Bowling by the same rules? Eu-United Nations relations and the transatlantic partnership

Abstract

When, in September 2002, the U.S. published its National Security Strategy, including an option for ‘preemptive’ or ‘anticipatory action’ and then threatened to apply the principle in the case of Iraq, many observers concluded that a major transatlantic gap had opened between the U.S. and Europe. Despite the fact that a number of European states supported America’s policy in different ways, after the war Europe as a whole demonstrated, especially by agreeing upon a European Security Strategy (ESS), that it was more attached to liberal institutionalism and the idea that political goals are best furthered via the rule of international law, the United Nations, and regimes than by ‘coalitions of the willing’. Furthermore, it contested a very broad interpretation of the right for self-defense. This gives credence to the assumption that the debate about whether the U.S. and Europe bowl by the same rules will continue to be a critical issue in European-American discourses and may well represent a window through which we will see further rifts in the transatlantic relationship. In this context, it is important to recognize that the EU acts as a revisionist power. Behind the European efforts, the aim has developed to change the power relationship between the U.S. and Europe by restraining Gulliver’s freedom of maneuver. The principal actors on the European side are France, often supported by Germany, and the legal bodies of the EU. The main argument is that the world should not be a unipolar one, dominated by the ‘hyperpower’ U.S., but should rather be a multipolar one in which the EU should gain substantially in importance, in accordance with its economic weight. The EU’s emphasis on sticking to the rules of the U.N.’s Charter, the emphasis on the U.N. as an organization, and the attempt to develop a strategic culture of its own are not only meant to unify Europe further, but also to balance American power. Against this background, this paper tries to answer the question of how the EU’s strategic principles, and the evolving institutional EU-U.N. relationship, may affect transatlantic relations. Particularly, it aims at looking at: