The ties that fray: why Europe and America are drifting apart.

• Author: Walt, Stephen M.

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are fond of describing NATO as the most successful military alliance in modern history. Who can blame them? The transatlantic partnership between Europe and America brought peace to a war-torn continent, overcame the Soviet challenge, and provided a safe haven in which to nurture European political and economic integration. Security ties between Europe and America also facilitated cooperation on a host of other issues, and helped foster a remarkable period of material prosperity.

Given these achievements, it is hardly surprising that few voices now call for an end to the alliance, and equally unsurprising that pundits like Zbigniew Brzezinski believe it can work a similar magic in areas far beyond NATO'S original mandate.(1) Unfortunately, such claims ignore the deep structural forces that are already beginning to pull Europe and America apart. Instead of becoming the core of an expanding security community, united by liberal values, free markets, and strong international institutions, the transatlantic partnership that fought and won the Cold War is already showing unmistakable signs of strain. No matter how many new states join NATO, and no matter how many solemn reaffirmations emerge from the endless parade of NATO summits, the high-water mark of transatlantic security cooperation is past.

The reasons are not difficult to discern. For the past forty years, the partnership between Europe and the United States was held together by three unifying forces. The first and most important was the Soviet threat. The second was America's economic stake in Europe, which reinforced its strategic interest in European prosperity. The third was the existence of a generation of European and American elites whose personal backgrounds and life experiences left them strongly committed to the idea of an Atlantic community.

All three unifying forces are now gone or eroding, and there is little hope of resurrecting them. NATO's formal structure may remain intact (and the alliance may keep busy adding new members), but Americans and Europeans should no longer base their foreign and military policies on a presumption of military cooperation.

The Pattern of Intervention

To a large extent, the entire idea of an "Atlantic community" rests on America's willingness to commit its military power to defend its European allies. When considering whether this commitment has a future, it is useful to recall when and why it arose in the first place.

In this century, the United States has taken on major overseas commitments on three occasions: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. The common thread in each case has been fear that another great power was about to establish hegemony in Europe or Asia.(2)

It is worth remembering that the United States did not intervene in either world war until it became clear that the Eurasian powers were unable to uphold the balance of power on their own. The United States let the other powers bear most of the costs of their competition, and emerged from each of these conflicts in much better shape than anyone else.

This self-interested policy may not have been good for the Europeans or Asians, but it wasn't all that bad for the United States. Instead of letting our allies free-ride on us, as they have done since 1949, the United States spent the first part of the century free-riding on them. Earlier and more extensive U.S. involvement might have prevented these conflicts, but such efforts might well have failed, and at far higher cost to the United States.

Similarly, the United States withdrew most of its armed forces from Europe after World War II, and agreed to bring them back only when it became clear that the European powers were in no position to stand up to the Soviet Union. Yet, even then, U.S. leaders never envisioned the permanent deployment of American troops in Europe and actively sought to bring them home throughout the 1950s.(3)

What these episodes suggest - and suggest strongly - is that the United States has been willing to sustain costly military commitments outside the Western Hemisphere only when another great power has threatened to establish hegemony in Europe (and the same, incidentally, is true of Asia). Europe faces no such threat today, and there are no credible threats on the horizon. Whatever U.S. forces are doing in Europe, they are not there to protect our wealthy and stable allies from external aggression.

No Threat, No Cohesion

Western Europe and the United States were brought together by the raw power of the Soviet Union, its geographic proximity to Europe, its large, offensively oriented military forces, and its open commitment to spreading world revolution. Because the Europeans were loath to sacrifice their independence and the United States was loath to let any single power dominate the entire Eurasian landmass, the industrial democracies of Europe and North America had ample reason to downplay their differences in order to preserve a common front.(4)

The disappearance of the Soviet threat has eliminated this overriding common interest, and though Europe and the United States still share some common goals, they are of a different order of urgency and seriousness. The United States and Europe are separated by geography, language, historical experience, and relative capabilities, and the U.S. interest in Europe is neither as obvious nor as significant in the absence of a potential hegemon perched on NATO's doorstep. This absence is to be welcomed, of course, and it would be foolish - and dangerous - to conjure up new foes merely to keep the West together. But, inevitably, this fundamental shift in the landscape of world politics is already having adverse effects on the transatlantic partnership.

First, conflicts of interest are becoming more visible and significant. The sad history of the Bosnian conflict offers eloquent testimony to this, and only the realization that NATO was coming unglued brought a belated and partial agreement for common action. NATO did manage to make a token show of force in response to Serbian repression in Kosovo, but its reluctance to take meaningful military action was apparent to all and the agreement negotiated by Richard Holbrooke is a temporary fix at best. America's European allies openly reject the policy of "dual containment" in the Persian Gulf and have been increasingly unwilling to enforce the UNSCOM inspection regime against Iraq. Our allies also hold profoundly different views on the Middle East peace process and on the proper approach to Castro's Cuba, and they are quietly resentful of America's penchant for cloaking unilateral action in the rhetoric of "multilateralism." The United States stood alone at the Kyoto conference on the environment, broke ranks with its allies over a global ban on landmines, and is the only NATO member to vote against the creation of an International Criminal Court to try accused human rights violators. The October G-7 meeting on the world financial crisis was notable...