Painful Partnership: The United States, the European Union, and Global Governance

Abstract

With new worldwide threats, post-Iraq war tensions, and the United Nations under siege, democracies should take the lead in forming a new coalition united behind a common global security agenda?as hinted by the High-Level Panel on Threats, Chal lenges and Change (HLP) in its December 2004 report.1 The vital ques tion after President George W. Bush's reelection is whether there will be more of the same from Washington, or whether unilateralism will make room for collective responses to the challenges of the twenty-first century. The relationship between the United States and the European Union (EU) will be decisive in any global arrangement. Iraq, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), terrorism, and world poverty loom large, and ongo ing trans-Atlantic differences will not go away. Washington's policies have raised hackles in Europe over, inter alia, the Kyoto protocol on cli mate change; the landmine treaty; the approach to child-soldiers; the HIV/AIDS epidemic; the death penalty; biological weapons; global efforts to curb illicit sales of small arms and light weapons; the Compre hensive Test Ban Treaty; the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; Amer ica's miserly percentage of overseas development assistance (ODA); and the International Criminal Court (ICC). As if these were not enough, U.S. attitudes toward the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, steel exports, farm and airline subsidies, alleged tax evasion, new definitions of torture and enemy combatants, and the new national security doctrine of preemptive strikes have also raised alarm. If we fast reverse, the June 2001 communiqu? from the EU-U.S. summit in G?teborg, Sweden, seems like ancient history: