Europe, the Necessary Partner

Abstract

For all the Republican rhetoric about a more Americanist approach to foreign policy, the United States needs partners in global diplomacy. Unilateral decisions carry costs. Even if they are successfully imposed on foreign states, they build up resistance to cooperation in other areas where U.S. interests are at stake. Multilateral leadership requires negotiation and compromise with partners who respect American leadership and whose contributions American policymakers respect. Americas most dependable partners are the democracies in Europe, collectively organized through the European Union (eu) and nato. With economic and political reform in Japan still blocked, and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations weakened by the 1997 financial crisis and incomplete democratization, Europe remains the indispensable partner without which American global leadership becomes unilateral. Transatlantic relations in the last decade have centered on redefining the U.S.-European partnership for the post-Cold War world. The most striking characteristic of the relationship today, however, is continuity rather than change. The gloomy predictions of American realists? that Europe without the two controlling superpowers would dissolve into anarchy?have proven entirely mistaken. Nato not only has sur vived but has developed new tasks and attracted new members.