What America Can Do for Europe

...What America Can Do for Europe As the dust settles after the explosive referenda at the heart of the European Union, interested parties from all sides are peering nervously into the crater, trying to figure out what remains of the European "project...

...First, the Bush administration should take a vow of silence when it comes to specific discussions of how Europe should develop...

...Third, the United States should do more to encourage its friends in Europe...

...Even the merest hint in Europe that Washington is actively seeking to undermine European unity would be enough to strengthen it...

...heads of government will meet next weekend to map an immediate route out of the debris...

...countries should simply carry on ratifying the constitutional treaty that was essentially detonated by the French and Dutch voters...

...Gerard Baker, for the Editors...

...It is hysterical nonsense to suggest that without closer E.U...

...Instead of creating hundreds more jobs for Eurocrats, Euro-diplomats, and Euro-politicians with global pretensions, it should be creating millions of real jobs for the growing army of unemployed that truly threatens economic vitality and political stability...

...The United States, however, has always had a vital national interest in the direction Europe takes, and the events of the last month provide an opportunity for much needed reflection in Washington about the transatlantic relationship...

...The administration should stop forthwith insisting that it believes ever deeper and closer European integration is in America's best interest...

...That means real economic reform, including deregulation and more flexible labor markets...

...Washington, then, should resist the usual attempts of Europe's political elites to enlist it as an enabler in their efforts to bypass the popular will and pursue their own grand visions...

...An economically healthy, politically vibrant, wholeheartedly democratic Europe is a vital partner for the United States in the world...

...Many of the countries of Europe have been reliable allies over the last 50 years or more...

...Over time, that would have meant downgrading and eventually destroying the transatlantic institution in which America retains the strongest voice, NATO...

...A healthy functioning relationship with this other pole of Western civilization, with its similar values and objectives, remains important to the United States...

...The "No" votes should in fact provide a real opportunity for Europe to revisit the very purpose and meaning of its union...

...That may mean giving more concessions than it might otherwise wish to allies such as Tony Blair, in his efforts to produce more generous debt relief for Africa...

...But it is time for Washington to reevaluate the best way of bringing that about...

...Washington has a powerful interest in seeing a strong Europe in the world as a vigorous partner for American foreign policy objectives...

...A not very well hidden aspect of the E.U...

...Second, Washington should take this opportunity to reassert the primacy of NATO...

...There may not be much the United States can do directly to assist in that process except offer encouragement...

...approach towards the E.U...

...E.U...

...But this silence must, at long last, be genuinely symmetrical...

...Despite protestations to the contrary, it was always clear that the prime movers behind this—the French—intended it to become an alternative locus for European nations to pursue their own foreign policy goals...

...The Bush administration has repeatedly missed opportunities to improve its standing in those countries whose governments remain actively committed to supporting the administration's main foreign policy goals...

...In the Brussels bunker, of course, the familiar instinct has kicked in—pretend nothing has happened...

...But making European economic recovery, rather than European integration, a central plank of U.S...

...Though some may be tempted to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the sight of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder contemplating the fragments of their superpower ambitions, they should resist it...

...try to eliminate national policies...

...desperately needs is economic growth...

...In the real world, whose characteristics are not readily recognizable to the inhabitants of the bureaucratic fantasy theme park that is the European Commission, serious reconstruction work must now begin...

...integrationists' agenda has long been the supplanting of NATO (a transatlantic alliance that incidentally already includes Turkey) with a specific E.U...

...Whatever else they have shown, the popular rejections ought surely to prompt a serious effort both to devolve power from an overweening Brussels and to reconnect the E.U...

...with the voters of Europe...

...interests that the E.U...

...The way to achieve such a Europe is not to facilitate the superpower fantasies of its remote and unaccountable political elites, but to empower the European people themselves with free markets and a real voice in the direction of their continent...

...The United States should actively encourage broader economic cooperation with any European countries that want it—promoting greater flexibility of labor and goods...

...All that is a question for the Europeans themselves to decide...

...members are mature democracies capable of making rational decisions...

...Incredibly, the official plan is that the other E.U...

...It is much more likely that top-down efforts to force separate nations into the straitjacket of one sprawling, remote supernation will only heighten national tensions...

...What the bulk of the E.U...

...It may mean a bit more generosity with defense contracts to companies from friendly European nations, or less onerous visa requirements for those countries' students and workers...

...But in the more complex post-9/II world, in which threat perceptions and strategies differ across the Atlantic and within Europe, it is no longer self-evidently in U.S...

...Finally, and perhaps most important, the United States should gently urge the Europeans now to address the real challenge they face...

...foreign policy would be more likely to help produce the kind of Europe that would really be in American interests...

...defense identity...

...But creating an ever more rococo panoply of bureaucracy and superstatehood is not the way to achieve that...

...In fact most E.U...

...integration the European nations will fall back into internecine strife...

...Studied neutrality, with a bias towards supporting the will of the peoples of Europe, should now guide the institutional U.S...

...This was true in the Cold War, when Western European fragmentation would have been a real problem in the fight against communism...