the current group of Western leaders sustain the improved ties?

There has never been anything quite like the European Union. It combines aspects of a federation, a common market, an international agency and a nation state: a behemoth encompassing 25 countries, 455 million people and a vast economy. The combined foreign aid budgets of the EU and its members lead the world, a sign of the continent’s potential global clout, and the euro currency is now stronger than the U.S. dollar.

Americans need to wake up to the coming reality of a European juggernaut, says U.S. economist Jeremy Rifkin, who in a recent essay in Britain’s Guardian newspaper called Bush’s visit “a potential watershed.”

“Americans and many Europeans have blinkers on,” Rifkin wrote. “Virtually the entire European continent now lives under a common flag, a single passport and, soon, a common constitution. But we are still in the habit of comparing Germany or France to the U.S. In the commercial arena, that makes less and less sense.”

Yet doubts and obstacles persist. On the fundamental issue of defense, Europe barely exists in comparison with the U.S. military machine. Britain and France have nuclear capacity, but European militaries other than Britain’s played generally minor roles in recent conflicts such as the Persian Gulf wars. NATO has been confined mainly to small-scale missions.

And European officials complain that the Bush administration has been hostile to an autonomous Europe, especially to projects for a European defense force and arms agency.

“Certain American leaders show a certain ambiguity,” French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told journalists in Paris recently. “It seems to them both good and dangerous that Europe builds itself. I have heard some say that ‘you are creating a European defense against NATO and the U.S.’ And in fact, I think they are complementary.”

The tensions are rooted in philosophical clashes on such issues as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty on climate change, both embraced by Europe and rejected by the U.S. The EU displays traits that tend to exasperate the Bush administration, which has shown little affection for slow-moving multinational institutions that constrain U.S. power.

Like the United Nations, the EU slogs through a maze of jargon, agencies, regulations and treaties. The addition of 10 members from Central and Eastern Europe last year made things more unwieldy. Few of the continent’s voters know or care much about the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, the EU’s only representative elected body.

Europeans themselves complain about the way Brussels does business. The prime minister of Luxembourg said Thursday that he was sick of endless squabbles over details of Bush’s upcoming appearances with the European Commission, the organization’s executive body, and the Council of Ministers, which represents member nations.

“One day you will read in my memoirs the difficulty to find the right way to have a press conference or to put a knife and fork together without having disrespect between institutions,” said Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

Caricatures aside, the institution building is far from complete. On one hand, for instance, Europe is working hard on coordinated policies to toughen borders against illegal immigration, an urgent issue. On the other, Spain has caused discord by embarking on an amnesty program for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Europe also finds it hard to speak with a single voice. Germany and France have long regarded themselves as the leaders of the EU. Britain resists their hegemony and, because of its special alliance with the United States and refusal to adopt the euro, keeps a certain distance from the organization. The British often team with other European countries to resist the Franco-German alliance.

Such fault lines predated the Iraq war, which caused an earthquake. France and Germany led the antiwar camp; Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland joined the U.S.-led coalition. Then Spain switched camps after the election of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who pulled his troops out of Iraq and urged other nations to do the same.

Overall, however, both factions seem to be moving on. France and Germany point to the violence in Iraq and the absence of weapons of mass destruction but have offered to assist the country with its debt and in training security forces. Governments that support the war emphasize the positive outcome of the recent Iraqi election.

“The elections closed the debate over whether the Iraqi people wanted liberty and democracy,” Frattini said.

The goal of common European diplomatic and security policies faces a key challenge this year in referendums on the proposed EU constitution. Spaniards are expected to approve the charter in their vote today, but opposition remains intense in Britain and other nations, where many citizens resist the idea of surrendering sovereignty to Brussels.

Even if Europe achieves internal unity, some worry about the future of the transatlantic alliance. They predict clashes on such issues as Iran’s nuclear program and arms sales to China.

More broadly, the U.S. regards itself as a guarantor of global stability, whereas nations such as France see a “multipolar” world in which emerging powers such as Europe, China and India dilute U.S. might.

In a new book titled “The End of the West?” French author Francois Heisbourg argues that Washington’s view of the value of an alliance with Europe declined steadily after the end of the Cold War and more rapidly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Events will determine the existence or absence of American support for the unity of its European allies,” Heisbourg writes. “At worst, and the worst sometimes occurred after the inauguration of President Bush in 2001, the unity of the Europeans must be actively fought.”

For the next two days in Brussels, though, words will be what count. Europeans and Americans insist that they speak the same language.

“When [Secretary of State] Condi Rice was in Paris, she said that the United States needs a strong Europe,” French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said.

“And I said that Europe needs a strong Europe as well.... A strong, autonomous and allied Europe is in the interests of the United States. If we are weak, it means that the Americans end up acting alone.”