Abstract
You might call it the Obama Paradox: With the election of Barack Hussein Obama as forty-fourth president of the United States, America chose a leader the entire world seemed to identify with. Europe, in particular, hailed the multi-ethnic, post-racial and cosmopolitan Obama with relief and hope as ‘one of us’. Atlanticists on both sides of the ocean were certain that this president would save and renew the transatlantic alliance. Yet two years later, the United States and Europe are further apart on many key issues than they have ever been—in their policies as much as in public attitudes. For the United States, Europe appears to be less relevant than ever before in recent history; in Europe, anti-Americanism seems to be drifting into simple (and often not even hostile) indifference. The transatlantic gap, far from having narrowed, seems to have widened.
The post-World War II alliance between the United States and Europe, grounded as it was in the shared experience of survival after an epochal mass slaughter, in a common perception of threat and in widely overlapping interests and values, was bound to mutate with the passage of generations into a more pragmatic, less emotional relationship. Then, at least for a moment, the attacks of 11 September 2001 seemed to herald a return to the old sense of unity, based on a joint stance against a global terrorist threat. But in retrospect, it has become clear that the so-called Global War on Terror was an interlude as well.
There are those—like Robert Kagan—who argue that we are in fact returning to normality, because the entire period which saw the creation and flowering of the transatlantic alliance between 1945 and 1989 was itself a historical anomaly. They contend that history, far from disappearing, is coming back with a vengeance, in the shape of classic nineteenth-century-style great power competition, the key difference being that (at least in America) the European Union or individual European nations are no longer considered likely to play a featuring role in this game. This take on the current state of the world implies a transatlantic relationship in which Europe is at best a minor ally to the US, and at worst, a deadweight irrelevance.
Yet there is a major flaw in this view. It ignores two forces that did not exist in the nineteenth century, but are the prime shapers of the twenty-first century's geopolitical landscape. Firstly, globalisation—the worldwide exchange of goods, people and ideas—has created degrees of integration whose political implications we are only beginning to grasp. At the very least, it limits the sovereign freedom of action that nation states took for granted during most of their existence. For evidence, one need look no further than the current global economic crisis, which provided a stark revelation to governments in Washington, European capitals and Beijing of just how complex the web of global interdependencies had become. Second, the post-1945 international liberal order, created by the United States and Europe, is being challenged by the new phenomenon of multipolarity: the rise of non-Western powers like Russia, China, India and Brasil. Despite some talk of a ‘Beijing consensus’, these challengers rarely present rival visions of what a new order ought to look like. But their arrival raises the prospect of a future global disorder, because some of the new powers act as spoilers, and all instinctively reject Western pleas to act as ‘responsible stakeholders’.
In sum, these forces—globalisation and multipolarity—give the United States and Europe more rather than fewer reasons to coordinate and cooperate with each other on a broad range of issues from climate to trade to foreign and security policy. Of course, the US remains the world's sole superpower, and the main stakeholder in global governance. But its power, hard and soft, has been eroded over the past decade. In an increasingly multipolar world, America needs alliances with like-minded countries more than it did in an earlier age, because they give it leverage and help conserve its resources. Europe, conversely, is a trade giant, but remains—to put it politely—vertically challenged in the political sense. Still, its ambitions (and, occasionally, its sense of responsibility) extend considerably beyond its immediate neighbourhood: Europe thinks of itself as America's key partner and co-stakeholder in dealing with global challenges, but it needs American power to gain worldwide leverage. Yet America has made it very clear that Europe should no longer rely blindly on its ability to ride on the superpower's coat-tails, or to shelter in its shadow. Europeans for the most part understand this, but they have yet to draw the appropriate conclusions. On both sides of the Atlantic, then, there is a tension between goals and capability that ought, logically, to draw America and Europe closer together.
This research paper examines America's and Europe's positions in the world and their relationship with one another. What are the reasons for the widening of the divide? Are they rooted in current political or individual constellations, or are there larger structural causes—even paradigm shifts—that are slowly driving the partners apart? It will then discuss several areas of transatlantic cooperation and describe how the current divides over these issues can be bridged and a new framework established: a new transatlantic relationship for the multipolar age.