Even in the most traditionally pro-American countries, surveys show a precipitous decline in U.S. standing. In Britain, according to a Pew poll, favorable opinion of the United States dropped from 83 percent in 2000 to 56 percent last year, and in Germany, the figure slid from 78 to just 37. Trust in Washington has also hit a record low. According to a survey for the German Marshall Fund, only 36 percent of Europeans now see U.S. leadership as desirable at all. In 2002, that figure was still 64 percent. Asked to name the main reasons for the decline, 34 percent said President Bush himself and 38 percent blamed the war in Iraq.
Bush and Iraq: if only it were that simple. But there’s even more alarming news. Only 35 percent of those surveyed thought transatlantic relations would improve after next year’s U.S. elections, while 46 percent guessed they would stay the same. As this suggests, the reasons for the crisis of the West go deeper than just one unpopular president and his war.
Throughout the cold war, the United States and Western Europe were held together by a common enemy: the Soviet Union. But there’s no longer any such single defining threat. Instead, the allies face many, often diffuse, dangers, such as climate change, poverty, demographic shifts, international terrorism and nuclear proliferation. And whereas the specter of the Red Army’s squatting in the heart of Europe tended to pull them together, Europeans and Americans often react differently to these more recent threats. At the same time, the re-emergence of an aggressive Russia and the rise of China and India have made the world more complex and multipolar. The United States is no longer the undisputed leader of the West. Europe itself has formed an unprecedented Union that includes nearly 500 million people and boasts a combined gross domestic product equal to the United States’. This new-style non-imperial empire is seeking a new identity.
For many Europeans, defining that identity is simple: to be European, for them, is to be not American. This attitude is popular—but it’s also stupid and wrong. There is no clear divide between European and American values. On many issues, “Blue State” Americans are closer to most Europeans than they are to their “Red State” compatriots. And Europe will achieve little or nothing in the world if it tries to act against the American hyperpower.
What can Washington do about all this? First, the next administration must recognize the scale of the problem it faces. This will be a big job—not just because of the depth of the current alienation, but also because of the transformed historical context. The transatlantic alliance that has existed for most of our lifetimes came into being in the 1940s, conceived in the flames of the second world war and the cold war. There is nothing inevitable about its continuation today. Without major surgery, it may not survive into the 2020s.
Washington must also confront its unfortunate past. Even most Republicans today acknowledge that the Bush administration has made big mistakes. Saying sorry isn’t enough, but it’s a good way for politicians to start a new chapter—and not too difficult if the mistakes you apologize for aren’t your own.
The next U.S. president should also give up talk of the “War on Terror” in favor of “the long struggle.” Words matter, and the “War on Terror” has become a discredited slogan—especially, though not only, in Europe—compromised beyond repair by the debacle of Iraq. Shifting from talk of war to struggle would underline the point often made by the U.S. armed services: that to defeat terrorists, insurgencies and Islamist radicals will require a policy mix that is only about 20 percent military. The other 80 percent must be political, social, cultural and economic.
On substance, the new administration must also be prepared to tackle global challenges beyond terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington and the U.S. media often seem to suffer from attention-deficit disorder, as though they’re capable of focusing on only one or two foreign stories at a time. Today’s world is a whole lot more complex than that, making multi-tasking a necessity. Europeans would respond well to an administration that gave climate change, development, China and Russia prominence alongside current U.S. obsessions. Encouragingly, recent polls suggest that when you detach these issues from specific questions about Washington’s policy on them, Europeans and Americans see them more similarly than you might expect. Remarkably, Europeans are now more supportive of long-term democracy promotion than Americans are, and there’s increasingly common ground to be found on terrorism and Islamist extremism, not least due to the spate of recent attacks in Europe.
To capitalize on these shared sentiments, it is vital that Washington start consulting Europe before acting and try to share leadership. Even most Democrats still seem to think that the United States should first decide what it wants to do and then announce the blessings of its new approach to a grateful world. That must change. Well before the presidential election, the foreign-policy teams of the leading candidates should begin discreet but widespread consultations with key allies, and help work out new policies that could be announced as joint proposals.
The next president should also embrace the European Union. NATO is still important. So are individual European countries. But they’re no longer the only important European actors. Ties to Brussels will never substitute for relations with London, Paris or Berlin, but the United States must start taking the EU seriously as a long-term partner on issues ranging from trade and climate change to the modernization and reform of the Middle East. Dealing with Europe always involves a conference call including key national capitals as well as Brussels. But working with the Union can also simplify transatlantic ties, since its mechanisms for foreign-policy coordination (due to be streamlined in the EU’s new treaty) can bring along 20 or more other EU countries Washington may not have the time or inclination to woo directly.
In sum, the next president should aim to relaunch the overall strategic partnership with Europe—but at the end of his or her term, not the beginning. The transatlantic relationship needs to be fundamentally redesigned for the 21st century. This will mean going back to basics, asking, what are the real global challenges of our time? What are European and American interests? Where do they coincide and where do they diverge? In spite of everything, a majority of Europeans still favor such a partnership. But too often attempts have been made to relaunch the relationship on grandiose rhetoric alone, with little action. This time, the two sides should do something together first, then celebrate it afterward.
So much for what the United States needs to do. As Ronald Reagan liked to remind us, it takes two to tango. Europeans love to criticize the United States. They are much less good at offering alternatives. To correct this, Europe should prepare a set of its own proposals by 2008 on at least a half-dozen key issues. If Europe doesn’t want to bomb Iran, it should figure out how to stop Iran from getting the bomb. If Europe wants collective action on climate change, it should figure out how to make that happen. The same goes for Russia, world trade talks, a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, long-term change in the Middle East and a strategy for preventing the dangerous radicalization of young Muslims. Europe cannot go on just asking the right questions. It needs to start offering some answers of its own.
