lunes, 8 de marzo de 2010

"THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING EUROPE"



Monday, Mar. 08, 2010

The Incredible Shrinking Europe

It was supposed to be the moment Europe grew muscles. Last fall, after a decade of work to simplify policymaking and make the European Union more efficient at home and stronger abroad, the last few holdouts signed a 1,000-page document known as the Lisbon Treaty. In November, the E.U.'s first real President and Foreign Minister were chosen. Europhiles dusted off their familiar dream: of a newly emboldened world power stepping up to calm trouble spots, using aid and persuasion where it could, but prepared to send in troops when it had to. Brussels would lead the fight against climate change. And Europe's economies would prove to the ruthless free markets of North America and Asia that the social market still offers the best way out of an economic crunch.

The dream didn't last a month. At the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, it was China and the U.S. who haggled over a final deal, while Europe sat on the sidelines. Instead of a foreign policy triumph, 2010 began with an unseemly squabble over whether or not to bail out Greece, whose debt has dragged down Europe's currency. At the same time, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he would be skipping an E.U.-U.S. confab in Spain in May, frustrated, it appeared, with the endless summitry that goes with accommodating the E.U. Little wonder that Europe finds itself in one of its periodic bouts of angst-ridden self-doubt. And little wonder that the rest of the world is asking questions: What does Europe stand for? Where does it fit into a world that seems set to be dominated by China and the U.S.? Would anyone notice if it disappeared? (See pictures of immigration in Europe.)

Let's get one thing straight: Europe is a remarkably good place to live. Many of the E.U.'s member states are among the richest in the world. Workers in Europe usually enjoy long vacations, generous maternity leave and comfortable pension schemes. Universal health insurance is seen as part of the basic social contract. Europe is politically stable, the most generous donor of development aid in the world. Sure, taxes can be high, but most Europeans seem happy to pay more to the state in return for a higher — and guaranteed — quality of life. "The E.U. offers an attractive social, economic and political model," Charles Grant, director of the London-based think tank Centre for European Reform, argued last year. "It is more stable, safe, green and culturally diverse than most parts of the world, which is why neighbors want to join and many migrants aim for Europe."r

But the good life at home doesn't make Europe strong abroad. The E.U. may have all the soft-power credentials in the world, but on the grand stage it has lacked the weight and influence of others. At times, it simply seems unable to say what it thinks. Washington and Beijing may squabble from time to time, but the U.S. has a reasonably well-articulated China policy: engage economically, encourage democratically, and criticize on human rights when appropriate. What's the E.U.'s China policy in a few words? (Read: "Should Europe Lift Its Arms Embargo on China?")

The E.U. underwhelms on other big issues. "When it comes to pressing international problems like Afghanistan, Pakistan or North Korea, the E.U. is either largely invisible or absent," wrote Grant in his essay, provocatively titled "Is Europe Doomed to Fail as a Power?" Lucio Caracciolo, editor of Limes, one of Italy's leading foreign policy magazines, says the problem is a Cold War hangover. The post-World War II period was a golden age for Western Europe, a time of reconstruction under the U.S. security umbrella, he argues. When it ended, Europe went into shock. "We're in denial," Caracciolo says. "We see that the Americans are not interested — to put it mildly — in our interests, and we put our head in the sand." Europe "happily decides," Caracciolo says, that Afghanistan, Iran, are American affairs. "Any major crisis is something that is analyzed abroad. We are not up to the responsibilities of the time." (Read: "Protecting Europe's Bank Data: U.S. Access Denied.")

The Lisbon Treaty, establishing the new offices of the President of the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was supposed to change all that. In practice, however, the new E.U. will be run by a complex mechanism with four axes: the President and Foreign Minister; the country holding the rotating presidency; the President of the European Commission and national heads of state and government. The new setup looks like a parody of all that is wrong with the E.U., bureaucratic and complicated, built on least-bad options and seemingly designed to encourage turf wars rather than action.

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Critics point to the selection of Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton as Europe's President and Foreign Minister as symbolic of a lack of vision. Van Rompuy, a former Belgian Prime Minister, is known for his ability to balance local sensitivities — no small feat in Belgium — and cajole opposing camps towards a consensus. Useful attributes, no doubt, but hardly the ones needed to make the E.U. count on the international stage. Ashton, a former British minister and European trade commissioner, has little experience in foreign affairs. "Van Rompuy and Ashton give the impression of being chosen for their limits rather than their merits," says Dominique Moïsi, senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations. One senior European official frets that when it comes to the E.U. projecting itself, the choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton means the grouping will have to reconcile itself to five years of underperformance.

It's early days for the new team, of course. Van Rompuy and Ashton could surprise their detractors. "We should be ambitious," Ashton told TIME in late January. But for all that ambition, Europe is no closer than it ever was to answering Henry Kissinger's famous question: "Who do I call when I want to call Europe?" So what explains the gap between Europe's stated ambition in foreign policy and its performance? And how can that gap be closed? (Read an interview with Catherine Ashton.)

No Europe: So What?
Start with history. The modern conception of a united Europe was born in the embers of World War II and rested upon the notion that binding Germany's fortunes to those of France and the rest of Europe could end the violence that had regularly engulfed the continent for centuries. Judged by that measure — and notwithstanding the pathetic failure to prevent or quickly end the wars of the Yugoslav succession — the E.U. has worked out fine. For most of that time, its leaders have been happy to concentrate on domestic policies: a single market, a European currency, free movement of people. The E.U.'s defenders, moreover, would argue that in its immediate neighborhood, its success has had a "demonstration effect" that is not to be underestimated. Just as Greece, Portugal and Spain wanted to lock in their democratic rights by joining the E.U. in the 1980s, so when the Soviet yoke was lifted, the nations of Eastern and Central Europe wanted to join the E.U. as fast as they could. By extending an area of peace and liberal government to the east, the E.U. has done much to calm a part of the world that not long ago was the cockpit for murderous rivalries.

Beyond its neighborhood, however the E.U. has rarely punched its collective weight. The main reason for that, of course, is that member states still like to defend and pursue their own national interests, rather than subsume them in a multinational body. There's also a case — and plenty in Europe make it — that Europe is better off continuing to aim low. "Very few European countries see the role of the E.U. as a power," says Moïsi. "They see Europe as a place — with a common market, a common currency, but not a power that should project itself onto the outside world." (See pictures of immigration in Europe.)

That argument begins to break down when you have aspirations to help fix the world. Over the past decade or so, many Europeans have liked to think of the E.U. as a counterweight to Washington and now Beijing: a big, rich, but more benign global power. Ask Catherine Ashton to define Europe's ideals, and her aspirations are far from modest: "Democracy. Human rights," she says. "Wanting to see stable, secure nations, with whom we enjoy political dialogue and economic relationships."

Europe is right to think big — both for its own sake and for that of others. Many in the rest of the world would welcome a stronger European voice. Capitals from Pretoria to Washington are constantly urging more from their European allies. As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip H. Gordon said to the House Foreign Affairs Committee after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty last year: "We hope E.U. member states will invest the post-Lisbon institutions with the authority and capacity to make concrete contributions to the pressing global challenges we face together." In Africa, India, Latin America, leaders would fall over themselves to engage more closely with a power that's neither the U.S. nor China — both nations that can come across as too powerful, too proselytizing of their own values, too prone to see their interaction with others solely in terms of their own national interests.

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But if Europe is to realize its own dreams and those of others, it has to change the way it does business. Acting as a true single bloc would bring greater influence. One of the problems in international meetings, says Jean-Pierre Lehmann, a professor of international political economy at IMD in Switzerland, is that the E.U. is "paralyzed by its members." A senior Asian official describes — with evident exasperation — how at international summits European leaders talk endlessly to each other. "They're very clubby," he says, and it isn't meant as a compliment.

Next, Europeans need to appreciate that ideals alone don't bring you respect. You have to win others to your side. The reality of that hit home — or should have done — at Copenhagen. Europe had done much of the running on global climate-change policy, setting carbon-reduction targets, introducing the first markets in which carbon could be traded, leading the way on exploiting greener energy sources. European leaders arrived in the Danish capital giving the impression that setting an example would be enough to persuade others into making concessions. But the conference took a different turn. A group of developing countries threatened to walk out. With negotiations on the verge of collapse, Obama entered a room where delegates from China were meeting those from Brazil, India and South Africa. They struck a deal and then presented it to Europe and other participants. "It was a global meeting hosted by a European country, in the E.U., in an area where the E.U. had something to offer," says the IMD's Lehmann. "But it was a huge humiliation. Europe was out of the room." "The painful lesson of Copenhagen is that you cannot be taken seriously ... if you are not a serious actor," says Moïsi. (See more about the Copenhagen climate talks.)

The Peaceful Continent
In a bitter irony, it is one of modern Europe's most cherished convictions — that the force of arms rarely settles political disputes for long — that inhibits it from being a more powerful player. European nations have sent thousands of young men and women to fight the Taliban, but the memory of the 20th century means European public opinion seems unwilling to commit to the war in Afghanistan for the long haul. On Feb. 20, the Dutch coalition government collapsed because of a dispute over when to end the country's deployment. The German government faces enormous domestic challenges in admitting its forces in Afghanistan are there to fight, not to be humanitarian workers in uniform.

To Washington, which knows that the world remains a dangerous place, these attitudes have become a serious concern. On Feb. 23, at the NATO strategic concept seminar, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Gates was particularly blunt. "The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st." Plenty of European diplomats would agree with him. After the speech one diplomat spoke of an "inertia" among Europeans when confronted with novel threats. "We have to explain to our own public opinion," he said, "the world we live in." (Read: "What is Robert Gates Really Fighting For?")

But that requires political leadership, which in much of Europe is lacking. Yes, Britain still sees itself as having a global role; so does France, whose President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been active on issues from the Georgia war of 2008 to the consequences of a nuclear Iran. But the E.U.'s largest state is absent from most such debates. For the last half of the 20th century, Germany was at the heart of the European experiment. But since the end of the Cold War, it has stepped back from the E.U., regularly taking a different path when Europe attempted a unified policy (notably during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009), and strengthening ties with Russia, to the chagrin of Britain and France. "Behind the scenes Germany is still pretty much the puppet master in the E.U., pulling many strings," says Ulrike Guérot, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "But sometimes Berlin is deciding not to pull any strings at all now, in which case nothing happens. Germany is starting to become good at avoiding Europe in a very subtle way."

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