He's Just Not That Into You, EU

Today, Roger Cohen of The New York Times wrote a column arguing that there may be negative consequences in the future for the Obama Administration's "benign neglect" toward the EU.  I would argue that there's a more complex strategy behind this benign neglect, that the Obama Administration is attempting to constrain the EU's role in global affairs.  This is a trimmed-down excerpt from an essay I wrote on this topic last May for my class on European Union Security and Defense Policy at Boğaziçi University:

After the breakdown and forced reconstruction of Atlantic relations in George W. Bush’s presidency, many hoped that Barack Obama’s administration would re-emphasize alliances and multilateralism.  Over the last fifteen months, however, the Obama Administration’s signals to the European Union have been contradictory.  Diplomatic officials speak of the EU as a global security actor, but the president and the Secretary of Defense reflect frustration and perhaps disinterest.  

Key members of President Obama’s foreign policy team have publicly welcomed a strong Europe as a global security actor.  Philip H. Gordon, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was a long-time critic of President Bush's relations with Europe.  He proposed a division of labor between NATO and the EU in which the EU would handle homeland security, democracy promotion, and humanitarian assistance, while NATO would remain the key instrument for military action.  

One could also look at the March 1, 2010 report of the Atlantic Council, which in Bush’s first term heavily criticized Europe.  In this report, the Atlantic Council, like Philip H. Gordon, recommends a division of labor in European defense between NATO and the EU: “If military action is called for and a U.S. role is required, NATO will have primary responsibility; if not, then the operational framework can be the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) or the United Nations.”  

Similarly, in a speech to the Atlantic Council, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We do not see the EU as a competitor of NATO, but we see a strong Europe as an essential partner with NATO and with the United States.”  Clinton’s and Gordon’s shift in rhetoric toward a division of labor between NATO and the EU’s own defense forces was also perceived by EU officials. In March of 2009,  EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner proclaimed that “we see with this administration a very different attitude . . . We have the United States with us and the United States has Europe with her. This is a different approach and we are quite hopeful!”

However, the president and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have delivered opposite signals.  In a February 23, 2010 speech to the National Defense University, Gates criticized the “demilitarization of Europe,” claiming that “large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — [this is] an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21^st [century].”  

Perhaps most importantly, President Obama has been reportedly cold to the European Union, preferring to meet bilaterally with individual countries and repeatedly “snubbing” various European leaders.  After his first U.S.-EU Summit Obama is reported to have wryly quipped that “political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate.”  Months later, President Obama famously snubbed dinner with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.  Most telling, Obama seems to have repeatedly excluded EU participation from central negotiations.  At the December 2009 Copenhagen Summit for Climate Change, Obama tried to negotiate with the Chinese Prime Minister directly, without Europeans in the room.  In February 2010, Obama declined to attend the 2010 EU-US Summit in Madrid.  Finally, President Obama failed to invite even one EU representative to the signing of the new START Agreement in Prague and his nuclear summit in April, which brought more than forty heads of state.  In a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which claims to have input from Obama Adminsitraton officials, the writers say: “the Obama administration has seen European governments . . . weak and divided—ready to talk a good game but reluctant to get muddy. Seen from Washington, there is something almost infantile about how European governments behave toward them—a combination of attention-seeking and responsibility-shirking.”

It is not clear whether the European Union will be treated as a global security actor by the United States under the administration of Barack Obama.  I would argue that the Obama Administration is trying to constrain the EU’s role in global affairs by simply denying it a seat at the table, as President Obama literally did in Copenhagen and Prague.  If the European Union wants to be an effective global security actor, it will need to break free from the current dynamic with the United States and reshape it to match the EU’s own identity and interests.