Old Europe, New Europe and the US

Renegotiating Transatlantic Security in the Post 9/11 Era

Tom Lansford, Blagovest Tashev

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351913997
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Iraq can be considered the 'perfect storm' which brought out the stark differences between the US and Europe. The disagreement over the role of the United Nations continues and the bitterness in the United States against its betrayal by allies like France is not diminishing. Meanwhile, the standing of the United States among the European public has plummeted. Within Europe, political tensions between what US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld euphemistically called the 'Old' Europe and the 'New' Europe continue to divide. To fully comprehend these rifts, this volume takes a specific look at the core security priorities of each European state and whether these interests are best served through closer security collaboration with the US or with emerging European structures such as the European Rapid Reaction Force. It analyzes the contribution each state would make to transatlantic security, the role they envisage for existing security structures such as NATO, and the role the US would play in transatlantic security.

Part One
Old Europe

Chapter 1
French Security Agenda in the Post-9/11 World

Robert J. Pauly

Introduction

The history of the transatlantic relationship over the past six decades is one that has consistently been defined by episodes of collaboration and discord across a range of economic, military and political issue areas. In that period, the ties between the United States and its European partners have grown perpetually deeper such that anything more than a transitory break in the Atlantic Alliance remains unlikely if not unthinkable. Nonetheless, there remain a variety of serious European-American differences – particularly with respect to security threats and the means through which to mitigate and eventually eliminate those dangers – that divide states on the two sides of the Atlantic generally and pit the United States against France specifically. During the Cold War, French leaders had a tendency to present Paris as a check on (and, to some degree, an alternative to) Washington’s transatlantic and global leadership and behave in ways that reflected that perspective. In 1966, for example, France withdrew from the military command structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The perpetual growth in the power and influence of the United States since the end of the American-Soviet bipolar confrontation, in turn, has exacerbated past Franco-American disagreements and undermined broader political and strategic linkages across the Atlantic.

The most recent case of a divergence between French and US interests in the European and transatlantic arenas came in the context of the diplomatic maneuvering that preceded, and has since followed, the conduct of the Second Iraq War in March and April 2003. French President Jacques Chirac opposed American President George W. Bush’s efforts to confront the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein over its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) developmental programs and sponsorship of terrorist organizations throughout the political process that unfolded prior to the US and UK led invasion of Iraq. Ultimately, when the Bush administration indicated it would sponsor a final United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution to authorize unequivocally the use of force against Saddam’s regime (the most recent of 17 previous measures, which was passed unanimously in November 2002, had stressed more ambiguously that Iraqi non-compliance would result in “serious consequences”), Chirac had the following response: “Whatever the circumstances, France will vote no.”¹ As a result, the United States chose not to put the resolution forward for a Security Council vote and proceeded, with substantial British support and the cooperation of more than 50 other coalition members, to eliminate Saddam’s regime and commence nation-building operations in Iraq.

Chirac’s stalwart opposition to the Second Iraq War, a stance also taken by Germany (traditionally among the most dependable of Washington’s allies) and Belgium, among others within and outside of Europe, was reflective of two additional fundamental characteristics of the Franco-American relationship that have become increasingly evident since the end of the Cold War in general, and Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 11 September 2001 in particular. First, French leaders are bitter over Paris’ lack of global influence relative to that of a United States, a collective of economic, military and political power and cultural outreach of which have been unrivalled since the implosion of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Second, they resent the willingness of the United States (especially the Bush administration) to act with the support of only some, rather than all, of its European allies, let alone the Security Council’s imprimatur, to preempt threats to American interests before such threats become imminent. It follows that France chose to obstruct US action against Iraq in the one institution within which Paris and Washington have equal power in the form of a right to veto any measure that comes to a vote – the Security Council.

Above all, the aforementioned divergences and their implications pertaining to the Second Iraq War and its aftermath provide a necessary foundation for a more in-depth discussion of French national interests and the foreign and security policies Chirac and his advisors have formulated and implemented in the pursuit of such interests. The balance of the essay addresses these issues through the presentation of the following six related sections:

• A review of French security priorities at the domestic, European, transatlantic and global levels.
• A discussion of the extent to which French security interests will be better served by collaboration with the United States in the transatlantic context or by orchestrating the development of an autonomous European Security and Defense Policy (EDSP) and managing the use of the nascent European Rapid Reaction Force (RRF).
• An assessment of the ways in which France can contribute most effectively to the enhancement of transatlantic security.
• An examination of the practical implications of divergent American and French security interests during the run-up to the conduct of the Second Iraq War.
• An examination of the French vision for the future of the transatlantic security relationship.
• The articulation of a set of conclusions on the essay’s contributions to the ongoing academic and policy debates on emerging post-9/11 transatlantic security dilemmas.

French Security Priorities in the Post-Cold War World

Historically, political leaders have always had a variety of tools at their disposal to employ in the development and implementation of foreign and national security policies. In general terms, the approaches they choose to pursue are typically conditioned by the changing nature and perception of the threats they face and the contemporary domestic and foreign crises to which they must respond. Nonetheless, irrespective of the historical circumstances, three rules have consistently proven indispensable to the effective formulation and implementation of policies designed to safeguard a given state’s interests at home and abroad. It is essential first to define one’s interests, second to prioritize those interests and third to take policy decisions accordingly. More pointedly, the policies that grow out of such decisions are the product of an admixture of three elements – interests, commitments and capabilities. States develop their interests on the basis of a range of factors, including economics, politics, security, geography, history, individual leadership, culture (most notably ethnicity and religion) and the unpredictability of unfolding events. Consequently, leaders make commitments that are contingent on the state’s economic, military and political capabilities at a particular temporal juncture.

The logical point of departure for a discussion of contemporary French security policy is a review of the general characteristics of the strategies it has pursued in the recent past, which, in this case, relate to the Cold War era. In short, France pursued its interests on two fronts – and through two sets of policies that were, at least at times, somewhat contradictory – during the half-century confrontation pitting the Americans against the Soviets. First, with respect to the theoretically existential threat posed to Western Europe by the Soviet Union, France naturally expressed staunch support for the United States, which supplied the vast majority of NATO’s military assets and thus provided a necessary insurance policy vis-à-vis Moscow and the Warsaw Pact states it controlled in the East. Second, by contrast, successive French Presidents of both the left and right attempted to cast Paris as a counterweight to Washington in terms of political leadership within the Alliance, the European Community and the developing world over which it had presided before the de-colonization processes of the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, France attempted to enhance its international prestige through the development of an independent nuclear force de frappe and withdrawal from NATO’s military command structure. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger offers an instructive synopsis of the French approach:

It is not that France does not understand the United States’ role as the ultimate safety net for French (and European) autonomous policy. Nor do French leaders have any illusions about the relative power positions of the two countries. In the major crises of the Cold War – the challenges to Berlin between 1957 and 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Gulf War in 1990–1991 – France proved a staunch ally; deployment of medium-range missiles in Germany in 1983 would not have been possible without the eloquent support of French President François Mitterrand. But the Cartesian, ultrarationalist education of French policymakers causes them to believe that the United States will understand their somewhat cynical applications of raison d’état, and will always respect the motivations which induce France to define European identity as a challenge to the United States, even while relying on it as a guarantor of France’s security.²

The closing French assessment to which Kissinger refers has not proven nearly so astute since the end of the Cold War. Transatlantic solidarity was indispensable to the effective containment of the Soviet Union from the 1950s to the 1970s – and, ultimately – to the rollback of its influence by the Ronald Reagan administration during the 1980s and the subsequent orchestration of the conclusion of the bipolar confrontation by the George H.W. Bush administration from 1989–91. However, with the United States advancing toward global hegemony and the lack of a common adversary to confront, divergences in Franco-American interests – and the unwillingness of either side to compromise publicly to the degree they did during the Cold War – have become increasingly more apparent in the 1990s and 2000s. From the French perspective, which is, of course, central to this piece, those divergences are best examined contextually at the domestic, European, transatlantic and global levels.

As is true of any state, France’s concerns over security begin at home. Among the most pressing of Chirac’s domestic worries, for instance, is the fact that there are presently between five and seven million Muslims residing in France, nearly all of whom have been excluded from the economic, political and social benefits afforded to the majority of the national populace.³ The potential for unrest emanating from Franco-Islamic communities, ranging from demonstrations and increases in the rate of criminal acts to riots and the commission of terrorist attacks, in turn, is one of the reasons why Chirac has had a tendency to portray the French government as more favorably disposed toward Arab and broader Muslim causes than the United States. Examples include Paris’ rejection of the use of force against Iraq by both the William J. Clinton administration in Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 and the Bush administration in the Second Iraq War and a French diplomatic tilt toward the Palestinians in the context of the fleeting Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Put simply, Chirac has used foreign policy to avoid further inflaming already marginalized Muslims that successive French governments have been unable, if not unwilling, to integrate effectively.⁴

At the continental level, French security policy, since the end of the Cold War generally and the events of 9/11 specifically, has been designed to achieve two related objectives. First, as it did during the Cold War, France has attempted with some success to enhance its political prestige by casting itself as the leading proponent of the inter- and intra-European deepening and widening processes. Its end in this endeavor is to increase the economic power and political influence of the European Union (EU) – and, by association, of France itself – relative to that of the United States. Second, it has pressed successfully for the creation of a RRF to afford the EU greater freedom of action to undertake military operations in which the Americans choose not to participate. Notwithstanding the progress the Europeans have made vis-à-vis the RRF, that entity remains largely untested. Nonetheless, the French goal, one Germany shares but the United Kingdom, among others, does not, is that the EU will eventually serve as a reasonably credible counterweight to American military power.

With respect to the transatlantic security community, French policy has proceeded along two relatively straightforward tracks over the past decade. First, France has had a tendency to accept American leadership – and military support – when unable to handle a regional security threat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: US Security Policy and the New Europe
• PART ONE: OLD EUROPE
• PART TWO: NEW EUROPE
• Select Bibliography
• Index