THE NEW EUROPE-MENACE

...If you can’t beat ’em, outflank ’em, goes the logic...

...And when the British and French issue a communiqu...

...when an EC commissioner warned, for instance, of the danger of “external intervention feared by all,” he was understood to be referring as much to the United States as the Soviet Union...

...But who really thought that the German Question had not been solved...

...envoy’s grandstanding and control of the show when the peace plan for Bosnia was hammered out in 1995...

...Germans themselves argued convincingly at the time of unification that the roots of democracy were deep and secure...

...And so much for a common Western analysis and response...

...And, without having ceded inordinate amounts of sovereignty and democratic control to supranational institutions, they were doing just fine...

...NATO’s enlargement—and the expansion of freedom and prosperity into Central and Eastern Europe—cannot happen without active American participation...

...Of course, were the Europeans actually willing to lead, considerable bloodshed and upheaval might be averted in Kosovo—just as they might have been averted in Bosnia had the Europeans been willing to lead there...

...But remember that the Europeans opposed American efforts to resupply Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and to forge a unified Western response to the oil cartel’s embargo and price hikes...

...Across the Channel, though, Jeffrey Gedmin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative...

...policies and preferences...

...Europeans are entitled to their choices...

...But the choices have implications for the United States...

...And now, despite contradictory signals from Tehran over the past year, Gerhard Schr?der calmly tells a German interviewer that “the time is ripe for an improvement in the traditionally good” relations between Germany and Iran...

...FROM THE OUTSET, EUROPE’S CAMPAIGN FOR A SINGLE CURRENCY HAS BEEN ABOUT POLITICS, NOT ECONOMICS...

...When America calls for solidarity in the name of ‘Western interests,’” says a former adviser to Kohl, “we increasingly ask whether these are simply U.S...

...After Germany’s unification, Kohl believed, the creation of a single currency would lead to a political unity that would once and for all lock in European cooperation and lock out the demons of malign nationalism, blood rivalry, and lethal fragmentation...

...Americans laugh...

...Still, if in Kohl’s view an economically and politically united Europe was the antidote to Europe’s darker inclinations, others have been developing a thoroughly different, modern perspective...

...At the Davos World Economic Forum this year, Washington found itself isolated because our allies had so effectively orchestrated their calls for expanding regulations at the international level...

...Malo in December, there was talk of Europeans’ working “within or outside NATO” in the future...

...The first architect of a detailed plan was Luxembourger Pierre Werner, who saw his vision undermined by the oil shocks of the early 1970s...

...But under the new conditions in post-Cold War Europe, the traditional arguments driving the process seemed strange and contradictory...

...And Western Europeans have been busy enthusiastically developing their European institutions—with minimal American participation or consultation...

...America the lone superpower still needs allies, just as Europe, its own superpower pretensions notwithstanding, still needs the United States...

...In fact, “unilateral [read: U.S.] definitions of global behavior will not be acceptable anymore,” declares Karsten Voigt, a senior foreign policy expert from Germany’s Social Democratic party...

...Monetary union, Germany’s minister of economics Karl Schiller would say, was merely a “prelude” to political union...

...Support for the idea in Western Europe grows, and the intent is to check America’s room for maneuver...

...When the United States battled Marxist insurgencies in Central America in the 1980s, the Europeans equivocated...

...That’s why in Germany Gerhard Schr?der, to the lament of industry and entrepreneurs, says “yes” to modernization, but “no” to an end of his country’s consensual, minimalist, and lowest-common-denominator approach to economic reform...

...There have been those on the left and the right who cheer the direction and argue for a neat division of labor in the Alliance...

...There’s little question why 10 Downing Street sticks to a wait-and-see approach on joining Euroland...

...Countering U.S...

...When martial law was declared in Poland in December 1981, the EC offered a temporizing response—and massive resistance to U.S.-sponsored sanctions...

...The campaign for political union will proceed...

...But the value of the transatlantic relationship endures—for both sides...

...When Helmut Kohl gets up in the night, mused the Economist a couple of years ago, the only thing he thinks about invading is the fridge...

...There was always “Europe” as an answer to the German Question...

...What’s also new is that it’s not only the French who are gnashing their teeth about American hegemony these days...

...But from the outset, Europe’s campaign for a single currency has been first and foremost about politics...

...European vs...

...So much for consultation among allies...

...This, while EU officials push for “harmonization” of taxes as one more way to eliminate an important competitive advantage the United Kingdom has enjoyed in the past in attracting jobs and capital...

...Iraq, Kosovo, Iran, Russia, Cyprus—wherever you look, the French are happy to play spoiler...

...And apart from asserting their new feelings of independence, there’s an agenda behind the posturing...

...Hegemony For clues, start with the French, who lament America as the “hyperpower” and explicitly promote a united Europe as a global counterweight to U.S...

...Beyond the single currency, Western Europeans want a “common foreign and security policy...

...But there’s more to the story...

...The tone and level of interest our British allies took in the so-called European defense and security identity was striking and unprecedented, even with all the predictable footnotes about how greater European independence will not undermine the transatlantic link...

...The divergence of views is striking...

...The fact is, it was never easy...

...But the new oppositional posture has a distinctly nonpartisan flavor...

...The left-of-center coloration of 13 of the 15 current EU governments adds accent to the discourse...

...But then there were high politics, too...

...There was a time when “empires were created through the sound of marching armies,” but today, waxed French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “tens and tens of millions give themselves a currency . . . to unite their destinies...

...Says prime minister Lionel Jospin: “The United States often behaves in a unilateral way and has difficulties in taking on the role to which it aspires, that of organizer of the international community...

...global policies...

...The courageous march toward political union,” wrote Nobel Prize winner and MIT economist Franco Modigliani this winter, “may end forever the deleterious nationalism that has ravaged the continent for centuries...

...After all, the EC, now the EU, was in no danger of coming apart...

...Had not the European Community (EC) fostered extraordinary multilateral cooperation after the Second World War...

...The EU has pursued monetary union since 1969...

...But it would be a bad thing...

...When 11 of the European Union’s 15 members joined in monetary union at the beginning of the year, they embarked on what probably constitutes the greatest voluntary transfer of sovereignty in history...

...and that it may hamper transatlantic cooperation, as common European positions are defined in opposition to U.S...

...disengagement from Europe will grow...

...So be it...

...It’s important for Americans, especially those who advocate European “leadership,” to understand that such leadership may often be paralyzed by intra-European petty rivalries...

...The economic rationale for the euro, in fact, has always been weak...

...But Americans laughed once about the euro, too...

...At the summit between French and British leaders in the French port of St...

...The formula is simple, according to senator Kay Bailey Hutchison: “Europe leads with the United States as backup on the European continent...

...At the same time, the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe clearly needed a hand...

...official—a reference to the U.S...

...Strong, liberal, democratic nation-states existed throughout Western Europe...

...Atlantic Security If the divergent views on economic policy are already becoming apparent, the foreign policy differences between the United States and our allies are likely to be even more far-reaching...

...Issues like Bosnia and Kosovo cannot be solved without American military power and leadership...

...President Jacques Chirac speaks of a new “collective sovereignty” to check American power and sees the EU and the United Nations as playing crucial roles...

...Strauss-Kahn calls the euro a “tool in the service of a better society, of a social model, that is to say the European model . . . based on greater solidarity” than in the United States—code words for shielding inefficiencies and protecting against “unfair” competition and what Strauss-Kahn calls “the free-market illusion...

...Heinrich Heine had once famously written: “Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht...

...When I think of Germany in the night, I’m robbed of my sleep...

...This idea, however, is deeply flawed...

...American isolationists, global unilateralists, and limp multilateralists will revel in the Europeans’ increasing assertiveness, and the possibility for U.S...

...Even in the 1960s and 1970s, it was primarily political objectives that drove considerations about a single currency...

...Even today, our policy of containing Iran, for example, has faltered in large part because our allies are unwilling to go along...

...That’s why free-marEERDMANS HERE-- REMOVE THIS LABEL ket spirits like Margaret Thatcher and Vaclav Klaus are persona non grata on the continent...

...We indulge in pleasant reminiscing over our common cause during the Cold War...

...The European Community, its original objectives having been achieved, is searching for its own modernized raisond’?tre...

...And not for the first time...

...Anglo-Saxon Economics Within Europe, the agenda is to defend the culture of the welfare state...

...One dynamic operating at the Kosovo peace negotiations has been “the Europeans getting back at Dick [Holbrooke] for Dayton,” says a senior U.S...

...Ideas for the single currency predate Germany’s unification and the Maastricht Treaty of 1991...

...It’s appropriate, then, for Americans to ask whether the special relationship with Britain is to fade as the United Kingdom seeks amalgamation with a European federal state...

...influence...

...affirming that “the European Union needs to be in a position to play its full role on the international stage,” Americans should ask what exactly Europeans envisage this role to be—and how it will relate to NATO...

...And are they compatible with American objectives...

...It’s also clear that the Clinton administration’s mishandling of Alliance issues has not helped matters...

...And Western Europeans will look for additional ways to assert themselves...

...It’s the most audacious gamble in the history of currency,” says the New York Times...

...First, the single currency will mean more, not less, protectionism against American goods and services if Western Europeans continue to resist painful reforms...

...It was German chancellor Helmut Kohl, however, who would translate this grand scheme into reality...

...There’s more of this to come...

...Most EU governments,” as Irwin Stelzer observes, “given a choice of America’s labor market system (flexible labor costs and relatively full employment) or the alternative (relatively high labor costs and relatively high unemployment), quite consciously choose the latter...

...What do the allies want...

...French mischief—and outright anti-Americanism— are nothing new, to be sure...

...And while the euro is bound to entail a great deal of muddling through, it is also certain to be pronounced by its champions a success...

...Everyone wonders whether the euro could challenge the dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency and whether it will make life easier—and cheaper— for tourists...

...It’s important not to forget that Schr?der inherited this approach from Kohl’s Christian Democrats, who virtually count as the country’s second Social Democratic party...

...The Free Democrats, Germany’s only true pro-market party, poll in the single digits and have little influence...

...European vs...

...Absent the Soviet threat, our allies across Western Europe are feeling less dependent on the United States...

...The EU’s direction is clear...

...Today’s boring Germans, as Josef Joffe puts it, are interested in exports, not expansion...

...Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt has boasted that the arrival of the euro means “the United States can no longer call all the shots” in the world...

...The Italian was “proud” to be able to call himself “a European citizen...

...To read the American press, you’d think that European monetary union was simply about economics— interest rates and global capital markets, trading volumes and transaction costs...

...It’s curious that British prime minister Tony Blair thinks the euro will be a key to liberalization...

...Prominent German commentators applaud the fact that, as they see it, Europe will no longer be “seconding U.S...

...The Portuguese called it a page “that can never be turned back,” while others beamed about the “new political start...

...No one believed that Europe’s single market required a common currency...

...Finally, the euro will make it easier to advance EU regulatory positions on the global stage...

...But these transitional economies, where the future was indeed uncertain, were left outside the EU’s door...

...With all our spats and differences, that’s how the Cold War was won...

...The Germans would give up their beloved Dmark, and the French would delude themselves into thinking they would run the new Europe...

...But what are those interests...

...Remember that after U.S...

...As for his successor as German leader, Gerhard Schr?der, he probably devours opinion polls and focus-group summaries when nocturnal wanderlust strikes...

...There were the low politics: The French sought a price for acquiescing to German unification in 1990...

...And terrorism, proliferation, rogue states, and other new threats are effectively combatted only when America and the alliance of democracies band together...

...What is new, though, are the conditions of the post-Cold War world...

...Like it or not, Prime Minister Blair’s United Kingdom will be forced off the fence if it decides to adopt the euro...

...Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s schizophrenic dance between overly deferential multilateralism and unilateral bullying, without clarity about our priorities or intentions, has destroyed precious capital and credibility...

...France’s interior minister, Jean-Pierre Chev?nement, puts the matter succinctly: “We have our interests and the Americans have theirs...

...Fair enough...

...interests cloaked in Alliance rhetoric...

...It’s understandable that, after decades of Cold War dependency, Western Europeans of all political stripes have tired of being the junior partner...

...Don’t expect the departure of Germany’s leftist finance minister Oskar Lafontaine to change things radically...

...Unity is no longer necessary primarily as a means to stabilize Europe internally...

...Take the current crisis in Kosovo, where the Clinton administration “invited” the Europeans to take the lead...

...Second, it will mean more, not less, discrimination against the Central and Eastern Europeans, who continue to languish outside the EU’s door...

...They did so despite the fact that no one was particularly dissatisfied with the existence of national currencies...

...Winning the peace will be no different...

...German and French leaders alike these days insist that the United Nations assume greater power and influence and hold alone the “indisputable legal basis” for the use of force in international affairs...

...You keep pedaling or you fall off...

...French blackmail, German guilt...

...It was January 1, 1999, in Brussels and the euro was being launched...

...British prime minister Tony Blair says the euro will make Europe “more efficient and less subsidized, more open and less heavily regulated...

...When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Europeans mustered condemnation and little more...

...But European integration, it was said, was like riding a bicycle...

...Was not, and against all odds, the historic Franco-German enmity being replaced with new amity...

...French foreign minister Hubert V?drine advocates accommodationist policies toward Iraq, noting that the French position is that “of all Europeans, . . . the Arab world, the position of the Russians, the Chinese...

...Generational change is underway...

...In fact, from the time the Maastricht Treaty was negotiated, some Germans have talked about monetary union as a defense against Anglo-Saxon economics...

...embassy staffers were taken hostage in Tehran in November 1979, the United States appealed to EC allies for support in applying sanctions, to no avail...

...On the contrary...

...But even when the Clinton team is gone, Western Europeans will be telling us more often, and more directly, that they want to feel like grownups...

...the United States leads with European and other allies as back up in the rest of the world...

...Now, Western European officialdom is looking primarily abroad and views the euro—and a politically unified EU—as the best vehicle to advance Europe’s interests in the world...

...And no one agrees today on precisely what the new single currency will accomplish economically...