12/05/2004|||110227504290268834||||||

TEAM PLAYERS

The only complaint I ever have about Robert Kagan is that I wish he'd publish his column more than once every few weeks. Today's must-read op-ed (reg required) offers a thought-provoking - and cheering - look at how the Ukraine crisis has given the EU and the US a chance to prove they really can work together.

Kagan certainly has no illusions about Europe's lack of military muscle. All the same, he sees other avenues opening up:

"In recent years thinkers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic have earnestly tried to restore the old Cold War strategic partnership, albeit aimed at a different set of enemies. We have squeezed European troops into Afghanistan, where they are growing weary, and tried to squeeze them into Iraq, where they do not want to go...

"But consider the possibility that this old formula won't work for the new 'postmodern' entity Europe has become. Except in matters of trade, Europe is not a global player in the traditional geopolitical sense of projecting power and influence far beyond its borders. Few Europeans even aspire to such a role. This means Americans should bury once and for all absurd worries about the rise of a hostile E.U. superpower -- Europe will be neither hostile nor a superpower in the traditional sense. It also means Americans should stop looking to Europe to shoulder much of the global strategic burden beyond its environs."

Charles Krauthammer poured scorn on European parochialism in his most recent column. Just for once, though, I think he may be overly pessimistic. Kagan strikes a more hopeful note:

"By accident of history and geography, the European paradise is surrounded on three sides by an unruly tangle of potentially catastrophic problems, from North Africa to Turkey and the Balkans to the increasingly contested borders of the former Soviet Union. This is an arc of crisis if ever there was one, and especially now with Putin's play for a restoration of the old Russian empire. In confronting these dangers, Europe brings a unique kind of power, not coercive military power but the power of attraction. The European Union has become a gigantic political and economic magnet whose greatest strength is the attractive pull it exerts on its neighbors. Europe's foreign policy today is enlargement; its most potent foreign policy tool is what the E.U.'s Robert Cooper calls 'the lure of membership.'

"Cooper describes the E.U. as a liberal, democratic, voluntary empire expanding continuously outward as others seek to join it. This expanding Europe absorbs problems and conflicts rather than directly confronting them in the American style."

US firepower remains essential, of course, despite all the complaints of Europe's anti-American peaceniks. Kagan urges his countrymen not to give up on the EU - not yet anyway:

"Americans are generally skeptical of or indifferent to the European Union. They shouldn't be. The United States has an important interest in the direction the E.U. takes in coming years. It may actually matter, for instance, whether Britain votes to support the E.U. constitution, as Blair wants. A Britain with real influence inside the E.U. is more likely to steer it in the liberal imperial direction that the E.U.'s Cooper, a former Blair adviser, proposes. That could prove a far more important strategic boon to the United States than a few thousand European troops in Iraq."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/12/team-players-only-complaint-i-ever.html|||12/05/2004 06:57:00 pm|||||||||

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