Redefining European Security (Garland Reference Library of Social Science)

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REDEFINING EUROPEAN SECURITY

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN EUROPEAN POLITICS VOLUME 4 GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE VOLUME 1154

C ONTEMPORARY I SSUES IN E UROPEAN P OLITICS C ARL C.H ODGE, Series Editor THE SOUTH SLAV CONFLICT History, Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism edited by Raju G.C.Thomas and H.Richard Friman REDEFINING EUROPEAN SECURITY edited by Carl C.Hodge

CONSCIENCE IN POLITICS An Empirical Investigation of Swiss Decision Cases by Jürg Steiner FRANCE AND GERMANY AT MAASTRICHT Politics and Negotiations to Create the European Union by Colette Mazzucelli

Redefining European Security

Carl Cavanagh Hodge Editor

Garland Publishing, Inc. New York and London 1999

Published in 1999 by Garland Publishing Inc. A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group 19 Union Square West New York, NY 10003 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Copyright © 1999 by Carl C.Hodge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and record ing, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Redefining European Security/edited by Carl C.Hodge. p. cm.—(Garland reference library of social science: v. 1154. Contemporary issues in European politics: v.4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8153-2791-9 (hardcover: alk. paper).—ISBN 0-8153-2792-7 (paperback: alk. paper) 1. National security—Europe. 2. Europe—Defenses. 3. World politics—1989-I.Hodge, Carl Cavanagh. II. Series: Garland reference library of social science : v. 1154. III. Series: Garland reference library of social science. Contemporary issues in European politics: v.4.UA646.R34 1999 99–12537 355.03304—dc21 CIP Manufactured in the United States of America ISBN 0-203-90674-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-90752-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-8153-2792-7 (Print Edition)

To the memory of Matthew Cavanagh Hodge

CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Introduction: Crucial Problems of Security in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Gerhard Wettig PART 1: THE OLD AND THE NEW CHAPTER 1

European Security Between the “Logic of Anarchy” and the “Logic of Community” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 John Baylis CHAPTER 2

The Revival of Geopolitics in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Heinz Magenheimer CHAPTER 3

The Economic Elements of the European Security Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 James Sperling CHAPTER 4

A Separate Peace? Economic Stabilization and Development and the New Fault Line of European Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Colette Mazzucelli CHAPTER 5

Transnational Threats and European Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Phil Williams and Paul N.Woessner PART 2: PRINCIPAL PLAYERS CHAPTER 6

France’s Security Policy since the End of the Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Axel Sauder vii

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CHAPTER 7

France and the Organization of Security in Post–Cold War Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Michael Meimeth CHAPTER 8

Redefining European Security: The Role of German Foreign Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Klaus von Beyme CHAPTER 9

Germany: Is Sound Diplomacy the Better Part of Security? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Carl Cavanagh Hodge CHAPTER 10

Russia and European Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Paul Marantz CHAPTER 11

The Future of American Atlanticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Gary L.Geipel PART 3: THE MULTILATERAL DIMENSION, HARD AND SOFT CH3APTER 12

The Military Aspects of European Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Edward M.Whalen CHAPTER 13

Between Ambition and Paralysis: The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and the War in the Former Yugoslavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Andreas G.Kintis CHAPTER 14

The OSCE: Nonmilitary Dimensions of Cooperative Security in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Cathal J.Nolan Conclusion: Where Is Europe? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Select Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Yesterday, Europe only just avoided perishing from imperial follies and frenzied ideologies,” wrote the late Raymond Aron in 1976, “she could perish tomorrow through historical abdication.” 1 One wonders whether Aron would not apply a similar turn of phrase to a Europe no longer divided by Cold War or would find in a half-decade’s history evidence of a work in progress. An inherent danger in any attempt to redefine European security is a relentless inflation of the number and variety of meanings for the concept all the way to meaninglessness. It is fair to say, also, that at the end of the twentieth century changing circumstance in Europe is doing much of the work of redefinition for us, at a rate that may yet make all preliminary judgments look foolish. Distinctions between national and regional, military and economic security have blurred to an extent that it is unrealistic to speak of one dimension without some reference to the others. In Europe this feature of contemporary international affairs is more readably observable than anywhere else. The end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet empire, the economic dislocations brought on by sweeping change all over Central and Eastern Europe are only the most obvious reasons for thinking about security in new ways. Less obvious but no less important is the fact that over the past four decades the states of Western Europe have made it their main business to dismantle the barriers of national sovereignty to an extent that it is today often impractical for their governments to speak of vital national interests. And yet security retains a hard core of military capacity for which national governments must summon both political will and fiscal ix

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resources. In 1963 Alistair Buchan gave us a sweeping definition of international security as a condition “in which the inhibitions and disincentives to waging war are stronger than the incentives,” while “the alternatives to a forceful solution of any conflict are as numerous, as sparing of national pride, as readily available, as human wit can devise, whether they be political, diplomatic, or judicial.”2 In 1997, as in 1897, governments consider security in the most elementary sense in terms of their ability to maintain sovereignty free from foreign coercion or internal violent overthrow. Critics who protested that it was backward to continue to do so were brutally disabused of their optimism by events in Yugoslavia even before all the political fences of Europe’s Cold War division had been dismantled. It is and has always been simplistic to regard military power as the prime factor in all international relations, but to shunt it from its central position in understanding international security is determinedly romantic. What Sir Michael Howard observed almost three decades ago bears repeating. There is all too little evidence that military impotence ever promoted stability and order.3 Realistically, therefore, a redefinition of European security cannot downgrade military considerations so much as to supplement them with an appreciation of the nature and seriousness of new challenges and variety of ways in which Europe’s institutionally rich security environment is adapting to and coping with them. In the most substantive sense, the contributors to this volume are not redefining European security—events are. It is those events in contemporary Europe that are compelling governments, quite independently of academic counsel, to adopt a definition of security lying between “the preservation of a country’s highest values” or vital interests as they are “purposefully threatened from abroad, primarily by other states” and overly inclusive versions that throw “quality of life” considerations and environmental disasters into the mix.4 The enthusiasts of broader definitions themselves concede that issues of migration and environmental degradation derive their security relevance primarily through their potential to damage relations between states to an extent that open conflict may result.5 European governments, the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are after all dealing with the fundamental problem of determining the very parameters of Europe, politically, economically, and institutionally—in both geographical breadth and institutional depth. 6 In referring to security and its redefinition, therefore, this book adopts fairly orthodox criteria of reference, centering on the efforts undertaken by national governments and multilateral

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institutions, beginning with the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, to continue to protect European populations from acts from war and politically motivated violence in light of the dissolution of imminent military threat posed to Western Europe by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, 1945–1991. It will assess the progress made in Europe toward “preventing conflict and rapidly ending conflict when it occurs,”7 in light of the profound changes brought about by the abrupt passing of a situation in which the probable source and nature of conflict in Europe were highly predictable. Contemporary Europe is a strange mixture of old and new, of accelerated and arrested history. The steep drop in the risk of nuclear war in Europe has enhanced the potential of limited geopolitical calculations made by individual states to a degree that we have not witnessed since the 1930s. The post-Soviet sphere of Eastern and Central Europe is today more democratic and anarchic, a realm where unsettled political scores and economic distress tempt governments with a weak democratic experience to measure national wealth and power according to standards of the early nineteenth century. For that reason the principal nonmilitary factor governing the prospects of European peace will be the progress of the economic and political revolution in the ex–Warsaw Pact and Soviet successor states. While the connection between the spread of democracy and the absence of war has too often been stylized into an empirical law of international relations, 8 the principles of limited government, rule of law, and popular recall have more to offer to the long-term project of peace in Europe than does military readiness in and of itself. Both the openness and postnational character of economic and political integration pursued in Western Europe is now being tested as never before. The opportunities afforded political terrorism and cross-border crime by the coincidental completion of the 1986–1992 Single European Act and the elimination of the Cold War frontier apply new stresses on public opinion and unprecedented demands on national, supranational, and multilateral institutions. The vision of a new Europe articulated in the Paris Charter of 1990 is now more than seven sobering years in the past. The Atlantic alliance has since extended an offer of membership to the former Warsaw Pact states of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic over repeated objections and occasional threats from Moscow, demonstrating that, for the time being, some partners of the Partnership for Peace are to be more equal than others. In the post-Soviet world, experience with democratic self-government and market economics varies enormously from one national history to the next. In making straight the

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“crooked wood of humanity,” the project of reform in Central and Eastern Europe will encounter many problems that predate the imposition of communism.9 For the time being, Europe can include Russia politically but cannot comprehend it institutionally. The ranking of candidates for membership in Europe is based in part on the economic and political performance of the candidate states but equally on how the existing EU membership envisions Europe. For Turkey, a NATO member with a long history of association with the EU, 1987 marks the inauguration of a period of Ankara’s repeated frustration in realizing the goal of joining Europe’s most sought after club. The suspicion that Europeans are perhaps incapable of accepting that a Muslim society could really become as secular and liberal as their own is unavoidable. For its part, Ankara has found it necessary to become newly innovative in defining its own security concerns in the dangerous neighborhood of the eastern Mediterranean, and early post–Cold War analyses of European security that included North Africa and the Middle East in the continent’s “arc of crisis” viewed Europe’s interests through a wider lens than any recently employed by European leaders individually or in concert.10 “L’Europe,” De Gaulle once remarked, “c’est la France et l’Allemagne. Les autres sont des légumes.” Because the Western European economic integration of the 1950s and 1960s made Franco-German reconciliation the prerequisite of the continent’s pacification and recovery, the BonnParis axis has been and remains the most important bilateral relationship among the core European states. For that reason this volume includes four chapters dealing with recent change in French and German foreign and security policy, each concerned with identifying the ways in which two national governments are struggling to square new national and European interests with the limited military resources and political will they are capable of committing to European peace. Euro-Gaullism, even more so than the older French variety, has little to offer the future beyond an even more bloated rhetoric. The privileged partnership will doubtless retain a good deal of its ability to identify the goals of the European future, but security concerns in particular indicate that it will be an altogether different story from that told by the most capable scholars of FrancoGerman relations hitherto.11 That is because the failure, rather the absence, of an authentically European response to the disintegration of Yugoslavia has revealed like nothing else the modest limits of even Franco-German Europeanism suddenly exposed to a security challenge. By 1996 the only reasonable

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conclusion on the Balkan experience, observed the German historian Michael Stürmer, was that “six years into the New World Disorder, NATO remains as necessary as it has ever been” and, more to the point, “the Europeans, so powerful and active on the economic scene, will need Uncle Sam to protect them against their weakness, opportunism and disunion.” 12 The United States is in 1998 as vital to the peace and stability of the Old Continent as at any time since the failure of the European Defense Community (EDC)—and with it the germ of a selfreliant Western European security capacity—in 1954. Just as the EDC died in the French parliament at the hands of deputies who could not part with a sovereign defense force, Europeans remain, in the words of a former American secretary of state, “prisoners of their own history”13 in their deeply flawed approach to Yugoslavia. This volume approaches the American interest in European security from two perspectives, the vitality of American Atlanticism generally and the changing role of an American-led NATO alliance in bringing military substance to the conceptual visions of European security. Because “Europe” as a security entity does not exist, the United States is today a European power to an extent that post-Soviet Russia is clearly not. Russia is today a political frontier. It is here that the travail of democracy, liberal democracy, will carry on well into the next century and where the longterm security interests of Northern and Eastern Europe will be either consolidated or undermined. At the very core of an institutional Europe that does not incorporate Russia, meanwhile, the experience of recent years provides us only with rather tentative—and not altogether encouraging—indications of the shape of the future European security regime. The Atlantic Alliance is the most successful, but not the only, institution claiming a direct or indirect security mandate; for better or worse, NATO is still far and away the most important. The literature of international organization is particularly rich with debate concerning whether and to what extent multilateral institutions actually change the behavior of sovereign states. Selfconscious realists rightly claim that institutions failed to prevent war in the Balkans; 14 the experience of post-1945 Western Europe more generally, however, testifies that multilateral institutions have exercised a powerful pacifying influence on Europe’s major and minor states. This has been so demonstrably true that European governments have cultivated an extraordinary faith in multilateral institutions often as a substitute for rather than a tool of international politics. In Europe the tendency is indeed so prevalent that it exercises a certain intellectual colonialism on

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the scholars of European affairs. Thus, only a professional Europhile would have dared to claim of Europe at the beginning of the 1990s that “by the end of the decade, if their governments succeed in creating a structure of resilient institutions, the entire continent will have become a zone of peace like the one that was forged four decades ago in Western Europe.”15 Europe is full of resilient institutions whose contribution to sustainable peace is only now being tested. To date only NATO can be said to have made a critical difference, and the alliance is itself undergoing a transformation by virtue of the very experience. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Western European Union (WEU) have played only subsidiary roles in redefining European security. They may possibly be the victims of what Philip Zelikow has called Europe’s “masque of institutions,” a preoccupation with the “architecture” of the European future that since 1989 has too frequently eclipsed concern with the practical imperatives of the European here and now.16 I would like to thank the contributors to this volume, each of whom commands a deeper understanding of the contemporary European dilemma than the editor can claim for himself. Its strengths are theirs, its shortcomings all my own. Additionally, I am in the debt of David Estrin and Kristi Long for their abiding patience with and encouragement of this project, Grant Hammond for his clearheaded advice on how to make it a worthwhile publication, and Chuck Bartelt for her sound technical advice.

Notes 1. Raymond Aron, “The Crisis of the European Idea,” Government and Opposition, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1976, p. 19. 2. Quoted by John Garnett (ed.), Theories of Peace and Security: A Reader in Contemporary Strategic Thought (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 34. 3. Michael Howard, “Military Power and International Order,” in John Garnett (ed.), Theories of Peace and Security, pp. 47–48. 4. Eric Nordlinger rightly inveighs against sprawling definitions of security in his analysis of post–Cold War American foreign policy. Yet his own definition, while appropriate perhaps to the United States, is demonstrably narrow when applied to Europe. Equally, Richard Ullman’s insistence that the preservation of the quality of life against all threats, man-made and natural, belongs to security policy could theoretically make national parks and funding for the arts part and parcel of security considerations. See Eric Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 10–11, and Richard Ullman, “Redefining Security,” International Security, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1983, pp. 129–153, also Securing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 134–137.

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5. Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 68. No. 2, 1989, pp. 129–154; Thomas F.Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as a Cause of Acute Conflict,” International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1991, pp. 76–116; Myron Wiener, “Security, Stability, and International Migration,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1992–1993, pp. 91–126. 6. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Consequences of the End of the Cold War for International Security,” Adelphi Papers, no. 265, Winter 1991–1992, pp. 8–10. 7. Jonathan Dean, Ending Europe’s Wars: The Continuing Search for Peace and Security (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994), p. xiii. 8. Compare Jack S.Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” in Robert I.Rotberg and Theodore K.Rabb (eds.), The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 88 with the more sober Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6, 1997, pp. 22–53. Also Thomas M.Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 86, No. 46, 1992, pp. 46–91. 9. Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994). 10. George Joffe, “European Security and the New Arc of Crisis,” Adelphi Papers, no. 265, Winter 1991–1992, pp. 53–67; Wall Street Journal, May 30, 1996, pp. A1, A4; Washington Post, June 2, 1996, p. A24. 11. Three of the best are F.Roy Willis, France, Germany and the New Europe, 1945–1967 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); Haig Simonian, The Privileged Partnership (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Colette Mazzucelli, France and Germany at Maastricht (New York: Garland, 1996). 12. Michael Stürmer, “Cap in Hand to Uncle Sam,” Financial Times, March 1, 1996, p. 18. 13. James A.Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G.P.Putnam’s, 1995), p. 645. 14. See John J.Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 5–49, wherein the author subordinates any truly realistic assessment of institutional influence to the cause of reiterating, yet again, the tenets of realism—which he fantasizes is largely alien to the foreign policy history of the United States in particular—next to a rather cheaply rendered caricature of liberal institutionalism. 15. Richard H.Ullman, Securing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 43. 16. Zelikow is dealing specifically with the gap between NATO institutionalism and existing security crises, but his observations have more general application. See “The Masque of Institutions,” in Phillip Gordon (ed.), NATO’s Transformation: The Changing Shape of the Atlantic Alliance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), pp. 77–89. See also Paul Cornish, “European Security: The End of Architecture and the New NATO,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 4, 1996, pp. 751–769. Cornish observes that words like “architecture” and “structure” are employed to “convey a sense of progress and optimism” and that “a good deal of the discussion to date has taken place on a conceptual building site.”

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ABM ASEAN AWAC BKA BND CAP CDU CFE CFSP CIS CJTF CSBM CSCE EAC EBRD EC ECB ECU EEC EDC EFTA EMS EMU EP EPC ERM ESDI EU FRG FTA GATT IFOR

Anti-Ballistic Missile Association of Southeast Asian Nations Airborne Warning and Control German Criminal Investigations Office German Federal Intelligence Service Common Agricultural Policy Christian Democratic Union Conventional Forces in Europe Common Foreign and Security Policy Confederation of Independent States Combined Joint Task Force Confidence and Security Building Measures Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe European Advisory Commission European Bank for Reconstruction and Development European Community European Central Bank European Currency Unit European Economic Community European Defense Community European Free Trade Association European Monetary System European Monetary Union European Parliament European Political Cooperation Exchange Rate Mechanism European Security and Defense Identity European Union Federal Republic of Germany Free Trade Agreement General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Implementation Force

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IGC IMF INF MBFR NAG NACC NAFTA NAN NATEC NATO OECD OEEC OSCE PfP PHARE PKK RMA SACEUR SACLANT SEA SFOR SHAPE UN WEU WTO

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Intergovernmental Council International Monetary Fund Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction North Atlantic Council North Atlantic Cooperation Council North American Free Trade Agreement Neutral and Non-aligned Nations North Atlantic Economic Community North Atlantic Treaty Organization Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Organization for European Economic Cooperation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Partnership for Peace Poland and Hungary: Aid for the Restructuring of Economies Kurdistan Workers’ Party Revolution in Military Affairs Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic Single European Act Stabilization Force Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe United Nations Western European Union World Trade Organization

Introduction: Crucial Problems of Security in Europe Gerhard Wettig

Principal Factors Determining European Security When the first secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sought at the beginning of the 1950s to define the purpose of the alliance, he held that its main purpose was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. This formula still holds true in the sense that Russia, the United States, and Germany continue to be those states whose relationship to Europe is central to all security issues on the continent. This is true even in the face of the radical change in world politics that has taken place since 1989. The Cold War confrontation of NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact has been replaced by a Europe in which NATO is the only functioning security organization. At the same time, mutual deterrence has ceased to be the basis of European security. Instead, we have on the one side a Western Europe that has been pacified by NATO and the European Union (EU) and on the other side a Central and Eastern Europe that, the more one moves east and southeast, is threatened by political instability. In the case of Bosnia, NATO, therefore, still faces the crucial test of proving that the alliance is able to function as a peacemaker beyond its traditional sphere of activity. Many countries now hope to enhance their stability by 1

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joining NATO. But the Atlantic alliance is not a machine that in and of itself manufactures security and domestic stability for any nation. Its effectiveness depends on the commitment of its members, changing political and diplomatic circumstance in Europe, and particularly on the relationship among Russia, America, and Germany. In the past decades the “German question” had been widely understood as the problem resulting from the division of the country into two separate states. In this sense the German question is now solved. But there remains another aspect of the question, resulting from the situation of Germany in Europe and demanding another solution. It is raised, for instance, when neighboring countries’ “uneasiness with the Germans” is expressed. In my view, this kind of uneasiness has less to do with the national features of the German people than is widely assumed; after all, the Germans have had long periods of peace in their history. Rather, the problem has to be seen in a systemic context. Germany is larger and stronger than its neighbors, and in addition to this, it is situated in a central position in terms of Europe’s geopolitics. These objective factors give the Germans an influential role in European affairs, but at the same time expose them to particular risks, simply because everything that happens in Germany is of vital import for its European neighbors. Unlike other European nations, there are few internal affairs with which the rest of Europe can allow the Germans to deal alone. German history has itself demonstrated the practical implications of the country’s position. Whenever Germany was divided and weak, European powers were prone to ensure their security at its expense, inter alia by fighting their wars on German territory. The principal events in the period between the Thirty Years’ War and the 1850s gave clear evidence of this. After Germany had become a united and strong nation, the Germans in their turn sought to ensure their security at the expense of the other Europeans, inaugurating two world wars and ending with their country’s total defeat. The historical lesson of this is that European security can never be solidly based either on the defeat or on the predominance of Germany. Conclusions drawn in the West after 1945 concerning Germany’s twentieth-century experience led to a set of policies for Germany revolving around the theme of positive integration. To be sure, Germany was subject to foreign control consistent with the security interests of the other European states, but this control was made compatible with German interests and exercised on a basis of mutual obligations. To the extent that German affairs were subject to foreign control, the Germans were allowed

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to exercise influence on the analogous affairs of the controlling countries. This put an end to the fatal choice between forcing European security needs on the Germans or, vice versa, forcing German security needs on the Europeans. The principle of integration, that is, the imperative of mutual control of the countries involved, is the basis of NATO, the European Union, and other Western communities. It has been the only effective answer to the German question in Europe. A completely different approach to European security has been taken by the United States. In fact, the United States, despite its geographical distance from Europe, has in the twentieth century become a European power as a direct result of the inherent vices of the traditional European state system. This system, as it functioned until the United States became involved, was based on the existence of five great powers checking one another to ensure a balance of power. If one of the great powers was sought hegemony, the others formed a coalition and—usually in a coalition war—to put an end to the effort. This system, if it may be called that, was functioning only painfully and tentatively even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it failed completely a hundred years later. In the First World War, Germany turned out to be so strong that even a coalition of almost all European powers was unable to defeat her; in the Second World War it was only the military intervention of the United States that brought about a decisive turn of military events. After having learned for the second time that a hegemony of one power over Europe had been averted only by American intervention, Washington concluded in the second half of the 1940s that, in the vital interest of American security, European history must not be allowed to repeat itself yet again. Everything had to be done to prevent any situation in which American boys would be sent to a European war. This policy begat NATO: The United States committed itself to a longterm presence in Europe in order to persuade a potential aggressor— which after 1945 became the Soviet Union—that the United States would never tolerate the domination of Europe by a single power. The underpinning emphasis on deterrence was meant to prevent another war and the inevitable need for American intervention. Indeed, the very existence of NATO imposed limits on Soviet expansion without war between East and West. After the end of the East-West confrontation it was widely assumed that the disappearance of the Soviet threat would put an end to the need for an American commitment in Europe. However, the events in former Yugoslavia, and particularly in Bosnia, have demonstrated that the states

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of Western Europe, notwithstanding the fact that their capacity for action is no longer paralyzed by the Soviet threat of forty years, are unequal to the tasks of peacekeeping and peacemaking in zones of political instability unless the United States is in command. It was only under American leadership and within the framework of NATO that it became possible to bring the conflicting parties to put aside their arms and take steps toward reestablishing peace. Thus, the United States continues to be an indispensable factor of security in Europe. This situation results in some political implications, which so far have received little attention. Given the relative decline in the significance to security of military factors, their continuing importance notwithstanding, the trans-Atlantic partnership between Europe and North America can no longer be based on common security interests to the same extent as during the Cold War. This situation calls for the development of further common interests between the two sides, especially in the economic field, the importance of which on both sides of the Atlantic is ranking ever higher. The Russian perspective on European security is bound to be radically different. Given its huge territory, large population, and abundant natural resources, Russia far exceeds European dimensions. Its military options, which include a nuclear capacity, therefore enjoy a much higher priority than those of the Western European states, including the nuclear powers Britain and France. As a consequence, Russia cannot be integrated into either NATO or the European Union, both goals toward which its leadership does not show a strong inclination in any case.

The Russian Approach to European Security This would not necessarily cause problems and tensions, if the Russians did not suffer under some historically strained perceptions. The end of the Cold War with the West was linked in Moscow to the expectation that the former Soviet sphere would no longer be excluded from participation in the Western community. Accordingly, many in Russia thought it natural for NATO to cease to exist once the Warsaw Pact had collapsed. The Atlantic alliance, they argued, must be replaced by a new security system covering all of Europe. In this view NATO not only embodied the former anti-Soviet posture of the West but also a club of states who refused access to Russia, the principal successor of the USSR. Thus, NATO became a symbol of Russia’s continuing exclusion from the West. Its

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continuing existence is something of an insult. And yet the central issue with regard to Moscow is no longer one of “keeping the Russians out,” but of including them adequately. Moscow never has left any doubt that it cannot identify with many European interests, just as the major and minor European states are unable to identify with those Russian concerns that reach beyond the borders of Europe. There can be consensus as far as both sides have genuine common interests. Concerning all other interests, either side must allow the other freedom of action. Such an arrangement would be likely to make NATO acceptable to Russia. It might establish, to the extent possible, common interests of Russia and NATO in certain defined areas. But given the negative implications of NATO as a symbol in Russia this outcome can hardly be assumed. In the last instance the crucial problem is not NATO’s opening but rather the very existence of the Atlantic alliance; if Russia cannot be convinced that its security interests are at least compatible with the continuing existence of NATO, a new sense of confrontation is likely to emerge. To the Western states the Russian suggestion that they abandon their alliance for the substitute of an all-European security system is clearly unacceptable, because such an arrangement would deprive Europe of its only functioning security structure. This is true today in Bosnia without regard to actions or words of any Russian government. An all-European security system in NATO’s stead would result in acute danger for security in Europe. The Atlantic alliance, a system of collective defense based both on common security interests of its members and on proper organizational preparations for the case of international crisis or war, would be replaced by a network of mutual security pledges between nations with differing security interests. This would result in a system of collective security whose participants would have to rely on their partners’ pledges to assist them in the event of aggression. The crucial point in this context is that for lack of genuinely common security interests, there would be no preceding consensus on the likely threat nor on the measures taken to avert it, let alone common preparations to meet the aggression in the event that deterrence fails. If a war were impending or breaking out, antecedent pledges to help the victim of aggression would not have any immediate practical implications. Every nation participating in the system of collective security would have to decide individually how to evaluate the situation and to formulate practical actions. Given the fact that the basic obligation under the agreement and the resulting commitments have been defined in an abstract sense only, the pledge to assist a given victim of aggression requires the respective individual partners’ deliberate and

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arbitrary choice when practically called for. Each signatory-state will have to decide on its own whom it chooses to regard as aggressor and whom as victim. It would also remain within each state’s discretion to decide by which means and to what extent it is going to assist the side that, in its view, deserves assistance. For lack of binding definitions and preparations, such decisions are likely to be taken only in accordance with the respective country’s own interests. The victim of aggression would be at the mercy of its partners and could not be sure of their assistance despite the fact that such assistance has been promised. For this reason, an agreement on collective security often is not binding. The kind of behavior that can be expected under such an arrangement has been demonstrated by European action in Bosnia before the intervention of the United States. Guided by the noble principles of the Paris Charter, but not bound by concrete commitments and measures, they claimed “to serve peace” together but in fact surrendered themselves to rivalry; developed contrasting approaches to this “out of area” conflict; canceled each other off wherever possible; and thus doomed themselves to an impotency that stood in grotesque contrast to their huge political, economic, and military superiority over the warring parties. Notwithstanding extraordinarily favorable preconditions to deter or repel military aggression, the European states demonstrated their collective weakness in a way that was as ridiculous as it was shaming, and it was only through American intervention that this spectacle was, at last, ended. As long as Russia continues to regard NATO as an antagonist that sooner or later has to be eliminated as a relict of the Cold War, there can be no consensus on security in Europe. The controversy over NATO’s opening to former Warsaw Pact states seeking to join the alliance is essentially caused by a fundamental disagreement about the very nature of the alliance. If Moscow were to accept the Atlantic alliance as a stabilizing feature of the international system, the existence of which permits the Russian leadership to concentrate its energies on the crucial task of domestic reform, a view that has in fact been articulated by Russian democrats, it could have agreed to the NATO membership of the Visegrad states of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary much more easily. It is only the perception of NATO as an antagonist that makes Moscow feel exposed to a growing threat. Russia’s present leadership not only tried to prevent the extension of NATO to the East, but it also suggested an array of very problematic alternatives, most of which were meant to establish elements of a collective security system in Europe. If as a result the security of Central

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Europe were “guaranteed” in both Western and Eastern declarations, a first step in this direction would have been accomplished by then establishing the substance of a collective security system for at least the Central European countries. The critical difference would have been that guarantees would not be given mutually by all states involved but unilaterally by all powers with a European security interest, including Russia. Yet once a system based on such formal commitments is created, it is easy to argue that this arrangement ought logically to be extended to all of Europe. From Moscow’s perspective this would imply some specific benefits, particularly the creation of an intermediate zone of countries in Central Europe deprived of the sovereign right to join an alliance of their own choice. Undoubtedly, it is in the interests of a peaceful Europe to develop security structures that provide for a growing consensus with Russia; this is the concern, after all, that made Western governments hesitate to open the NATO alliance to new members from the start. Moscow took advantage of this by trying to wring more concessions from the NATO states as a price for extending the alliance. Moscow ought to have appreciated Western sensitivity for Russian concerns as evidence of a fundamentally friendly attitude, and it ought to have corrected misperceptions of NATO’s alleged anti-Russian intent accordingly. But the opposite was the case. Western gestures notwithstanding, there were more and more voices to be heard from Moscow accusing the Western states of anti-Russian designs. Even after Boris Yeltsin’s reelection to the Russian presidency, this turned out to be the standing Russian position, and NATO enlargement was only grudgingly accepted. The idea that the existence of NATO is itself incompatible with Russian security interests confronts the alliance members, and those countries that want to join, with the demand that they abandon the foundations of their security in order to please Moscow. Should this underlying sentiment continue to animate Moscow’s policy, consensus between Russia and the West on security in Europe will be impossible, and the Russian claim that NATO is an adversary will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Two Fundamental Challenges for Europe At the end of the millennium, Europe is facing two fundamental challenges rooted in history and culture and crucial for security. These challenges can be met only by all the principal European countries

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working jointly. The peoples of Central Europe—including, by virtue of their cultural heritage, the Baltic states in the north and the Slovenes and Croats in the south—are striving to rejoin the family of Western nations while seeking to ensure domestic and regional stability. Their efforts may in turn help their eastern and southern neighbors to stabilize and prosper over the long run. On the southern flank of Europe, from the Maghreb to the Middle East, there are both authoritarian and Islamic-fundamentalist regimes, which, if endowed with a nuclear capacity, will be a threat both to moderate forces of the region and to the security of the neighboring countries. There are two institutional vehicles that can help to reintegrate the Central European countries into the West, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. It would be wrong to see NATO and the EU as alternatives. They are complementary. The mandate of the Atlantic alliance is to guarantee security and stability in a narrower, more traditional sense, whereas the energies of the EU are directed primarily at the creation and preservation of the political and economic conditions on which lasting security and stability are founded. Everything depends, therefore, on NATO and the EU pursuing a common policy toward Central Europe. Both require internal restructuring to make them institutionally equal to the task of integrating Central Europe. Still, the difficulties to be overcome are much fewer for the Atlantic alliance, so that NATO is likely to gain full capacity to act effectively sooner than the EU. Past and future Russian opposition to the growth of the alliance is an obstacle to Western compliance with the aspirations of the Central European states. According to a theory which is popular primarily in those countries that want to join the alliance, the West should not bother itself at all about the episodes of anti-Atlantic clamor in Moscow. Russian opponents of NATO have nothing in mind but to exploit Western sensitivity to fears that in fact are grossly exaggerated or entirely fictional. Moreover, Russia’s NATO critics are seen to represent only a very small group, whose alleged concerns about a threat from NATO are not shared by the people for whom they profess to speak. This assessment seems valid in the sense that the average Russian is absolutely uninterested in the whole NATO expansion issue, while the political and military leaders in Moscow are well aware that the West is neither willing nor capable of launching aggression action against their country. This does not mean, however, that they now look at the Atlantic alliance from a point of view fundamentally different from the time of the Cold War. After a short period after the collapse of the Soviet Union,

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during which democratic forces in Russia tended to favor a positive attitude toward NATO and influenced public opinion accordingly, the old way of thinking has reestablished itself in many of the country’s leading political circles. Here NATO is seen as the counterpart to the defunct Warsaw Treaty Organization, now seeking to extend its power at the expense of the other side. Therefore, any advance of NATO closer to the Russian borders is seen as a potential threat that has to be averted, even though there is no genuine fear of a military attack. It is concluded, then, that the current official course of cooperation with the West—which, to be sure, is ridden with conflicts, but accepted in principle—would have to be revised, if the implementation of NATO expansion ultimately created a renewed atmosphere of confrontation. Such a turn of events would be detrimental to security of all Europe but of immediate and direct concern to the Central European countries. Both challenges facing the Continent and its people call for cooperation of all involved parties to the redefinition of European security, the three most important powers above all. As far and as long it is possible to involve any of them, a policy of exclusion should be ruled out. With regard to the reintegration of the Central European countries into the Western community of nations, the United States and Germany have key roles to play. America is both the ultimate guarantor of military security and a power that neutralizes intra-European rivalries. Germany is a bridge to the West and a country with particular commitments to Central Europe; it is also a principal promoter of the project of European integration historically designed to prevent renationalization and thus reantagonization of politics on the Continent, which now requires further development of political structures, though not necessarily an economic and currency union. Hostility from Russia, however, would create an external strain on Europe. This, we should hope, can be avoided, even though some may comfort themselves with the assumption that external pressure may promote inner unity as it did the four decades of East-West confrontation. Russian cooperation in European affairs is also important with regard to the challenges in the south. The regional security of the Mediterranean area cannot be guaranteed by simply intensifying the European-Islamic dialogue—which so far consists largely of mere theory and diplomatic platitudes anyway—and by increased economic cooperation. Neither is European recourse to American power and the commitment of the United States to Israel and moderate Arab governments likely to cope with all the work to be done. In particular, a problem as complex as the prevention of

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expansionist regimes acquiring nuclear weapons can be mastered successfully only with Russian participation. Under these circumstances ways must be found that provide for further NATO expansion into Central Europe without destroying political and military cooperation with Russia. This is likely to result in the improvisation of many links and relationships that fall short of formal membership in the alliance. Moreover, there must be an attempt to test whether EU institutions can be developed that allow for indirect participation of the Central European states in the Atlantic alliance. In this scenario some indispensable requirements would have to be met: All decisions on admission and implementation would have to be made jointly with the NATO members, particularly with the United States; EU mechanisms would have to be tightly linked to the alliance; and for the candidate states no minor status could be accepted. Only if the military and economic dimensions of future European security are made to work in tandem can an inclusive, and therefore positive, redefinition of European security emerge.

PART 1

The Old and the New

CHAPTER 1

European Security Between the “Logic of Anarchy” and the “Logic of Community” John Baylis

International security in the twentieth century was dominated by what Stanley Hoffmann has described as “a permanent dialogue” between two contending traditions.1 The first tradition emphasizes the recurrence and repetition of violent conflict in world politics. It is a “tradition of despair” that focuses on the propensity of states to pursue power and engage in relentless competition. According to this realist view, international politics is a kind of anarchy characterized by an inherent lack of trust, with states locked in a security dilemma from which they cannot escape. As such, the future is likely to be like the past, with violent conflict an ever-present possibility. The second tradition is more optimistic about the prospects for international security. It rejects the deterministic view that violence is inevitable and sees peaceful change as being not only necessary but possible. This liberal, or what its detractors have called utopian, school recognizes the brutal nature of international politics but sees the opportunity for cooperation and communitarian values to transform international politics in a more peaceful direction.2 This chapter focuses on the impact of this “permanent dialogue” on the evolution of European security in the post–Cold War era. To set the scene, the first section looks

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at the dominance of liberal thinking in the interwar period and realist thinking during the Cold War period. Section two considers the resurgence of liberal thinking at the end of the Cold War reflected in the attempt to build a new European order based on ideas of cooperative security. Section three goes on to consider the limits to the process of communitybuilding that emerged from this “new thinking” about security and highlights the continuing influence of realist thinking in the contemporary debates about European security. The chapter ends with a discussion of the attempts to reconcile the two competing traditions and the ambiguity in European security that this has created.

Postwar Debates about Security The debate between the liberal/utopian and realist schools of thought has been particularly fierce in the aftermath of the two world wars of the twentieth century. Following the devastation and horrors of the First World War utopianism held sway in both theory and practice. Alfred Zimmern, writing in 1936, saw World War I as “a period of transition” in which the traditional resort to power politics would be transcended in favor of cooperation and responsibility. In his view “the League of Nations was in harmony with the historical nature of things (which)…in the long or short run…would prevail.”3 By the late 1930s, however, this optimistic view had been discredited by the failure of the League to deal with aggression. Writing in 1939 E.H.Carr launched an attack on the wishful thinking of utopians, like Zimmern. In his Twenty Years’ Crisis Carr stressed the importance of realist thinking, which “emphasized the irresistible strength of existing forces and the inevitable character of existing tendencies.”4 Like Albert Sorel, Carr distinguished between those “who imagine the world to suit their policy and those who arrange their policy to suit the realities of the world.”5 For Carr, realism was the necessary correction to the “exuberance of utopianism.” Despite this emphasis on realism, however, Carr accepted that if an orderly procedure was to be established in international relations, some way would have to be found for basing its operation not on pure power alone but on an “uneasy compromise between power and morality,” which, he argued, was “the foundation of all political life.”6 For the moment, however, the failures of interwar utopian ideas and the experience of the Second World War meant that it was realism that became the dominant school of thought in international relations after

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1945. During the Cold War the European security system was based on a bipolar balance of power and mutual nuclear deterrence designed to offset a continuous competition for security between the competing alliances. It was widely believed that the mutual antagonism between East and West would continue indefinitely and that little progress was likely to be achieved in attempts to fundamentally transform the system. There might be brief periods of détente—as there were in the mid- and late-1950s and early 1970s—eventually giving way to renewed antagonism. The prevailing system was regarded by writers like Anton DePorte to be the best of all possible systems because it accurately reflected the realities of power and helped achieve the longest period of peace in European history.7 At the same time, however, it would be wrong to conclude that liberal or utopian thinking was wholly absent during the Cold War. The Schuman Plan of 1950, which set up a joint coal and steel community between France and Germany, and the development of the European Economic Community in 1957 were seen by the architects of European integration as being more significant in security than in economic terms. They were designed to overcome ancient hatreds and traditional competition between European states. Community values and interdependence were seen in Western Europe as a means of avoiding war between the major European powers. This approach to European security was reflected in the work of David Mitrany and Karl Deutsch. Mitrany’s functional theory focused on areas of mutuality between states rather than conflict. For Mitrany functionalism was designed to alter the subjective conditions of mankind. War, he believed, was caused by the attitudes, habits of thought, feelings, and allegiances that were fostered by the state system. To overcome this, functional organizations could, “by focusing attention upon areas of common interest, build habits of cooperation which will equip human beings for the conduct of a system of international relations in which the expectation of constructive collaboration will replace that of sterile conflict as the dominant motif.” 8 These ideas provided the intellectual foundations for the movement toward European integration. Similarly, writing in the late 1950s, Karl Deutsch foresaw the opportunity to create a North Atlantic–European security community that would transcend the traditional security dilemma between European states. Such communities involved groups of people that became sufficiently integrated so that there “is a real assurance that the members of that community will not fight each other physically, but will settle their disputes in some other way.” Membership of security communities,

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Deutsch believed, could transform the interests of states to the point that peaceful change becomes increasingly taken for granted. The “logic of anarchy” would then be replaced by the “logic of community.”9 This kind of thinking was evident in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which began in 1973 and culminated in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. The dilemma for the delegates at the conference was whether their task was to reinforce the stability of the status quo or to sow the seeds for a transformation of the prevailing system that would break down the barriers between East and West. In the short term, it helped to consolidate the existing system, but in the longer term there seems little doubt that the principles and normative framework agreed in the Final Act and the process of review that was established helped to subvert the foundations of the Cold War system of security in Europe.10 The emphasis on human rights in Basket Three of the Helsinki Accords and the setting up of monitoring committees contributed to the emergence of “civil societies” in various Eastern European countries, which prepared the ground for the “quiet cataclysm” of 1989.11 Since then a remarkable process of transformation in the structure of the architecture of European security has taken place. In part the changes that have occurred have been driven by a new conceptual approach to security based on community-building and cooperative security. According to Janie Leatherman “cooperative security” is “a demilitarized concept of security that has resulted in imbuing security with political and human dimensions, and in basing security on confidence and cooperation, the elaboration of peaceful means of dispute settlement between states, the consolidation of justice and democracy in civil society, and the advancement of human freedom and rights, including national minority rights.” 12 This approach to security can be seen in some of the new practices, institutions, and mechanisms that have emerged over the past five or six years.

The Construction of a New European Order The process was initiated at the CSCE Paris Summit meeting during November 19–21, 1990. The Paris Charter agreed upon by participants reflected the euphoria and optimism that prevailed in Europe at the end of the Cold War. The emphasis was on “the end of division, the new spirit of unity and the community of values” that the CSCE states professed to share. The aim was to set up a series of new institutions (including a

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Secretariat, a Conflict Prevention Centre, and an Office of Free Elections) and to establish the CSCE as the main focus for a new European security identity. As such, the Charter helped to breathe new life into the Helsinki process by laying the foundations for a series of innovative summit and ministerial meetings.13 One of the aims of the Paris Charter was to create “a community of democracies from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” which it was presumed would enhance peace and stability in Europe. To help achieve this an Office of Free Elections (OFE) was established. This was taken a stage further at the Prague Council meeting in 1992, which replaced the OFE with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to promote democratic values and human rights in Eastern and Central Europe. The relationship between human rights and security had been an essential part of the Helsinki process since 1975, and at a conference on the “Human Dimension” in Moscow in 1991 delegates agreed that commitments undertaken in the field of the human dimension of the CSCE are matters of direct and legitimate concern to all participating states and do not belong exclusively to the internal affairs of the state concerned.14 Effectively, this innovative (but controversial) declaration established the precedent that the CSCE would legitimately become involved in intrastate, as well as interstate, conflicts. As such it provided the ideological basis for the establishment of the post of High Commissioner on National Minorities (at the Helsinki Summit in 1992) and a series of missions designed to highlight and resolve conflicts involving national minorities. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the membership of the CSCE was increased from 35 to 53, making it a truly pan-European institution. This expansion of membership, however, highlighted the institutional weaknesses and the lack of coherence of the CSCE. Attempts to redress this problem were undertaken in two ways. First, by transforming the CSCE into a more permanent Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) at the Budapest Summit in 1994. And second, by seeking greater consensus on the conceptual and practical basis of security in Europe. The Budapest Summit also agreed on a “Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security,” which explicitly linked human rights to general security and cooperation. At the same time Russia put forward a proposal for a

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“Common Security Model for the Twenty-First Century.” The idea was to search for a comprehensive codification of European norms that all states would accept as the basis for their dealings with one another and their conduct domestically. All of these developments since the Paris Charter reflected a conscious attempt to construct a new European order with the CSCE/OSCE playing a central role in diffusing a wide range of ideas designed to develop a conceptual consensus and achieve greater cooperation between member states. According to Emanuel Adler the OSCE can be regarded as “a security community-building institution” in the sense that it plays a critical role in “the diffusion and institutionalization of values, norms and shared understandings amongst members.” Adler argues that it performs four crucial community-building functions. “(1) It sets liberal standards— applicable both within each state and throughout the community—that are used to judge democratic and human rights performance. (2) It attempts to prevent violent conflict before it occurs and to develop the practice of peaceful settlement of disputes within the OSCE space. (3) It builds material trust by promoting military transparency and cooperation. (4) It supports the building of democratic institutions and market economic reforms.” Adler argues that in general the OSCE plays an important role in helping “to shape new transnational identities based on liberal values and serves as a conduit for the transmission of liberal values, norms, and practices to the East, thereby helping create new vested interests in a panEuropean cognitive space.”15 The CSCE and OSCE, however, have not been alone in this process of social construction. 16 Despite their different memberships and different focuses, the Council of Europe, the European Union, NATO and the Western European Union (WEU) were also pursing similar objectives. Like the OSCE, the Council of Europe has played an important role in promoting respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. The main difference has been that the Council of Europe is essentially a judicial body, whereas the OSCE is largely political in the kind of agreements it reaches. The Council of Europe also establishes standards that states have to reach before they can join. Membership is set as a goal that states can achieve only after they have reformed their political systems and established practices based on Western liberal constitutional and legal principles.17 A similar approach has been adopted by the EU and NATO. For those Eastern and Central European states aspiring to join the EU

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certain stringent standards of economic and political development have to be met before membership can be achieved. In order to “rejoin Europe” these states have been encouraged to undertake the wideranging (and often painful) reforms that are necessary to enable them to collaborate with the existing EU states in the ongoing pursuit of greater integration. Once again, however, this involves the states outside the EU redefining themselves by adopting the values of the Western European community. At the same time the EU has attempted to work closely with the more inclusive OSCE in pursuing the common objective of achieving greater convergence between the former adversaries. As an example of this, in March 1995 a pact on stability was agreed upon among the EU members. This was then transferred to the OSCE as part of an attempt to foster good, neighborly relations among Eastern and Western European states by achieving consensus on ideas of preventive diplomacy designed to resolve minority and border problems among European states.18 The search for greater convergence has also been behind the attempts by NATO since the end of the Cold War to find a new role for itself. According to NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, speaking in March 1996, the main purpose of the alliance “had changed from one of preventing war to actively shaping peace.” “NATO,” he argued, “was now about much more than just collective defence. It was also about developing trust, about establishing patterns of cooperation, about managing crises collectively, and about creating peaceful, stable relations among the European and North American democracies.”19 The attempt to redefine and adapt NATO to the new post–Cold War circumstances was reflected in the creation of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) in 1991. The purpose of NACC was to open greater consultation and cooperation among the members of NATO and the former members of the Warsaw Pact in a wide range of areas, including civil-military relations, military doctrines and budgets, defense conversion, and conceptual approaches to arms control. This process was taken a stage further in 1993 with the adoption of the Partnership for Peace program designed to “expand and intensify political and military cooperation throughout Europe, increase stability, diminish threats to peace, and build strengthened relationships by promoting the spirit of practical cooperation and commitment to democratic principles that underpin the Alliance.” 20 The aim in some (but not all) cases was to prepare states on the outside for eventual membership of the alliance.

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What is significant is the difference in the approaches adopted by the Council of Europe, the EU, and NATO on the one hand and the OSCE on the other. The contrast is clearly summed up in Adler’s argument: The status of “partnership,” invented by the European Union, the Council of Europe, and NATO, is intended to provide a probationary status to states that wish to join the security community. More than anything else, this probationary status is intended to enable community members to distinguish whether applicants are making instrumental choices or are adopting the shared identity. In addition, their partnership in common economic and security enterprises is meant to play a major role in changing the applicants’ identities to make them “more like us.” The OSCE has taken a different approach. Rather than waiting for “the other” to change its identities and interests before it can be admitted to the security-building institution, from the outset it has incorporated all states that express a political will to live up to the standards and norms of the security community, hoping to transform their identities and interests. Thus the OSCE has begun to develop the notion of security by means of inclusion rather than exclusion or conditional future inclusion.21 The policy adopted by the WEU has been a combination of both of these approaches. In May 1994 nine countries of Central Europe accepted an invitation from the WEU Council of Ministers to become Associate Partners of the WEU. Like the approach adopted by the EU and NATO this arrangement was designed to encourage the gradual integration of the former “East” of Europe nations into the common European political, economic, and defense structures. The WEU went further, however, in allowing the direct involvement of the partners in the work of the various WEU bodies, including the Council of Ministers. The document on associate status established the right of the nine states to attend council meetings on a regular basis and opened the opportunity for them to be invited to working groups and even to join WEU crisis management operations. Rudolf Joó has argued that this inclusive policy (similar to that adopted by the OSCE) could lead to a wide-ranging partnership involving “cooperation in European military equipment projects; coordination of pan-European (OSCE) issues, including verification of CFE agreements; participation in the debate on a European defence policy; contribution to the proposed European defence ‘White Paper’; and eventual—if only

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partial—participation in multinational formations answerable to WEU, such as the European Corps.”22 Despite these different institutional approaches, however, taken together the initiatives undertaken by the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the EU, NATO, and the WEU since 1990 undoubtedly represent an important step in the direction of creating a pan-European security community. 23 The various European institutions have consciously attempted to diffuse Western liberal norms, values, and practices to Eastern and Central Europe and beyond and in so doing have helped to create a growing sense of European identity and community, which has encouraged greater expectations of peaceful change.

The Limits of Community Although considerable progress has been made in the search for consensus on communitarian values and greater cooperation, it remains far from clear how far this process can go. Even the most enthusiastic supporters of these trends in European security concede that “it is not certain that the logic of community will prevail over the logic of anarchy.”24 There are other writers of the more pessimistic realist and neorealist traditions like John Mearsheimer, who believe that institutions and the communitarian approach offers only “false and dangerous promises.” For Mearsheimer, in a world of constant security competition, the cooperation that exists among states in an institutional framework like the OSCE is likely to be limited because it is dictated by self-interested calculations. States will only cooperate and accept communitarian values while they believe it is in their interests to do so. Institutions, he argues, are not able to alter state preferences or change state behavior. The notion that states can somehow change the rules of power politics and construct a community that will usher in a period of perpetual peace is regarded as unrealistic by realists, like Mearsheimer.25 The pessimists point to events in Bosnia in the early 1990s as an example of the failure of existing European security institutions to prevent war and large-scale ethnic cleansing. CSCE Europe had proclaimed that it had the ability to invoke conflict resolution mechanisms at an early stage; that it was capable of making prompt decisions to intervene on behalf of human rights, including those of minorities; and that it could impose credible political, economic, and military sanctions. Despite some important humanitarian efforts, however, it failed to deliver. When the

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Dayton Peace Accord was achieved it was largely the result of forceful action by NATO and the United States. Partly as a result of Bosnia, realists point to the contemporary primacy of NATO as the key institution of European security and its continuing determination to maintain its collective defense role and, albeit at a reduced level and in the background, its nuclear deterrent posture. Such a view, however, is rather too stark. While it retains its capability for “hard defense,” NATO is also attempting to adapt itself to the post– Cold War world. This clearly creates something of a dilemma. As one writer has put it, “NATO has become Janus-faced, looking at realist power politics while at the same time betting on idealism and security community.” 26 Put another way, although close collaboration has been established with the OSCE (which bases its approach to security on “the logic of community approach”), it is also true that the legacy of the past still weighs heavily on the alliance. Walter Kemp has argued that at the heart of the matter lies the fact that the two are embodiments of diametrically opposed world-views. NATO is a collective EuroAtlantic security organisation with an exclusive membership that is essentially a military alliance. The OSCE is a cooperative panEuropean security organisation with a comprehensive membership that concentrates on preventive security and has no enforcement mechanism.27 Kemp is right up to a point. However, he plays down the serious attempts that have been made by the alliance to create a new identity for itself in recent years. The problem is that the alliance itself embodies the two “diametrically opposed world-views.” In this contemporary argument between optimists and pessimists, realists and utopians, both in a sense are right. Europe in the late 1990s has become “an area where old and new concepts of security, while being contested and on a collision course, are nevertheless being put to work simultaneously.”28 That these ideas clash can be seen in the difficulty that NATO has in simultaneously maintaining a threat-based strategy of deterrence and in pursuing policies of reassurance and cooperative security.29 At the heart of the dilemma is how to deal with Russia. For many realists, the belief in a world of relentless security competition suggests that sooner or later cooperation between Russia and the West will break down. According to this view, deterrence needs to be maintained and the alliance needs to expand as quickly as possible to the

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east to enhance its strategic position while it can. For contemporary utopians, however, the overwhelming task of security policy is to reassure Russia and incorporate it in every way possible into Western political, economic, and security institutions. From this point of view, the expansion of NATO to the east against Russian opposition poses the danger of redividing Europe and re-creating the tensions of the Cold War.30 In practice, the West is trying both to expand and to maintain a cooperative dialogue with Russia. It is pursuing the difficult goal of trying to persuade Russia that NATO’s enlargement strategy follows the “logic of community” rather than “the logic of anarchy.” Through negotiating a strategic partnership between NATO and Russia the aim has been to try and demonstrate that NATO’s expansion to the east is not the threatening act of an alliance in a balance-of-power system, but the stabilizing action of a gradually developing security community, based on cooperative security ideas, attempting to extend its boundaries to embrace the former adversaries.31 Whether the Russians can be made to see it in these terms remains very unclear. In the weeks prior to the Madrid Summit in July 1997, which announced the NATO decision to allow Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to join the alliance in 1999, the Russian Minister of Defense General Igor Rodionov expressed Russian anxieties very clearly. He argued that implementing the decision to expand NATO means failing to create a unified security area, and going back to dividing lines across Europe. Whatever intricate political rhetoric is used to justify such an expansion, this will mean a return to the bloc mentality which means instability and tension.32 From a Russian perspective, NATO policies appeared to be ambiguous. The decision to enlarge, Rodionov argued, “testified to NATO’s double standards.” “Russia’s purported threat is assessed on the basis of its military potential, yet Russia is supposed to accept at face value the declarations of a peace-loving NATO.” This unsatisfactory and dangerous situation, he argued, could be resolved only if NATO gradually evolved into a collective peacekeeping and peacemaking organization operating under the mandates of the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The signing in Paris of the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security between NATO and Russia on May 27, 1997,

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helped to overcome some of these outstanding anxieties. The agreement helped to lay the ground rules and establish a formal mechanism for a new security partnership that gave Russia ambassadorial representation at NATO headquarters and equal status in preparing for future peacekeeping operations. For President Bill Clinton the Founding Act played an important role in helping to achieve “the long-sought goal of a peaceful, democratic Europe.” As part of the trade-off for Moscow’s acceptance of the expansion of NATO, the agreement also opened the opportunity for Russian membership in a series of international economic organizations.33 The aim from the alliance’s point of view was to use the Founding Act as part of a broader process of changing “the whole pattern of thought that had dictated the politics of the European continent for the past fifty years.” From the Russian point of view, however, acceptance of NATO expansion remained grudging. Problems continue to exist over a range of issues, including the military balance, the implications of enlargement for existing and future arms control agreements, and future expansion plans.34 Despite the attempt by NATO, therefore, to portray the Founding Act as a means of building confidence in Moscow that the enlargement of the alliance would not threaten its interests, suspicion and resentment continued across the political spectrum in Russia, raising a question about the prospects of developing a genuinely pan-European security community in the longer term.35

Conclusion To paraphrase Inis Claude, Europe at present is in a period of adventurous experiment and flourishing inventiveness.36 There is little sign, in some areas of Europe at least, that force is losing its utility or that European institutions individually or collectively are capable of providing an infallible formula for the solution of the problems posed by ethnic conflicts, irredentist border disputes, state fragmentation, and national minorities.37 It is very easy to exaggerate the progress that has been made in the adaptation and coordination of institutions as part of a new architecture of European security. In particular, there is often a tendency by supporters, especially of the OSCE, to take too seriously the ostensible gains that exist largely on paper. Having said this, there is also more to be seen than unsolved problems, unresolved conflicts, and unparalleled dangers of chaos and destruction. Despite the weaknesses and failures of European institutions

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25

in dealing with the post–Cold War crises that have arisen, fallibility is not the same as futility; limited achievement is not the same as unlimited failure; and risk is not the same as imminent danger. Identifying the successes achieved by preventive diplomacy and the impact of shared normative structures on state behavior is extremely difficult to achieve, but there is no doubt that European institutions have helped to reduce tensions in areas like Georgia, Moldova, NagornoKarabakh, Chechnya, and Bosnia.38 Europe in many ways is currently between the logic of anarchy and the logic of community. It may be that the odds are still against the logic of community. There is still no clear conceptual consensus in favor of cooperative security, and the process of building a pan-European security community in which there are dependable expectations of peaceful change is still at a very early stage. Past and present experience suggests that the total eradication of conflict in Europe is unlikely to be an achievable objective. Nevertheless, there has been some movement in the 1990s in the direction of the gradual “taming of power” and the harmonization of interests in Europe. Undoubtedly there has been some progress in the search for peaceful change, which has been the result of a deliberate process of social construction. There is no guarantee of success, but equally there are no iron laws of international politics that preordain failure. European security, like international politics in general, is ambiguous and highly complex. Realism and utopianism in many respects are contradictory. Certainly they come from very different epistemological routes and are based on very different assumptions about the role of conflict in international relations. This being so, the most realistic aim of European statesmen, as E.H.Carr argued in 1939, should be to continue the search for that “uneasy compromise” between the realities of power and the moral and prudent imperatives of building a more peaceful, just, and stable European order.39

Notes 1. Hoffman identifies these two traditions with Rousseau and Kant. See “Rousseau on War and Peace,” in Stanley Hoffmann, The State of War: Essays on the Theory and Practice of International Relations (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965). Also I Clark, Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2. For a useful discussion of utopianism or idealism (as it is sometimes called) see D.Long and P.Wilson, Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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3. A. Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918–1935 (London: Macmillan, 1935). 4. E.H.Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 11. 5. A.Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolutions Francaises, quoted in ibid. 6. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 220. 7. A.W.Deporte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986). 8. See in particular the works of David Mitrany, including The Progress of International Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1933), “Functional Federalism,” Common Cause, November 1950, and A Working Peace System (New York and London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1946). See also Inis L.Claude, Jr., Swords into Plowshares: The Problem and Progress of International Organization (London: University of London Press, 1965). 9. Deutsch argued that security communities could be either “amalgamated” or “pluralistic.” Amalgamated communities involve the merging of two or more states into a larger state. Pluralistic communities involve independent states integrated to the point that they have “dependable expectations” that war will not break out between them. See Karl Deutsch et al., Political Community in the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 5. 10. See W.A.Kemp, “The OSCE in a New Context: European Security Towards the Twenty-first Century,” Discussion Paper 64, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1996. 11. See E.Adler, “Europe’s New Security Order: A Pluralistic Security Community,” in B.Crawford (ed.), The Future of European Security (Berkley: IAS, 1992), and S.Lehne, The CSCE in the 1990s: Common European House or Potemkin Village? (Vienna: Braumüller, 1991). 12. Janie Leatherman, “Conflict Transformation in the CSCE: Learning and Institutionalization,” Cooperation and Conflict, No. 28, 1993, p. 414. 13. For a discussion of the CSCE and OSCE in the 1990s see I.M.Cuthbertson (ed.), Redefining the CSCE: Challenges and Opportunities in the New Europe (New York: Institute for East-West Studies, 1992); A.Heraclides, Helsinki-II and Its Aftermath: The Making of the CSCE into an International Organization (London: Pinter, 1993); M.Lucas (ed.), The CSCE in the 1990s: Constructing European Security and Cooperation (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1993); and V. Mastny, The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, 1986–1991: Analysis and Documentation (New York: New York University Press, 1992). 14. Quoted in W.A.Kemp, “The OSCE in a New Context,” p. 13. 15. Adler bases his arguments on constructivist theory and the literature on social psychology (especially the work on cognitive regions). See his “Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations” (Unpublished paper, July 1996), p. 30. 16. For a discussion of constructivist theory see A.Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” American Political Science Review, No. 88, June 1994, and Friedrich Kratochivil, Rules, Norms and Decisions (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 17. For a brief discussion of the relationship between the OSCE and the Council of Europe see W.A.Kemp, “The OSCE in a New Context,” p. 25. 18. For a discussion of the relationship between the EU, OSCE, and NATO see U. Nerlich, “The Relationship Between a European Common Defence and NATO, the OSCE and the United Nations,” in L.Martin and J.Roper (eds.), Towards a

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

27

Common Defence Policy (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union, 1995). Speech given by the secretary-general of NATO at the Russian Council on Foreign and Security Policy, March 20, 1996. Gebhardt von Moltke, “Building a Partnership for Peace,” NATO Review, Vol. 42, No. 3, June 1994, pp. 3–7. E.Adler, “Imagined (Security) Communities.” R.Joó, “Associate Partners: A New Phase,” WEU Newsletter, No. 13, February 1995. Emanuel Adler and Michael N.Barnett, “Governing Anarchy: A Research Agenda for the Study of Security Communities,” Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 10, 1996, pp. 63–98. For an excellent discussion of the “logic of community” and the “logic of anarchy” in relation to the OSCE see E.Adler, “Seeds of Peaceful Change: The OSCE as a Pluralist-Security Community-Building Institution.” Paper delivered at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association held at San Diego, California, April 17–21. John Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, No. 20, Summer 1995; Adler, “Seeds of Peaceful Change,” and Kemp, “The OSCE in a New Context.” Adler, “Seeds of Peaceful Change.” Kemp, “The OSCE in a New Context.” Adler, “Seeds of Peaceful Change.” See L.S.Spector and J.Dean, “Cooperative Security: Assessing the Tools of the Trade,” in J.E.Nolan (ed.), Global Engagement: Cooperation and Security in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994). For the debate for and against NATO expansion see R.D.Asmus, R.L.Kugler, and F.S.Larrabee, “NATO Expansion: The Next Steps,” and M.E.Brown, “The Flawed Logic of NATO Expansion,” Survival, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 1995, and Coral Bell, “Why an Expanded NATO Must Include Russia,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, December 1994, pp. 27–41. R.E.Hunter, “Enlargement: Part of a Strategy for Projecting Stability into Central Europe,” NATO Review, Vol. 43, No. 3, May 1995, pp. 3–8. See Igor Rodionov, “Russians Fear a New Cold War,” The London Times, March 12, 1997. At the same time that the Founding Act was signed the OECD offered Moscow a cooperation pact to help liberalize its economy and strengthen its ties to the West. There were also promises to allow Russia to join the Group of Seven (making it a summit of eight), to consider Russian membership in the World Trade Organization, and to negotiate improved economic access to the European Union. In March 1997 Rodionov argued that enlargement would “undermine” the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), and the acquisition by NATO of airfields in Eastern and Central Europe would raise important questions about the future of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (START). In the latter case NATO aircraft would be able to reach the Smolensk-BrianskKursk and Petrozavodsk-Yaroslavl-Belgorod lines. Tactical nuclear weapons stations in Europe would then become “a strategic consideration,” The London Times, March 12, 1997. Under the Founding Act, NATO stated that it “had no intention, no plan, and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members.” At the same time, however, it reserved the right to develop “adequate” infrastructure facilities for guaranteeing its collective defense

28

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

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responsibilities toward new members. Although it agreed not to station “substantial” forces in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, it did not rule out some smaller deployments. Nevertheless some sensitivity toward Russian anxieties was shown by the decision to limit expansion to three Central European states rather than five, as some NATO states wanted. Mikhail Gorbachev has argued that the West has betrayed Russia by going back on an assurance given in 1990 that the alliance would not expand into Eastern and Central Europe. Claude, Swords into Plowshares, pp. 371–406. The events in Albania in early 1997 once again demonstrated the limited ability of the OSCE and the EU to intervene effectively in situations involving civil strife within states. The CSCE/OSCE in particular has worked quietly behind the scenes to cool off simmering conflicts in these areas. Carr quotes with approval Reinhold Niebuhr’s argument (in Moral Man and Immoral Society) that “politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.” See Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 100.

CHAPTER 2

The Revival of Geopolitics in Europe Heinz Magenheimer

If one looks upon geopolitics as both a methodological tool for the study of international affairs and a political philosophy, then one has to distinguish between its customary use in Western society and its status in Central Europe or Russia. Two major factors explain the difference: first, the powerful influence of geopolitical thought in Germany, especially in the period 1933–1945, and second, the revolutionary changes experienced by the European states during 1989–1990. By contrast, Western tradition, especially in the United States and Great Britain, has since the nineteenth century consistently awarded geopolitics a status both in political studies and in practice. Names such as Alfred Thayer Mahan (the naval equivalent of Clausewitz), Sir Halford John Mackinder, Homer Lea, Nicholas Spykman belong to this tradition, along with Colin S.Gray, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Paul Kennedy.1 The great insights of these schools of thought center on the interplay of sea and land power, the contrast between naval and continental modes of strategic thought, and finally forms of power projection and the importance of geographic factors as an integral element in international affairs generally. On the other hand, German, Austrian, and Swedish scholarship before and after 1918 made a remarkable contribution to theory development, conceptual debate, and interdisciplinary approaches that 29

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interdisciplinary approaches that combine geography, military history, strategy, demographic, economic, and constitutional studies into one comprehensive outlook. The concept Geopolitik was coined by the Swedish professor Rudolf Kjellén, originally at the turn of the century and then with reference to the territorial aspects of the First World War.2 After 1918 it was primarily German scholars who made noteworthy contributions to the study of geopolitical correlations; these included Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) and Albrecht Haushofer, Otto Maull, Hermann Lautensach, and Erich Obst, as well as Giselher Wirsing and MajorGeneral Oskar Ritter von Niedermeyer.3 Noteworthy among geographers are those who before and during the First World War devoted themselves to the study of the “politics of geography” yet did not identify fully with either the conceptual approaches or the thematic concerns of geopolitics. Foremost among them is Friedrich Ratzel, a founder of political geography who as early as 1903 championed the importance of sufficient living space, Lebensraum, to state legitimacy and survival, but also worthy of attention are Albrecht Penck4 and Hugo Hassinger. Indeed, Penck is the author of the idea of Zwischeneuropa, or “intermediary Europe,” which retains its relevance to European security to this day; Hassinger, a cultural geographer, took the idea of a political and economic region of Mitteleuropa, or “Central Europe,” first introduced by the writer and politician Friedrich Naumann in 1915, and further developed its geographic implications.5 According to Kjellén’s definition, geopolitics is the study of the state as a “geographic organism” or “territorial phenomenon.” The Central European students of geopolitics concerned themselves with key concepts such as “position,” “strategic value,” the “territorial expanse,” and borders of states. The most important factor was thought to be position, which according to circumstance could be central (Germany), transitional (France), peripheral (Russia), island (Britain), buffer (Poland after 1918), and barrier (Belgium before 1914). As to “strategic value,” a distinction was drawn between an internal, supposedly stable situation and external, supposedly fluid circumstances. Another important element was the configuration of borders and the differentiation of offensive from defensive or neutral borders. In English the diverging implications of words such as frontier and boundary testify to the inherently varying nature of border situations from one case to another.6 Considerable significance was attributed to the differences, for example, between river and mountain borders that played a role in many conflicts during the formation of spheres of influence in the European past. The

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inherent superiority of one over the other, however, was never proven. Additionally, there was a tendency, with regard to drawing economic and cultural borders, to view water barriers as less important than mountain ranges, set against the view that the rivers represented more significant barriers from a military and strategic standpoint. From this latter angle mountain passes were regarded less as dividing lines than as unifying ligatures, so that dominant regional powers in the past have given priority to controlling mountain crossings for their military value. The German geopolitical school of thought, which itself was partly influenced by Kjellén, made significant contributions between the wars, yet had to live with the stigma of having laid the theoretical foundations of the Nazi expansionist ideology. Karl Haushofer and like-minded scholars were accused of having furnished the leadership of the Third Reich with the alibi for territorial conquest, to all intents and purposes in fact of having invented the very idea of Lebensraum in the first place. Haushofer was suspected of being the man who, having invented the geometry of imperialism, stood behind Hitler’s war goals. After 1945 geopolitics came into disrepute and was considered unacceptable as an academic discipline. That the Nazis only understood and partly misapplied geopolitical theories is a notion that only recently, and after much controversy, has come to enjoy a degree of acceptance.7

Geopolitics and German Unification, October 1990 By virtue of the revolutionary upheavals in Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 and the reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany assumed the role as the central power of Europe, a role filled by Imperial Germany until 1918, to a certain degree also by the Weimar Republic, but most clearly by the Reich after 1933. For a variety of reasons Germany’s newly strengthened position was greeted with mixed feelings, from the Western side with the concern that Germany’s increased power could endanger the so-called European balance or cast doubt on the Federal Republic’s commitment to the West. Some states, France and Britain, for example, undertook diplomatic steps to delay the advent of German unity in which, among other things, the stabilization of the Soviet Union was viewed as a possible counter-weight to Germany’s new heft. Jacques Attali, then special advisor to French President Francois Mitterrand, noted that as late as November 1989 Mitterrand confessed

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strong personal antipathy toward German unity along with indignation at Soviet Premier Gorbachev for his summit in the Caucasus with German Chancellor Kohl in July 1990. The French president was from the outset, on the other hand, under no illusions concerning his limited capacity to prevent German unification when he conceded that “after all, we can’t declare war on Germany just to thwart its reunification.”8 Certainly, the great majority of the French populace was fully conscious of Germany’s economic preponderance while influential members of the political class in France were able to celebrate Germany’s approval of the Maastricht Treaty of December 1991 as a victory for French centralism and a restraint on Germany, even if it had been purchased with a heavy mortgage; Maastricht, they told themselves, was the Treaty of Versailles without a war.9 Similar reservations about unification were voiced in Britain and Poland. British worries were of a pragmatic nature, based on the conviction that over the long term a reunified Germany would become the preeminent power on the Continent and would dominate Central and Eastern Europe economically. The consultations convened by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with British and American historians, among them Gordon Craig and Hugh Trevor-Roper, testify to these concerns. At the very least London had to conclude that the centuries-old policy of maintaining a balance of power on the Continent had lost much of its effectiveness. These deliberations were powerfully resonant with traditional geopolitical reasoning. The Poles harbored possibly the strongest resentments toward the waxing fortunes of their neighbor to the west, even though their country had by no means suffered the greatest loss and destruction during World War II. Yet slowly, the realization spread that in an era of civil power profitable business could be conducted with that neighbor and that in Germany they would have a powerful advocate on behalf of Poland’s early absorption into the European Union and membership in NATO. So the Polish perspective became increasingly optimistic.10 When one considers the partly ambiguous, partly contradictory attitudes that emerged in the disintegrating Soviet Union and then Russia, it is easier to appreciate the truly momentous nature of the changes that took place, despite all the doubt and attendant circumstances, with Germany’s reunification and the end of Europe’s division. Rapid reunification was possible not least of all because of Gorbachev’s diplomacy. But it was the German government that was able to convince its neighbors completely that, notwithstanding the extraordinary agility of its own diplomatic

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maneuvers, reunification would not awaken any dormant expansionist impulses and that the “will to power” was a thing of the past.11 From a purely pragmatic standpoint there was no other choice than to recognize a new equation of power at the center of Europe that immediately opened up new possibilities for the smaller states in the eastern, central, and southeastern parts of the Continent. Geopolitically, Germany assumed the function both of an “anker” and a “bridge” between Eastern and Western Europe, which is to say that it really resumed its historic role as Europe’s central power. The bridge function follows naturally as a product of the country’s geographically central location, but it is enhanced by its nine neighbors. This function applies to Poland and Austria as well, yet is mitigated by their secondary power status. This illustrates a rule of geopolitical reasoning, namely that the significance of a state is not determined solely by the number of its neighbors, and that the interaction of factors such as national borders, the distribution of ethnic demography, and geographic location is critical and that a certain equilibrium is achieved when these factors converge or correspond.12 Even if these rules are not especially relevant to the current circumstance of the Federal Republic, one is confronted in Germany’s case with a state with many of the qualities of a great power, even in applying the traditional criteria stipulated by Kjellén:13 • • •

Sufficient territorial expanse Internal stability and a high degree of cohesion Freedom of maneuver

The first point is certainly open to a variety of interpretations, since there are hardly reliable geographical parameters for defining sufficient territorial expanse. Especially in an era when the assets of civil power set the standards—according to which economy, technology, science, and education standards take precedence over a state’s military potential—the political significance of a state’s territorial size declines significantly. In contrast to the Cold War era, the major powers today can bring their power to bear in the international community only to a limited extent through the “classical” tools of armed forces, arms production, war, direct intervention, or diplomatic pressure. It is also difficult to speak of clear winners and clear losers from the outcome, and military potency counts less and less in determining a state’s prestige in the international arena. Power struggles are played out primarily with nonmilitary means.14 The

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best case in point of these new realities is the Russian Federation since 1992, which remains the largest state in the world in terms of territory but which, due to these radically altered internal and external circumstances, is unable to derive direct benefit from its enormous size. Turning to the second criterion, Germany’s status remains largely unchanged, while the third, that of free maneuver, also merits certain reservations with regard to its relevance even in reunified Germany’s case. Viewed from the traditional perspective of foreign policy, successive German governments have taken on far-reaching commitments through membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), and the Western European Union (WEU) that collectively foreclose on any unilateralism for German foreign policy. Until recently, moreover, there were self-imposed limitations in force on the deployment of Bundeswehr troops beyond German borders, a limitation first set aside by the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court of July 12, 1994. Although in some respects the diplomatic freedom of NATO members has been enhanced by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Kohl government has been scrupulously faithful in its commitments to Western allies and has avoided power plays altogether. Measuring freedom with the yardstick of civil power, however, Germany today enjoys—as the most important and pivotal member of the EU—fundamentally greater maneuverability throughout Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, though even here it runs up against the limits of its financial capacity. If one were to apply the same standards for transfer payments made to the provinces of the defunct German Democratic Republic to the support given Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, for example, Germany would have to come up with DM 450 billion annually!15 It should be remembered that France in particular has since 1957 used the European Union as an instrument to domesticate and restrain Germany, to an extent that the rhetorical question has been raised as to whether France has thus constructed a cage for the Federal Republic. 16 A lot will depend on whether France, whose domestic problems were evident in the conflict of December 1995, can continue to exercise influence over Germany. In any case, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the Ukraine and the Baltic states, value Germany as their most important partner in the political and economic transformation in which they are immersed. For its part, the German government can adhere to one of the maxims of Bismarck’s diplomacy, which after 1871 attempted to balance Germany’s precarious middle position in Europe with a policy of “indepensibility” and

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“good works” in the East.17 The facts of Russia’s dramatic decline along with the fragmented political landscape beyond Germany’s eastern border serve in many respects to make the post-Soviet states natural allies for Germany. Hence, the Kohl government’s steady advocacy of NATO membership for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The observation that since 1989– 1990 we have witnessed the nullification of the peace dictated at Versailles after World War I is altogether apt.18

The Geopolitical Status of Intermediate Europe A fundamental feature of international relations over the past four decades had been a multiplication of the number of sovereign nation-states. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, they numbered no more than 53; at the onset of war in 1939, 81; by 1995 there were 194, of which 185 were represented in the United Nations. After Germany’s reunification there were in Europe alone 18 new states created. International affairs have thus become more and more complex purely by virtue of the increase in the number of actors on the world stage, and this complexity itself impedes predictability while enhancing insecurity. Before discussing Europe as a region, however, the matter of Europe’s borders merits some examination. A good many geographers avoid any spatial definition of Europe, so it is up to historians and political scientists themselves to find working answers to the question of what constitutes Europe. Just as it is misleading to equate Europe with a European Union that is in the process of expansion, it is also inadequate to rely on the political borders of a collection of European states to define, for the purposes of a discussion of its security, where Europe begins and ends. Who or what is supposed to embody the will to make “Europe” into a great power?19 Reference to the resilience of a culture of Hellenic-Latin origin in Western Europe will not suffice, since it would not take into account that part of Eastern Europe influenced by the Eastern Orthodox Church or the pockets of Islamic culture. The thought of including all of Russia as part of Europe also seems illogical, because vast expanses of Asia reaching all the way to Vladivostock would have to be arbitrarily declared a constituent part of Europe. Much more satisfactory would be a demarcation of Europe reaching from the Atlantic in the West to the middle or lower Volga River or even the watershed of the Ural Mountains and Ural River in the East, which includes that portion of Russia extensively formed by European

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influence. These borders are especially relevant to the security issue, because they are more or less congruent with the area defined by the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) of November 19, 1990, from which the Caucasus states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are nevertheless left out.20 What is new to the map of Europe after 1991–1992, and which has historical precedent, is the (re)emergence of a geopolitical region best described as Intermediate Europe. The concept of Intermediate Europe, or Zwischeneuropa, as it has been used since the end of World War I, refers essentially to the territory lying between the eastern border of Germany and the western border of the then newly created Soviet Union. It was primarily of economic and strategic significance. Because many German scholars of the interwar years proceeded from the assumption of an economic and political unity of Germany and Austria, they saw in the states of East-Central, Northeast, and Southeast Europe a natural German sphere of influence, a strategic approach, and simultaneously an extended hinterland that could form a sturdy bulwark against any expansionist efforts of Soviet Russia. The cultural and economic ties between the states of Intermediate Europe and Berlin were considerably stronger than those with Soviet Russia, so it was assumed that Germany and Austria together would impose order in the region sufficient over the long term to make it an independent power block between the Western powers and the Soviet Union.21 Today Intermediate Europe stretches from the Gulf of Finland in the North to the Adriatic in the Southeast. It consists of the three Baltic states, the four Visegrad states of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and also of Slovenia, Croatia, post-secessionist Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Albania, Macedonia, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Among them, the four Visegrad states and Slovenia represent eastern Central Europe, to which a large portion of Austria also belongs, and they are the states that since the great watershed of 1989–1990 have attempted, ahead of other states in the region, to secure by way of democratic and economic reforms membership among the stable states of the EU. These reform states are returning, in other words, to their Western orientation of the period immediately following 1918.22 The region of Intermediate Europe is therefore defined by its pivotal position between the European NATO states and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), among whom Russia represents the principal power. This situation has been somewhat amended, admittedly, by NATO’s invitation to the Visegrad countries to join the alliance in 1999.

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FIGURE 1.1

Intermediate Europe

By virtue of the very close ties established between Belarus and the Russian Federation since 1993, it is reasonable to regard them as a single geopolitical unit, with the consequence that Russia’s sphere of control in eastern Central Europe extends from the Baltic, in the form of the Kaliningrad enclave, to the eastern border of Poland. This fact has to be taken into account in any discussion of the future of eastern Central

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Europe. So far as Ukraine is concerned, the western portion of the region of Galicia-Lodomeria has strong Central European ties, yet the vast territorial expanse of Ukraine, with its industrial center of gravity in the East and its economic dependence on Russia, puts the country’s Eastern European identity beyond debate. Yet from another geopolitical perspective Ukraine also poses a formidable barrier between Russia and the Balkans, cutting off the land connection between Russia and the states of Southeast Europe that existed until 1991. In recent years it has been the prevailing opinion that the young democracies of Intermediate Europe, especially the reform states, would be primarily preoccupied with economic difficulties. However, this generalization has required amendments that take into account the domestic power shifts and political reorientations that have occurred as economic conditions gradually improved. Viewed in this light the question as to how these countries are going to prosper and shape their future in the buffer zone between Germany in the West and Russia in the East becomes more prescient. Lastly, one has to understand what value Russia and the nations in the West will place on Intermediate Europe over the long term. The region is by no means a no man’s land, as is sometimes claimed in Poland, but represents rather, 1. 2.

In security terms, a zone of relative insecurity. In geopolitical terms, a zone of conflicting interests, a buffer between NATO on the one hand and Russia (with Belarus) on the other. Depending upon domestic and international developments, this buffer could come to be regarded as a strategic approach by one or the other group.

The first concern here is with the foreign policy and security interests of the individual states of this region. On this matter it is important to note that though most of the states of Intermediate Europe assess realistically the risks and opportunities implied by their respective roles within the buffer zone, they have not since 1989 been driven by an equal desire to become full-fledged members of both the European Union and NATO, and that Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria will have to limit their ambitions to one rather than both of these clubs. To varying degrees these states consider membership in NATO as advantageous certainly but not necessarily as a matter of great urgency. Of the three Baltic states only Estonia has consistently sought NATO membership without reservations, while Lithuania has taken an extremely cautious approach to

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the issue in deference to the importance of relations with its neighbor, Russia, in the Kaliningrad enclave. The most important candidates for admission to both the Atlantic and the European clubs are Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. All four signed the Partnership for Peace with NATO in February 1994 and the so-called European Agreement a year later. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary together crossed a critical threshold at the NATO Madrid Summit of July 1997 when the alliance extended an invitation for their accession by 1999, yet there are already differences within the alliance over sharing the costs of eastward expansion. In Hungary there has been a long-standing concern to use NATO membership to improve the country’s exposed geopolitical position, due to a lack of natural borders; the presence of large Hungarian minorities in almost all neighboring states; and its proximity to the contending states of the former Yugoslavia. Indeed, in September 1997 the Hungarian foreign ministry lashed out publicly at Slovakia with allegations of the ill treatment of the latter’s Hungarian ethnic minority. Poland’s position is characterized by its immediate proximity to the Russian sphere of influence and to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The country borders on seven other states, and its unprotected eastern border contends with an influx of foreign refugees, some genuine, others less so. The policy of NATO membership that Poland pursued with special zeal since 1993 was underscored by vigorous criticisms from the Polish leadership, most prominent among them the comments of former President Lech Walesa in March 1994, alleging that the West had led the post-Communist states to false hopes and made it easier for Russia to apply pressure on its neighbors to the West. To be left in a no man’s land was simply intolerable. 23 Other arguments in behalf of Poland’s early admission to NATO ranged from the need to buttress domestic reforms with greater security to the imperative that the West learn from the mistakes it had made with regard to Poland prior to 1939. Finally, there was the presence of Russian border troops along Poland’s border with Belarus, symbolizing Moscow’s claims to territory where the Bug River forms the frontier between Poland and Belarus. The Czech Republic’s geopolitical situation is less perilous, but the country has already come so far with economic Westernization that membership in NATO represents a logical corollary for its foreign policy. For its part, Slovakia does not at this point consider membership in the Atlantic alliance a serious security priority.

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NATO and the United States have since 1993 registered with approval the membership aspirations of the Visegrad states, yet simultaneously confronted them with conditions, including standardization of organization, equipment, and training of their armed forces consistent with NATO criteria; a willingness to shoulder designated security burdens; and full acceptance of nuclear deterrence. Yet all the applicant states have been attempting in recent years to save money by reducing the size of their armed forces dramatically, in Poland from around 390,000 troops before 1989 to 260,000 by late 1995 and in the Czech Republic from 200,000 to 85,000 men over roughly the same period. The fact alone that the successful applicants will have to make extraordinary efforts in order to attain NATO standards with regard to armaments will put their fiscal resources under considerable pressure. In October 1997 at a meeting in Maastricht, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen clashed with representatives of the existing NATO states over their own contribution to alliance expansion; whereas Washington accepted that the project will cost it up to $2 billion over the next decade, several Western European states assumed it would cost them nothing.24 At the same time, the core alliance states do not have the capacity to station numbers of troops in the new member states sufficient to take over protection of their borders, having themselves reduced the absolute size of their armed forces by more than 45% since 1990. The German Bundeswehr had to accept a contraction from almost 500,000 to 340,000 men. The American armed forces, which in the mid-1980s amounted to some 350,000 men stationed in Western, Central, and Southern Europe, were down to approximately 130,000, including the Seventh Fleet in the Mediterranean, by early 1996.25 It is therefore reasonable to assume that the implementation of NATO’s eastward expansion will face a good many practical difficulties in staying on schedule, no matter what the enthusiasm of the member states in principle.

The Geopolitical Perspective in Russia To begin with it is important to stress that the dissolution of the Soviet Union has enhanced the power and influence geopolitically of both China and Germany.26 Germany’s increased importance is reinforced from the economic perspective by the dependency of most of the states of Intermediate Europe, while China’s inherent economic weight has been somewhat increased by the protracted recession in Japan. Geopolitical

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thinking in Russia experienced an obvious revival by virtue of the radical eastward revision of the country’s strategic borders to the region just west of Smolensk—a change varying between 1,200 and 2,000 kilometers—and the increased importance of the region east of the Urals. In general terms Russia was in 1991–1992 pushed back by increments to the frontiers of the Treaty of Andrussovo in 1667;27 the sovereignty of the three Baltic states meant that it lost most of its Baltic coast between Klaipeda and Narva and as a consequence had to consolidate its navy in the Baltic in the bases of Baltijsu and Kronstadt near St. Petersburg. The surrender of the Baltic reduced Russian prestige as a naval power in the region very significantly. It would be reduced still more, if Russia were also to abandon the enclave of Kaliningrad. The enclave remains a Russian “bastion” of potentially high strategic value because of the army of three divisions and several brigades, including a rocket brigade with SS-21 launchers, stationed there after upon their withdrawal from Eastern Europe and the Baltic states after 1989. Poland in particular views this concentration of military power as a threat. In the Baltic a continental perspective, which emphasizes the geographic unity of the region with Russia, collides with a maritime perspective, according to which Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are border states of the Baltic Sea. To some extent Sweden and Finland can rightly regard these states, whose coasts are directly opposite their own, as neighbors. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Russia considers all three states as part of its so-called “near abroad,” to which Moscow attached special importance, most notably in a controversy with Estonia and Latvia concerning sovereignty over three coveted border areas that in 1945 were claimed by the Soviet Union and which Russia has refused to surrender.28 Russia, in fact, is unable to point to a “natural” border with any of its neighbors, a fact that complicates its relationship with the Ukraine in particular. The Ukraine not only hinders Moscow’s access to the Balkans, but it also denies Russia control of the northwest coast of the Black Sea. Even though Ukrainian ownership of the Crimea has met with fierce opposition from an ethnic Russian majority on the peninsula, the Ukraine has been able to retain sovereignty there. The lengthy quarrel over control of the massive Soviet Black Sea Fleet ended in a noteworthy success for the Russian side, but Moscow was still unable to make good on all of its demands, recovery of the seaport city of Sevastopol, for example. The dispute was provisionally settled in June 1995 with an agreement that divided the 833 vessels of the Black Sea Fleet 81.7% to 18.3% (669 ships

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for Russia, 164 for the Ukraine). The matter of bases was agreed upon by way of a compromise in which the Ukraine chose to locate its main naval facility 75 kilometers north of Sevastopol. The concept of a “strategic partnership” contributed to a preliminary normalization of bilateral relations, though it has since acquired no real substance. However, in December 1995 the Ukraine conceded that a possible eastward extension of NATO in the region would automatically entail a confrontation with Moscow. Political traditions dictate that it is to be expected that Russia will do everything to bow the Ukraine to its influence, perhaps within the framework of a Slavic Union.29 When one considers into the bargain that south of the Caucasus Russia has had to relinquish all territories conquered up to 1815, one is able to appreciate the real extent of the “retreat to Moscow” that has proceeded hand-in-hand with the increased value of the Asian regions of the Russian Federation. Only the continuing close economic and military ties binding Belarus to Russia meanwhile offer modest consolation for eastward revision of the country’s western frontier. In recent years the spokesmen of “Eurasianism” and “national patriotism”—in other words, the Imperial or Greater Russia tradition—have used geopolitical reasoning to justify both territorial claims and a more expansive foreign policy generally. At stake is the preservation of “vital and geopolitical interests”; the resurrection of Greater Russia, indeed, even the former Soviet Union, in which power and geopolitics are essentially equated. All are attempts to fashion identity and ideological unity without defining what these geopolitical vital interests actually are. In one context it is taken to mean maintaining a balance of power with the West, which can at the most be only a long-term goal; in another context it is deemed just compensation for the lack of natural borders. Lastly, the preponderance of Asian terrain as a proportion of all territory is deemed to infer the pursuit of a Sonderweg in foreign relations, because Russia is required to act alternately on behalf of its European and Asian interests. How do the most influential Russian elites view their country’s position relative to Intermediate Europe and the new constellation implied by the eastward extension of the EU and NATO? Beginning in the autumn of 1993 Russian politicians and institutions outbid each other with warnings and threats against NATO enlargement in particular, “Eurasians” and “National Patriots” using much the same arguments. While an extension of the EU was deemed tolerable by many, presidential candidate General Alexander Lebed declared in April

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1995—in a series of what became, admittedly, radically inconsistent statements—that an eastward extension of the Atlantic alliance would be the beginning of a Third World War; for its part, the foreign ministry stressed repeatedly that such an action would at least be regarded as a revival of the Cold War. The Chief of Staff General Kolesnikov denied the need for NATO’s continued existence, and the nationalist demagogue Vladimir Shirinovsky warned of the creation of new Eastern pact should NATO admit new members from East-Central Europe. In October 1995 the president of the Russian Federation denounced eastward expansion even with economic arguments, claiming that Russia would lose important export markets once the new member states of NATO became dependent on Western technologies.30 Even more extreme were the many threats emanating from the defense ministry to target Poland and the Czech Republic with nuclear missiles deployed in the Kaliningrad enclave (since 1990 the enclave had been used as a staging point for Russian troops and equipment withdrawn from Germany). In addition an increase in the number of Russian troops stationed in Belarus was announced. A study released under the auspices of the General Staff at the end of October 1995 then called explicitly for the use of force against NATO enlargement; in the event of NATO expansion into the Baltic states, outright military invasion was to be the order of the day. If Russia were to find itself under continuing Western pressure, it could sell nuclear missile technology to countries such as Iran, Iraq, and Algeria, if Islamic regimes were in control there. In any event Moscow was to prepare to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the Kaliningrad enclave, to naval units in the Baltic and the North Sea, and also to forces in the Crimea, Georgia, and Armenia. A supplementary argument against NATO expansion was aimed at declaring invalid the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) of November 1990, because the treaty was finalized in the context of the then existing military alliances. In the Russian view, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the redistribution of the relevant “treaty-limited elements” to Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan represents a significant weakening of Russia’s military position. Ukraine, for example, was entitled to 4,080 tanks and 4,040 artillery pieces; Belarus, 1,800 tanks and 1,615 artillery pieces; and Russia had to make do with a ceiling of 6,400 tanks and 6,415 artillery pieces. By comparison NATO made gains by way of Germany’s enlargement, and the upper limit of related armaments imposed on the Russian Federation amounts in fact to only about one-third of the upper limit imposed on

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NATO states considered as a single figure.31 With the invitation extended in spring 1997 to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to join NATO, a fairly strong case can be made that the Western alliance will enjoy such military advantage in Europe that Russia need no longer feel obliged to abide by the CFE. The deployment in 1993 of additional troops and equipment to the military command of the North Caucasus, the “southern flank,” was defended with the claim that Russia faced an altogether changed situation from that of the Soviet Union in 1990. The signatories ought therefore no longer govern their conduct according to the political and military balance that prevailed at the treaty’s signing. This argument was underscored when the breakaway province of Chechnya first declared its independence in 1991. In December 1994 Moscow launched a war on Chechnya in order to thwart secession, a war which ended with Russian military withdrawal in 1996 and nothing proven save Russian military ineffectiveness.32 Summarizing the arguments against NATO expansion from the Russian perspective, the following key points emerge: 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

Eastern expansion will eliminate the present buffer zone between the NATO states and the Russian sphere of influence, by giving NATO a common border with Belarus and the Kaliningrad enclave. NATO will gain direct influence over Lithuania, the other Baltic states, and Kaliningrad. Should NATO integrate Romania as well as Hungary as a new member, the Western alliance would acquire a strong position in the Balkans and sooner or later would bring pressure to bear on the beleaguered Yugoslav Federation. The “near abroad” generally would come almost completely under Western influence. The economic and military balance would shift even further to Russia’s disadvantage. Finally, the danger of a surprise attack by NATO could not be altogether ruled out.

Wrapping these points together, it is above all noteworthy that Russia raises predominantly security and geopolitical objections to prevent further loss of power. It is obvious why Moscow does not want Intermediate Europe, which since 1945 has either constituted part of the territory of the Soviet state or served as a strategic approach to it, particularly the former GDR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, to fall into NATO’s sphere of

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influence. Thus, it is clearly evident that thinking in terms of the friendfoe categories of the Cold War has by no means been fully overcome. This of course applies to both sides of the Cold War divide.33 The threat to form a new defensive alliance in the event of NATO expansion was publicized by President Yeltsin on September 14, 1995, in the form of a decree outlining Russia’s strategic policy;34 the nationalist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovski, almost simultaneously proposed an eastern pact to include Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovakia, and the Yugoslav Federation. The observation that the collapse of communism occasioned a new division of Europe roughly along the border between Catholic and Orthodox Europe goes deeper than purely geopolitical reasoning. Accordingly, the drive by many of the states of Intermediate Europe for strong ties to the West appears both understandable and logical. And yet there are drawbacks to NATO expansion that should not be overlooked in the overall picture. Expansion carries with it the danger of a redivision of Europe along the eastern border of Poland. The stable community of Western and Central European states will, with the elimination of the buffer zone, inherit a border with Russian-dominated territory. It will be difficult to avoid the impression in Russia of being “fenced off” from the rest of Europe. How are the requirements of NATO expansion to be squared with the willingness to develop a political and diplomatic partnership with Moscow? Ukraine in particular would suffer from the hardening of such a demarcation, which is one reason why its government was so eager to sign a charter of cooperation and consultation with NATO immediately following the alliance’s invitation of membership to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The Atlantic alliance has a similar charter with Russia, and Russian pressure on Ukraine not to develop its Western ties further and to opt for an Eastern pact will be very strong. A NATO expansion that is too broad—already there is talk of offering membership to Romania and Slovenia in 1999—could find the alliance assuming too great a burden, in light of the questionable military benefit of some of the new and prospective members, and therefore being unable to give its new members the security guarantees they seek. After the Duma election of December 17, 1995, which made the Communist Party under Gennady Zhuganov the strongest party but which hardly relegated Zhirinovski’s party to a marginal role, resistance to NATO expansion in Russia intensified. President Yeltsin’s reelection in 1996 was, admittedly, a heartening victory for reform over recidivism, and Yeltsin has since seemed to accept NATO membership for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary with greater equilibrium than anyone would

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have thought likely in the light of the warnings and threats that had emanated from Moscow over the preceding months. But the domestic politics of foreign policy in Russia do not necessarily relate directly to strategic criteria. There is the very delicate condition of the economy and the concern about selling Russia out through the cheap export of natural resources. Hence, many Russian politicians bolster themselves with the dangerous argument that Russia can rely only on its residual military power, above all its nuclear capacity, to be respected as a great power. It had been widely proposed, lastly, that the country attempt to improve its relations with China, in order to be able to direct its main focus on Eastern Central Europe and the Balkans. An expansion that stayed within modest dimensions, on the other hand, would have advantages from NATO’s perspective. States located in Intermediate Europe could seek membership in or association with the European Union but would remain for the Russian-dominated bloc more or less harmless strategically and would not have to worry about a confrontation with the East. Russian politicians would not find further grist for apocalyptic scenarios, so relations with the United States and other Western countries would be improved. In light of the continuing uncertain political course of Russian and Belarus, the West should under no circumstances go the route of cordoning off Russia, even though the dangers of a “premature partnership” between Russia and the West are not to be denied.35

Conclusion and Outlook The “return of geopolitics” refers on the one hand to the reemergence of strategic perspectives and schools of thought that have enjoyed little attention for some time, that indeed have been so discredited that geopolitics in some countries is not established as an academic discipline. On the other hand geopolitical reasoning is used in the countries of Eastern Europe in order to support national interests and claims with allegedly “scientific” theory. Viewed as a whole, it is apparent that everpresent factors such as inner and outer “strategic value,” domestic stability, the control of geographic positions and traffic routes, or the existence of “strategic approaches” are receiving increasing attention. In the positive sense geopolitics is used as a tool of foreign and security policy insofar as it contributes significantly to understanding the nature of one’s own position but also the ability to empathize with that of other

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states. It draws upon the teaching of Rudolf Kjellén most fundamentally in its recognition of the relationship between political power and territory. It can lead to the insight that every attempt to change the course of history involves an armed intervention in the “free interplay of forces.” It follows further that the pursuit of dominance depends on territorial factors that themselves change in accordance with evolving international conditions. Knowledge about the value and control of territory constitutes a central theme of geopolitics for the purpose of appreciating the limitations of one’s influence as well as those of one’s rival. It can bring balance to one’s conception of the world. Particularly in a world of interdependencies and increasingly overlapping interests, an appreciation of the advantages of international cooperation should flourish. A sober regard for geopolitical realities leads to the ultimate conclusion, lastly, that great powers preserve their power by serving the interests of the less powerful.

Notes 1. See, for example, Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History (New York: Hill & Wang, 1957); Sir Halford John Mackinder, “The Geopolitical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal, April 1904, pp. 421–437; Homer Lea, The Day of the Saxon (New York: Harper Bros., 1912); Nicholas Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1942); Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Game Plan: The Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), and “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs, No. 2, 1994, pp. 67–82; Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), and Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Vintage, 1994). 2. Rudolf Kjellén, The politischen Probleme des Weltkrieges (Leipzig and Berlin: B.G.Teubner, 1917). 3. See Karl Haushofer and Rudolf Kjellén, Die Grossmächte vor und nach dem Weltkriege (Leipzig and Berlin: B.G.Teubner, 1930); Karl Haushofer, Bausteine zur Geopolitik (Berlin, 1928); Richard Hennig, Geopolitik (Leipzig: B.G.Teubner, 1928); Giselher Wirsing, Zwischeneuropa und die deutsche Zukunft (Jena, 1932); Oskar Ritter von Niedermeyer, Wehrgeographie (Berlin: Verlag R.Hobbing, 1942); Frank Ebeling, Geopolitik: Karl Haushofer und seine Raumwissenschaft, 1919–1945 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994); Ursula Laack-Michel, Albrecht Haushofer und der Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart: E.Klett, 1974). 4. Albrecht Penck, Politisch-geographische Lehren des Krieges (Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1915). 5. Friedrich Naumann, Mitteleuropa (Berlin: G.Reimer, 1915).

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6. Karl Haushofer, Wehr-Geopolitik (Berlin: Junker & Dunnhaupt, 1934), p. 66. 7. Frank Ebeling, Geopolitik, p. 21. 8. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 12, 1995, p. 3; Jacques Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 3 (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 368–370 9. Quoted from Le Figaro. See Ludwig Watzal, “Der Irrweg von Maastricht,” in Rainer Zitelmann and Karlheinz Weissmann (eds.), Westbindung (Frankfurt: Propylaen, 1993), p. 484. 10. Ulrich Wickert (ed.), Angst vor Deutschland (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1992), p. 244ff. 11. Heleno Sana, “Deutschlands neuer Patriotismus. Der Wille zur Macht,” in Wickert, Angst vor Deutschland, p. 159. 12. See Hans-Dietrich Schultz, “Deutschlands natürliche Grenzen,” in Alexander Demandt (ed.), Deutsclands Grenzen in der Geschichte (Munich: Beck, 1900), p. 70. 13. Die politischen Probleme des Welthrieges (Berlin and Leipzig: B.G.Teubner, 1916) p. 9. 14. See Hanns W.Maull, “Zivilmacht Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Vierzehn Thesen für eine neue deutsche Aussenpolitik,” Europa Archiv, Vol. 47, No. 10, May 1992, pp. 269–278. 15. Gerhard Schwarz, “Einhiet in Vielfalt statt Zersplitterung,” Europäische Rundschau, No. 1, 1994, p. 63. 16. Zitelmann and Weissmann, Westbindung, p. 484. 17. Josef Joffe, “Bismarck or Britain? Toward an American Grand Strategy after Bipolarity,” International Security, Spring 1995, pp. 94–117. 18. John Lukacs, The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1993), p. 192. 19. This issue is broached by Joseph Rovan in “Wie Weit reicht Europa?” Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 24, 1995, p. 15. 20. These borders were also problematic for provision for European security, since Russia redeployed a good many treaty-limited military assets beyond the Urals, a move that NATO could describe only as regrettable but legal. 21. Giselher Wirsing, Zwischeneuropa und die deutsche Zukunft (Jena: E. Diedricks, 1932), p. 311. 22. Ludger Kühnhardt, “Der Osten des Westens und die russische Frage,” EuropaArchiv, Vol. 49, No. 9, May 1994, pp. 239–247. 23. Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 28, 1994, p. 6. 24. Financial Times, October 3, 1997, p. 2. 25. The Military Balance, 1995/96, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London 1995. 26. Francis P.Sempa, “The Geopolitics of the Post–Cold War World,” Strategic Review, No. 1, 1992, p. 15. 27. After a prolonged conflict between Russia and Poland for possession of the Ukraine (1654–1667), Russia obtained the Smolensk region and the eastern Ukraine, with Kiev. The treaty was of strategic importance in that it gave Russia its first contact with the Turks in the Balkans. 28. Frankfurter Allgemeine, September 5, 1992, p. 5. Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt has pointed out that his country too considers the Baltic states its “near abroad” and has implied that, in the event of a Baltic war, Sweden would not necessarily stay neutral. The Economist, July 9, 1994, p. 53. Bildt explained

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29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

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his position more systematically in terms of region security in “The Baltic Litmus Test,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 5, 1994, pp. 72–85. Andreas Heinemann-Grüdre, Das russische Militär zwischen Staatszerfall und Nationabildung (Cologne: Bundesinstitut für Ostwissenschaftliche und Internationale Studien, 1993); Eugene B.Rumer, Russian National Security and Foreign Policy in Transition (Santa Monica: Rand, 1995); David Kerr, “The New Eurasianism: The Rise of Geopolitics in Russia’s Foreign Policy,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 6, 1995, pp. 977–988. Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 27, 1995, p. 5. Die Welt, October 27, 1995, p. 5. Richard Falkenrath, “The CFE Flank Dispute, Waiting in the Wings,” International Security, Spring 1995, pp. 118–144. Since Russia’s military withdrawal, Russian officials and laws have had virtually no force within the Chechen republic. Die Zeit, November 17, 1995, p. 12. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73 No. 2, 1994, pp. 64–82.

CHAPTER 3

The Economic Elements of the European Security Order James Sperling

The sudden transformation of the Cold War security order in 1989 altered the structure of the European state system, intensified the interrelationship between military security and economic security, raised new possibilities for cooperation in military and economic affairs, and necessitates the striking of a new balance between the economic, political, and military requirements of security. The end of the Cold War and the erasure of the stark political and military lines dividing the European Continent have not unified Europe. Europe remains divided by differences in the level of per capita GDP, level of economic development, the stability of democratic institutions, and differential membership in the key institutions of the European security order, particularly NATO and the European Union (EU). Overcoming the continuing division of Europe and assuring the future stability of the European security order are contingent upon the successful transition of the Central and Eastern European states to the market economy and multiparty democracy. Until that transition is completed and consolidated, issues of political economy must be treated as elements of the new security order rather than as a problem subject to the calculus of welfare maximization. This perspective requires a redefinition of security. It suggests that the European security system has two mutually constitutive elements, the political-military and the economic. The interdependence of these two elements of the security architecture raises a set of important and 51

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interrelated questions: What are the constituent elements and content of economic security? How do they interact with the military elements of security? These questions are addressed in this chapter.

Toward an Economic Definition of Security Mercantilist thought has been more conscious of the connection between the economic and military elements of national security than much of the contemporary literature on either security studies or political economy. The critical roles played by economic capacity and wealth as essential components of state security and state power are central concerns of mercantilist thought, even though the precise relationship between “power” and “plenty” varies considerably.1 Many contemporary analysts do not embrace the broad mercantilist view that economic capacity is not only an essential instrumental objective of national security policy, but a proper end of state policy as well. Rather, the importance and relationship between power and plenty is reduced to a narrower instrumental approach. At the most general level, the instrumental treatment of economic security focuses on the connection between economic growth and national security, particularly on determining how or whether the rate of economic growth constrains the ability to achieve a desired level of military security. A second instrumental treatment of economic security reduces the problem to one of determining whether defense spending is either a drag on or the motor driving domestic economic growth. 2 A third variation focuses on the division of the national budget between defense and nondefense expenditures. Here the relationship between the economy and military security is reduced to examining the allocation of scarce budgetary resources within a closed domestic political system.3 A second approach to the economic dimension of security addresses the connection between the openness of the national economy and the erosion of national autonomy. Here the level of trade, financial integration, and monetary interdependence becomes the Achilles’ heel of national security policy. Other analysts contract this concern to a focus upon the necessity of technological dominance to guarantee military security.4 These analysts are concerned with the necessity of maintaining a state’s position on the technological frontier, of translating technological dominance into a competitive edge in the production and deployment of military forces, and of guaranteeing the domestic viability or international competitiveness of the national industrial base.

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A final category of analysis focuses on the connection between government macroeconomic policy and national security policy. Here the inability of the state to correct chronic payments or budgetary deficits is treated as a potential threat to national security. These concerns are perhaps best captured by the concept of “strategic overextension” that describes the seemingly inevitable incompatibility between commitments and capabilities of great powers. 5 These instrumental views of the relationship between economics and security are overly narrow and parochial. They are overly narrow because they neither consider nor investigate the concept or content of economic security. Economic issues are important only insofar as they affect the military dimension of the security equation. These views are parochial because they are fixated with the security from a national rather than a systemic or societal perspective. A broader concept of economic security deserves attention and elaboration, although such a conceptualization faces a number of difficulties. First, the market economy, and the accompanying market ideology sustaining it, are premised upon the insecurity of economic actors, particularly at the firm and individual levels. The problem, then, becomes one of disentangling desirable adjustments at the level of the individual and firm from undesirable developments at the level of society, the state, or the system. Second, as Barry Buzan argues, economic security can have meaning only in restricted circumstances and where there are demonstrable linkages between the economy, on the one hand, and military capability, power, or social identity on the other. Yet he treats issues impinging upon the content of economic capacity and national identity, ranging from monetary relations to macroeconomic policy to debt repudiation, as essential and critical elements of the inexorable ebb and flow of the market mechanism. 6 While it is a superficially attractive proposition that anarchy “is the optimal political environment for the market,” 7 this formulation runs the risk of conflating the absence of centralized power, law, and effective sanction at the level of the international system with the construction of a legal system, enforced by a political authority, necessary for the market mechanism to flourish at the level of the state. In other words, advanced capitalism and the allocation of goods by the market are not politically neutral constructs or limited by national boundaries. Rather, they are social conventions that require both political support and protection at the national and international levels; requirements that are provided by the state for internal transactions and by treaty, convention, and international institutions for external transactions.

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A broader definition of economic security has three identifiable and separable elements. First, economic security reflects a concern over the ability of the state to protect the social and economic fabric of a society. Second, economic security involves the ability of a state to act as an effective gatekeeper and to maintain societal integrity. Third, economic security concerns the ability of the state in cooperation with others to foster a stable international economic environment in order to reinforce cooperation in the military sector as well as to extract the welfare gains of openness. This conceptualization of economic security suffers from a number of disabilities: It lacks the historical primacy and intellectual currency assigned to military security; it suffers from a diffuseness of both potential threats and remedies; and its content resists neat categories of threat. It is also clear that the economic dimension of the national security is not as well demarcated as the military dimension of security. Military threats to national security are both specific and intentional; economic threats are both diffuse and systemic, and they may be unintended or a secondary consequence of state action.8 But these troubling characteristics do not relieve us of the need to consider economic security as a distinct concept. The consequences of macroeconomic malfeasance by a major economic power, the collapse of financial markets triggered by a major debt repudiation, a generalized hyperinflation, or a collapse of currency markets could, singularly or in combination, threaten the very survival of the state or nullify the economic clauses of the domestic social contract, up-end the economic foundation of national political stability, or reintroduce the corrosive competition between states that preceded the Second World War. The resolution of the security problem facing post– Cold War Europe cannot be achieved by dodging the problem of economic security or by treating the economy as an instrumental adjunct to the military requirements of security. Nor can we be satisfied with simply displacing the military definition of security with an economic conceptualization of security—the military dimension remains too important. The security requirements of the post–Cold War European security space demand a broader, systemic definition of the relationship between the economic and military dimensions of security. The concern embedded in this conceptualization of economic security is that the international economic system be constructed in such a manner that it creates a stable and secure environment supporting not only the economic sector, but the political and military sectors as well. It also suggests that an analysis of the institutions and architectures of the post–Cold War European security space be framed not only by the

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concern with these two components of security, but with how these two elements of security intersect and the consequences of that intersection for the formulation of a stable European security architecture. Yet this concern presumes that the barriers to the institutionalization of the European security architecture that existed in the postwar period have been surmounted. Such an assumption would appear to be supported by the argument up to this point: The external context of state action in the European security space is now characterized by amity rather than enmity, and the security dilemmas of the postwar period have been largely resolved. The potential for cooperation may not be directly translated into the institutionalization of that cooperation. It may be that the core characteristics of military competition preclude an institutionalization of cooperation, and the changing currency of power may also serve to limit the feasibility of institutionalizing the economic dimension of security. Systemic stability and the prospect for a peaceful and cooperative panEuropean security order are largely contingent upon the successful transition to the market and multiparty democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. And those transitions, in turn, are contingent upon a stable economic and military environment. Three economic policy areas—the macroeconomy, trade, and finance—define the economic elements of the European security order.

The Macroeconomic Dimensions of Security The security dimension of macroeconomic stability has been given resonance by the marketization and democratization efforts of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) states. The role of a stable macroeconomic environment in the European security order is indirect, but is nonetheless critical to its stability. Macroeconomic stability and favorable macroeconomic conditions in Western Europe and the United States will enhance the prospects for the successful and lasting transition to the market and democracy in the CEE states as well as retard a return to nondemocratic forms of governance. The linkage between macroeconomic stability and prosperity for the success of the internal reform of the CEE states is found in the causal connection established in the minds of Europe’s ruling elites between the macroeconomic collapse after 1929 and the ensuing political chaos of the 1930s: The competitive devaluations and the rise of currency and trading blocs in the 1930s were an ill-conceived response to the macroeconomic collapse beginning in 1929, facilitated the

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rise of fascism, and established a basis for the outbreak of war in Europe. The failure to cope with the macroeconomic instability of Europe prior to the Second World War informs the preoccupation with ensuring macroeconomic stability in the post–Cold War Atlantic economy. Treating macroeconomic policy as an element of the future European security order is not inconsistent with NATO communiqués since the Atlantic Declaration in 1990 and may be reasonably inferred as a new security concern, albeit one that the alliance is uniquely ill-equipped to effect. Yet it remains the case that the macroeconomic policy remains an ambiguous candidate for inclusion in the security architecture of the post– Cold War world. Prior to 1989, the problem of macroeconomic policy cooperation within the context of the EU remained largely confined to the task of maintaining exchange rate stability within the European Monetary System (EMS) to protect intra-European trade from exchange rate disruptions stemming from the wayward exchange rate and macroeconomic policies in the United States, and to enhance the prospects of European monetary union that would parallel and support European political unification. The importance of macroeconomic policy cooperation also reflected the erosion of national autonomy in the conduct of monetary policy: the progressive integration of Atlantic financial markets had amplified the impact of divergent monetary and fiscal policies on bilateral exchange rates and reduced national macroeconomic policy autonomy. 9 Macroeconomic policy has impinged upon security issues, however, when macroeconomic conflicts—especially in debates over the relative virtues of American and German fiscal and monetary policies in the 1970s and 1980s—limited political cooperation in the security sphere. Yet the interdependence between macroeconomic policy and security policy was limited and had been easily short-circuited up to 1989. In the 1970s, for example, the Europeans made a successful effort to preclude the linkage of security concerns and macroeconomic policy by the United States in the aftermath of the first oil crisis in 1973–1974.10 The connection between the macroeconomic policies pursued by the G7 nations (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada) and consequences of those policies for the nations in transition is direct and incontrovertible. The successful transition of the CEE states is largely contingent upon a favorable macroeconomic environment. First, only a stable macroeconomic environment can facilitate trade between the eastern and western halves of the Atlantic economy and investment in the eastern half of Europe. And second, the marketization and democratization of the CEE states serve as the criteria

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that these states must meet to continue receiving concessions on issues ranging from debt forgiveness to receiving financial support from international financial institutions (the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) or continued access to special facilities within those institutions (the Structural Transformation Facility of the International Monetary Fund [IMF]). Macroeconomic policy stability shapes the prospects for a stable European security order in a number of ways. Macroeconomic stability has become the sine qua non for the progress toward a single Europe, toward the fulfillment of the Maastricht Treaty ambition of a single European currency. The criteria of macroeconomic policy stability established in the Maastricht Treaty have become, at a minimum, the macroeconomic policy criteria for the whole of Europe, West, East and Central. There is then a nascent European macroeconomic regime that presents a common standard of macroeconomic performance acting not only as a potential gatekeeper for future aspirants to the EU and WEU (and potentially to NATO as well), but bears upon the continued deepening of the enlarged EU, particularly with respect to its ambitions in the security and foreign policy fields. Moreover, the inability of the nations of Europe and North America to sustain macroeconomic policy coordination may reintroduce an enmity in economic relations that will spill over and corrode efforts at cooperation and integration in the military sphere of the pan-European security architecture. Macroeconomic divergences in the Atlantic economy, in combination with the formal advantages associated with macroeconomic coordination, have produced episodic and generally unsuccessful efforts at coordination. 11 The major institutions of macroeconomic and exchange rate management enforce consistent and mutually reinforcing norms. The macroeconomic policy preferences of the IMF, the G-7, and the EU reflect a general consensus within the Atlantic macroeconomy—shared not only by those international institutions but by national central banks and finance ministries as well—that monetary policy should target noninflationary growth and fiscal policy should target a balance between expenditures and revenues. These macroeconomic preferences have been conjoined with a greater dependence upon market forces to allocate resources efficiently within national economies and between them. Structural policies removing impediments to the market have increased factor mobility within and among the nations of the Atlantic economy. Greater capital mobility, which has become a fixture of the Atlantic economy in the 1990s, has had two consequences for the nations of Europe and North America: It has increased the efficiency of capital

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markets and national economies, and it made even less effective the nominal monetary sovereignty enjoyed by the majority of the nations of the Atlantic economy. The EU has gone the furthest in establishing the criteria for macroeconomic convergence in the Atlantic area. The convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty have created a set of macroeconomic norms that have gained widespread currency throughout Europe. The norms of fiscal rectitude and monetary propriety established by the Maastricht Treaty have been embraced not only by the member-states of the EU, but its prospective members as well. Moreover, the IMF, in its stand-by arrangements with the CEE states as well as the republics of the former Soviet Union, has contributed to the adoption and enforcement of the Maastricht norms. The legitimacy accorded the Maastricht norms within Europe and larger Atlantic economy face the problems of enforcement (and freeriding) and coordination. The IMF, the EU, or the G-7, for example, can enforce these macroeconomic norms only with countries that approach either institution as a supplicant for balance of payments or other financial support. Consequently, these institutions have considerable leverage over the CEE states, particularly when conformity with those norms are an implicit criterion for EU membership. States already in the EU, such as Italy or Belgium, have the option of challenging the Maastricht norms of fiscal rectitude. Yet the inability of the market to discipline directly fiscal deficits helps explain how the fiscal irresponsibility of the United States could persist and why there has been less success in creating fiscal convergence within the EU. The problem of coordinating macroeconomic policy within the Atlantic economy is amenable to an institutional fix. A strengthening of the G-7 or IMF surveillance over the macroeconomic policies of the major Atlantic economies will not eliminate differences of interest that may only reflect different stages of the business cycle or political disabilities foreclosing the mutual adjustment of economies regardless of how beneficial that adjustment might be in terms of welfare maximization. Within the European context, the limits of macroeconomic divergence have been set by the monetary dominance of the Bundesbank and the fiscal criteria embedded in the Maastricht Treaty. So long as the prospect of EMU remains an alluring one, the fiscal criteria will be largely self-enforcing if enforced at all. The successful completion of the marketization process and the transition to a functioning and stable democracy are explicit membership criteria for both NATO and the EU. The ability of the

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Atlantic states to expand the zone of security eastward, therefore, depends upon domestic economic and political developments that are extremely sensitive to the macroeconomic environment that they face. Yet it is also the case that the provision of that macroeconomic environment cannot be guaranteed. Nor do the nations of the Atlantic economy make macroeconomic decisions based upon these important security considerations. The narrow pursuit of national advantage in the conduct of macroeconomic policy can lead to minor welfare losses for the North American and EU states and could jeopardize the prospects for a stable European security order. The resolution of the security dimension of macroeconomic policy is located in the acknowledgment of the difficulty of macroeconomic coordination and convergence, and in the embrace of a two-speed Europe that is divided between those countries that have met the Maastricht criteria and those that aspire to do so. This solution would protect the integrity of the Maastricht criteria, create a stable macroeconomic core at the center of Europe, provide a point of orientation for nations along the European periphery, and foster greater political balance in the Atlantic economy that could facilitate greater U.S.-EU cooperation on macroeconomic and exchange rate policies.

The Trade Dimension of Security The treatment of trade as a security issue within the Atlantic area was limited to two general cases during the postwar period. The first and most sustained security concern was the sale or transfer of military or dual-use technologies to Warsaw Pact member states. The end of the Cold War initiated two changes in the security dimension of trade: First, the former member-states of the Warsaw Pact are now viewed as potential security partners of the NATO states. The concern with the transfer of military or dual-use technologies persists, but the developing nations outside Europe are the targets of control. Second, the transfer of dual-use technologies to Central and Eastern Europe is considered yet another means for aiding the transition to the market economy and as a mechanism for integrating those states into the broader global economy. The second general security concern linked to trade was located in the vulnerability arising from too great a dependence upon foreign suppliers of critical raw materials, intermediate goods, or finished goods.12 Trade vulnerability and the potential loss of technological dominance remains a

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salient security concern for the United States, the EU, and Japan. This category of threat, however, has been attenuated by significant changes in the international economy. Commodity cartels have failed to set the price or fix the supply of raw materials on the international market. Dependence upon the foreign supply of intermediate or finished goods no longer poses a credible security threat: The sources of supply are dispersed within the OECD, much of the merchandise trade registered by industrial countries is intra-industry and increasingly intrafirm, and the deregulation of national markets reduces both the incentives and opportunities for the restriction of trade for political advantage between the major poles of economic power, particularly in the European security space. Yet trade remains a part of the post–Cold War security problem in Europe. The security dimension of trade flows from the palpable and noncontestable welfare benefits attributed to freer trade. Trade contributes to the more efficient allocation of resources within and among national economies, to greater levels of consumption at lower prices, to economic growth and development, and to a higher level of employment. The stability of the European political space is partially dependent upon the ability of the Eastern Europeans to exploit market opportunities in the West, and thereby make successful and permanent the transition to the market economy. The welfare benefits of trade provide the nations in transition a compelling rationale for participation as full members of the GATT/WTO trading regime and for seeking preferential access to the market of the EU. If the importance of trade to the pan-European security order were limited to the welfare benefits of trade received by the CEE states, the discussion could be brought to a close. Such a closure would be premature, however. Freer trade with the OECD states provides a mechanism for a market-driven restructuring of these nations’ economies. Unimpeded trade provides a nonintrusive mechanism for achieving the task of economic transition. Trade delegates the task of economic transition to individual economic agents without entailing the political costs and engendering the political resentments of direct interventions in the economy by Western advisers, bankers, and political authorities. Concomitantly, larger volumes of trade between the two halves of Europe should carry the advantage of lowering the cost of aiding the transition to the market. Trade will enable the CEE states to earn the hard currency necessary to retool their economies, and subsequently to lessen the burden on Western budgets by reducing these nations’ dependence upon Western

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aid from either bilateral or multilateral donors. Thus the security importance of freer trade between Eastern and Western Europe is located in the contribution it can make to systemic stability via its support of the successful transition to the market and the stabilization of democracy. Finally, trade is an element of the European security order owing to the peculiar circumstance of the post–Cold War world. The nations along the periphery of the Atlantic economy have placed a political and security patina on their economic relationships with the industrialized nations. Just as the macroeconomy creates the framework conditions for the transition to the market economy and the support of democratization, trade (along with investment) is the engine of growth that will consolidate those transitions. If the CEE states are denied markets for their goods, economic growth will remain slack and their reform efforts severely handicapped. In this respect, trade is a pillar of the European security order and must be considered as such until the transitions to the market and democracy are consolidated and irreversible. The security dimension of trade also emerges in the debate between the Anglo-Saxon and continental schools of political economy. The Anglo-Saxon school strongly suggests that trade contributes to the comity of nations. More generally, writers from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill to John Hobson have held that free trade and the web of interdependencies created by free trade generate positive externalities that contribute to stability, prosperity, peace, and amity between states in an anarchical international system. There is also a significant thread of the continental tradition, embodied in the works of J.G.Fichte and Friedrich List, which holds trade to be a source of international mischief and the pretext for or cause of war. A third approach, however, holds that free trade should be treated as an externality produced by the structure of power in the international system, and that the openness of the trading system reflects the polarity of the international system. Joanne Gowa extends the argument made by Kenneth Waltz. Just as a bipolar system is the most stable politically and strategically, a bipolar system of power is most likely to support free trade. Just as the prospects for peace are diminished by multipolarity, so are the prospects for stable free trade coalitions.13 While Gowa’s argument that a bipolar distribution of power privileges free trade is empirically plausible, as is the alternative argument that systemwide free trade is dependent upon hegemony, it does not necessarily follow that free trade will collapse in the absence of either. If the existing openness of the Atlantic economy was a function of systemic bipolarity, then the post–Cold War Europe

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security space should be eventually characterized by preferential or regional trading agreements. As a consequence, the expectations of both the Anglo-Saxon and the continental schools will be met: The decay of multilateral free trade will loosen the bounds that have entwined the security interests of North America and Europe, and regional trading arrangements will inevitably engender conflict between North America and Europe. The final destination of the pan-European trading system will reflect some combination of political choice and economic destiny. The political choices facing the nations of the European security space are already embedded in a large number of regional, bilateral, and multilateral arrangements governing trade between the prosperous and impoverished halves of Europe. What is incontrovertible, however, is that trade is one of the primary and most efficient transmission belts of economic growth and development. A dense web of trade interdependencies between the nations of Western, Central and Eastern Europe would contribute to greater amity within the European security space and consequently makes easier and more likely the construction of a comprehensive and inclusive set of security institutions. Trade interdependence can create a basis for political trust—an externality supporting cooperation in other areas impinging directly upon or requiring the sacrifice or pooling of national sovereignty. Enhanced trade between the two halves of Europe also carries with it, however, the potential for premature demands for participation in military security institutions such as NATO or the WEU; for the creation of the anomaly that within the narrow confines of the European political space, close trade ties are not paralleled by the offer of membership in one of the leading institutions of military security, namely NATO or the WEU; or for the natural regionalization of the European economy that leads to the alienation or disassociation of Europe and the United States. The extension of the Maastricht norms in the European macroeconomy have been paralleled by the extension of the Single European Act (SEA) norms to the real sector of the European economy. The accession strategy outlined by the EU requires the conformity of the prospective members to the acquis communitaire. The intention of those nations to adopt the SEA norms for the real sector of the economy reinforces the normative congruence of the real and monetary sectors of the European economy. The normative congruence of the European economy does not suggest, however, that there will be a contiguity of economic and political boundaries in post–Cold War Europe. There will be two core political and economic boundaries of Europe: the EU and the Russian Federation,

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particularly its links with Belarus and Ukraine. Many states will fall outside either grouping. Some states will be stranded, like Turkey and Bulgaria, and others will select to remain nominally independent, like Norway and Switzerland. Yet the EU is uniquely placed to establish and enforce the norms governing economic activity in the European security space. Trade poses a danger to the European security order only if it encourages the progressive disassociation or even fragmentation of the two pillars of the Atlantic economy. The creation or perception of a “Fortress Europe” could be accompanied by a Pacific reorientation of the United States. Such a development, were it to occur, would certainly degrade the security relationship not only between the United States and Europe, but within Europe itself. The self-interest of the major players, particularly the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, counsels against that development. The recently concluded GATT agreement, the creation of the WTO, and the renewed interest in an Atlantic Free Trade Area expressed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany suggest that multilateralism is not a spent force in the Atlantic economy.

The Financial Dimension of Security The transition to a market-driven and entrepreneurial economy requires large and sustained capital inflows. But capital inflows to the CEE states have been offset by sustained capital outflows reflecting not only the uncertainty of individual economic agents about the pace and final destination of economic and political reform, but by the need to service external hard currency debt, the majority of which was incurred prior to 1989. The process of correcting the malformation of the CEE economies is handicapped by the budget deficits of the industrialized West, which limit the level of financial aid that can be made available to these governments, and the sovereign debt overhang of the reforming East, the repayment of which places a privileged claim on domestic savings and export earnings.14 The budget deficits of OECD states have compromised the ability to provide aid on a scale similar to the European Recovery Program (ERP) that accelerated the reconstruction of Western Europe after the Second World War: Whereas ERP disbursements were equal to an annual average of 1.875% of American GNP between 1948 and 1951, all of the G-24 aid to both the CEE states and the former Soviet Union is

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equal to an annual average of 0.60% of American GNP between 1990 and 1994.15 The external debt obligations of the reforming East, which were carried over from the Communist regimes and assumed by the newly established democratic governments, have placed a drag on the process of economic reform. Debt service requirements have sustained an outflow of capital from these countries, where it is most desperately needed, to Western commercial banks and creditor governments. The geopolitical position and importance of these states to the security of the Atlantic area suggests that the debt service obligations of those nations must treated as something more than the relatively simple problem of protecting the balance sheets of commercial banks. Nor can sovereign debt be simply viewed as the distributional problem of shifting the burden of default onto Western taxpayers to cover officially guaranteed loans. Rather, it represents a key element of the pan-European security order even though neither portends the onset of war nor corresponds to traditional conceptualizations of security. The stability and solvency of the international financial system is the commonly identified connection between sovereign debt default and national security.16 Sovereign default by any of the CEE states would fall far short of disrupting the international financial system. But sovereign default could lead to the stagnation of economic and political reform in Central and Eastern Europe. The stability of the European security order is threatened not only by the inability (debt default) or unwillingness (debt repudiation) of these states to service their external debts, but by the economic consequences of servicing external debt with domestic savings. Either debt default or debt repudiation would lower the overall level of investment in these economies because both foreign and domestic investors would have disincentives to invest and incentives to disinvest. Sovereign debt overhang has reduced the ability of these states to finance the economic transition and placed five sources of strain on the emerging and fragile democratic political fabric. First, high sovereign indebtedness limits the ability of firms and governments to borrow on international capital markets—the specter of default dissuades lending by both commercial banks and Western governments. Second, high sovereign indebtedness raises the price of capital. Consequently, higher interest rates limit the ability of governments and the incentives for individual economic agents to invest in the domestic economy. Third, domestic and foreign investors, in calculating the real rate of return for the investment, will be forced to require a higher nominal rate

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of return to compensate for near certainty of higher future taxes to service external debt. A fourth consequence of debt overhang is to lower the incentives to pursue economic reform by the CEE states: The political costs of economic reform and servicing external debt are borne exclusively by the national governments, whereas the lion’s share of the economic gains from economic reform are enjoyed by the creditor banks and governments.17 A final consequence for these economies is the use of scarce domestic savings to service external debt, rather than to finance the transition to a market economy and accelerate economic growth. The cumulative economic consequences of debt overhang for the CEE states are slower economic growth and a more difficult transition to a sustainable market economy. The cumulative security consequences of debt overhang range from a return to (involuntary) economic autarky, which would preclude the Western objective of an economically integrated Europe, to the resurgence of authoritarian governments supported by widespread resentment of the West. If Western governments wish to build the future European security order upon a firm foundation, a delicate balance must be struck between guaranteeing that the CEE governments service their external debt and ensuring that the debt service burden neither undermines the transition to the market economy nor destabilizes these fledgling democracies. The transitions to the market economy and democracy in the CEE states and the former Soviet Union are incomplete and imperfect. The transition to the market was impeded by the burden of debt facing some of those nations, particularly Albania, Poland, Hungary, and the Russian Federation. But the primary impediment to the transition was the difficulty of the task itself. The transition to the market and democracy requires a recasting of those societies rather than the simple reconstruction of economies disrupted by war or natural disaster. The discipline of the market and the ambiguities of democratic politics are neither easily imported nor absorbed. Moreover, correcting the malformation of those nations’ economies requires sustained and vast capital inflows over a decade or more. The G-24 states have been unable (or unwilling) to meet the investment needs of the CEE states and the former Soviet Union. Part of the problem reflects disputes over relative responsibility for financing the transition—in the United States Congress, in particular, there is a scarcely suppressed belief that it is somehow Europe’s problem. And part of the problem may be located in the efforts of the Western European states to meet the Maastricht fiscal criteria and the American effort to

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redress over a decade of fiscal malfeasance beginning with the Reagan administration. The formal international institutions aiding the transition to the market—particularly the G-7, the international financial institutions, and the Paris and London clubs—cannot be said to have failed the states in transition, although the G-7 has a limited ability to steer the course of debt negotiations, since most debt is held by commercial banks rather than by governments. Where the bulk of the debt has been held by governments, as in the case of Poland, the G-7 has fashioned a rather generous solution. The G-7 fear, expressed particularly by the Americans and Germans, that an economically destabilized Poland could disrupt the European security order provides a partial and compelling explanation of the preferred treatment of Polish debt. Nonetheless, the debt overhang facing the other CEE states and the Russian Federation could have been resolved with greater dispatch and on more generous terms. The aggregate level of debt is a relatively trivial amount if compared to the annual aggregate defense expenditures of the NATO allies during the Cold War, yet the debt service burden placed on the CEE governments has slowed, if not worked against, progress toward two primary objectives of the G-7 states: the democratization and marketization of the CEE states. The G-7 states could have and should have extended to the other CEE states, particularly Hungary, the terms offered Poland to relieve its debt burden. The G-7 countries could have diminished the commercial debt burden of the CEE states by purchasing the outstanding debt at market rates, which ranged from ten cents to thirty-seven cents on the dollar in the early 1990s. Such a policy would have relieved pressures on scarce foreign exchange, provided a payoff for the G-7 states that would have been immediate, visible, and politically defensible; and the financial resources of the IMF and World Bank could have been devoted to the problem of macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment rather than to the servicing of debt. The institutions of the debt regime have not failed. Rather, Western governments have been unwilling to commit sufficient resources to support the marketization and democratization processes, despite the importance of those two processes to the foreign policy agendas of the major European states and to the stability of the European order. The failure to devote sufficient resources to the task at hand reflects an irony of post–Cold War Europe. At a time when the economic instruments of statecraft are the most effective and essential to the stability of the European security order, the major European and North American states

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lack the fiscal wherewithal or political will to exploit an opportunity to assure the continuation of the long postwar peace.

Conclusion Three norms govern the issue clusters of the European security order: democratic governance, collective security, and conformity with the market. The post–Cold War security order has been effectively enveloped by the norms of the Bretton Woods and NATO economic and security systems. As was the case with the American-inspired security order, the macroeconomic, trade, and exchange rate cluster facilitates the integration of national markets that not only enhances national economic welfare, but creates a community of interest that translates into a source of support for the institution of collective defense, NATO. In the post–Cold War order, the universalism envisioned at Bretton Woods has been replaced with a more parochial construction that focuses upon the relationship between an enlarged EU and North America. The precise content of those norms with respect to macroeconomic policy is located in what can be called the Maastricht norms; the norms of trade policy are an admixture of regionalism and multilateralism. The norms of the market economy and democratic governance suffuse and drive the financing regime. The nations in transition have been subject to the “new conditionality”— project finance and balance of payments financing is contingent not only upon the standard criteria of feasibility or sound macroeconomic adjustment, but upon progress toward marketization and democratization. The norms of democratization and marketization govern the economic dimension of security and generate two externalities: It creates a common frame of reference for identifying and resolving conflicts of interest, and it creates a community of interest and values that supports the task of collective security. The norms of marketization, democratization, and collective security have contributed to the development of a common frame of reference for all of the states occupying the European security space. These norms contribute to the development of an international context that is characterized by amity rather than enmity, that blunt the divisive dynamics of multipolarity, and that alter the calculation of benefit and gain in a way that supports cooperation. It is too early to assert with any certainty the extent to which those norms have been internalized by national elites in those nations. Yet the evidence of the first half the decade suggest that

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these norms have altered calculations of interest and action for the nations in transition. Of more particular interest is the role that the economic institutions of the European security order play in the process of normative adoption. It would appear that in the construction of the European security order, the economic institutions of security have been the primary conveyors and enforcers of those norms. Those institutions have largely conformed with the instrumental interests of the Western nations, particularly the belief in the elective affinity between the market, democracy, and peace. Yet international institutions have mediated between the interests of the Western states and the states in transition. Moreover, these norms have functioned as criteria not only for membership in these institutions of security, but as the criteria for access to finance to underwrite the transition process itself. A secondary institutional question that must be addressed is the problem of institutional choice. The security architecture can be decomposed into two interlocking institutional clusters: the economic and political-military. A major consideration is the problem of coordination between and within those clusters. The empirical evidence would suggest that there have been high levels of coordination within the institutional clusters on a periodic basis. In the economic cluster, coherence and coordination has been supplied by three institutions: the market, the IMF, and Maastricht. The market, given the openness of national economies and the reliance upon the market by national authorities to allocate resources within and between the economies of the Atlantic area, has reduced the control national authorities can exert over macroeconomic aggregates and has consequently created pressures for the coordination of economic activity. The IMF has contributed to the extension of Western macroeconomic practices and policies in the nations in transition. The IMF leverages its key role in the debt regime to lessen the debt overhang retarding the process of transition, but extracts in exchange a fidelity to restrictive macroeconomic norms. And the Maastricht norms have created a set of macroeconomic and exchange rate policy targets that discipline not only the EU nations but also the nations along its eastern periphery. The problem of coordination within the security cluster has been largely resolved with the emergence of NATO as the core security institution of the European security order, a development helped in large part by the institutional innovation broadening the participation in its deliberations by nonmembers, the prospect of eventual expansion, and the partial reconciliation of the Anglo-Saxon and French positions over the form and

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function of an independent European pillar. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and Partnership for Peace (PfP) program hold open the possibility of meaningful security cooperation between the two most important states in the European system, the United States and the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) provides an institutional foundation for preventative diplomacy. Coordination between these two clusters, or more generally between the economic and military dimensions of the security order, remains unsolved and may resist an institutional solution. The G-7 is ill-equipped to serve the role of coordinating mechanism. The G-7 is an organization with global reach but parochial concerns. Just as the French are relatively indifferent to leadership changes on the Korean peninsula, the Japanese are nonplussed by the problem of North African migration to Europe. The exclusion of the Russian Federation from the G-7 and its inclusion in a political caucus is not tenable, particularly if the economic and military dimensions of security are as interdependent as has been suggested. A new grouping, a G-4 consisting of the United States, Japan, the EU, and the Russian Federation, might successfully perform the task of coordinating the two elements of the security order, but the problem of parochialism would remain as would the awkwardness of an EU that cannot speak with one voice on economic and security problems. The problem of economic security may prove to be a temporal one within the European security space. The centrality of economic security to European stability is located in the urgency of completing and consolidating the transitions to democracy and the market. The integration of the states of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly, into the heretofore Western institutions of security and prosperity is contingent upon the CEE states meeting those two criteria. Once these states make the transition to democracy and have economies irrevocably linked to the market norm, many of the economic security concerns identified here will be better ap-proached from the perspective of welfare maximization. But we are closer to the end of the beginning than the beginning of the end. The problem of economic security will vex policymakers well into the next millennium.

Notes 1. See Jacob Viner, “Power Versus Plenty,” World Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1, October 1949, pp. 1–27, and David Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

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2. For example, Michael D.Ward and David R.Davis, “Sizing Up the Peace Dividend: Economic Growth and Military Spending in the United States, 1948–1996,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 3, September 1992, pp. 748–755, Steve Chan, “The Impact of Defense Spending on Economic Performance: A Survey of Evidence and Problems,” Orbis, Summer 1985, pp. 403–434, and Charles Kupchan, “Defence Spending and Economic Performance,” Survival, Autumn 1989, pp. 447–461. 3. Penelope Hartland-Thunberg, “From Guns and Butter to Guns v. Butter: The Relation Between Economics and Security in the United States,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4, Autumn 1988, pp. 47–54. 4. See Theodore H.Moran, “An Economics Agenda for Neorealists,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2, Fall 1993, pp. 214–215, and Ethan Barnaby Kapstein, The Political Economy of National Security: A Global Perspective (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992), pp. 188ff. 5. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), and David P.Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony (New York: Basic Books, 1987). 6. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post–Cold War Era, 2nd Edition (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991), pp. 124–131, 241–248. 7. Buzan, People, States and Fear, p. 249, Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993), pp. 51–55. 8. Martin C.McGuire, “The Revolution in International Security,” Challenge, Vol. 33, No. 2, March/April 1990, p. 6. 9. The importance of the integration of capital markets as a structural constraint on the macroeconomic policy choices of the nations of the Atlantic economy has become increasingly noted. See Michael Webb, “International Economic Structures, Government Interests, and International Coordination of Macroeconomic Adjustment Policies,” International Organization, Vol. 45, 1991), pp. 309–342, Michael C.Webb, “Understanding Patterns of Macroeconomic Policy Co-ordination in the Post-War Period,” in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D.Underhill (eds.), Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), pp. 176–189, and David Andrews, “Capital Mobility and State Autonomy: Toward a Structural Theory of International Monetary Relations,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 2, June 1994, pp. 193–218. 10. See James Sperling, “America, NATO, and West German Foreign Economic Policies, 1949–89,” in Emil J.Kirchner and James Sperling (eds.), The Federal Republic of Germany and NATO—Forty Years After (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 168–172. 11. Those finding favor with macroeconomic coordination include Joceyln Horne and Paul R.Masson, “Scope and Limits of International Economic Cooperation and Policy Coordination,” IMF Staff Papers, Vol. 35, June 1988, pp. 259–296, Koichi Hamada, “A Strategic Analysis of Monetary Interdependence,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 84, No. 4, 1976, pp. 677–700, and The Political Economy of International Monetary Interdependence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979). For statements skeptical of such cooperation, see Patrick J.Kehoe, “Policy Cooperation among Benevolent Governments May be Undesirable,” Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 56, April 1989, pp. 289–296, Kenneth

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12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

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Rogoff, “Can International Monetary Cooperation Be Counterproductive?” Journal of International Economics, Vol. 18, No. 1 1985, pp. 199–217, Roland Vaubel, “International Collusion or Competition for Macroeconomic Policy Coordination. A Restatement,” Recherches Economiques de Louvain, Vol. 51, No. 3/4 1985, pp. 223–240. See Wayne Sandholtz, et. al. (eds), The Highest Stakes: The Economic Foundations of the Next Security System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Joanne Gowa, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and Free Trade,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 4 December 1989, pp. 1249–1253. Lawrence H.Summers, “Multilateral Assistance for Russia and the Other States of the Former Soviet Union,” Treasury News, LB 377, (Washington, DC: Department of the Treasury, 21 September 1993), p. 1. ERP figures drawn from Alan Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 94; figures for aid to the CEE states and former Soviet Union drawn from European Commission, G-24 Coordination Unit, Overview of G-24 Assistance, 1990– 1994, Brussels, 24 February 1995, WD 300. Calculations by author. See, for example, Jeffery Sachs, “Conditionality, Debt Relief, and the Developing Country Debt Crisis,” in Jeffery Sachs (ed.), Developing Country Debt and the World Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 276; and Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, “The Politics of Stabilization and Structural Adjustment,” in Sachs, Developing Country Debt, p. 264. Sachs, “Conditionality, Debt Relief, and the Developing Country Debt Crisis,” p. 277, Eduardo Borensztein and Peter J.Montiel, “Savings, Investment, and Growth in Eastern Europe,” IMF Working Paper (Washington, DC: IMF, June 1991), pp. 21–25, and Ishac Diwan and Fernando Saldanha, “Long Term Prospects in Eastern Europe: The Role of External Finance in an Era of Change,” Working Papers (Washington, DC: World Bank, June 1991), pp. 19–25.

CHAPTER 4

A Separate Peace? Economic Stabilization and Development and the New Fault Line of European Security Colette Mazzucelli

The only alternative is for us to think long term, and this means we have to sacrifice our present for our future. This is what is happening now in Hungary, and no matter which government is ruling—as long as its members are experts—people will suffer from social insecurity for at least another few years until we make up for the burdens of our past. But I believe that no matter how good things become in the future, people will always stay dissatisfied in some way because this is just the nature of humankind. ——Szenthe Orsolya, student at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences This chapter focuses on German and European Union (EU) economic diplomacy in the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as this diplomacy pertains to three key elements of change: (1) the objective of 73

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sustainable economic prosperity, (2) the quest for identity, and (3) the elusive goal of lasting security. The countries in the region are divided into the following groupings: the CEE six (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria); the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania); Albania; the former Yugoslavia; Slovenia; the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; Ukraine and Belarus. In view of its size and status in the international system, Russia is considered separately,1 as are the newly independent states (NIS). It should be underlined that the size of the geographical area covered and the diversity of the countries in this area makes an assessment of the type of aid given to different groupings of countries by Western donors more difficult.

German Economic Diplomacy, 1990–1995: Trying to Promote Regional Stability In the decades after World War II, an important aspect of the Federal Republic’s foreign policy was the use of its considerable economic means to further political objectives. This economic diplomacy is all the more relevant in the post–Cold War international system. In an increasingly multipolar world, geopolitical realities must be calculated alongside economic clout as the notion of security is redefined away from strict military considerations. Regional actors like the European Union (EU), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Mercado Commun del Sur of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay (MERCOSUR)2 play specific roles in the system while offering benefits and costs to their individual member states, which have chosen to pursue a course of collective action. The costs of unification limited German financial contributions to the countries of the CEE region in the period following the “year of miracles” in 1989. Prior to 1993, the inflow of assistance to the region in general and to specific countries like Poland and Hungary was higher, but increased taxes in 1994 to finance the modernization of the eastern part of the country and pave the way for the German economy to meet the Maastricht criteria on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) were a constraint on the Federal Republic’s overall contribution. It is necessary to view German financial contributions in the context of the national interests that motivate them: the achievement of German unity; the promotion of the free development of a region that includes

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many of Germany’s neighbors, several of which share a border with the Federal Republic; and the development of new markets for the German economy particularly in the new states.3 The last goal gains in importance as time passes. The volume of German foreign trade with the Central and Eastern European countries and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) for 1995 was DM 119.3 billion, of which DM 89.3 billion was with the Central and Eastern European countries and DM 30 billion with the CIS. The German export surplus with these countries for 1995 was about DM 2 billion. The comparison in terms of German trade during that same time period with France, DM 153 billion, or Italy, DM 107 billion, is noteworthy to consider. So is the fact that the dynamic of trade with the CEE countries has increased some 20% from 1994 to 1995 while trade with the CIS stagnates at present.

Security as Sustainable Economic Prosperity The Federal Republic of Germany’s financial support for the reform processes in the Central and Eastern European countries4 was a little over DM 50 billion for the period 1990–1995.5 This assistance included grants, credits, export guarantees, and transfer ruble balances. The last item consisted of funds owed to the former German Democratic Republic. 6 German contributions for reforms in the newly independent states reached almost DM 109 billion over roughly the same time period.7 Much of this was provided as credits and export guarantees. Another large portion was offered in the form of grants and free shipments of goods. A good deal of these funds were promised under the agreement made between Germany and Russia on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the five states of eastern Germany. The Federal Republic also spent a significant amount to promote the “economic and social reintegration of returning troops to the NIS. This also included housing construction for members of the NIS military forces.”8 In terms of the percentage share in total bilateral commitments to the six CEE countries during 1990–1994, Germany registered an impressive 23.6% as compared to 15.4% for the United States, 9.3% for France, and 7.8% for Japan. 9 Likewise the German percentage share in the total cumulated grant commitments to 11 post–Communist CEE countries during 1990–1994 was 9.2% compared to a total of 10.4% for other EU members. 10 For Germany and Austria “geographical proximity and common borders with the recipient region” are factors that determine

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bilateral allocation of assistance. Other considerations that come into play include: “prospects for future EU membership; historical links…; and strategic and cultural relations.” 11 The Assistance to Transition Survey 1995 points to the fact that the previous factors at times seem more important than assistance given to meet real needs, as indicated by the relative wealth of recipient countries. Clearly Poland and the Czech Republic have an advantage in terms of the support each country receives from the Federal Republic because both share a border with Germany. Yet, Germano-Polish and Germano-Czech relations each are weighed down by the burden of history. Hungary, on the other hand, shares no common border with the Federal Republic, but it does have the advantage of earlier experiments with market socialism in the 1980s and no historical baggage in Germano-Hungarian relations. The German percentage of contributions to EU-funded programs like PHARE (Poland and Hungary: Aid for the Restructuring of Economies) and humanitarian aid to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe was about 28% or almost DM 4 billion from 1990 to 1995. The bulk of PHARE funds were distributed for projects in private sector developments and enterprise support; education, health, training, and research; infrastructure (energy, transport, and telecommunications); environment and nuclear safety; and agricultural restructuring.12 However, an important consideration is that during the period 1991– 1994, the amount of official gross transfers from the German government to the new Länder increased steadily: DM 140 billion (1991), DM 152 billion (1992), DM 169 billion (1993), and DM 178 billion (1994). In the words of one government official, transfers to the new Länder have totaled about DM 20 million an hour since the first six months following unification. This level of assistance shows no signs of tapering off, given the insistence of trade unions in the new Länder to keep wages high, even though productivity standards and foreign investment are lower than in the West, and the fact that unemployment remains high in the eastern part of the country, a legacy of the former Communist regime.13 Even though the German percentage of the EU’s contribution to the CEE six during this same period was significant, statistics reveal that the level of assistance disbursements to these countries averaged $36 per capita in 1992 and around $30 in 1993. This is a poor comparison to the yearly average of $262 received by Ireland or $173 received by Portugal via the EU’s regional and cohesion funds14 to which the Kohl government makes a sizable contribution as a result of the agreements made at the Brussels European Council in February 1988. When asked why the funds

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given to the countries in the region are modest by comparison, the German reply is that in an effort to bring the eastern part of the country up to the standards of the its western half “charity begins at home.” 15 Furthermore, as a look at any map showing the transport links on the continent reveals, at least three cities in the eastern part of Germany are poised to become economic gateways to the CEE region: Berlin with its projected future links through Poland and Belarus leading directly to Moscow, and Dresden and Nuremberg, each with potential links to Prague leading on to Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and Istanbul.16 In order to achieve sustainable economic prosperity, the countries in the region require steady inflows of foreign direct investment and Western assistance that do not create so much debt that these countries cannot establish or maintain a positive balance-of-payments position. The Kohl government consistently argues against “the construction of a new economic wall dividing East and West.” 17 However, German goals of deepening European integration as a security guarantee and enlarging the EU are potentially irreconcilable. Unless integration among the existing member states deepens, the future enlargement to the East will threaten the EU’s existence as an influential actor in world affairs. This consequence would be detrimental in terms of security to those countries presently wishing to join the EU as well as to its present members, particularly Germany, which looks more than ever to multilateral fora to express its economic and political weight.

Security as a Quest for Identity For the countries in the CEE region, security and identity are linked in economic terms by the prospect of membership in Western institutions, namely the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Both organizations are viewed as a means to ensure economic modernization and acceptance in the Western community after years of isolation as Soviet “satellites.” As one of the staunchest supporters of EU and NATO enlargement, the Federal Republic of Germany also espouses a view of sovereignty that emphasizes sharing its powers as a federal state with the European institutions in Brussels. The traditional notion of sovereignty, which may be described as “what one has is what one keeps” is not that which most Germans, scarred by the legacy of World War II, care to espouse. Instead the notion of sovereignty as “what one has is what one shares”18 describes a European policy of enlightened self-interest

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that Kohl’s Germany aims to pursue. However, even in the post–Cold War environment the Federal Republic still faces a security dilemma of being “too big for Europe, yet too small for the world.”19 As Hedley Bull writes, “Throughout the history of the modern states system there have been three competing traditions of thought: the Hobbesian or realist tradition, which views international politics as a state of war; the Kantian or universalist tradition, which sees at work in international politics a potential community of mankind; and the Grotian or internationalist tradition, which views international politics as taking place within an international society.” 20 Whereas the Hobbesian view depicts international politics as “pure conflict between states” which resembles “a game that is wholly distributive or zero-sum,” the Kantian view emphasizes “transnational social bonds that link the individual human beings who are the subjects or citizens of states.” International politics is a “purely cooperative or non-zero-sum game.”21 In the Grotian tradition, “international politics expresses neither complete conflict of interest between states nor complete identity of interest; it resembles a game which is partly distributive but also partly productive.”22 Trade, or more generally speaking, economic and social intercourse between one country and another, best illustrates the Grotian view of international activity. Relations among states are “bound by the rules and institutions of the society they form.” The Grotian view does not represent “the overthrow of the system of states”; instead it advocates “the acceptance of the requirements of co-existence and cooperation in a society of states.”23 In post–Cold War Europe, the system of states is trying to adjust to the Grotian tradition of international politics. International economic institutions like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) provide a forum for states like the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to modernize their economies and learn the “rules of the game” of Western cooperation.24 Yet these countries’ desire for membership in the institutions of the European Union and NATO risks producing strife with their neighbors, which remain outside the “Rich Man’s Club,” but whose desire for an identity within the EU is as strong. Moreover, the dividing lines east of Poland are not as clearly drawn as some may think. Belarus and the Ukraine could conceivably belong to the EU in the future.25 The implications of this for relations with Russia are significant especially given Russia’s sensitivity about the role of these countries within its historical sphere of influence. Given Russia’s

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economic predominance within the Confederation of Independent States, a desire on the part of Belarus and Ukraine to join Europe could provoke discord. Clearly the interaction among states and institutions in Europe is modifying states’ behavior. For instance, a desire to keep the schedule for pre-accession negotiations on track was cited as a factor in the decisions by Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania to sign basic treaties improving their relations over ethnic minorities issues. This is the case even though the prospects for Slovakia and Romania are less promising in the first round of negotiations that began in early 1998. However, it is the rapport between Germany and Russia, and the impact of the discourse between them on the countries “in the middle,” that will provide the real challenge for institutions to shape the conduct of international relations in the next century.

The Elusive Goal of Lasting Security In terms of the future security of the continent, both Germany and France have invested the most capital in a project that may well become a symbol of the emerging European identity on the international scene, the Economic Monetary Union (EMU). While finance ministers and heads of state and government discuss the implications of introducing EMU in 1999 on governments, banks, multinational firms, and small companies, a key question remains: How does EMU impact on the future enlargement of the EU to the East?26 If security is defined by Germans as bridging the socioeconomic gap between the two halves of the continent, how does the potential achievement of EMU for a majority of the EU’s member states within the next 5 to 10 years mesh with the admission of new members for which it makes no economic or political sense to push for rapid entry into the EMU?27 The Maastricht convergence criteria, including a country’s budget deficit and public debt as a ratio of gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation and interest rates based on an average of the best three performers in the group of those that enter in the first round to establish the EMU, are set at strict levels to ensure price stability. This was a clear German priority from the start of the Maastricht process to negotiate a Treaty on Economic and Monetary Union.28 If the countries of Central and Eastern Europe focus on achieving these criteria instead of on long-term economic restructuring, their overall

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structural reform processes would suffer. Moreover, membership in the EMU takes away exchange-rate flexibility as an instrument of macroeconomic policy and forces economic and monetary policy to conform with that of the European Union. This would be risky as long as the CEE countries’ weak central banks and underdeveloped capital markets are struggling with the inflationary pressures and appreciating exchange rates that accompany large capital inflows.29 Instead of forcing new members of the European Union into “a potentially unsustainable fixed exchange rate to the euro,” a longer transition period in a more flexible Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) II would give these countries a chance to adjust to a stable exchange rate gradually, yet still be able to react to macroeconomic distortions with exchange-rate changes.30 However, even if economic prudence dictates, by remaining among that group of countries defined as “the outs” in relation to “the ins,” which are accepted into the first round of the EMU, these new CEE member states would raise an important political issue in an era in which security is increasingly geoeconomic. Clearly the struggle for current EU member states to meet the Maastricht convergence criteria is creating tensions among them. Questions are being raised about how the criteria will be interpreted as well as about how certain countries may be relying on gimmicks and creative accounting to meet 1997 targets when the decision on the first-round members will be made.31 As the French economy begins to shows signs of recovery, with predictions of 2.4% growth for 1997, German figures showing some 12.7% jobless in early 1996 stand out. Weak growth and high unemployment turn attention to whether Germany will in fact be able to reduce its budget deficit to the 3% of GDP outlined in the Maastricht criteria.32 The fact, and the efforts of Justice Paul Kirchhof to persuade the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe to uphold strict convergence criteria on the EMU, could raise legal questions that go beyond the court’s 1993 ruling that the EMU should be established with Germany participating as long as the Bundesrat and Bundestag approve the decision by a two-thirds majority vote. 33 In the words of Federal President Dr. Roman Herzog, the right of the Bundesrat and Bundestag to approve this decision is crucial to the tradition of parliamentary democracy in Germany.34 The fact that the new CEE member states may remain outside the EMU for decades to come along with several current member states of the EU may exaggerate the divisions between wealthier and poorer

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members. Clearly the Federal Republic is more oriented toward the Central and Eastern European region, whereas France and the southern member states focus on the Mediterranean. This further accentuates divisions within the European Union at a time when the definition of a pre-accession strategy by the EU toward the East is a necessary priority to achieve an enduring collective security system on the continent.

European Union Economic Diplomacy, 1990–1995: Trying to Elaborate a Strategy of Pre-accession The end of the bipolar division of the continent as well as the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and its sphere of influence in the “East bloc” countries called for a fundamental reconsideration of the European Community’s (EC) policy toward the region of Central and Eastern Europe. Programs such as PHARE, assistance from the G-24 countries,35 and the formation of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) each provided a source of support for reforms in the CEE region. The search for a more long-term strategy by the European Union, however, was initiated by the elaboration and negotiation of the Europe Agreements.36 Unlike the monies given to countries in the region by programs like PHARE, which at times wound up in the hands of consultants instead of financing needed projects, the rationale of the Europe Agreements was, simply put, “trade is better than aid.”37 However, from the perspective of the recipient countries, there is an asymmetry to the Europe Agreements. This fact, and the view from the East that the overall monies given to the region are negligible in terms of strategy formulation,38 show the extent to which the two halves of the continent differ in their assessment of the way in which such a strategy should be formulated.

Security as Sustainable Economic Prosperity The European Union’s policy toward the East, otherwise known as its Ostpolitik, relies on economic and trade relations to promote growth in the region. As the main trading partner of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the EU took in ECU 23 billion in exports from the region out of its total exports of ECU 29 billion to member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.39 The EU

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also exported ECU 30 billion to the CEE countries out of a total of ECU 39 billion from OECD countries. The growth of trade is also illustrated in terms of the 74% increase in exports to the EU from 1989 to 1993 by CEE countries and in the 120% increase in the CEE countries’ imports from the EU during that same period. In terms of aid and technical assistance, the European Union provided 57.5% of Western bilateral aid to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe between 1990 and 1993. During this early phase of economic reconstruction, the EU provided ECU 9.5 billion for grants out of a total of ECU 18.3 billion from the West as a whole. In technical assistance and investment support, the European Commission proposed that over ECU 7 billion be allocated to the PHARE program for the period 1995 to 1999.40 As a partner to Russia, Ukraine, and the newly independent states, the European Union was the recipient of nearly ECU 18 billion in exports out of a total of ECU 23 billion from these countries to OECD states in 1992 alone. In terms of imports by Russia, Ukraine, and the NIS, ECU 13 billion in products out of a total of ECU 19 billion from the OECD countries came from the EU. European Union aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States is also significant with the EU and its member states contributing ECU 54 billion out of a total of ECU 92 billion, or 59%. Moreover, in several different categories, the EU and its member states offer substantial assistance to the CIS: 45% of food aid, ECU 40 billion in export credits, 88% of strategic aid, and 40% of technical assistance via the Tacis program.41 In addition, the Tacis program gave hundreds of millions of ECU to Russia during the period 1992 to 1994. Projects include the restructuring of state enterprises, the promotion of private sector development, and agricultural and public administration reform, including “advice on how to create legislation as the basis for a democratic society.” 42 Aid for infrastructure development in the fields of energy, telecommunications, and transport is also a priority of the Tacis program. These last three fields are the same as those in which the European Union encourages the creation of trans-European networks to make the internal market function more effectively. The extension of these networks into the eastern part of the continent is intended to promote regional security by improving infrastructure. In the words of former Hungarian Foreign Minister Dr. Géza Jeszenszky, “it is important to consider the fact that historically the

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countries of Central and Eastern Europe belonged to a common economic area. The consequences of World Wars I and II have led to obstacles to regional cooperation in the form of closed border crossings and destroyed bridges. For instance, to go from Slovakia to Romania it is necessary to travel well into the Ukraine. A more direct route is not open. One of the biggest challenges for the security of the region is to reestablish these physical links in a shared and prosperous economic space.”43 One concrete example of this is the proposed reconstruction of a bridge connecting Hungary and Slovakia. In late 1996, the European Union announced it would donate $6.25 million out of its PHARE program to rebuild the Maria Valera Bridge. This bridge, destroyed during World War II, symbolizes the difficult relations between the two countries. 44 Despite the offer of financial assistance from the EU, two obstacles remain. First, there is a strong lobby in Slovakia against the restoration project. A segment of the elite and the populace in Slovakia still believes that if the bridge were restored Hungarian soldiers would cross over it and invade their country. Second, the reconstruction of the bridge could be delayed if the planning gets embroiled with the controversy over the Bös-Nagmaros Danube Dam. This dispute has been brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for settlement given the two countries’ inability to work out an agreement on their own.45 The dam project to divert a section of the Danube was started by Hungary and Slovakia under communism, but Hungary declined to continue with the construction project and later sued Slovakia for completing the dam. 46 Such interstate tensions in the region are real threats to security. Therefore, initiatives that promote sustainable economic prosperity as an instrument of security could include the use of the Danube to facilitate trade among the many countries through which it flows. On the other side of the coin, there is the use of the Danube as a tool of conflict prevention through regional cooperation.47 Both these ideas are firmly rooted in the functionalist tradition of international cooperation emphasizing horizontal socioeconomic ties that transcend state borders. The notion of functionalist cooperation is of particular relevance to Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS because of the long-standing animosities among peoples of diverse ethnic origins trapped within arbitrarily drawn state borders that do not necessarily correspond to their nationalist aspirations. There is an emerging consensus in the region that an identity for the diverse peoples living there must be, first and foremost, local or regional as well as European

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in order ultimately to overcome the interstate tensions that exist. It is in this definition of security that the European Union faces one of its greatest economic challenges to assist the CEE region and the Confederation of Independent States.

Security as a Quest for Identity The European Community’s initiative to negotiate the Europe Agreements in 1990 could be seen as much as a means to “create a new type of association agreement as part of the new patterns of relationships in Europe,” 48 as an initial step toward identifying the CEE countries in specific ways with the EC. As viewed from the EU, the Europe Agreements are “extremely wideranging in that they provide the framework for cooperation in the political, economic, industrial, trade, scientific, technical, environmental and cultural spheres.”49 In concrete terms, this means a political dialogue consisting of regular bilateral meetings and consultations at the highest political level between EC heads of state and government and CEE leaders; provisions for the “free movement of goods, including the progressive establishment of free trade in industrial goods; provisions on the other freedoms of movement, including movement of workers; approximation of legislation to make the laws of the Associate Member States compatible with Community law; dimensions of economic, cultural and financial cooperation;” and institutional arrangements, including the establishment of an association council in which yearly meetings among the EC and associate member state ministers could take place.50 From the vantage point of the CEE states, however, the desired objective of eventual membership in the European Community was not clearly stated at the outset. Second, although the Europe Agreements are enormously helpful in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to the countries of the region, there is still an asymmetry in favor of the EC in that trade liberalization in “sensitive” sectors like textiles, iron, coal, steel, and agriculture was slower at the outset for the EC. This resulted in a greater quantity of exports for the EC to the CEE states than imports by the EC from countries in the region. Third, there is a concern voiced in the region that there is no strategic interest on the part of the West in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike the Marshall Plan aid, which was strategic in nature, the Europe Agreements and financial

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assistance from the EU are viewed as useful only in tactical ways. Strategic aims are considered to be focused on Russia.51 The use of economic instruments as a means to promote a security policy for the continent must take into consideration the “common and contradictory interests among states, nations and social groups; (their) relations are marked by both cooperation and confrontation.” 52 In this context, “making sense of Europe” is more than explaining the complexity of the integration process to citizens of the EU or addressing the democratic deficit at the national and European levels. It is in the most fundamental sense an issue of using trade and assistance in key areas to make social groupings that transcend state borders in different regions of the Continent survive and forge a shared identity as Europeans.53 As the changing nature of trade relations throughout the continent bring about the growth of “the new superregions of Europe,” both cooperation and discord are probable within and across existing state borders. In the western half of the continent, a preoccupation with achieving the integration outlined on the internal agenda of the EU produces bargains and tensions among the member states. There is also discord, provoked by economic disparities, among diverse ethnic and geographical groupings within Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. There is likewise a need to define the essential points of a new debate to provoke a political renewal at the regional, national, and European levels. A debate that is a forum of expression for a society of states in the Grotian tradition has yet to emerge. This debate could serve the socioeconomic enrichment of Europe stirring motion like “a cyclotron accelerating ideas.”54 In the eastern half of the continent, there is the daily struggle against the dead weight of bureaucratic and social inertia after decades of communism, an inertia that offers little resistance against a mentality that things cannot change. So why accept individual or collective responsibility? Why not accommodate? Until now an epistemic community 55 strong enough to elaborate a strategy for the European Union to implement in Central and Eastern Europe has been lacking despite the steadily growing number of exchanges among EU and CEE officials and expert analysts outside the European institutions. From the vantage point of the CEE countries, it is necessary to underline the role of values in the debate. For many in the region, the real threat to their security is a renewal on the left end of the political spectrum, not the nationalism or radicalism of the right.56 This phenomenon is illustrated by the notion of the “old boys” returning to power, Communists with the

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morals and values of the old systems, like stale wine in new bottles. These leaders rely on a hierarchy of order that is vertical, not horizontal, one that requires absolute power and manipulation for political survival, not an understanding of markets and the rule of law. This is the world according to Hobbes, not Kant or Grotius. The real danger is that the “old boys” cannot lead or organize societies at the end of the twentieth century nor can they provide role models with which their peoples can identify. In part these countries’ desire to identify with the Western community represents a way of overcoming the loss of trust that state power under communism provoked within entire societies and individual families. During a presentation to Hungarian students in Budapest, Federal President Dr. Roman Herzog spoke of an identity for Europe in cultural terms.57 Students from Hungary’s oldest and most elite university, Eötvös Loránd Tudományi Egyetem (ELTE), asked the president about his thoughts on their prospects for employment and on the possibilities to use their skills and training in the changing economy of an integrated Europe. Clearly there is a necessity for the European Union to develop an economic strategy for the region that mitigates social differences. Societies of the twenty-first century will not protest these inequities by taking to the streets like their predecessors in the nineteenth century. Instead of “voice” they will choose “exit” by addicting themselves to drugs or turning to crime. The emergence of the most expansive network to date of organized crime across borders illustrates the seriousness of the threat to the security of the average citizen. Moreover, it is a threat that exists on a continental scale with the most deadly consequences in Russia and the NIS. Some analysts believe that there is a network of persons in key positions throughout the region with links back to Moscow.58 In this context, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe look to the EU for a clear signal stating that Russia is a factor capable of exploiting economic instability in the region. The identity of the CEE countries is defined by membership in the European Union.

The Search for Lasting Security The extent to which the EU has offered signs of eventual membership to the CEE countries can be assessed in a series of decisions taken at European Councils in Copenhagen, Essen, and Cannes. 59 Copenhagen agreed upon a conditional acceptance by the EU of eventual membership

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of the CEE countries given the existence of democratic institutions, functioning market economies, ability to accept the acquis communautaire, and the capacity of the EU to accept new members without endangering its own internal integration dynamic. Quicker market access for sensitive products from countries in the region was granted, as was a shift from bilateral to multilateral political dialogue between the EU and the CEE countries. In terms of PHARE assistance, up to 15% of its funds would be earmarked for projects related to infrastructure development.60 In spite of the overall agreement, it was clear that economic issues between the two sides were producing distributive bargains in a zero-sum game and that key member states including the Federal Republic believed that the hurdles for eventual membership were still quite high for the countries in the region. The Essen European Council, which concluded the German presidency of the council in December 1994, outlined a “pre-accession” strategy in the form of a “structural dialogue.” The core component of the structural dialogue was the establishment of conditions that would facilitate the functioning of the internal market in the wake of an enlargement to the East. These conditions included action taken by the EU to identify the most important parts of the acquis communautaire in order to assist the CEE countries with technical harmonization and sectoral alignment and the legal approximation of their national laws to internal market standards.61 From the EU’s standpoint, when the structural dialogue covers issues relating to the internal market, where it is especially important to improve the pre-accession strategy, and the preparation at the working level is done well, the results are usually appreciated on both sides at the higher political levels. However, when the dialogue occurs as part of meetings of the General Affairs Council, where the agenda is already overcrowded, then the results are not as satisfactory for either side.62 In the view of one political leader from the CEE countries, the structural dialogue at times resembles “structural monologues” where the associated member states have an “opportunity to deliver a speech.” The result is that “many parallel speeches are delivered without any real monitoring and follow-up.”63 The Cannes European Council in June 1995 produced an agreement on the White Paper, which, like the 1985 Cockfield Paper on the completion of the internal market, is organized on a sectoral basis. The White Paper covers “legislative acts and conditions for their application including the regulatory, supervisory and administrative structures required for implementation and enforcement.”64 The aim of the White Paper is to

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enable each associated member state to assess its own priorities and timetable for EU membership instead of fostering competition among them during the accession process. It is also meant to engender mutual trust among these countries and the institutions of the EU as the CEE states aim to approximate their own legal systems to internal market legislation in a transparent and effective manner.65 This approach to pre-accession offers the prospect of EU membership to a limited number of countries, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the Baltic states by the early years of the twenty-first century with an enhanced associate status for the other countries that remain in the outer circles. This is an incremental approach. Given the number of issues on the EU’s internal agenda and the ways in which its institutions and member states interact, it will be difficult to elaborate, in socioeconomic and geopolitical terms, a broader strategy toward the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, their quest for security in terms of economic prosperity and European identity remains in the face of what many in the region perceive to be an expansionist and unstable Russia. In the Hungarian language, the word ház (house) very closely resembles the word haza (homeland). In terms of meaning, there is also a similarity in meaning expressed in Hungarian between the house of one’s father and Europe as the broader homeland. The eloquent words of the poem by Mihály Babits (1883–1941) express this sentiment: Here is the room where I was born, the first place I saw Here is the garden where I built the first castles of sand… From here he steps into the wider homeland, where he feels at home in the same way: I looked on Rome with the respect of a son as though it were the city of my fathers, and Avignon laughed, like Tolna, bathing cheerfully in the same light, and one spirit embraced all from people to people, uniting distant lands in a living net: one spirit, one country from end to end, my self-castigating homeland: Europe.66

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By far the most visible threats in the daily lives of populations in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States are economic, as the transition from stabilization to development proceeds slowly or not at all, and psychological, as popular disillusionment mingles with feelings about questions of ethnic identity and the search for common values beyond the communist-capitalist ideological divide. Clearly the revival of nationalist, anti-European sentiment is most likely to occur where economic hardship is greatest and feelings of insecurity and isolation most pronounced. After decades of a bloc mentality, defined by the Cold War division of Europe, a structuring of attitudes is necessary to enable individuals in the East and the West, sitting around and not across the table, to recognize that a lack of fundamental economic resources sows the seeds of war, civil and interstate. One of the challenges of the next century, to which no military alliance can respond, is the recognition that “a separate peace,” in which security is defined in divisible parts, is the major fault line on the European Continent.

Notes 1. Business Central Europe, The Annual 1995/96 presents different country groupings with Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia each considered separately. 2. “Remapping South America,” The Economist, October 12, 1996, pp. 1–26, provides an excellent survey of MERCOSUR. 3. Interview, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Hungary, Economics Section, Budapest, October 21, 1996. 4. Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia are included in this group along with the “Visegrad” four, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States. Russia and the Newly Independent States (NIS) are in a separate category. 5. Interview, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Hungary, Economics Section, Budapest, October 21, 1996. 6. German Information Center, The Stabilization of Central and Eastern Europe (New York: GIC, April 1994), p. 1. 7. Interview, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Hungary, Economics Section, Budapest, October 21, 1996. 8. German Information Center, The Stabilization of Central and Eastern Europe, p. 2. 9. Institute for East-West Studies, Assistance to Transition Survey 1995, p. 28. These percentage statistics are taken from Figure 2.2. 10. Ibid., p. 29. These percentage statistics are taken from Box 2.4. 11. Ibid., p. 30.

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12. European Commission, PHARE Funding 1990 to 1994 (Brussels: Directorate General for External Political Relations, 1996), p. 5.2.1. The charts included give the overall breakdown of PHARE support by sector over a four-year period. 13. Interview, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Hungary, Economics Section, Budapest, February 26, 1997. 14. Institute for East West Studies, Assistance to Transition Survey 1995, pp. 40–41. 15. Interview, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Hungary, Economics Section, Budapest, February 26, 1997. 16. Daniel Michaels, “Reconnecting the Region,” Central European Economic Review, March 1997, p. 17. 17. Peter Van Ham, The EC, Eastern Europe and European Unity (London: Pinter, 1993), p. 179. 18. Interview, Delegation of the Commission of the European Union to the Republic of Hungary, PHARE Section, October 24, 1996. 19. General Hans-Henning von Sandrart, Comments made during the Security Policy Conference of the German Atlantic Association and the Hungarian Atlantic Council, November 15–17, 1996, Budapest, Hungary. The quote used by General von Sandrart was originally made by Dr. Henry Kissinger. 20. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 24. 21. Ibid., p. 25. 22. Ibid., pp. 26–27. 23. Ibid., p. 27. 24. BNA’s Eastern Europe, “Government Says Membership in OECD to Bolster Ties, Cut Borrowing Costs,” (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 1996), Vol. 6, p. 220. 25. Colette Mazzucelli, “The Future of the European Union and Implications for European-American Cooperation: An Interview with Secretary General Jürgen Trumpf, Parliamentary State Secretary István Szent-Iványi and Ambassador Carlos Westendorp,” ECSA Review, Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall 1996, p. 21. 26. “Bird-brained Debate,” Business Central Europe, October 1996, p. 28. 27. Ibid. 28. Colette Mazzucelli, France and Germany at Maastricht: Politics and Negotiations to Create the European Union (New York: Garland, 1997). 29. “Bird-brained Debate,” p. 28. 30. Ibid. 31. “Guess Who’s Coming to EMU,” The Economist, October 5, 1996, pp. 27–28. 32. “Germany Becomes Key to Success of EMU as France Signals Growth,” Wall Street Journal Europe, February 28–March 1, 1997, p. 2. 33. Matt Marshall, “German Judge Raises Prospect of Legal Test Delaying Start of EMU,” Wall Street Journal Europe, February 26, 1997, pp. 1, 5. 34. Comment made by Dr. Roman Herzog in response to a question asked by the author after an address given to Hungarian students at the Eötvös Loránd Universität, Budapest, February 26, 1997.

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35. At the time of its origin, the G-24 countries included the twelve members of the European Union, the six countries belonging to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey. Since then three EFTA states, Austria, Sweden, and Finland, have joined the European Union. Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland remain EFTA members. 36. Interview, Delegation of the Commission of the European Union to the Republic of Hungary, PHARE Section, October 24, 1996; Ulrich Sedelmeier and Helen Wallace, “Policies Towards Central and Eastern Europe,” in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds.), Policy-Making in the European Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 353. 37. Interview, Delegation of the Commission of the European Union to the Republic of Hungary, PHARE Section, October 24, 1996. 38. Interview, Dr. János Martonyi, Baker & McKenzie, Budapest, November 22, 1996. 39. Fraser Cameron, “The European Union’s Ostpolitik,” Paper presented at the ECSA Conference, Charleston, South Carolina, May 13, 1995, pp. 6–7. All figures quoted in this section are taken from this paper. 40. Ibid., p. 7. 41. Ibid. 42. Mazzucelli, “The Future of the European Union and Implications for European-American Cooperation,” p. 16. 43. Interview, Dr. Géza Jeszenszky, Budapest Institute for Graduate International and Diplomatic Studies, November 5, 1996. 44. András Doncsev, “Bombed Bridge To Be Rebuilt,” Budapest Sun, December 19,1996–January 8, 1997, p. A5. 45. Ibid. 46. László Deák, “Four Digressions on the Diversion of the Danube,” Paper presented during an ISDN videoconference panel, “Environment and Ethnicity in the Danube Basin,” between Budapest and New York for the International Conference, “Perspectives on Political and Economic Transitions after Communism,” Columbia University, February 28–March 1, 1997. This panel was organized by Civic Education Project (CEP) lecturers in Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania in conjunction with the Institute on East Central Europe (IECE), Columbia University. 47. Dr. Edita Stojic-Karanovic, “Toward Sustainable Security by Regional Cooperation,” Paper presented at the Conference Security and Disarmament in Europe—The Role of Inter-Governmental Institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations, Budapest, October 31–November 3, 1996. 48. Quoted in Sedelmeier and Wallace, “Policies Towards Central and Eastern Europe,” p. 367. 49. Cameron, “The European Union’s Ostpolitik,” p. 2. 50. The key elements of the provisions of the Europe Agreements are found in Sedelmeier and Wallace, “Policies Towards Central and Eastern Europe,” pp. 368–369. 51. Interview, Dr. János Martonyi, Baker & McKenzie, Budapest, November 22, 1996.

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52. Jan Stankovsky¯, “Economic Instruments of a Security Policy for Eastern Europe,” Perspectives, Winter 94/95, p. 83. 53. This is a theme taken up in Darrell Delamaide, The New Superregions of Europe (New York: Plume, 1995). 54. The notion is taken from “The European House in Budapest: A Brief Presentation,” a brochure published by Európa Ház, Budapest, October 1996. Miklós Barabás, director of the European House, provided this publication to the author. 55. Peter M.Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 1, Winter 1992, p. 3. 56. Interview, Dr. János Martonyi, Baker & McKenzie, Budapest, November 22, 1996. 57. Dr. Roman Herzog, “Deutschland und Ungarn—Partner für das neue Europa,” Address and remarks given to Hungarian students at Eötvös Loránd Universität, Budapest, February 26, 1997. 58. Interview, Dr. János Martonyi, Baker & McKenzie, Budapest, November 22, 1996. 59. The information in this section draws on Sedelmeier and Wallace, “Policies Towards Central and Eastern Europe,” pp. 372–383. 60. Ibid., p. 374. 61. Ibid., p. 381. 62. Mazzucelli, “The Future of the European Union and Implications for European-American Cooperation,” p. 16. 63. Ibid., p. 15. 64. Cameron, “The European Union’s Ostpolitik,” p. 4. 65. Ibid. 66. The lines from this Hungarian poem are taken from “The European House in Budapest, A Brief Presentation” (Budapest: Európa Ház, 1996).

CHAPTER 5

Transnational Threats and European Security Phil Williams and Paul N.Woessner

The Year 2005: A Projected Calendar of Events Monday, January 10: The mayor of Frankfurt finds a message on his email telling him to check a left luggage locker at the main railway station. He sends personnel from his office and finds that 200 grams of weaponsgrade plutonium have been left in the locker with a note telling him that if he wants to avoid a nuclear explosion in his city he needs to ensure that $150 million are deposited in a specified bank in the Cayman Islands. He is warned that if he approaches the federal government or law enforcement agencies, the threat will be implemented. After some considerable deliberation, the mayor decides to comply with the demands on the understanding that those making the threat will refrain from further extortion of Frankfurt in the future. Tuesday, February 15: A team of investigative journalists from Russia working in collaboration with CNN reveal that the new Russian government is little more than a front for large, powerful, well-organized crime groups that not only dominate Moscow but also have links with groups in other Russian cities as well as subsidiary operations outside the country. The symbiosis between criminals and bureaucrats that accompanied the transition to a market economy has become a wholly 93

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collusive relationship in which it is impossible to tell where government ends and the criminal world begins. Key members of the government and leading businessmen in Russia are reliably reported to be closely linked with leading criminal organizations, providing political protection for these organizations and benefiting from large payoffs and political support in return. The program in which all this is revealed sparks off a debate about how Western Europe and the United States should respond to what appears to be a compelling indictment of the new government. Wednesday, March 23: Intelligence reports reveal that Libya has developed a capacity to hit southern Europe with missiles that carry chemical weapons. It is believed that the Islamic government of the country has acquired an arsenal of over two dozen missiles armed with binary weapons. French and Italian foreign and defense ministers are particularly alarmed, but are unable to persuade their counterparts elsewhere in Europe of the need for economic sanctions. Saturday, April 2: In Britain an unknown cult organization (believed somehow to be related to the millennium) releases the Ebola virus on the London-to-Paris train. Several thousand deaths are reported throughout the south of England and northern France before authorities are satisfied that they have managed to contain the spread of the disease. Thursday, May 19: Three large financial firms in the city of London are forced to cease activities because their computer systems have been destroyed. Records have been wiped out and a variety of backup systems have also been compromised. At the same time, it is revealed that other companies have been making regular extortion payments for several years to anonymous criminal organizations in order to avoid a similar fate. Tuesday, June 7: A former Italian prime minister and the former head of the National Bank are placed on trial for their links with the Camorra and ’Ndrangheta, criminal organizations that in the mid- and late 1990s took over many of the activities that had been dominated by the Cosa Nostra until the clampdown by the Italian government and the clean-hands campaign of the mid-1990s. Wednesday, July 13: A huge banking scandal erupts in France, which, in the previous five years, had become a haven for money laundering by all sorts of terrorist and criminal groups. Although France had been a party to the activities of the Financial Action Task Force since its inception, it had failed to implement a series of FATF recommendations. French bankers had connived at money laundering activities that were generally believed to have a stimulating effect on the economy. Although these earlier episodes had resulted in a series of accusations about the

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banking system, these were not proven. This latest scandal, however, threatens to disgrace some of the most venerable French financial houses and banks, as well as extend to the senior levels of the French government. It causes a crisis of confidence not only in French banking institutions but also in the French government. Friday, August 5: An emergency meeting of European financial ministers is convened to discuss both the banking crisis in France and the massive problem of counterfeiting of European currencies, a problem that has become extensive. It is believed that the bills are printed in Lebanon and distributed throughout Europe by a large network of Nigerian criminals who had hitherto been involved in drug trafficking and credit card fraud. On the opening day of the conference the French minister of finance is called back to Paris, where he announces his resignation. After a few days’ delay, in which a new finance minister is appointed in France, the conference goes ahead on Tuesday, August 9 but does not yield a satisfactory response to either of the problems on the agenda. Sunday, September 18: One of Europe’s largest private security companies is alleged in press reports in Germany to have provided the hit men for a series of assassinations of prominent businessmen—in some cases the very people they had been hired to protect. Efforts to investigate this on a European scale, however, are stymied by stalemate in Brussels. Thursday, October 27: The Europol building in The Hague is destroyed by a large terrorist bomb coated with radioactive material. The perpetrators are unknown, but there is speculation that this is a retaliatory measure by “The Coalition,” a conglomerate of Russian, Italian, and Colombian criminal organizations that dominates criminal activity throughout the European Union, and is retaliating because of the pressure that had been put on it by law enforcement agencies acting on the basis of intelligence analyses supplied by Europol. Tuesday, November 1: A new drug hits the streets in Western Europe. It is a synthetic drug that combines the characteristics of both cocaine and heroin but is much more powerful—and immensely addictive. There are widespread reports of fatal overdoses. Among the victims are the teenage children of prominent members of government in both Belgium and Spain. Friday, December 30: The German chancellor who had been the leader of the efforts to reestablish law and order and public security in Europe is assassinated with a bomb. A series of events of this kind can easily be dismissed as, at best, enormously pessimistic and, at worst, wildly implausible. On closer

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inspection, however, it is clear that while the rapid sequence and overall constellation of these episodes is unlikely, the individual events, or something closely resembling them, are certainly not. Indeed, incidents have already occurred that could be regarded as direct precedents for some of these contingencies. The Tokyo subway chemical gas attack of March 20, 1995, by a bizarre cult known as Aum Shinrikyo (the Supreme Truth) in particular makes it impossible to dismiss these scenarios as the figment of an overheated imagination. So does the fact that Aum Shinrikyo was attempting to build nuclear, biological, and laser weapons and had sent some of its members to Zaire in an effort to acquire the Ebola virus. Nor is this the only event that provides what is likely to be a foretaste of things to come. The indictment of five-time Italian Prime Minister Andreotti for his apparent collusion with the Mafia, for example, suggests that patterns of corruption by organized crime are not only well established but can reach the highest levels of government. Further, the vicious attacks that the Colombian cartels launched on government and law enforcement agencies in the late 1980s and early 1990s indicate that criminal organizations have little compunction about resorting to largescale violence against their home state if this is deemed necessary to protect their illicit enterprises. Moreover, the emergence of Russian organized crime during the first half of the 1990s, and the growing links between Russian criminal organizations and those from Colombia and Italy, suggests that Europe will face an unprecedented criminal threat in the years ahead. In other words, although the sequence of events may appear to overdramatize or exaggerate the intensity of the challenge, in fact, it is little more than an extrapolation of current trends. A future Europe in which something occurs resembling the scenario for 2005 is likely to evoke considerable nostalgia for the Cold War. Yet, the Cold War for Europe was both the best of times and the worst of times, simultaneously highly dangerous and highly stable. The dangers stemmed from the division of Europe, the stark military confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and the possibility that any conflict in Europe would escalate into a full-scale nuclear war. At the same time, the very possibility of large-scale conflict of this kind imposed a degree of stability and order that was not fundamentally challenged. In post– Cold War Europe, the dangers are clearly much smaller. Yet they are in some respects more insidious, more pervasive, more difficult to detect, more difficult to avoid, and more difficult to counter. There is no equivalent of nuclear deterrence as a means of imposing stability in post–Cold War Europe. And while there are still potential dangers from the use of large-

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scale military power, the list of possible incidents offered in the 2005 scenario suggests that current and future threats come in many different guises, extend well beyond military power, emanate from a growing variety of actors, and are no longer linked inexorably to territory. Whereas historical threats have generally stemmed from the power of acquisitive states, the threats of the future are likely to stem from conditions in which state structures lack authority and legitimacy and are unable to contain either criminal enterprise or political disaffection within their borders. This emphasis on unconventional threats does not mean that more traditional threats can be ignored. Traditional geopolitics could all too easily come to the fore once again, with a competition for influence in Central Europe between a resurgent and assertive Russia, sensitive about the loss of empire, and a unified Germany seeking to translate economic power into political clout. There are also potential threats to Europe from the south. The most obvious is the development of long-range missile capabilities and weapons of mass destruction by states such as Iraq, Libya, and Algeria. As well as this direct threat there are also spillover threats: In the world of 2005, Europe could become an unusual oasis of stability in a world in which many states are crumbling, in which warlordism and disorder are rife, and in which migration flows are large and impossible to stop. While the war in Yugoslavia revealed that Europe is not immune to such tendencies, they are clearly much greater to the south and to the east. To expect that Europe can somehow remain immune to the consequences of widespread instability of this kind would be a mistake. In a world in which there is widespread anarchy and disorder, islands of stability become attractive targets. While recognizing the potential of both geopolitical and spillover threats, however, the focus of this chapter is less on conventional threats than the more novel challenges posed by terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations. The argument is that although the terrorism threat has been around for a long time, there are new dimensions to this threat that transform its potential scope and magnitude. Similarly, although some European countries—most especially Italy—have lived with organized crime for over a century, the threat posed by transnational criminal organizations is being transformed by the globalization of trade and finance, by technological developments such as global information and communication systems, and by the opening of borders. The other side of this is the emergence of new vulnerabilities in postmodern societies that are not always fully appreciated by those who have traditionally focused

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on military threats. The information revolution in particular means that security is no longer inextricably related to the protection of territory. Against this background, this chapter examines both the emerging terrorism threat and the emerging threat to security from transnational criminal organizations.

Terrorism and European Security Europe’s familiarity with terrorist threats goes back to the 1960s and 1970s and groups such as the Baader Meinhof gang and the Red Brigade. Europe also suffered to some extent from state-sponsored terrorism that was supported—although not always orchestrated directly—by states in the former Soviet bloc and several states in the Middle East. Indeed, it appeared in the 1980s in particular that the European Community states had learned to live with a high-level terrorism threat in the same way that the United States had learned to live with a high level of urban violence. The future, however, will not necessarily be like the past. Indeed, there are several dimensions of the terrorist threat of the twenty-first century that will be novel and distinctive and will pose a much more dramatic threat to European security than the terrorism activities of the 1970s and 1980s. Three dimensions stand out as particularly important: a much more varied and unpredictable set of terrorist groups; the likelihood that one or more groups will resort to weapons of mass destruction, crossing even more dramatically the threshold that was breached in Tokyo; and the emergence of “cyber-terrorism” as a distinct and major threat to economic and social life in Europe.

The Diversity of Terrorist Groups Terrorism has traditionally been linked with political causes such as Irish or Basque independence, and with political and military conflict in the Middle East. Political terrorist groups of this kind are likely to continue their activities, while at the same time being subject to a continuation of the fractionalization and factionalization processes that allow the emergence of new organizations with either more radical or more moderate agendas. Such splintering has long been familiar and has helped to increase both the number and diversity of terrorist organizations that governments have to contend with. In the future, however, the terrorist

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world is likely to become even more varied, as the traditional political terrorists are joined by groups whose allegiance to a political cause is less clear, whose targets are less obvious, and whose behavior is far less predictable. Groups that are not on the radar screen of intelligence or law enforcement agencies could quickly emerge as perpetrators of terrorist actions, as Aum Shinrikyo did in Japan. There are several kinds of groups that could become particularly significant in the future: 1.

2.

3.

Cult groups with nihilist philosophies, which, for reasons that might not always be clear, resort to violence against society. The difficulty with these groups is that they are unpredictable, the targets of their activity are not always obvious, and their rationale is difficult for outsiders including intelligence agencies to understand. The capacity to predict and forestall their activities, therefore, will be problematic at best. Such groups will often have low visibility, only being recognized as a problem after they have initiated a terrorist campaign. They will also tend to have radicalized, nihilist, and somewhat bizarre philosophies that may be closer to the ramblings of Charles Manson than to the more familiar tenets of radical Marxism or radical Islam. Aum Shinrikyo had some of these characteristics and, in some respects, could be the prototype for the terrorist threat of the twenty-first century. Although it might be difficult for other groups to emulate the wealth of Aum Shinrikyo (which was worth over $1.3 billion), variations of the bizarre philosophy that led to actions intended somehow to provoke war between Japan and the United States are rather less implausible. Right-wing neo-Nazi groups that go beyond attacks on immigrants to attacks on what they see as permissive, liberal, and weak states. Ironically, there is some comfort in the familiarity of neo-Nazi groups in Europe. They are seen in some quarters as disruptive rather than really dangerous fringe groups. Yet, it would not be surprising if they escalated the level of violence they employ, especially if there are further waves of migration to the European Union, sparked by war and instability to the south and east. Political groups that emerge as a reaction to the growing centralization of government and regulation in Brussels. The grievances of such groups would have less to do with their own governments than with the European Union bureaucracy. It is not inconceiv-

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4.

5.

able that they could ally with neo-Nazi groups or with the more traditional terrorist organizations seeking national independence. Their targets could well be the institutions of the European Union. Poverty-based groups that are concerned with attacking the symbols of wealth and power in a world in which the gaps between the “haves” and the “have nots” are increasing rather than diminishing, and is accentuated by a global media. Ironically, without the Marxist alternative that promised economic redemption, the main motive could well be the desire to highlight their plight and to ensure that greater efforts are made to alleviate it. At the same time, the desire for simple revenge on those who are seen as the exploiters could also become a powerful impulse. Among the most obvious potential targets are the key institutions of the global financial system and transnational corporations whose offices and personnel symbolize the kind of wealth that members of the indigenous population can hardly imagine, let alone attain. Kidnappings of personnel, bombings of banks, and attacks on corporate offices are likely to become even more common occurrences than they are at present, as the politically disaffected are joined in the terrorist ranks by the economically deprived. While much of the violence perpetrated by the radicalized poor is likely to take place in the developing world itself, it is certainly not inconceivable that some groups will take the fight to what they see as the heartlands of the oppressors—the United States, Japan, and the European Union. Criminal groups that resort to terror tactics in response to law enforcement crackdowns against them. The models here, of course, are Colombia and Italy. In both cases, the state ultimately prevailed against the criminal organizations, although not without considerable expenditures of blood and treasure. Even so, this is not a contingency that should be ignored, as a variety of criminal organizations continue to amass both power and wealth through their activities in Europe. Should there be a serious effort to disrupt the activities of these groups and to dismantle the organizations themselves, they are unlikely to “go quietly.”

None of this would be particularly alarming in itself were it not for the two other developments that are likely to transform the terrorist threat from something that is relatively easy to contain or absorb to a major

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threat to security, namely, the availability of weapons of mass destruction and the new vulnerabilities associated with information infrastructures.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Much has been written over the years about the possibility of nuclear terrorism or, alternatively, the prospect that terrorist groups might use chemical or biological weapons. The attack on the Japanese subway by Aum Shinrikyo, however, gave what had hitherto seemed alarmist predictions an unprecedented degree of credibility. As Bruce Hoffman noted, the attack breached a threshold that had hitherto been inviolate.1 Indeed, it was only through a mixture of luck and the sloppy implementation of the attack that fatalities were limited to 12 and that there were not vastly more than 5,000 people injured. Once breached, such thresholds can never be fully repaired. Consequently, it would be foolish to ignore the likelihood that terrorist actions will increasingly involve some kind of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, it is at this juncture that the collapse of the Soviet Union bears directly on future threats to European security. The collapse of the Soviet Union also led to the crumbling of the system of control over the nuclear infrastructure that had been maintained by the KGB. Although nuclear weapons seem to be under control, there have been continued diversions of radioactive material and an alarming growth of nuclear smuggling networks. Some observers have dismissed this as simply amateur smugglers dealing in radioactive junk as part of “get rich quick” schemes. This is understandable. The majority of known episodes have had this character, and there have been only five or six incidents involving “proliferation-significant materials.”2 The crucial point, however, is that diversions of nuclear material do not have to be proliferationsignificant to pose a threat to security. A variety of materials could be used to produce crude radiological weapons that would cause a significantly larger number of casualties than conventional weapons alone. In addition, if the target is a high-profile political or financial institution and the contamination is significant, then the disruptive effects could be much larger than those associated with traditional terrorist incidents. Some observers seem to feel that the problem has been alleviated. Certainly it received far less publicity during 1995 and 1996 than it did in 1994, when there were several cases in Germany and one in the Czech

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Republic involving weapons-grade materials. This can be attributed in part, however, to the sensitivities of the German authorities in the aftermath of the Munich sting operation of August 1994, when German intelligence agents engaged in a dangerous form of entrapment and knowingly allowed fissionable materials to be transported on a Lufthansa flight from Moscow to Munich. Even though there has been far less publicity about nuclear material trafficking, the diversions have continued. Indeed, according to a report by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German Federal Intelligence Service, the number of individual cases reported worldwide increased 36% from 1994 to 1995.3 Serious as this upward trend may be, it does not tell the whole story. If experience in drug trafficking and other forms of smuggling is anything to go by, then those nuclear smuggling cases that are detected or foiled represent only a small percentage of the total number of cases. Nor should the German experience necessarily be regarded as indicative of the broader pattern of nuclear material trafficking. While Germany is certainly one of the interim destinations for smuggled radioactive material, it is far from being the only one. In 1992 and 1993, there was a significant number of incidents in which materials went to Italy via Switzerland, while Austria has long been a favorite location for liaisons among nuclear material traders. Perhaps, most significant of all, however, is the fact that radioactive material going through the Caucasus or Central Asia has a far lower chance of being intercepted because of the lack of resources of the customs and law enforcement. To assume that nuclear material trafficking invariably takes the Western route could prove to be a serious mistake. Indeed, there have been enough reports about the involvement of Turkish groups in the clandestine trafficking of nuclear materials to suggest that the southern routes could ultimately prove to be far more important than the routes going West. This has serious implications both because of the proximity to rogue states and because of the potential links with terrorist groups. There is also a real possibility that Russian criminal organizations will become increasingly involved in the smuggling of nuclear materials, perhaps acting as suppliers for terrorist groups. Although nuclear material trafficking is certainly not a core activity of Russian organized crime, there is evidence that some criminal groups have been involved in smuggling. One such case, which may have involved members of the Solntsevo criminal organization, was reported in October 1994. According to the report by law enforcement authorities in Moscow, about a dozen individuals were arrested. It was also acknowledged that the group had a

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well-established division of labor for dealing with radioactive materials, which implies that they had some experience in this area of activity.4 In November 1996, after the arrest of a group of Sicilians and their German financiers, it was disclosed that they had been negotiating with a Russian criminal organization in an effort to acquire radioactive materials. 5 The attempt had been foiled only because Italian police had succeeded in infiltrating the Sicilian group. The implication is that it would be wishful thinking to expect that Russian criminal organizations will eschew nuclear material trafficking as “beyond the pale of acceptable behavior.”6 As one well-informed analyst has noted, “While some groups and individuals may find the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction abhorrent, others do not. History disproves the notion that certain misconduct is taboo even for organized crime syndicates. Money talks louder than ethical strictures. It is worth recalling it was once a widely held belief in the United States that organized crime would not deal in narcotics.”7 There is still, of course, a significant gap between organized crime groups acting as suppliers of nuclear material and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by terrorists. It is certainly not inconceivable, however, that terrorist groups intent on large-scale destruction will be able to acquire sufficient material to cause significant destruction. Moreover, there is a real possibility that such materials will be used not for terrorist actions but as the basis for large-scale extortion. The mayor of Frankfurt scenario, described at the outset of this chapter, could become all too real in what is increasingly likely to be an era of mercenary terrorists. Loss of state sponsorship has already encouraged terrorist groups to engage in criminal activities in order to provide the financial means to pursue their political agendas. Nuclear extortion by terrorist groups would simply be a logical extension of this process. Chemical and biological devices are also likely to be an increasingly important part of the terrorist arsenal whether for actual or threatened use. With plans for constructing such weapons available on the Internet, the widespread availability of dual-use materials offers unprecedented opportunities for terrorists: “The same technologies and organisms that are used to produce pesticides, solvents, vaccines, medicines, and even beer can easily be diverted to produce chemical and biological weapons.”8 In other words, the opportunities are now widely available. Some observers take comfort from the belief that terrorist groups are unlikely to initiate actions likely to undermine any sympathy that might be developing for their cause. If this consideration suggests that the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat from traditional terrorist groups might not be as

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great as sometimes claimed, it says nothing about some of the newer participants. If, as suggested earlier, the terrorist world is becoming increasingly diverse and less predictable, then the prospects for a rational calculation and self-restraint are likely to diminish significantly. This is evident not only in the chemical gas attack on the Tokyo subway, but also by the placement by Chechen rebels of a radioactive device in a Moscow park, and the use of radioactive materials for personal vendettas in several somewhat bizarre cases of murder and attempted murder in the former Soviet Union. In the fall of 1995, Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader, threatened to carry out terrorist acts using radioactive substances. On November 23, a container holding radioactive cesium-137 was unearthed in Moscow’s Izmailovskii Park. Basayev said there were four containers (each weighing 32 kg with cesium inside) on Russian territory, all wrapped in TNT. The containers were to be exploded if “active combat operations” resumed in Chechnya. 9 Although this threat was not implemented, the discovery of the container with cesium once again suggested that the inhibitions on using even very crude weapons of mass destruction are eroding. The implication of all this is that, over the next 10 to 15 years, for Europe to avoid a terrorist incident involving weapons of mass destruction, it will have to be very lucky indeed.

The Emergence of Cyber-Terrorism Another novel but increasingly important dimension of the terrorist threat to the countries of the European Union concerns the possibility of “cyberterrorism,” that is, attacks on the European information infrastructure. In a sense, information infrastructures are one of the great strengths of postmodern societies such as those of Japan, Western Europe, and the United States. Sophisticated computerized information and communication systems have become a key factor in the development of competitive financial systems as well as the development of more sophisticated military weaponry. Along with increased sophistication, however, has gone an increased dependence—and, therefore, an increased vulnerability. Technology has been embraced enthusiastically and with insufficient attention to network vulnerabilities. In Europe, as in the United States, the information infrastructure is used to control a variety of activities that are essential to the functioning of the economy and society: electrical power grids, transportation systems, banking transactions, and the health-care system, as well as many commercial enterprises. As dependence upon

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linked communication and information systems has grown, the possibility that these systems will be compromised or disrupted has become more salient. Indeed, the information infrastructure has become a very tempting target. Nor should potential attacks on this infrastructure be dismissed as simply tampering with information and communication systems. Cyberterrorism, as Barry Collins has suggested, is a misnomer in that the consequences are not limited to the world of cyberspace but occur in the physical world.10 Particularly significant are the junctures where the virtual and the real meet. Tampering with data and software in the virtual system could have major repercussions in the physical world, involving such things as automated computer-controlled pharmaceutical or food production and the computerized financial transactions that have become indispensable to the functioning of global banking and finance. Indeed, the disruption of the systems that facilitate national and global financial transactions, stock markets, air traffic control, the collection of taxes, the operation of social security, let alone key components of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement infrastructures; could have far-reaching effects on the ability of societies and governments to function effectively.11 In short, the information infrastructures of postindustrialized states offer both new targets for attack and new instruments through which terrorist attacks can take place. In the future, the logic bomb rather than the conventional bomb may prove to be the terrorist weapon of choice. This is all the more likely because the capacity to initiate such attacks is relatively easy to obtain. The growth of computer literacy has resulted in a form of individual empowerment that although enormously beneficial to society can also be exploited for malevolent purposes. A RAND report made the same point in a different way when emphasizing the low entry costs of engaging in offensive strategies in cyberspace. “The price to develop a high-performance Information Warfare capability is low and is available to a wide range of participants. Unlike previous highperformance weapons technologies, new potential information warfare weapons can be developed by skilled individuals or groups residing anywhere within the Global Information Infrastructure.”12 One person with a computer, a modem, and the requisite knowledge and skills has the capacity to wreak considerable havoc on national and global information systems, even those that have security mechanisms and fire walls. Moreover, for terrorist organizations, attacks on the information infrastructure have the advantage that they can be initiated from a distance, incur a very low level of risk, and offer a high level of anonymity.

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Transnational Organized Crime and European Security The threat from transnational criminal organizations overlaps with that from terrorist organizations but is perhaps even more serious. Transnational criminal organizations pose challenges to national sovereignty, to individual members of society, to societies themselves, to the rule of law, to the effectiveness of some international norms and conventions, and to the viability and integrity of their home states. Their linkages with terrorist organizations, their exploitation of civil wars and ethnic strife, their extensive use of violence and corruption, and their readiness to traffic in a wide range of products all underline the fact that they are no longer simply a law enforcement problem. Indeed, European security is also likely to be seriously jeopardized by the activities of its indigenous criminal organizations, such as the Italian Mafia, as well as criminal networks based in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

The Threat to State Integrity Transnational criminal organizations can be regarded as the AIDS virus of the modern state. While they tend to be most pervasive where the state is already weak, transnational criminal organizations perpetuate that weakness using a mix of corruption and violence. Although they use these tactics to a degree in their host states, their main efforts are directed at their home states in an effort to ensure that this remains a safe haven. The consequences are insidious. Just as the AIDS virus breaks down the body’s immune system, powerful criminal organizations break down the defense mechanisms of the state. Using corruption and the infiltration of licit institutions, they create conditions that enable them to operate with impunity. In some cases, criminal organizations are able to extend their networks into law enforcement institutions, thereby neutralizing and undermining control efforts. The capacity of criminal organizations to spread corruption can also distort the purposes that the state is supposed to serve. At worst, the state can become the servant of the criminal organization, placing the needs and desires of the criminal leaders above the needs of the citizens. This emphasis on the insidious rather than overt nature of the threat is not to deny that in some cases organized crime has initiated a direct assault on its home state. While the assault of the Medellin Cartel on the

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Colombian state is perhaps the most blatant example, the Cosa Nostra in Italy did something similar through much of the 1980s and the early 1990s. In both cases, the criminal organizations challenged the state monopoly of violence and inflicted a level of harm exceeding that resulting from the activities of most terrorist groups. In Italy, though, the Mafia assault proved counterproductive, creating a major backlash that galvanized and sustained an unprecedented counterattack by the state. With the arrest of top Mafia leaders and the continued efforts to eliminate corruption, it appears that the state has emerged victorious. This assessment is reinforced by reports that organized crime in Italy is experiencing a contraction of its profits and an unprecedented expenditure of resources. Yet, the Cosa Nostra should not be written off. It has a vast network of transnational connections and activities that help cushion against domestic reverses. Moreover, patron-client relations are so deeply embedded in Italian political life that new political affiliations are likely to be created to replace the symbiotic relationship with the Christian Democrats that the Cosa Nostra enjoyed for much of the postwar period. Moreover, according to one report the Cosa Nostra has “taken two important steps to protect itself: it has established new procedures to limit what any single mobster knows about the organization, and it has forged new ties with Italy’s other major organized crime gangs.”13 This latter development has been characterized as “the syndication of Italian organized crime, a form of internal pax mafiosa directed at maximizing profit and minimizing conflict.”14 There also appears to be a consolidation of linkages between Italian criminal organizations and other groups. The connection with the Cali Cartel in the first half of the 1990s was certainly instrumental in expanding the cocaine market throughout Western Europe, while growing linkages with Russian criminal organizations could prove extremely valuable in the future—especially if the Russian state, unlike its Italian counterpart, is unable to mobilize sufficient resources to contain the threat from indigenous criminal groups. There is a distinct possibility that in Russia, large and powerful criminal organizations will, in effect, become a shadow government, exerting control from behind the scenes. The old symbiotic relationship between the state apparatus and the black market criminals—a relationship that was essentially under the control of the state in the Soviet era—has been replaced by a new symbiotic relationship dominated by the criminal organizations themselves. It is not too large a step from this to the emergence of a criminalized state. The problems this would pose for European security are very real. Efforts to integrate Russia

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into the global economic system would have to be reconsidered, while the implications for control of the Russian nuclear arsenal and the nuclear material inventory are chilling. With Russia as a home base for criminal organizations that are extending their reach and influence into Western Europe, as well as a potential safe haven for non-Russian groups, the challenge to the European Union is likely to grow substantially. Even if European Union members are able to overcome the existing obstacles and harmonize national legislation against organized crime and drug trafficking, so long as the criminal organizations have “sanctuaries” from which to operate with impunity, then they will pose a major challenge to the member states. When the famous bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied that that was where the money was. For the same reason the European Union members are likely to be the targets of intensified organized criminal activity that emanates from the former Soviet Union.

The Threat to Civil Society In considering the threat to security, it is not only traditional state security that has to be considered but also civil society and individual well-being. One component of the threat to societies is drug trafficking. Peddling a product that creates its own demand, drug trafficking organizations have developed sophisticated marketing techniques that target new customers as well as habitual users. Moreover, the illicit drug industry is extremely innovative, and in the years ahead greater emphasis is likely to be placed on synthetic drugs, irrespective of their impact on the psychological and social health of those who consume them. Drug trafficking also creates higher levels of violence within society. Some of the violence comes from those under the impact of illicit drugs. In other cases, violent crimes are perpetrated by those seeking money to feed their habits. A third form of drug-related violence is that stemming from competition among drug traffickers themselves. As if these adverse consequences for society were not sufficient, they are compounded by lost productivity, which in many societies has significant implications for economic competitiveness, as well as substantial costs in terms of health care and law enforcement. Even when they are not trafficking in drugs, transnational criminal organizations still introduce a higher level of violence into the societies in which they operate. On some occasions innocent citizens are inadvertently caught in violent exchanges and become the casualties of internecine

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warfare or succession struggles. In other instances, licit businessmen become the victims of extortion attempts by criminal organizations. Perhaps the most serious threats to individuals, however, come from those organizations that engage in what might be termed “human commodity trafficking,” especially the abuse of women and children through sexual slavery for profit. 15 The sex trade has long been a staple of organized criminal activity. Most recently, it has involved the trafficking of women from Central and Eastern Europe to work as prostitutes in Holland and other Western European countries. At the most fundamental level, human commodity trafficking of this kind is a gross violation of human rights and the essential dignity of human beings. When it involves the systematic abuse of children it is among the most heinous of crimes. And insofar as security depends on the maintenance of a safe and secure environment in which citizens can exercise their right to life and property without fear of violence, intimidation, or the danger of sexual slavery, then it is clear that transnational criminal organizations pose both direct and indirect threats to individual security. These threats may be a long way from traditional military threats to national security, but for the victims they are far more immediate than scenarios devised by military planners.

The Threat to Financial Systems Transnational criminal organizations also pose a threat to the integrity of financial and commercial institutions. Yet the nature of this threat is rarely enunciated with sufficient care. Although the possibility that transnational criminal organizations might attempt to disrupt the European nodes of the global financial system cannot be excluded, especially if these organizations are placed increasingly on the defensive, the real threat is less one of destruction or disruption than it is of exploitation. Criminal organizations want to maintain the existing system while ensuring that they can continue to exploit its multiple points of access, its capacity for rapid and anonymous money transfers, and its lack of transparency—all of which facilitates the laundering and transfer of the profits from their illegal activities. Yet if the amount of money that is laundered through the global financial system is large in absolute terms, it is minuscule when compared to the sheer volume of financial transactions occurring on a daily basis. The real danger is elsewhere. In order to facilitate criminal dealings with the “upperworld,” and especially the laundering of illicit

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profits, co-opting of financial officers is a favorite tactic. The infiltration of the banking system and other parts of the financial sector in this way is particularly troublesome, as it encourages a level of corruption that could ultimately create a crisis of trust in financial institutions at the national, the European, and the global levels. Another danger is that the mobilization and targeting of criminal capital will have seriously damaging consequences in particular sectors or on specific firms. The liquidity of their capital base allows front companies for criminal enterprises to engage in unfair competition that facilitates the extension of criminal influence throughout the economy. While such dangers are particularly obvious in states in transition and developing states, even the states of the European Union are not immune.

The Prospects for Large-Scale Extortion Closely related to the threat to financial institutions and national and regional economies from infiltration and corruption are the threats to information infrastructures from organized crime. The threats here overlap with those from terrorist organizations but are more likely to involve extortion than the implementation of disruptive or destructive actions. The logical development of the growing sophistication of transnational criminal organizations and the growing reliance of business and governments on computerized information and communication systems is the recruitment of skilled computer hackers by criminal organizations. This may well already have occurred. In mid-1996 there were reports in the Sunday London Times that since 1993 there had been over 40 attacks of this kind in London, New York, and other European banking centers and that around £400 million had been handed over to the extortionists. Several financial companies in Britain had met extortion demands in order to prevent the disruption or destruction of their computerized information systems. 16 Three of the extortion cases apparently occurred in January 1993. In the first, trading ceased at a brokerage house after a threat was followed by a computer crash. Ten million pounds was apparently paid to the extortionists via a bank account in Zurich. In the second, a blue-chip bank paid over £12 million after receiving threats to its computer systems, and in the third £10 million was handed over. Another episode occurred in March 1995, when a defense firm paid £10 million to prevent implementation of a threat to computer and information systerns.17 “In all four incidents, the

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gangs made threats to senior directors and demonstrated that they had the capacity to crash a computer system. Each victim conceded to the blackmailers’ demands within hours, and transferred the money to offshore bank accounts, from which it was removed by the gangs within minutes.”18 Although there is difficulty confirming not only the details of these episodes but also the overall veracity of these reports, extortion episodes of this kind are certainly within the realms of plausibility. In fact, their absence would be more surprising than their occurrence. If threats to destroy computerized information systems are one form of extortion, another is related to the nuclear material trafficking issue discussed earlier. The most likely contingency here is that the threat from crude radiological devices will be used against corporations or cities, and perhaps even governments, not for political purposes but for financial gain. If criminal organizations become increasingly engaged in nuclear material trafficking and do not find ready buyers, then one possibility is that they will simply discard the material, something that poses a serious danger of environmental contamination. An alternative is that they will be tempted to use the material in their possession for extortion. Once again, there are precedents with several reported incidents of extortion attempts involving nuclear or radioactive materials. In 1993, police were informed that four Eastern Europeans were intent on blackmailing the Bonn and Vienna governments by threatening to release radioactive materials. A device was apparently to be exploded as a demonstration, and subsequently governments would be required to meet certain financial demands for details about the locations of similar weapons.19 In another reported case in 1993, a group of people from the CIS and the Czech Republic, having failed to sell radioactive material in Austria, allegedly became “involved in the construction of warheads that release radioactive substances when they explode. These bombs were said to have electronic timers and were to be used to blackmail Western governments. It was planned to place the bombs in five different locations, mainly in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.” 20 Once again, the threats did not materialize. A more plausible threat occurred in November 1993, when the Munich State Criminal Police Office discovered two computer diskettes threatening to set off nuclear explosions in Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. The blackmailer wanted a lotto jackpot. He demanded a manipulation of the winning jackpot number; a certain combination of figures was to secure him a win of DM 100 million. The police took this case seriously and undertook an investigation because the diskettes contained “a huge

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amount of inside information.” However, the ultimatum expired without any further communication from the offender.21 In August 1994 in Switzerland, a blackmail attempt involving radioactive material was uncovered. According to the authorities, an individual was threatened with unidentified substances that, after having been examined, turned out to be radioactive. 22 According to the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), during 1994 a casino, bank, and a hypermarket were all targets of extortion by people threatening radioactive pollution. 23 As with the instances of cyber-extortion, details of these episodes tend to be rather sketchy, not least because of the fear that publicity might encourage imitation. Nevertheless, they could well be a foretaste of things to come.

Conclusions The implication of all this is that transnational criminal organizations, along with terrorist organizations, pose novel but potentially very serious threats to European security. As well as adding a degree of turbulence to domestic politics, and challenging the normal functioning of government and law, these organizations pose a threat to information systems and to the effective functioning of financial and commercial institutions. As transnational actors, they are growing in power and influence and could become one of the most serious threats to national and international security in the next century. A European security agenda that ignores these threats would be dangerously incomplete. This should not be surprising. Security is a dynamic concept and is related both to vulnerabilities and to the possibility that certain kinds of actors will exploit these vulnerabilities. The implication of the preceding analysis is that the geopolitical changes associated with the end of the Cold War as well as the processes of globalization in trade, technology, financial, communications, and information systems have created a synergy between new vulnerabilities and new kinds of transnational actors willing and able to exploit them. As suggested earlier, the threats are very different from the security challenges of the Cold War. Yet the fact that they are embedded not in the formal structure of international relations, but in transnational and subnational developments actually makes them less manageable. They demand innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, greater sensitivity to new forms of vulnerability, a willingness to form publicprivate partnerships to establish more effective safeguards, and a readiness

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to combine law enforcement expertise and national security intelligence to a degree that is unprecedented. Moreover, there is a clear and present requirement for a series of complementary measures aimed at the prevention, control and absorption of these threats. Without both an overarching strategic framework that encompasses such measures and a serious effort to implement them, Europe will be a vulnerable and lucrative target for transnational criminal and terrorist organizations.

Notes 1. Quoted in Staff Statement, “Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo,” Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs United States Senate, 104th Congress, First Session, Part I, October 31 and November 1, 1995, p. 47. 2. This is the term used by William C.Potter, “Before the Deluge? Assessing the Threat of Nuclear Leakage from the Post-Soviet States,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 25, No. 8, October 1995, p. 8. For a broader overview and assessment of the nuclear material trafficking problem see Phil Williams and Paul Woessner, “The Real Threat of Nuclear Smuggling,” Scientific American, January 1996, pp. 40–44. 3. Jürgen Marks, “Basar des Schreckens,” FOCUS, No. 30, July 22, 1996, p. 28. 4. Grigoriy Sanin and Nikolai Kopeikin, “Rossiyskim uranom torguiut optom i v roznitsu,” Sevodnya, October 19, 1994, p. 7. The authors are also grateful to Guy Dunn for his insights on this issue of organized crime involvement in this particular episode. 5. Dmitriy Polunin, “Plot to Smuggle Uranium from Russia Foiled,” ITAR-TASS, November 25, 1996. See FBIS-SOV-96–229. 6. John F.Sopko, “The Changing Proliferation Threat,” Foreign Policy, No. 105, Winter 1996–1997, pp. 3–20 at p. 7. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p. 9. 9. See Daily Report: Central Eurasia, “Basayev’s Threat of Nuclear Terrorism Assessed,” FBIS-SOV-95–163, August 23, 1995; Penny Morvant, “Radioactive Container Unearthed in Moscow Park,” OMRI Daily Digest, No. 229, November 27, 1995; and Daily Report: Central Eurasia, “Basayev’s Recent Remarks Cited,” FBIS-SOV-95–226, November 24, 1995. 10. The comments by Barry Collins were made at a conference on “Terrorism and the New World Disorder” organized by the Office of International Criminal Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago on August 9, 1996. 11. Ibid. 12. Roger C.Molander, Andrew Riddile, and Peter Wilson, Strategic Information Warfare: A New Face of War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1996) p. 15. 13. Alan Cowell, “Italians Voting, with Mafia a Top Issue,” New York Times, March 27, 1994, p. 10. 14. Alison Jamieson, “The Transnational Dimension of Italian Organized Crime,” Transnational Organized Crime, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1995, pp. 151–172.

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15. For this term see Transnational Organized Crime: A Capstone Report (University of Pittsburgh, Ridgway Center, April 1994). It was coined by Lina Calderon, Sheryl Pinnelli, and Erin Crowe. 16. Insight, “City Surrenders 400M Pounds to Gangs,” Sunday London Times, June 2, 1996, p. 1. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Daily Report: West Europe, “Further Reportage on Nuclear Smuggling; Attempts at Nuclear Blackmail,” FBIS-WEU-94–164, August 22, 1994. 20. Daily Report: West Europe, “Report on Nuclear Smuggling Published,” FBISWEU-94–175, September 8, 1994. 21. Ibid. See also “Attempts at Nuclear Blackmail,” Daily Report: West Europe, “German BND Warns Against Nuclear Terrorists,” FBIS-WEU-94–026, February 1994. 22. Daily Report: West Europe, “Federal Police Confirm Radioactive Blackmail Case,” FBIS-WEU-94–166-A, August 21, 1994. 23. Daily Report: West Europe, “BKA: Serbian Terrorists Planned Nuclear Attack” FBIS-WEU-95–035, February 20, 1995.

PART 2

Principal Players

CHAPTER 6

France’s Security Policy since the End of the Cold War Axel Sauder

During the Cold War France formulated, perhaps with greater consistency than any other member of NATO, a clear conceptual framework for its security policy. 1 This framework can be traced back to a specific understanding of international relations 2—one might call it the realist paradigm—that in turn is firmly rooted in a political culture emphasizing the preeminence of nation-states and their sovereign rights. French security doctrine was organized around the core principle of decisional autonomy and the need for an independent defense capacity. Of course, this did not make military cooperation with other states impossible but rather limited its scope. Military integration, as in the military structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which France left in 1966, was considered politically illegitimate, because in the eyes of French policymakers it tended to dilute the member-states’ fundamental responsibility for the defense of their citizens. However, French security doctrine was equally adapted to the specific context of the Cold War. It responded to a clear Soviet threat by a qualified commitment to NATO, while maximizing political influence and status through its claim to pursue an “independent” security policy. This overall framework has all but disappeared since the events of 1989–1990. Like the Atlantic community as a whole, France has had to 117

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adapt to an altogether new political and strategic environment. There is no more massive threat, but rather an array of limited and more diverse risks to the European Continent and in adjacent regions. Small wonder that this new configuration of risks requires fundamentally different armed forces from those built to the requirements of the pre-1989 era. At the same time, international cooperation is more necessary than ever while the basic rules of military cooperation within the Atlantic alliance are beginning to change. Politically, the more diverse and less threatening character of current security challenges has made alliance cohesion more difficult to achieve. A related factor is the clear possibility of a declining American involvement in European matters at a time when the European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) remains weak both in theory and in practice. There are both deep-rooted features of continuity in the French doctrine and a pressure for radical change in France’s overall strategy, defense policy, and armed forces. Hence the sweeping reforms undertaken in 1995–1996 under the newly elected President Jacques Chirac. The aim of this chapter is to analyze how France has dealt so far with these conflicting pressures. It will argue that, while France has gone a long way in adapting herself to a changed political and strategic environment, its government has not called into question the basic conception of its security policy, which is still characterized by a quest for maximum political and military autonomy even though French policymakers openly acknowledge that the country needs the support of its allies in most military contingencies.3

Gaullism Between Principle and Pragmatism In the first decade after World War II there emerged a French model of an independent security policy. It was most forcefully articulated by General Charles de Gaulle after he resumed power at the head of the Fifth Republic—and is therefore referred to as Gaullist doctrine—even though the basic concepts are much older. 4 At the heart of France’s traditional conception of defense lies the nation-state, the very political legitimacy of which depends on its ability to protect its citizens, externally from foreign invasion, internally from civil conflict and violent unrest. States cannot share their sovereignty in defense matters, lest they put this legitimacy at risk. 5 This principle is at the root of France’s unitary political culture, which historically favors a concentration of power over a system of checks and balances. The sharing of sovereign rights is almost

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impossible in internal politics, and is even more difficult to achieve when it involves non-national actors. In other words, nation-states must strive to maintain an autonomous defense capability and to provide for security through national endeavors rather than international cooperation. An order of guaranteed international peace and security would, in Gaullist eyes, not be possible in any case. In a world where all states claim sovereignty, there can by definition be no power above the states that could guarantee security to any degree approximating the states’ capacity to guarantee civil peace within their borders. In an environment of international anarchy, states therefore must not become dependent on allies for defense. They may, of course, cooperate with others, but allied assistance cannot be taken for granted. In this fundamentally insecure environment, power and influence depend to a large extent on the degree to which a state is able to defend itself, so military independence is for that reason seen as a necessary condition for political influence. If France wanted to play a role on the world stage, de Gaulle concluded, it would have to be as independent as possible from the need for outside—in the context of post-1945 Europe, American— protection. In the years between 1958 and 1966, de Gaulle gradually translated this conception into a coherent policy. He accelerated national efforts to develop nuclear weapons, since only with a nuclear capacity could France hope to pursue a strategy of national security as he envisioned it.6 De Gaulle also modified step-by-step France’s relations with its main allies and with NATO. In spring of 1966 he withdrew all French forces from NATO’s military integration and decided that France would no longer participate in most bodies of NATO’s military organization.7 Critics have always explained those actions with reference to a kind of French antiAmericanism. There might be some truth to this interpretation, because de Gaulle clearly resented the de facto American hegemony in Western Europe, but the main reason for this partial disengagement was more complicated and linked to the understanding of international relations and the nation-state outlined earlier. In spite—I am even tempted to argue because—of this special status among the states of the Atlantic community, France has not only pursued cooperation with NATO and with its main allies, but also appears in retrospect a particularly reliable ally. France has in fact never formulated a genuine go-it-alone strategy. De Gaulle simply thought that France, while benefiting evidently from military cooperation with its allies, would be in a better position politically and militarily if in extreme cases it could do

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without external assistance. In fact, immediately after France’s withdrawal negotiations began between NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) and French Chief of Staff General Ailleret on the conditions of a French participation in the collective defense of Western Europe. The first of more than forty subsequent agreements was signed in 1967. The French insisted that there would be a prior political decision on their country’s engagement in common military actions with its allies, and that there would be no automatism of engagement, as was implied by NATO’s military integration. It is true that France flirted until 1969 with a doctrine that came close to nuclear neutrality (since it did not designate any particular enemy). Well into the 1970s French governments developed a military strategy that distinguished between two hypothetical battles, the first in Germany, where France intended to “test” the enemy’s intentions with limited forces, while reserving the bulk of its forces for a second battle along the French border.8 But beneath the surface of national rhetoric on defense matters, a good deal of flexibility and pragmatism was possible. We know today to what extent France received U.S. assistance while perfecting its nuclear warheads 9 ; moreover, France reinforced significantly its conventional capabilities in the 1970s and 1980s and thus became much better equipped to defend Western Europe in concert with its allies. French policymakers acknowledged more and more openly that national security could not be separated from that of France’s European allies and that this limited room for independent maneuvering.10 It is a particular irony that France, under a Socialist/Communist government in the 1980s, appeared to be America’s best ally, while most of the other European states struggled with strong popular protest movements against NATO’s double-track decision. France maintained nevertheless a certain ambiguity regarding its commitment to NATO’s collective defense for the duration of the Cold War era. One reason was doctrinal. Since the highest value in France’s defense tradition was autonomy, it was rather difficult to determine in advance what France would actually do in a given alliance contingency. Another quite potent motivating factor was the political benefit derived from maintaining that position. In her relations with Moscow, Paris could underline her special status within the Western world; inside NATO, meanwhile, uncertainty over France’s commitment gave its leaders exceptional political leverage. They knew perfectly well that all allies, especially the Germans, were keen to reduce that uncertainty, so France could exact a price for commitments that, among the other allies, were

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taken for granted. Given its very favorable geographic position well behind allied defenses, France would in any scenario be defended by NATO forces stationed mainly on West German territory.11 However, France had to be careful not to push pretentions of autonomy and independence too far. Paris could not afford to weaken the American presence in Europe, especially when East-West relations reached their periodical lows, and France had a larger political interest in maintaining good relations with Germany, her closest partner in Europe. The Federal Republic was most interested in an effective and early French participation in NATO’s strategy of “forward defense,” and proved understandably allergic to French pre-strategic nuclear weapons that had a purely national mission and were bound in a war scenario to be used on targets on German territory.

Political and Military Pressures for Change Because the political benefits of France’s autonomous doctrine were dependent on the bipolarity of the European state system, a clear Soviet threat, and a no less clear American commitment, the sweeping changes of 1989 to 1990 put more pressure on French strategic doctrine than on any other, with the possible exception of the Germanys. After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was no immediate and massive threat to French security or, for that matter, to the security of the West as a whole. There remained residual threats, the most important being the huge nuclear arsenals spread over the territory of and among the successor states to the Soviet Union, but it is today highly unlikely that they might endanger Western security in the foreseeable future. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Central Europe, the liberation of the Central and Eastern European nations, and German unification have made NATO’s traditional conception and defense posture completely obsolete. Consequently, NATO has had since 1990 to adapt its force structure from one of linear defense along the intra-German border to a force posture capable of more geographical and political flexibility. In other words, the very system of NATO’s military integration that France so vigorously rejected in the past lost its military, and part of its political, rationale. NATO began evolving slowly in the direction of a more traditional alliance, based on ad-hoc cooperation rather than peacetime integration. Imperceptibly, the main point of contention between France

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and the alliance disappeared. On a political level, France had always sharply criticized the Soviet-American condominium, yet its disappearance deprived Paris of the special status it had always claimed in the past. The rather comfortable position of being part of the West but pursuing an independent policy was lost. The very political and military context that justified and enhanced France’s special status with regard to NATO began to change, raising the question as to whether France’s policy on NATO made sense any longer. A second set of structural changes in the post–Cold War era was related to more general European-American relations. Europe and America were no longer bound together by a direct and common threat, so the trans-Atlantic security relationship has, in the past few years, lost some of its automaticity. Allies on both sides of the Atlantic today seem firmly committed not to let the relationship go adrift, but this is more of a political priority and less of a military priority than in the past. Furthermore, since most of the security challenges NATO is currently facing are less “reactive” and more equivocal in character—in the past, NATO’s mission was to respond to a clear attack, now it is most likely to intervene in complex regional crises—a workable security relationship supposes a more precise definition of which political interests and values the alliance is committed to defend. In any case, an American engagement cannot be taken for granted any longer, as witnessed in the first years of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Today, some security challenges in Europe can be legitimately considered in Washington as not justifying an American engagement, whereas European states might reach the opposite conclusion. For that structural reason, European states are facing a very difficult dilemma that is most acutely felt in France. The problem centers on how to maintain an increasingly uncertain American engagement in Europe while simultaneously preparing for situations in which the Europeans might need the capacity to act alone. In the past few years, France has pursued two barely compatible policies. The first approach was based on the assumption that American and European security interests will inevitably diverge sharply in the future, from which it followed that Europeans should vigorously pursue the goal of developing an autonomous European defense identity, even at the cost of speeding up the American disengagement from the European continent. The Atlantic alliance itself had to be limited to its traditional mission of collective defense; Europeans were to take care of non–Article V missions in Europe on their own. This was in essence President Mitterrand’s policy from 1990 to 1993. A second policy slowly emerged.

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France began to acknowledge that the overriding French interest in European stability as well as practical considerations, especially in terms of military resources available, required a strengthened NATO and transAtlantic relationship, along with the development of a more coherent European defense identity within NATO, rather than outside it. This has led to a much more constructive French policy toward NATO, which we shall examine later in greater detail. A third new structural factor is derived from the new military trends in post–Cold War Europe. Military alliances and national armies were in 1989, and mostly still are, ill equipped, ill trained, and ill prepared for the most likely sort of military contingencies in the future: rapid and decisive but limited military interventions in greater distance from the homeland than before. European armies were designed and equipped to fight largescale conventional battles with massive troop and tank forces on Western European soil. Although Paris consistently denied it, that was equally true for the French armed forces, even if their concentration on tank battles was a bit less extreme than that of the Bundeswehr. True, France has some experience with military interventions in Africa and in 1984 even pioneered the creation of the First Rapid Reaction Force in Europe, force d’action rapide, but even this was designed mainly for warfare in Central Europe, in geographical proximity to French territory.12 Given the political factor of a public eager to cash in the post-1989 peace dividend and the technical requirements of advanced weaponry in times of fiscal austerity, France’s restructuring effort has been slow. One should note that while France has had significantly higher defense spending than most of its allies, 13 its financial problems have been compounded by the attempt to produce too large a set of armaments on too narrow a financial and industrial base, in most cases a national one. France today simply cannot hope to create a military industrial plant that would enable it to tackle most crises alone and is now condemned to cooperate with its allies. Moreover, France has had to overcome the contradiction between a strategy of national defense and the fact that her national territory, as the key reference of such a strategy, is no longer directly threatened. This has reduced the political and military significance of the French nuclear arsenal. Taken together these factors have pushed Paris to reconsider its traditional alliance policy. These three structural changes—the loss of France’s special political position, a more complex trans-Atlantic security relationship, and a clear trend toward increased multinational cooperation—have been more or less apparent from 1990 onward. All three have required an

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adaptation of France’s security policy, of its overall strategy as well as of its armed forces. However, and quite understandably, this necessity only slowly became apparent to French policymakers, who sometimes ignored incentives for change, especially when they seemed to contradict the basic principles of Gaullism. But under the pressure of international and domestic developments, France has slowly devised a new security doctrine, culminating in President Chirac’s reform of 1995–1996, that adapted rather than abandoned the traditional French doctrine.

The Squaring of the Circle? One political crisis and two wars highlighted the need for reform in national alliance policy, strategic doctrine, and armed forces. Although the deep trans-Atlantic resentment that accompanied the birth of the Eurocorps might be seen as the starting point of France’s rapprochement with the Atlantic alliance, France drew additional military conclusions from the Persian Gulf War and a political lesson from the war in Bosnia. Paris had to acknowledge that in the Persian Gulf of 1991 its forces were not only poorly equipped for the war’s specific requirements but also highly dependent on cooperation with more efficient allies. French forces lacked the sufficient satellite reconnaissance and airlift capacity that in the Persian Gulf was predominantly provided by the United States. This led first to efforts to streamline and reorganize the French armed forces in order to better prepare them for such contingencies and to enhance their compatibility with allied forces. France engaged, after a painful review of achievements and shortcomings in the Persian Gulf War,14 in a far-reaching reform of its armed forces that under a Socialist government and a Socialist president, largely prefigured reforms announced by President Chirac in February 1996.15 The main idea was to break up the traditional configuration of the armed forces and to rearrange them into functionally defined réservoirs de forces, from which two newly created joint services commands could draw resources for both national and multinational military operations. France thereby conceded the need for more international cooperation in the future, but hoped to escape, through greater military flexibility, the need for permanent and formal integration of its forces that would have limited its political autonomy. The Persian Gulf War also demonstrated that Europeans still were far away from being capable of effectively conducting operations of such a

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magnitude and, even more importantly, that France’s most important partner in Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany, was unlikely to revise quickly its traditional policy of military restraint. The tortured history of the Western engagement in the former Yugoslavia, especially in the Bosnian war, reminded France’s policymakers that an American engagement might be not only a military necessity, as in the Gulf, but also a political one, since most Europeans seemed to lack the political will to confront the crisis without American involvement. After three consecutive years of European inaction, there was at least one winner by default in the former Yugoslavia, NATO. The Bosnian lesson was a highly ambiguous one. American support was still critical but took a very long time to come, and the United States might well have chosen to stay away from the conflict. Paris drew the conclusion that, although it was good to develop a greater European independence from American or NATO assets, everything had to be done to avoid what might be interpreted in Washington as a move to reduce America’s stake in European affairs. European governments, especially France, had therefore to proceed very cautiously and reassure Washington that calling for greater European responsibilities implied no interest in undermining the transatlantic security link. The best way to accomplish this was to relocate the security debate fully within the parameters of Atlantic alliance. This France did officially in December 1995. As in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, the lessons from Bosnia triggered in 1995–1996 an even more ambitious attempt to reform France’s defense policy and military. The bottom line of this project is fairly simple: France has to redefine its relations with NATO if it wants to promote a European security and defense identity. Second, France should gradually trade rapprochement with NATO against concessions from its allies, thereby exerting decisive influence on the reform of the Atlantic alliance itself. Third, France should seek the leading position among European members of the alliance in order to obtain maximum political leverage within the reformed alliance and should do so by making the most significant contribution in terms of headquarters and troops. Together, these goals have required in turn a complete restructuring of the nation’s military, an undertaking announced in February 1996.16 The acid debate around the Eurocorps had, three years before, highlighted the political risks of European initiatives that could be perceived as a duplicating of existing NATO structures and forces. It also demonstrated that even in the new situation after the end of the Cold War, Germany was still unwilling to choose between Paris and

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Washington, just as it had been in the 1960s in spite of many French advances. In the midst of the transatlantic rifts over the Eurocorps, French officials went as far as to propose an alternative French, but Europeanized, nuclear umbrella for Germany. 17 Bonn’s nonreaction to that proposal signified that the Federal Republic could not be counted on to build European structures that would compete with rather than complement NATO. Finally, France had, for the sake of this project, to accept far-reaching agreements with NATO. For the first time since 1966 Paris agreed that French forces might be placed under NATO’s operational command.18 Ironically, the Eurocorps was from a French perspective initially designed to regain the political initiative France had lost in the first two years after the end of the Cold War due to its splendid isolation from the debates going on within NATO. The Eurocorps should have been a truly European response to the creation of NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force earlier in 1991, which was perceived in Paris as a clear defeat for France’s efforts to “Europeanize” the Continent’s defense.19 The outcome was rather different than intended. Instead of creating a European alternative to NATO structures, France had to accept that the Eurocorps would have to be complementary to NATO. The agreement between the SACEUR and the French and German chiefs of staff of January 1993 is a watershed in French NATO policy, because for the first time since 1966 Paris, France agreed to eventually subordinate French troops to the alliance’s operational command.20 The Eurocorps, moreover, is the first model of the kind of “double-hatting” that led one year later to the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept, in which NATO members tried to reconcile greater European autonomy with the preservation of a strong Atlantic link. At the same time, there began to emerge a more relaxed relationship between France and NATO’s military bodies, preparing for the policy shift of 1995–1996. The main ingredients for sweeping change were therefore already present in 1994–1995. However, during President Mitterrand’s last term France proved incapable of bridging the widening gap between a doctrine of national defense and a much more pragmatic approach to security on the ground. For that reason the 1994 White Book was more the sign of a difficult compromise than a genuinely fresh conceptual start.21 Although its analysis of the strategic environment and of the main threats and risks was valid, the practical conclusions in terms of alliance policy and the structure of the armed forces became obsolete in the course of the sweeping reform undertaken in 1995–1996.

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A New Alliance Policy? On December 5, 1995, French Foreign Minister Hervé de Charette announced that France would resume its participation in NATO’s Military Committee and that the French defense minister would henceforth normally participate in alliance discussions. This was more than a mere continuation of France’s slow reconciliation with the alliance. 22 Very significant was France’s readiness to abandon for the first time the symbolic aspect of its alliance policy represented by its traditional nonparticipation in many NATO bodies, thus bringing official discourse on and de facto activity in the alliance more into accord with each other. Former President Mitterrand had understood that France had to develop its cooperation with NATO, if Paris wanted to avoid political isolation in the debate over European security. Practically, moreover, France’s participation in military operations under the aegis of NATO made it increasingly irrational not to be present, for the sole reason of political symbolism, in the main military bodies of the alliance, especially the Military Committee (MC). French forces were assigned to NATO operational command in the context of the operations “Deny Flight,” “Deliberate Force,” and in the Implementation Force (IFOR) in the Balkans. For practical reasons, France had to ensure a minimal control over the operations,23 but Mitterrand was reluctant to concede more than French participation on an ad-hoc basis. The newly elected President Chirac did not share Mitterrand’s inhibitions. As early as February 1993, he had developed a candid view of France’s participation in the Atlantic alliance. He acknowledged that most Europeans did not want a European defense identity outside NATO. France, he argued, had therefore to revise its traditional NATO policy, observing that …if France wants to play a determining role in the creation of a European defense entity, it must take into account the state of mind of its partners, and reconsider to a large degree the form of its relations with NATO…. The necessary rebalancing of relations within the Atlantic alliance…can only take place from the inside, not against the United States, but in accord with it.24 Chirac understood that France could reap enormous political benefits by a pragmatic reorientation of its alliance policy. Moreover, the move would not entail major political costs for France, since participation in the MC

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and eventually also in the Defense Planning Committee (DPC) would not signify its return in the alliance’s integrated military structure (IMS). The move is better understood as the abandonment of an outdated political symbol. France has been, right or wrong, suspected of a hidden agenda hostile to NATO whenever it volunteered a stronger European defense identity; Paris can now deflect this criticism by pointing to its new attitude to NATO.25 This has helped to end increasingly academic debates over trans-Atlantic relations. In the past both sides usually agreed that the Europeans should take on more duties and responsibilities, and that this was also in America’s own interest. But immediately, quibbling began over institutional models. Suspicions—among Europeans, and between Europeans and the United States—prevented any tangible progress. France’s move has now triggered a productive discussion where questions of substance, especially the political and military architecture of the CJTF concept, are at last addressed. At the same time, France’s proposals for reform are much more credible than in the past, when the contrast between the official endorsement of a European defense identity independent of NATO and the feeble practical achievements was all too stark to produce a credible policy stance. France’s position was paralyzed by the contradictions between a very Europeanist rhetoric, unwillingness to cede sovereign rights or to mobilize financial resources in order to make such a European identity effective, and a covert “atlanticization” of France’s practical security policy. France can now push for a Europeanization of NATO by virtue of its readjusted relationship with the Atlantic alliance. The June 1996 NATO summit in Berlin established a new overall political consensus over the Europeanization of NATO, which was mainly a result of France’s changed attitude to the alliance. In the final communiqué, the building of a European security identity was unambiguously located inside the alliance. Furthermore, even European actions will require the consensus of all 16 NATO members through prior approval by the North Atlantic Council (NAC). In turn, the communiqué explicitly recognized that the adaptation of the alliance’s structures “will enable all European allies to make a more coherent and effective contribution to the missions and activities of the alliance as an expression of our shared responsibilities; to act themselves as required….” 26 The details of these arrangements have still to be worked out, and there are doubtless some hidden sources of intra-alliance conflict, but there is a clear political consensus on the complementarity of ESDI and the larger framework of NATO.

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France has not only gained political credibility in the process of NATO’s Europeanization efforts, it has also increased its bargaining leverage in the context of NATO’s reform process. French representatives now participate fully in all discussions on the matter, and they have something of interest to offer to all NATO states: further normalization of France’s relationship with the alliance and deployable troops for new missions. French officials have stated clearly that they expect their actions to be matched by parallel reform of the alliance itself, creating a clear linkage between the two processes.27 For the time being, France has not decided on its participation in the Defense Planning Committee. Although there have been largely unnoticed hints at possibly closer consultations over French nuclear forces within NATO in the near future—Prime Minister Juppé announced in September 1995 a French initiative to create a dissuasion concertée—French officials still rule out a French participation in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). It is hard to see why France should rule out indefinitely such a participation, but again there might be the hope of creating a European subgroup within the NPG.28 The public debates and appraisals of France’s participation in military bodies have tended to obscure a much more important issue, the reform of NATO’s integrated military structure. Since the principle of military integration was at the heart of France’s recriminations against NATO, it is not entirely surprising that France’s efforts in the context of alliance reform are focused on that aspect. The general aim is to provide for more flexibility within NATO’s command and force structures. This means in French eyes first and foremost abandoning the structure France still considers contrary to the national sovereignty of the member states. There is actually a sound political and military argument to defend this view. The IMS is politically too rigid, the opting out of one particular state for political reasons being very difficult. At the same time, the IMS appears too clumsy militarily. Its core principle, knitting together national troops and command structures in standing multinational structures in peacetime, makes it extremely awkward to put together coalitions of forces that are tailor-made for one specific contingency. France has always proposed an alternative model of military cooperation, based on the principle of ad-hoc cooperation on the basis of maximal interoperability, to NATO’s IMS. That model would be, so goes the French argument, militarily as efficient as the IMS but more respectful of the legitimacy of national priorities. A second set of goals concerns France’s desire to endow the European

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allies with greater autonomy within NATO’s command chain. A first significant step in this direction was taken on the NATO Brussels Summit of January 1994. The allies decided to create the CJTF structure inside the alliance. It would provide for “separable, but not separate” military capacities equally suited for all-European or Euro-Atlantic coalitions of forces. 29 The commitment represented the first breach of the former dominant principle of military integration inside NATO; if forces were to be separable, their level of integration had to be limited. This led to a paradoxical situation: The more flexible NATO’s force structures are, the easier it is to maintain a unique command chain yet the more loosely integrated it has to be. Though the principle was acceptable to all, implementation of the CJTF concept proved very difficult. One major point of contention was the overall shape of CJTF. The United States and other allies were interested mainly in adapting NATO headquarters in order to allow for more flexibility and, eventually, European operations. France, by contrast, stressed that it did not want to rule out the contribution of national or multinational headquarters to CJTF. A first agreement was reached at the NATO Berlin Summit of June 1996, but technical details remain to be worked out. In the words of President Chirac, the decisions of the Berlin summit “open the way for a full French participation in the structures of an alliance whose principles and modes of functioning have been profoundly transformed.”30 In fact, the formerly dominant principle of integration has been slowly eroded and gradually transformed into a military structure with much looser and less permanent links between national contributions and command structures. Command and force structures will rely more on ad-hoc cooperation than on formal integration, thus making it much easier for France to participate fully in the alliance. What counts now with regard to influence inside the alliance is the ability to make, from national forces, a significant contribution to those ad-hoc coalitions in terms of command structures and forces. Occupying key positions in the IMS, a key German strategy in the past, is today less profitable. This raises a few questions about a possibly declining German influence within NATO.31 The most interesting aspect is the striking complementarity between the French efforts to install a new military structure within NATO and the general thrust of the reform in France’s own armed forces. There is a strong coherence between the two processes, given that the main rationale behind the restructuring of the French armed forces is to

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enable Paris to claim a de facto European leadership role within NATO by way of providing the most significant European contribution to a given military effort.

Reforming the Armed Forces On February 22, 1996, President Chirac announced on television a radical reform program for the French armed forces. 32 According to most observers, the reforms ranked second in significance only to the sweeping changes carried out in the 1960s after the war in Algeria. Although the nature of the reforms should have come as no surprise for those who had closely observed Jacques Chirac’s thinking and the opinions of his top advisers, chiefly Pierre Lellouche, the reform’s scope and rhythm are indeed exceptional and will determine the French army’s evolution until the year 2015. President Chirac identified a new set of missions for the armed forces, with a revised set of priorities, wherein force projection is now the most important mission. Consequently, he announced that France’s armed forces would be gradually professionalized and reorganized during a transition period of six years from 1997 onward. For its nuclear deterrent the country would in the future rely only on the airand sea-based components of its nuclear arsenal. The prestrategic (tactical) missiles Hades and the aging land-based strategic assets would be dismantled in the very near future. France would also review some of its equipment programs and try to restructure and regroup its national armament industry in order to engage in European joint ventures from a stronger negotiating position. 33 The aim of the reform was, in short, to have a better adapted military instrument at a significantly lower cost. It is hoped that France could save up to Fr 100 billion over the next five years. 34 Since Chirac’s announcement, and after a debate over the future of conscription that was somehow conducted in a top-down manner, the French parliament has adopted Chirac’s reforms by voting for the 1997–2002 program in June 1996.35 The rapport annexe of the program details the profound changes France is to undertake in the next few years.36 There are now four main missions for the French armed forces, dissuasion (nuclear deterrence), prevention, projection, and protection. None of these functions is entirely new, but their order of priorities is somewhat changed. Nuclear deterrence, the very core of France’s defense

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policy during the Cold War, has lost some of its former predominance. It remains in principle the ultimate guarantee of national vital security interests, but its practical significance has diminished because France no longer faces a direct nuclear threat. Protecting the national territory has also become important and is a differently conceptualized function. After having been one of the major missions of France’s conventional forces, it has become a task laying greater emphasis on internal security and in the main the responsibility of the Gendarmerie.37 Whereas those two traditional functions have lost some of their former importance, the accent of the 1996 reforms is clearly on the two remaining missions, prevention and, especially, projection. The 1994 White Book took an ambiguous stance on the problem. On the one hand, it analyzed the strategic environment in a similar if not identical fashion, yet it stuck to military missions that were still centered on the defense of the national territory. French decision makers have now drawn radical conclusions about the new strategic context in Europe and abroad. France is seeking to specialize for the two military missions that are most likely to be the dominant mode of engagement in the years to come: crisis prevention and crisis intervention. In France and abroad, critics have detected a dérive expéditionnaire in French military doctrine. The German ministry of defense had voiced the argument that France could specialize in military interventions only behind the protection of the Bundeswehr, still a conscript army made for traditional defense missions. The German defense minister warned, moreover, that the Eurocorps was not to become an Afrika-Korps.38 These concerns appear logically flawed for several reasons. First, it is not at all clear that France is particularly eager to be engaged to a greater degree in African crises in the future. Paris doubtless wants to retain its influential position on the African continent, but it seems much more likely that the projection capacity is above all designed for intervention in Europe and its “near abroad,” thereby maximizing France’s political influence. In short, the focal point of the French reforms is Brussels, not Bangui. Would any French president embark on such a massive reform, only to better respond to mutinies in Central African countries? Second, it is difficult to identify the threat from which France would be protected by the Bundeswehr.39 France and Germany worked together on their respective White Books on defense—these and were published almost simultaneously in 1994—and they developed fundamentally the same assessment of the strategic situation. Even supposing that such a threat exists, would a French president abruptly decide to become

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dependent on Germany for France’s security, after decades of at least formal independence in defense matters? Third, even projectable forces are suited for national defense missions. They might in fact be even better equipped to perform that function, given that Western Europe no longer has to be defended at the Elbe River, but, if at all, on a much larger and less linear battlefield. A significantly increased capacity for crisis intervention is the main rationale behind the gradual professionalization of the French armed forces. France now needs a smaller, but highly professional force in order to be able to intervene effectively in limited crises. Chirac referred explicitly in his television interview of February 1996 to the inadequate number of troops France was able to muster during the Persian Gulf War, while praising several times the British army as a model for the national reforms. Chirac set a target of 50,000 men that should be immediately available for crisis prevention and crisis intervention in two different theaters, once the reforms are complete. According to the program, the French armed forces will be reduced by approximately 30% over the next six years. In order to do this Paris has undertaken another major restructuring effort, affecting mainly the army. The number of regiments will fall from 129 to 85. The French air force and navy are also to be trimmed down, but to a lesser degree. More significant than quantitative criteria is the constitution of four functionally defined réservoirs de forces in the place of the former divisional structure (armored, mechanized, light mechanized, and assault infantry). 40 The current restructuring is thereby following the direction already struck by the reform efforts of 1992–1993 when the Socialists were still in office. From that point onward, two major changes have been under way: the creation of two joint services commands called états majors interarmées and a first attempt to restructure the armed forces into force reservoirs. One of the joint services commands is to specialize in military operations overseas, and the other is designed for military interventions on the European Continent. Both would have only an operational role; they would normally not command any troops. In the event of a military contingency, French commanders can draw on military resources from the force reservoirs and assemble, with much greater flexibility than in the past, tailor-made intervention forces. In the words of former Defense Minister Charles Millon, “The new modular organization of the army will increase its flexibility and its availability. Today, our army is not capable of quickly engaging with a considerable number of troops in military missions at some distance from the national territory, even in Europe.”41

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It is less the national aspect that makes this reform really interesting than the international one. Beginning in 1992 and to an increasing extent ever since, France has acknowledged that in most cases military interventions can be carried out only through vehicles of multinational cooperation. The traditional aim of maximizing political autonomy is still alive, though pursued through different means. France no longer seeks an autonomous capacity for a wide array of missions and has maintained this principle only for the core of any national defense policy, the security of the homeland, which will still be guaranteed through the force de frappe. For all other missions, however, Paris hopes to maximize its political influence through intelligent cooperation with her allies. Influence in these kinds of contingencies, French policymakers seem to believe, no longer flows from autarchy but rather from the political leverage gained over the terms of cooperation through significant contribution to a common effort. In that respect, France’s new force structure has several advantages in the event of multinational military cooperation. First, because Paris has traditionally resented military integration in peacetime, the additional flexibility provided through this new force structure allows France to avoid permanent military cooperation while being well-prepared to actually cooperate in a specific situation, thus retaining maximum political autonomy without sacrificing military potency. Second, can France influence, by virtue of this very capacity, the evolving debate on how to reform the Atlantic alliance’s force structures. Paris can now muster a series of solid operational arguments in support of its preference for adhoc coalitions. Third, the reforms create the national resources necessary to claim a leadership role in eventual force coalitions. This gives a new and politically relevant significance to France’s renewed military relationship with NATO. The CJTF concept is designed to provide enhanced flexibility for assembling multinational military contingents, both in terms of headquarters and of force contributions. During the two years following the Brussels NATO summit, there has been considerable disagreement between allies, especially between France and the United States, on how to implement the concept. Washington initially insisted that force headquarters should be exclusively provided by NATO, even in cases where the United States decided not to become engaged in an operation. France has argued to the contrary that CJTF operations eventually be conducted also by national or European headquarters. In April 1996 the two sides reached an agreement that was very close to the initial French

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position. The United States finally agreed that CJTF missions might also be run by European or national commands, while France conceded that all CJTF operations would require prior political approval from the North Atlantic Council. 42 The compromise came fairly close to the general agreement reached at NATO’s Berlin summit a few weeks later. 43 Although France was unable to muster enough support for its idea of a European command within NATO, or at least a visible and permanent European structure, this was a significant political victory for Paris, a victory that would certainly not have been possible without France’s new political attitude toward NATO. The specific arrangements for CJTF remain to be worked out, but one can easily see the potential for political influence within NATO that the French reforms offer within the CJTF context. France is particularly well positioned to claim a leading role in any CJTF contingencies that are not conducted by NATO commands. In the event of operations led by the Western European Union (WEU) France could certainly claim a significant role in the command of such an operation, and could eventually even provide the organizational spine of the force headquarters through its own national headquarters. To this spine officers from the participating nations could be attached, since the WEU itself has only a modest planning cell. France has repeatedly maintained that political responsibilities and the respective national share in commanding an operation should be roughly in line with each nation’s contribution to it.44 This quite logical principle would mean a significant departure from the traditional NATO concept of multinationally integrated commands, in which the distribution of posts and responsibilities is stable and not directly dependent on military contributions to a given operation. If it is able to reach the very ambitious goal of setting up a force of 50,000 men for rapid force projection, France would again have a strong case for a leadership role in any allEuropean operation, or, in the case Washington should decide to participate, at least the role of privileged partner of the United States. By comparison, the German Bundeswehr is planning ultimately to provide around 12,000 men for crisis intervention. 45 In any case, the new organization of French forces should provide France with the necessary flexibility to make a contribution with significant political dividends. After thirty years of splendid isolation from NATO’s most relevant military committees, France can now aspire to a leadership role within the Atlantic alliance. This is certainly one of the biggest achievements of Franco-German cooperation in security and defense matters, where Bonn

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has consistently refused to choose between Paris and Washington while striving to maintain a maximum of number of links between France and NATO. This remarkable success could well become a political problem for Germany in the future. Having established a productive multilateral working relationship with NATO, France will no longer have to rely so heavily on Franco-German cooperation. The Franco-German alliance was at least partially built on the assumption that Bonn could to some extent play the role of an intermediary between Paris and NATO, especially in the committees France did not attend. That function of the Franco-German partnership will gradually become obsolete. Additionally, France’s drive to secure a leading role among European NATO member states directly threatens the comfortable and influential position the Federal Republic has occupied in the past. France is now claiming its share of posts in the bodies in which it participates.46 Finally, France will become a particularly influential ally, on the strength alone of its ability to make significant contributions to new missions of the alliance. Germany will stick, for political but also for military reasons, to its policy of restraint for the foreseeable future. It remains to be seen how the Franco-German security relationship will manage with these shifts in the relative distribution of power within the alliance.

Conclusion Immediately after the end of the Cold War, French security policy showed many of the symptoms of immobilism. While the rest of Europe was celebrating the end of the Continent’s division and the outbreak of a general peace, French officials kept warning about long-term risks in the European strategic environment.47 France’s security policy, according to that analysis, remained legitimate and had not to be changed. Paris pushed for a “Europeanization” of defense, but in a very traditional way and sometimes halfheartedly. But there were also signs of a slow change under way. These remained isolated and were more the fruit of bare necessity than the product of an overall political strategy. It was therefore not surprising that France could not capitalize on these moves politically. The election of Jacques Chirac to the Elysée permitted a radical shakeup of France’s security and defense policy on almost all levels, thereby projecting Paris to the spearhead of political and military developments within the Atlantic community. Most of the ideas were by

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no means new. Some French strategists had previously called for a redefinition of France’s relationship with NATO or a professionalization of its army. 48 Other reforms were already under way, restructuring in the army, for instance. But Chirac decided to push reforms on all levels simultaneously. This provided for remarkable consistency in the reforms, but it was a politically highly dangerous decision. France had lived for more than thirty years with a broad—and, from the vantage point of the German observer, enviable—national consensus on defense. This consensus was centered around the notion of independence in defense, which was in most cases understood as autonomy from NATO, if not, in some circles, nuclear autarchy. This interpretation was a complete misreading of Gaullism and overlooked the extent of practical ongoing cooperation between France and the Atlantic alliance. But in terms of perceptions at home, French governments had to be careful not to appear as betraying de Gaulle’s legacy. The last series of nuclear tests in 1995–1996 may have had that rationale, too, beyond its technical or strategic justification. Moreover, the reduction of the armed forces and the scrapping of conscription in a country committed to the political myth of the “people in arms” could well have led to resentment in the armed forces. Yet on all levels, the criticism has been fairly muted. Even the issue of conscription has not led to a national debate—the government actually had to foster one—nor did the closing down of many garrisons in France and Germany provoke any particular anger locally. It might well be that the explanation lies in the fact that only a Gaullist president with a strong standing in the military and larger strategic community could dare to reform Gaullism. The very scale and scope of the proposed reforms suggest that success will not come easily and that some of the more ambitious objectives might have to be scaled back, for political as well as for financial reasons. The growing Europeanization of the French security policy, however, seems irreversible. While pursuing a security policy with worldwide interests rhetorically, France now concentrates substantively more and more on the European Continent. A second level of Europeanization is that France intends, indeed is forced, to conduct most military operations in a context of European or Atlantic cooperation. While maintaining the emphasis on the need to be able to defend itself, this is less and less seen as a likely scenario. France has even proposed a Europeanization of its nuclear doctrine, possibly even in NATO, on the model of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group.

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Certainly, these changes reflect shrinking national resources. But they also seem to testify to France’s growing political and economic integration into the European Union. It was no pure coincidence that French hints at a possible European deterrent were partly justified by the de facto connectedness of France’s economic and political interests with those of its main partners. It remains to be seen whether the gap between the reality of France’s engagement in the European project and a rhetoric still placing a premium on national autonomy can still be bridged. Until now, France has not abandoned the core principle of its defense policy—retaining the ability to defend itself, should the need arise—in spite of tremendous changes in its doctrine and armed forces. It is true that the French doctrine now places much greater emphasis on multinational military cooperation and that policymakers even openly admit that France would be in most cases of crisis intervention dependent on cooperation with its allies. But it would be a mistake to conclude from that observation that France has abandoned altogether its traditional premium on military and political autonomy. In the French tradition, if a state cannot defend itself, it has no viable exit option from cooperation with its allies. In extreme cases it might have to accept political subordination to priorities of those allies, since the only alternative is being conquered or destroyed. This, in very crude terms, is the bottom line of the Gaullist conception of national security. It applies to national defense. As far as this mission is concerned, French policy has not changed. Yet due to a completely changed strategic environment, it simply is no longer at the core of France’s alliance policy. The latter is dominated by the new missions of crisis prevention and crisis intervention. Because there is an exit option for France in almost every likely contingency of that kind, closer cooperation with her allies can be accepted without fearing political dependency. Paris has in almost any case at least the option to remain aloof of an intervention, when an imaginable vital security interest is at stake. French nonparticipation in Bosnia, for example, would certainly have damaged serious French political interests and might have been perceived as cynical and the like, but it is hard to believe that France’s survival and integrity was to any degree at stake in the Balkan crisis. France’s Weltbild is a world dominated by sovereign nation-states, insecure in the absence of an overarching power structure and bound to remain in that state since no principle of international order can guarantee states’ security without destroying at the same time their

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statehood. It is a fair guess that this paradigm is, for right or for wrong, not very likely to change in the near future. But it will in any case not prevent France from being one of the leading players in European security matters well into the twenty-first century. This has to do with an extraordinary capacity for adapting security paradigms to changing circumstances that France has demonstrated in the past and will certainly be capable of in the future.

Notes 1. See for introductions to French security policy Frédéric Bozo, La France et l’OTAN (Paris: Masson, 1991); Philip H.Gordon, A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Michael M.Harrison, The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Lothar Ruehl, La politique militaire de la Ve République (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1976); and Alan Ned Sabrosky, “France,” in Douglas Murray and Paul R.Viotti (eds), The Defense Policies of Nations: A Comparative Study (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 206–259. 2. Edward H.Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1946); Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1948); Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A theoretical analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) and Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). 3. This contribution focuses on France’s policy toward European security. While France traditionally claimed (and still does) worldwide responsibilities, the European Continent has nevertheless at any time been at the heart of France’s security policy. Accordingly, the recent changes are most visible and most radical in relation to the context of European and Atlantic security. Moreover, France’s policy in Europe is even more important for her status in the world than it was in the past. This is not to suggest that France’s security policy in other parts of the globe—for example, in Africa—will not change; it almost certainly will. But due to limited space, a choice had to be made, and there were enough good reasons to limit the scope of this paper on European security. 4. On the basic continuity between the Fourth and Fifth Republics’ security policies see Harrison, The Reluctant Ally. 5. De Gaulle had declared, in his famous speech at the Ecole militaire in 1959: “Si on admettait pour longtemps que la défense de la France cessât d’être dans le cadre national, et qu’elle se confondît, ou fondît, avec autre chose, il ne serait pas possible de maintenir chez nous un Etat”; cited after La politique de defense de la France. Textes et documents, Dominique David (ed.). (Paris: La Documentation française, 1991), p. 72. 6. “Without them,” concluded de Gaulle as early as 1960 in a speech at Chambéry, “we would no longer be a European power, no sovereign nation, but simply an integrated satellite”; cited after André” Passeron, De Gaulle park (Paris: Plon, 1962), p. 374.

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7. A detailed account of the formative years of de Gaulle’s security policy can be found in Harrison, The Reluctant Ally, pp. 115–163; Ruehl, La politique militaire, pp. 99–157. 8. Livre blanc sur la défense nationale (Paris: Ministère de la défense, 1971), especially p. 9. 9. Richard Ullmann, “The Covert French Connection,” Foreign Policy, No. 75 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–33. 10. The first official attempt to devise a more realist doctrine was a speech by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then French president, in 1976. See Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, “Allocution,” Défense nationale, Vol. 32, No. 7, July 1976, pp. 5– 20. 11. On the complex security relationship between France and Germany see Deutsch-französische Sicherheitspolitik. Auf dem Wege zur Gemeinsamkeit? Karl Kaiser and Pierre Lellouche (eds.) (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1986); David G.Haglund, Alliance Within the Alliance? Franco-German Military Cooperation and the European Pillar of Defense (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991); Philip H.Gordon, France, Germany and the Western Alliance (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995); and Axel Sauder, Souveränität und Integration. Französische und deutsche Konzeptionen europäischer Sicherheit nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges (1990–1993) (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995). 12. On the Force d’Action Rapide see Diego A.Ruiz-Palmer, “Between the Rhine and the Elbe: France and the Conventional Defense of Central Europe,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 471–512, and Joachim Schild, Frankreichs Sicherheitspolitik in Westeuropa. Zur Westeuropäisierung der französischen Sicherheitspolitik, 1981–1989 (Minister: Lit, 1991). 13. For a detailed account of the defense expenditures of NATO member states see NATO Review, No. 1, January 1996, pp. 31–32. In 1995, France was still spending 3.1% of its GDP (Germany: 1.7%), or $673 per capita, compared to Germany’s $379. 14. It was, for example, noted with particular bitterness that Great Britain had sent twice as many soldiers to the Persian Gulf than France, whereas the French armed forces were twice as big. See the very critical report by Jean Lecanuet and Jacques Genton, Rapport fait au nom de la Commission des Affaires Etrangères sur quelques enseignements immédiats de la crise du Golfe quant aux exigences nouvelles en matière de défense (Paris: Sénat, 1991) (Document No. 303). See also then Defense Minister Pierre Joxe’s interview “Avenir de l’armée,” Le Figaro, May 19, 1992; Karl Jetter, “Veraltet und fast blind,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 24, 1991. There was no coincidence in President Chirac’s several references to the British army when he announced his reforms on February 22, 1996. 15. Jean-Michel Boucheron, Rapport fait au nom de la Commission de défense de l’Assemblée nationale et des forces armées sur le projet de loi de programmation relatif à l’équipement militaire et aux effectifs de la défense pour les années, 1992–1994 (Paris: Assembled nationale, 1992) (Document No. 2935). 16. Projet de loi relatif à la programmation militaire pour les années 1997 à 2002 (Paris: Assemblée nationale, 1996) (Document No. 2766). 17. See the text of Mitterrand’s proposal to Europeanize France’s nuclear deterrent, voiced on January 10, 1992, at the “Rencontres nationales pour l’Europe” in Propos sur la défense, edited by the Service d’information et de relations publiques des armées (SIRPA) (Paris: SIRPA), No. 25, January/February 1992, pp. 11–13.

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18. See Daniel Vernet, “Nouveau pas de Paris vers l’OTAN. La France a accepté que ses unités de l’Eurocorps soient placées sous commandement atlantique,” Le Monde, March 12, 1993. 19. Claire Tréan, “L’OTAN reconnaît à l’Europe des Douze le droit de se doter d’une politique de sécurité,” Le Monde, June 9–10, 1991. 20. See Daniel Vernet, “Nouveau pas de Paris vers l’OTAN,” Le Monde, March 12, 1993. 21. Livre blanc sur la défense 1994 (Paris: Editions 10/18, 1994). 22. A detailed account of the developments in France’s NATO policy can be found in Robert P.Grant, “France’s New Relationship with NATO,” Survival, Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 1996, pp. 58–80. 23. François Heisbourg, “L’OTAN et le piler européen,” Politique Internationale, No. 71, Spring 1996, pp. 55–64. 24. Cited after Grant, “France’s New Relationship with NATO,” p. 63. 25. French Defense Minister Millon put it quite bluntly: “Qu’on le veuille ou non, les initiatives de la France ont paru suspectes: notre dynamisme européen pâtissait aux yeux de nos alliés d’une rhétorique vis-à-vis de l’Alliance dont nous ne reconaissions pas l’anachronisme…. Plus que jamais, la clarté de notre politique atlantique est la condition de la crédibilité de notre politique européenne”; see Millon’s speech at the Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale, December 19, 1995, in Propos sur la défense, No. 55, December 1995, pp. 144–156, esp. p. 147. However, France did not convince everybody. See for a still very suspicious analysis that heavily extrapolates from trends in the 1960s Peter Schmidt, Frankreichs neues Verhältnis zur NATO: Preisgabe oder Verwirklichung gaullistischer Prinzipien? (Ebenhausen: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, May 1996) (SWP-AP 2957). 26. Cited after U.S. Information & Texts, No. 22, June 5, 1996, p. 19. 27. Defense Minister Millon wrote after the NATO Berlin Summit: “It is depending on the success of the work we have undertaken if France can take the necessary decisions concerning her full participation in a profoundly modified alliance system that allows for the expression of a European identity”; see Charles Millon, “Vers une nouvelle alliance,” Le Monde, June 11, 1996. Prime Minister Juppé had stated in a declaration on behalf of the French government three months earlier that “the degree of our future engagement in the reformed alliance will depend on the effectiveness of the adaptations that will be decided and on the degree of responsibility that the Europeans can exert inside the Alliance”; see Prime Minister Alain Juppé: Déclaration du gouvernement sur la politique de défense (Paris: Assemblée nationale, March 20, 1996) (Document No. 2654). 28. On France’s attitude toward combined nuclear forces see Jean de la Guérivière: “OTAN: la France participera aux travaux de planification,” Le Monde, June 15, 1996, relating Millon’s proposal that France might make new propositions in the near future. See also Prime Minister Juppé’s speech before the Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale, September 8, 1995. See also for a comment on that proposal Axel Sauder, “Europäisierung der ‘Force de frappe’? Zur Gestaltung des europäischen Pfeilers in der NATO,” Dokumente, Vol. 52, No. 1, February 1996, pp. 36–42, and “Vers une européanisation de la force de dissuasion française,” Année européenne 1996, edited by the Groupe des Belles Feuilles (Paris: Groupe des Belles Feuilles, 1996), pp. 61–68. 29. See Declaration of the Heads of State and Government, Brussels, January 10– 11, 1994, NATO Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, February 1994, pp. 30–33. 30. See Chirac’s speech before the Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense

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32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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Nationale, June 8, 1996, Défense nationale, No. 8 August/September, 1996, pp. 7–18. As Grant writes: “Paris has been particularly insistent that command roles and staffing for a non-Article-5 military operation must largely be a function of the countries that are participating in the operation rather than of a preset, integrated command arrangement”; see “France’s New Relationship with NATO,” p. 67. Le Monde, February 24, 1996. This article does not cover that complicated subject, since a whole array of armaments projects are currently being revised, and many decisions still have to be made. But it should be noted that the general thrust of the reform is to consolidate the armaments industry first on a national level (Chirac pushed for a merger of aircraft-makers Aérospatiale and Dassault and announced the privatization of Thomson, an electronics conglomerate with a civil and a military division). On arms procurement, the accent has been on canceling some projects while cutting procurement figures for the remaining. See for details Jacques Isnard, “Le budget militaire sera réduit de 100 milliards de Francs en cinq ans,” Le Monde, February 24, 1996, and David Buchan, “A 21st Century Army,” Financial Times, February 26, 1996. See Programmation militaire pour les années 1997 à 2002 and Jean-Baptiste de Montvalon, “Le projet de programmation militaire a été pacilement adopté par les députés,” Le Monde, June 9–10, 1996. This rapport is part and parcel of the law and has been approved with it. It is later referred to as “Rapport.” The “Rapport annexe” states bluntly that “in the absence of any major external and direct threat against our borders, it [protection] is more a task in terms of internal security than of military defense in a narrow sense”; see Rapport, p. 11. For German criticisms see Karl Feldmeyer, “Unklarheiten in der deutschfranzösischen Sicherheitspolitik,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 2, 1996, mainly based on a background talk with Defense Minister Volker Rühe; see also Lucas Delattre and Daniel Vernet, “Les ministres français et allemand de la défense ont du mal à dissiper les malentendus,” Le Monde, March 6, 1996. It is worth noting that the Federal Republic is the Western country that formulates the most conciliatory policies toward Yeltsin’s Russia, while, at least officially, basing its military doctrine on a kind of Russian threat. Jacques Isnard, “Le budget militaire sera réduit de 100 milliards de francs en cinq ans,” Le Monde, February 24, 1996. Charles Millon, Déclaration du gouvernement sur la politique de défense (Paris: Assemblée nationale, [March 20] 1996) (Document No. 2654). Bruce Clark, “Europe and U.S. Lay Plans for a More Flexible Military Alliance,” Financial Times, April 26, 1996. See the Final Communiqué of the North Atlantic Council Meeting in Berlin, March 6, 1996, U.S. Information and Texts, No. 22, June 5, 1996, pp. 19–24. The Rapport annexe states that “…the constitution of that projection capability will be guided by the following principles:…France’s capability to influence, proportionallly to its political and military contribution, the conception and the command of [multinational] operations in which she might have decided to participate…”; see Rapport, p. 10. It should be noted, however, that France and Germany do calculate in a slightly different manner. Germany’s 12,000 troops are calculated on the

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assumption of full rotation (i.e., replacement, after some period of time, by fresh troops), for which roughly threefold number of troops is necessary, while France will be able to muster only 50,000 troops “avec des relèves très partielles”; see Rapport, p. 14. The real difference between the two figures is therefore smaller, but nevertheless significant. 46. Jacques Isnard, “La France tente d’obtenir un grand commandement régional de l’OTAN,” Le Monde, July 21–22, 1996. 47. For a very characteristic example for a pessimistic glimpse into the future see the article of then Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, “Vieilles nations, jeune Europe,” Revue des Deux mondes, No. 15, May–June 1990, pp. 3–8. 48. François de Rose, “Construction européenne et sécurité,” Commentaire, Vol. 14, No. 55, 1991, pp. 471–476; Alfred Grosser, “Le rôle et le rang. Note sur la politique militaire de la France,” Commentaire, Vol. 15, No. 58, 1992, pp. 361–365; and Pierre Lellouche, “La France et l’OTAN,” Relations internationales et stratégiques, No. 7, Autumn 1992, pp. 90–98.

CHAPTER 7

France and the Organization of Security in Post—Cold War Europe Michael Meimeth

With the end of the Cold War Europe has entered a new strategic era, one that is characterized by the absence of a permanent, long-term uniform threat and in which the risks and threats to Western Europe’s security have become more diverse and less direct. As the poor performance of the West in dealing with the war in former Yugoslavia has shown, the existing multilateral security institutions have yet to demonstrate their ability and adaptability in this new strategic environment. On the other hand, there is widespread consensus that the need for multilateral action is imperative to the preservation of the national security of Western European countries.1 In this unprecedented situation, France too has lost a coherent strategic concept and is forced to rethink and to redefine the fundamentals of its security policy.2 Over the history of the Fifth Republic these have been characterized by the imperative of independent freedom of choice whether or not to participate in multilateral security structures. The project of redefinition is still under way. Especially with regard to its relationship to NATO, French policy still remains ambiguous. Some observers argue that in recent years France’s policy toward NATO has not really changed in

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substance and is still strongly influenced by the Gaullist legacy. By committing itself to working within the military structure of the Atlantic alliance, these analysts claim, France has gained the capacity to shape and to influence NATO’s future to conform with its own interests. With this, France is getting what it wanted, the limitation of NATO’s role, and therefore that of the United States, in the emerging security order of the post–Cold War Europe.3 In contrast to this view, the argument here is that the end of the Cold War put an end to a situation that had made it possible for France to stay outside the integrated structure of the North Atlantic alliance and to pursue its policy of national independence without having to renounce the security benefits provided by NATO and the United States. Instead of limiting NATO’s role and the American influence in Europe, the collapse of the bipolar order has forced France to get much closer to NATO than it wanted. This argument is largely based on core assumptions of the neorealist theory which claims that 1.

2.

3.

the structural constraints of the international system, more specifically the distribution of power among the actors within this system, condition and restrain security policy choices of individual states. multilateral security cooperation among middle powers becomes more difficult, if not impossible, once an external risk has been defused. beyond the existence a common external threat, hegemonic leadership is an important condition for multilateral security cooperation.4

Set in this context, this chapter will show how the structural constraints of international politics have conditioned the scope of French diplomacy in regard to multilateral security cooperation. The first section features a brief overview on the conduct of French security policy during the Cold War, and the second deals with the conceptional conclusions drawn by French political and military elites from the collapse of the old bipolar order with regard to France’s relationship to the existing multilateral security organizations. How has France implemented its conceptions and how has this implementation been affected by the new strategic context? Finally, there will be some concluding remarks on the problems France is facing in organizing and implementing its conception of multilateral security cooperation in post–Cold War Europe.

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Multilateralism, European Security, and the Conduct of French Diplomacy During the Cold War French security policy has often been criticized for its inconsistencies. This criticism was directed against its policy toward European integration, its arms control and disarmament policy, as well as against its qualified willingness to cooperate in the Atlantic or European security framework. France has been accused of using its security policy to realize the classic Gaullist imperatives of “indépendance” and “grandeur.” Yet it is often forgotten that France’s policy reflected certain structural constraints resulting from the East-West conflict. In that conflict, France as a Western democratic state was simultaneously both an actor and an integral part of the conflict structure, a position that limited its options in security matters. Even the existence of independent nuclear forces did not change this situation fundamentally, although the rational for establishing its force de frappe had been to guarantee French military independence and the dissolution of blocs in Europe.5 During the Cold War, limiting Soviet influence on Western Europe and strengthening Germany’s ties to the West were the top priorities of French diplomacy. Only in the context of these two goals was a strong political and military engagement of the United States in Europe accepted. France and Western Europe needed the United States to counterbalance the overwhelming Soviet military power in Europe, whereas a strong American presence in Europe was seen as essential by French decision makers to tie Germany to the West. Thus, France’s security depended more on decisions made in Washington than in Paris. Starting in the mid-1970s French diplomacy was guided by the perception that in the long term the United States was interested in decoupling American and European security. France’s reactions to the SALT negotiations were in part a reflection of this. 6 Paris was also irritated by President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of December 1987, which were in Paris interpreted as another indicator for an imminent American disengagement from Europe. In combination with the enduring Soviet threat, these developments gave French diplomacy a sense of foreboding. The oft-cited incertitudes allemandes added another element of insecurity to what was already regarded as a precarious situation on the Old Continent. Since the beginning of the 1970s, the French had feared that the national interest of Germany would lead Bonn to abandon the

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common Western policy of balancing the Soviet Union in favor of a more neutralist position.7 Under these circumstances it seemed highly unlikely that the United States would be willing to continue its military presence in Europe. On the other hand, neither French scholars nor French politicians doubted that the perceived weakening of the American security guarantees helped to explain the apparent neutralist tendencies of German foreign policy.8 Under these circumstances it had to be in France’s interest to strengthen the political and military ties to the existing multilateral security structures of those two partners upon whom it had tried to impose a different international structure a decade earlier. In other words, a more thorough integration of Germany into the Western security system and the preservation of the American security umbrella had to be treated as complementary processes. Therefore, France’s decision to assume a favorable attitude to NATO’s dual-track decision of 1979 and to co-initiate the policy was logical and consistent. The deployment of new American weapons systems was seen by the French as a necessary element in renewing the link between American and Western European security, 9 offsetting “national-neutralistic” tendencies in Germany; and solving “the German question for the next twenty years.”10 However, the deployment did not bring about a satisfactory solution to the critical problem of coupling European and American security. At best, it mitigated the central dilemma, because, under the conditions of strategic parity between the superpowers, the existing American security guarantees had turned into mere probabilities. Thus, the cooperation with Germany in the fields of security and defense policy initiated in 1982 gained a specific meaning. The French objective was not to create an alternative to NATO; on the contrary, it was an attempt to contribute to the institutionalization of the oft-cited “European pillar” within the alliance. At the same time, this policy was crafted to strengthen links between NATO and the French military potential in order to enhance the overall deterrence capacity of the alliance in Central Europe in the field of conventional as well as nuclear weapons.11 Though this did not include acceptance of conditions of joint nuclear targeting in the perception of the French decision makers, practiced solidarity in the realm of conventional defense and persisting “nuclear uncertainties” were not mutually exclusive categories. On the contrary, with regard to the intended strengthening of the overall deterrence capabilities of the alliance they were two sides of the same coin. 12

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Without an adequate integration into a common defense the French nuclear forces could not credibly fulfill their function of “multiplier” of overall deterrence assigned to it in the Declaration of Ottawa of 1974; the possibility of an early launching of nuclear weapons that had been part of the French strategy would have degenerated into self-deterrence. On the other hand, any common defense that tried to exclude the additional nuclear risks caused by the participation of France would have remained incomplete. After all, increased incorporation into the alliance had been particularly important to Paris because a potential aggressor would have to face the risk of an early nuclearization of the conflict and its escalation to the strategic level, because the aggressor would confront the forces of an independent European nuclear power.13 After the upheavals in Eastern Europe in 1989 France continued its policy of stabilizing the existing Atlantic alliance framework. The reasoning behind this behavior was that, even at the beginning of the 1990s, France was highly skeptical about the changes in Soviet foreign policy and perceived a continuing need to counterbalance Soviet military power.14 At that time, France was therefore reluctant to recognize that the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) should play a prominent role in organizing European security and assumed that French security was still best guaranteed by NATO. It is noteworthy that during the German reunification process French policy favored tying all of Germany into NATO instead of binding it to a purely Western European security framework whose future still seemed unclear at that time. Thus, President Mitterrand demanded the new Germany’s membership in the alliance in order to strengthen its cohesion. 15 As a German scholar remarked at that time, “If NATO didn’t exist, the French would have to invent it.”16 It remains to be shown whether France’s relationship to NATO has changed after the Soviet empire collapsed, the massive threat has been dramatically reduced, and fears of German neutralist tendencies have become obsolete with the obvious deepening of the European integration process.

France and Multilateral Security Cooperation in Post–Cold War Europe It is important to realize that there is a widespread consensus among French politicians and security experts that the participation of NATO and

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consequently of the United States in European security affairs will continue to be vital for the security and stability of the Old Continent.17 On the other hand, until recently French policy was essentially guided by the principle that in the long run Western Europe has to create its own security and defense organization largely independent of NATO. The rationale behind the European approach to security issues has been based on the logic of the European integration process itself. For the French government the process of building a European Union will remain incomplete as long as the EU is deprived of far-reaching capacities in the field of security and defense affairs. As Pierre Lellouche, diplomatic adviser to President Jacques Chirac, put it some time ago, “There will be no political union of Europe without a strategic European Union.” 18 However, for France the establishment of a largely independent European center of power would not mean an end to any American engagement in Europe but rather that the dominant American influence on the Old Continent has to come to an end with the passing of the Cold War. From this perspective, in recent years France’s goal has been to restrict NATO to a purely collective defense function, while at the same time preventing any functional or geographical enlargement of the Atlantic alliance by strengthening the Western European Union (WEU) as a rival institution. Thus, notwithstanding strong reservations, France agreed to the NATO decision at the beginning of June 1992 to accept military missions on the behalf of the CSCE. Shortly thereafter, however, it got its European partners to agree to a regional delimitation of military activities of the WEU with the Petersberg Declaration of June 19, 1992. In a meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) in December of the same year, France then blocked a far-reaching agreement between NATO, the states of Central Europe, and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) that would have provided the basis for common military missions in order to enforce peace. In the spring of 1992 France had proposed a treaty on collective security within the framework of CSCE that was actually seen by NATO officials and many security experts as an attempt to undermine the role of the NACC. The reluctance to accept a wider role for NATO in organizing European security in the early post–Cold War period stemmed from France’s perception of the future American role in Europe, from its specific vision of a new European security architecture as well as from its approach to the settlement of regional crises in Europe and its peripheries. With regard to the American role in European security affairs, Paris suspected that efforts to expand NATO geographically as well as

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functionally would serve the interest of the United States in that it would continue to exercise a dominant position in Europe even under the new international circumstances. 19 It was from this perspective that French foreign policymakers sharply criticized the creation of the NACC as responsible for the failure of President Mitterrand’s project of a European Confederation that was planned to restore French influence over panEuropean affairs.20 As far as the new European security order is concerned, French vision was in the early days of the collapse of the bipolar order based on a conception in which conflict prevention by political and economic means was given clear priority over military force. There was little room for NATO in international crisis management. It was based on these assumptions that Prime Minister Edouard Balladur proposed his plan for a pact on security and stability in Europe; the Balladur Plan set out the framework within which the international community should attempt to prevent future crises on the Continent. 21 However, NATO’s role in the collective defense of Western Europe—in balancing Russia’s huge conventional and nuclear arsenal—still remained vital for French security in the worst scenario. Many French analysts and foreign policymakers had additionally serious concerns with regard to the cohesion of the alliance in case NATO should expand its role. It was assumed that with the end of the imminent Soviet military threat, the growing diffusion of minor security risks did not represent a solid enough basis for a common security and defense policy within the framework of NATO. There was also the fear that expanding NATO security commitments to include all of Europe would weaken the necessary strategic solidarity between the United States and Western Europe and would thus unwittingly accelerate the strategic disengagement of the United States,22 which seems unavoidable in the long term anyway. 23 It was from this perspective that French policymakers witnessed American reluctance to become fully engaged in efforts to restore peace in the former Yugoslavia; rather than fearing continuing U.S. hegemony in Western Europe, Paris began to worry about American disengagement.24 For the French Socialist government of the early 1990s, building an independent European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) was seen as the only way to compensate for the expected American disengagement and at the same time to create a “risk insurance” against potential military contingencies threatening European security in the future. As former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson put it, “It’s evident that the United States is disengaging from Europe…. It can’t leave and ask us not to have a defense of our own.”25

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Finally, the Persian Gulf War and the early French reading of the Yugoslav crisis had a major impact on France’s attitude toward the future of NATO. In contrast to most of its partners, France did not see the Persian Gulf War as a model for future NATO activities. As Frédéric Bozo has noted, “At the political level, the French view was that NATO’s formal involvement in future similar contingencies was unthinkable, both because major allies like Germany could or would not take part in such operations and because the support of non-NATO members such as the Soviet Union or the involvement of moderate Arab countries would be impossible if the NATO flag was visible.” With regard to the Yugoslav crisis, Paris held to the conviction from the very beginning of the crisis that the problem could be dealt with only in political, not military, terms. For Paris “NATO’s involvement was clearly seen entailing the risk of transforming a mission of humanitarian support or interposition into a confrontation with one of the parties, i.e., the Serbs, and, therefore, that of an escalation of the crisis. Moreover, in French eyes, NATO’s direct implication in Yugoslavia would at best complicate relations with Russia and, at worse, antagonize Moscow with equal risks of escalation, if not spill over.”26 Beginning in the fall of 1990, these political and securityoriented considerations caused France to conceptualize and to publish together with Germany several plans to develop the WEU as an alternative security framework largely independent from NATO.27 Although, those concerns are still shared by large parts of the French political class and military establishment,28 it is undeniable that France has lately been pursuing a more flexible and constructive policy toward NATO and the United States. The way in which the Franco-German Eurocorps was integrated into the Atlantic alliance by way of the agreements signed in January 1993 testifies to this. France’s willingness to make available to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) troops with a high degree of readiness has significantly widened France’s former cooperation agreements with NATO. In those agreements France provided troops officially only as operational reserves and refused to take a predetermined position in NATO defense planning, yet French units of the Eurocorps have become part of the integrated defense planning of the alliance.29 Moreover, France has changed its attitude toward the envisaged widening of NATO functions. Shortly after coming into office in 1993, the French Minister of Defense, François Léotard stated that it would be absurd to restrict NATO’s role solely to the deterrence of an aggression that has become progressively less likely; rather, the alliance should be prepared for new and further-reaching tasks in and around Europe. He

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added that for this reason France had to play a part in redefining NATO’s new mission and that the French armed forces should therefore cooperate in the respective military institutions of the alliance. 30 This public announcement only made official a policy already adopted by the government. Since mid-April 1993 a high-ranking French military official had been regularly participating, with voting rights, in those meetings of the Military Committee that deal with NATO’s engagement in the Adriatic and in the Balkans.31 In September 1994 Léotard attended an informal meeting of NATO defense ministers in Spain, the first time since 1966 that a French defense minister had participated in such a meeting. Hervé de Charette’s speech of December 1995, in which he announced France’s full participation in the alliance’s Military Committee, was thus the logical consequence of an evolution well under way. With regard to the alliance’s eastern enlargement, the conservative government in Paris has also demonstrated more flexibility than its Socialist predecessor. In a speech before the National Institute for Defence Studies (IHEDN) in Paris on May 15, 1993, Léotard declared that the new role of NATO should not only include peacekeeping missions but should also take into consideration security guarantees for Central and Eastern Europe in a middle-term perspective.32 Prime Minister Edouard Balladur fully supported him on the issue. As early as the beginning of February 1992, Balladur explicitly stated in a programmatic article on France’s position in the new world order that NATO, in order to survive, has to assume responsibility for the security of Central and Eastern Europe.33 However, at that time, this did not mean that these states would achieve membership in NATO in the near future.34 Consequently, it is not surprising that France fully supported the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program agreed upon at the NATO summit meeting in January 1994. President Mitterrand even regarded this program as a welcome addition to Prime Minister Balladur’s recent proposal to establish an international conference on security and stability in Europe, the so-called Balladur Plan. This constituted a significant change in Mitterrand’s position. In contrast to his former European Confederation project, the Balladur Plan35 explicitly mentions an active participation of the United States in dealing with the new challenges for European security.36 Although France’s policy on Eastern enlargement has changed significantly yet again—from 1995 onward it has actively supported the aspirations of Eastern European countries to become NATO members— French sentiment on the issue remains very skeptical. On the one hand, French policymakers are afraid that NATO enlargement could antagonize

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Russia; on the other, there is a growing concern among many of the same people that compensations offered to Moscow for its agreement to enlargement could undermine the U.S.-European relationship with regard to NATO’s collective defense.37 The efforts of President Chirac to promote Romania’s membership candidacy could be interpreted as an attempt to dilute the dynamics of NATO’s enlargement policy. French policy on participation in NATO’s decision-making bodies also remains ambiguous. Instead of returning to the integrated military structure of the alliance, France has essentially ameliorated its working relationship with the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE).38 At this writing a French defense minister has still not participated fully in the work of the NATO Defense Planning Committee. The reasons for French reservations are twofold. The first is that the Franco-American dispute on the reform of NATO’s internal command structure has hitherto blocked substantial progress on the issue. The second pertains to political control of the military. From the early 1990s onward Paris has repeatedly claimed that NATO should reduce the competences of military commanders and strengthen the role of the North Atlantic Council.39 Despite these reservations, the shifts in France’s NATO policy have been remarkable. The reasons for it are many. The obviously proAtlantic turn in France’s security policy was probably helped by the fact that the Clinton administration, in contrast to its predecessor, allowed for greater Western European independence in security matters. In addition, Washington seems to have softened its position regarding overall control and responsibility for peacekeeping or peace-enforcement operations that until recently it was willing to assign only to integrated NATO staffs. It was in this context that the chief of staff of the French armed forces, Admiral Lanxade, and the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shaliskasvili, in the summer of 1993 agreed upon the planning for the deployment of a large peacekeeping force in Bosnia to implement a peace agreement. While the United States accepted a measure of United Nations control, France in turn agreed to the American requirement of a NATO-led operation. 40 Moreover, the Americans proposed the use of the Combined Joined Task Force (CJTF) that would employ NATO’s logistics, intelligence, and communication facilities yet could operate under a different command. As NATO’s former Secretary-general Manfred Wörner put it, this would create “separable but not separate” military capabilities allowing Europe to act where the United States does not want to or cannot act. This project has

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been first a matter of an intense Franco-American dispute. The core problem originated with the French ambition to establish an independent command structure outside of NATO military missions not part of collective defense, which clearly demonstrated a recurring tendency to view NATO solely as a military toolbox. If embraced by France’s European partners, the idea could undermine NATO’s institutional health in the long run.41 Not surprisingly, the United States rejected the French proposal, and Germany too was skeptical.42 The dispute was settled on June 3, 1996, when the NATO member states approved the CJTF concept. The settlement became possible only after France gave up its plans to create an independent command structure outside NATO for those missions in which the WEU would use NATO’s intelligence as well as its command and control facilities. Additionally, France agreed that the use of such facilities will depend on a unanimous consent of the North Atlantic Council. The outcome seems to indicate that France is no longer drawn to the idea of multilateral security structures. This important change was partly prefigured by the French White Paper on defense, issued in February 1994. Far from expressing any animus against the United States and NATO, the White Paper explicitly acknowledged the Atlantic alliance as “the principal organisation of defense” 43 and called only for “strengthening WEU’s role as complementary to NATO.”44 The paper indicates that France has finally accepted and now openly acknowledges NATO’s central role as a backup institution for potential out-of-area missions that one or more of its members would carry out under the auspices of the United Nations.45 It reflects the French conviction that, due to fundamental changes in international politics, a maximum of flexibility in the use military power is necessary and that such flexibility should not be undermined by any permanent military integration, be it NATO or the WEU, as the framework of a solely European defense structure.46 Additionally, France was moved closer to NATO in the acknowledgment that a purely European approach to the security problems of post–Cold War Europe would be incompatible with NATO’s long-term existence and would lead to American alienation from Western Europe. 47 Accordingly, Paris has repeatedly declared its strong interest in the continuation of the Atlantic alliance. In 1992 Jean-Marie Guéhenno, then head of the planning staff in the French foreign ministry, explained that an American disengagement from Europe would be an undesirable prospect for France. Independent regional blocs in Europe, North America, and Asia—each pursuing independence—would create a rather dangerous and unstable world not at

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all safe from terrible surprises.48 Even France has no interest in a world in which economic conflicts between Western Europe and the United States could grow into a political and strategic rivalry between the two regions. So far, such a development has been prevented by linking European and American interests through NATO, and there are presently no alternative structures to serve this purpose. Over and above these long-term considerations, current difficulties in endowing the European Union with a security dimension have also contributed substantially to the Atlanticist shift in French security and defense policy. President Mitterrand demonstrated with his lone excursion to Sarajevo in June 1992 that this dimension of the European integration simply did not exist. The common security interests of Western European states, so often cited between 1990 and 1992 as the rationale behind France’s demands for the establishment of a mostly independent European security and defense policy, were not strong enough to lead to the formulation and to implementation of a common position. In this increasingly critical sphere of European integration, the Franco-German axis—a necessary condition for any progress—does not function,49 as early differences between Bonn and Paris over how to deal with the war in former Yugoslavia clearly indicated. Whereas the German government pressed for early international recognition of Slovenia and Croatia by the European Union, France supported the idea of a single Yugoslavian state, and Roland Dumas, French foreign minister at the time, accused Germany of escalating the conflict by pressing for recognition. 50 Though these particular differences were settled, it is reasonable to expect future episodes of diverging policy under the conditions of growing risk diffusion. The rather modest results of the 1994 Paris Conference on Security and Stability in stabilizing Eastern Europe, as well as the EU’s frustration in dealing with the war in former Yugoslavia, together support the conclusion that leadership of the United States is still needed by France as an important condition for European security cooperation. Although established by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Mitterrand with the express aim of overcoming potential conflicts of interests and of stimulating the discussion of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the so-called Eurocorps has so far not altered this situation. Although it is a primary task of this military unit to contribute to international collective crisis management, 51 Paris and Bonn have different ideas on its future missions. Whereas in Germany, planning the defense of German and alliance territory is given clear

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priority over any other military missions, including collective crisis management, 52 French interest in the Eurocorps is more far-reaching, and the Franco-German paper of December 1996 did not overcome this contradiction. 53 France still has important political, economic, as well as strategic interests in sub-Saharan Africa, whose protection, Paris feels, requires to a certain degree its military engagement in the region even after the end of the Cold War. 54 Moreover, a substantial contribution to international military crisis management is seen by French political leaders as an instrument to enhance their country’s international status and influence. With its involvement in the Rwandian civil war in summer 1994, France demonstrated its continuing ambition to act as a world power.55 Since the French armed forces suffer severely from operational and financial shortcomings, Paris hopes that Bonn will make substantial contributions to both the defense of Europe and beyond.56 With this in mind France has already developed concrete scenarios for future missions of the Eurocorps. In the case of the civil war in Rwanda, the former French defense minister Léotard pleaded in the summer of 1994 for the creation of international intervention forces with participation of the Eurocorps for the pacification duties in Africa. And in September 1995 Foreign Minister de Charette proposed to engage the Eurocorps in a future peace-implementation force in Bosnia. On both proposals, the German government had strong reservations, 57 and the Franco-German paper of December 1996 made reference to the corps only as an expression of common engagement for collective defense.58 In the light of the enduring German reluctance to engage German armed forces in operations of collective military crisis management, consequently, there is a growing concern among the French leadership that this military unit could remain ineffective and degenerate into a hollow symbol of European power.59 Moreover, this would also mean that this ambitious Franco-German project could not fulfill one of its main political functions, stimulating the process of European security cooperation and anchoring the strength of a united Germany within a European framework. Notwithstanding pronouncements to the contrary, a fear survives among the French political elite that in the near future Germany, as the new European great power, could loosen the ties binding it to Western Europe and start acting independently. Former Foreign Minister Alain Juppé was very clear on this when he observed that “Germany with its 80 million people and its economy that will have digested the problems of

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reunification within three or four years will have a substantial sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe—stretching to the Ukraine and all the way to Russia, and it might be tempted to say that it needs the European project far less than twenty years ago. This temptation exists and we have to face it.”60 From this perspective, Paris is understandably skeptical about the actual process of broadening the European Union so aggressively promoted by the German government. On the one hand, there are concerns that a northward and eastward enlargement of the EU will lead to a disproportionate gain of influence for Germany that would be detrimental to France. There is also a fear that, with a growing number of member states, the cohesion of the EU will be weakened and Germany could, again, be tempted to loosen its strong ties to the EU.61 It is not surprising that in spring 1994 the French ambassador in Bonn, François Scheer, addressed the traditional French concerns on the “incertitudes allemandes” and demanded a clear and definite commitment of Germany’s foreign policy to the deepening of the European integration. Even the first steps toward a common FrancoGerman Ostpolitik—that is, the inauguration of trilateral discussions involving France, Germany, and Poland, the so-called “Weimar triangle”—as well as the support France now demonstrates with regard to the eastern enlargement of the EU has so far not neutralized this fear.62 At the moment, therefore, the real danger for France is that the European project will falter and fragment, with Germany loosening its European ties and beginning to act as an independent great power. In such a situation France would then find itself forced to go alone in a Europe characterized by increasing instability along its eastern and southern flanks but a strong and independent Germany at the center. It is this perception of the strategic logic of post–Cold War Europe that has driven France and NATO closer together during the past two years and which finds Paris looking for a more active and leading American role in European security affairs. 63 For the near future Europe’s security will depend on the United States for three vital functions. Strategically, the United States can balance the residual military power of Russia, which may present a continual, if attenuated threat. Politically, the American presence can also offset an anticipated German hegemony, either within or outside the framework of the European Union. And psychologically, the Old Continent still needs the United States to repress its own nationalist demons.64

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Conclusions New French attitudes toward NATO do not mean that France will give up its commitment to creating a more independent European defense organization in the long run. It rather means that Paris will for now try to change the Atlantic alliance system from within. 65 Commenting on NATO’s CTJF decision of June 1996, Foreign Minister de Charette declared that for France the primary task of NATO’s internal reform has to be to provide Western Europe with a far-reaching independence in military and security affairs. France’s choices in security policy have been strongly affected by perceived international constraints as well as by an interpretation of the distribution of power among the key players. During the Cold War the bipolar structure of international politics precluded the realization of the French ambition to create a politically and militarily more independent Europe under French leadership. Instead, the conditions of the international system forced France to help stabilize those multilateral security organizations whose importance to European security it rather would have minimized. With the collapse of bipolarity, French attempts to create an independent European power center can in part be interpreted as an attempt to counterbalance American power; on the other hand, they also testify to the French realization that within the new international framework American and Western European interests are no longer necessarily concurrent. The effort to establish a strong and largely independent European security identity under French leadership has become more and more difficult, because, in contrast to the Cold War era, a diffusion of security threats encourages European governments to view security matters from a variety of national perspectives. Early FrancoGerman differences over Yugoslavia show that the much-praised “partnership” between Paris and Bonn is characterized more by common fear of failure than by common security interests. The result is a policy of the lowest common denominator that not only seems ineffective but that might also accelerate the decline of existing multilateral security structures. The prospects for a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) are very unclear, so for the near future NATO will remain the international institution most likely to guarantee France’s security. The Atlantic alliance is currently of specific importance to France not so much in dealing with an external threat, but as a means of grappling with the security dilemma of burdens and responsibilities within the Western camp. Viewed from this perspective, the pro-Atlantic U-turn

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of French diplomacy has resulted from the perception that the actual state of affairs in European integration in the field of security is as yet insufficient to prevent an unintended renationalization of security policy.

Notes 1. Hanns W.Maull, “Strategic Outlook: Compatibilities and Incompatibilities,” in Michael Brenner (ed.), The Atlantic Alliance and Collective Security in Post– Cold War Europe (New York: St. Martin’s 1998). 2. Frédéric Bozo, “France and Security in the New Europe: Between the Gaullist Legacy and the Search for a New Model,” in Gregory Flynn (ed.), Remaking the Hexagone: The New France in the New Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), pp. 213–232, esp. p. 220. 3. Peter Schmidt, “French Security Policy Ambitions,” Aussenpolitik, Vol. 44, No. 4, 1993, pp. 334–343. See also his “Germany, France and NATO,” U.S. Army War College. Strategic Outreach Paper and Conference Report, October 17, 1994. 4. On the elaboration of this argument see Michael Meimeth, “International Structure, Multilateral Security and the Dilemma of Political Authority in Post–Cold War Europe: The Case of France,” Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 1–4, 1994. 5. The strategic as well as the political instrumentality of the French nuclear forces have always been dependent upon the existing distribution of power in the international system. The stabilization of the two alliances, together with a certain stalemate in the political relationship between the superpowers in the mid-1960s, created the opportunities for the French to exploit their unique political and strategic position without having to consider seriously the possibility of a military conflict in Europe. 6. Michael Meimeth, Frankreichs Entspannungspolitik der siebziger Jahre: Zwischen Status quo und friedlichem Wandel. Die Ära Georges Pompidou und Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1990), pp. 24–39. 7. Pierre Lellouche gave a good example of the concerns of French political elite at the end of the 1980s when he expressed his vision on possible future European security structures as “…a kind of vast Austria, dominated by a neutral but economically superior Germany that would be buying Soviet benevolence through massive transfers of capital and technology to the Soviet empire—all under the shadow of the Red Army of course.” International Herald Tribune, January 1, 1989. 8. This negative interrelationship between the perceived implications of AmericanSoviet arms-control negotiations on the one hand and German uncertainties on the other hand caused the French to refuse to participate in Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR). At that time, the French were sure that the evolution of a neutralized Central European corridor would be the probable outcome of such negotiations. It was this same negative connection that caused the seemingly paradoxical situation at the end of the 1970s in which French

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9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

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officials secretly rejected the SALT II Treaty due to its potential implications for European security, while they continued to insist on the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee, and sharply criticized Germany in public for its pessimistic evaluation of the future course of American-European policy. For details see Michael Meimeth, “Die deutschen Ungewißheiten der siebziger Jahre während der Präsidentschaft Valéry Giscard d’Estaing,” Dokumente, No. 1, 1988, pp. 39–47. This was pointed out by former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in an article in Le Monde, February 19, 1983. Jacques Huntzinger, then diplomatic adviser of President Mitterrand, quoted in Françoise Sirjacques-Manfrass, “Die französische Sicherheitspolitik nach der doppelten Null-Lösung,” HSFK-Report No. 8, 1988, p. 5. On this see Lothar Rühl, “Franco-German Military Cooperation: An Insurance Policy for the Alliance,” Strategic Review, Summer 1988, pp. 48–54. See Pierre Hassner, “La France, l’atome et l’Europe ou le réalisme de l’irréalisme,” Revue Internationale de Défense, February 1984, pp. 133–142, p. 135. See Jannou Lacaze, “Politique de défense et stratégic militaire de la France,” Défense Nationale, June 1983, pp. 11–29, esp. p. 21. See also the speech of the French prime minister at that time, Michel Rocard, before the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Defense on November 15, 1988, quoted in Europa-Archiv No. 23, 1988, pp. D674–D676, esp. p. D675. For further details see Ingrid Bertram, “Frankreichs Reaktionen auf den Zusammenbruch des Warschauer Paktes und der Sowjetunion,” in Hanns W. Maull, Michael Meimeth, Christoph Neßhöver (eds.), Die verhinderte Großmacht: Frankreichs Sicherheitspolitik nach dem Ende des Ost-WestKonflikts (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996) pp. 47–61. President Mitterrand at a press conference on April 19, 1990, quoted in Frankreich-Info, April 27, 1990. Michael Stürmer, director of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, a German research institute for international affairs, quoted in the International Herald Tribune, May 7, 1990. President Mitterrand in an interview given on the eve of the NATO summit in January 1994, quoted in Le Figaro, January 10, 1994. Only the extreme left and some conservatives like former Prime Minister Pierre Messmer argue for a complete dissolution of NATO. Quoted in Le Monde, December 21, 1988. On this see especially the articles by Paul Marie de la Gorce, “L’OTAN et la prépondérance des Etats-Unis en Europe,” Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1993, and “Comment l’alliance tente d’adapter son système de sécurité,” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1993. On Mitterrand’s European Confederation see Michael Meimeth and Christoph Neßhöver, “Die gesamteuropäische Dimension französischer Sicherheitspolitik: Mitterrands Konföderationsprojekt und Balladurs Stabilitätspakt,” in Maull, Meimeth, Neßhöver, pp. 152–177, Fn. 13. Bozo, p. 226, Fn. 2. Lothar Rühl, “Paris sorgt sich um die NATO,” Die Welt, February 5, 1992. Pierre Lellouche, “Otan: Le rendez-vous manqué,” Le Figaro, January 11, 1994.

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24. Robert P.Grant, “France’s New Relationship with NATO,” Survival: The IISS Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 1996, pp. 58–66; Frédéric Bozo, “La France at l’Alliance: Les limites du rapprochment,” Politique Etrangère, 1995–1996, pp. 865–877, esp. p. 868. 25. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal July 15, 1991. 26. Bozo, “France, NATO and Collective Security after the Cold War,” in Brenner, Fn. 1. 27. For example, the so-called Genscher-Dumas Paper on a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) within the framework of the European Union, published on February 6, 1991, and the common Franco-German initiative of October 14, 1991, which announced the creation of the Eurocorps as the nucleus of an independent European defense organization. 28. Thierry de Montbrial, “Bill Clinton: l’Absence de vision,” Le Figaro, August 18, 1993, and Pierre Lellouche, “Otan: Le rendez-vous manqué,” Le Figaro, January 11, 1994. 29. Skeptics on France’s new NATO policy claim that the French agreement on NATO’s use of the Eurocorps is bound to three conditions: (1) that there is Franco-German agreement on the release of the forces, (2) that the corps be used for a mission defined in advance by plan approved by French political authorities, and (3) that the corps be engaged according to the plan. Thus, operational command would very much resemble conditions of operational control. See Grant, p. 61, Fn. 24. 30. Interview quoted in Le Monde, May 13, 1993. There seemed to be a growing consensus on this issue not only in the French government itself but also between the government and President Mitterrand. For Mitterrand see Le Figaro, January 10, 1994. 31. Jacques Isnard, “La France siège désormais avec voix délibérative au comité militaire de l’Otan,” Le Monde, May 14, 1993. 32. Quoted in Défense Nationale, July 1993, pp. 9–19, esp. p. 16. 33. Edouard Balladur, “La France et le nouvel ordre planétaire,” Le Figaro, February 3, 1992. 34. On this see the comments of Prime Minister Balladur during his recent visit in Poland, quoted in Le Monde, July 3–4, 1994. 35. See Mitterrand’s comments on the Partnership for Peace program, quoted in Le Figaro, January 10, 1994. 36. Text of the “Balladur-Plan” is reprinted in Ingo Kolboom and Ernst Weisenfeld (eds.), Frankreich in Europa. Ein deutsch-französischer Rundblick (Bonn: Europa, Verlag, 1993). 37. Nicole Gnesotto, “1996 et la défense commune: Encore une occasion manqué?” Politique Etrangère, No. 1, 1966, and Lothar Rühl, “Die NATOErweiterung—im Osten nichts Neues: Gefahren einer Ueberkompensation für russische Einlenken,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 11, 1997. 38. Schmidt, “Germany, France and NATO,” p. 19. 39. G.Trangis, “Ni splendide isolement, ni réintégration,” Le Monde, July 14, 1993. For details see Grant, “France’s New Relationship,” p. 65, Fn. 24. 40. Bozo, Fn. 24. 41. Schmidt, “Germany, France and NATO,” p. 19. 42. Karl Feldmeyer, “Bei der Suche nach einer neuen Struktur des NATO-

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Bündnisses geht es vor allem um Einfluß,” Frankfurter Allgemeine, August 5, 1996. 43. Therefore, the Russian proposal to make NACC part of CSCE was refused by France, as it would have meant a weakening of NATO. Baudouin Bollaert, “Otan: Rendez-vous à Istanbul,” Le Figaro, June 8, 1994. 44. See also on this the interpretation of the White Paper that Léotard has made in a newspaper article: “Défense: un consensus actif,” Le Figaro, March 4, 1994. 45. Quoted in Le Figaro, December 3, 1993. See also Jacques Baumel, “La France et l’avenir de l’Otan,” Le Figaro, December 14, 1993. Consequently, the White Paper states that French defense minister and the chief of staff of the French armed forces will participate in NATO meetings on a case-by-case basis decided by the French president and the prime minister, especially when peacekeeping and peace enforcement are involved. 46. For this argument see G.Trangis, “Ni splendide isolement, ni réintégration,” Le Monde, July 14, 1993. G.Trangis is the pseudonym of a high-ranking official in the Balladur government. 47. Frédéric Bozo, La France et l’Otan. De la guerre froide au nouvel ordre européen (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1991). 48. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, “Sicherheit und Verteidigung in Europa,” Dokumente No. 2, 1992, pp. 121–127, esp. p. 123. 49. Peter Schmidt, “The Special Franco-German Security Relationship in the 1990s,” Chaillot Paper No. 8, Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union, Paris, June 1993. 50. Quoted in Hans Stark, “France-Allemagne: Entente et mésententes,” Politique Etrangère, Winter 1993–1994, pp. 989–999, esp. p. 994. For a detailed discussion of the Franco-German differences on the war in former Yugoslavia see Philip H.Gordon, “Die Deutsch-Französische Partnerschaft und die Atlantische Allianz,” Arbeitspapiere zur Internationalen Politik 82, Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Polik, Bonn, April 1994, pp. 43–66. 51. This is stated in the Franco-German Declaration of La Rochelle on May 22, 1992, reprinted in Europa-Archiv, No. 13, 1992, pp. D454–D455, esp. p. D455. German Defense Minister Volker Rühe, commenting on French plans to provide French armed forces with military power projection capabilities of global reach, quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 2, 1996. 52. Text reprinted in Blätter für deutsche und Internationale Politik, No. 3, 1997, pp. 376–382. 53. Michael Meimeth, “Frankreichs militärische Engagement in Afrika. Aufgaben und Perspektiven,” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Working Paper 2960, June 1996. 54. Prime Minister Balladur in an interview with the French TV station Antenne 2 on June 27, 1994. 55. On French interests in defense cooperation with Germany, see Schmidt, “The Special Franco-German Security Relationship in the 1990s.” 56. See François Léotard, “Pour une force d’action africaine,” Le Monde, July 6, 1994. Also “Frankreich bringt Eurocorps ins Spiel,” Frankfurter Allgemeine, September 22, 1995, and Frankfurter Allgemeine, July 14, 1994, and September 26, 1995. 57. Thus, in summer 1994, M.Caldaguès, member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the French senate, declared that in the case that the

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60. 61.

62.

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German Bundestag should vote against a participation of the Eurocorps in settling the crisis in Rwanda, the existence of this military unit would be called into question. Quoted in Eckhart Lohse, “Auf den Champs-Elysée nicht unter feindliches Feuer geraten,” Frankfurter Allgemeine, July 1, 1995. Alain Juppé quoted in Le Monde, September 2, 1993. This was recently expressed by the former French Foreign Minister Jean François-Poncet, quoted in Le Point, May 7, 1994. See also the revealing article by Henri de Bresson, “l’Allemagne tempère ses ardeurs européennes,” Le Monde, July 5, 1994. Daniel Vernet, “Ein anderes Bild von Europa “Die Zeit, March 25, 1994. Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 16, 1994, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 18, 1994. During his visit in Poland in September 1996, President Chirac declared he wants Poland to become a member of the EU in the year 2000. Quoted by Michael Ludwig, “Schlagseite im Weimarer Dreieck,” Frankfurter Allgemeine, September 13, 1996. Thus, commenting on the so-called “Schäuble-Lamers paper” of September 1994, which is generally seen as a clear and unambiguous German commitment to the European integration, a prominent member of the French Institute of International Affairs expressed serious concerns upon the possibility of a unilateral German Ostpolitik. Michael Meimeth (ed.), Europa auf dem Weg zu einer gemeinsamen Sicherheits und Verteidigungspolitik (forthcoming). See also the comments Prime Minister Balladur made in an interview with Le Monde, May 18, 1993, and Dominique Moïsi and Jacques Rupnik, Le nouveau continent: Plaidoyer pour une Europe renaissante (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1991), p. 157. Dominique Moïsi is deputy director of the French Institute of International Affairs, Paris. The demand for an active American leadership in European affairs in order to prevent political and military instability on the Old Continent has been repeated in an article by Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Affairs and member of the Commission of the White Paper on Defence. “Europe: La stabilité, comment,” Le Figaro, June 10, 1994. Peter Schmidt, “Frankreichs neues Verhältnis zur NATO. Preisgabe oder Verwirklichung gaullistischer Prinzipien?” SWAP-AP 2957, May 1996. Hervé de Charette quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine, June 4, 1996. The former French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy said in 1992 that a European power was needed “because it is unhealthy to have a single superpower in the world.” Quoted by Flora Lewis in “Europe’s Last Minute Jitters,” New York Times, April 24, 1992.

CHAPTER 8

Redefining European Security: The Role of German Foreign Policy Klaus von Beyme

The Policy Options of Reunified Germany It is a commonplace of conventional wisdom on Germany that Germany traditionally looked East rather than West.1 What, however, does “looking” mean in this context? Germany has never been especially myopic in looking East or West. But since Napoleon and the post-Napoleonic Holy Alliance, Germany was thrice disappointed by her Western neighbors and therefore turned East for allies. Between 1806 and 1820 there was only a transitional opportunity to have Britain as an ally. As soon as Napoleon was defeated, Prussian-British interests diverged again and Britain lost interest in intervening in Central European affairs. After 1871 it was hardly in any Western neighbor’s interest to contemplate an alliance with Germany. With France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of a new German Reich, only Russia had a position like the United States in 1990, namely that it was too big to feel threatened by a greater Germany. So again Germany looked eastward for greater security. The Weimar Republic of 1919 felt itself a humiliated underdog of the international system with a certain kinship to

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the new Soviet Union. In the Treaty of Rapallo it sought and found an understanding with Moscow on secret economic and military cooperation that undermined the Treaty of Versailles. After 1945 this tradition, dating from Tauroggen 2 to Rapallo, was abandoned completely. Germany’s outlook on East-West was territorialized. West Germany became part of the Western world, and Germany’s center of gravity thus shifted from Central-Eastern Europe to Central-Western Europe. The East German regime proclaimed a revolution that in fact happened only in the Federal Republic, the Westernization of Germany. 3 The unification of 1871 had little in common with the “reunification” of 1990. The German empire was hardly a continuation of Prussia, as many of the victors believed after 1945 when they abolished Prussia. The more commendable traditions of Prussia—tolerance, rationality, and enlightenment—had long since eroded away within the empire of William II. The only temptation to great power politics evident in the reunification process was in Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s unwillingness to accept the smaller powers among the former allies of the war coalition against Hitler as partners in the Two Plus Four negotiations involving the four principal victors of 1945 and the two German states of 1990.4 His caustic claim to the effect that “you are not part of the game” was hard to swallow for a country like Poland, which had suffered most in the Second World War under German occupation. The better traditions of the Federal Republic of Germany did not erode after 1990. If some critics complain about the “colonization” of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) by West Germans, they tend to ignore the most positive aspect of the process: the rapid integration of East Germany into the Western alliance system. The first German unification led to a pentagonal balance of power in which Germany, France, Austria, Great Britain, and Russia were the preeminent states. Bismarck’s subsequent creation of a Triple Alliance including Germany, Austria, and Italy was a violation of the rules of the game. Nothing like this happened after 1990. Even when one follows the rise and fall of nations in the style of Paul Kennedy,5 one has to acknowledge that 1990 did not usher in a rise of any new empire. There was hardly any continuity, even if Chancellor Helmut Kohl is sometimes compared to the physically massive stature of Bismarck. Unfortunately, the parallel ends about where the unusual fortune of the two uniting statesmen is discussed. Kohl hardly approaches Bismarck’s outstanding intellectual capacities. He sometimes likes to evoke the memory of his predecessor, but he more usually poses as the grandchild

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of Konrad Adenauer than of Bismarck. All parallels of the two foundings of 1871 and 1990 are imaginary. Germany in 1871 was Europe’s greatest military power. After 1990 its army actually shrank to some 370,000 troops. Germany in 1871 was an expanding economic power, which overtook Britain around 1890, only to be overtaken shortly thereafter by the United States. The Germany of 1990 was and is a stagnating economy, lacking innovation; in some respects Germany had the best economic system, but a system more appropriate to the 1960s.6 Germany after 1871 was behaving aggressively or unduly egoistic. After 1990 the Federal Republic even renounced a voting power in the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) in proportion to its increased population. Germany’s representation remained the same as Britain, France, or Italy. The only parallel between the two German unification regimes is a certain realism common to both the founding fathers. Bismarck and Kohl share the conviction that Germany is to remain a continental power without claim to a global diplomacy. Even as an economic power, reunified Germany revealed European limitations. Foreign investments between 1989 and 1992 went mostly to small neighbors. The Benelux countries attracted as much of it, $27 billion, as Britain and the United States together. In East Asia, German capital was represented only by $2.5 billion. The bipolar structure of the Cold War era featured fundamental policy goals on the part of Germany’s Western allies, keeping the Soviets “out” and keeping Germany “down.” After 1990 “down” was replaced by “in.” Germany would hardly have been allowed to reunify yet remain in the Western alliance had not most of the actors party to the event—including Premier Gorbachev—accepted that a neutralized united Germany would be more of a security risk for her neighbors than a Germany fully enmeshed in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In order to demonstrate the reliability of Germany’s Westpolitik, Kohl deepened the process of European integration at a time when integration was no longer as popular with Germans as it had been after the war when it represented the only escape from a role of the permanent underdog. But he had additional reasons to accelerate the process that led to Maastricht, prominent among them a concern to unite the European economy against the challenge of other economic superpowers, particularly Japan,7 and a desire to create institutional and policy faits accomplis before the accession of new members such as Austria, Finland, Sweden, and, in a more distant future, Eastern European countries. Most fundamentally, Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand, who was no more pleased with

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the fact of German reunification than British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wanted to reassure that Germany was firmly under control. West Germany’s sovereignty was partly instituted in the mid-1950s but had never been complete. When in 1990 this was at last accomplished by the abolition of the last occupation responsibilities of the four Allied victors of 1945, the Federal Republic got its first chance to commit blunders in foreign policy. Bonn made use of it, though in moderation. Chancellor Kohl did not sufficiently consult Germany’s allies during his initial steps toward reunification, such as his ten points for a confederation of the two German states of December 1989. Kohl and Foreign Minister Genscher were precipitous in extending formal recognition to Slovenia and Croatia as Yugoslavia disintegrated, and they did not sufficiently coordinate their actions with other European powers. Fortunately, these blunders did not create lasting resentments. Bonn’s allies soon felt that they too had no other choice than to recognize Germany’s unification process, while accepting the creation of new states on Yugoslav territory in spite of all the dangers of “Balkanization” accompanying it. On the German unification issue it helped that the allies showed little inclination to pay for the rebuilding of East Germany. They were not only “free-riders,” in spite of the small sums the East German Länder got from the EEC; they were also able to internalize the costs of reintegration of a territory that even under the old division of the Cold War camps had partly been a hidden member of the Western club because of the GDR’s privileges in the inter-German trade, exempted from the strict rules of extra-EU commerce. There was also speculation that West Germany’s economy might be weakened by the burden of its Eastern mezzogiorno just as Italy’s economy has always been hobbled by poverty in its southern half. This was, however, never a major consideration. The Western European nations were not concerned that West Germany might fall short of either the conditions for a monetary union or the more likely date of 2002. Fortunately, Germany seemed only for a short period in 1992–1993 unable to meet the standards it had most stubbornly promoted for the inner circle of monetary Europe. As of 1994 Timothy Garton Ash saw four main options open to the future of German foreign and security policy. 1.

A Carolingian completion of deep integration by the inner circle of old EEC countries. The logical destination of such a process would be political union, perhaps in a Confederal Republic of Northwestern Europe.

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The promotion of a wider Europe, involving more members but a looser integration implying no political union. It could involve membership of the Visegrad and Nordic states—along with Slovakia, Slovenia, and Austria—in NATO, the EU, and the Western European Union (WEU). A Moscow-first strategy. The new-old power of Central Europe elaborating a new “special relationship” with what remains the most powerful state in Eastern Europe. The pursuit of the status of a world power. Germany would embrace the American proposal that it become a “partner in leadership” and seek the rights and obligations of a world power, starting with the Security Council of the United Nations.

Ash came to the conclusion that Germany will “choose not to choose” and will instead try to do at least a little of everything. But world power status is clearly beyond realization. Even Germany’s aspirations for a seat in the Security Council of the United Nations are not pursued in any consistent way. Otherwise, Chancellor Kohl would hardly have dared to offend the UN by refusing to come to the anniversary of the world organization in 1995. Another incarnation of a mondialiste strategy could be the offensive for East Asian export markets launched from time to time. But these campaigns have had limited effects. The German government knows that its influence, compared to Japan and the United States, is limited in evolving Asia. Rather, Germany is continuing in the old tradition of remaining, even in commercial affairs, a predominantly continental power. It concentrates on Eastern Europe, where, thanks to know-how and the fact that the two German states once accounted for about 15% of the Soviet foreign trade, Germany has fared better than its competitors. Even before 1989, there was occasionally loose talk about German “co-leadership,” especially in the United States. But President George Bush’s hint at Germany and America as “partners in leadership,” is best understood as an attempt to amend the narrow Anglophile perspective of the European policy of his predecessor Ronald Reagan rather than a genuine invitation to global leadership.8 The Carolingian completion cited by Ash as central to the European policy of both Chancellor Kohl and former leader of the Social Democratic Party Rudolf Scharping, is not incompatible with the wider Europe concept that is usually linked with the name of Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. Admittedly, Kinkel in the early 1990s was not as strong as

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his predecessor Genscher. He was too weak at the time of erosion of his small Free Democratic Party to develop a foreign policy alternative to the two major partisan powers in the country, the Christian and Social Democrats. On the other hand, the idea of a “Europe of two speeds,” an idea supported if not invented by the Germans, could square a deeper Europe with a wider Europe. And yet Carolingian completion could turn out to be a misleading concept. Belgium, the “arch-European” country hosting the European capital, may not be able to enter the inner circle of monetary union on schedule. Italy has had a good many quarrels with German Finance Minister Theo Waigel over his observation that it too might not be a member of the inner circle. Italy was a cornerstone of Carolingian Europe, and there would no doubt be major efforts from the rest of the European Union to avoid leaving behind the host country of the Treaty of Rome. It is also hard to accept as feasible that Belgium could be excluded from the group of currency union countries. Even with Belgium and Italy in, the likely outcome of monetary integration would stretch the Carolingian design. Denmark, if it does not resort to selfexclusion, is a likely candidate for membership, and Sweden, too, could qualify. The Moscow-first policy is the least likely of all possible German security policies. True, Germany is ready to make concessions toward Russia more than any other European state. The usual German approach to Russia after 1949 consisted of checks and diplomacy over the blood and iron of the nineteenth century. Germany was the chief supplier of investment goods to the Soviet Union even before the end of the Cold War and has since given far and away more aid than any European country to post-Soviet Russia. Meanwhile, the Eurobarometer and other survey institutes provide us every year with data recording the dissatisfaction of Eastern Europeans with the help they have received from the West. In 1991 the notion of a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe was bandied about, but if we compare circumstances at the end of World War II with those at the end of the Cold War, the differences are striking. From 1948 to 1951 about $12.4 billion were poured into Western Europe. This corresponded to 1% of the gross national product of the United States and 2% of that of the recipient countries. 9 By 1993 Western help to post-Soviet Europe amounted to about the equivalent, with ECU 68 billion allotted to Eastern Europe and ECU 140 billion going to the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). Of this 38.3 to the CIS came from Germany alone; 13.2 from the rest of the European Union; 5.9 from the United States; and 2.3 from Japan.

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These sums are actually modest compared to the transfers from West to East Germany. On a per capita basis these amounted to twelvefold what the Marshall Plan allocated to the Federal Republic. If the CIS were to receive the equivalent of the inner German transfers, it would account for some DM 2 trillion per annum. Even the entire OECD could not launch such an effort. Russia in particular might have attracted more aid, if the Western European states had been convinced that the money was being used in the right way. The high German transfers to the former Soviet Union are more akin to a political and security levy than a genuine economic investment. Like much of the aid to Russia, they were based above all on a desire to keep Boris Yeltsin in the office of the Russian presidency rather than on the calculation that they would fuel economic recovery. Even though stabilizing benefit of the transfers was uncertain, they were deemed worthwhile. For their message to the ex-Communist states is clear enough—namely that it pays to remain on the road to democracy—and it appeared to have been understood by the Russian electorate in the presidential election of 1996. According to the surveys conducted in the post-Communist years, Western aid as a whole, and especially German transfers, is acknowledged by only a minority of the Eastern European populace. The Poles, who received the highest amount of Western aid, appeared to appreciate this only by a small margin; the Rumanians, who received a comparatively low subsidy, mentioned Western aid most favorably among the respondents of public surveys. The most ambivalent answers concerned the issue as to whether the successor states of the former Soviet Union should also participate. Opinion in Hungary and Czechoslovakia was affirmative, whereas citizens of the Baltic states reacted to the idea of aid for the former Soviet Union most negatively. Many respondents thought Russia should receive aid only under limiting conditions. Russia, they thought, should demonstrate more of the prerequisites of democracy in order to qualify for Western support. What these surveys can tell us is limited, but they at least expose rivalries among the countries in the former Soviet bloc. If one country gets more aid, the aid program is denounced as biased by its neighbors. Germany in particular is under constant suspicion of forming “new axes” or reviving traditional alliances, with Hungary, for instance. In spite of its efforts and traditional links to the countries of Eastern Europe, Germany is suspected in other ways. It has not been forgotten that the Soviet Union in 1945 only inherited the hegemonic economic

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position that Germany had filled in Eastern Europe in spite of alliances rather directed to offset it. Germany therefore benefited most of the breakdown of communism, and its reputation among its new Eastern neighbors declined in proportion. In Poland in 1991 negative public attitudes toward Germany reached 32%, very close to the level of antiSoviet sentiment. In 1993 Polish citizens perceived the new Germany even as more dangerous than Russia. Prior to their country’s division into two sovereign states Czechoslovakians tended to reverse the order. Not surprisingly, Eastern Europeans do not perceive countries other than Russia and Germany as constituting much of a threat at all. However, in Russia only the potential Japanese “threat” scores about the same level of apprehension as the new Germany. Notwithstanding these resilient prejudices, German chances for working as a mediator in Europe are not bad. The United States is considered the best ally of most Eastern European states, but in Hungary and Bulgaria the new Germany has actually been ranked above the United States as a potential ally.10 Relations between Germany and Russia are less subject to distorting public bias because they are on a more equal footing. In Russia, German financial aid is more readily visible and appreciated. For Germany, economic diplomacy in Russia also pays, especially when we look at the primordial position in economic exchange relations Germany has in Eastern Europe yet understand that Germany is more easily ready to concede to Russian claims to a hegemonic position in the territories of the former Soviet Union. It is possible that some Russians feel that the level of relations of their partners with their friends has to be qualitatively inferior to the relation between themselves and their friends. As a partner, Germany is more prepared than other Western powers to accept the reunification of Soviet territories under the Russian flag. One of the reasons is that Germany is closer to the Russian borders and has more to fear from unrest and disorder to the east of it. There exists an unstated nostalgia for the old system of order running from Finland to the Transcaucasus. It is evident in other countries, but it is stronger in Germany than anywhere. Yet this does not mean that Germany has a “finlandized” attitude in toward relations with Russia. In many respects, after all, the reunified Germany has acted counter to Russian interests. Helmut Kohl has encouraged the access of Eastern Europe’s budding democracies to NATO and the European Union more openly than any other important leader. Germany has an interest in having Poland as a glacis within the Western camp, just as France enjoyed the benefit of the German glacis between

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itself and the Warsaw Pact, even after it pulled out of NATO’s integrated command. Every move in the direction of including former Warsaw Pact members into Western alliances and regional associations is considered as an “unfriendly act” by Moscow. The Bonn government’s policy on Yugoslavia was considered more detrimental by decision makers in Moscow than that of any other nation. For a moment, the great power constellation of 1914 seemed to be restored: Russia, France, and Britain supporting Serbian claims against Croatia, backed by Germany and Austria. The Bosnian civil war has since neutralized this constellation and blurred the distinctions. President Bill Clinton’s success in peacemaking has avoided alienating the Russian government completely, and Bonn was able to stand in the shadow of the American superpower. In military matters there are some fears that Germany may attempt cooperation in nuclear policy with Russia. But these fears are still farfetched, and are informed more by the memory of hidden collaboration in the distant past and the “secret Reichswehr” hidden on Soviet territory in the days of the Weimar Republic, 11 than any sober calculation of Germany’s security interests. Why should Germany exceed peaceful development of nuclear power for military purposes in hidden arrangements with Russia when it refuses cooperative offers by the French President Jacques Chirac who was eager to strengthen France’s force de frappe without wanting France to bear the costs alone? There is hardly a new Rapallo in the offing, certainly least of all in military planning. One of the first steps toward greater military potency for Germany would be to abolish its army of draftees as a direct consequence of having agreed in 1990 to a reduction of German military forces as a price for national reunification. This could be done without arousing suspicions. After all, the two major allies of America and Britain both have professional armies. But current German policy still does not consider a professional army as an alternative to the Bundeswehr of the past forty years. And this is not solely because the development of about 80,000 well-paid soldiers of lower ranks would be the first step toward such a new structure altogether and would cost a lot of money. Germany’s political leaders generally still adhere to the democratic creed of an army of “citizens in uniform” and are afraid of the potential social isolation of a professional army. Reunification had the unpleasant consequence for the Bonn government that it inherited not only a territory but also a vast arsenal of weapons on that territory. Since the Federal Republic had accepted a drastic reduction of her armed forces as a condition of national

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reunification, there was no use for these weapons. Most of them were sold, thus earning Germany third place, behind the United States and Russia, among the top aggregate suppliers of major conventional weapons to the world. 12 Relative to its GNP, however, Germany remained far behind allies such as France and Britain, while the German arms industry underwent the deepest cuts in domestic arms procurement, almost 50% in four years, in Europe. These facts testify that the German arms industry, which, relative to most national arms industries has a high degree of diversification, did not intentionally embark on any mass export drive. The eight German companies with a place on the list of the world’s top 100 arms manufacturers amounted to only 14% of their sales from arms, whereas the average for most Western arms manufacturers has historically been between 30% and 40%.13 Of course, these figures have not stopped foreign commentators in the East and the West from bemoaning Germany’s comeback as a military power, but the informed decision makers know the figures and will draw pragmatic conclusions from them. Official propaganda against Germany in Eastern Europe has almost stopped completely. This is because it is widely appreciated that the government of the Federal Republic has lived up to its international obligations. Germany meticulously adhered to its commitments on verifications and inspections in arms reduction, and only Britain and Germany accepted a genuinely balanced control in all the sectors of military equipment. Most countries fulfilled their commitments in a rather more selective fashion. Only in Russia have the attacks of post-Soviet experts on foreign policy continued, both against NATO generally and the specific role of Germany in it. In fact, Western analysts sometimes found the Russian interpretation of international realities more dogmatic than that in the late Soviet period.14

A German Sonderweg after Reunification? Karl Marx once remarked that when history repeats itself it tends to develop the first time as a tragedy and the second as a farce. Germany has a good deal of experience with the former; no other tradition of national exceptionalism has been so lethal to the balance of world peace as Germany’s. Consistently, a certain romantic holism was perverted into crude diplomatic formulae and abused by Machiavellian realists in nineteenth-century power politics. Romantic holism today is more usually

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witnessed as farce. That is, it is used to draw the appropriate lessons from German history and thereby create a new German exceptionalism. Germany in the early 1980s was admired for its rapid transformation of a quietist political culture featuring an often stultifying aversion to conflict into the Mecca of unconventional behavior. But every Mecca hosts is orthodoxy. The German Green Party and the deep influence it brings to bear on the left wing of the Social Democratic Party has strengthened a popular attitude toward international affairs to the effect that any and all conflict should exclude Germany. Thus Germany has acquired a reputation for combining a commercial attitude to international conflict of a “checkbook ally,” who will fight to the last American GI in Kuwait and to the last French peacekeeper in Bosnia, with a moral fundamentalist’s appetite for clean politics. Additionally, Germany’s allies have had some difficulty in understanding that its government could only see its way clear to shouldering international responsibilities through the blessing of the Federal Constitutional Court. This body, more prestigious in Germany than any other central institution, is not always internationally minded. With its sentence on the Maastricht treaty it became a major enemy of the Brussels Eurocrats, because it fixed narrow limits to further European integration. In the case of German engagement in peacekeeping in Bosnia, fortunately, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in a more progressive direction. Yet even after the court’s decision that German soldiers could be deployed to the Balkan conflict, the two opposition parties opposed any potential German involvement in fighting and insisted on solely humanitarian help. The Social Democrats gave the old Socialist catchword of internationalism a new meaning, while the Green Party was split on this issue. Humanitarian participation was accepted. The argument continued over the question of Kampfeinsatz, the combat deployment of German troops. The spokesman for the fundamentalists, Ludger Volmer, feared that under the cover of a moral obligation to prevent genocide, NATO could get a plein pouvoir for military actions. He did not accept the uniqueness of the Bosnian events and pointed to some 40 dirty wars going on in the world that involved genocide. The fundamentalists attacked the realists for accepting that NATO would decide in which case and in what fashion the alliance would intervene. Realists such as Hubert Kleinert did not see any possibility of abuse so long as the United Nations Security Council was to decide in which case of genocide the international community should intervene. 15 Many radical Greens have shifted their position. Although they do not accept a German military

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contribution to peacekeeping, they do for the first time impose sanctions against the parties in a conflict. A majority in the Green Party does not want to send soldiers abroad, preferring a special military unit of volunteers under the command of the foreign office rather than the defense ministry, consistent with their desire to abolish military service and establish a further-reduced army of volunteers. The official policy of the governing coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals has been only peripherally influenced by the new wave of fundamentalism. And yet the parliamentary majority of 424–48 in Bundestag that ratified the Constitutional Court’s ruling—namely that German contributions to peacekeeping missions were in tune with the Basic Law—does not reflect the heat of argument around the issue. The Social Democrats and some Greens were won over to the Constitutional Court’s positive ruling under many caveats. German troops could be dispatched only with the mandate of the Security Council of the United Nations; only after a constructive agreement of the Bundeswehr; and only in a case where a special law is passed that can be repealed anytime. Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel confessed that even for the government parties, “Cautiousness and reserve will certainly continue to do us good in the future.” 16 Even on the basis of such an agreement between government and opposition, details were open to quarrel. The government parties also were inclined to believe that German soldiers should not serve in areas where German troops operated in World War II. But since most of the war was fought in Eastern Europe and the Nazis for a short time dominated the whole area from the Northern Cape, near Hammerfest in Norway, down to the Transcaucasus, Germany could use this excuse to declare that ineligible for most peacekeeping missions in Europe! Germany has a problematic relationship with ethnic and national factors underpinning the legitimacy of a state and the qualifications for its citizenship, namely in the ethnocentric residue of the official state ideology as the ius sanguinis of German citizenship. This developed not as the fruit of romantic thought, as some writers abroad have claimed, but rather as the result of an unhappy history. Two lost wars diminished Germany’s territory but left the desire to uphold the right of citizenship to those Germans no longer living within the boundaries of the German state. After 1945 the ius sanguinis was overdue to be abolished, but it had immediate relevance to the millions of refugees and expellees who had to be included as citizens. The existence of the GDR further legitimated this situation, even in the time of détente. The GDR enjoyed a certain quasirecognition, but when a GDR citizen fled to the West he automatically

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became a citizen of the Federal Republic. Only since 1990 has this problem been addressed with Germany due to a shift to a contractualist concept of citizenship, without fixation to ethnic roots, in order to become fully Western European.17 Certainly this is a welcome development relative to the ius sanguinis practiced in variations of the principle from Estonia down to the Crimea by post-Soviet successor states with less than pacifying results. Reverse discrimination against the former dominant Russian ethnic group has developed and provoked Russian threats in response. In spite of this artifact of an outdated concept of nation and statehood, Germany has generally tried to evolve beyond ethnic definitions of citizenship. Most German intellectuals profess what has been dubbed from Dolf Sternberger to Jürgen Habermas as “constitutional patriotism,” based on the notion that the state’s popular legitimacy should be promoted according to the rights it guarantees its citizens. The German Grundgesetz, or Basic Law of 1949, however, does not provide for a very participatory system and is rather more on the tradition of the Rechtsstaat of a constitutionally formalized statement of rights and obligations. Its altogether reasonable and legitimate intentions for German democracy are in danger of being perverted if the status quo of the constitution—drafted and adopted in the fundamentally different national circumstance of defeat, division, and occupation—is used to prohibit Germany from assuming international responsibilities. Germany accepted almost half a million refugees from worn-torn Yugoslavia, more than any other country in Europe. Yet it fails to recognize that it might have done more to limit the size of the refugee problem overall when the Western powers sought to limit the impact of ethnic purge and territorial aggression arising from Yugoslavia’s disintegration. The country’s sundry “alternative” lobbies and the Greens in particular insisted on a stubborn application of pacificist principles of a caliber that can isolate Germany just as thoroughly as past acts of aggression. Theirs is a tyrannous virtue disliked by all of Germany’s neighbors, because it implies that all positions at variance with it are morally inferior. The more conservative members of the Social Democrats in Germany found themselves fighting off the charge of the far left that they were “bellicist.” Traditional positions on nationalism and internationalism were often reversed, conservatives becoming more actively internationalist while the self-appointed internationalists of the past used the Basic Law to justify a new German Sonderweg. Although Germans argue among themselves in the Bundesbank, their

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European neighbors in the East and West do not always differentiate one German political camp from another. Instead they witness the German reluctance to engage in international peacekeeping in juxtaposition with the power of the German Bundesbank. Polemical attacks on Germany conjure the fear of a Geldkrieg instead of a Weltkrieg, because the Bundesbank has maneuvred itself into a self-righteous position of defining for the whole continent what “politics of stability” is to mean. Only in Germany, it seems, would it occur to a government to pass a Law of Economic Stability, an action of no substantive impact but good symbolic politics. As long as such actions are confined to German territory, neighbors in East and West are inclined to admire the stabilizers in the boardrooms of the Rhine Valley. But as soon as the Bundesbank dominates the budding European bank and the German minister of finance tries to stipulate which country is eligible for the currency union and which is not—as he did first in October 1995 in the case of Italy—the German logic on stability is considered a threat. During the unusually extensive strikes of December 1995 the French press found who was to blame. The Germans, armed with their rigid standards for the monetary union, had forced Paris to accept excessive cuts in the budget. Economic specialists understand that the watchdog role of the German Bundesbank makes European unity especially expensive for Germany, because it carries a greater financial burden for Europe than the other major states, all of whom were happy to accept that Germany did not claim more seats in the European Parliament and in the European Commission after reunification made it demographically larger than Britain, France, or Italy. The general public abroad has difficulty in seeing the self-righteous attitude of the Bundesbank as anything other than another negative consequence of the reunification process in Germany. That process created an artificial economic boom. To pay the costs for the integration of former territory of the GDR, the Bonn government borrowed, running up Reaganesque deficits. This in turn forced the Bundesbank to act in defense of the integrity of the Deutsch mark in ways that had unpleasant consequences on Germany’s partners in the West.18 Germany’s politics of virtue is not popular abroad, whether it is launched by ecologists and pacifists or by the official politics of economic stability. Without intending to, it sends a message of arrogant exceptionalism. Germany’s most fundamental contribution to European security will have to begin with the attempt to become a more normal state, because the most detrimental factor for a peaceful and prosperous continent is any kind of Sonderweg.

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Notes 1. Matthew Horsman and Andrew Marshall, After the Nation State: Citizens, Tribalism, and the New World Disorder (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 73. 2. In 1812 the Prussian General Ludwig von Yorck signed an unauthorized armistice with the Russians at Tauroggen in East Prussia at a time when Prussian contingents were serving with Bonaparte’s Grande Armée, thus establishing a habit of German double-dealing between Western and Eastern European powers. See Paul W.Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), pp. 452–453. 3. Timothy Garton Ash, “Germany’s Choice,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, 1994, pp. 65–81. 4. Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), pp. 353–354; also Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Errinerungen (Berlin: Siedler, 1995). 5. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Fontana, 1989). 6. Michael Porter notes that business formation in Germany has been faltering since the 1980s and that, while German technology is often very advanced in well-established industry, it is rarely at the cutting edge of new technologies. He ventures that Germany will in the future require policies that foster individual initiative and open competition over state intervention, economic concentration, and conflict avoidance. See The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York: Free Press, 1989), pp. 715–719. 7. Klaus von Beyme, “Die Renaissance der Integrationstheorie,” in Volker Eichener and Helmut Voelzkow (eds.), Europäische Integration und verbändliche Interessenvermittlung (Marburg: Metropolis, 1994), pp. 27–43. 8. Robert G.Livingston, “Was wäre durch eine Schaukelpolitik zu gewinnen?” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, Vol. 6, 1994, p. 691. 9. I.Brock and I.Hauchler (eds.), Entwicklung in Mittel- und Osteuropa (Bonn: Eine Welt, 1993), p. 236. 10. Times Mirror Centre for the Peoples and the Press, The Pulse of Europe: A Survey of Political and Social Values and Attitudes, 1991, pp. 101, 106. 11. Winfried Wolf, “Auf Umwegen zur Militärmacht? Deutsche Verwicklungen in ABC-Waffenprogramme,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, No. 4, pp. 459–469. 12. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), SIPRI Yearbook, 1995, p. 453. 13. SIPRI Yearbook, 1995, p. 459. 14. Jeffrey Surovell, “Western Europe and the Western Alliance: Soviet and PostSoviet Perspectives,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 1995, p. 188. 15. “Den Menschen helfen,” Der Spiegel, No. 48, 1995, p. 41. 16. International Herald Tribune, July 13, 1994, p. 1. 17. Dan Diner, “Wird die Budesrepublik ein westliches Land?” Blätter für deutsche und international Politik, Vol. 5, 1995, pp. 545–553. 18. Josef Joffe, “The New Europe: Yesterday’s Ghosts,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, 1993, pp. 29–43.

CHAPTER 9

Germany: Is Sound Diplomacy the Better Part of Security? Carl Cavanagh Hodge

A Civil Power as Cold Warrior The Federal Republic of Germany, unified with the German Democratic Republic in October 1990, played a major role in winning the Cold War. This role, crowned with the success of national reunification, consisted of two parts: a record of unswerving loyalty both to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to the institutions of Western European economic integration, complemented by a cautious, multilateralist approach to all of Bonn’s foreign relations, East and West. Just prior to the thaw in East-West tensions in the late 1980s, the Federal Republic fielded by far the most powerful conventional force among the eight armies that together composed NATO’s central front in Europe. The Bundeswehr’s strength stood at 700,000 troops, the hard core of which organized 345,000 into 36 fully manned brigades forming 12 divisions deployed in 3 main army corps.1 In tribute to the lessons of Germany’s militarist past, there were even then significant limits to the Federal Republic’s potency. The Adenauer government of the 1950s renounced West German production of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the production of guided missiles, heavy warships, long-range artillery, and strategic bombers. 181

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Underwriting West German security at the most fundamental level was the nuclear umbrella of the United States; the additional nuclear capacity of other European allies such as Britain and France supplemented the deterrent to aggression against West German territory but also implied a status of strategic inferiority. Reflecting the insecurities of the Federal Republic’s fledgling democracy, moreover, Adenauer’s planners took elaborate precautions to ensure that a new German army would remain under civilian control. The Bundeswehr was to consist of “citizens in uniform”—by 1986 more than half of its manpower consisted of 15month conscripts—who took no oath of obedience in the traditional sense and retained rights of individual conscience not tolerated in the American, British, or French armed forces.2 From the 1960s onward the Federal Republic hosted a massive nuclear arsenal, the maintenance and periodic upgrading of which made it “the most densely nuclearized country in the world” 3 and imposed heavy political costs on successive Bonn governments for West Germany’s frontline position in the superpower confrontation. Indeed, in 1982 the Socialist/Liberal coalition of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt fell to a Christian Democratic/Liberal coalition indirectly as the result of popular opposition to the deployment of a new generation of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) in the Federal Republic, a policy for which Schmidt had been the major European spokesman. 4 Yet Bonn weathered this and other political storms over security policy so well that by the 1980s to speak of Germany’s transformation into a democratic society and a civil power involved very little in the way of caricature. The principal features of civil power include domesticated internal political affairs, based on a stable democratic system of government founded on the rule of law and constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights; the reinforcement of a democratic order by material prosperity; historical experience in the use of traditional instruments of power and a broad consensus on the need to replace them with supranational cooperation, including the surrender of a degree of national sovereignty; and, lastly, acceptance of the fundamental interdependence of nation-states.5 Germany’s transformation had obvious implications for its approach to security, both in the short and long term. Bonn governments of the 1970s and 1980s undertook to place relations with the Soviet bloc on a more positive basis through a policy of diplomatic and economic Ostpolitik. Though Ostpolitik was initially an initiative of center-left coalitions and often the object of criticism from conservative quarters, the Christian Democratic government of Helmut Kohl attempted to

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retain its advantages even at the risk of strained relations with United States during the early Reagan administration.6 In retrospect this turned out to be worthwhile. For a while critics in the West often expressed concern about Bonn’s fundamental loyalty to the goals of the NATO alliance in the face of trade and investment opportunities in Eastern Europe. Bonn actually enhanced its conventional readiness in the mid1970s by creating three additional armored brigades, bringing its total to 36, and announcing plans to establish six Home Defense Brigades to be equipped with tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and antitank weapons. 7 Moreover, the Soviet leadership was apparently under no illusion that Ostpolitik reflected even a modest trend toward creeping neutralism. Later, in the midst of the INF tensions of the mid-1980s the durability of the German-American alliance “was articulated with particular forcefulness by the most conservative elements of the Soviet elite, above all the military establishment”; in fact, it was not the weakening of Bonn’s alliance commitment that struck Moscow, “but its enduring strength.”8 From its position of strength in the very cockpit of the NATO alliance, Bonn’s diplomacy nevertheless convinced Moscow of the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of German intentions, thus depriving the Warsaw Pact of its official raison d’être.9 Bonn’s diplomacy did not of itself tip the scales of the East-West struggle. It was the resolve of the Reagan and Bush administrations, followed by their willingness to pursue ambitious arms reductions with Moscow in light of the reform agenda of Mikhail Gorbachev and the opportunity for a new phase of superpower détente, that took the Cold War into its endgame. However, there is no doubt that a level of trust established by Bonn’s patient diplomacy made it easier for Moscow to eventually acquiesce in Germany’s reunification on terms overwhelmingly favorable to Western security interests. Ironically, any lingering Soviet worries about German revisionism were offset by the American insistence that a reunified Federal Republic was to remain in NATO; for Moscow, German neutrality outside of NATO was strategically unacceptable, and German membership in both NATO and the Warsaw Pact was politically absurd. 10 Ultimately, the Kohl government agreed to limit the future size of Germany’s armed forces to a total troop strength of 370,000—even accounting for the absorption of the East German Nationale Volksarmee—and to assist Moscow financially in withdrawing Soviet troops from East German soil. For Bonn the benefits of this comprehensive mutual standdown were so obvious and massive that it seemed to confirm the predilection of a civil

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power that in the long run only “soft” security provided any meaningful security at all.

The Virtues and Limits of Soft Security The conclusion was in error, but it is not hard to empathize with Bonn’s view of Germany’s role in the Europe of the early 1990s. The Kohl government’s approach to the Visegrad states in particular has stemmed in the short term from a concern for social security, the knowledge that economic chaos and destitution in Eastern Europe would bring waves of new immigration to a country already reeling from the costs of its own reunification.11 In early 1990s Kohl made it plain that for Bonn Eastern European and post-Soviet affairs were the only game in town, and Germany’s refusal to take a major role in the Persian Gulf War could be defended with the argument that stabilizing Eastern Europe was at least as responsible a post–Cold War policy as ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. By late 1991 Bonn had accounted for 20% of all grants, 40% of macroeconomic assistance, and 55% of trade and investment guarantees to Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics, making it far and away the most significant presence for economic reform. Germany used its natural advantages of geographical proximity, historical ties, and comparative familiarity with banks and firms in the Visegrad states to promote deep and long-term German economic and political ties there. As early as November 1989, for example, Kohl offered Poland an unprecedented debt-reduction plan along with financial aid to encourage investment by the German private sector. As the European Union’s largest and most influential economy, Germany is in a pivotal position to orchestrate European initiatives in support of postCommunist economic reform. Though initially ambivalent about the French initiative to create the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Bonn came to appreciate that a multilateral approach to economic aid could do in the East what the European Community had done in Western Europe over the previous four decades, namely foster the development of a new market while easing the fears of Germany’s Eastern and Western neighbors that Bonn’s goal was to create a German-dominated zone in the East.12 This will likely come about in any case. The Czech Republic has been one of the more attractive targets for foreign direct investment, yet so much of it comes from Germany that some Czechs complain that their

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country is becoming a German colony. Volkswagen’s acquisition of the automaker Skoda is symbolic both of the German presence in the Czech Republic and of the high priority given by corporate Germany to enhancing profitability by locating in economies with skilled and comparatively cheap labor. 13 For Eastern European governments, undoubtedly, this calibre of Western corporate presence is certainly preferable to the region’s not-so-distant past, not only for its economic benefits but also because of the larger implications of having Western vital interests resident on Eastern European soil. In April 1991 Polish President Lech Walesa stated it most bluntly when he observed that “having a Frenchman or an Englishman here with his factory is like having a division of troops.”14 Appreciative of this kind of Eastern European insecurity, the Kohl government attempted early to engage NATO in a strategic dialogue with former members of the Warsaw Pact and was a major factor in creating the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) in November 1991. The purpose of NACC was to open up consultation over a wide range of areas, including civil-military relations, military doctrines and budgets, defense conversion, and conceptual approaches to arms control. The connections Bonn routinely draws between economic stabilization and strategic considerations are reflective of a holistic approach to security issues generally, at the very core of which is a concern with the economic vitality and political health of the new Eastern European democracies. In this respect German policy is philosophically in harmony with what Robert Hunter, U.S. permanent representative of the North Atlantic Council, recently referred to as the projection of stability into Central Europe, in order to “help shape the attitudes and practices needed to underpin a vocation of peace.”15 The new democracies have their own notion as to what practices can further such a project. Some have adopted variations on the political system that was so successful in transforming postwar Germany; Hungary, for example, has instituted the German mechanism of a constructive vote of nonconfidence, according to which a government can be removed from office by parliament only if parliament has an alternative government, and a majority to sustain it, ready to replace it. On occasion Bonn has also been frank with its Eastern European neighbors about the importance of political and economic reform to the achievement foreign policy aspirations. If Slovakia wants to follow the Czech Republic into NATO, cautioned Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel in the summer of 1997, it must complete the transition from dictatorship to a legal state and market

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economy. 16 The agenda of European Union enlargement into Eastern Europe is therefore an integral part of Bonn’s security policy “aimed at enlarging the area of political, economic and security policy stability” but also at allaying fears that Germany is carving out a hegemonic role for itself in the region.17 Timothy Garton Ash has minted the term attritional multilateralism to capture the spirit of German foreign and security policy.18 The Federal Republic rarely confronts an international issue squarely or interprets its substance in terms of express German concerns. Instead, Bonn first acquired diplomatic respectability by viewing all matters through the lens of “community,” and has since thrown Germany’s growing economic strength behind policies that articulated the established consensus among the states of the European Union. This tradition has made Bonn’s diplomacy plodding yet predictable. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt observed in 1990 that reunified Germany would require nothing so much as a determination to retain a sober sense of proportion, a habit of proceeding in small steps toward an intended goal, stamina, and steadiness. 19 As chancellor, Schmidt always placed a premium on the calculability of Bonn’s diplomacy. His successor, Helmut Kohl, for the most part adhered to the same maxim. A principal reason for this is that Germany is a highly successful trading economy, but one more intimately connected, above all through the European Union, to a much higher number of immediate neighbors than is the case with other major economies such as the United States or Japan. During the Cold War Bonn concentrated on securing German economic interests through the vehicle of European and global multilateral institutions, both because this was conducive to the trust Bonn needed to build with its many European neighbors and critical to the zone of peace and stability Germany needed to fashion in Western Europe, where its most vital trade interests resided. The Federal Republic’s foreign policy agenda was limited primarily to Western European affairs, whereas the stability of regions such as the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East remained above all the headache of Bonn’s superpower ally, the United States. Yet even prior to the end of the Cold War, West Germany’s modest international role was wildly out of proportion to its economic heft; to a reunified Germany at the heart of a continent in the sweep of massive change falls a responsibility for leadership in which security concerns assume a higher profile. The domestic environment in which contemporary German diplomacy is immersed is one of strong popular and often vocal concern for international peace combined with an ostentatious loathing of any and

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all manifestations of power politics. The criminal abuse of power in their country’s past makes Germans deeply reluctant to admit that Germany is again powerful. But the idea, popular with the German public in the early 1990s, that the world’s fourth largest economy could take on the posture of an outsized Sweden or Switzerland belongs to the realm of fantasy.20

Hard Security, Harder Choices Germany’s fundamental security dilemma is that the threat to sovereignty and population that prevailed during the Cold War was massive and readily identifiable, whereas the numerous potential threats to either today are both weaker and dispersed. Geopolitically, national reunification has shifted the country’s center of gravity, like its capital, northward and eastward. The good news is that the Federal Republic today is surrounded by friends and partners; the bad news is that just beyond the frontiers of core Europe—by which is meant the European Union and those Eastern European states with whom the EU and Germany have close relations—is a vast zone of potential threats, running from the Baltic states in the North through Intermediate Europe to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East in the South, and extending on an East-West axis from North Africa into Central Asia. 21 Though Germany lacks any broad-based tradition in strategic thinking and has been slow to articulate a strategic model for its future security, the practical problems of the immediate post–Cold War here and now have forced certain hard choices on Bonn’s leadership. Not surprisingly, the most important of these have been in northeastern Europe and have involved strong German support, from Defense Minister Volker Rühe in particular, for the eastward expansion of NATO along with associate-partner status for the Visegrad and Baltic states, Romania, and Bulgaria in the Western European Union (WEU). Additionally, Bonn has developed a fundamentally different approach to its relations with Eastern Europe on the one hand and Russia on the other, an approach that for now goes a long way toward defining the frontiers of the new Europe. Bonn clearly intends to incorporate a good many of the Eastern European states into NATO and the EU while keeping Russia at a polite arm’s length. On NATO expansion specifically Rühe has been blunt: Russia’s place is quite clear. We want a Russia that will successfully reform—and it will become a privileged strategic partner for the

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Alliance. I cannot envision Russia as a member of the Alliance. The country is simply too big, too different, spanning nearly half the globe. I cannot imagine the Alliance being willing to extend an Article 5 collective defense guarantee to Russia’s eastern and southern borders.22

German support for Polish, Czech, and Hungarian NATO membership is a mixture of geopolitics, cultural affinity, historic guilt, and hard-headed thinking on burden-sharing in regional security. Moreover, the Kohl government repeatedly made plain its concern to tie together the strands of soft and hard security by advocating eventual EU membership for the same states. Given Germany’s natural concern for stability in the Baltic region—a concern reinforced by the importance assigned to the region by the United States as well—the attention devoted to northeastern Europe is understandable.23 Still, it is not appreciated by the Federal Republic’s traditional partner in Europe, France. While France’s initial reaction to German reunification tended toward the petulant,24 Paris had invested sufficient political capital in Franco-German defense cooperation to be justifiably concerned about the order of Bonn’s post–Cold War security priorities. French worries over Bonn’s commitment to Western security during the stormy German INF debate of the 1980s, after all, were behind the Mitterrand government’s enthusiasm both for deeper integration of the European Community in the Single European Act and an intensification of Franco-German defense cooperation. German reunification intensified the effort, partly because Paris sought to bind the new Germany even more closely to itself and partly because both countries faced a need to rethink their security policies in light of cuts imposed on defense spending by public demands for “peace dividend” at the end of forty years of Cold War. In the 1980s Bonn responded to French overtures by proposing the creation of an integrated Franco-German military brigade that has since been fleshed out into the multinational Eurocorps, the core of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) within the Atlantic alliance and the first embryo of a European army since the failure of the European Defense Community in 1954. 25 The Eurocorps is a symbolic and modestly substantive contribution to the notion that the new Europe should assume greater responsibility for its own security, but its existence cannot hide the fact that the Franco-German partnership is under strain partly because of increasingly diverging security interests. France’s concern with Southern

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European and Mediterranean affairs stands in sharp contrast to German preoccupation with the Northeast. Paris cannot have been happy with Bonn’s announcement of its intention to fashion a trilateral corps with Denmark and Poland.26 Additionally, while France has undertaken to rethink radically its national security policy and its relationship to NATO, Germany has not. The reasons for this are multiple and mutually reinforcing. German governments, to begin with, remain reluctant to articulate any concept of national interest that is not clouded with the wholesome rhetoric of Europeanism and internationalism, while German thinking adheres to a self-consciously antimilitarist definition of security. In combination these fairly durable features of German strategy have made open debate concerning the ways, means, manpower, and hardware of military capacity very slow to emerge. Germans discuss power the way an alcoholic holds forth on drunkenness. Bonn’s political and military elite, moreover, have never shared France’s ambivalent attitude toward NATO. The Germans are not as attached to the ideals of greater European self-reliance in security matters, nor are they as uncomfortable with the notion that future European security will be overwhelmingly Atlanticist in substance. Finally, Germany’s massive fiscal outlays for national reunification and generous aid to the reforming states of the former Warsaw Pact have Bonn thinking habitually in terms of cost cutting and comparatively austere defense budgets. The Kohl government could argue with some justice that Germany’s contributions to soft security compensate for military limitations. Hence, it is more true of Germany than of any other major European state save Britain that ESDI has been “primarily a political concept developed by the West European member states in their search for greater convergence or identity of interests while not changing the basic political and military structure of the Alliance.” 27 Germany security policy has tended to tinker with rather than overturn the status quo. Because it agrees in principle with Paris that more genuine European defense capacity is necessary—that Europe ought to have the ability to launch a military operation in which the United States is not involved—it has devoted a good deal of energy to revamping the institutional “architecture” of continental security. At the Maastricht Summit of December 1991 the Kohl government coauthored the proclamation of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It also helped to revive the long-dormant Western European Union (WEU) as a possible cornice for a European “pillar” of Atlantic security, and it seconded the French proposal

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that the WEU should become an integral part of the EU, an institution to which it historically has no formal link. From the retrospective of 1998, however, German enthusiasm for such initiatives has been part of the “masque of institutions” of the early post–Cold War era, a diversion “from direct discussion of the vital interests, regional policies and needed military readiness” of European security.28 It has been fueled by a desire to maintain Bonn’s traditionally close partnership with France much more than by a desire to alter a security regime that remains fundamentally dependent on the United States. Germany is willing only to a very limited extent to give genuine substance to ESDI. It prefers to mitigate the cost of developing a European security capacity by keeping it under the umbrella of NATO and has since 1989 made the Bundeswehr into a principal target of savings for the national budget. The Defense White Paper of 1994 announced that foremost among Bonn’s security goals was to maintain peace, and Bonn has developed a three-pronged security strategy that is overwhelmingly diplomatic in nature, based on economic integration, inclusive security institutions, and disarmament—each of which involves a continuation of Ostpolitik on a more comprehensive scale.29 In light of the kind of pressures and priorities imposed on post–Cold War Germany, the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept approved by NATO in January 1994 was bound to be of particular interest to its political leadership. Because the CJTF involves the pooling of national defense resources for peacekeeping and flexible crisis response, it speaks to the German concern with cost-effectiveness in a time of scarce defense resources; because it is a creature of NATO it also answers Germany’s concern that European security remain fundamentally Atlanticist in substance. Additionally, the CJTF could in theory provide support to an operation undertaken by the WEU, thus helping to make the European pillar of the alliance more substantial without undermining the Atlantic connection. The further development of the Eurocorps would not in principle undermine the CJTF, while the ongoing effort to create a Rapid Reaction Force of some 50,000 troops with the Bundeswehr signifies a willingness to move Germany’s ability to contribute to military operations including combat roles beyond the realm of the rhetorical. Even the foreign press has observed that the rapid reaction corps testifies to a partial professionalization of Germany’s armed forces, even as Bonn adheres officially to universal service and the political correctness of the peoples’ army.30 Still, it is one thing to create a smaller but possibly more potent defense capacity and quite another to mold a European security capability with a

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significant measure of self-reliance. There is scant evidence that Bonn is seriously interested in the latter, and defense procurement is perhaps the best evidence that this is so. European states generally are currently struggling to maintain their respective defense industries. Although collaborative development of technologies and weaponry is certainly part of the answer to diminished national capabilities, Germany is no more prepared to embrace open competition among European suppliers for its defense needs than is France or Britain, and German defense spending itself cannot maintain a national industry. In the spring of 1994 the management of Rheinmetall, a longtime defense contractor, argued that between 1990 and 1993 the number of jobs in the defense sector had declined from 280,000 to 140,000. Rheinmetall claimed further that the country was approaching a critical threshold beyond which further contraction of the defense industry would make it difficult both to equip the Bundeswehr with German-made weapons and to sustain Germany’s technological competence in weapons development.31 Where multinational cooperation has taken place, as in the development of the Eurofighter, for example, the Kohl government’s budgetary rigor and uncertainty over Germany’s purchase of 180 copies of the new aircraft has repeatedly imperiled the whole project. When in the autumn of 1997 the purchase finally cleared the Kohl cabinet, the favorable vote had as much to do with the 18,000 jobs created in the finance minister’s home state of Bavaria for the montage of the fighter than with Germany’s defense needs as such.32 Whereas Germany can be considered the primary force behind deep European economic and monetary integration, it represents a major obstacle to any equivalent development in the realm of security, due to its modest defense spending, its cautious approach to defense reform, and its attachment to NATO as Europe’s primary security organization. Collectively, these factors make it unlikely that the Federal Republic will be a driving force for ambitious change or European self-reliance in military security. It is therefore doubly important that German governments apply special commitment, skill, and courage to the nonmilitary security issues. Yet here, too, the record of recent years has been mixed and not altogether encouraging.

Botching the Balkans This is true above all with respect to the political disintegration of Yugoslavia. On December 23, 1991, Germany announced its intent to

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proceed with unilateral diplomatic recognition of the secessionist Yugoslav states of Croatia and Slovenia, unquestionably one of the most precipitous acts in post–Cold War Europe. With it the Bonn government in effect renounced the legitimacy of the existing Yugoslav state and pressured other European governments to do the same. Within weeks the Yugoslav federation came apart at every seam while civil affairs degenerated into an anarchy of armed violence as convoluted in many respects as the Thirty Years’ War. In Germany’s defense, it should be conceded at the outset that an alternative approach to recognition would not necessarily have produced a fundamentally more peaceful transformation of Yugoslavia. While it is doubtful that the serial wars of the Yugoslav succession could have been avoided altogether, Germany’s action did not offer Yugoslavia and its populace the best chance for more peaceful change because Bonn failed to apply the best of its diplomatic and political brains to the issues of sovereignty, self-determination, and human rights. The mere fact of a unilateral German initiative came as something of the short, sharp shock to those who thought they knew the Federal Republic as the Eagle Scout of European multilateralism and had become accustomed to the caution and predictability of its diplomacy. Among the many “cardinal sins” of which the Federal Republic stood accused by overanxious critics of the day, all have since been either eclipsed or made irrelevant by subsequent events, with the exception of Bonn’s approach to Yugoslavia in 1991. 33 The first diplomatic endeavors of a reunified Germany were bound to be damned by many, regardless of which way they turned, but Europe and the Atlantic alliance are still living with consequences of Bonn’s set-piece in Balkan cleverness. When Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Bonn’s foreign minister at the time, defended his government’s recognition of the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia, he claimed to do so less in spite of Germany’s dark history in the Balkans than because of it. He was right, of course, to reject the notion that Germany should somehow recuse itself from speaking out on Yugoslavia as a consequence of that history. In a parliamentary debate Genscher argued that the lesson of Germany’s past meant that in the Yugoslav crisis Bonn was obliged to speak out for selfdetermination, human rights, and respect for minorities, yet never cited one or the other principle as the nub of his government’s fundamental concern. The opposition cautioned the government above all against unilateral actions and advised that the path to a responsible German

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policy on Yugoslavia led through the European Community (EC) and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).34 Even if Genscher did not cite a first principle of the coalition’s thinking on Yugoslavia, Bonn’s emerging preference clearly became that of self-determination. In fact, German policy appears to have viewed the legitimacy of the general principle of self-determination in isolation from the probable consequences of its application to the Balkan situation specifically or European security generally. The secessionist issue, as it emerged in Yugoslavia in 1990, was from a Serb perspective indistinguishable from the humiliation of the Yugoslav army by secessionist forces in Slovenia. Bonn apparently believed that, by implying that retaliatory actions by the army would only increase the likelihood of German and European recognition of the secessionist republics, Belgrade could be deterred from attempting to even the score. That at least was the logical thrust of Bonn’s policy, but even in the early stages of the Yugoslav crisis German and European policies were not running parallel.35 An awareness of the troubled history of self-determination in Europe certainly informed the deliberations of the advisory and arbitration commission established under the auspices of the EC’s Conference on Yugoslavia and chaired by French constitutional lawyer Robert Badinter. Its advice amounted to a recommendation that the goal of selfdetermination could be realized within the parameters of an existing state and that self-determination could be championed forthrightly if it were understood that the principle, in and of itself, did not imply statehood. Among the conditions that would have to be satisfied for the EC to recognize new sovereign states in Eastern Europe, special emphasis was placed on international agreements governing the rights of minorities and the integrity of borders. Taken together, the conditions suggested that sovereignty could be shared or compounded; they offered further that Brussels not accept the notion that Slovenes and Croats required sovereignty in order to accomplish self-determination.36 In practical terms these recommendations gave Serbs in Slovenia and Croatia cause to believe that their rights might be secured without recourse to war, and they gave Belgrade a legitimate reason to reconsider unconditional support for the violent actions of ethnic Serbs in Croatia and Slovenia. They also attempted to link Slovene and Croat aspirations to respect the fundamental human rights of ethnic Serbs living in their midst. The recommendations failed to buy time, partly because Belgrade at this point did not reconsider its policy seriously but piled one atrocity

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upon another in the Serb-dominated pocket of Croatia, and partly because Germany pressed the recognition agenda. In fact, Foreign Minister Genscher announced Bonn’s intention to recognize the secessionist states without so much as waiting for the adoption of the Badinter Guidelines on the Recognition of New States in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. The Kohl government also ignored the advice of an international coalition against recognition that included the governments of other EC member states, the Bush administration, the United Nations Security Council, and the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuellar, Cyrus Vance (UN envoy to Yugoslavia), and Lord Carrington (chair of the Yugoslav Peace Conference). In so doing, the most influential national government in the EC simultaneously made a hash of European unity and gave the secessionist republics every reason to believe that statehood could be had unconditionally and that 1992 would be an open season on ethnic Serbs. Pondering the prospects of living henceforth in what was now officially a largely landlocked state, Belgrade had every rational cause to recoup the territorial losses of the Yugoslav state before any enforceable cease-fire took hold. Its spokesmen justified their actions with the classic irredentist argument—they were in theory rescuing Serbs trapped in Croatia and Slovenia—yet there was always a respectable logic to the conclusion that armed force was now the only real card Serbs had left play to influence the future shape of Yugoslavia. Foreign Minister Genscher insisted that Bonn was not picking sides in the secession quarrel and that Serb behavior rather than German affinity for the Slovenes and Croats was guiding his government’s behavior. European foreign ministers had to ask themselves whether Belgrade would see the issue that way, when the EC decided to follow Bonn’s lead. They got their answer on January 8, 1992, when a Yugoslav air-force jet shot down an EC peace-monitoring helicopter, killing all five passengers. That the Kohl government’s official acknowledgment of the equal right of all Yugoslav states to secede on a claim of self-determination amounted to a fig leaf for its de facto patronage of Slovenia and Croatia was all too obvious.37 What explains Bonn’s actions? The evidence is mixed that the Kohl government was influenced by broad German public support for recognition and the often strident insistence of the national press that prompt action be taken. Had Kohl stayed with the emerging European line on recognition, nonetheless, he could certainly have survived the political storm. Bonn had faced down stronger popular protest against its policies, in the deployment of new INF weapons on German soil during the 1980s,

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for example, and there was no long-standing German goal of supporting Slovenian and Croatian self-government. Undoubtedly, the government was under pressure to come to grips with a major problem in soft security, the refugee problem brought on after 1989 by the combination of the Cold War’s end and the Federal Republic’s comparatively liberal laws on political asylum. Fugitives of the Yugoslav conflict were traveling to Germany in larger numbers than to anywhere else. In fact, by September 1992 Germany had absorbed 220,000 refugees from the former Yugoslavia, while France and Britain together had accepted fewer than 4,000. Even Switzerland had made room for 70,000. Certainly, the refugee problem helps to explain the policy of recognition, but it hardly suffices for a coherent defense of the policy in light of its consequences, realized and potential, for European peace. Western failure in the Balkan crisis was authored in the first instance by the Kohl government. To be sure, a determined American-led action might well have made a critical difference to the duration, scale, and political outcome, although almost certainly not the fact of the slaughter. Yet everyone understood why the Bush administration stood back, even as the awful events unfolded. In the context of the moment, Germany and Europe recently reunited, the United States deferred to the judgment of its European allies, above all the Federal Republic, to come up with a European policy worthy of the wealth and wisdom Europeans were assumed to have accumulated over the previous four decades. The then U.S. secretary of state, James Baker III, confesses that at the time there existed a degree of resentment in Washington over express European ambitions to develop a defense and security identity relatively independent of the United States and over the administration’s protests that the EC was not yet equal to the task. He notes further that “there was an undercurrent in Washington, often felt but seldom spoken, that it was time to make the Europeans step up to the plate and show that they could act as a unified power. Yugoslavia was as good a first test as any.”38 Europe failed the test spectacularly and may well have done so even in the absence of German unilateralism. Yet after German recognition, only concerted Western action stood any chance of bringing the killing to an end. Since the Bonn government knew that the states of the European Community, or a representative sample thereof, were unwilling to lead such a response, it had no business imposing a recognition timetable on its European partners. Even more fundamentally, it had no right to threaten to go unilateral, because every member of Kohl’s cabinet understood that, whatever European troops ultimately either fought Serbia

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or stepped up to peacekeeping duty in order to make good on the sovereign rights his government thought Slovenes and Croats deserved, none of them would be German. Until 1994 the country immersed itself in a lengthy and self-indulgent debate on the constitutionality of committing German troops even to peacekeeping operations of the United Nations. In other words, when it became obvious with reference to the unfolding Balkan crisis that the new Europe would require more of Germany than it did of a Sweden or Switzerland, Bonn attempted to hide from the consequences of its Balkan diplomacy. A 1994 a report of the Bundeswehr University aptly observed that “a feature of German political culture is to take refuge in constitutional legality.”39 Bonn answered criticisms of its recognition initiative by arguing that it could not deny the right of self-determination for Slovenes and Croats after East Germans had so recently acquired it themselves. The comparison was false. In 1990 the Kohl government had found it necessary to give the Soviet Union a series of guarantees, largely relating to security concerns, as the price of Moscow’s acquiescence on German unity. Germans had not won unification in a single act of courage in 1989; they had bought it with the patient diplomacy of forty years and unswerving loyalty to the Atlantic alliance. Moreover, the constitution of the Federal Republic proclaimed Bonn’s full responsibility for the fate of 17 million Germans held hostage in the Soviet bloc by Cold War circumstance. Germany alone had a unique political and moral duty to recognize their will to democratic self-determination by dissolving the totalitarian East German state. Bonn assumed no similar responsibility with regard to Croats and Slovenes in Yugoslavia, no matter what their aspirations, and the Kohl government would have of committed no hypocrisy in demanding that Slovenia and Croatia meet certain standards of human rights in a status short of statehood before it would extend any recognition of sovereignty. There was a coalition of sentiment among the EC governments for the cultivation of just such a European policy, and Bonn was well placed to set about the work of doing so. The twentieth-century world is one in which the right to selfdetermination and democracy have been intimately linked. But they are clearly not one and the same thing. Although it is apparent at the end of the century that democracy is on its way to becoming a “global entitlement,”40 its relationship to the century’s experience of nationalist self-determination movements is as problematic as ever. In his own discussion of the force of ethnic identity in international affairs, Daniel Patrick Moynihan reminds us that the principal of self-determination,

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made respectable by its central place in President Woodrow Wilson’s blueprint for European peace after 1919, was, prior to the armistice, an article of war-fighting diplomacy employed by each side to weaken the other through the cultivation of ethnonationalist zeal. This turned a legitimate article of anti-imperialist foreign policy into the illegitimate child of nationalism and strategic expedience, but did not rob it altogether of the capacity to contribute positively to civilized politics between nations. Hence its inclusion alongside the commitments to respect for sovereignty and the inviolability of frontiers in Basket I governing security in Europe of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. Still, Moynihan notes that one of the great lessons of this century is that “minorities not infrequently seek self-determination for themselves in order to deny it to others,”41 thus creating the tinder for altogether new security crises. Yet because the Slovene and Croat republics had held popular referenda on secession, the Kohl government pounced on the obvious parallel to self-determination only recently expressed at the polls by East Germans and painted over fundamental differences regarding the likely consequences of the same principle applied in the Balkans. Into the political flux of post–Cold War Europe, Bonn’s diplomacy introduced a disturbing precedent. Its intended message was a bundesdeutsch homily that Belgrade could not frustrate democratically expressed aspirations with military force. The message received in Ljubljana, Zagreb, and elsewhere was essentially that “the principle of self-determination could legitimately break up multinational states”; German recognition encouraged nationalist politicians in Yugoslavia to believe that the surest way to succeed with a project of secession was to “instigate a defensive war and win international sympathy and then recognition.”42 In retrospect it is obvious that between 1991 and 1994 Germany sought above all to avoid direct European responsibility for a European security crisis. Even before Bonn made plain its unilateralist intentions, Foreign Minister Genscher used high-minded internationalism to provide his government with the veneer of disinterestedness, expressing again and again the conviction that the “internationalization” of the Balkan dispute would bring the fighting to an end. The technique caught on. When United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuellar warned that a premature Western recognition of Slovenian and Croatian sovereignty would likely further inflame the military conflict, Dutch Foreign Minister, and subsequently European Commissioner, Hans van der Broek countered that, to the contrary, Bonn was on the right track with its growing preference for formal recognition. Genscher then took his diplomacy into

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de Cuellar’s arena with an address to the UN General Assembly in September 1991 in which he defended external intervention in domestic situations involving offenses to human rights and democratic order. The human rights principle, in other words, was not to carry the day for Bonn’s policy on Croatian and Slovenian secession, but it was good enough for invoking international responsibility for dealing with the consequences. As other European states moved reluctantly to line up behind Bonn, Genscher was using the possibility of UN Security Council involvement in Yugoslavia to remove in advance any direct responsibility for Bonn to deal with the consequences for the step it was about to take in December. In a particularly self-serving chapter of his memoires, Genscher later criticized the UN and the EC for particular failings in the Balkan crisis and recommended stronger authority for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), yet conceded not an inch to the notion that Germany’s approach to the secessionist issue could have been different.43 The tentative peace in the former Yugoslavia has since 1995 been maintained, under the terms of the Dayton Peace Accord and the auspices of NATO, by the presence of American firepower. The Yugoslav episode has had the sole merit of exposing the fiction of even a relatively autonomous European security identity. The fact that the Western community, led on by Germany, had chosen sides in the struggle in no way diminished the frequency with which it was described as a civil war, and thus not a legitimate candidate for more vigorous external intervention than the peacekeeping role with which the hapless UN was saddled. It was the greater horror of ethnic cleansing more than anything else that finally prompted the Clinton administration to acknowledge that the Atlantic alliance had a responsibility to civilize this corner of Europe. After the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 1994 that there existed no constitutional prohibition against the deployment of German troops in the former Yugoslavia after all, Bonn sent medical, transport, and logistics personnel to Croatia under UN auspices; in December 1996 the Bundestag voted to send combat troops to join the NATO occupation force in Bosnia. Clearly, the conflict could easily have taken the direction it did, even if the Kohl government had pursued another strategy. But having chosen to lead, Bonn should have championed the application of respectable rather than expedient criteria for recognition and should have done so in explicit reference to the lessons of the European past. Germans know that democratic procedures can legitimate a political outcome that is illiberal

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in both intent and consequence; they know further that in the Balkans there was more than sufficient historical evidence to suppose that a good deal of illiberal intent toward Serbs accompanied Croat and Slovene national aspirations. Instead, smart politics trumped responsible diplomacy, and Bonn’s actions frittered away the opportunity to test the liberal utility of sovereign statehood in Europe at a critical juncture of its history. Decades of academic discussion of “usable history” in post-1945 Germany counted for nothing whatsoever. Had the human rights dimension of the recognition question time to develop, the secessionist republics, too, would have had to defend the legitimacy of their actions with reference not only to the democratic entitlement afforded them by popular referenda but also to the liberaldemocratic rights Slovenes and Croats were prepared to guarantee to Serbs living in their midst. Bonn’s action stampeded the European Community, broke Western unity, and prevented these distinctions from emerging. Within days of Bonn’s announcement, the ugly old melody of ethnonationalist irredentism drowned out the voice of sobriety. Worst of all, official recognition of Slovenia and Croatia refocused Serb attention on the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and forced the hand of Bosnian secession. Thereafter, the precedent established by the Kohl government’s announcement quickly acquired a dynamic of its own. Western attempts at mediating the dispute only deepened its fault lines, “by accepting the nationalists’ definition of the conflict, undermining or ignoring the forces working against radical nationalists, and acting in ways that fulfilled the expectations and reinforced the suspicions of nationalist extremists.”44 German actions in response to the unraveling of the Yugoslav state, when viewed in relation to other aspects of Bonn’s post–Cold War security policy, therefore testify to three features of contemporary German security policy. First, Germany is reluctant forthrightly to lead Europe to a collective and responsible security policy. Second, German security concerns are focused primarily on northeastern rather than southeastern Europe, given the differential in attention, patience, and diplomatic commitment Bonn has been willing to commit in either region. Third, Germany can be liable to expedience and avoidance of responsibility on behalf of itself and Europe even in the realm where it has most excelled since the inauguration of Ostpolitik in the 1970s, soft security, if a crisis at hand does not correspond with German regional preoccupations. Because Germany’s contribution to the substance of hard security remains comparatively modest and does not appear likely to undergo radical

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change in the near future, forthright German leadership in the development of a European Security and Defense Identity seems unlikely and possibly not even desirable.

Conclusion: Is the Best Security Sound Diplomacy? “Among the lost comforts of the Cold War,” notes Michael Stürmer, “was the fact that Germans were spared the moral pain which has and always will accompany any responsible use of power.” 45 The domestic environment in which contemporary German security policy is immersed is one of strong popular and often vocal concern for international peace combined with an ostentatious loathing of any and all manifestations of power politics. The principled commitment to internationalism and peaceful conflict resolution has frequently been willfully blind to the often complex considerations underlying the responsible use of power. Popular German moralism on international issues, moreover, is often in direct proportion to its abstractness. The criminal abuse of power in their country’s past makes Germans deeply reluctant to admit that Germany is again powerful. They engage in international issues with a mind to internationalist principles and optimal outcomes rather than from the question as to what Germany can or should do.46 Both political tradition and budget restraint make it improbable that Germany’s military capacity to contribute to European security will be upgraded significantly at any time in the near future. The country could use nothing so much as an open debate on the nature and structure of its defense forces. Yet the Kohl government insists that it will stick with the conscript force even as the practical requirements of a rapid reaction corps necessitate the creation of many of the features of a professional army in the Bundeswehr’s midst. Meanwhile, the foreign and security policy of the Socialist and Green opposition remains essentially a sandbox affair, the spokesman of the latter party advocating the Bundeswehr’s complete conversion to a peacekeeping force at the disposal of the United Nations.47 In a 1995 address to the German Society for Foreign Policy Bundespräsident Roman Herzog inveighed against the outdated and often immature nature of contemporary Germany’s attitude to things military. He recommended not only that the nation’s foreign policy be brought into proportion to its greater weight in world affairs, but that it be more explicit with its neighbors in the articulation of German interest and that

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it face squarely the fact that both soft and hard power have their appropriate moments for application. Most notably he called for courage of leadership, for governments to recognize that German and European security can no longer be maintained via checkbook diplomacy; that a commitment of life and limb may be required; and that the habit of governments following public opinion represents a weak foundation for responsible foreign policy.48 At this writing at least there is little evidence that Herzog’s sentiment has been embraced by the Kohl government. Polling data that is already somewhat dated shows that German public opinion is much more likely to support the use of the Bundeswehr in combat in principle much more readily than when confronted with a specific security emergency scenario. But the same data suggests that the public is possibly ahead of consensus among the German political class, having formed a popular base for a new articulation of national security in spite of the lack of leadership from the parties and the government.49 Germany surely does not bear sole responsibility for the fact that a Made-in-Europe security regime remains a Christmas wish. Its efforts in stabilizing fledgling democracies in Northeastern Europe represents the greatest single national contribution to soft security since the end of the Cold War. Capable states such as France and Britain too often match Bonn shrug-for-shrug on the matter of how Europe can demonstrate more self-reliance. Still, the knowledge that American withdrawal from Balkans peacekeeping would not be followed by a European willingness to take up the slack some six years after the outbreak of hostilities is a depressing measure of the lack of progress. Europe will begin to approximate the newness it claims for itself only when Germany acknowledges its own power and the burden that necessarily comes with it.

Notes 1. A valuable source on the history and development of the Bundeswehr is Stephen Szabo (ed.), The Bundeswehr and Western Security (London: Macmillan, 1990). The figures on troop strength date to 1986 and were taken from “The Sentry at the Gate: A Survey of NATO’s Central Front,” The Economist, August 30, 1986. 2. On the origins of the Bundeswehr and the logic of “innere Führung” see David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 7, 183, 197– 200, 241, 234–257.

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3. Jeffrey Boutwell, The German Nuclear Dilemma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 14. 4. Schmidt’s coalition partners in the Free Democratic Party (FDP) voted against his government in a constructive vote of nonconfidence in September 1982 and formed a government with the Christian Democratic Party, in part because the antinuclear and pacifist politics of the Green Party had undermined electoral support for Schmidt’s Socialists and endangered the viability of a center-left alliance for the general elections of autumn 1983. The domestic German politics of the INF debate are covered by Jeffrey Herf, War by Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance, and the Battle of the Euromissiles (New York: Free Press, 1991). For the strategic and diplomatic dimension see Wolfram Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 110–119. 5. Germany’s characteristics are most succinctly treated by Peter Katzenstein in “United Germany in an Integrating Europe,” Current History, March 1997, in which the author refines his interpretation of preunification Germany made in West Germany: The Growth of a Semisoveriegn State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), and by Hanns Maull, “Zivilmacht Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Vierzehn Thesen für eine neue deutsche Aussenpolitik,” Europa Archiv, Vol. 47, No. 10, May 1992, pp. 269–278. 6. See Angela Stent, From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German–Soviet Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Clay Clemens, Reluctant Realists: The CDU/CSU and West German Ostpolitik (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989). 7. John S.Duffield, Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 210–211. 8. Michael J.Sodaro, Moscow, Germany, and the West from Khrushchev to Gorbachev (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 266–267. 9. Ibid., pp. 268–269. 10. Even a fairly critical assessment of Ostpolitik concedes that it established a climate of trust and “helped slightly more relaxed attitudes about Germany take root when Gorbachev turned close attention to German issues in 1987.” See Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). p. 61. On American assurances to Moscow regarding Germany see Raymond Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington: Brookings, 1994), pp. 426–427, and Richard A.Falkenrath, Shaping Europe’s Military Order: The Origins of the CFE Treaty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), p. 70. 11. The domestic backdrop to the Kohl government’s Eastern European economic diplomacy, it should be remembered, was an upswing in right-wing political activities and violence against visible minorities in Germany by skinhead groups. 12. Steven Webber, “Origins of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” International Organization, Vol. 48, No. 1, 1994, pp. 8–9, 27– 28. 13. “Czech Industry and Investment,” Financial Times, May 14, 1997, p. v. 14. Quoted in Zbigniew Dobosiewicz, Foreign Investment in Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 25.

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15. Robert E.Hunter, “Enlargement: Part of a Strategy for Projecting Stability into Central Europe,” NATO Review, Vol. 43, No. 3, May 1995, pp. 3–8 (Web edition). 16. Thomas Baylis, “Presidents Versus Prime Ministers: Shaping Executive Authority in Eastern Europe” World Politics, Vol. 48, No. 2, 1996, pp. 297– 323. The Economist, August 16, 1997, pp. 40–42; September 13, 1997, pp. 54–56. 17. Peter Schmidt, “German Security Policy in the Framework of the EU, WEU and NATO,” Aussenpolitik, Vol. 47, No. 3, 1996, p. 213. 18. Ash means that the Federal Republic has prospered diplomatically by pursuing national goals exclusively through multilateral institutions such the EU, NATO, and the Helsinki process. Additionally, West German foreign policy features a “habitual conflation of German and European interests.” Timothy Garton Ash, “Germany’s Choice,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, p. 71. He deals with these themes more thoroughly and critically in In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993). 19. Helmut Schmidt, Die Deutschen und Ihre Nachbarn (Berlin: Siedler, 1990), p. 640. 20. Christian Hacke, “Die neue Bedeutung des nationalen Interessen für die Aussenpolitik der Bunderepublik Deutschland,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B1–2, January 1997, p. 11. Hans-Peter Schwarz, Die gezähmten Deutschen: Von der Machtbessenheit zur Machtvergessenheit (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1985), p. 149. 21. Ibid., p. 6. Also Ronald D.Asmus, German Strategy and Opinion After the Wall, 1990–1993 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND), p. 7. 22. “The New NATO,” lecture given at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies/American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, DC, April 30, 1996, p. 9. See also Ludger Kühnhardt, “Germany’s Role in European Security,” SAIS Review, Vol. 15, 1995, pp. 103– 128, and Hartmut Mayer, “Early at the Beach and Claiming the Territory? The Evolution of German Ideas on a New European Order,” International Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, 1997, pp. 721–737. 23. Rühe claimed in autumn 1997 that the Visegrad states belong to the same Kulturraum as Germany, France, and Italy and that after 1945 they were robbed of the fruits of Allied victory. Rede des Bundesministers der Verteidigung, Volker Rühe, beim Forum “Standort Welt” von FAZ, CAP und Deutschlandradio, Berlin November 6, 1997. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 21, 1997 (NZonLINE); Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 3, 1997 (SZonNet). 24. If we are to believe the diaries of the French president’s adviser, Jacques Attali, President Mitterrand and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were in December 1989 so disturbed by Washington’s comparatively relaxed attitude to the prospect of German unity (U.S. Ambassador to Bonn, Vernon Walters, talking of reunification in five years) that they spoke in terms of avoiding another Munich. Jacques Attali, Verbatim, 3 Vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1995), Vol. III, pp. 368–370. 25. On the origins of contemporary Franco-German defense cooperation see Philip H.Gordon, A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 126–134. On the defense cooperation more generally see Stephen A.Kocs, Autonomy or Power?

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26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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The Franco-German Relationship and Europe’s Strategic Choices, 1955–1995 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995). Die Welt, October 29, 1997 (online edition). Peter Schmidt, “ESDI: A German Analysis,” in Charles L.Barry, Reforging the Trans-Atlantic Relationship (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), p. 37. Philip Zelikow, “The Masque of Institutions,” in Philip H.Gordon (ed.), NATO’s Transformation: The Changing Shape of the Atlantic Alliance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), p. 88. Peter Schmidt, “ESDI,” pp. 51–52; Kocs, Autonomy or Power? pp. 234–235. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 5, 1997 (NZonLine). Handelsblatt, May 25, 1994, p. 5. See also Trevor Taylor, “European Security and Defence Cooperation,” International Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 1, January 1994, pp. 12–15. Financial Times, March 10, 1997, p. 2; Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 10, 1997 (SZonNet). See William Horsley, “United Germany’s Seven Cardinal Sins: A Critique of German Foreign Policy,” Millennium, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1992, pp. 225–241. Das Parlament, November 15, 1991, pp. 5, 7. Robin Alison Remington, “Yugoslavia and the Internationalization of the Balkan Conflict” in Raju G.C.Thomas and H.Richard Friman (eds.), The South Slav Conflict: History, Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 238–239. Beverley Crawford points out that the very act of Slovenian and Croatian secession split Germany from the European Community. Whereas Bonn and Brussels were essentially of one voice on Yugoslavia until the late spring of 1991, within two weeks of the republics’ declarations of independence all the major German parties favored recognition. Beverley Crawford, “Explaining Defection from International Cooperation: Germany’s Unilateral Recognition of Croatia,” World Politics, Vol. 48, July 1996, pp. 482–521. Nicely summarized by James Gow in “Shared Sovereignty, Enhanced Security: Lesson from the Yugoslav War,” in Sohail H.Hashmi (ed.), State Sovereignty: Change and Persistence in International Relations (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 159–166. Susan L.Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1995), p. 278. James Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989– 1992 (New York: G.P.Putnam’s), p. 637. Lutz R.Reuter, “Constitutional Developments in Germany since 1945,” Beiträge aus dem Fachbereich Pädagogik der Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg (1994), p. 43. Thomas M.Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 86, No. 46, 1992, pp. 46–91. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 63–106, 70. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 189. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Siedler, 1995), pp. 927–968. Woodward, p. 147.

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45. Michael Stürmer, Die Grenzen der Macht: Begegnung der Deutschen mit der Geschichte (Berlin: Siedler, 1990), p. 246. 46. Hans-Peter Schwarz, Die gezähmten Deutschen: Von der Machtbessenheit zur Machtvergessenheit (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985), p. 149. 47. See the editorial by Kurt Kister on the contradictory functional and fiscal pressures impinging on German defense policy in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 9, 1997 (SZonNet), and compare it to the surreal debate of security policy between SPD and Green spokesmen in Die Zeit, October 31, 1997, p. 4. 48. Ansprache von Budespräsident Roman Herzog bei der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, Bonn, March 13, 1995. 49. Ronald D.Asmus, Germany’s Geopolitical Maturation: Public Opinion and Security Policy in 1994 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995), p. 48.

CHAPTER 10

Russia and European Security Paul Marantz

There have been sweeping changes in international politics and European security since 1989. Nowhere have the changes been greater than in regard to the former Soviet Union. The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union itself has ceased to exist. Marxism-Leninism has been discredited and abandoned. The division of Germany has ended. The Soviet empire in Eastern Europe has been swept away, and the forward deployment of Soviet troops and military equipment in the middle of Europe is no more. The geopolitics of Europe have been transformed fundamentally. Precisely because so much has happened so quickly, it is difficult to know what all this means for European security in the present and in the future. In particular, there is much uncertainty about the direction that future Russian policy might take and the implications that Russia’s conduct will have for the rest of Europe. Does Russia’s assertive and expansionist policy toward the newly independent states of Central Asia and the Caucasus signify a rebirth of Russian imperialism? Does it constitute a threat to all of Europe? Is a renewed policy of containment the appropriate response for the West to Russian expansionism? Will the enlargement of NATO enhance security in Eastern and Central Europe? Might a deterioration in relations with Russia lead to a rebirth of the Cold War? To answer these questions, we need to gain a better understanding of what has and has not changed now that the Soviet Union no longer exists and its place has been taken by a new, unstable, and much diminished Russian state. What features of the Soviet political system served to 207

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perpetuate and intensify East-West antagonism during the Cold War? Is Russia sufficiently different from the Soviet Union to permit the establishment of durable and cooperative relations that will serve as a crucial building block in a new system of European security?

The Soviet Union and the Cold War During the long years of the Cold War, there was an anguished debate about the impact of misperception, miscommunication, exaggerated fears, and missed opportunities.1 Undoubtedly, these factors contributed to EastWest tension at times and affected the course of particular crises. Nonetheless, from the vantage point of the 1990s, we are now able to compare the fundamental institutions and practices of the Soviet political system with the very different features of post-Communist Russia and see how the nature and intensity of the Cold War was shaped by the particular characteristics of the Soviet political system. During the Cold War, perceptions of an acute Soviet threat to Europe were heightened by five interrelated features of the Soviet system: the Soviet Union’s extensive military capabilities, the lack of transparency within the Soviet Union, the absence of internal political constraints on the Soviet leadership, the Soviet regime’s commitment to an official ideology of Marxism-Leninism, and our inability to ascertain Soviet intentions with any degree of certainty. In short, the problem during the Cold War was not just what the Soviet Union did but what the Soviet Union was. 2 It is no accident that so long as the main features of the Soviet political system remained unchanged, the Cold War continued unabated; when the Soviet political system was transformed in 1989– 1991, the Cold War was quickly terminated. With the end of the Cold War, we now have a much better appreciation of the Soviet Union’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities and the extent to which these were hidden from the West. The development of Soviet power was very uneven, and formidable military strength coexisted with economic and political weakness. The Soviet Union was able to accomplish impressive feats in high-priority areas, such as rocket technology and the mass production of tanks, but was far less adept in producing personal computers or satisfying basic consumer needs. Through the use of coercion, the Soviet regime could command an individual’s obedience, but it was far less able to win their loyalty and to inspire personal initiative and hard work. The Soviet Union was a one-

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dimensional superpower. It possessed immense military strength, but was weak in economic and political power.3 If during the Cold War, there was a tendency at times to exaggerate Soviet military capabilities, now there is a danger of minimizing what they were. The Soviet military threat was not conjured by cold warriors in the West. It was a real threat that had to be countered, even if its exact dimensions were often difficult to measure with precision. The Soviet Union was, along with the United States, one of the world’s only two superpowers. Its military strength was far greater than that of Britain, France, or Germany. It had a huge military force of some five million men. Unlike now, these forces were well disciplined, effectively commanded, and had high morale. In Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, they demonstrated that they could be deployed quickly and effectively. The Soviet military was equipped with vast numbers of modern weapons, including tanks, aircraft, missiles, and artillery pieces. In many categories of weapons, Warsaw Pact forces clearly outnumbered those of NATO. The problem for the West during the Cold War was not just that the Soviet leaders had so much military might at their disposal, but that it was very difficult for the outside world to know how they might choose to use this power. If the Soviet leaders were to decide to embark on military aggression, there were few internal restraints on them, and there would be little warning for the West. Within the Soviet political system, power was highly centralized in the hands of a dozen or so leaders in the ruling Politburo. This small group could act swiftly without answering to any other bodies or being constrained by formal or informal constitutional and political mechanisms. The Soviet legislature was a powerless and ineffectual tool of the Communist Party, and it rubber-stamped all Politburo actions. Nothing even remotely resembling a free press existed. The role of the press was confined to public relations, and all actions of the government were uncritically endorsed by it. Opposition parties were banned, and dissenters were silenced. Elections were meaningless, and public opinion was robbed of its voice. What a small circle of party leaders wanted to do, they could do quickly and without the need to consult or persuade. The Soviet leadership could also act with great secrecy. Due to the absence of political accountability, the Politburo could restrict information to a very narrow circle of officials and ensure that it would not become more widely known. Even if an unhappy official were foolish enough to

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consider leaking confidential information, there was no free press or independent political figures to whom information of public concern might be circulated. The regime was zealous in guarding its secrecy and shielding its actions from foreign eyes. It restricted the movements of its citizens, limited their contact with foreigners, and regarded even relatively innocuous information as a state secret. Secrecy was regarded as a weapon and asset of the state. The Soviet leadership did not appreciate how its excessive secrecy fostered mistrust and increased international tension, and even stifled the flow of information within official circles. Efforts to create greater transparency, such as open skies, inspections of nuclear tests, or advance notification of military maneuvers, were rejected as imperialist spying. These fundamental and largely unchanging features of the Soviet political system greatly contributed to Western anxiety about the Soviet Union, and were a major factor in the acute level of tension that characterized the Cold War. The West was confronted by an adversary who clearly had the military capability to do it great harm, that possessed a political system which imposed few constraints on the ability of a small number of leaders to take whatever actions they wished, and that allowed them to develop their plans in great secrecy. Having no way of reliably knowing what the Soviet leadership intended, and recognizing that with so much might at their disposal they were capable of inflicting great damage, the West had no choice but to maintain a posture of vigilant and effective deterrence. Moreover, the effect of all this was further magnified by the Soviet regime’s fervent endorsement of Marxism-Leninism. The official ideology proclaimed that capitalism was exploitative and evil, that the capitalist system was doomed to perish, and that it was the obligation of the Soviet Union to do everything possible to hasten its demise. This uncompromising stance was publicly embraced by all Soviet leaders and embodied in their official pronouncements. Even when advocating improved relations between the camps of socialism and capitalism, the Soviet leadership defended peaceful coexistence as “a form of the class struggle” and endorsed détente as a means of creating conditions that would facilitate the triumph of communism. There were endless debates in the West over the role of MarxismLeninism in actual Soviet policy making and whether Soviet leaders really believed the official ideology or were simply using it cynically to buttress their own domestic power and to legitimize policies that were adopted on much more pragmatic grounds. 4 Some Western scholars

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argued that with time the ideology had either lost its policy relevance or had been rendered far less hostile to meaningful East-West cooperation, whereas others saw this as wishful thinking and dangerous selfdeception. The key point from the standpoint of European and international security, however, is not who was right in this long debate, but the fact that for the duration of the Cold War there was no reliable way of knowing just what the Soviet leaders genuinely believed and how much their thinking was or was not colored by the strident anticapitalist rhetoric that pervaded virtually all official pronouncements. Thus, the regime’s adherence to Marxism-Leninism further intensified uncertainty in the West and compelled Western policymakers to prepare for a full range of contingencies. Yet another factor adding fuel to the Cold War was the adversarial stance that the Soviet Union adopted toward the existing distribution of power in Europe and in the international system more generally. Either due to the dogma of Marxism-Leninism or because the Soviet leaders believed that their country was steadily gaining in power at the expense of the declining United States, the Soviet leadership seemed convinced that existing power relations should be changed in its favor. The current international order was not regarded as legitimate or durable. The Soviet Union was a revisionist and not a status quo power. It was constantly probing and pushing in its search for change. Its leaders believed that history was moving in their direction and that an assertive foreign policy would accelerate the capitalist West’s decline. The precise mechanisms that Soviet leaders relied upon to undermine the West and to redistribute international power changed over time, but Moscow’s determination to bring about a fundamental alteration in the international balance of power did not. Lenin and Stalin believed that the inherent contradictions within the capitalist market system would bring its demise. Khrushchev declared that the Soviet system was destined to demonstrate its economic superiority over capitalism. Brezhnev relied upon the buildup of Soviet military strength and a breakthrough in the Third World. But however different the mechanisms upon which they relied, the Soviet leaders shared an unwillingness to accept the international status quo.5 All this is not to say that the Soviet Union alone was to blame for the Cold War. Misguided Western policies also contributed to the intensity of the Cold War and magnified the inherent dangers. However, the Cold War was not caused by misperception and misunderstanding. The nature of the Soviet system posed a difficult and profound challenge to the West.

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Uncertainty, mistrust, tension, and the need to make contingency plans for worst-case scenarios were built into the very foundation of relations with the Soviet Union. Until the Soviet Union itself changed, the dynamics of international politics and European security were highly resistant to change.

Russia and Post–Cold War Security When we compare present-day Russia to the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 1980s, it is immediately apparent just how much that country has changed and the impact this has had on European and international security. The most obvious change, and the one most frequently discussed, is the collapse of Soviet military power. The Soviet Union was undeniably a military superpower. Contemporary Russia is a military pigmy in comparison.6 The military security of Western Europe has been immeasurably enhanced by the disintegration of the Soviet military machine. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany, Poland, and the other states of East-Central Europe removed Moscow’s forces from the heart of Europe. The states of East-Central Europe, which had been forced to serve as docile Soviet satellites during the Cold War, are now fully independent and are determined to be integrated with the West. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are on their way to membership in NATO. Rather than serving as an extension of Soviet power, they now function as a barrier to it. The collapse of Russia’s so-called outer empire in Eastern Europe has been matched by the disintegration of the inner empire of the Soviet Union itself. In place of the mighty Soviet Union, there now exist fifteen separate, independent states. Although Russia is by far the largest of these states, it possesses a population of only one-half that of the former Soviet Union. With an independent Ukraine on its western border, Russia is now more distant from Western Europe than it has been since the seventeenth century. Within Russia, economic, political, and social change has devastated the once proud Soviet military machine, reducing it to a faint shadow of its former self. The Russian army now stands at 1.5 million men, approximately one-third of its strength under Brezhnev. Even more important, morale and discipline have collapsed. Military salaries scarcely meet minimal subsistence levels, and even these are often not

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paid for many months. There is an acute shortage of housing for officers and their families, and many of them have been forced to live in tents or decrepit apartments. Even food is in short supply, and a major scandal erupted when it was reported that a number of recruits had died of starvation on a military base in the Russian Far East. Many military bases lack even enough funds to pay their utility bills, and so many power companies have threatened to cut off electricity to military bases that a special law was passed prohibiting them from doing so. Military equipment is deteriorating sharply, and little new equipment is being procured. Training exercises are curtailed because there is not enough money to obtain fuel for tanks, planes, and ships. Whereas Soviet military expenditures under Brezhnev rivaled those of the United States, current Russian military spending has been reduced to a fraction of present U.S. levels.7 The failure of Russian troops to subdue a few thousand lightly armed fighters in the breakaway republic of Chechnya is a graphic confirmation of the decrepitude of the Russian military. Russian troops are now poorly trained, badly equipped, and terribly commanded. Despite their superiority in air power and firepower, they were humiliated by relatively small numbers of highly motivated and resourceful rebels. As one analyst trenchantly observed, the debacle in Chechnya demonstrates that Russia cannot even “successfully invade itself.”8 The remarkable erosion in Moscow’s military capacity is a central feature of the new security environment in Europe. However, it is only one factor among many. The enormous political and economic changes that are occurring in Russia are also transforming European security. Those features of the Soviet political system that did so much to fuel tension, uncertainty, and mistrust during the Cold War are no more. Marxist-Leninist ideology has been thoroughly discredited, and it has been abandoned by the Russian government and the Russian people. Governmental power is no longer concentrated in the hands of a few all-powerful individuals. Although the Russian constitution of 1993 provides for a powerful president, he still must share authority with a genuinely independent legislature that is given the power to ratify treaties, declare war, and approve the budget. An independent press is developing, and it has been spirited in its criticism of official policy. The contrast between the Soviet press’s total support for the war in Afghanistan and the Russian press’s vigorous condemnation of the

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military’s failures in Chechnya—and of the Government’s attempts to cover them up—is a graphic illustration of how much has changed in Russia. The Soviet regime was able to operate in great secrecy. It could ignore public opinion, and it did not have to worry about opposition parties and genuine elections. All this is no longer the case. As the price for winning a second term as president in the election of July 1996, President Boris Yeltsin had to modify his policies, fire unpopular ministers, make costly promises, adopt many of the ideas of his critics, and seek an end to the unpopular war in Chechnya. During the Cold War, the West was threatened by the massive strength and cohesiveness of the Soviet state. Now the situation is totally different. The greatest threats to European security derive not from Russian might but from the weakness of the Russian state, its low level of institutionalization, its ineffectiveness, and the danger of its collapse. The low capacity of the Russian state is evident, not just in comparison to the Soviet leviathan, but in its inability to perform the basic functions of a normal state, such as the collection of taxes, the enforcement of laws, the maintenance of national unity, the funding of the military, and the payment of pensions and the salaries of government workers. A radical change in our perspective is required if we are to comprehend the challenge that present-day Russia poses for European security. As one analyst has written, “Instead of having to hedge against the threat of a soon-to-be-powerful-again Russia, the West must deal with a weak Russia and address the challenge of continuing Russian instability.”9 During the Cold War, the central task for the West was to contain Soviet power and to prevent its further expansion. Now the challenge is very different. It is to stabilize Russia’s fragile economic and political system, to prevent its fragmentation into feuding ministates, and to lessen the Russian population’s hardship and suffering, since these conditions provide a fertile breeding ground for authoritarian and ultranationalist movements. European security would be greatly adversely affected by economic collapse or political disintegration in Russia. Russia’s collapse would greatly increase the flow of refugees to Central and Western Europe. A weakening of law and order in Russia would result in an intensification of transnational criminal activity, drug trafficking, and the smuggling of nuclear material beyond the levels to which these have already risen since 1991. Economic collapse in Russia would drag down the economies of

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the Central European states, and the reverberations would be felt across Europe. Social tensions would increase in Europe, and ultranationalistic and authoritarian demagogues would find more fertile soil for their movements. No one can predict how Russia will develop in the years ahead. Economic conditions for much of the population remain desperate. Democratic institutions are poorly developed. A large, secure, and politically active middle class has not yet been created. Regional grievances are strong. The West is not well understood or trusted. Given the enormity of Russia’s internal problems, the meager funds at the disposal of Western governments, and the difficulty of influencing long-term internal problems from abroad, there are sharp limits to how much the West can do to shape the direction of Russia’s development. Nonetheless, what happens within Russia will have a great impact on Europe and the world. We cannot afford to be indifferent bystanders.

Russia’s “Near Abroad” and European Security Although Russia is far too weak to pose a direct military threat to Western Europe, it still remains a major regional power. Despite the disarray of its military forces, Russia is far stronger than its immediate neighbors. The fourteen newly independent states that emerged alongside Russia from the wreckage of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991—what Russians now refer to as the “near abroad”—are vulnerable to pressure from Moscow. As Russia has become more assertive in dealing with the “near abroad,” this has raised important questions as to how European security should be conceptualized and promoted. Does the expansion of Russian influence in the “near abroad” constitute a threat to stability in Europe? What is the appropriate response to Russia’s encroachment on its neighbors’ sovereignty? Initially, during 1992—which was the first year of Russia’s existence as a fully independent post-Soviet state—Moscow followed a very moderate policy toward the former republics of the Soviet Union. Russia sought good relations with them based upon shared interests, mutual cooperation, and the negotiation of differences. Russia’s main priority at this time was to promote improved relations with the major Western powers, to secure foreign economic assistance, and to focus on urgent

FIGURE 1.1

The Russian Near Abroad

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domestic concerns, most notably the transformation of the economy, the construction of new political institutions, and the consolidation of Yeltsin’s personal power. By mid-1993, however, Russian policy in the “near abroad” became far more assertive.10 Russia used military, economic, and political pressure to reassert its influence and win important concessions. Russian troops became involved in civil wars in Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. Moscow took advantage of the dependence of its neighbors on Russian oil and gas and capitalized on their growing indebtedness. It stepped forward as the protector of the 25 million Russian-speakers living in the “near abroad” who, it was alleged, were being subjected to discrimination and were being treated as second-class citizens. Russian spokespersons not only claimed that Russia had special responsibilities to police the region around it, they also urged the international community to recognize and accept this. In a speech on February 28, 1993, Yeltsin declared: Russia continues to have a vital interest in the cessation of all armed conflicts on the territory of the former U.S.S.R. Moreover, the international community is increasingly coming to realize our country’s special responsibility in this difficult matter. I believe the time has come for authoritative international organizations, including the United Nations, to grant Russia special powers as guarantor of peace and stability in this region.11 Russia also attempted to revitalize the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) as a supranational organization that would promote greater political and economic integration in the “near abroad” and serve as an instrument for extending Russian influence. Georgia, which had steadfastly refused to join the CIS in 1992, bowed to Russian pressure and became a member. Azerbaijan reluctantly agreed to reactivate its membership. Moldova responded to the continued presence of Russian troops in the eastern part of the country by cooling its aspirations for closer relations with Romania and by strengthening ties to Russia. Tajikistan became a virtual Russian protectorate, and only a few years after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, Russian troops were once again launching military strikes into that country, this time aimed at rebels fighting the government of Tajikistan who were based there. Many in the West argued that Russia’s use of military force, economic blackmail, and political pressure constituted a serious threat to European

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and international security. They viewed Moscow’s actions as reflecting the rebirth of Russian imperialism.12 They advocated a policy of firmness and strength on the part of the West. Russian expansion had to be contained. According to these analysts, Russia had to be stopped now or its imperial appetite would grow, and the West would soon face more serious challenges in areas of direct interest, such as Ukraine, the Baltic states, or even eventually Poland. Russia, they argued, faced a stark choice in charting its domestic future and its relations with the West. In the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both.”13 Russia’s assertiveness in the “near abroad” was accompanied during 1993–1994 by a more independent and forceful stance on a variety of important issues, such as NATO’s enlargement, peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia, and policy toward Iraq, Iran, Libya, and India. As a result, there was a marked cooling in relations between Russia and the West. There was anxious speculation about the danger of a “cold peace.” Concern was expressed by some influential observers, including William Perry, then the U.S. secretary of defense, that “a renewal of some new version of the cold war” was even possible.14 Fortunately, a sharp deterioration in relations with Russia was avoided. Policymakers in Europe and the United States ultimately adopted a more restrained view of the nature and significance of Russian conduct in the “near abroad.” A tacit understanding was eventually worked out that largely defused the issue and decoupled it from European security. The perspective that prevailed in Western policy-making circles was based upon a hard-headed appraisal of the interests of the Western powers and of Russia. According to this perspective, the central interest of the West in dealing with Russia is to prevent that country’s estrangement and alienation. An isolated Russia would easily fall prey to ultranationalism, anti-Western sentiment, and authoritarianism.15 It was vitally important to keep open lines of communication to Russia, to integrate it into the world economy, and to ensure that it played a meaningful role in European security institutions, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Partnership for Peace, and the Council of Europe. These objectives were far more important than the West’s peripheral interests in Georgia or Tajikistan. A variety of arguments were advanced for interpreting Moscow’s actions in the “near abroad” as something more than the initial act in an unfolding grand design that would eventually bring it into collision with the rest of Europe. It was acknowledged that Russia did, indeed, have

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genuine interests in the “near abroad” and that Yeltsin’s government had to be attentive to these or it would find itself undercut by more nationalistic leaders and movements within Russia.16 Russian policymakers were concerned with the instability and violence on their doorstep. Civil wars were being waged in Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. There was a danger that some of these conflicts would spill over into Russia itself, while others were causing thousands of refugees to flee to Russia at a time when it was unable to cope with the influx. Economically, there existed a high degree of interdependence between Russia and its neighbors. Russia was dependent on the “near abroad” for raw materials and important industrial components, and the “near abroad” served as an important market for Russian goods. Central Asia and the Caucasus have huge reserves of oil and gas. Russia would like a share of the profits and wants to ensure that the pipelines carrying oil and gas to the West pass through Russia. Russia is concerned that a political vacuum in nearby countries would enable regional rivals, such as China or Turkey, to strengthen their influence. Poorly defended borders mean that drugs, arms, criminals, and smuggled natural resources or nuclear material could move more freely into and out of Russia. Porous borders also make Russia more vulnerable to the spread of Islamic radicalism. Finally, no Russian government can maintain its credibility if it appears to be turning its back on the millions of Russian-speakers in the “near abroad” who feel vulnerable to civil conflict or discriminatory legislation. Whereas Russia has concrete and strong interests at stake in the “near abroad,” Western policymakers recognized that their countries’ interests are more limited, especially in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Ukraine and the Baltic states are important to European security because of their proximity to the rest of Europe, because they serve as an important barrier to Russian power, and because there is strong sympathy for their plight in a number of Western countries. However, the same cannot be said in regard to Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, or Georgia. Here Western interests are minimal. There is an economic interest in participating in the development of the immense energy resources of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, but this is scarcely a vital interest. Moreover, given the shortage of capital in Russia and that country’s need for foreign markets for its raw materials, an accommodation on energy issues can be worked out. As much as there was unease over Russia’s heavy-handed approach to the “near abroad,” Western policymakers also recognized that their options for countering Russian influence in that region are limited. There is little

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public support for risking the lives of peacekeepers and for spending scarce funds trying to resolve intractable ethnic conflicts in faraway lands. In a number of Western capitals, as much as there is apprehension over growing Russian power in the “near abroad,” there is even greater anxiety over the expansion of Chinese or Iranian influence. Russia’s stabilizing influence is seen as far preferable to the possibility that Islamic radicalism might be able to make significant inroads in the region. As a result of these considerations, a tacit understanding was eventually worked out between Russia and the West. This understanding accommodates Russian and Western interests, and it helps to insulate larger issues of European security, so they are not damaged by Russian policy toward the “near abroad.” The Russian leadership understands that the West makes a sharp distinction between Ukraine and the Baltic states on the one hand, and Central Asia and the Caucasus on the other. Russia has acted with restraint in Ukraine and the Baltics. In return, Russia has tacitly been granted a relatively free hand in Central Asia and the Caucasus. So long as Russia limits its overt use of force, tries to win the acquiescence of the governments involved (as it has done in Georgia and Tajikistan), and avoids heavy-handed actions that bring front-page headlines in the West and give further ammunition to the critics of cooperation with Russia, Western leaders are willing to accept a strong Russian presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus. In an ideal world, Russia would not seek nor be granted a sphere of influence in neighboring countries, just as the United States would foreswear a sphere of influence in Latin America, and France would refrain from intervention in African affairs. But we do not live in an ideal world. Major powers take an expansive view of their own interests, and weaker countries are forced to make accommodations. There are limits to what the Western powers can reasonably hope to achieve in dealing with Russia and the “near abroad.” Priorities must be set and hard choices made. The prevention of a major deterioration of relations with Russia, so that we can continue to assist it in becoming a stable and constructive partner in European security, has been a major accomplishment of Western diplomacy.

Russia and NATO The West faces a painful dilemma in regard to NATO’s enlargement. On the one hand, Russia is simply too unstable and too divergent in outlook

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to be incorporated into an expanded NATO. On the other hand, it would be too damaging to Western interests—and potentially too dangerous—to simply exclude Russia from NATO when other states are being admitted. How, then, can a security umbrella be extended to Central Europe without severely damaging relations with Russia? Although the Cold War schism that locked East and West into relations of near total antagonism has ended, Russia and the West still see the world in very different terms and face very different circumstances. There is often a sharp divergence in outlook, values, and interests between them. During the so-called honeymoon period in Russia’s relations with the West that lasted from 1991 to mid-1993, Moscow consciously chose to follow the West’s lead on a whole range of issues. This highly conciliatory strategy was chosen in order to dissipate lingering mistrust of Russia in the West, to demonstrate that the new Russia was fundamentally different from the old Soviet Union, and to obtain desperately needed economic aid and political support. By mid-1993, this policy of farreaching accommodation ended, and Russian policymakers followed policies which showed that Russian interests, as they saw them, differed markedly from Western interests. This was the case in regard to the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Iran. From the perspective of the West, Russia is not an attractive or even a plausible candidate for membership in NATO in the foreseeable future. Russia is having great difficulty in making the transition to a healthy market economy and a stable democratic political system. It has a long way to go in developing an effective system of commercial law and consistent taxation that will sustain a healthy economy. The central government is weak, regionalism is growing, and there is an ever-present danger of fragmentation. Civilian control of the military has not been consolidated. Russia is embroiled in numerous civil wars simmering on its borders. While Russian-Chinese relations are presently more cordial than they have been in decades, there is a potential for later conflict. China is becoming more powerful economically, more nationalistic, and more assertive, while Russia stagnates. Admitting Russia to NATO would lead to the unpredictable transformation of this organization and possibly to its paralysis or demise. Since NATO membership will be offered to several Central European nations but not to Russia, Western advocates of enlargement have tried to convince Moscow to acquiesce in this process. Some have even argued that if only Russian policymakers took a hard-headed nonideological look at enlargement, they would recognize that it served their interests as well

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as those of the West. 17 They argue that the end of the Cold War has already brought about a fundamental change in NATO’s mission. It is no longer predominantly a military alliance directed against Moscow, but an organization of common security that will enhance stability and security throughout Europe. It will dampen ethnic and border conflict. It will provide reassurance to the states of Central Europe and prevent the kind of instability, arms races, and shifting alliances that characterized this region prior to World War II. NATO’s enlargement will moderate and restrain growing German power, and it will ensure that the United States continues to function as a safely distant but still effective pillar of European security. Whatever the intrinsic merits or demerits of these arguments, they have little appeal to Russian policymakers. For them, NATO’s enlargement without Russian membership constitutes a real and a symbolic loss of power that they cannot easily accept. Many Russians feel an acute sense of humiliation and anger at their country’s sad condition. The Soviet Union had been one of the world’s only two superpowers. It actively influenced events in all parts of the world. It was respected and feared. In contrast, contemporary Russia is often ignored and scorned. It has been forced to approach the West cap in hand, seeking economic aid and a delay in the repayment of its debts. It has been pushed to the sidelines when key questions of international politics are discussed, such as peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia and peacemaking in the Middle East. In this context, the enlargement of NATO against Russia’s wishes is seen symbolically by Russian policymakers as further evidence of humiliation and marginalization.18 Beyond the symbolism, there is no disguising the fact that NATO’s enlargement also signifies a real decline in Moscow’s power. The countries of East-Central Europe now look westward, not eastward, for security, for economic assistance, for trade, and for their political and economic models. The enlargement of NATO is by no means the cause of this realignment, but it does reinforce it. In the words of one Russian commentator: …Russia will have to deal with an expanded and consolidated EuroAtlantic community in which it will have no place. The new Europe will extend not from the Atlantic to the Urals, as Charles de Gaulle once proposed, but from San Francisco to Brest. The bloc’s expansion will preserve and strengthen the American presence in

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Europe while at the same time squeezing out Russia, which is geographically part of Europe.19 Russians feel that their great and once mighty country should count for more than the Czech Republic or Poland in the councils of Europe. But when these countries are admitted to NATO while Russia is left on the outside, it will count for less. Within Russian policy-making circles, there is genuine concern and anger over NATO’s enlargement. However, the issue is also further complicated by the intrusion of domestic politics. Critics of Yeltsin’s government are attempting to turn the issue to their own advantage. They play upon the population’s disorientation and insecurities, and they argue that the government’s inability to prevent NATO’s enlargement is damning evidence of its failure to protect the nation and to safeguard the gains of the Second World War, which had been won at such a high price in Russian blood. Most Russians outside of Moscow’s policy elite are preoccupied with the struggle for personal survival amid the disorder and chaos of daily life. Unemployment, inflation, and crime concern them far more than foreign policy issues. But NATO’s enlargement reinforces their sense that the government has done little to preserve the benefits of Russia’s previous greatness and to safeguard the well-being and security of its citizens. As the opposition tries to exploit the issue, the government is driven to take a hard line so that it cannot be accused of caving in to the West. The sharp and prolonged disagreement between Russia and the West over NATO’s enlargement is in itself a major problem for European security. But it is far more than this. It is also a reflection of the way in which many Russians perceive Europe and view Russia’s place in a European order. Disagreement over NATO is indicative of a pervasive sense that Europe represents an alien world that Russia does not and cannot fully share. Even if the issue of NATO’s enlargement is successfully dealt with and fades from view, this Russian sense of distinctiveness and not belonging will continue to have powerful political reverberations.20 Attitudes within Russia are very different from those in much of EastCentral Europe. In the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and many other states of the region, there is a very strong identification with “the West.” People feel fully a part of European culture and history. They believe that they were betrayed after World War II when they were con-signed to the

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Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and were artificially cut off from the West. They want to integrate into Europe as completely and as quickly as possible. In Russia, however, there is far more ambivalence about the West. While Russian mistrust of the West was actively reinforced by decades of Cold War tensions and by unrelenting Soviet propaganda, its roots go back centuries. For hundreds of years, Russians have felt that Western Europe had a different and alien culture. During periods of modernization, Russia’s rulers sought to acquire Western technology, but they remained wary of alien values. The West was seen as too materialistic and too individualistic. Its political and economic institutions were viewed as unsuited to Russian conditions and inappropriate for the Slavic personality.21 These age-old feelings have a strong contemporary resonance. They mean that misgivings and doubts about the intentions of Western nations and the suitability of Western institutions for Russia are widespread. For example, a poll of 3,850 Russians that was conducted in December 1995 found that 60% of those interviewed agreed with the view that “the West is pursuing the goal of weakening Russia with its economic advice.”22 A Russian international relations specialist, Elgiz Pozdyakov, reflected the views of large numbers of Russian intellectuals and ordinary citizens when he wrote in 1991: Russia cannot return to Europe because it never belonged to it. Russia cannot join it because it is part of another type of civilization, another cultural and religious type…. Any attempt to make us common with Western civilization and even to force us to join it undertaken in the past resulted in superficial borrowings, deceptive reforms, useless luxury and moral lapses.23 Many Russians have little understanding of Western institutions and practices. For them, the concept of “Western democracy” conjures up not images of personal autonomy and freedom, but of corruption, crime, unemployment, pornography, extreme inequality, and callousness toward those individuals who are poorly equipped to survive in a brutally competitive free market. Russia’s post-Communist foreign policy has been shaped by the ongoing struggle between three major schools of thought: Westernizers, who believe that Russia should integrate as fully as possible with the world economy and should adopt Western institutions of parliamentary

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democracy and free market capitalism; the Eurasianists, who stress Russia’s distinctiveness and advocate the energetic defense of Russia’s national interests; and the ultranationalists, who see the West as Russia’s enemy and call for active opposition to it. After a brief period of ascendency in 1992, the influence of the Westernizers has sharply declined.24 Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev’s identification with a proWestern policy became a serious political liability for Boris Yeltsin. In the run-up to the 1996 presidential election, Yeltsin forced Kozyrev to resign and replaced him with Yevgeny Primakov, a tough and experienced official from the Soviet era who is identified with a much firmer approach to the West. In short, as important as the controversy over NATO enlargement is, it is also a symptom of a deeper and more profound problem, Russia’s sense of distinctiveness from the West. Because this feeling has existed for centuries and is deeply rooted in Russian culture and consciousness, it will not be easily eradicated. However, if Russian sensitivities and anxieties are recognized and understood, Western policy can be more effectively fashioned to avoid intensifying these feelings and over time to find ways to diminish them.

Conclusion The disappearance of the Soviet Union has brought far-reaching and irreversible change to international politics. The basis of European security has been fundamentally transformed. During the Cold War, European security rested on military strength, and vigilant preparedness for the worst-case scenario of possible Soviet aggression against the West. Now the central task of the West is not to contain and deter Russia, but to assist it, help its economy grow, promote political stability, and above all facilitate Russia’s integration into the world market and panEuropean security institutions. A web of common interests draws Russia and the West closer together. Security can now be based on greater openness, transparency, and confidence-building measures rather than nuclear deterrence and the buildup of arms. Russia is not an easy country to work with. Its historically based sense of distinctiveness sets it apart from the rest of Europe. Its post-Communist political system remains undeveloped, and its economy is weak. There are, indeed, troubling similarities between present-day Russia and the ill-

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fated Weimar German Republic of the late 1920s and early 1930s. There is a danger that Russian politics may move toward greater authoritarianism and nationalism in the future. Nonetheless, as this chapter has argued, the challenges posed by Russia are far less acute and much more manageable than the Cold War antagonisms inherent in the Soviet Union’s policies and political practices. Cooperative relations with Russia are vital to European security. As a report prepared for the Trilateral Commission has observed: “There is no security problem on the [European] Continent that is not made more manageable through Russian cooperation, and none that does not become more intractable if Moscow defines its interests in ways that oppose Western objectives.”25 Creative diplomacy can ameliorate the tensions and strains in dealing with Russia and draw it into new security relations that will benefit all of Europe.

Notes 1. Seweryn Bialer and Michael Mandelbaum, The Global Rivals (New York: Knopf, 1988); George F.Kennan, The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age (New York: Random House, 1983); Thomas G. Paterson, Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 2. This interpretation of Soviet foreign policy, which stresses the role that the fundamental features of the Soviet political system played in intensifying the Cold War, has been termed the “essentialist” perspective. It is discussed in William Zimmerman, “Choices in the Postwar World: Containment and the Soviet Union,” in Charles Gati (ed.), Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974), pp. 89–99. 3. Paul Dibb, The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). 4. Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988); Allen Lynch, The Soviet Study of International Relations (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Richard Pipes, U.S.Soviet Relations in the Era of Detente (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1981). 5. Paul Marantz, From Lenin to Gorbachev: Changing Soviet Perspectives on East-West Relations, Occasional Papers, No. 4 (Ottawa: Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, 1988). 6. Benjamin S.Lambeth, “Russia’s Wounded Military,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 2 (March/April 1995), pp. 86–98; Anatol Lieven, “Russia’s Military Nadir,” The National Interest, No. 44, Summer 1996, pp. 24–33. 7. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1995–1996 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 112–113. 8. Michael Mandelbaum, The Dawn of Peace in Europe (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1996), p. 143.

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9. Christoph Bertram, Europe in the Balance: Securing the Peace Won in the Cold War (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1995), p. 33. 10. This section draws upon the discussion of Russian foreign policy and the “near abroad” contained in my article “Neither Adversaries nor Partners: Russia and the West Search for a New Relationship” in Roger E.Kanet (ed.), The Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (London: Macmillan, 1997). 11. Cited in Suzanne Crow, “Russia Asserts Its Strategic Agenda,” RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 50, December 17, 1993, p. 2. 12. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2, March/April 1994, pp. 67–82; Henry A.Kissinger, “Beware: A Threat Abroad,” Newsweek, Vol. 127, No. 25, June 17, 1996, pp. 41–43; Uri Ra’anan and Kate Martin (eds.), Russia: A Return to Imperialism? (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995). 13. Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” p. 72. 14. New York Times, March 15, 1994, p. A4. Also see, Georgi Arbatov, “Eurasia Letter: A New Cold War?,” Foreign Policy, No. 95, Summer 1994, pp. 90–103. 15. Robert D.Blackwill, “Russia and the West,” in Robert D.Blackwill, et al., Engaging Russia (New York: The Trilateral Commission, 1995), pp. 23–36; Mandelbaum, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, pp. 113–154. 16. Bruce D.Porter and Carol R.Saivetz, “The Once and Future Empire: Russia and the ‘Near Abroad’,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3, Summer 1994, pp. 75–90. 17. Strobe Talbott, “Why NATO Should Grow,” New York Review of Books, Vol. 42, No. 13, August 10, 1995, p. 29. 18. Anatol Lieven, “Russian Opposition to NATO Expansion,” The World Today, Vol. 51, No. 10, October 1995, pp. 196–199; Richard L.Kugler, Enlarging NATO: The Russia Factor (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1996), pp. 19–21. 19. Aleksei Pushkov, “Assessment: NATO Begins Its ‘Eastern Set’,” Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 67, October 1–8, 1995, p. 11, as translated in The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol. 47, No. 39, 1995, p. 9. 20. Bruce D.Porter, “Russia and Europe after the Cold War: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policies,” in Celeste A.Wallander (ed.), The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), pp. 121–145; Neil Malcolm (ed.), Russia and Europe: An End to Confrontation? (London: Pinter, 1994). 21. S.Neil MacFarlane, “Russia, the West and European Security,” Survival, Vol. 35, No. 3, Autumn 1993, pp. 3–25; S.Neil MacFarlane, “Russian Conceptions of Europe,” Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1994, pp. 234–269; Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe (London: Routledge, 1996). 22. New York Times, April 19, 1996, p. 3. 23. Cited in Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 177. 24. Renee de Nevers, Russia’s Strategic Renovation, Adelphi Paper Number 289 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1994), pp. 23–39; Leszek Buszynski, “Russia and the West: Towards Renewed Geopolitical Rivalry?” Survival, Vol. 37, No. 3, Autumn 1995, pp. 104–114. 25. Blackwill, “Russia and the West,” p. 25.

CHAPTER 11

The Future of American Atlanticism Gary L.Geipel

American Atlanticism is a complex phenomenon that produces a simple result. The result is America’s willingness to regard itself as a European power, to behave as though the Atlantic Ocean offered no protection against the intrigues of European diplomacy and the force of European arms, and to commit itself to preserving peace in Europe as if its own security and domestic order were at stake. To those of us who consider ourselves Atlanticists, the need for this sort of American posture is selfevident. To those who oppose America’s European obligations, the Atlanticist posture is a quaint anachronism at best, a dangerous and expensive absurdity at worst. This chapter will not expound on either of those perspectives, because such expositions already exist in large numbers and because the future of American Atlanticism hinges less on its intellectual merits than on a complex set of attitudes, interests, personal experiences, and relationships within the U.S. body politic. Those will be examined here. The prognosis for American Atlanticism remains good. Recent reports of U.S. isolationism, the rise of the Pacific Rim at the expense of transatlantic relations in U.S. foreign policy, and the collapse of American leadership in international relations all have some anecdotal basis but tend to be overdrawn and based on narrow or short-term analyses. Conditions that could erode the Atlanticist consensus in the United States will be 229

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considered here, but the underlying thesis is optimistic. American Atlanticism will tend to survive and may even thrive in the twenty-first century—if U.S. and European leaders understand its ingredients and work to preserve them.

Equilibrium America’s complex Atlanticism is akin to a chemical reaction that tends, fortunately, to equilibrium. The Atlanticist chemical reaction has four ingredients: hard economic interests, moral purpose, cultural affinity, and, most importantly, sheer political will on the part of America’s top leaders. At various times during five decades of American Atlanticism, each of those four ingredients has been more or less present. Significantly, however, the decline of one ingredient has almost always been matched by the rise of another to preserve equilibrium. America’s economic interests in the ruined Europe of the late 1940s were potential at best, but the potential will to remain present in Europe was strong, and it hardened in the 1950s under the challenge of Soviet communism. Over time, U.S. demographic and educational trends have weakened U.S.-European cultural affinity, but America’s economic stakes in the transatlantic relationship have grown steadily. In the 1980s, anti-Americanism and economic “Eurosclerosis” might have alienated the United States from Europe severely, but the Reagan administration’s moral high-mindedness proved infectious and helped to preserve equilibrium yet again. To date, the most dramatic test of the Atlanticist equilibrium took place in the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the opening of the Berlin Wall, and the democratization of Central and Eastern Europe— contrary to the expectations of cynics who believed that the survival of the Atlantic alliance demanded a Communist bogeyman—did not weaken the Atlanticist consensus significantly. While support among American leaders for a consistent commitment to NATO dropped by 50 points between 1986 and 1990, Americans as a whole did not follow suit.1 The percentage of Americans who believe that the United States should maintain or increase its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is only slightly lower today (64%) than in 1986 (70%) and elite support for a consistent NATO commitment has rebounded as well. 2 The weight on the American conscience of ethnic strife and genocide in former Yugoslavia may have had much to do with this, along with a fairly widespread awareness that U.S. economic ties

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with Europe remain important. About half of the American people and an overwhelming majority of U.S. elites believe that European economic unification is good for the United States.3 This is not to suggest that the Atlanticist equilibrium is governed by mystical forces that will always set things right. If one ingredient were to disappear from the chemical reaction entirely—particularly the political will of the president—or if all four ingredients were to become scarce, American Atlanticism almost certainly would face an existential crisis. What history tells us, however, is that American Atlanticism is not particularly volatile. It is unlikely to collapse in the wake of a single, dramatic event, and it does not require a particular cast of characters or geopolitical circumstances to thrive. To understand the prospects of American Atlanticism in the twenty-first century, we must examine its individual ingredients.

The Economic Stakes America’s diplomatic and military engagement in key regions of the globe, at its most crass and self-interested level, is an insurance policy against the risks of economic exposure. The U.S. economy would suffer greatly if isolated from the rest of the world. Therefore, U.S. foreign policy must protect American economic interests from political instability in key markets, from disruptions of trade routes and energy supplies caused by military aggression, and from foreign economic policies that restrict the movement of goods and services across borders. To put the argument in transatlantic terms, the United States is heavily invested in Europe and continues to depend on robust U.S.-European trade relations for its economic health. Military conflict or large-scale political instability in Europe would jeopardize those stakes. Therefore, to the extent that a major U.S. security role in Europe reduces the chances of such conflict or instability, the cost of America’s NATO commitment— even if it grows as a result of the alliance’s upcoming expansion—can be understood as a relatively modest insurance premium to cover massive economic exposure. The economic case for Atlanticism thus parallels the case against an isolationist U.S. foreign policy, which would entail little more than military self-defense and economic protectionism. The United States no longer dominates the global economy as it did in the years after World War II. America’s share of world gross domestic product (GDP) is about 22%, down from 40% in 1950. That change

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actually tells us very little about U.S. exposure abroad, though it is often cited in commentaries suggesting that America has a declining stake in the world economy or a declining claim to global leadership. Germany leads in per-capita terms, but America is the world’s largest trading nation when the absolute value of its exports and imports is considered.4 Millions of American jobs exist because the United States exported $48 billion of goods and services in 1995 to eager foreign buyers.5 With U.S. trade as the driving force, North America’s ratio of trade to GDP has doubled in the past 20 years, outpacing the global average.6 Trade is only the beginning of the story. U.S. foreign investment has exploded in recent years. One particularly dramatic indicator is the existence now of almost 700 U.S. investment funds, with assets of $146 billion, focused primarily or exclusively on investments outside the United States itself. Fully 80% of those funds have existed for less than five years. 7 American capital has never been so mobile. At the same time, large and even medium-sized U.S. firms, like their foreign counterparts, increasingly make expansion and restructuring decisions with an eye to global labor markets rather than local or even national conditions. Particularly in light manufacturing and the service sector, there is little to impede U.S. firms from shifting parts of their production and operations to lower-cost and less regulated foreign labor markets. The negative impact of this situation on some low-skilled American workers and the rhetoric of some politicians notwithstanding, there is little that U.S. public policy can do to reverse what is often called the “globalization” of capital and labor markets. Protectionist strategies almost certainly would have the unintended consequence of accelerating the flow of U.S. investment and jobs to more open markets. Instead, America’s brightest future will depend on efforts by government, business, and individuals not just to preserve but to extend the advantages of education, entrepreneurship, and technology development enjoyed by the United States in the global economy. The self-confident America that results from such efforts will desire more exposure to the global economy, not less. America’s transatlantic economic relations remain a crucial element of the bigger picture just described. Europe is not driving the growth in America’s foreign trade, but neither is Europe declining significantly in importance, as one might conclude from hyped reports on the rise of the Pacific Rim. In 1995, 24.2% of U.S. merchandise exports went to Europe. That is down from the 29% of U.S. exports accounted for by Europe in 1989. Meanwhile, Asia’s share of total U.S. merchandise exports rose from 30.6% in 1989 to 33% in 1995. Such percentage shifts mislead us, however. The value of U.S.

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merchandise exports to Europe rose from 1989 to 1995 in absolute terms, from $105 billion to $140 billion.8 Asia’s disproportional growth, which is not surprising in view of the youth and ribald capitalism of the region’s emerging markets, does not in any way diminish America’s stakes in Europe. As of 1992, 49% of America’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) stock was in Europe and 59% of FDI stock in the United States originated in Europe.9 In Germany alone, U.S. firms acquired 138 companies in 1995, well ahead of any other foreign investor.10 In absolute terms, European direct investment in the United States totals more than $250 billion. U.S. direct investment in Europe totals more than $200 billion, and European affiliates of U.S. corporations earn an estimated $850 billion per year from sales. Fortunately, the American people do not need to hear litanies of statistics to appreciate the importance of U.S. economic relations with Europe. More than three million Americans work in the United States for affiliates of European corporations, and hundreds of thousands more owe their jobs to the increased demand for goods and services created by those European firms. In small midwestern and southern towns just as on Wall Street, the positive impact of transatlantic economic relations is self-evident. Twenty-seven percent of the state of Indiana’s manufacturing product, to focus on one example, is accounted for by direct export activity, and five of Indiana’s top ten export destination countries are European. Exports directly account for almost 70,000 jobs in Indiana and indirectly sustain another 84,000 jobs that support manufacturing exports.11 At the most visible level of all, the North American base of Germany’s Boehringer-Mannheim provides 1,500 residents of Indianapolis with a paycheck, making it one of the city’s largest employers.12 Many other large and small foreign employers are scattered throughout the state. Similarly in South Carolina and Alabama, the high-profile openings of BMW and Mercedes auto and truck plants, respectively, brought new economic vitality to relatively poor regions. Therefore, to assume that the economic importance of Europe and the world does not register with most Americans in the late 1990s is to assume that they are blind, deaf, and dumb. They are not. Among America’s leaders, confidence in the future of transatlantic economic relationships has inspired such diverse figures as Republican congressional leader Newt Gingrich and labor leader Lane Kirkland to call for steps in the direction of a Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA)—in effect, a merger of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU). Many experts are skeptical that North America and Europe could reconcile their trade orientations in key industries such as agriculture, film, and telecommunications, or overcome the structural

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differences between the U.S. and the EU economies. Other critics suggest that the pursuit of TAFTA would regionalize the pursuit of free trade at the expense of global efforts centered on the World Trade Organization (WTO). Supporters counter that TAFTA could point the way for further global trade liberalization, and they dangle the stunning economic opportunities that a single transatlantic market would present. 13 While some TAFTA enthusiasts appear to support the idea primarily as a placeholder for U.S.-European engagement if NATO-centered security relationships languish, the TAFTA vision nevertheless suggests that a healthy, economically motivated Atlanticism persists. Looking to the future of transatlantic economic relations, there are grounds for concern. The term “Eurosclerosis” is not heard much today. That is because the Western European economies trade intensively with one another, show a growing openness to external trade, routinely undertake cross-border mergers and acquisitions inconceivable a decade ago, and benefit significantly from the market openings created by German unification and the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. From an economic standpoint, however, the longer-term future of Europe remains murky. The EU countries, with few exceptions, have made little progress in easing the regulatory burden on business or promoting the financing opportunities needed to spur entrepreneurship. Too often, young European entrepreneurs feel compelled to pursue their dreams in the United States or elsewhere rather than in their hometowns and nations. The EU countries also have not reined in an entitlement mindset and overgenerous social-welfare schemes that—combined with Europe’s aging populations—scare away some foreign investors and could bankrupt several national treasuries by the early twenty-first century. The struggle of the prototypical Swedish welfare state to avoid fiscal collapse in recent years is a cautionary tale. Staggeringly high and stubbornly unmoving unemployment rates in most Western European countries testify to the tremendous reluctance of firms to expand their work forces in the region’s expensive, hyper-regulated labor markets. Finally, the EU’s arm’s-length approach to the nascent free markets of Central and Eastern Europe has limited the economic gains from investment and trade that otherwise might have accrued to the Continent as a whole. EU membership for the Central and Eastern European countries remains as elusive as a mirage, creating enormous frustrations in the volatile region. Indeed, the EU appears much more interested in creating new, highly regulated welfare states in its own image—the so-called convergence process—than in opening its agriculture, labor, and product markets to the East.

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Traditional American investors and multinationals have made their peace with Western Europe’s structural peculiarities, frustrating as they may be to growth, and the region’s large single-market remains difficult to ignore. In the medium to long term, however—as the global alternatives to wading through Europe’s statist quicksand proliferate (read: Asia and Latin America)—the economic ties that bind the United States and Europe could diminish not just in relative but in absolute terms as well. European leaders who want to keep America’s eye must be alert to this, as they weigh the political costs and benefits of economic reform.

Cultural Affinity Business and economic interests are a crucial component of American Atlanticism. The hands-on conduct of transatlantic business brings several tens of thousands of Americans and Europeans together annually, no doubt resulting in numerous friendships and heightened mutual understanding. One step removed from day-to-day business contacts, several million Americans owe their livelihoods to transatlantic trade and investment. It is doubtful, however, that the unusual intensity of Atlanticism could have been (or can be) sustained on the basis of economic interdependence alone. What emerged across the Atlantic over the past five decades, to use the ideal but typically cumbersome German word, is a Schicksalsgemeinschaft, a community of shared destiny. Contrary to the fears of those who believed that the Cold War was all that held us together, the transatlantic community today does not want for shared concerns. The solidification of democracy and the free market on a global scale, the protection of the environment, the prevention of chemical- and nuclear-arms proliferation, and the safeguarding of economic and social progress in the face of demographic challenges all cry out for common attention and responses. For the transatlantic community to remain strong, however, many Americans from all walks of life feel they must be connected to Europe in some meaningful, personal way—through ethnic heritage, education, travel, language, the exchange of art and ideas, or other means. Only if such connections exist will Americans even think to look to Europe in addressing common concerns. The connections remain healthier and more plentiful than many anxious European observers believe, but it is likely that the high-water mark of transatlantic cultural affinity was reached in the mid-1980s, when the number of U.S. troops in Europe (and their dependents) peaked and

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before the shift of U.S. demographics and curricula accelerated away from their traditional European orientation. The decline in transatlantic cultural affinity of the past decade, if it persists, will affect so-called Middle America disproportionately. Elitelevel transatlantic exchanges seem to be holding steady or posting modest gains. The number of Americans receiving Fulbright grants to study in Western Europe, for example, is holding reasonably constant, with slight declines in the case of some countries having more to do with higher program costs than a loss of U.S. interest. 14 The Fulbright program’s German counterpart, the German Academic Exchange Service, reports a steady increase in the number of Americans and Germans seeking support to study in each other’s homelands. About 8 million Americans travel to Europe each year, despite the dollar’s weakness in most European countries, but that statistic represents less than 3% of the U.S. population and includes numerous “double entries” for business travelers and wellheeled repeat visitors. Art exchanges and transatlantic tours by orchestras and other performance groups are commonplace today, involving and reaching a growing but still small number of Americans. If the U.S. population as a whole is considered, a different picture emerges. A majority of Americans still claim European ancestry, but those ties are receding into an evermore distant past. Asian and Latin American influences, on the other hand, are fresh and growing dramatically. New immigration to the United States from Asia and Latin America is now greater than European immigration to the United States by a factor often or more.15 The young ancestors of America’s European founding fathers are twice as likely to study Spanish in secondary schools than French, German, and Italian combined. 16 A similar situation prevails in higher education. While still small, enrollments in Japanese language courses at U.S. universities have more than tripled since 1983. The study of Spanish increased by 40% during the same period, while the study of French and German has barely remained constant.17 At the same time, the three U.S. government “programs” that sent millions of Americans and their families to live in Europe over the course of four decades—the U.S. armed services—have cut their total deployments in Europe to about 100,000 from well over 300,000 at the height of the Cold War, reducing or eliminating the only opportunity that Americans of modest means had to experience Europe for extended periods. Trends in secondary and (particularly) higher education in the United States have substantially diluted the dose of European history, literature, and philosophy once given to most college and college-bound students as a matter of course.

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American architecture, music, painting, and writing—not to mention business and political practices—owe a great deal to European influences, but fewer Americans will become aware of that legacy so long as a powerful segment of the academy equates favorable studies of Europe with the perpetuation of “cultural dominance” or even racism. And while American popular culture penetrates almost every border on the planet, contemporary European art, film, music, and television have not captured an American audience of any appreciable size. As one essayist put it recently, “When you live in Europe, America is always with you, in the form of popular culture, political controversies, global might, and the outrageous scandals and personalities that titillate the planet…. But when you leave Europe,…you leave it utterly.”18 Some critics argue that America’s heavily marketed, lowest-commondenominator entertainment products have an unfair advantage in cultural exchange, drowning out more sophisticated offerings. However, Europe also fares poorly in the higher-level exchange of ideas. The academic trends, technological innovations, new management practices, and political initiatives that sweep the globe today are rarely European. Europe’s striving for economic and political union is the exception that proves the rule. The seemingly marvelous and hopeful process of nations surrendering their individual sovereignty for mutual benefit somehow comes off in the hands of Western European leaders as a plodding and rather distasteful bureaucratic exercise. Some observers suggest that the growth of the Internet and other sophisticated telecommunications tools will help to replace and perhaps even to expand the opportunities that Middle Americans have for contact with Europeans. Contact does not necessarily produce affinity or understanding, however. The Internet will do little to promote cultural affinity or the creation of a transatlantic Schicksalsgemeinschaft if the communication that flows over it is almost exclusively in English; if the ideas, products, and trends promoted and discussed in its electronic fora originate overwhelmingly in the United States; and if the Americans who “dial up” have little understanding of their nation’s traditional associations with European ideas and problems.

A Higher Moral Purpose The justification of U.S. foreign policy has almost always included a strong moral imperative, due to the dispersion of power in American

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democracy and the sense of exceptionalism upon which the country was founded. It has rarely been enough for American presidents to base foreign-policy choices on national interests or on the power calculations of Realpolitik. Bringing along the U.S. Congress, the states, and the American people has led presidents to stress the rightness and moral necessity of America’s stance. This was just as true when George Washington advised his young nation to stay out of European conflicts as when Woodrow Wilson sent American troops to Europe in World War I.19 The moral justification of U.S. foreign policy was never more evident than in the pursuit of Atlanticism during the Cold War. Soviet communism provided a contrast to America’s defense of freedom that was stark and quite formidable. So long as the Berlin Wall stood as a perverse monument to the illegitimacy of communism and so long as hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops were massed just a few kilometers east of the Wall and remained capable of overrunning Western European forces, the moral arguments for U.S. engagement in Europe almost made themselves. A second moral justification for American Atlanticism extended well beyond the deterrence of communism. The experience of fighting two hot wars in Europe and uncovering the Holocaust during this century taught Americans that Europe’s demons depended upon no particular ideology or individual to reassert themselves. Americans who paid even passing attention to foreign policy understood this and were willing to support their country’s broader roles as Europe’s honest broker and ultimate guarantor of security, particularly since they could trace their own origins to Europe in most cases. The U.S. military presence allowed the Western European nations to bracket the security problems that had bedeviled their relationships for centuries and to focus instead on common economic and political interests. America was doing the right thing by playing roles that no other nation could play in Europe. Europe has not changed fundamentally, as the EU demonstrated by its failure to bring peace to the Balkans. The breakup of Yugoslavia was the first European crisis of the post–Cold War era, but it will not be the last. For the foreseeable future, Western Europe’s responses to such crises will have more to do with the history and geography of individual EU nations than with common edicts from Brussels. America as the honest broker is still needed, or Europe’s grand plans for union could founder on disagreements over how to handle security challenges on the European periphery.

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It is not yet certain that this remaining moral imperative, which requires a kind of benevolent hegemony, can carry American Atlanticism into the twenty-first century. It is markedly more subtle than the deterrence of communism, and it is likely to erode along with America’s collective memories of early twentieth-century history. Arguments about the moral necessity of American leadership formed a major part of the Clinton administration’s justification of U.S. deployments to enforce the Bosnian peace agreement in 1995, but they coexisted with easier, more straightforward appeals to the protection of human rights. “[W]e will have the chance to help stop the killing of innocent civilians, especially children, and, at the same time, to bring stability to central Europe, a region of the world that is vital to our national interests. It is the right thing to do,” said President Bill Clinton in an address to the nation before he dispatched U.S. troops to the Balkans.20 Ethnic cleansing and other horrifying abuses in the former Yugoslavia were widely known in the United States and met a high level of outrage, particularly since news coverage of the Bosnian conflict was graphic and widely available. In future challenges to Europe’s security, the moral outrage provoked by genocide will not always be present. Americans may not feel a sense of mission and moral purpose in Europe if the primary function of their costly military deployments and diplomatic engagement is to referee European squabbles. It is not far-fetched to argue that the absence of U.S. leadership in security affairs might contribute to a breakdown of the EU’s plans for economic and political union as well as to sever intra-European tensions over the handling of crises in Eastern Europe and around the Mediterranean. It is almost impossible, however, to construct a scenario for a return to military conflict among the nation-states of Western Europe. Their territorial appetites are satiated. Their economies are mutually dependent to a degree unprecedented in international relations. Their youth and their political elites display a keen sense of history and, in many cases, an almost pathological discomfort with military power. They are wealthy. All of this could change in a generation or two. Within the time horizon of U.S. policymakers and taxpayers, however, Western Europe appears not as a volatile region that morally compels American charity and protection but as a global economic force that could be doing much more to ensure its own protection. This is the paradox of contemporary transatlantic relations. U.S. leadership is not needed at the present time to prevent an utter calamity in Western Europe. The moral imperative of Atlanticism no longer hits

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Americans over the head. If U.S. leadership is not sustained, however, European integration and long-term stability will suffer. Absent a coherent diplomacy and military deterrent in Europe, which the United States provides, small wars could arise on the Continent’s periphery and threaten to become large wars by drawing in other nations. The challenge for U.S. leaders will be to translate the more subtle moral imperative of twentyfirst-century Atlanticism into a mission that will enjoy the support of the American people.

Political Will: The Many, the Few, and the One Are America’s top leaders inclined to the task of advocating Atlanticism for a new century? How much persuasion do Americans require? What role do American elites, such as academic experts and congressional representatives, play in shaping America’s transatlantic agenda? Those questions all address the final and perhaps most vital component of American Atlanticism: political will. There is a tendency in some studies of international politics to assume that individuals (even national leaders) are little more than bystanders to the power of economic forces, geography, social trends, or major interest groups in shaping relations between states. In the grand sweep of history, this assumption may be justified. No empire has lasted forever, and no empire’s fall can be attributed to the action or inaction of a single individual. However, in setting a nation’s foreign-policy priorities at a given point in time, individual leaders and groups of influential elites—shaping as well as reflecting the preferences of public opinion as a whole—are decisive.

The Many Americans at the dawn of the twenty-first century are more internationalist than at almost any time in their nation’s history. They are for the most part high-minded and willing to sustain a leading U.S. diplomatic and military role in the world. They are not inclined to take risks with the lives of American soldiers, however, and they are convinced that the financial costs and other burdens of sustaining democracy and an open economic order must be shared by other leading nations and by global organizations such as NATO and the United Nations. All of these assertions are supported by a broad range of

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polling data that will not be explored here in great depth, since others have undertaken that important work. 21 Nevertheless, three sets of findings deserve closer attention, because they challenge widely held myths about U.S. public opinion. The myth of looming isolationism. The prospect of neo-isolationism in America has a power to set off the drum beats of hysterical commentary that is matched only by the prospect of neo-Nazism in Germany. Perhaps neither phenomenon can be warned of too much or seen lurking under too many peripheral rocks. It is the experience of this mid-westerner, however, that a commentator’s level of hysteria about American isolationism tends to be inversely proportional to his actual exposure to Main Street America. The most recent warning bells went off in early 1996, when the Republican primary campaign produced a few victories or near-victories in small states for the isolationist candidate Pat Buchanan. Their headline value notwithstanding, Buchanan’s successes in a crowded Republican field are almost meaningless as an indicator of broader U.S. sentiment on foreign policy. Using the very generous assumptions that half of all Americans actually vote in primary elections, that half of those primary voters are Republicans, and that Buchanan’s best primary showings of around 20% reflect his true support among Republican voters, then the high-water mark of Buchanan’s support is about 5% of the voting-age population in a small group of states. If the same primary-vote calculations are done in America’s midwestern farm-belt states, where the positive impact of free trade on agriculture and other exports has been enormous, then support for the Buchananesque agenda of isolationism and protectionism barely climbs into single digits.22 The most striking feature of U.S. internationalism is its consistency in recent decades, as demonstrated in recurring surveys of American opinion. In 1994, 65% of respondents to the quadrennial poll of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations favored an “active role for the United States in world affairs.” Sixty-six percent held the same view in 1974, when the global scene facing the United States bore little resemblance to today’s conditions.23 Looking ahead, 73% of Americans fully expect the United States to play a greater international role in the next ten years than it does today. 24 This suggests a high level of confidence in the ability of the United States to master the demands of global leadership. America’s exposure to the world and its dependence on the world have increased dramatically since the 1930s, and it is very difficult to imagine a sudden, grass-roots upsurge of isolationism in the foreseeable future.

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The myth of American miserliness. Contrary once again to widespread impressions, most Americans desire no additional cuts in U.S. defense spending and are quite willing to sustain current levels of foreign assistance. The Chicago Council found that “those who expected that the end of the Cold War would bring about a fundamental change regarding defense—to a situation where there was virtually no public support for substantial spending—have clearly been mistaken.” In 1994, 72% of Americans believed that defense spending should be kept the same or, in some cases, expanded. This was up from 65% in 1990. 25 Other polls show that 55% of Americans believe that the current U.S. deployment of 100,000 troops in Europe is “about right” or “too few.”26 Arguing against the feasibility of NATO expansion and other initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe, some commentators and politicians point to the unwillingness of Americans to devote public funds to foreign assistance. To the extent that this unwillingness exists, however, it is based on wild overestimates of what the United States actually spends on foreign assistance. A 1995 study asked a sample of Americans how large a share of federal spending they believe is devoted to foreign aid and how large a share they believe should be devoted to foreign aid. The median respondent believed the United States spent 15% of its budget on foreign aid and that the United States should spend only 5%.27 Actual spending on foreign aid amounts to less than 1% of the federal budget. A University of Maryland survey also taken in 1995 found 80% of Americans agreeing with the proposition that “the United States should be willing to share at least a small portion of its wealth with those in the world who are in great need.”28 The myth of the Lone Ranger mentality. Finally, it has become conventional wisdom to assume that Americans disdain international organizations and the United Nations in particular as being utterly ineffective or as constituting threats to U.S. sovereignty. “Out on Main Street,” one prominent intellectual writing from east of the Hudson River would have us believe, “there are many citizens who…worry aloud about an invasion of government agents coming in black helicopters in the night to confiscate their guns and impose a New World Order in which the United States will be subject to UN command.” 29 In contrast to this insulting, cartoonish image, the vast majority of Americans believe that the United States must resort more than ever before to multilateral mechanisms in international affairs. A 1995 University of Maryland survey found 89% of Americans agreeing that “when there is a problem in the world that requires the use

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of military force, it is generally best for the U.S. to address the problem together with other nations working through the UN rather than going it alone.” Sixty-seven percent of Americans said they favored UN peacekeeping, and a similar number favored contributing U.S. troops to UN operations and paying UN peacekeeping dues.30 NATO enjoys even stronger support among the American people. Over 60% of respondents in separate 1995 surveys held a favorable view of the alliance and believed that it should be maintained.31 To counter the widespread mythology about American isolationism, miserliness, and paranoia is to find at least three strong reasons for optimism about the future of American Atlanticism.

The Few The American elite, if not an oxymoron, certainly is a multifaceted group of people with a broad range of worldviews. With regard to the future of American Atlanticism, the elite deserves attention for its ability to influence, on the one hand, the general public and, on the other hand, the president of the United States and other top leaders. It gives comfort to some observers that U.S. foreign policy still appears to be in the hands of an “East Coast establishment” committed to the Atlantic alliance. 32 Be that as it may, there is reason to believe that the role played by elite academics, commentators, foreign service officers, and other government cadres in shaping America’s role in the world is diminishing. The most rigorous examination of elite attitudes on foreign policy, all the more useful for its comparisons to general public attitudes, is the quadrennial Chicago Council on Foreign Relations survey, which includes congressional and administration representatives in its “leadership” sample, along with academic, business, church, media, and labor union figures. Among the most striking of the Chicago Council’s most recent findings is that America’s elite is significantly more volatile than the public in its attitudes on foreign engagement. Elite-level support for U.S. defense spending plummeted in the wake of the Cold War’s end, as did its commitment to NATO—only to rebound by the mid-1990s—while public support stayed relatively constant. Contrary to conventional wisdom, elites are significantly less likely than the public at large to support strengthening the United Nations and significantly more likely than the public to support the use of American troops in a

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variety of overseas contingencies.33 Whereas the public is more cautious, as a rule, and willing to defer greater responsibility for global stability to a collective body, America’s elite is more activist and bullish on U.S. leadership. The U.S. Congress as a segment of the American elite has been the subject of particular concern in recent years, with regard to the future of Atlanticism. More than half of the current Members of Congress were elected after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The number of Members who have served in the U.S. armed forces at all—let alone fought in Europe— is at a post–World War II low that will not (cannot, due to the end of the draft and simple demographics) be reversed. Foreign policy and national security receive scant attention from most federal legislators in the absence of a crisis or, in some cases, an opportunity to raid the budgets of the Pentagon or the U.S. Department of State. Visiting European leaders and Washington diplomats complain of consistently poor access on Capitol Hill, where even a foreign minister can no longer draw a speech crowd or fill an appointment book. Such trends in the U.S. Congress may annoy those of us who believe that foreign policy and the Atlantic relationship should enjoy pride of place, but the trends should not surprise us or worry us excessively. Though there is little hard data to support this view—as much as they watch public-opinion polls, America’s legislators don’t subject themselves gladly to surveys—former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger probably is correct in asserting that today’s federal legislators are not isolationists so much as they “have no real knowledge” of foreign affairs and therefore remain uninterested in shaping U.S. foreign and security policy. 34 They are, in that respect, quite similar to the people they represent, favoring caution and constancy in U.S. foreign policy without devoting much attention to the mechanics of U.S. power or the crises of the day. The courage and insight of today’s Members of Congress is much more likely to have developed in battles with a school board or a public-service union than in battles with a foreign enemy. Considering the state of America’s schools, its urban crises, and its unsustainable levels of entitlements spending, Congress’s recent obsession with domestic affairs is not altogether inappropriate or altogether irrelevant to America’s future strength in the world. Nor is it inappropriate for Congress to assume a largely critical and reactive posture with regard to U.S. foreign and security policy. The levers of power, after all, heavily favor the president in shaping and exercising America’s role abroad. The U.S. Congress,

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despite its demographic transformation, is not devoid of articulate Atlanticists. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich positively gushes in supporting his view that “[o]nly America can lead the world. America remains the only global, universal civilization in the history of mankind.” 35 But as another congressional Atlanticist, Senator Richard Lugar, argued in a 1996 press conference, there is no better subject for presidential leadership of U.S. foreign policy, coupled with a broad mandate for a secretary of state, than “to pursue innovative, ambitious, and even controversial solutions.”36 In an age of relative global calm and unprecedented access to information, the role of a mediating elite in shaping foreign and security policy may be reaching a low point. More than ever, the vital connection is between the American public and the president of the United States himself.

The One In determining the foreign policy of the United States, the powers wielded by the president are formidable indeed. Despite congressional limitations on the ability of U.S. presidents to sustain wars, to conclude treaties with other nations, and to fund all manner of foreign-policy and defense goals, the president retains the crucial powers of definition, initiative, and direct communication with the American people. The president can define the goals, range, and priorities of U.S. foreign policy; he can initiate major diplomatic and military actions; and he can communicate his intentions and reasoning to the entire nation, in some instances (in an Address to the Nation, for example) without a media filter. All of those powers together could not take the United States down a foreign-policy course that a large majority of Americans were utterly opposed to taking. Nor could the president’s foreign-policy powers ultimately overcome the resistance of a Congress that was utterly hostile to a particular decision. However, within the range of judgment calls into which the Atlanticist agenda still falls, the importance of the president’s political will is large. The power of the presidency in shaping America’s transatlantic engagement has been demonstrated clearly in the case of the U.S. military deployment to Bosnia. In October 1995, 55% of Americans opposed the assignment of U.S. troops to a NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia.37 Less than one year later, contrary to predictions that even a short-term U.S. deployment would meet massive grass-roots resistance in the United States and a backlash at the polls, support for an ongoing commitment of

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U.S. troops in Bosnia—beyond the original December 1996 withdrawal deadline—stood at 59%.38 The fact that the Bosnia deployment has cost almost no American lives thus far almost certainly is a major factor in explaining why support has not eroded. However, the marked increase in support for a U.S. military presence in Bosnia demands another explanation, one that is probably quite simple: Presidents get the benefit of the doubt in matters of national security. President Clinton explained his troop-deployment decision to the American people in a persuasive manner, and the U.S. presence has correlated with a cessation of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia (read: the U.S. is doing some good). Therefore, President Clinton’s cynical gambit of waiting until after his own reelection in 1996 to announce the obvious—the importance of a continuing deployment of U.S. troops in the Balkans—would not have been necessary. He had the public’s support. What he lacked, unfortunately, was confidence in his own authority and the political will to sustain a course in Europe without reference to the worst-case scenarios of his campaign advisers.

A Final Assessment: The Risks and the Rewards Reviewing the ingredients of American Atlanticism in the mid-1990s offers much reassurance. America’s economic engagement with Europe is diverse and immense; it will continue for many years to stand up favorably in comparisons with transpacific or inter-American trade and investment. Many Americans still steer to Europe’s cultural beacon. At least one moral dimension of American Atlanticism—the honest-broker role—remains intact. And the American people demonstrate an amazing constancy in their will, or, rather, willingness, to sustain the transatlantic security connection and a U.S. military presence in Europe. The equilibrium of American Atlanticism is in no imminent danger of collapse. At least three serious concerns cloud the longer-term horizon, however. The first has to do with how Americans and Europeans give meaning to Atlanticism and measure its health and success. The fairly extensive review of official statements, intellectual commentary, and punditry that supports this chapter uncovered a distinct tendency in recent years to focus on symbolic manifestations of Atlanticism rather than on coherent strategies, weighty commitments, and their credibility. This is worrisome, since all the rhetorical commitment that America can muster will not

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preserve its status as a European power if the cultural, the diplomatic, and particularly the military mechanisms for U.S. engagement have been dismantled. For example, Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s Madrid speech of June 1995 on the transatlantic relationship—intended to be a seminal address—reviews the lexicon of connections from the Partnership for Peace to “parliamentary exchanges” and “sister cities” and is sprinkled with calls for new “agendas,” “task forces,” and “mechanisms.” 39 The speech makes no effort, however, to link security goals with steps to attain them. It does not delineate threats (other than those of the amorphous “global” variety) or opportunities. It does not, moreover, explain how the United States will sustain a meaningful security role in Europe—let alone expand NATO and end the Balkan conflicts—with a dwindling troop presence and ongoing defense cuts. Nor does it explain how the various agendas, task forces, and mechanisms might be implemented in a meaningful way while the U.S. Department of State is closing consulates and retiring local janitorial personnel for lack of funds. This may be unfair to the former secretary of state, who is simply a prominent representative of a much larger trend. It is the trend that should give us pause. American Atlanticism was and must remain a grand strategic bargain backed by credible commitments of resources—human and material. We cannot replace the articulation of a grand strategic bargain with the formation of task forces. And we cannot replace the credible commitment of resources with ad-hoc appropriations and hope. A second concern is that America in the early twenty-first century may only give as good as it gets in the transatlantic relationship. We have become a less altruistic nation, in moral and material terms, and we look for an equalization of burdens between ourselves and our key allies. What we see in Europe is not always assuring. As suggested earlier, the risk of economic insularity in Europe is great, as the project of monetary union proceeds and as individual countries grapple with massive structural problems. The eyes of some American businesses may wander during this period. And the Eastern European nonmembers of the EU may be marginalized both economically and politically. Europe’s image in the United States will suffer as a result, even among die-hard Atlanticists who want to believe that the peaceful and prosperous Europe they helped to create is capable of extending and replicating itself eastward. Cultural and intellectual exchange between the United States and Europe, as already argued, is becoming more and more one-sided. Most seriously of all,

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however, at the very moment when the transatlantic premium on European military strength and self-sufficiency is at a high point, Europe’s actual capabilities are being eroded to a stunning degree. American leaders still speak bravely of working with Europe to address security challenges on a global scale, but the ability of our traditional allies to lend a hand militarily, say, in a future Persian Gulf conflict, or in a Northeast Asian crisis, is becoming almost nonexistent. European military budgets have become little more than reserve tanks, periodically drained to cover the politically untouchable demands of the welfare state. As a result, programs to develop credible power-projection or hightech reconnaissance capabilities in Europe teeter on the brink of extinction. Even more ominously, efforts to pool European resources to develop joint capabilities have foundered or have been scaled back dramatically in almost every case. European diplomats need not be entirely mystified about their declining access on Capitol Hill so long as the ability of their countries to lend the United States a helping hand on the world stage remains in decline. Finally, the long-term future of American Atlanticism will remain in jeopardy so long as the most important ingredient in the complex equilibrium—American political will—is not reinforced at the highest levels. It is not the many who will safeguard America’s commitment to Europe. The American public will not demand an activist Atlanticism, a U.S. troop presence in Europe, or an enlarged NATO, but the American public will support those components of a U.S. foreign and security policy if a forceful case for them is made by a president who seems otherwise capable of shaping and carrying out a coherent U.S. strategy. It also is not the few who will safeguard America’s commitment to Europe. Academics or policy intellectuals rarely stray outside the realms of preaching to the converted or debating the powerless. For a U.S. congressperson or senator, meanwhile, the decision to vote for a budget that contains cuts in military or diplomatic spending or forces a further pullback of U.S. troops from Europe is rarely an isolationist vote or even a vote against Atlanticism. Usually, it is a pragmatic vote for a budget that maximizes the legislator’s own agenda without utterly compromising his principles on the secondary matters into which foreign policy and national security have been relegated of late. Therefore, only the president—the One, the Commander in Chief—can safeguard America’s commitment to Europe. Only the president can argue for and win the resources and commitments necessary to protect American interests. The history of American Atlanticism offers a very simple

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lesson for the future: Public opinion can be shaped as much as followed. Indeed it must.

Notes 1. American Public Opinion, op. cit., p. 35; the Chicago Council’s “leaders” sample included “Americans in senior positions with knowledge of international affairs.” 2. Based on survey data compiled by Frederick Schneider’s Research for the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1996) and by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in its American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1995. 3. American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1995, op. cit., p. 25. 4. World Trade Organization, International Trade: Trends and Statistics (Geneva: WTO, 1995), p. 13. 5. OECD, Main Economic Indicators, August 1996, p. 66. 6. WTO statistics present North America’s ratio of trade in goods and services to GDP, which includes both Canada and the United States. 7. Wall Street Journal, January 5, 1996, annual survey of mutual funds. 8. International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook (Washington: IMF, 1996), pp. 445, 446. 9. Financial Market Trends, No. 61, June 1995, pp. 24, 26. 10. Chamber Way Germany Midwest, August 1996, p. 7. 11. Lawrence S.Davidson and Heejong Kang, Export-Related Employment and Wages for Indiana (Indiana Department of Commerce, June 1996), pp. 9–12. 12. Indianapolis Business Journal Book of Lists, December 4, 1995, p. 76. 13. See, for example, Thomas J.Duesterberg, “The Case for Transatlantic Free Trade,” in Gary L.Geipel and Robert A.Manning (eds.), Rethinking the Transatlantic Partnership (Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1996), pp. 47–54. 14. Fulbright Scholar Program 1994 Annual Report (Washington: Council for International Exchange of Scholars, 1995), p. 15. 15. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Yearbook, 1996. 16. This assuredly has little to do with the influences of Spain and much to do with the proximity and demographic impact of Latin America. (Statistics provided by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Yonkers, New York.) 17. Richard Brod, “Foreign Language Enrollments in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education—Fall 1986,” ADFL Bulletin, Vol. 19, No. 2, January 1988; Richard Brod and Bettina J.Huber, “Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 1990,” ADFL Bulletin, Vol. 23, No. 3, Spring 1992, and more recent numbers provided by the Modern Language Association. 18. David Brooks, “Why Europe Is Boring America to Death,” The Weekly Standard, June 24, 1996, p. 26. 19. In his most recent book, Henry Kissinger provides an eloquent discussion of

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21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

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how American exceptionalism is reflected in both its isolationist and interventionist impulses; see Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), Chapter One. President Clinton, “U.S. Support for Implementing the Bosnian Peace Agreement,” Address to the Nation (November 27, 1995), in U.S. Department of State Dispatch Supplement, Vol. 6, December 1995, No. 5, p. 19. See, in particular, American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1995, op. cit.; Steven Kull, “What the Public Knows That Washington Doesn’t,” Foreign Policy, Winter 1995–1996, pp. 102–115, Jeremy D.Rosner, “The KnowNothings Know Something,” Foreign Policy, Winter 1995–1996, pp. 116–129, and Frederick Schneider’s Research, “Survey of American Attitudes Toward NATO and U.S. Involvement in Bosnia,” The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, reprinted in American Council on Germany Occasional Paper No. 4, 1996. See Thomas L.Friedman, “Heartland Geopolitics,” New York Times, May 1, 1996, p. A13. Somewhat lower levels of support for internationalism in the council’s 1978 and 1982 polls, taken during periods of recession, suggest that the perceived condition of the U.S. economy may be among the most powerful factors affecting U.S. attitudes on global activism. See American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1995, op. cit., p. 13. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 34. The Gallup Organization (April 1995), telephone poll of 1,008 U.S. adults. Program on International Policy Attitudes, Americans and Foreign Aid: A Study of American Public Attitudes (March 1, 1995), as reported in Joshua Muravchik, The Imperative of American Leadership (Washington: AEI Press, 1996), p. 39. Kull, “What the Public Knows,” p. 106, citing the results of a survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. Sidney Blumenthal, “The Return of the Repressed: Anti-Internationalism and the American Right,” World Policy Journal, Fall 1995, p. 3. Kull, “What the Public Knows “pp. 104, 105. The Gallup Organization (April 1995) and Princeton Survey Research Associates (June 1995). Although Eric Nordlinger notes for example that East Coast publications with a strong history of support for Atlanticism, such as Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic have endorsed a reduction of the American burden in Europe and a more narrowly-focussed, “interest-based” foreign policy. See Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 19. American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1995, op. cit., pp. 33–39. As quoted in Robert S.Greenberger, “Dateline Capitol Hill: The New Majority’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy, Winter 1995–1996, p. 162. Newt Gingrich, “Only America Can Lead,” New Perspectives Quarterly, Spring 1995, p. 4.

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36. Federal News Service, transcript of press conference of Senator Richard G. Lugar (November 8, 1996), Washington, DC. 37. CBS News/New York Times (October 1995), telephone poll of 1,269 U.S. adults. 38. Program on International Policy Attitudes (June 1996), telephone poll of 1,227 U.S. adults. 39. Warren Christopher, “Charting a Transatlantic Agenda for the 21st Century,” Address at Casa de America, Madrid (June 2, 1995), U.S. Department of State Dispatch, June 5, 1995, pp. 467–470.

PART 3

The Multilateral Dimension, Hard and Soft

CHAPTER 12

The Military Aspects of European Security Edward M.Whalené

The end of the Cold War had a dramatic impact on the military aspects of European security. The calculus that defined European security since the end of World War II suddenly was no longer applicable. Nuclear weapons were devalued, and the conceptual basis of multilateral security institutions designed to counter the Soviet threat disappeared. A “peace dividend” euphoria swept publics on both sides of the Atlantic. As domestic support for huge military establishments vanished, governments drastically reduced defense budgets, armaments, and military personnel. At the operational military level, generals and admirals found themselves in possession of concepts and weapons that were no longer applicable to the diffuse threats of the new age. As the nations, institutions, and armies struggled to adjust to new realities, both threats and technologies continued their dynamic evolution. It has been almost ten years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but conceptual, institutional, and military solutions to the new realities are only now beginning to emerge. The organizations responsible for European security are today still struggling to adjust to this combination of simultaneous political, military, and technological change. In this chapter I will begin my discussion of the redefined military dimension of security by looking first at the changed nature of the threats to Europe. Second, I will examine the major institutions responsible for 255

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European security and the ways they are being renewed and restructured. Finally, I will look at the militaries themselves and discuss the impact of the changes wrought by both the disappearance of the Soviet threat in Europe and a more general revolution in military affairs that is altering fundamentally the way armies, air forces, and navies fight. My conclusion is that Europe today is faced with stark choices. It can either develop security institutions and military capabilities to deal effectively with current threats, or, if it fails to do so, become even more dependent on the United States than it was during the height of the Cold War. The United States, having learned the lesson twice in this century that European stability is vital to its own security,1 is faced with the task of assisting its European partners in finding the right balance between outright autonomy and utter dependence. The era that replaces the Cold War will be shaped fundamentally by the nature of European and American choices in military security.

New and Diffuse Threats During the Cold War the threat to the West was crystal clear, despite problems in measuring precisely Soviet nuclear throw-weights or armored divisions. The clarity and immediacy of that threat contributed to the unity of resolve exhibited by the United States and its European partners. Notwithstanding frequent international and domestic debates about the appropriate size of the military force necessary to counter the Warsaw Pact, an estimate of adequate allied armed force was undertaken and units were assembled and deployed. The West had divisions of tanks, squadrons of aircraft, and fleets of warships primed and ready to go to war within several hours’ notice of an impending attack by the Soviets and their minions. Later, as the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself unraveled, it was hard for American and European publics, conditioned by the combatant attitudes of the Cold War, not to expect both the “end of history” victory of liberal market democracy and the unconditional end to armed confrontation. Security institutions and military establishments, built up at great cost during the Cold War, could be retired and money freed up for long-suffering social programs. Unfortunately, however, the destructive forces repressed by Soviet totalitarian power were now also freed to wreak havoc in and around Europe. The brutal war in former Yugoslavia in particular snapped Western leaders and publics back to reality.

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While Europe today faces less of a direct threat to its military security than at any time in its history, a diffuse multitude of risks has taken its place. The list includes regional instability and ethnic tensions; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, chemical weapons, and their ballistic means of delivery); transnational dangers such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and ecological catastrophes; and threats to democracy and reform in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. While only a few of these threats are genuinely “new,” our perception of them as security dangers has heightened. Also, with the passing of the life-and-death Cold War struggle, we have raised our standard of what constitutes adequate security for our national and international communities. But what about old threats? What about Russia? Does the principal successor state to the Soviet Union realistically pose a military threat to European security? No, certainly not at any time in the next decade, and most likely not at any time in the foreseeable future. Although it is difficult to shake the ingrained image of the Soviet/Russian menace from the American and European consciousness, Russia does not currently pose a threat to Europe. Yes, Russia still possesses a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons. The West’s real fears, however, are that the Russian nuclear arsenal is deteriorating, or that nuclear weapons or materials may be smuggled to revisionist states or terrorist organizations. On the conventional side of the military equation, of course, Russia still possesses a vast array of tanks, planes, and warships. But the condition of this war material is decrepit. Equipment is not being properly maintained; replacement parts and upgrades are not being funded. The state of Russian military manpower is not much better. Readiness and training have severely suffered due to a lack of money, while available funds are frequently diverted simply to pay and feed the troops. Even despite these desperate measures, many Russian soldiers and sailors of all ranks are living in poverty. Corruption and resignation are widespread among Russia’s military leadership. The reverberations from an implosion of Russia’s military are more of a security threat to Europe than the comparatively remote possibility of direct Russian military aggression. The fact that Russia is currently not a direct treat does not obviate the necessity to include it in European security institutions. Ad-hoc arrangements such as Russian military participation in Bosnia and Russian involvement in the old-fashioned “great power” Contact Group that paved the way for the Dayton Peace Accord for Bosnia are good

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starts, but they should be institutionalized. At the U.S.-Russian Helsinki Summit in 1997, Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin agreed on the development of a NATO-Russia charter. Russia, without acquiring a veto on NATO affairs, is to be consulted in matters where its interests are involved. European security institutions will not be otherwise unemployed in the coming years. Regional conflicts continue to smolder, especially in the East and Southeast of the Continent. Instabilities will continue to challenge European crisis-management innovations and institutions. Though the Bosnian conflict appears to have stabilized, only time will tell if the fighting there can be brought to a definitive end. Other ethnic disputes and possible civil wars boil just below the threshold of open conflict in the Baltic, Ukraine, and the Caucasus. Only tenuous ceasefires dampen further interstate conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagarno-Karabakh, and Greece and Turkey over their Aegean islets and sovereign prerogatives. Europe’s entire southern neighborhood has its share of ethnic and ideological instabilities. Whereas Germany may fret about problems to its east, France, Italy, and Spain all regard North Africa as a potential source of trouble. The Southern Europeans are worried that radical Islamic fundamentalism and ethnic conflict could cause unstable states such as Algeria to break down and flood European shores with refugees. Such a crisis could have enormous implications, given the popularity of such political formations as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s xenophobic Front Populair in France. Europe would then be faced not only with humanitarian disasters and potentially millions of refugees; it might also find itself having to defend the fundamental standards of its own democracy. Rogue states along the North African and Middle Eastern rims pose another challenge. Libya, Syria, Iran, and Iraq are working constantly to improve their capabilities in nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction. These revisionist states are additionally aided by China and North Korea in qualitatively improving their ballistic missiles. Currently, such missiles as the Scud threaten only the extremities of southern Europe, but if North Korea exports either the latest missile (Taepo-Dong 2) or technology that it has in development to any other rogue state in the region, the threat will increase dramatically. The TaepoDong 2 is assessed to have a 4,000-kilometer radius range, which would put the majority of Europe, including the United Kingdom and southern Norway and Sweden, within the missile’s striking range from launch sites in North Africa or the Middle East.2

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Institutional Responses to the Current Situation There are many institutions that claim responsibilities for European security. They include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Western European Union (WEU), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the European Union (EU). The EU attends to important nonmilitary security factors such as economic and social programs. The OSCE has some crisis-management potential, but is most effective in the “soft power” areas of diplomacy, election monitoring, and human rights. The WEU, nominally a security alliance with defense guarantees stronger than NATO’s, has played second fiddle to NATO, and only recently experienced a rebirth. In sum, the bedrock of Europe’s military security is and remains NATO. Before I am branded an unreconstructed Cold War warrior, let me acknowledge that I agree with Carl Hodge’s characterization of the current security situation, which he accurately outlines in the introduction to this book. As he points out, military concerns no longer dominate national and regional security considerations quite so much as they did during the Cold War. Overall security has always been made up of political, economic, military, and social components. Just as the importance of the military component has receded since the end of the Cold War, other factors have assumed renewed significance. This does not mean, however, that the military component is inconsequential. Though economic and social aspects of security are unquestionably applicable in more situations than they were in the past, there are certain situations, Bosnia being a recent example, where economic and social measures are simply unequal to the size of the security dilemma. No amount of economic incentives could have separated the warring factions in Bosnia; NATO aircraft and artillery had to bomb the recalcitrant Serbs to the bargaining table. Military power is no longer the most important tool in a decision maker’s kit, but it remains a vital instrument of modern-day statecraft. As the West’s premier security organization, NATO has been struggling to adapt to the changed situation. Even before the USSR disintegrated, the alliance had promulgated a new strategy that concentrated more on the overall stability of Europe and less on a direct threat from the Soviet Union. The NATO member states recognized the essentially diffuse nature of the European security problem. To meet the new security challenges, NATO restructured itself from an institution concerned solely with defense into one that is today responsible for European crisis management. This

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was not a painless process, because important European nations such as France originally did not want the alliance to expand its competencies. In addition to internal adaptation, NATO members sought a more inclusive concept of European military security. NATO’s former adversaries and neutral observers were invited to join consultative bodies such as the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and the Partnership for Peace (PfP). The alliance wanted pan-European participation in the missions it expected would define security in the new era: humanitarian operations, peacekeeping, and peace enforcement. Even Russia joined the NACC and PfP, and participated in NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR) and Stabilization Force (SFOR) missions in the former Yugoslavia under an American general’s operational direction. Multilateral involvement was rapidly becoming a hallmark of the redefinition of European security.

The United States and Its European Security Relationships Where does NATO’s leading state stand in regard to this redefinition of security? As in the past, the United States continues as uncontested leader of the alliance. During the Cold War, it was above all determined American leadership that pushed the West to victory in the face of Soviet military competition. Recently, American officials have played key roles both in Grafting NATO’s new strategy in the early 1990s, and in creating the new organizations (NACC, PfP) that implemented the strategic concept. Washington has also been steadfast in its support of an enhanced European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) within the alliance, a topic I will cover later in the chapter. Finally, the United States is leading the current effort to expand NATO to include the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Most European NATO members are understandably more reluctant to tinker with the alliance, because it represents their ultimate insurance policy. American objectives in NATO are in line with Washington’s national security strategy, which articulates America’s ultimate goal as “enlarging the community of market democracies while deterring and containing a range of threats to our nation, our allies and interests.” 3 Active engagement and enlargement have replaced reactive bipolar containment and confrontation. In American military strategy, success at warfighting is still the core military goal, but a broader version of

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military security also incorporates ways to promote stability and thwart aggression in nontraditional ways such as peacekeeping and peace enforcement.4 The forward presence of American troops on foreign soil is another key component of national military strategy. Because the U.S. military has been reduced almost by half since the end of the Cold War, it is selfevident that there are now fewer combatants available to station overseas. The American military presence in Europe specifically has been reduced by over 200,000 troops since 1989, and although many think that the current number of 100,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen in Europe is the right amount, even this psychological threshold may be lowered due to budgetary and restructuring pressures. Despite the reduction in the strength of American military forces in Europe, the United States still provides the overwhelming majority of combat power at NATO’s disposal. And in many ways, the United States’ position as a superpower has put it in a better position to anticipate the military redefinition of security necessitated by the end of the Cold War. As a military superpower with global Cold War commitments, the United States perfected the flexible strategic deployment of large bodies of troops to any point on the globe. With the loss of the requirement to have masses of soldiers in static positions along the Cold War front lines in Europe, this strategic mobility became central to today’s flexible military strategy. In quantitative terms the size of the American contribution to NATO has decreased, but in relative and qualitative terms it has increased. American military hardware is the most advanced in the world, and its military personnel are among the best. The United States is in possession of unique systems that are termed “force multipliers” by military planners. Additionally, the United States alone can offer the alliance robust strategic mobility (airlift and sealift transports and tankers); deployable command, control, and communications (C 3 ) systems; and multidimensional intelligence capabilities. The presence of these unique assets is one of the reasons European political and military planners seek out American participation in European security undertakings. These are also the reasons why Washington continues to insist on leadership of the alliance and why most European states are happy to let it play this role. As a superpower, America’s conceptual leadership remains vibrant and untrammeled by conservative European views of the alliance. The United States has a global vision that even the most broadminded European states, France and the United Kingdom, for

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example, do not possess. In a realist sense, the United States brings the most military power to the table and logically expects a commensurate voice in alliance affairs. Because America also continues to function as the balancer par excellence between Europe’s major states, in both the political and military realms, Europeans still want the United States to play the role of mediator and leader.

ESDI and the WEU But even as the United States remains firmly in the leadership position of European security, Washington continues to support an integration of continental efforts in the alliance and a greater role for European states in NATO. In fact, the United States has furthered European integrative efforts in the military area since the attempted European Defense Community (EDC) of 1952–1954. The Eisenhower administration supported this early European effort, which would have produced a supranational European military establishment, but the project was aborted in 1954 when the French parliament refused to ratify the EDC treaty. The Western European Union (WEU), established by the Brussels Treaty of 1948, actually predates NATO and was the first successful attempt to institutionalize a separate European security identity. Current efforts to integrate European security efforts go under the rubric of the European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI). Attempts were made prior to the EU Maastricht Treaty to incorporate ESDI into the EU, but too many EU member states were against a security role for the union. Instead, language was inserted into the treaty to “eventually” make the WEU responsible for European security and defense at some unspecified point in the future. Leading up to the NATO Brussels Summit of 1994, France attempted to make the WEU an expression of ESDI independent of NATO, but did not succeed in its efforts because the majority of European states wanted NATO alone to be the institution to handle security and defense matters. At the summit itself, all NATO members (including France and the United States) eventually backed a policy of strengthening ESDI within the confines of the transatlantic alliance. The NATO member states went even further at the 1996 Berlin ministerial conference, and specified the WEU as the organization to foster ESDI and be the European pillar of the NATO alliance. The parameters of American support for ESDI are clear. Washington promotes the integration of European security measures as long as they

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are within the bounds of the NATO alliance. With the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept that was advanced at the 1994 NATO summit, NATO military assets were even offered to the WEU for military operations in which the United States did not choose to participate. The American representatives insisted, however, that NATO’s governing political bodies decide on the conditions of such a “loan” and not relinquish ultimate control of the loaned alliance assets; the WEU, in other words, would be “separate but not separable” from NATO. The alliance and the WEU are still negotiating the specific modalities of loaning alliance military assets. Another condition of American support for an improved ESDI boils down to quid pro quo. If Europeans desire increased positions of responsibility in the alliance, they are to earn this privilege by increasing their quantitative or qualitative contributions to NATO’s security and defense. Bonn, for example, has improved its alliance standing by reinterpreting constitutional restrictions that forbade German troop deployments, so that German combat units now participate fully in alliance peacekeeping operations. Paris, on the other hand, has recently been in a row with Washington over the leadership of NATO’s most important regional command, Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH). The French, who pledged to return to NATO’s integrated command structure after a twenty-eight-year absence, see French command of AFSOUTH as a reward for their reintegration. The United States does not see this symbolic reason as sufficient justification to surrender the American-held command position into European hands. The United States provides the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet to AFSOUTH, which represents the bulk of this NATO command’s combat force. There is widespread support for ESDI as a theoretical construct among both Europeans and Americans, yet recent attempts to put theory into practice have been spectacularly unsuccessful. The most glaring failure was Europe’s inability to control the conflict in Bosnia. When the former Yugoslavia started to disintegrate, Washington backed off from the conflict, and Europe interpreted this as an opportunity to show what it could achieve politically and militarily without their American big brother. However, Europe’s inability first to construct an effective foreign policy consensus on the Balkan crisis and then to control the conflict resulted both in many civilian and military casualties in the former Yugoslavia and a setback for ESDI. The United States extricated Europe from its predicament by getting NATO directly involved in Bosnia, and by providing American military leadership and combat forces to the

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operation. Europeans drew the lesson from Bosnia that for a military operation to be a success, NATO and the United States must participate at the highest levels. Europeans believe that American combat forces must be put in harm’s way in order for Washington to take an operation seriously and to provide the “combat multipliers” so essential to a modern-day military undertaking.

Whither the WEU? Whereas on paper the WEU offers its ten members5 a stronger defense guarantee than NATO’s, for the foreseeable future it will confine itself to more benign military missions. Although the WEU has no standing forces or command structure of its own, member nations have committed multinational military units to the WEU in the event of a crisis. These units include the Eurocorps, Eurofor (a rapid deployment force), Euromarfor (a quick reaction naval force), and the U.K./Netherlands amphibious force. Since its rebirth in 1984, the WEU counts among its successes minesweeping operations in the Persian Gulf region, a naval quarantine in the Adriatic, customs patrols on the Danube, and a policing operation in Mostar, Bosnia. These missions are in line with the “Petersberg Tasks,” developed during the 1992 WEU conference in Germany, which determined that the WEU should undertake humanitarian tasks, rescue missions, and the peace operations tasks of peacekeeping and peace enforcement. The WEU is currently laboring to fulfill the mandates it received in the past several years. In order to fully maximize the ESDI and CJTF concepts, the WEU needed an effective military planning staff. The newly formed WEU Planning Cell consists of a modest fifty officials, in stark comparison to the thousands of officers on similar NATO staffs. A WEU Situation Center (command post) was opened in 1996, and provides crisis-management monitoring. Additionally, the WEU Satellite Center has been operating since 1993 to provide strategic intelligence to the organization’s decision makers. Satellite information is gathered both from commercial sources and from Helios, a French-Spanish-Italian defense observation satellite.6 The WEU is slowly building up the capabilities to carry out the Petersberg Tasks. The question remains as to whether the European states have the will to carry out security operations on their own. Deafening silence from the WEU was its response to European security challenges

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that cried out for its involvement. When Greece, a full member, and Turkey, an associate member, quarreled over an Aegean islet in 1995, the WEU did not act decisively to resolve the dispute. Instead, Washington had to intervene to keep these two European “allies” from going to war over nationalistic grievances. In April 1997, Albania was disintegrating into chaos due to lack of an effective government response to a financial scam that bilked thousands of Albanians out of their savings. A European state was descending into anarchy, an appropriate challenge for the WEU’s crisis-management and peacekeeping competencies, but again the WEU did not undertake any action. By default, Italy stepped up to lead an ad-hoc European task force that was blessed by the OSCE, to try to bring a modicum of law and order to chaotic Albania. European states appear to lack the determined collective commitment to transform the WEU and ESDI from rhetoric to reality. The future of the WEU is a topic at the ongoing EU Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). France and Germany are leading a campaign to have the EU absorb the WEU’s security and defense competencies. Other EU member states that do not favor the Franco-German supranational approach, the United Kingdom most prominent among them, are not keen on any changes to the present intergovernmental structure of the WEU. Additionally, apprehensions abound that a move to include security and defense responsibilities in the EU, right on the heels of NATO expansion, would needlessly provoke Russia. Only if European monetary union is carried out by a restricted EU core (France, Germany, and the Benelux states) could it be possible for the EU to absorb the WEU’s responsibilities. Barring this unlikely outcome, the EU IGC will most likely stick with the status quo for the WEU.

The Military Implications of NATO Expansion At the NATO Madrid Summit in the summer of 1997, NATO invited Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to apply for alliance membership. Slovenia and Rumania remain likely candidates for the notso-distant future. These nations have actively participated in NATO Partnership for Peace activities, and will have to demonstrate to the alliance that they are healthy market democracies with effective civilian control over their militaries, and that they harbor no revisionist intentions to change borders in their region. NATO’s expansion to the East will reinforce military trends that have

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been developing since the end of the Cold War. When the static lines of confrontation in Central Europe dissolved, the alliance had to develop improved capabilities to deploy its forces throughout the alliance area. This means that NATO will probably not permanently station nuclear weapons nor formations of alliance troops in the new NATO states but will instead concentrate on the ability to carry out a NATO treaty Article V defense of the new members, involving deployment of mobile combat forces by air, land, and sea. Most prospective new member states have already been restructuring their militaries to be compatible with NATO forces and processes. Besides participating in alliance-sponsored exercises, they have been steadily improving the NATO language (English and French) capabilities of their military commands and staffs. Modifications have been made to their airtraffic control systems to make them compatible with NATO air-defense nets; if a crisis erupts, the new members need to be familiar with NATO procedures and fully integrated into NATO C3 systems. The militaries of the new members will have to be capable of initially staving off an aggressor until alliance forces are forward-deployed and combat-ready. Since this forward movement of NATO forces will be a key to their survival, the new members will have to establish indigenous reception bases and supply pipelines. In addition to the costs and liabilities expansion brings to NATO, it also enables the new members to make positive contributions to European security. Primary among these benefits is the stability that NATO membership brings to the region. How many times in their respective histories have Poland and the Czech Republic been mangled in the shatter zone of European balance-of-power politics? Most Europeans will breathe a collective sigh of relief once Central Europe has been stabilized by NATO; hopefully, the membership experience of the first group will encourage other prospective members to democratize, civilize, and domesticate internal ethnic and nationalistic frictions. On the military level, the new members will bring capabilities to NATO that are currently either lacking or are in short supply in the alliance. These include combat service, civil affairs, tactical ground transportation, and medical support as well as chemical detection, search and rescue, and logistics capabilities. 7 And in spite of advanced technology that sometimes allows machines to replace human combatants, it remains true that for many operations having a soldier occupying the ground is essential to the success of the missions, especially humanitarian and peace operations, that are most likely to occur in the foreseeable

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future. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have all contributed troops to the peace-enforcement effort in Bosnia, and have integrated well into the NATO-led operation. The new members’ future participation in similar operations will be a welcome addition to multilateral peacekeeping forces.

Redefining Operational Military Capabilities Had World War III broken out in Central Europe, it would in many ways have been a horrible reenactment of World War I. Had the immense Warsaw Pact armies attacked, they would have collided with massed divisions of NATO troops along the alliance’s static front line. While the West owned a technological lead, it would have been difficult for NATO to take advantage of its qualitative edge against the brute force of overwhelming numbers. Air power and sea power would not have been able to diminish the carnage on the ground. The Soviet military and their allies possessed vast arsenals of biological and chemical weapons, trained frequently with the real toxins, and were expected to use them as part of their attack game plan. If the West found it was losing too much ground, it may have employed tactical nuclear weapons to break the deadlock, most likely spurring nuclear retaliation in kind from the Warsaw Pact. Thankfully for Europe and the world, this Armageddon scenario disappeared at the end of the Cold War. Today only a few hundred tactical nuclear weapons remain on the Continent, a small number compared to the tens of thousands of artillery-fired, missile-launched, cruise missile-carried, and air-dropped nuclear weapons stockpiled on both sides during the Cold War. Central Europe is all but free of biological and chemical weapons, and million-man Cold War armies have been drastically reduced. And for the military, flexibility and mobility has replaced the Cold War vision of a head-on clash of armies as a military strategy. Power projection is the military watchword of the day. As discussed in the previous section, NATO is now working to improve its capability to deploy rapidly powerful but much smaller military formations. Future conflicts will most likely not take place in Central Europe but rather on the European periphery, or even on other continents. European armies are still adjusting to this conceptual change. No longer are huge in-place forces required; lean units with strategic agility are needed. No longer can Europe count on interior lines of supply and indigenous local resupply; deployable and responsive logistics are needed for future contingencies.

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The military implications of the new realities are far-reaching. During the Cold War, it was enough for the alliance to be multinational at the strategic level, meaning that NATO was integrated only at the top; on the front lines divisions from the member nations fought side-by-side, but within their own sectors. In today’s situation, comprehensive multinationality is required. Both military and economic efficiency require the integration of units and equipment at the lowest levels. Multinational corps, divisions, and brigades have been established and are cutting their operational teeth. The concept will be developed to include national elements within smaller military units. NATO’s premier rapid reaction unit, the Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps, was deployed to Bosnia and proved the advantages of deep multinationality. Another change in the nature of contemporary military undertakings is the accelerated operational pace. During the Persian Gulf War in the Middle East, the advanced Western militaries displayed their ability to complete a full decision cycle faster than their adversary, a seemingly mundane accomplishment is in fact a key to victory on the modern battlefield. Attacks were planned, executed, assessed, and then replanned and reexecuted before the Iraqis recovered from the first attack! The source of this conceptual agility was the ability to tie together technologically advanced C3 and intelligence systems—both terrestrial and space-based—nimble tactical mobility, precision target destruction, and rapid reassessment and retargeting. There were no geographic or temporal hiding places for the adversary. The West’s “dominant maneuver” was lethal everywhere, in all weather conditions, day and night.8 The new mode of warfare introduced during the Persian Gulf War was the precursor of what is now called the Revolution of Military Affairs (RMA). Military theoreticians, freed from the static concepts of Cold War combat, are applying daring new concepts to operational planning and execution. The digital revolution in computing speed and capability is enabling the acceleration of RMA capabilities. Space platforms are being netted into more effective, increasingly integrated, and more widely disseminated C3 and intelligence systems. Stealth technology, combined with unheard-of precision and conventional explosive improvements, has exponentially increased the lethality of combat platforms. And these combat platforms are more frequently unmanned, reducing the exposure of valuable human resources. There are good and bad RMA implications for European security. On the positive side, there is a shift from the costly and drawn-out sequential military operations of the past to the rapid and concurrent execution of

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today’s leading-edge warfare. The combination of mobility, stealth, precision targeting, and improved lethality will work to help reduce the military’s exposure in future operations. The RMA offers the decision maker a razor-edged scalpel instead of a blunt sledgehammer. The C3 and intelligence “system of systems” offers many efficiencies and force multipliers. A rudimentary version of such a system is functioning in Bosnia today, allowing military decision makers to track every ground and air vehicle within 200 kilometers of AWAC (Airborne Warning and Control) aircraft and Joint Star reconnaissance aircraft. 9 Although the RMA will never totally disperse the Clausewitzian “fog of war,” RMA radically improves the commander’s ability to penetrate it. The flip side of these improvements is that potential adversaries have access to most if not all of these technologies. Computing skills can be used to passively infiltrate military C 3 and intelligence systems, or offensively to crash such networks. Electronic terrorist attacks against civilian systems are possible and with grave consequences for databased industries and services. Rogue states are also taking advantage of improved precision and technology to upgrade the range and precision of their Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and missile systems. While the RMA allows a Western counter-proliferation attack to be more scalpellike, it is getting more difficult to find the targets. Our adversaries are doing a better job of physically and electronically hiding their weapons of mass destruction from the prying eyes of satellites and airborne eavesdroppers. The final disadvantage of the RMA is its high cost. States must display the determination to constantly improve their militaries to keep up with advanced concepts and technologies. While the United States is surging ahead in this area, its European partners are experiencing difficulties with modernization. European economies are currently experiencing hard times, and futuristic military systems are not favored by parliamentarians in the face of high unemployment and the lack of a clear-cut external threat. Europe realizes that it is more vulnerable than the United States, for example, to a rogue state’s ballistic missiles, yet it is the United States, and not Europe, which is developing both groundbased and airborne-laser ballistic missile defenses.

Conclusions When the Berlin Wall crumbled, many concepts that guided security during the Cold War also fell into the rubble. The “monolithic” Soviet

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aggressor disappeared and was replaced by a multitude of diffuse threats, which include regional instability and ethnic tensions; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, biological, chemical weapons, and their ballistic means of delivery; transnational dangers such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and ecological catastrophes; and threats to democracy and reform in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. Whereas only one major European security institution, the Warsaw Pact, disappeared at the end of the Cold War, the majority of Western security organizations have readjusted to the new realities and continue their work on the Continent. The current European security architecture consists of many overlapping institutions (NATO, WEU, OSCE, and EU), but NATO remains the premier defense and security organization. NATO is healthy, and is in the process of simultaneous deepening and widening. As to the ESDI, attempts to establish a strong European security identity have taken several institutional paths over the past decade, but the WEU will most likely be the organization that incorporates and furthers ESDI. In the near to midterm, both the WEU and ESDI will remain within the confines of NATO. The end of the Cold War caused one of the most sweeping reevaluations of operational military strategies and tactics in the twentieth century. Warfare that had been based on massed formations is now grounded in strategic agility, mobile combat units, and flexible logistics. Within the NATO arena, multinationality is another key concept of this military redefinition. The ongoing “Revolution of Military Affairs” offers a glimpse into future military operations. Force modernization and technology enable more rapid power projection and smaller logistics tails. The shift from sequential to concurrent operations leaves no shelter for the adversary. Time, weather, and location do not hinder day-and-night, all-weather, and multidimensional surveillance and attack. The integrated command, control, communication, and intelligence “system of systems” rapidly processes information and command data for widespread dissemination. Improvements in stealth, precision, unmanned systems, and weapons lethality round off the advantages provided by radical new military concepts and technology. The implications of redefined threats, institutions, and military operations are far-reaching for both the United States and Europe. Because of its superpower status and strong economy, the United States appears to be in a better position politically and militarily to wrestle with the challenges presented by the new era than its European partners. The

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Europeans do not suffer from lack of vision, but it remains to be seen if European willpower and budgets match the political pronouncements made by European leaders about autonomous ESDI and capable modern European militaries. The security institutions and military organizations that defined an era were many years in the making. The NATO alliance, the WEU, and OSCE did not appear overnight at the end of World War II but took years to evolve. The security organizations and military strategies that characterize our new, as yet unnamed, era will also require years to acquire substance. Europe must decide to back up its quest for a stronger ESDI or be increasingly dependent on the United States for political and military leadership. The United States must decide how it can assist Europe to find a mutually beneficial balance of integration, autonomy, military capability, and transatlantic solidarity. None of these challenges offer simple answers. Our historical present tense will be shaped fundamentally by the nature of European and American choices in military security.

Notes * Disclaimer: Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations, expressed or implied, are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or any other U.S. Government agency. 1. President William J.Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, Washington, DC: The White House, February, 1995, p. 25. 2. “An anti-missile shield: Circles of fear,” The Economist, January 4, 1997, p. 33. 3. Clinton, p. 2. 4. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Military Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, February 1995, p. i. 5. Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom. 6. WEU Secretariat-General, WEU Today, Brussels, Belgium, 1997, p. 37. 7. Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, U.S. Department of State, “Report to the Congress on the Enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and Implications,” Washington, DC, February 24, 1997, p. 12. 8. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision 2010, Washington, DC: Joint Staff, 1997, p. 20. 9. “The Future of Warfare,” The Economist, March 8, 1997, p. 21.

CHAPTER 13

Between Ambition and Paralysis: The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and the War in the Former Yugoslavia Andreas G.Kintis

As the Cold War drew to a close, it became increasingly clear that a new era of international politics was dawning. The emergent international system featured the disintegration of the Soviet empire, thereby emancipating many peoples from foreign rule; it also signaled the coming of age of the European Union (EU). Being for years under the protective umbrella of one of the two rival superpowers, the EU was called at short notice to shoulder a wide range of responsibilities and to perform the role of a superpower in the making. Against this background the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) that emerged from the Maastricht Summit selected the Yugoslav crisis as one of its first foreign policy tests.1

The Road to Maastricht It is hardly original to note that the great transformations of 1989–1990 signaled the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era. This 273

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oft-quoted statement, however, a truism by now, still retains an undiminished value. It is the starting point one has recourse to in order to assess the implications that the end of the Cold War had on the process of deepening the political and security unity of the European Union, which inevitably also implied the parallel development of a common defense policy. However, to grasp fully the meaning of those changes and to comprehend their longer-range implications, one needs first some sense of the three central features of the Cold War years. First, in the wake of the Second World War a bipolar world system emerged with the Soviet Union and the United States standing at its two opposite poles. The devastation of continental Europe in 1939–1945 and the concurrent decline of the traditional great powers—Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy—created a power vacuum that was filled by the two new world actors. This development generated an increasingly militarized and ideologically highly polarized struggle between the United States and the USSR that was based on mutual deterrence and was accompanied by the division of Europe into two antagonistic blocs symbolized by the division of Germany. Second, the East-West split and the balance-of-power policies that had been developed to so high a degree during the Cold War compelled the two superpowers as leading members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively, to honor their commitments to their “cluster of dependent allies or reluctant satellites.”2 The result, as Adrian Hyde-Price noted, was that “the existence of the broader East-West conflict…and the alliance structures it generated, helped contain— although not to remove—more localised conflicts.” 3 Third, there was a perceived danger that the world would be left in rubble if the United States and the USSR ever engaged in direct conflict, particularly with nuclear weapons. In this setting the European Community (EC) concentrated on the development of its economic clout and looked to the United States for its military security. As David Allen and Michael Smith argued: The old European order placed significant restrictions on the ability of the EC to play an independent and expansive role in the international system…. The Community’s previous failure to develop either a common foreign policy or a security identity of its own could be explained by the need to defer to the United States in return for the provision of a security umbrella whilst the Cold War confrontation was also seen as an inhibition on the extension of the EC to include either the neutral states of Western Europe or the states of Eastern Europe.4

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Since the late 1980s, however, the world, fascinated by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the toppling of the Berlin Wall, began to contemplate the alternatives to the Cold War. The two rival superpowers, along with their allies, were transformed almost overnight from enemies into apparent friends. In this “new Europe” that emerged, considerations focused primarily on the promotion of an open international trading system and the improvement of the internal economic and political wellbeing of individual states. The main role of the EC in this context was to provide an essential part of the multilateral framework within which the management of the economic and political transition in Central and Eastern Europe could occur. According to Allen, before the dramatic changes in the European landscape, the EC seemed able to allow itself the luxury of a relatively relaxed development, with a gradual consideration of the process of EMU [Economic and Monetary Union] and further institutional reform, and a postponement of further enlargement considerations until after the completion of the 1992 targets. One of the immediate effects of the quickly developing changes was to give much greater urgency to all West European decisions, both unilateral and multilateral.5 The generally nonviolent transformation of the Communist-led states of Central and Eastern Europe into systems where Communist governments were quickly replaced under pressure of mass demonstrations did not catch the EC completely unawares. Already by the mid-1980s the EC’s commitment to the 1992 program combined with the Single European Act (SEA) had given a significant boost to the EC to enhance and extend its authority and to add new competences to its agenda. The groundwork for the relationship with the Central and Eastern European countries was laid in June 1988 with the signing by the EC and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, or Comecon) of the “Joint Declaration on the Establishment of Official Relations” with which the two organizations mutually recognized each other. According to Karel de Gucht and Stephan Keukeleire: The Joint Declaration and the changing attitude of the Eastern Bloc countries thus resulted in the addition of a completely new dimension to the Community’s external relations. The period during which the European Community had found it possible to ignore the East of Europe almost completely, since the predominantly military

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relationship with the Communist countries was primarily a matter for NATO and the USA, had after all come to an end. For the first time it seemed possible to pursue a constructive security policy which was not only geared to providing a defence against the potential threat but also tried to remove this threat.6 By April 1989 the EC had decided to strengthen the links with its Central and Eastern neighbors by concluding cooperation agreements with them. Poland and Hungary, which were particularly inclined toward democratic reforms and a more market-oriented economic system, were provided with economic aid. According to Allen, Jacques Delors, the then president of the European Commission, pushed for an active and coordinated EC policy toward the East “partly because he wanted West German support for EMU and partly because he wanted to advance Commission competence into a new area.” 7 And it was indeed a few months later, during a Paris summit of the G-7 nations that Delors’s far-sightedness was rewarded with the undertaking by the Commission of the responsibility to coordinate Western aid, $648 million, to Warsaw and Budapest on behalf not only of the European Community but all the G-24 (the EC states plus twelve Eastern European states).8 Despite, however, Mikhail Gorbachev’s new thinking and his desire to forge a significantly improved relationship with Western Europe—defined in his “Common European House” in which East and West both had to live under the same roof—not all EC member states were favorably disposed toward moving quickly to formulating a policy of reconciliation with their communist neighbors. Britain, in particular, suspected that Gorbachev’s intentions were simply a pretext for splitting the Atlantic alliance and luring Western Europe away from the United States. In West Germany, however, a different view held sway. For the Germans, improving relations with Central and Eastern Europe was seen as an opportunity to integrate these countries into the Western European architecture. As the division between West and East Germany began to unravel, Bonn was faced with an influx of refugees from East Germany and found itself in the position to respond rapidly, preferably with the support of its EC partners…. West Germans did not have the luxury of adopting the preferred British position of “wait and see.” If the West Germans could not get their partners to act in harmony in response to this new situation, then they would have to act alone.9

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It was in this political context that Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced on November 28, 1989, his Ten-Point Programme for Overcoming the Division of Germany and Europe. At the center of the plan was the development of a German confederation based on integration between East and West Germany. Accordingly, the plan emphasized the “necessity of a contractual community moving slowly—probably within a ten-year transition period—toward confederal structures as the outcome of a gradual process.”10 The declaration also sought to allay fears of German domination and exploitation by proclaiming that “the future architecture of Germany must fit into the architecture of Europe as a whole.”11 Although the plan carefully placed German unification in the context of European integration by advocating the further strengthening of the EC so that it could serve as “the foundation for a truly comprehensive European union,” 12 Germany’s partners were perturbed by Kohl’s omission to include the standard undertaking of Germany’s “unshakable ties with the West.”13 Even though Bonn’s plan was clearly designed to assuage the fears of other Europeans about a united Germany, France and Britain were displeased by the fact that such a major initiative had been taken without prior consultation.14 Therefore, as Edward Mortimer argued: It was natural, even if wounding to German official sensibilities, that some Europeans wondered aloud whether the sudden removal of the physical constraints imposed on German power since 1945 would not lead to a re-emergence of that power, undoubtedly in a less evil form than that of the Third Reich, but in one which would nevertheless make Germany’s weaker neighbours feel insecure.15 Given the skepticism about Germany’s continued commitment to European integration, France sought to firmly integrate Germany into the EC, thus limiting that nation’s future independence and dominance. In particular, the goal of monetary union as a means of subsuming German power under the authority of European institutions became “a matter of geopolitical urgency for France.”16 Nevertheless, major hurdles remained. One of these was posed by Germany’s position to seek to delay the starting date of the EMU Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). Whereas Foreign Minister HansDietrich Genscher favored the establishment of a firm timetable for Economic and Monetary Union, which he viewed as necessary for keeping intact the Franco-German partnership and realizing the broader goal of political union, German monetary and financial authorities were

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more ambivalent about the idea of EMU. Any precipitous moves toward monetary union, they believed, would lead only to the loss of the Deutsch mark, a symbol of national power as well as sovereignty, and to a downgrading of the role and independence of the Bundesbank, which was regarded as the country’s bastion against any return of the inflation that in the past had brought the Nazis to power.17 At the same time, within the governing coalition parties there was concern that government support for EMU might be politically unwise since it would play into the hands of emerging right-wing parties by giving them further ammunition for their claims that the Kohl government was not assertive enough of German national interests. 18 In addition, the Kohl government made accomplishments on political union and a stronger European parliament a precondition for Germany’s agreement to EMU.19 As a result of these and other statements by German authorities, a growing uncertainty surfaced among many Europeans about Germany’s loyalty to the EC. In contrast to France, Britain’s response to the challenge of German unification was to oppose any further EC drive toward closer economic and political integration out of fear of losing influence over decisions in an EC in which the center of political gravity was shifting toward a united Germany. Instead the British government advocated the enlargement of the EC and its transformation into a looser confederation of sovereign and independent nation-states as the best way to retain some influence and control over a powerful and assertive Germany. Confronted with the prospect of West Germany dismantling gradually its links to the EC and fearful that plans for further integration and, in particular, monetary union would be sidetracked or delayed, Delors, in a speech to the College of Europe in Bruges in October 1989, urged “Community [EC] members to rally quickly behind a program of economic and monetary union.” If they failed to do so, rapidly evolving bilateral links between member states and Eastern bloc nations could fracture the EC. 20 It was an implicit reference to his concern about the need to remind West Germany of its fundamental interest in strengthening its links to the EC. According to Delors the EC would break apart or see its momentum halted if its twelve members were unable to close ranks in support of Eastern bloc reform and a solution to the division of Germany. 21 His vision of Europe was that of a new Europe that would extend well beyond EC borders to embrace Central and Eastern European countries as well as the Western nations of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). As he put it, “I believe not in the future, but in one future for all of

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Europe. History will not wait. A quantum leap is necessary for both our conception of the Community [EC] and our actions toward the outside world.” 22 Thus Delors saw events in Central and Eastern Europe as requiring the EC to get on with its goals of integration, especially by establishing an IGC that would amend the EC’s founding treaty to include the concept of EMU complemented by another IGC on political union involving a common foreign and security policy and reform of the EC institutions to make them more efficient and democratic. This had to be accompanied by a rapid endorsement of the Social Charter and a strong common declaration regarding reform in Central and Eastern Europe. The discussions of the European Council meeting in Strasbourg in December 1989 placed greater emphasis than before on the pace of EC integration as well as on the timing of the IGC on EMU and came to be seen as a test of Germany’s commitment to European integration. Seeking to preserve European unity and erase many of the doubts about the extent of Germany’s support for monetary union, Bonn bowed to the wishes of its EC partners and accepted the French demand to set firm dates for EMU. As Chancellor Kohl stressed, agreement to further integration and, in particular, EMU was the price Germany had to pay for Europe’s acceptance of unification.23 The final communiqué issued at the end of the meeting set December 1990 as the date for the IGC on EMU. 24 Amid rapid change in Europe the EC called for the creation of a European development bank to aid reforming Eastern bloc nations, and expressed a wish for German reunification to come about by peaceful and democratic means, respecting all treaties and agreements as well as the numerous principles on dialogue set out in the Helsinki Final Act. It must also be embedded within the framework of European integration.25 In the words of Michael Baun, “Bonn considered this endorsement vital for domestic political reasons since it would help offset claims that the Kohl government was getting little in return for agreeing to talks on monetary union.”26 At the conclusion of the meeting Kohl noted that Europe had moved a sizable step forward toward integration.27 However, the rush toward an economically unified Europe and the excitement over communism’s collapse obscured the new dilemmas posed for the West by the rapidly changing environment to which the EC had to react. What no one had anticipated was that the end of the Cold War did not remove all sources of conflict on the Continent. Rather it had changed their nature and character from a purely politico-military one to a socioeconomic one. This transformation was dramatically elucidated by

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Delors in his Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture delivered on March 7, 1991, to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London: All around us, naked ambition, lust for power, national uprisings and underdevelopment are combining to create potentially dangerous situations, containing the seeds of destabilization and conflict, aggravated by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.28 That general portrayal of the post–Cold War era can be amplified by a long list of specific problems such as ethnic and nationalist conflicts, the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons; economic, social, financial, and environmental problems; immigration; and international terrorism. As Curt Gasteyger argued: These challenges have little to do with traditional political or military adversity and more with fundamental changes in society, in particular, its different expectations and higher vulnerability. As such they are more difficult to conceptualize, let alone deal with. Mankind has been trained for centuries to deal mostly with clearcut military threats and aggression, with roughly measurable military balances and fairly well established strategies. It has little experience when it comes to dealing adequately with minority claims or civil strife. And it has practically no experience of, or the means to cope with, such challenges as weapons proliferation, mass emigration, or the protection of hundreds of thousands of refugees in a distant land.29 Therefore, the end of the competition between East and West for global domination did not inevitably imply a reduction in the need for effective security systems and instruments, even if the type of system required may have changed.30 In order to respond to events in Central and Eastern Europe and aware of their foreign policy limitations evident in the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War,31 the majority of the EC member states, apart from Britain, decided to accelerate the pace not only of economic integration but also of political and eventually military integration. For some member states, however, another reason for consolidating the EC in the political and foreign spheres was even more decisive: a wish to bind a united Germany more tightly to an EC foreign policy stance. This wish emanated from a fear that Germany’s preoccupation with successful unification and its commercial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe would slow down the process of political integration. Bonn also wanted to advance such an

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objective in order to allay any concerns among its neighbors about the foreign policy of a larger unified Germany.32 In addition, a peripheral issue until communism crumbled in the East, the debate between “deepening and widening” generated controversy within the EC and triggered increasing demands for a common foreign and security policy. A primary reason for this controversy was the fear expressed by the majority of member states that it would be more difficult to enhance the EC’s competence and authority in the security and defense realm when the anticipated widening of the EC Community in the form of accessions by EFTA states occurred in the mid-1990s. In response, some EC leaders began to urge an acceleration of EC integration as a precondition for further enlargement. This was necessary, they argued, to provide the EC with the institutional capacity it needed to deal with the challenges in Central and Eastern Europe and to prevent the emergence of a “dubious” EC in security and defense terms when several neutral countries acceded to the EC Community.33 Finally, a further incentive that made the prospect of an increased European selfreliance in defense and security affairs so compelling was the suspicion of a reduced American military presence in Europe. Thus it was decided to convene in December 1991 a second IGC on political union, to work in parallel with the conference on EMU, among whose objectives was agreement on a CFSP. In this context the outbreak of hostilities in former Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991 ensured that the provisions for a CFSP remained at the center of debate.

Rhetoric and Reality: A Critical Review of the EU’s Performance in the Former Yugoslavia The terms frequently used to describe the European Union’s performance in the first security challenge that it ventured to handle alone are “inadequate” and “too little too late” The EU’s inability to stop the fighting, particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was widely perceived as evidence of a divided and impotent EU incapable of making a success of an undertaking such as the pacification in former Yugoslavia. Worse, the inevitable rendering on the media of what was happening in former Yugoslavia gave rise to understandable but sometimes iniquitous criticism on the part of public opinion. This led to widespread public disenchantment with the European Union, which was made the scapegoat for the EU member states’ lack of political will to act in unison thus inhibiting an effective solution to the crisis. Michael Brenner, in a critical

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article on the EU’s intermediation in the Yugoslav crisis, summarized the mistakes of the EU’s diplomacy in the following way: It was not preordained that EC countries be so shortsighted about the dangers of Yugoslavia’s dismantlement and the ethnic passions it liberated; nor that they act fitfully and, too often, too late in trying to bring their influence to bear; nor that they cast the die for Bosnia through the ill-considered, premature recognition of Slovenia and Croatia; nor that they respond to the Bosnia catastrophe with hollow threats whose unfulfillment gave courage to the intransigent; nor that they refrain from interdiction measures to enforce the economic embargo or bring sustained pressure to bear on key European violators;…nor that their stern demands for the closing of detention camps and cessation of the shelling of cities be left as paper declarations while the Twelve exhausted their time and energy on the Maastricht ratification crisis.34 The EU’s involvement in former Yugoslavia was motivated by factors relating to the goals and methods of European integration and the desire to redefine and refine its foreign policy mission and identity, as well as reach a consensus about its relations with the other European security organizations with which most of the EU’s member states are also affiliated. The war in former Yugoslavia was, therefore, seen both as a challenge and an opportunity. It was seen as a challenge because the member states of the EU were compelled under the circumstances to develop structures for foreign policy cooperation that were effective enough to identify and pursue joint initiatives affecting the complicated process of disintegration in Yugoslavia. It was seen as an opportunity because the EU could, through a common foreign policy, maximize its influence in the Balkans and be seen as a component of the new European geostrategic landscape with substantial troops on the ground in its own backyard, able to achieve a political settlement of ethnic conflicts over territory without the military power and political leadership of the United States. The United States had made it clear that it regarded Yugoslavia as Europe’s problem and seemed content to let the EU take over the role of mediator between Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In an article in Foreign Affairs, Warren Zimmermann, the last American ambassador in Yugoslavia, wrote that an official from the U.S. State Department’s European Bureau commented that Yugoslavia had become a “tar baby in Washington. Nobody wanted to touch it. With the American presidential

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election just a year away, it was seen as a loser.”35 Some also thought that the reluctance of the Bush administration to become involved in the Balkan conflict was because the Americans believed that Europe was bound to fail in former Yugoslavia emphasizing thus the need for American leadership and the fact that the EU could not ignore its fundamental dependence on the United States for military security in Europe itself. The Persian Gulf War also had a deterrent impact on American willingness to become militarily involved in Yugoslavia. According to Georg Schild, military observers in the United States warned that the success in the Gulf War was based on a unique political and military setting. In the Gulf War, a broadly based international military coalition was formed comprising highly advanced Western democracies, former people’s democracies, and prosperous Muslim states. Furthermore, the Gulf terrain was ideal for air force operations, in which the West was able to display its technological superiority. None of these conditions applied to a possible military engagement in the Balkans…. Consequently, leading American military officials, such as the chief of general staff Colin L.Powell, were among the most vehement champions of American opposition to military engagement in the Balkans.36 Once the EU’s inability to muster a degree of consensus sufficient to enable the EU to act with one voice became clear, however, American leaders decided to become more involved in the sundry international initiatives and actions undertaken to try to bring the warring sides in former Yugoslavia to the negotiating table.37 It was in this period that the American administration realized that the EU and the Western European Union (WEU) could not successfully handle the Yugoslav crisis alone and had little to contribute to the resolution of the fundamental problems in the Balkans. In truth, the EU’s task of harnessing together a number of incremental initiatives to facilitate a resolution of the Yugoslav conflagration was always extremely difficult: The highly complex and emotional nature of the issues at stake, the important role played by poorly disciplined irregular forces, the illwill with which nearly all the major actors entered into the diplomatic process, and the pervasiveness of war propaganda and distorted information all combined to make the conflict particularly opaque and intractable.38

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The EU’s efforts were directed at brokering cease-fires and attempting to get the warring parties to negotiate a political settlement.39 The threat to use economic measures against republics that were not cooperative, isolate Serbia diplomatically, and grant recognition to Slovenia and Croatia had some effect on the negotiations for a political solution. The greatest merit of these diplomatic and economic coercive measures was probably to provide the stimulus for the Serbian camp to agree to a cease-fire in Croatia on January 2, 1992. The EU’s role as a coercive peacemaker, however, could not have had an impact on the course of the conflict because the EU itself did not credibly threaten the use of force. It was goodwill without the will to power.40 In fact, the JNA’s (Federal Yugoslav Army) high command, shortly after the war in Croatia started escalating, had already dismissed any forceful Western military action to prevent Yugoslavia’s dissolution and violent outcome or to defend the values that the West proclaimed were at stake. Critical to this assessment, according to Sabrina Petra Ramet, was the Persian Gulf War. JNA analysts studied Western responses to Iraqi threats and to the eventual Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and specifically ruled out any conclusion that a similar Western response might be anticipated in the cases of Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina. That conclusion was based on the recognition that the EC countries, through the Western European Union, could not engage in meaningful military operations without U.S. support, which, because the United States was not significantly involved, was lacking. 41 Although intervention on the ground was excluded as a military option in former Yugoslavia, many believed that the effectiveness of the EU’s involvement could have been enhanced by the use of coercive violence.42 This was to be accomplished by discouraging any potential aggressors from thinking that the gains achieved by deliberately resorting to conflict could ever outweigh the costs of embarking upon such a course. This line of reasoning lead Stuart Kaufman to the conclusion that the attempts of the EU to use economic leverage to deter undesired action was doubly ineffective since it neither deterred nor reassured.43 Thus, the lesson to be drawn from the experience in former Yugoslavia is that use of military force can be a useful instrument in the effectiveness of diplomacy.44 This is not to say, however, that the use of force per se leads to political settlements. This can be achieved only at the negotiating table among the warring factions themselves. It follows, therefore, that the EU could not have played a role that was commensurate with its weight as an international actor. The EU was, to use Jacques Delors’s phrase, as a child confronted with an adult crisis.45

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Nonetheless, these intellectual and practical difficulties, which demonstrate the conditions to be met for the EU to be an influential actor in the international scene, did not prevent the EU states from inventing a wide variety of new foreign policy procedures in their bid to contribute to a peaceful solution to the Yugoslav crisis. EU involvement took various forms: the dispatch of ministerial troika missions to mediate in Slovenia; successive peace conferences with a permanent EU chairman; the dispatch of teams of monitors;46 the deployment of an assortment of economic instruments as a means of pressure designed to support the EU’s mediatory diplomacy; the imposition of economic sanctions; the administration of Mostar, where the EU has assumed primary responsibility for the physical and political reconstruction of Bosnia’s second largest city; the provision of humanitarian assistance; and support for the creation of stable political and economic systems, reconstruction and development, and the establishment of normal relations among all the states and people in former Yugoslavia. It could be argued, therefore, that the EU had a considerable impact on the conflict in former Yugoslavia. James Gow and Lawrence Freedman concur that “from the perspective of achieving a concerted, albeit sometimes divided, limited and uneven, response, the Community did rather better, although the human cost in Yugoslavia makes success an inappropriate term…. EC common foreign policy…probably got it as right as circumstances allowed.”47 Moreover, as Martin Holland suggested, the Yugoslav crisis established an important principle of EC foreign policy that was added to the EU’s list of foreign policy instruments and options: the possibility of acting autonomously and of invoking external political intervention within Europe’s immediate sphere.48 However, as Simon Nuttall pointed out, “These are all internal. The invention of new procedures is a praiseworthy activity, but one of interest only to the Community.” 49 The fact remains that when these measures failed to resolve the crisis, the EU’s limited competence in security and defense matters and, more importantly, its member states’ disparate foreign policy objectives together ensured that the EU’s ambition to assert its presence as an international actor was impaired by its inability to maintain common positions. Even though in its initial response to the crisis, the EU succeeded in maintaining a relatively cohesive position, its later inability to compose divergent views within its own ranks undermined its effectiveness. In John Newhouse’s words, “That Europe would fail in Yugoslavia should have been clear to those who were charting the path to Maastricht. The test was an unduly stiff one for a

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community that still lacked the political cohesion required for the making of foreign policy.”50 This incapacity having been stated, it remains of course necessary to be assessed against other factors. 51 In the first place, it is doubtful whether any European country acting alone would have enjoyed the same power to act than the EU as a whole. Similarly, strenuous efforts to maintain consistent and appropriate EU responses have averted the danger of the conflict turning into a European war. None of the parties to the conflict was able to play one European country off against another. Finally, the EU’s policy produced regularities and expected patterns of behavior by Yugoslavia’s neighbors, which were induced to accept the EU position. To the extent that the EU had a policy toward the crisis in former Yugoslavia, that policy relied heavily on the European Political Cooperation (EPC) machinery.52 In relation to its objective constraints as a foreign policy actor, the EU did demonstrate ingenuity in inventing ways of dealing with the crisis that did it nothing but credit. 53 By forcing the belligerent parties into a structured dialogue, the EU created opportunities for them to communicate, negotiate, and forge compromises among themselves. In addition, by explicitly expressing its continuous support for the peace process through the declarations, Troika missions, and especially the peace conferences, the EU contributed to an amelioration of the situation. By the same token, however, the war in former Yugoslavia showed the communitarian limits of EPC, which suffered from a weakness in the common mechanisms for crisis management and the mobilization of resources to assist with the formulation and then the support of active diplomacy by the EU, and the lack of adequate forecasting, analysis, and planning capacity at the EU level. 54 The result was that the deliberations of the European Council, the routine meetings of EU heads of government, became those of a diplomatic conference mediating among the domestic interests of the participants, rather than of a body working out and implementing a common foreign and security policy reflecting the joint interest of the EC.55 However, it should be noted that the EPC’s response to the Yugoslav crisis should not have been overly surprising, given its record in coping with crises. Christopher Hill has empirically supported the assertion that the EPC has not been “particularly well-suited to handling international crises, even those in which the Europeans [were] themselves directly involved.” As Hill argued, the EPC has been able to respond increasingly

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quickly to major international events but unable to react firmly, decisively, and dramatically to such events. Thus, he suggested that over the twenty years of its life, EPC has got better at engineering consensus, in and out of crisis, and at avoiding the humiliating silence of complete inaction when faced with a new drama or threat. But member states are often still forced into anodyne generalizations by their fundamental lack of the capacity to agree amongst themselves on international questions.56 Would things have been different if the CFSP provisions had been in place in 1991? According to Joao de Deus Pinheiro, Portugal’s foreign minister at the time, nothing in substance in the EC’s handling of the Yugoslav conflict would have changed. Only main guidelines could have been fixed according to other procedures. 57 As Douglas Hurd, former British foreign secretary, opined: It is argued, for example, that somehow we would have achieved more as a European Union in Bosnia if we had put different procedures to work around the table of 12 Ministers. This is unreal. Our aims in Bosnia were consistent and agreed, but limited. We worked to prevent the spread of war. We ironed our differences among ourselves. We did not, like our grandfathers, take different sides in the Balkans. We produced peace makers and ideas for peace. We mitigated the suffering by providing aid and troops to protect that aid. But we did not, any of us, intervene, to enforce a particular solution on the warring factions. No one in my hearing from any country ever suggested that we should. That we made mistakes I do not doubt,…I do not believe that any of the facts which I have mentioned would have been different if the Treaty of Maastricht had provided for majority voting on the main issues of foreign policy.58 The war in former Yugoslavia provides a most telling example of the fact that although the Treaty on European Union (TEU) put at the member states’ disposal the mechanisms and procedures for a more coherent approach to external affairs, it did not provide them with appropriate and adequate instruments for achieving the ambitious objectives set out in Article J.1.2 of the treaty.59 Although the joint action was rather successful in that it interlinked the efforts of member states toward a common aim, made an appreciable contribution to the pacification of the region through

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the administration of Mostar, and, as Giovanni Jannuzzi observed, preserved and consolidated a fundamental experience of the EPC, namely the interrelationship between political objectives and economic instruments,60 it was far from being an adequate response to the conflict in former Yugoslavia since it failed to stop the fighting. As a result, the states most closely concerned have considered it more effective to take action outside the framework of the CFSP,61 through ad-hoc arrangements like the Contact Group and the Rapid Reaction Force. EU involvement in finding a settlement for the war in former Yugoslavia was based on a sense of responsibility and a feeling of pride. The EU ought to have been able to find a peaceful solution for the problems through diplomatic negotiations, both in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.62 Only later was it acknowledged that its actual capabilities and hence the credibility of its CFSP aspirations could be eroded if the EU failed to live up to highly exaggerated expectations. 63 The rapid evolution of events in former Yugoslavia has confronted the member states with the reality that the dangerous gap between the EU’s actual capabilities and will to act and the expectations as to what it can do cannot be easily closed.64 In addition, as Susan Woodward insightfully noted, the conflict in former Yugoslavia, fueled by unrestrained nationalism and emotional appeals to the past, baffled the West, which saw it as an anachronistic and unpleasant reminder of old ethnic and religious conflicts that modern Europe had left behind: Outsiders insisted that the Yugoslavs were not like them, that such atrocities always characterized the troublesome region and its penchant for war and balkanization, that more than anything else the violence demonstrated the difference between them and us. Even the morally outraged used a language of distinctions in their label of barbarism: the “otherness” of nations capable of such evil. This act of dismissal…justified inaction.65 In this respect the obvious constraints on the EU’s international influence can be overcome only by a “change of mentality.” According to Delors, the EU “needs to be more aware than it is today of the problems of peace and security in a turbulent world. It needs the political will to confront the dangers and the determination to acquire the necessary institutional and financial resources.” 66 As Nuttall observed, “The question is not whether the Community succeeded or failed [in former Yugoslavia], but whether it had the means of fulfilling its ambitions and if not, whether it prefers to give itself the means or abandon its ambitions.”67

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Searching for the Holy Grail: The Treaty of Amsterdam The political disintegration of former Yugoslavia raised fundamental questions about security and defense cooperation in Western Europe, forcing Western governments to treat reform of the ELPs capacity for a common foreign policy and NATO reform as two inextricably intertwined processes. For some people the alleged failure of the EU over Yugoslavia demonstrates the futility of attempting to pursue a single foreign policy with majority voting. The obvious consequence of the Yugoslav experience is that, for the time being, NATO should remain the principle organization for military collaboration within Europe. For others, the Yugoslav episode provided further proof of the value of an integrated European foreign policy and the necessity for an independent Western European defense organization.68 Those who believe that common foreign policy is desirable attribute EU’s inadequate response to the conflict to institutional weaknesses. The outbreak of the Balkan war coincided with the IGC on political union, and the CFSP was still too much in its infancy. The Yugoslav crisis cannot therefore be used as a test of credibility.69 Moreover, Yugoslavia no longer seemed as central to Western security interests as it had been during most of the Cold War era. Common to Americans and Europeans [was] the feeling that national interests were not sufficiently at stake in the Yugoslav conflict to justify the commitment of military force.70 In line with this analysis, Josef Joffe noted: When [statesmen] command the youth of their countries to face death in battle, there must be compelling national interests to justify the sacrifice. In Bosnia the strategic argument was hard to make, unless it was clad in terms of remote consequences such as the possible spillover of the war into the larger region. There was no oil to be safeguarded, no nuclear-armed dictator to be stopped, no strategic balance to be restored. Nor did the Balkan war offer a reasonable chance of success at a reasonable price.71 The notion of a common foreign and security policy implies that there are shared assumptions about such issues as sovereignty, peace, security, and the nature of threats. The basis for such a policy may be the power of a specific state or states or the power of supranational authorities. If the characteristics of the policy as a whole and the nature and needs of the

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participants are in congruence, then the policy may be exceptionally effective. In the case of the EU, however, they are not, and this is what gives rise to important questions about the source of the policy and about the relationship between the capacities of the policy and the expectations of individual actors outside or within it. Unless these issues are addressed the CFSP will fail “to achieve common action for the common good” and the EU “will fail to influence significantly the development of any new European security system.”72 As Carl Bildt, the EU’s high representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1995 to 1997, argued, “It is an absolute necessity for the EU to forge a true Common Foreign and Security Policy to enable Europe to take on its responsibilities and develop a partnership primarily with the United States, but increasingly with Russia as well. Only then can the Union play its proper role in the world.”73 The 1996 IGC, which formally began its work at the European Council in Turin on March 29, 1996, and concluded the revision of the Treaty on European Union at the Amsterdam European Council on June 18, 1997, offered the EU member states an opportunity to try to focus on new institutional and operational instruments for giving real substance to European foreign policy. One of the conference’s top priorities was to make the external policies of the EU more coherent, effective, and visible. The CFSP has been improved in the following ways: 1.

2.

Overall consistency is strengthened by enhancing the role of the European Council in: (a) defining the principles of and general guidelines for the common foreign and security policy, including for matters with defense implications; and (b) deciding on common strategies to be implemented by the EU in areas where the member states have important interests in common. Common strategies shall set out their objectives, duration, and the means to be made available by the EU and the member states. A high representative for the CFSP, who will be the secretary general of the European Council, will assist the council and the presidency in CFSP matters. The high representative will also head a policy planning and early warning unit that will be established to provide policy assessments and more focused input into policy formulation. The unit shall consist of personnel drawn from the general secretariat, the member states, the commission, and the WEU. The tasks of the unit shall include the following: (a) monitoring and analyzing developments in areas relevant to the CFSP; (b) providing assessments of the EU’s foreign and security

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policy interests and identifying areas where the CFSP could focus in the future; (c) providing timely assessments and early warning of events or situations that may have significant repercussions for the EU’s foreign and security policy, including potential political crises; and (d) producing, at the request of either the European Council or the presidency or on its own initiative, argued policy options papers to be presented under the responsibility of the presidency as a contribution to policy formulation in the European Council, and which may contain analyses, recommendations, and strategies for the CFSP. Decision-making procedures and foreign policy capacity will be significantly improved in four ways: 1.

2.

3. 4.

While unanimity continues to be the rule for all fundamental policy decisions, the risk of deadlock is reduced by allowing for a constructive abstention procedure, whereby a member state abstaining in this way would not be obliged to apply a particular decision. Qualified majority voting will be the rule for decisions under the CFSP that implement any common strategies agreed unanimously by the European Council, or which implement joint actions or common positions that have already been adopted. A so-called “emergency brake” is provided that would allow any member state to oppose the adoption of a decision for important and stated reasons of national policy. In such cases, those member states that consider it important for the EU to act could, if they represent a qualified majority, refer the matter to the European Council for decision by unanimity. The EU will have the capacity to negotiate and conclude international agreements on foreign policy matters. The EU’s security and defense objectives have been reformulated to take account of developments in this area since the TEU was negotiated. The so-called Petersberg tasks (i.e., humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping, and crisis management) are explicitly mentioned in the TEU as aspects of the EU’s security policy thereby underlining the EU’s desire to develop its action in these areas more effectively, while ensuring that all member states are involved as far as possible in their implementation. The treaty provisions will enhance cooperation between the EU and the

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WEU, in particular in order to provide the operational capability to undertake tasks such as those mentioned above. The emphasis has been on taking steps to ensure more effective, practical results. The possibility of the EU’s CFSP evolving into a common defense, along with the integration of the WEU into the EU, may be envisaged. Any such moves would require a decision by the European Council, which would also be subject to agreement by member states in accordance with their national constitutional requirements. As Stephan de Spiegeleire wrote, “All of these changes certainly do not represent the ultimate solution to the security challenges facing Europe, but what is clear is that governments will now have much less leeway in pleading institutional imperfections as a justification for inaction.”74 The jury remains out on whether the changes to CFSP agreed at Amsterdam will provide for a more effective foreign policy. The decisive factor will remain the political will of the member states to use the instruments they have established.75

Notes 1. In brief, the EU created by the Treaty on European Union comprises three pillars. The first amends the EEC, ECSC, and Euratom treaties and formally names them the European Community. The second pillar concerns Common Foreign and Security Policy, and the third covers justice and home affairs. The objectives of the CFSP are laid down in Article J.1.2. These objectives are to be realized through “systematic cooperation” (Article J.2) and “joint action” (Article J.3). Article J.2 constitutes basically a continuation of the European Political Cooperation (EPC). However, it modestly enhances Article 30.2 of the SEA by being couched in a mandatory form. Article J.3 represents a significant and important expansion of the EPCs level of commitment and range of policy instruments. Under Article J.3.1 the Council of Ministers on the basis of general guidelines from the European Council decides unanimously whether a foreign policy issue should be the subject of joint action, its specific scope, the EU’s general and specific objectives in carrying out such action, its duration and its means, procedures, and conditions for its implementation. However, it is the following proviso (Article J.3.2) that breached new grounds by providing for the possibility of qualified majority voting every time the specific details for implementing joint action has to be taken. Once a joint action is adopted it commits the member states in the positions they adopt and in the conduct of their activity (Article J.3.4). Article J.4 constitutes a major breakthrough in the taboo area of defense by extending Article 30.6 of the SEA to “include all questions related to the security of the Union, including the eventual framing of

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a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence” (Article J.4.1). The CFSP provisions call for the Western European Union (WEU), “which is an integral part of the development of the Union, to elaborate and implement decisions and actions of the Union which have defence implications.” With respect to the inclusion for the first time of a defense dimension, three points have to be made. First, defense issues are not subject to qualified majority voting (Article J.4.3). Second, CFSP must respect any existing obligations on member states in the NATO framework (Article J.4.4). Third, CFSP should not impede the development of bilateral defense cooperation within the WEU or NATO (Article J.4.5). The remaining Articles of Title V endorse marginal adjustments of the EPC’s practice. Maastricht provides for a rejuvenated Council of Ministers; the European Commission is granted a nonexclusive right of initiative (Article J.8.3); the EPC secretariat is merged with the Council of Ministers’ secretariat-general; the role of the presidency is confirmed while the Troika procedure is formally recognized; and the 48-hour emergency procedure is modified. 2. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Consequences of the End of the Cold War for International Security,” in New Dimensions in International Security, Part I, Adelphi Paper 265 (London: IISS/Brassey’s, Winter 1991–92), p. 3. 3. Adrian Hyde-Price, European Security Beyond the Cold War: Four Scenarios for the Year 2010 (London: RIIA/Sage, 1991), p. 49. 4. David Allen and Michael Smith, “The European Community in the New Europe: Bearing the Burden of Change,” International Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, Winter 1991–1992, p. 3. 5. David Allen, “West European Responses to Change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” in Reinhardt Rummel (ed.), Toward Political Union: Planning a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the European Community (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), p. 118. 6. Karel de Gucht and Stephan Keukeleire, “The European Security Architecture: The Role of the European Community in Shaping a New European Geopolitical Landscape,” Studia Diplomatica, Vol. 44, No. 6, 1991, p. 43. 7. David Allen, “The European Community and the New Europe,” in Dennis Swan (ed.), The Single European Market and Beyond: A Study of the Wider Implications of the Single European Act (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 233. 8. Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 25. 9. Allen, “West European Responses,” p. 121. 10. Eckart Arnold, “German Foreign Policy and Unification,” International Affairs, Vol. 67, No. 3, 1991, p. 455. 11. Michael J.Baun, An Imperfect Union: The Maastricht Treaty and the New Politics of European Integration (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), p. 39. 12. Ibid. 13. Barbara Lippert and Rosalind Stevens-Strühmann, German Unification and EC Integration: German and British Perspectives (London: Pinter for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993), p. 11. 14. Holly Wyatt-Walter, The European Community and the Security Dilemma, 1979–92 (London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s, 1997), p. 162.

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15. Edward Mortimer, European Security after the Cold War, Adelphi Paper 271 (London: IISS/Brassey’s, 1992), p. 9. 16. Baun, An Imperfect Union, p. 36. 17. Roy Pryce, “The Treaty Negotiations,” in Andrew Duff, John Pinder, and Roy Pryce (eds.), Maastricht and Beyond: Building the European Union (London and New York: Routledge for The Federal Trust, 1994), p. 37. 18. Baun, An Imperfect Union, p. 28. 19. Time, April 22, 1991, pp. 28–38. 20. Time, October 30, 1989, pp. 58–61. 21. Ibid. 22. The Economist, November 25, 1989, p. 58. 23. Baun, An Imperfect Union, p. 37. 24. Thatcher left Strasbourg after the EC had decided to hold an IGC on EMU but not until after the 1990 West German election. Thatcher said that Kohl, with French assistance, had fixed a date which “suits his election but not mine…. Kohl did not want the IGC on EMU on the political agenda until after the 1990 German election because he feared that voters might see EMU as a potential barrier to, or distraction from, reunification.” Allen, “West European Responses,” pp. 122, 126. 25. Cited in Hugh Miall, Shaping the New Europe (London: RIIA/Pinter, 1993), p. 82. 26. Baun, An Imperfect Union, p. 41. 27. Time, December 18, 1989. 28. Jacques Delors, “European Integration and Security,” Survival, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1991, p. 100. 29. Curt Gasteyger, “European Security and the New Arc of Crisis: Paper II,” in New Dimensions in International Security, Part I, Adelphi Paper 265 (London: IISS/Brassey’s, Winter 1991–1992), p. 73. 30. George Joffe, “European Security and the New Arc of Crisis: Paper I,” in New Dimensions in International Security, Part I, Adelphi Paper 265 (London: IISS/ Brassey’s, Winter 1991–1992), p. 54. 31. According to Francois Mitterrand, “We [the Twelve member states] have not yet shown that Europe really exists,” Time, October 22, 1990. 32. Lippert and Stevens-Strühmann, German Unification, p. 115. 33. De Gucht and Keukeleire, “The European Security Architecture,” p. 61. 34. Michael J.Brenner, “EC: Confidence Lost,” Foreign Policy, Vol. 91, 1993, p. 31. 35. Warren Zimmermann, “The Last Ambassador: A Memoir of the Collapse of Yugoslavia,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 2, 1995, p. 15. 36. Georg Schild, “The USA and Civil War in Bosnia,” Aussenpolitik, Vol. 47, No. 1, 1996, p. 23. See also David Gompert, “How to Defeat Serbia,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, 1994, pp. 30–47. 37. Branko Pribicevic, “Relations with the Superpowers,” in Sabrina Petra Ramet and Ljubisa S.Adamovich (eds.), Beyond Yugoslavia: Politics, Economics, and Culture in a Shattered Community (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), pp. 342– 343. 38. R.Craig Nation, “Italy and Ethnic Strife in Central and Southeastern Europe,” in Vojtech Mastny (ed.), Italy and East Central Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), p. 63. See also V.P.Gagnon, Jr., “Yugoslavia: Prospects for

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39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

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Stability,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 3, 1991, pp. 17–35; James Gow, “Deconstructing Yugoslavia,” Survival Vol. 31, No. 4, 1991, pp. 291–311; Cvijeto Job, “Yugoslavia’s Ethnic Furies,” Foreign Policy, Vol. 92, 1993, pp. 52–74; loan Pascu, “Romania and the Yugoslav Conflict,” European Security, Vol. 3, 1994, pp. 153–161; Sabrina Petra Ramet, “War in the Balkans,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 71, No. 4, 1992, pp. 79–98; Michael Wilson, “The Balkans,” in Kevin Clements and Robin Ward (eds.), Building International Community: Cooperating for Peace, Case Studies (Canberra: Allen & Unwin in association with the Peace Research Centre RSPAS, ANU, ACT, 1994), pp. 140–162. For an excellent account of the EU’s inexperience and ineffectiveness in negotiating cease-fires, see James Gow and James D.D.Smith, Peace-making, Peace-keeping: European Security and the Yugoslav Wars, London Defence Studies 11 (London: Brassey’s for the Centre for Defence Studies, 1992). Josef Joffe, “The New Europe: Yesterday’s Ghosts,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 1, 1992–1993, p. 31. Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 2nd ed., p. 244. See James Gow, “The Use of Coercion in the Yugoslav Crisis,” The World Today, November 1992, pp. 198–202. Stuart Kaufman, “The Irresistible Force and the Imperceptible Object: The Yugoslav Breakup and Western Policy,” Security Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter 1994–1995, p. 309. As one senior UN official engaged in the handling of the Yugoslavia breakup observed, “Force is the ultimate arbiter and any diplomatic policy that does not rely on carrots and sticks will not really get you very far. Without a club in the closet, without a credible threat of force, policy becomes bluff, bluster.” Herbert Okun, UN Special Adviser and Deputy-Head of Civilian Affairs UNPROFOR, Interview, “Diplomacy and Deceit” Channel 4 TV, August 2, 1993, Media Transcription Service, Bloody Bosnia, MTS/M2578, WPS, p. 4, quoted in James Gow, “Nervous Bunnies: The International Community and the Yugoslav War of Dissolution, the Politics of Military Intervention in a Time of Change,” in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Military Intervention in European Conflicts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 24. Time, September 30, 1991, pp. 18–20. Looking upon the weapons at the EC’s disposal, Delors was of the opinion that the EC had only three: public opinion, the threat to recognize Slovenia and Croatia, and economic sanctions. European Parliament, Directorate-General for Information and Public Relations, September 9–13, 1991, PE 152.616/rev, p. 17. In Simon Nuttall’s view the institutional significance of the observer mission for the EU internally has been seriously underestimated. “Quite apart from its contribution to the Community’s diplomatic efforts, here was an international force, wearing a white uniform and the blue brassard of the European Community. The mission was recognizable as the embodiment of the Community on the ground in just the same way as the UN troops were recognizable by their blue berets as the embodiment of the United Nations on the ground; and this at a time when the Community had still not succeeded, after 40 years, in reaching agreement on a common armed European force displaying the same insignia.” Simon Nuttall, “The EC and Yugoslavia—Deus

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ex Machina or Machina sine Deo?” Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 32, Annual Review, 1994, p. 22. 47. James Gow and Lawrence Freedman, “Intervention in a Fragmenting State: The Case of Yugoslavia,” in Nigel S.Rodley (ed.), To Loose the Bands of Wickedness: International Intervention in Defence of Human Rights (London: Brassey’s, 1992), p. 130. 48. Martin Holland, European Community Integration (London: Pinter, 1993), p. 136. 49. Nuttall, “The EC and Yugoslavia,” p. 12. 50. John Newhouse, “The Diplomatic Round: Dodging the Problem,” The New Yorker, August 24, 1992, p. 61. 51. Catherine Guicherd, “The Hour of Europe: Lessons from the Yugoslav Conflict,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 17, 1993, p. 164. 52. European Political Cooperation, the predecessor of CFSP, was established on October 27, 1970, when the foreign ministers of the EC adopted the Luxembourg Report. EPC was the process of information, consultation, and common action among the 12 member states of the EC. The key features of EPC were: a commitment to consult and cooperate on foreign policy issues and to work toward coordinated positions and joint actions; a commitment to consult before adopting national positions on foreign policy issues of general interest; decision making by consensus among governments; the confidentiality of consultations; and direct contacts between foreign ministries, allowing speed and flexibility. 53. Nuttall, “The EC and Yugoslavia,” p. 24. 54. Willem van Eekelen, “WEU Prepares the Way for New Missions,” NATO Review, October 1993, pp. 19–23. 55. Nuttall, “The EC and Yugoslavia,” p. 25. 56. Christopher Hill, “EPC’s Performance in Crises,” in Rummel, Toward Political Union, pp. 135–146. 57. Agence Europe, January 10, 1992, No. 5643. 58. Douglas Hurd, “Europe Looks East,” Winston Churchill Memorial Lecture, Luxembourg, March 14, 1996. 59. As Jacques Santer, president of the European Commission, emphasized, “The general objectives laid down in Article J.1(2) centred as they are on the concept of identity on the international scene (Article B), represent a direct continuation of the entire history of the European Communities, and they constitute a first positive result.” See Jacques Santer, “The European Union’s Security and Defence Policy: How to Avoid Missing the 1996 Rendez-vous,” NATO Review, November 1995, p. 4. 60. Giovanni Jannuzzi, “The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and Its Contribution to Global Security,” NATO Review, December 1994–January 1995, p. 15. 61. Santer, “The European Union’s,” p. 6. 62. Edelgard Mahant, “Foreign Policy and European Identity,” History of European Ideas, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1995, p. 490. 63. Juliet Lodge, “The EC and Yugoslavia,” in Holly Cullen, Dino Kritsiotis, and Nicholas Wheeler (eds.), Politics and Law of Former Yugoslavia, European Community Research Unit 3 (Hull: University of Hull, 1993), p. 2. 64. Christopher Hill, “The Capability-Expectations Gap, or Conceptualizing

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65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

73.

74. 75.

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Europe’s International Role,” Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, 1993, pp. 305–328. Susan L.Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1995), pp. 19–20. Jacques Delors, “European Unification and European Security,” in European Security after the Cold War, Part I, Adelphi Paper 284 (London: IISS/ Brassey’s, 1994), p. 13. Nuttall, “The EC and Yugoslavia,” p. 25. David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (London: Victor Gollancz, 1995), pp. 3–4. Stephanie Anderson, “EU, NATO and CSCE Responses to the Yugoslav Crisis: Testing Europe’s New Security Architecture,” European Security, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995, p. 340. Guicherd, “The Hour of Europe,” pp. 165, 171. Joffe, “The New Europe,” pp. 33–34. Juliet Lodge, “From Civilian Power to Speaking with a Common Voice: The Transition to a CFSP,” in Juliet Lodge (ed.), The European Community and the Challenge of the Future (London: Pinter, 1993), 2nd ed., p. 248. Carl Bildt, “The Global Lessons of Bosnia,” in Carl Bildt, Claude Cheysson, Bill Jordan, Lawrence B.Lindsey, Loukas Tsoukalis, Franz Vranitzky (eds.), What Global Role for the EU? (Brussels: The Philip Morris Institute for Public Policy Research, September 1997), pp. 29–30. Stephan de Spiegeleire, “Has Godot Finally Arrived?” WEU Institute for Security Studies Newsletter, Vol. 21, October 1997, p. 1. Fraser Cameron, “The Future of European Security: Perspectives after Amsterdam, Madrid and Agenda 2000,” Paper presented at the Halki International Seminars, Halki, Greece, September 1997.

CHAPTER 14

The OSCE: Nonmilitary Dimensions of Cooperative Security in Europe1 Cathal J.Nolan

From its relatively humble founding at Helsinki in 1973–1975 by thirtythree European countries plus the United States and Canada, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has grown into an impressive set of formal institutions and expanded to include 55 member states. It is no longer simply a conference in semipermanent session, dedicated to easing tensions in Europe that stemmed from the Cold War. It is now a full-fledged international organization whose area of declared security interest spans Eurasia. The OSCE also seeks to provide security in the broadest sense, going beyond its core military aspects to include cooperation on economic, social, and human rights issues that its charter documents argue are the essential underpinnings of cooperative security and stable international relations. Yet, for most of its first two decades the OSCE/CSCE 2 was not even a formal international organization. Instead, it was a drawn-out process of political, social, and normative negotiations that took the form of irregular, multilateral conferencing. During much of that period it was also a forum of direct ideological confrontation between East and West, cloaked in what appeared to some to be nearly meaningless rhetoric about common security ambitions and “confidence and security building measures” 299

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(CSBMs). 3 Still deeper hypocrisy, or worse, was seen by critics in the original CSCE proclamation of aspirations toward elevated respect for human rights standards, supposedly shared among the conference’s three major groups: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states, Neutral and Non-Aligned Nations (NAN), and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), or Soviet bloc, states. To appreciate how far the OSCE has come, as well as to gauge the distance it has yet to travel, it is essential to review its history since it was founded as the CSCE in 1975. During the early years of prolonged Soviet bloc obstruction within the CSCE, the most severe critics in the West tended to dismiss the process as an anachronistic curiosity, even a throwback to supposedly discredited methods of closed diplomacy, without connection to real-world issues or interests. Yet, even during its most stagnant years, populist dismissals of the CSCE as a mere sideshow of the Cold War—or as just another talkshop for pampered, distant diplomats—were mistaken on at least two levels. First, but also least obvious, such dismissals underestimated the real political consequences of words, including the aspirational and standard-setting kind, as both a catalyst and a currency of change via persuasion. Second, and more important, some critics failed to appreciate the long-term importance of the survival of the CSCE, and underestimated its potential for institutional evolution and the expansion of its agenda. Hardline American critics of détente, in particular, did not appreciate how important it was to Western Europeans to continue dialogue across a range of issues with the Soviet bloc states. And few, if any, appreciated how beneficial it would prove to have a cooperative security forum in place when the day finally came that the Berlin Wall fell, and European security had to be fundamentally reconfigured. In fact, the CSCE would eventually play a role in drawing the Cold War to a peaceful and orderly close. On the other hand, admirers of the CSCE tended to exaggerate its potential importance and overstated its actual contributions in the 1970s and 1980s. Since the end of the Cold War, some admirers have uncritically attributed a major, rather than supporting, role to the CSCE in precipitating the end of the Cold War. Others have depicted the OSCE as the main support for a new “architecture” of European—and even Eurasian—security, based on the putative acceptance of liberalinternationalist ideals and values among its disparate member states. This essay argues for a more balanced view of the evolution of the OSCE. It concentrates on the most controversial and difficult to implement, but in important respects also the most fundamental, of the three Helsinki “baskets”: the human dimension of security.4 It examines

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the evolution of the CSCE’s standard-setting and monitoring roles in the areas of human and minority rights, the area in which the least progress was made during the first decade of the process, but also where change was most profound and far-reaching, when it finally came, in its wider political and security effects. Thus, the focus throughout the essay is on the slow, unsteady, but ultimately impressive shift of “Basket III” issues from the ignored periphery to near the center of the negotiating process, and their emergence as the basis for a comprehensive political settlement of the Cold War in Europe. Reflecting the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union into some 20 successor states, by the middle of 1997 the OSCE had expanded to include 55 nations. Together, these states span the Eurasian land mass, adding as well the two NATO-member, North American democracies of Canada and the United States. This sudden expansion was unforeseen by the original signatories. Its most important effect was to refocus the CSCE beyond primary concern for Moscow’s relations with Western Europe, to a new concentration on the newly independent states of Central Asia and beyond.5 This change in membership happened more or less automatically, via the mechanism of new state succession to existing treaties and other legal obligations that had been incurred by extinct states, namely the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The initial response to this vast, unexpected geopolitical burden was the promulgation of a heady rhetorical claim within official OSCE circles that held the organization now stretched in both aspiration and mandate “from Vancouver to Vladivostok.” However exaggerated this rhetoric is, there can be no doubt that the new OSCE has in fact undergone a fundamental and dramatic shift in both membership and agenda since the preparatory and founding conferences of 1972–1975. How may one make sense of this evolution in institutional structure, issues, and membership? First, it must be understood that the changing forms taken by the OSCE, and the quality of its ultimate contribution to security and cooperation, continue largely to reflect the ongoing security problems and context of East-West relations. But it is important also to understand that genuine political surprises arose along the way. Among the most prominent of these unexpected developments, neither the most dedicated and liberal diplomats nor the most conservative Eastern bloc governments anticipated the degree to which human rights issues would move from the periphery to the center of the CSCE process. Soviet leaders, in particular, repeatedly and significantly underestimated the ultimate importance of Basket III issues, not merely for their Western negotiating partners but

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also for the evolution of CSCE negotiations, and even for the fate of the Soviet empire itself. Western critics, too, thought the initial declaration of support for human rights a paper promise, that would have little or no impact on Soviet behavior or the long-term outcome of the CSCE process, which they tended to see as confined to military issues, with some connection to economic incentives to be offered the Soviets. At the insistence of Western and some Neutral and Non-Aligned states, from its inception the CSCE kept up a unique emphasis on humanitarian and minority rights issues—or the so-called “human dimension” of regional security. At first, deep skepticism seemed justified, as CSCE member states compartmentalized these concerns in “Basket III” of the 1975 Final Act. This separation from military issues (Basket I) and economic links (Basket II) satisfied the Soviet bloc’s interest in accepting the unavoidable (Western insistence on a human dimension to the agreement), while still marginalizing the human rights issue in East-West security talks. But even before the great events of 1989–1991, the CSCE had begun to shift focus. Over time, state-to-state discussions moved the process from pro forma consideration of humanitarian issues on the basis of traditional, interstate relations to a new consensus that genuinely viewed regional security as ultimately resting on mutual respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals, as well as nations. In 1990, CSCE member states formally codified this idea in the historic Charter of Paris. Henceforth, it was declared, the pursuit of pan-European security would take place on the basis of declared common values and mutually enforced concern for democracy and human rights. This was a remarkable change from the early years of ideological confrontation and institutional stagnation. How did it come about? And what was the relationship of the CSCE’s notion of the “human dimension of security” to the end of the Cold War?

The Origins of the Human Dimension The CSCE process arose from several sources. As early as the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union called for a separate “European” security conference and treaty that would exclude the United States from regional security arrangements. Moscow repeated this call periodically throughout the 1960s and into the early years of détente at the start of the 1970s. What the Soviets clearly were after was some form of legal sanction for the post– World War II territorial gains they had made, including several

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annexations that returned Soviet borders to their expanded, 1940 configuration. Of course, this sanction would also have legitimized their postwar domination of Eastern Europe. In addition, Moscow wanted Western acceptance of the legitimacy of their client state in East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR). Finally, the Soviets hoped that a “separate peace” would split the United States from Western Europe, and especially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), in the areas of collective defense and other security arrangements.6 However, most Western European states responded to the Soviet Union’s interest in a “pan-European” security settlement with counterproposals to link military aspects of regional security to desired economic ties and benefits, as well as more fundamental humanitarian and human rights issues.7 Moscow wanted to overcome trade and technology barriers while confirming and reinforcing political divisions between Europe’s two great camps. But the Western states—albeit, to varying degrees—saw the breakdown of ideological walls and the progressive extension of democratic values as a necessary precondition, and a long-term guarantee, of any regional security arrangement that went beyond the firm promise of the United States to defend Europe that was the core of the NATO alliance. Thus, from the outset a basic tension existed between the Soviet emphasis on arms-control issues, reducing military tensions, and weakening ties between the United States and Western Europe, and the Western states’ insistence on linking security talks to Soviet interest in trade and technology, as well as the more troublesome issue of respect for basic human rights within the Soviet bloc itself. This central tension over the proper political bases for building trust and confidence that might eventually extend to the security arena was profound. Indeed, it precluded even preliminary negotiations on a comprehensive security settlement for nearly fifteen years. It was not until the advent of U.S.-Soviet détente— and, most directly, the key normalization initiatives of West Germany’s Ostpolitik at the beginning of the 1970s—that the interests of both sides in the Cold War coalesced around acceptance of a general conference on regional security in Europe. Preparatory talks began in November 1972, leading to preliminary agreement to discuss all three areas of CSCE concern—military security (arms control and CSBMs), economic cooperation, and human rights and contact—at the main conference, set for Helsinki. It was at this point that humanitarian concerns were first lumped together and referred to as “Basket III” issues. This separation from the military and economic aspects of the talks was due partly to consistent Soviet rejection of the

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West’s argument that the three areas of negotiation were intimately interrelated. But it also reflected a lingering division between the European Community (EC) states and the United States. The former saw Basket III as the most important wedge into (and possibly one day dividing) the Soviet bloc, because it promised not merely short-term easing of tensions but the eventual reform and basic transformation of the Soviet system. Meanwhile, under President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the United States held back from the multilateral conference approach to the Soviet Union in favor of direct bilateral contacts and summit negoti-ations.8 Hence, it was Canada and the European members of NATO, with some assistance from the smaller democracies of the NAN group (e.g., Sweden), that pushed for strong linkage between Soviet interest in acquiring legal legitimacy for postwar borders, and progress in implementing Basket III principles. This connection was embedded in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. The Final Act imposed no legally binding commitments on its signatories. Instead, it enumerated supposedly common normative commitments, and set in motion a negotiating process to see if these might be advanced and implemented over time. As might be expected, it was not just the Soviet bloc that wanted to avoid the legally binding obligations of a treaty. For different reasons, the United Kingdom and the United States, most prominently among the Western powers, also preferred rhetorical to formal legal pledges. Even so, ten basic principles were hammered out and agreed upon. The first six concerned traditional security matters and used traditional language; they also spoke most directly to Soviet interests: (1) sovereign equality of member states; (2) an end to the threat or use of force against other signatories; (3) “inviolability of frontiers”; (4) territorial integrity; (5) peaceful settlement of disputes; (6) nonintervention in members’ internal affairs (this sixth principle also spoke to Western and NAN interest in denying legitimacy to Soviet bloc interventions, such as that in Czechoslovakia in 1968, that might again be taken under cover of the Brezhnev Doctrine). The next two Helsinki principles were unequivocally Western in inspira-tion and origin, and together constituted the effective linkage of human dimension issues with all other aspects of security as essential components of peace to be pursued under the CSCE process: (7) “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief”; and (8) “equal rights and selfdetermina-tion of nations and peoples.” The final two principles were pro forma in-cantations of members’ collective intention to keep and apply the agreement: (9) “cooperation among states;” and (10) “fulfillment in good

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faith of obligations under international law.”9 More specific agreements were divided into the various components of the Three Baskets on military, economic, and human dimension issues. The West obtained a great deal from the Final Act, although this was not necessarily appreciated at the time. Rather than decoupling the United States from Western Europe, Moscow had to acknowledge that the United States’ role in European security was legitimate; it even came to see this role as in some ways conducive to Soviet security (for instance, as a constraint on a resurgent West Germany and as a barrier to Anglo/French nuclear cooperation). The long-standing and highly dangerous tension over Berlin and the disputed status of the two Germanies was further eased, and agreement was achieved on a series of CSBMs designed to support and extend détente. 10 Also achieved was formal acceptance by all signatories of the right of member states to comment directly on one another’s human rights and other practices, as these pertained to common Basket III commitments. What did the West give up? Despite a great deal of hyperbole on the political right over the “betrayal” of Eastern Europe, such as the frequent gross mischaracterization of the Helsinki Accords as “another Yalta,” the Final Act did not grant Moscow the full de jure recognition of postwar boundaries that it so badly wanted. Instead, the Final Act carefully qualified the principle of territorial inviolability with the innovative notion that frontiers could indeed be altered, but only by peaceful means.11 It is true that the Accords required West Germany to postpone reunification (which was not then seen as imminent, in any case), and that they tacitly accepted the continuing existence of a Soviet sphere of domination in Eastern Europe. But such concessions were to reality, rather than to the Soviet Union: They acknowledged that early German unification was unlikely, and recognized the apparent solidity of the Soviet bloc. Moreover, this was all unofficially spelled out in the United States in the “Sonnenfeldt Doctrine,” which called for an “organic” relationship to be cultivated among the Soviet Union and its Eastern European client states.12 Beyond recognition of these geopolitical realities, the Final Act—and indeed, the whole CSCE process—represented a sophisticated new understanding of regional security. It was quickly appreciated by Western Europeans, and somewhat later by the two North American members of NATO, that while the Western military alliance was required to deny the Soviet Union any opportunity for direct aggression, it was just as important to limit the motives for belligerent action by Moscow.13 Thus, among the most lasting achievements of the CSCE founding conference at

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Helsinki, as matters have turned out, was formal collective recognition of the liberal-inter nationalist thesis that permanent security in Europe must be based on the free flow of persons and ideas—that is, that long-term security ultimately rested on respect for basic human rights and the dignity of individuals, and progressive extension of the mores and institutions of representative government. That notion was, of course, a fundamental threat to the status quo within the Soviet bloc. As such, it constituted a more effective diplomatic thrust than all the earlier, empty talk of “liberation” of the “captive nations” of the East.14 Through formal introduction of this idea into an accord the Soviets badly wanted for other reasons, the Western powers successfully turned the long-term focus of the CSCE process onto internal preconditions for security, and thereby pointed directly to Soviet and Eastern bloc political repression as a source of legitimate and persistent security concern. The Soviets, preoccupied with territorial questions, and to a lesser extent with access to trade and technology, apparently never grasped this point (had they done so, it is safe to say that the Final Act almost certainly would never have been approved by Moscow). As one keen observer has put it, the Communist old guard in Moscow fundamentally “misjudged the real thrust of Helsinki: the destabilizing potential of Basket III for domestic politics.”15 It is all the more ironic, therefore, that the reaction to the Final Act in the United States ranged from lukewarm, to indifferent, to distantly hostile. For instance, leading presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and Henry “Scoop” Jackson both opposed the Final Act, and there was widespread editorial criticism of President Gerald Ford’s decision to travel to Helsinki to sign the document.16 During three decades of confrontation before 1975, both sides in the Cold War had more consolidated their respective spheres of influence than challenged that of the other side. But agreement on the Final Act led to a significantly different phase in the European theater of the Cold War, at least in its manifestation as a battle of ideas about political legitimacy.17 After 1975 there was a historic—and it may now be confidently said, permanent—shift in the intellectual and political competition between the Soviet bloc and the Western democracies. And the CSCE process was at the center of this change. Henceforth, anti-Soviet rhetoric emanating from the foreign ministries of most NATO countries was to be tempered with talk of “confidence and security building measures” and other legacies of détente. But at the same time, greater efforts were now made by Western European states—joined later in the 1970s and 1980s by Canada and the United States—to use the increasingly salient issue of human rights to

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challenge the fundamental legitimacy, and thereby erode the political viability, of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union itself. True, this erosion of Soviet foundations was to be accomplished most immediately through dangling a carrot of reduced military tension through gradual political accommodation and arms control, and by offering mutually beneficial trade and technology transfers. But the assault on the bases of Soviet power also depended in good measure on a newly offensive, to put it plainly, emphasis on “human dimension” issues; and this went to the very heart of power and claims to legitimacy within the Soviet bloc. In short, the West’s tenacious insistence on linking Basket I initiatives on military security and Basket II economic ties with Basket III humanitarian principles constituted a calculated ideological and political offensive that successfully used the CSCE process to mount an assault against the foundations of the Soviet system.18 For the first time in the history of East-West relations, under the Final Act formal agreement was reached to set up information exchanges on human rights disputes, and allowance was made for diplomatic representations and comments on member states’ compliance with formal CSCE commitments. This would culminate years later in the creation of a permanent “human dimension mechanism,” and in a multiplication of post–Cold War processes for monitoring compliance with CSCE standards. Skeptics who saw the lean years of confrontation in the 1970s and 1980s as a time of stagnation in the CSCE process ultimately would be proved wrong. With the benefit of hindsight, it is today more clearly accurate to say that during the first years of the CSCE process, behind the apparent rock solid facade of the Soviet bloc, there was already underway a dripby-drip erosion of the legitimacy of the Soviet idea and system. The CSCE human dimension agreements both opened the Soviet bloc to external criticism in new ways that the Soviets found difficult to counter, and they greatly encouraged growth of a genuine democratization and reform movement within Soviet bloc states. A crack had been opened in the monolith, and it was steadily widened and deepened by constant exposure to the weathering effects of liberal ideas of universal human rights, popular legitimacy, and respect for the interests of national and ethnic minorities. As noted earlier, this shift was largely unexpected and unforeseen at the time by Soviet negotiators. It also went mostly unnoticed, at first, by higher-level American representatives and policymakers, who in the early to mid-1970s were alternately preoccupied with bilateral approaches to Moscow or distracted by prolonged internal disputes attendant on the

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Watergate crisis and withdrawal from Vietnam. It was, on the other hand, the explicit intention of West German and other European diplomats to move the CSCE process in this direction. It thus bears repeating that the degree to which the West concentrated on pursuit of respect for human rights as a prerequisite for peace was more a product of the emergence of an independent and newly assertive West German foreign policy, and specifically Ostpolitik, than of any early American leadership or initiative. 19 In the late 1970s and early 1980s the United States would embrace this idea wholeheartedly—after all, the notion had deeper roots in American political history and diplomacy than it did even in Western Europe. In fact, in the 1980s American delegates at the CSCE would make the fiercest human dimension criticisms of the Soviets, going beyond what the most assertive Western Europeans then thought advisable.20 Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of Western efforts was a buildup of terrific diplomatic and political pressure on the Soviet system, reinforced by “Helsinki Watch” groups that sprang up in all Eastern bloc countries. In the end, linkage of military restraints and economic benefits to human, political, and minority rights, combined with internal demands for reform that made explicit reference to the Helsinki Accords, contributed significantly to the dissolution of the Soviet empire and idea.21 Between 1989 and 1991 Moscow would have to concede openly, in fact as well as in rhetoric, that regional security negotiations henceforth would not aim at better defining spheres of influence or domination by the superpowers, but at a security community based on wide acceptance of Western principles of human rights, economic liberty, representative governance, and respect for international law.22 The seeds of this eventual ideological surrender were planted in the CSCE at the outset, by the insistence of the Western states that respect for human rights was an essential element of peaceful interstate relations. It was this linkage that led to the breakthrough of considering the domestic conduct of member states as an entirely proper subject of international comment and concern.

From Helsinki I to Helsinki II Within a short time, the Soviets recognized the grave mistake they had made by permitting human contacts and human and minority rights provisions into the Helsinki Accords in 1975. Similarly, previously fierce critics of the CSCE now pounced on the opening that Basket III offered,

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and began to use the multilateral process available to attack the fundamental legitimacy of the Soviet system. This important but underlying development was obscured from public view, however, by nearly a decade of apparent official neglect of the CSCE process among many member states. Over the course of several “follow-up” meetings— from the Belgrade Follow-up in 1978 to the Vienna Follow-up in 1987— the CSCE faded from the center of diplomatic attention it had briefly occupied during the heyday of détente. Inability to make further progress beyond the initial set of accords threatened to become failure to proceed at all, as the CSCE seemed to stagnate year after year. Rather than a means of transcending East-West conflict, the CSCE looked like it might become just another arena for waging ideological and propaganda warfare between the NATO and Warsaw Treaty Organization blocs, with the concerns of non-aligned states relegated to the margins.23 Defenders of continuing the effort pointed out that this was simply part of a more general pattern in East-West relations. And so it seemed, as after 1978 détente was abandoned and the Cold War moved into a newly harsh phase of political contest, and then indirect military confrontation in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and Central America. If the West was disappointed, the Soviets were increasingly chary of a process that offered little beyond what they had achieved already by 1975, which yet held their system publicly accountable for the repressive policies it depended on for survival. For the Soviets, matters worsened during Ronald Reagan’s first term, as the United States began to use the CSCE “reviews of implementation” follow-up conferences more as an ideological cudgel than the diplomatic shaping tool they were intended to be.24 Even West Germany, long a principal supporter of the process, saw the CSCE more as a bridgehead for its own foreign policy into the Eastern bloc than a bridge spanning the gulf between the blocs. To a degree, this mix of indifference and narrow self-interest by the larger players left caretaking of the CSCE process to smaller Western states such as Belgium, Canada, and the Netherlands. The effort of these states to keep the process moving forward was supported by some non-aligned member countries. 25 These nations saw the CSCE as of long-term importance to regional security arrangements, and therefore provided needed diplomatic ballast when either the hostility or the indifference of larger powers threatened to sink the whole project. They kept up this activity despite the fact that during this time extant CSCE commitments were not lived up to even as delegates spoke of negotiating and undertaking new ones. By the mid-1980s the process had reached its

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nadir: The CSCE ceased to move forward in any meaningful way, and became a diplomatic process in search of a purpose. Talks concerning the human dimension made even less progress than the rest of the CSCE in these years. The low point was reached during the tenth anniversary year, at the Ottawa Meeting of Experts on Human Rights in 1985.26 Debate was acrimonious, with each side more intent on swapping accusations about abuse than creating or improving mechanisms for oversight and implementation of existing commitments. Moscow was increasingly defensive. Even aggressive statements by Soviet delegates citing abuses in Western countries were, at base, an effort to deflect attention and thereby contain damage the human rights issue was doing to Soviet prestige. The session concluded without an agreed upon final document. Some analysts maintain that in simply holding the Meeting of Experts the human dimension process was inched ahead a bit more, by virtue of establishing, “beyond doubt, that criticism regarding another state’s human rights record could hardly be construed as interference.”27 But even if true, that was cold comfort at the time to people deeply concerned about the lack of progress—and in some respects, actual retrograde movement—on human rights issues after 10 years of CSCE effort, multiple follow-up conferences, and thousands of hours of multilateral talks. The CSCE did not fade away or dissolve as it might have for the additional reasons that (1) the process provided a kind of creative inertia all its own; (2) it remained a remarkably low-cost operation and did not draw critical fire on the expenses front 28; (3) participation was highly symbolic for most states; and (4) in any event, its very ineffectiveness rendered it mostly harmless. That the CSCE was more a barometer of than a cause of the level of détente between the Soviets and the Western powers was again revealed by the events of 1987–1991. The first real breakthrough of the procedural logjam came at the Vienna Follow-up Meeting in 1987. But that came on the heels of a series of dramatic reversals of Soviet policy and practice that had no direct relation to the CSCE: the beginning or the end of persecution of Soviet dissidents, signaled by release of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner from internal exile; a general easing of emigration restrictions on Soviet Jews; and a genuinely new openness in Soviet foreign policy under Mikhail Gorbachev and, even more so, Eduard Shevardnadze. 29 It was in this broader context of sweeping change within the Eastern bloc that the Western members of the CSCE first resisted, and then seriously entertained, a rather remarkable proposal made by the Soviets—that

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Moscow should play host to a conference dedicated to the human dimension, the very area of CSCE obligation that had so bedeviled EastWest relations over a dozen years. This was the great turning point in the history of the human dimension, and indeed the whole CSCE. The West had long seen the process as one of building bridgeheads for its own values and interests into the Soviet bloc. But once the internal bankruptcy of the Soviet system was almost openly admitted by Moscow, Soviet bloc countries—frequently led by the Soviet Union itself—sought to use the CSCE as a bridge out of their self-imposed isolation and backwardness. In exchange, the West and some NAN nations insisted that the human dimension start to move away from standard-setting activity (few standards remained to be set by that time, in any case), toward ongoing review and open commentary on implementation of the human rights and contacts provisions of the Final Act, and supplementary agreements. 30 It was agreed in early 1989 to press ahead with a meeting on the human dimension in Moscow, as part of instituting an elaborate new “Conference on the Human Dimension” (CHD) mechanism.31 This agreement took nearly two years to arrange and was achieved only after the West extracted significant concessions about markedly improving the “on-the-ground” human rights situation in the Soviet Union. Still, the initiative eventually led to the genuine breakthrough of the “Moscow mechanism” that permitted voluntary requests for CSCE dispatch of human dimension experts or rapporteurs to trouble spots, but also set up the possibility of compulsory rapporteurs should the situation be judged of sufficient gravity to warrant an override of the voluntary mechanism.32 Also, more emphatic normative commitments were obtained in the late 1980s amplifying the core CSCE idea that peace ultimately depended on respect for individual human, as well as minority, rights. Distinguishing between CSCE cause and effect in relation to the end of the Cold War becomes much more difficult at this point. Clearly, internal liberalization within Soviet bloc countries partly drove them toward new openness to the West and relative flexibility over adopting additional human dimension commitments and oversight provisions. But to what degree was the reverse true? Many activists of that day, often found later in government or diplomatic service, remain convinced that the human rights pressure brought to bear at a critical time by the CSCE process and member states was crucially important. They cite the CSCE role in encouraging activism by, and in offering some measure of outside protection to, Soviet bloc non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They

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also point to the deterrent effect of focusing international attention on continuing human and minority rights abuses and problems. 33 Most remarkable, Soviet bloc governments now began to use the CHD mechanism and other CSCE apparatus to comment on one another’s domestic conduct. Within the Soviet Mission to the CSCE, and inside the Soviet foreign ministry itself, such mechanisms provided both tools for advancing domestic reform and validation to reformers in their struggles with holdouts from the ancien régime. No less an authority on this point than Eduard Shevardnadze, then Soviet foreign minister, has written that in these years the CSCE became a centerpiece in the process of evolving Soviet foreign policy and East-West relations.34 With the remarkable events of the latter half of 1989 underway, attention within the CSCE shifted further away from standard-setting toward consolidation of real reform in the East, and genuine normalization of relations between the two formerly hostile military/political blocs. Procedural obstacles that stood for years now toppled with unexpected and exhilarating ease. Such procedural and substantive breakthroughs within the CSCE reflected wider events in the European theater, which also laid the groundwork for a remarkable consensus achieved at the Paris Summit of the CSCE in 1990. At this major summit, the Cold War and NATO/WTO hostility were both formally declared at an end. The “Charter of Paris” that issued from the meeting was the seminal paper in the evolution of the “new CSCE,” as its officials now habitually referred to developments after 1990.35 Most notably, the Eastern European countries ceased to function as a cohesive bloc within the CSCE—including on human and minority rights issues. That revealed lesser but growing differences among NATO countries, especially between the EC on the one hand and the United States on the other. In turn, the effective dissolution of East-West bloc negotiating postures within the CSCE loosened the internal ties of the NAN group, which became less activist and spoke less coherently on key issues than had previously been the case. The formerly distinct negotiations over CSBMs, economics, and the human dimension now came together in ways long spoken of, but never before achieved. Five conferences in quick succession36 confirmed impressive new armscontrol agreements, set up a range of CSBMs in the military field, and strongly reasserted the CSCE doctrine that peace was linked to political (and economic) liberalism and basic rights. Yet even these remarkable conferences and agreements barely kept pace with changes in the wider world. The CSCE was still acting more as a stenographer than an executive of change.

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By the middle of 1991, within the CSCE there was no longer an operating Soviet bloc. Effectively, there was no more center bloc of neutral and non-aligned nations either, as the non-aligned nations took increasingly diverse positions, reflecting the fact that there was no longer a central conflict about which one needed to strike a neutral pose. Only the Western (NATO) states maintained something like their former bloc cohesiveness, but even that caucus group was somewhat more divided than hitherto. More importantly, the era of fundamental ideological division within the CSCE was at an end. It had not been compromised or negotiated out of existence. Instead, and there is no other fair or accurate way to put it, the surrender of one side had been accepted by the other. The core ideas about the interrelatedness of peace, security, human rights, and economic liberty put forward for decades by the Western democracies were explicitly adopted by the CSCE as its own. It is not an exaggeration to say that in this way the human dimension of security now moved to the very center of regional negotiations. The tenor of debate changed accordingly. Where once harangues, charges, and countercharges dominated human dimension and other CSCE meetings, Western delegates now sometimes praised Eastern European or Soviet reformers and reforms, while heads of state or government from Poland and the Czech Republic stood at CSCE summits to condemn communism and praise democracy and the expected wonders of the new marketplaces they were beginning to permit. Western and NAN delegates also made more careful distinctions among those formerly Eastern bloc countries that were genuinely liberalizing (such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and those where repressive elites had done little more than make a change of public name, party uniform, and flag (as in Rumania and Bulgaria). Finally, former Eastern bloc states began to invoke the CHD mechanism in a positive way and not just in ideological counterattack, as had previously been the rule. But for the most part, they remained preoccupied with implementing their own internal reforms. That lone holdout from the CSCE, Albania, finally asked and was given permission to join, though at first only as an observer. And the Baltic states were admitted, proudly and defiantly ahead of the formal breakup of the Soviet Union. This acceptance of the reversal of the Soviet annexations of 1940 occurred with surprising ease, and without formal objection from Moscow. Yet for all that was accomplished in the years 1989–1991, it remained true that the CSCE was for the most part behind the curve of reform. If it was going to become more than marginally relevant to the great changes taking place within individual member states

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and between East and West, everyone agreed, a major reform of the process itself was necessary. It was time to turn to real implementation: mainly unilaterally through internal reform, but aided by multilateral factfinding, conciliation, and good offices. And it was also now time, most participating governments said, to turn what had been an ad-hoc negotiating process into a formal, and permanent, international organization.

From the CSCE to the OSCE The CSCE underwent major reforms in 1992–1994, culminating in what has become known within the organization as “Helsinki II.” Essentially, another series of reform conferences (Helsinki 1992; Rome 1993) accelerated what was already underway as a form of creeping institutionalization: The CSCE ceased to be a conference in permanent session and became, at last, a formal institution. For the first time, truly permanent structures were put into place—a Secretariat in Vienna, an economic office in Prague, a High Commissioner for National Minorities in The Hague, and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in Warsaw, which was specifically devoted to advancing the human dimension. With these structures set up by the end of 1993, the CSCE took the final step and became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on January 1, 1995. The European Union (EU) member countries were especially forceful in pushing for this broadened institutionalization.37 But not all CSCE members welcomed the development. During 1991–1993 Canada and the United States argued for CSCE retention of the flexibility they believed went with looser structures. They accepted formal institutionalization—and attendant budget increases—reluctantly, and only under great pressure from European allies. Institutionalization thus partly reflected the new prominence of the EU, as against NATO, within the Western caucus. But it also resulted from EU bloc’s pronounced penchant for bureaucratization of interstate issues.38 Yet, this institutional adjustment was also a realistic response to the rise in importance of the human dimension within the overall structure of the OSCE in the post–Cold War period. During 1989–1992, East-West military issues faded rapidly from prominence and have since been relegated to other, non-CSCE forums (most notably, NATO’s “partnerships for peace” program). Senior OSCE officials and ambassadors and other

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delegates from a variety of member states expect the human dimension to become the primary focus of the organization.39 The early evidence about how this will work out over time is still mixed. The worst failure, of course, has been the calamity of the war in the former Yugoslavia, where the CSCE early on ran into a stone wall of resistance to its claim to an oversight role and efforts at mediation and human rights monitoring. The situation deteriorated so badly that Serbia (Yugoslavia) was suspended from membership in mid-1993. In 1993– 1994, the question of universality arose as Greece invoked the “consensus rule,” by which the CSCE traditionally operated, to block full membership for Macedonia (to whose flag and name Athens made petulant objection). Macedonia was thus given only observer status, until it was eventually formally admitted in 1995. At the time of this writing, this eventual outcome of the OSCE’s involvement is unclear. But it has taken on an important support role under the “Dayton Agreement on Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Other early evidence concerning the OSCE’s potential new role and effectiveness on matters of regional security is highly encouraging. The record of the High Commissioner for National Minorities is a stellar one, for example. His expertise in preventive diplomacy and good office missions has been called upon by numerous states involved in cross-border ethnic disputes, or which have been criticized for discriminatory practices (e.g., several countries concerning the Roma). There also have been hopeful developments concerning the Baltic states, including at least one request by Russia for ODIHR’s good offices and other assistance in resolving citizenship disputes pertaining to ethnic Russians left in the “near abroad” after 1991.40 OSCE observer and rapporteur missions have been sent into an increasing number of regional trouble spots—from trans-Dniestra (in Moldova) to Latvia, and from Nagorno-Karabakh to Georgia.41 The OSCE chairman-in-chief has several times charged a personal representative with investigative tasks under the so-called Moscow mechanism. For example, by 1997 such personal envoys had proven key to starting CSCE/OSCE missions, and follow-up action in Moldova, Georgia, and Chechnya. On other occasions, top OSCE officials have personally conducted missions. In 1994 the secretary-general toured the five Central Asian members of the organization, and the chairman-in-office visited Sarajevo and Belgrade in the midst of heavy fighting. By mid-1997, a total of nine long-term field missions were established with detailed briefs on conflict prevention and crisis management. For all these missions, the core concepts of the human dimension and encouragement of democracy-building and the

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respect for the rule of law are central to their purpose. Cooperative efforts have also been undertaken with the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), and NATO, in an concerted effort to avoid costly duplication of effort and to share expertise. For example, the OSCE shares information with NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), and has been regularly invited to NACC seminars on regional security. The OSCE also cooperates with NATO and the EU through “sanctions assistance missions,” concerning enforcement of sanctions against Serbia. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali publicly welcomed the OSCE’s willingness to take on human rights observer and other missions within its region; and the OSCE has observer status at the UN.42 Even Japan, which asked for and was granted observer status, as early as 1994 expressed an interest in assisting OSCE efforts at conflict resolution and preventive diplomacy in the Balkans, and perhaps elsewhere. 43 In addition to these human dimension initiatives, the OSCE continued to pursue conflict resolution on military matters under such instruments as the “Vienna mechanism on unusual military activities” 44 and the on serious emergency situations under a third protocol often referred to as “the Berlin mechanism.”45 Of course, larger states always played a preeminent role in the CSCE, and this will continue to be the case within the OSCE. The main players have always been the Soviet Union (Russia after December 25, 1991), the United States, and the European Community (European Union after January 1, 1994). But smaller states have played, and continue to play, a significant role as well. Within the Western camp midsized democracies have been among the most active delegations, and have at times been influential beyond their relative weight in other forums. For instance, Canada was highly active from the start, well ahead of the elevated United States interest in the CSCE that developed toward the end of the 1970s. Canadian delegations were especially engaged—and somewhat uncharacteristically, also highly confrontational—in the 1980s. The Belgians and Dutch were prominent players within the Western camp in the 1970s and 1980s, as were the Swedes within the NAN group. However, since the end of the Cold War these states, too, have realigned within the OSCE. For instance, Canada accepted a lower profile as other small Western states with which it once tacitly allied, such as Sweden, began to more closely coordinate policy with the EU bloc. Also, since the Maastricht Treaty promised a common EU foreign and defense policy, delegations from smaller Western European democracies increasingly submerged public differences within an EU front that was in turn

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dominated by the larger EU countries. Meanwhile, the United States also increasingly acted separately, in its capacity as a great power with distinct bilateral relationships and interests beyond the OSCE. 46 On the other hand, the newly independent nations of Eastern Europe (especially Poland), and some of the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), turned to the OSCE as a principal forum within which to address their new security concerns, including those regarding Russia. Meanwhile, partly to reduce the role played by NATO, Russia also indicated that it might want to develop the OSCE as the main European political and diplomatic body dealing with regional security. During what were often headily optimistic days about the future of regional security in Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was encouraging that the OSCE seemed to recognize realistic limits to its role and commitments—and this in spite of rhetorical hubris to the contrary, such as in its claim to speak on security issues “from Vancouver to Vladivostok.” Thus, the OSCE has not in general tried to enforce mere legal remedies upon miscreant or disputatious states—remedies that would most likely be rejected and lead to sustained confrontation between the OSCE and the targeted state. Instead, it tended to move diplomatically only when a political consensus was reached on a given issue. To critics, and perhaps even to insiders at times, this may appear paralytic. But it probably is more fairly and accurately seen as far-sighted and prudent. In addition, the OSCE has resisted efforts by some nonparticipating states to draw it into extraregional issues, although it has pioneered a special relationship with several sets of countries such as the Mediterranean states. The OSCE also rejected an early, secretive approach by “Northeast Asian countries”—as one secretariat official put it to the author, in guarded tones of artificial mystery—for mediation assistance on resolving “a longstanding peninsular disagreement.” 47 The organization also managed to stay out of the Middle East peace process, despite the interest of some involved countries to draw it in.48 In short, the OSCE has moved toward a definition of its role in regional security that looks to the human dimension as a form of preventive diplomacy at its most fundamental level, rather than to a direct role in conflict management. It already has in place a variety of formal and informal “mechanisms” that can work well, if they are both seen and used by member states in a nonadversarial role. The OSCE will likely enjoy success if it continues to concentrate on sustaining the consolidation of Europe’s new democracies, and more tolerant and law-respecting interstate relations throughout the region. It may have an additional role to play in economic transformation of the

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former command economies of the East, in which direction it is drawn by the legacy of “Basket II” issues. But it might be argued that the OSCE should emphasize protection of civil, political, and especially ethnic minority rights as a means of preventive diplomacy, leaving economic arrangements to be decided where they will be decided anyway—by national governments in their dealings with the marketplace, regional economic associations, and international lending agencies. The OSCE is at its best when doing the normative work that underlies successful diplomacy—that is, when building acceptance of shared norms, most notably respect for the rule of law and representative institutions, and promoting human and minority rights. It is most effective not when it tries to insert itself directly as a mediator into ongoing conflicts, but when it makes consensus efforts to foresee and prevent new ones from breaking out. The OSCE has not merely survived the end of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union and empire, and a massive expansion of its membership and demands on its attention and resources; it has thrived under these conditions. If its members continue to move prudently and slowly, in face of the rush of events and attendant demands for instant solutions to ingrained problems, it may yet develop into a principal vehicle for one day constructing genuine European security on a liberalinternationalist basis, that incorporates shared respect for human and minority rights, the idea of representative government, and adherence to international legal principles and commitments.

Notes 1. Research for this study was conducted in Warsaw and Vienna in 1994 with major support from the Cooperative Security Competition Program, Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada. An earlier version of the paper was presented to a panel on humanitarian diplomacy at the International Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois, in February 1995. The editor is grateful for comments by Joel Rosenthal, president of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Steven Garrett of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and Albert C.Pierce of the National War College. Portions of this paper were published previously, as “The Evolution of Cooperative Security: Canada and the Human Dimension of the CSCE, 1973–1994,” Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia, Occasional Paper Series, No. 10 (April 1995). 2. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on January

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

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1, 1995. For reasons of historical accuracy, the original acronym is used concerning developments prior to 1995. Prior to 1983 publication of the Madrid Concluding Document, these were known more simply as Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs). The development of this idea has been coincidental with the CSCE since its founding. CSBMs are essentially designed to reduce the danger of war arising from misunderstanding or miscalculation in a region that, during the Cold War, was the most heavily armed in human history. CSBMs include (1) prior notification of major military maneuvers (those exceeding 25,000 troops originally, 13,000 troops after 1986); (2) exchanges of military observers; (3) regular consultations among military leaders of opposing blocs; (4) compulsory, on-site verification regimes built into arms reduction agreements; (5) information exchanges on existing armed forces, including force structures, deployments, major weapons systems, and annual military budgets; (6) “open skies.” This term for the human rights—and related “human dimension”—component of the CSCE process was coined in the CSCE Final Act issued at Helsinki in 1975. The only European state not to join the CSCE in 1975 was Albania, then still deep within its radical isolationist period under the quixotic Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. With the collapse of the Soviet Union all 15 successor republics joined the OSCE. Some participated with great enthusiasm, born of newfound national freedom and a desire to quickly establish international links independent of Moscow. Others, most notably the five Central Asian republics, achieved early formal membership but became actively involved only slowly, from 1991 to 1997, as their domestic political situations stabilized or, as often, became the subject of official OSCE concern. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, its successor states also joined the OSCE. Serbia was later suspended from membership (but not expelled) for its noncooperation with OSCE missions sent into the Balkan war zone. Macedonia at first was granted only observer status, due to the intransigence of Greece in refusing to permit Macedonia to enter the OSCE under that name, and the workings of the consensus rule that permitted Greece—and all other member states—an effective veto. Macedonia was finally granted full membership in the fall of 1995. In 1996 the principality of Andorra gained membership, bringing the total at the time of this writing to 55 states. On Soviet motivations in the founding of the CSCE see Stephen J.Flanagan, “The Road to Helsinki,” in Vojtech Mastny (ed.), Helsinki: Human Rights and European Security (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986), pp. 43–47. In the same volume, see the “Introduction” by Mastny and the essay by Robert Legvold, “The Soviet Union and Western Europe.” Bennett Kovrig, “European Security in East/West Relations: History of a Diplomatic Encounter,” in Robert Spencer (ed.), Canada and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), pp. 3–19. See the author’s Principled Diplomacy: Security and Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), pp. 127–153.

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9. For the text of the Final Act, see John J.Maresca, To Helsinki: The CSCE, 1973–1975 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), pp. 228–283. 10. For example, it was agreed that NATO and the WTO would each give prior notification of military maneuvers, and exchange military observers, during war games and other military exercises. 11. On this point, see the extensive discussion in Mike Bowker and Phil Williams, “Helsinki and European Security,” International Affairs (Autumn 1985). 12. Helmut Sonnenfeldt, counselor to the U.S. State Department, made his controversial remarks to a gathering of European ambassadors. They were reported in the New York Times, April 6, 1976; they have been reprinted as Doc. No.21 in Mastny (ed.), Helsinki, pp. 94–98. 13. On this point see Bowker and Williams, “Helsinki and European Security,” p. 609. 14. For a concise summary of ineffectual U.S. human rights policies toward the Soviet bloc from Truman through Johnson, see Nolan, Principled Diplomacy, pp. 103–125. 15. Mastny, “Introduction,” Helsinki, p. 10. Also see A.H.Robertson, “The Helsinki Agreement and Human Rights,” in Donald Kommers and Gilbert Loescher (eds)., Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1979), pp. 130–144. 16. Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 300–302, and Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation (New York: Brookings, 1985), pp. 478–479. 17. A sophisticated, and lastingly important, treatment of this theme is Pierre Hassner, “Europe: Old Conflicts, New Fears,” Orbis, Fall 1973, pp. 895–911. 18. See Nolan, Principled Diplomacy, pp. 127–153. 19. See Wolfram Hanrieder, “Maturing of a Relationship,” in Carl C.Hodge and Cathal J.Nolan (eds.), Shepherd of Democracy? America and Germany in the 20th Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), pp. 105–121. Also see Bowker and Williams, “Helsinki and West European Security,” pp. 608–613, and Michael Sodaro, Moscow, Germany and the West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, pp. 142–154. 20. Somewhat surprisingly, because quite uncharacteristically, this was also true of Canadian delegates during the 1980s. Interviews with multiple delegations, CSCE Conference Center, and CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. 21. This broad interpretation of the impact of the West’s human rights campaign on the Soviet bloc’s internal transformation was widely held among delegates of the Permanent Missions to the CSCE from NATO countries and former Soviet bloc states alike. Indeed, the claim was asserted most emphatically by delegates from the Polish and Slovak Permanent Missions to the CSCE. Interviews, CSCE Conference Center, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. 22. On this debate among the Soviet nomenklatura, see Paul Marantz, “Eduard Shevardnadze and the End of the Soviet System: Necessity and Choice,” in Cathal J.Nolan (ed.), Ethics and Statecraft: The Moral Dimension of International Affairs (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), pp. 195–212. 23. This point is made forcefully in Kal J.Holsti, “Who Got What and How: The

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24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

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CSCE Negotiations in Retrospect,” in Spencer (ed.), Canada and the CSCE, pp. 134–166. See Mastny, Helsinki. Docs. #93–118, U.S. Department of State, Current Policy, Vol. 492 (June 15, 1983), U.S. Secretary of State, American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1983, Doc. #157, and Nolan, Principled Diplomacy, pp. 155–177. For example, during this period Canada’s delegation gained a reputation for being one of the most anti-Soviet and openly and assertively critical. That may have reflected more general trends in Canadian foreign policy after 1977, in which certain domestic groups brought new pressures to bear on questions of immigration and family reunification in Canadian/Soviet relations, as well as twice-returned Conservative government. Interviews with delegates from several NATO and former Eastern bloc countries, Permanent Missions to the CSCE, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. Also see H.Gordon Skilling, “The Belgrade Follow-up” and “The Madrid Follow-up,” in Spencer (ed.), Canada and the CSCE, pp. 283–348. On the role of other small powers, see Alexis Heraclides, Security and Cooperation in Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 47–106, passim. April 7–June 17, 1985. Heraclides, Security and Cooperation in Europe, p. 74. Even after the CSCE expanded its budget and infrastructure significantly in 1993 and 1994, the total budget remained under $45 million. Interview, Hans Christian Cars, Director of Administration and Budget, CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, April 28, 1994. On the understudied yet crucial role played by Shevardnadze in radically redirecting Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev, see Marantz, “Eduard Shevardnadze and the End of the Soviet System.” On changes in Soviet and American human rights policy see Robert Cullen, “Soviet Jewry,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1986–1987, pp. 252–266, and Nolan, Principled Diplomacy, pp. 162–177. Heraclides, Security and Cooperation in Europe, pp. 88–90. The CHD mechanism committed CSCE states to (1) “exchange information and to respond to requests for information and to representations” on matters and principles pertaining to human dimension commitments; (2) hold meetings with other states when these were requested for oversight purposes; (3) accept the wider communication or human dimension concerns to member states as a whole; and (4) respond with follow-up information to any bilateral or multilateral inquiries. An early, concise study is Hannes Turner, “Human Rights in the Concluding Document of the Vienna Follow-up Meeting of the CSCE of January 15, 1989,” Human Rights Law Journal, No. 10, 1989. Interviews, various NATO delegations to the CSCE, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. A concise explanation of the operation of the “Moscow mechanism” is in Heraclides, Security and Cooperation in Europe, pp. 164–167. This was the almost universal view, stated most emphatically to the author by delegates from the Polish and Slovak Permanent Missions to the CSCE. Interviews, CSCE Conference Center, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994.

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34. Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom (London: SinclairStevenson, 1991), pp. 128–129, passim. 35. Interview, Hans Christian Cars, CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, April 28, 1994. 36. Paris 1989, Bonn 1990, Copenhagen 1990, Paris (again) in 1990, and Moscow in 1991. 37. Interviews, Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, CSCE, Warsaw, April 18–21, 1994; interviews, delegates from various Permanent Missions to the CSCE, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. 38. American objections to a change in the legal makeup of the CSCE reflected the constitutional reality that if full legal stature as an international organization was agreed, this would raise the question of Senate approval, and suspicions that the United States would be asked to pay the lion’s share of any new expenses. Interviews, Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, CSCE, Warsaw, April 18–21 1994; interviews, delegates from various European Permanent Missions to the CSCE, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994; interview, Keith M.Morrill, First Secretary, Canadian Delegation to the CSCE Forum for Security and Cooperation, Vienna, April 25, 1994. 39. Interview with Vladimir P.Dronov, Diplomatic Adviser, Office of the Secretary General, CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, April 28, 1994; interview with Peter F.Walker, Ambassador of Canada to the CSCE Forum for Security Cooperation, Vienna, April 27, 1994; interviews, delegates from various Permanent Missions to the CSCE, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. 40. Interviews, Jaques Eric Roussellier, Human Dimension Officer, Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, CSCE, Warsaw, April 18–21, 1994. 41. CSCE, Newsletter, April 15, 1994, and October 7, 1994; CSCE, Summary of Meetings, Decisions, Missions and Documents since the Charter of Paris 1990 (1994). By 1997, exploratory missions under the Moscow mechanism had been sent to Croatia, Estonia, and Moldova. On some occasions, this use of the mechanism served as prelude to the dispatch of longer-term missions. 42. Interview with Vladimir P.Dronov, Vienna, April 28, 1994. 43. CSCE, Newsletter, October 7, 1994. 44. The OSCE does not address military security by providing mutual guarantees of defense. Instead, it promotes CSBMs and arms-control agreements, such as the “Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE),” and the “Vienna Documents on Confidence and Security-Building Measures.” The thrust of these agreements is to advance regional demilitarization by (1) setting sharp limits to key types of military equipment and personnel and (2) developing a system of reliable information exchange and an intrusive verification regime and early warning system. 45. Some effort is being made, at the time of this writing, to streamline and coordinate the operation of these various “mechanisms,” with the usual OSCE emphasis on encouraging member states to view them as instruments of conflict resolution rather than confrontation. Other conflict prevention and crisis management devices include the “Pact on Stability in Europe,” adopted March 21, 1994, and the “Convention on Conciliation and Arbitration Within the CSCE,” which entered into force on December 5, 1994, and established an OSCE “Court of Conciliation and Arbitration.”

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46. Interviews, delegates from various NATO delegations, and the Polish Permanent Mission to the CSCE; interviews, officials of the CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, April 22–May 1, 1994. 47. Interview, CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, May 1, 1994. On the other hand, later in 1994 observer status was granted to the Republic of Korea, as a nonparticipating state at meetings of the Permanent Council. 48. Interview, CSCE Secretariat, Vienna, April 28, 1994. However, arrangements were made for comprehensive information exchanges with Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. OSCE, Fact Sheet: Partners for Cooperation, http://www.osceprag.cz/info/facts/partners/html, November 19, 1997.

Conclusion: Where is Europe? “Where is Europe?” asked Senator John McCain on August 11, 1992, in reference to the widening conflict on the terrain of the former Yugoslavia. “We have seen Germany recognize the sovereignty of some Yugoslav nations, but what evidence of leadership have they demonstrated beyond that action?”1 The senator expressed the incomprehension of many of his colleagues at Europe’s apparent inability to deal effectively with a crisis on its own doorstep and, and in doing so, touched on the reason why in the Balkans above all the new Europe of 1992 looked depressingly like older incarnations. Collective European will was nowhere to be seen in the face of German unilateral initiatives to force recognition of the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia and to internationalize the management of a European crisis. Four years later the foreign ministers of the European Union expressed their resentment at the observation of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke that, while the military provisions of the Dayton Peace Accord had been implemented quite successfully, the civilian aspects were less successful because of what Holbrooke called the messy and ineffective arrangements insisted on by European governments. The ministers were in a weak position to chafe at American criticisms, as their own efforts in the Balkans prior to Dayton had been ineffective and promised to remain so in the future. Hans van den Broek, the European Union’s external affairs commissioner, said in May 1996 that he believed Europe should take the lead in assembling a military force for the state of Bosnia-Herzogovina the next year and was promptly contradicted by the indignant British, French, and German governments.2 Then as now there 325

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was every indication that in Bosnia in particular peace will be unsustainable without a significant peacekeeping presence. One of the foremost authorities on the conflict notes that the parties to it tend to regard the Dayton Peace, in a reversal of Clausewitz, merely as war by other means. In late 1996 the communities were no longer fighting, but “the goal of a multi-ethnic, unified Bosnia was further from realization than at the time of the Dayton signing.”3 What does the Bosnian case tell us about the present and future of the Atlantic alliance specifically and European security more generally? It says first that no cease-fire was possible until NATO intervened, above all because the alliance represents American political will and firepower. At no point during the political disintegration of Yugoslavia and wars of succession that followed was a European-brokered peace and the enforcement thereof even remotely convincing. Britain and France committed the largest national contingents to the largely frustrated peacekeeping effort, but even a coherent Anglo-French Balkan plan for peace never emerged. Instead, Europe finally welcomed 20,000 U.S. troops to enforce an American-brokered cease-fire. By 1996 the only reasonable conclusion available was that “the Europeans, so powerful and active on the economic scene, will need Uncle Sam to protect them against their weakness, opportunism, and disunion.”4 Additionally, Bosnia speaks for NATO’s efforts to acquire a new role in the post–Cold War environment, a challenge to which it has responded more creatively than any other multilateral institution. Far more than any other factor, NATO has been responsible for establishing peace and returning daily life to an imitation of prewar normality. At the same time, the alliance’s activities are partly an expression of the contradiction cutting through Western policy, namely that, while it is there to enforce peace, NATO is not really a neutral party but an instrument for Western policy to buttress Muslims and Croats in Bosnia against Serbs. It is worth remembering that when the issue of recognizing Croatia and Slovenia was forced upon the alliance’s members in 1991– 1992, recognition shunted NATO away from a position of disinterested neutrality. It has been the interpretation of the Clinton administration, moreover, that war in Bosnia was possible in the first place because of an asymmetry of military strength favoring ethnic Serbs forces. In the interest of peace, NATO has found it necessary to assume the role of neutral arbiter and to take it seriously, by interdicting, for example, the shipment of artillery to the Muslim-Croat federation that would have created a new imbalance of armaments and a new incentive to aggression.5

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The Europe that Senator McCain seeks has meanwhile been busy with other things. The Kohl government in Bonn has staked its fate on, and devoted its energies to, the realization of Maastricht Europe and the single European currency to which EU members have been formally committed since the European summit of December 1991. Having succeeded with national reunification, the government of Europe’s undeclared and reluctant primas inter pares, Germany, has wasted no effort to make possible this article of European quasi-statehood and federation. In 1997 its commitment to the cause even brought it into conflict with its own central bank and the leaders of German industry over tax reform and the value of Germany’s gold reserves. A single European currency now looks a near-certainty. Bank and industrial firms are working on the technical details of doing business with it. With all of this on their plate, Germany and the other EU states have had little time for the wreckage of their recognition diplomacy in Yugoslavia. Before and since the first fighting broke out, discussion of the wider issue of European security has proceeded in the somniferous vocabulary of integration, as if some cone of silence over Brussels shut out the distant chatter of small-arms fire from the Balkans. Because public support for the new Europe is so dependent on perceptions, the European integrative project often seems to divorce itself from any reference to day-to-day news. Governments and summits use words such as architecture and structure to neutralize the impact of press depictions of real events for which other words like flood and hazardous mess, though no less metaphorical, are more appropriate.6 Official talk of “new architecture” and “flexible structures” circulate among European capitals with a frequency that is inversely proportional to any common agreement on what the new structures should be. Semantic infiltration is supposed to conjure effective institutions and collective political will into existence.

The Present and Future Atlanticism Andreas Kintis cites the Amsterdam meeting of the European Council of June 1997 as a success in terms of sharpening the member states’ thinking on a Common Foreign and Security Policy yet concedes that the revised Treaty on European Union represents only incremental progress.7 Moreover, it is evident from Kintis’s analysis that the EU member states take the institutional implication’s of the Western European Union’s capacity to fill humanitarian and peacekeeping roles—and for some the

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consuming issue as to whether the WEU is to be actually integrated into the EU—as seriously as the WEU’s practical ability to meet those tasks itself. The meeting at which the WEU Council for Foreign and Defense Ministers declared its willingness to participate in peacekeeping under the auspices of the OSCE or the UN took place in Petersberg, Germany, in 1992. It is a sobering reminder of the glacial pace of change in the EU that only some five years later were such tasks explicitly recognized in an EU treaty. The Amsterdam agreements in and of themselves will not advance the cause of a common European defense and security policy significantly. Given recent experience, the more important question perhaps is not only whether the member states will use the institutional mechanisms they have established, but whether, when confronted with a new security contingency, they will use the imperfections of those institutions as an alibi for not acting at all. None of this is to say that the discussion of institutional architecture is irrelevant. Nor is it to imply that institutions such as the WEU have no role to play in European security. Rather, it is to say two things: first, that the WEU’s role is at present very limited and will likely remain so; second, that institutions themselves are hardly the point. The WEU can and should work on its mandate and capacities, but there is no inherent contribution to the substance of European security by its absorption into the larger union. The European Union is itself the primary vehicle of concerted and effective soft security policy, while hard security remains overwhelmingly dependent on the Atlantic alliance. For better or worse, these are the concrete, rather than the theoretical, pillars of European security. Only a determination by the governments of the major EU states to live up to regional responsibilities—and to work through the institutions already at their disposal, their shortcomings notwithstanding—will wean the EU from its appetite for pious nonparticipation in any venture involving risk. At the very least, the member states owe it to the memory of EU monitors who lost their lives in the first weeks of the Balkan war when Brussels dispatched them on a mission for which there was no coherent European goal. As a defense and security entity, Europe is today no more readily visible than it was in 1991. The Atlantic alliance remains the brain, sword, and shield of the Old Continent’s defense. Moreover, Ed Whalen reminds us that the revolution of military affairs will make it difficult even for a united European willpower to decide how best to use its

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financial resources to enhance continental security in a fashion that does not in some respect appeal either to Washington’s aid or its leadership. This has been true in the day-to-day business of keeping the peace in the former Yugoslavia; it is also true in planning for potential threats at the high end of security, especially where discussion turns to the “arc of crisis,” stretching through the Middle East and North Africa and the financial and technological requirements of missile defense against regimes expected to have the ability to threaten targets as distant as Britain and Sweden. The technology of missile defense is at its most advanced not in Europe but in the United States, and the Clinton administration itself places higher priority on arms-control agreements than on the further development of such technologies.8 The condition of European defense industries generally reflect that of the German industry cited specifically in Chapter 9 of this volume: Contracting national defense budgets will require consolidations and cross-national partnerships for expensive made-in-Europe technologies to be developed.9 European governments are dealing with two competing imperatives. The first is to trim national defense expenditures in the name of the kind of fiscal discipline that will allow member states to meet Maastricht criteria while saving from the axe domestic programs that are politically sensitive. This means that governments are attempting to rationalize defense procurement by doing more research and weapons development on a European rather than a national scale, often working out a division of labor and thus a division of costs among the participating countries. Additionally, they face the prospect of having to finance research and development of the defense technologies that will permit them to escape near total dependence on American-made products. The challenge is to do more with less. So GKN, the U.K. defense and automotive group, has joined forces with the German engineering companies Krauss MaffeiMaK-Rheinmetall and Wegman to bid for the Anglo-Franco-German contract to build battlefield transport vehicles such as the Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle (MRAV). The consortium will be competing against the bid of another Anglo-German combination involving Vickers and Thyssen. There are sacrifices in national discretion inherent in such alliances. Because Britain was a latecomer to the MRAV project it has had to accept specifications for the vehicle already established by France and Germany. These two countries have formed a joint arms agency for the purpose of rationalizing defense procurement, an agency from which they threatened to exclude Britain after the John Major government purchased American tank-busting Apache helicopters rather than the Franco-German

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Tiger. 10 Thomson-CSF of France and GEC Marconi of the U.K. are pooling their sonar activities into a joint company, which, with a turnover of $535 million and 3,500 employees, will be the second-largest supplier of underwater listening devices after Lockheed Martin of the United States. Thomson Marconi Sonar will manufacture sonar equipment for the British and French nuclear submarine fleets, antisubmarine frigates, and antisubmarine maritime patrol aircraft. Because they are geared to equip forces that are intelligent, highly mobile, and flexible, many of these efforts are compatible with NATO’s New Strategic Concept, but the coherence of their contribution will depend both on the articulation and implementation of a European defense and security policy that addresses means and priorities along with the inescapable fact that Western European governments are currently underfunding defense to a degree that is undermining industrial capability over the long term.11 There is not, admittedly, any imminent danger that the United States will abandon its European commitments for want of such an effort on the part of its allies. In fact, NATO expansion into Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary has enjoyed strong support in principle from the American public. Some polls have even revealed that a large majority of Americans would endorse the dispatch of American troops to help defend a country such as Poland if it were to come under Russian attack. 12 However, less enthusiastic Atlanticist sentiments are in evidence in regards to the financial costs of NATO enlargement and the issue of burdensharing with European allies. The memory of European impotence in the Balkans will doubtless play upon public feelings about and congressional support for NATO expansion as the costs are actually felt. Neither will the vitality of the alliance be helped by the complaints of European governments that Washington is dictating policy to its allies, so long as ESDI remains more of an idea than a reality and European governments fail to assume a greater, even preponderant, responsibility for peace in Bosnia. In the absence of progress on these and related matters, “allied unity could be could be severely tested by an increasingly acrimonious debate” as Congress reflects public impatience with what will appear, from the American perspective, wealthy and capable allies unwilling to pay the price of true partnership. 13 To be taken seriously as partners, European governments have a long way to go, notes Trevor Taylor, for “it is a remarkable contrast that the United States, with 250 million people, has military plans to maintain a capability simultaneously to conduct successfully two regional wars, while the European Union states, with a larger population, could not conduct one without significant help.”14

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American economic ties with Europe are more extensive and durable than with any other part of the world save Canada. Proposals for a Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) or even a North Atlantic Economic Community (NATEC) represent an awareness that economies in both Europe and North America would benefit if these ties were deepened further. The realization of either, however, would require massive commitments from national governments and durable public support. In awareness of Europe’s preoccupation with organizational architecture, however, even the most avid enthusiasts of new Atlantic trade initiatives concede that “a new structure is never a substitute for political will.”15 The kind of political will that is based on popular support for Atlantic military commitments will be harder to come by if the American public does not believe that Europe itself will address future contingencies such as the Balkan crisis, at least as a unified diplomatic entity if not a military force. Equally, it will be difficult for any administration in Washington to champion closer economic ties with Europe in the face of the EU’s plodding progress toward opening its markets to the economies of the former Warsaw Pact. In 1997 Germany recorded a 19% increase in exports to Eastern Europe, 16 yet Eastern European access to Western European markets is subject to EU convergence criteria that shelter German producers just as effectively as those of the smaller economies. Atlanticism in the United States is less imperilled by the traditional Europhobic isolationism of the early twentieth century than by a broadbased boredom with European affairs shared by the American people and their legislators. The contemporary American electorate is no longer dominated by voters with a living memory of World War II, and congressmen elected in 1992, 1994, and 1996 based their political fortunes primarily on domestic issues in a post–Cold War context. Gary Geipel sums up the cumulative consequence of all these factors when he points out that the moral imperative of Atlanticism no longer “hits Americans over the head.” To be sure, the sound health of Atlanticism will also depend on a determination to overcome contradictory impulses in Washington as well. In the 1920s the United States sought compromise and a degree of unity among the European nations as a precondition for American economic involvement, yet it often reacted to joint European initiatives as plots against American interests.17 Inevitably, a diplomatically united Europe would pursue goals that deviate from American preferences. Washington would have to suffer some of these in silence for the larger interest of furthering that unity and thus mitigating America’s burdens.

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The paradox of contemporary Europe is that the United States is a European power in a way that Russia, geographically a part of the Continent, can only hope to be. The limits of Russia’s influence are most clearly symbolized by its exclusion from NATO. Paul Marantz points out that there is in contemporary Russia an occasionally volatile domestic politics of foreign policy. Of the three schools of thought concerning Russia’s future in international affairs—the Westernizers, the Eurasianists, and the ultranationalists—only the Westernizers accept that the country’s role and influence in the global community will be determined fundamentally by the success or failure of the domestic transformation, that is, the still open question as to whether Russia’s enormous potential wealth will be made actual by market dynamics and beneficial to the millions of Russians who have hitherto paid a high price in support of their country’s experiment with democracy. Issues on the agenda of Russia’s foreign relations are routinely exploited by the enemies of democratic and market reforms to argue that the reformers have frittered away the prestige that is Russia’s birthright and that NATO expansion in the face of Moscow’s opposition is just a symbol of a more general national decline. Contemporary Russia’s military is a shadow of the former Soviet threat. Early in 1997 two of the country’s top defense decision makers, Yuri Baturin and Igor Rodionov, maintained that indeed Russia’s military was on the brink of collapse, and they dismissed as fantasy any plan to convert the conscription-based army of 1.7 million into a professional force. Still, that same army has been employed, albeit with modest results, to intervene in the affairs of several Confederation of Independent States (CIS) members. Political pressures forced President Yeltsin to replace Foreign Minister Kozyrev with Yevgeny Primakov, a tough and experienced official from the Soviet era who is identified with a much firmer approach to the West. In light of Russia’s economic crisis and the collapse of support for President Yeltsin’s reforms, Primakov’s appointment as prime minister in September 1998 symbolized both the strength of reactionary forces in the country and the uncertain future of its foreign relations. Accordingly, Russian reactions to NATO enlargement have been a study in contradiction and inconsistency since the issue was first broached. In the spring of 1994, Kozyrev recommended that the creation of a unified, non-bloc Europe could be furthered above all by upgrading the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe into a more inclusive organization, claiming further that it was the democratic principles of the 56-member CSCE that ultimately prevailed in the Cold

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War rather than NATO’s military capacity. It was a generous effort in half-truth, but one that did not play well in the Duma. When Kozyrev signed a compromise document that gave Russia less than full equality with the United States in the Partnership for Peace (PfP), Communists and nationalists denounced the PfP as “American imperialism” and compared it with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.18 For his part, General Rodionov conceded in November 1996 that NATO enlargement posed no threat whatever to his country; in February 1997 Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov warned that it would nonetheless be psychologically scarring. It was in part with a mind to correcting some of the loose thinking on NATO enlargement in deference to Russian sensibilities that former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned against blurring the distinction between military and political tasks on enlarging NATO on the one hand and establishing a constructive security relationship with Moscow on the other. He rightly noted that it would be folly to appease Russian anger over NATO enlargement with promises that were unrealistic and misleading, and that it was properly the task of the OSCE to develop political security mechanisms that included Russia in ways that a militarily relevant alliance could not. 19 Although the OSCE is not the superstructure of post–Cold War European security that Moscow once hoped it would be, it clearly does have a pragmatic political role to play in channeling Russian diplomatic energies in a positive direction, such as in monitoring election standards, just as the Partnership for Peace can promote defense cooperation and security transparency, supplementing the confidence-building efforts that traditionally also fall within the OSCE’s mandate. To the extent that both deepen political ties between NATO and Russia, they can help to, in the words of NATO’s assistant secretary general for political affairs, “allay anxieties” that an alliance which does not incorporate Russia is necessarily directed against it.20 Both Marantz and Heinz Magenheimer stress the variety and expanse of Russian geopolitical interests. Critics of NATO expansion have cited the danger of exciting Russian anxieties over Western encroachment into the “near abroad” and have recommended alternative approaches, ranging from a more cautious and nuanced approach for alliance expansion to a plan for making Russia itself a full member. 21 Yet NATO membership for the Visegrad states is only partly about security against a possibly recidivist Russia. In terms of the redefinition of European security it is part of a determination to

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bring the military, political, and economic dimensions of security closer together and thereby to further the progress of reform and transformation within the most promising countries of the former Soviet bloc. Moreover, the expansion plans agreed upon in the spring of 1997 are also the product of compromises struck with a mind to managing the cohesion of the existing alliance. Extension into the Visegrad states was viewed as either imperative or at least acceptable to the greatest number of member states. The major alliance states ran the risk of diluting the perceived benefits, and thus the political capital to the governments of prospective members, if they were seen to be too sensitive toward Moscow’s many neuroses. In the months preceding the 1997 decision on expansion, Moscow itself tended to exaggerate the strength and possible consequences of Russian opposition, and the Russian leadership ultimately accepted the alliance decision with more equanimity than many security analysts in the West. It is undeniably true that “if enlargement backfires by producing a Cold Peace with Russia, or worse, the West will have traded one strategic problem for another,” 22 but it is hard to see how the modest expansion such as Visegrad membership represents can be a greater gamble than leaving the region adrift between power blocs.23 There is, lastly, a historic and moral justification for bringing the Visegrad states into NATO, namely the Western abandonment of these states to Nazi and Soviet imperialism earlier in the century. Though moral obligation cannot be expected to matter much to the selfconsciously tough-minded students of strategic studies, a realistic appreciation of the domestic politics of foreign affairs in the United States could not fail to bring the Clinton administration face-to-face with the past. Senator Barbara Mikulski noted that after Yalta her Polish parents had turned their portrait of Franklin Roosevelt to face the wall and said that she sincerely wished to avoid doing the same with President Clinton’s picture.24 There comes a point, in other words, when the recognition of moral obligation and investment in goodwill is the most far-sighted form of self-interest. A core issue for the future of European security regarding Russia is the stabilization of the country’s fragile economic and political system. Russia poses few direct threats to the new Europe, but a rather wide array of indirect threats to the order and security EU citizens have come to regard as the primary benefit of having abandoned their warring ways. Six years into the project of building a Russian democracy and market economy, there were heartening signs of progress. The long winter of reform

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continued, but reduced interest rates with falling inflation in 1997 made the economy at least appear more normal. The central worry was a lack of real economic growth, especially after a 6% contraction of economic activity in 1996, and, as Marantz stresses, the limited capacity of the Russian state to fulfill those functions critical to its very survival over the long term. In 1996 taxing authorities extracted only 50% to 60% of the revenue to which they were entitled, a fiscal strait that led the government to spending cuts and conflict with the Duma. The crisis of 1998 has now brought all these problems to a head. It is altogether possible for former Communists and nationalists to overthrow a democratic regime via democratic means and to then embark on an aggressive foreign policy in order to demonstrate to the credulous that national vitality has returned. In Europe it has all been done before. So it is disturbing to see Alexandr Rutskoi, who in 1993 led the coup attempt against Yeltsin, elected in 1996 to a regional government post in the province of Kursk. Moreover, not every assertion of national interest beyond Russia’s borders can be regarded by intelligent observers as wrong-headed recidivism. After all, political economy and geopolitics routinely mix to bring up important questions about Russia’s future. At this writing the Ukraine is some $300 million in arrears in payments for Russian natural gas. When the Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, needed some $3 billion to pay off tax debt in 1997, it cut off exports to Ukraine in order to collect. This produced mixed results, given that Russian gas exports to Western Europe have to cross Ukrainian territory, and Ukraine has been known to pinch Russian export gas to Europe when its own supplies are down.25 How is Moscow to deal responsibly with a situation that further restricts its capacity to function yet could so easily implicate the interests of Western European states? Conscious of its vulnerability, Ukraine has sought closer ties with the West generally and with one of the Visegrad states, Poland. At the NATO Madrid Summit in May 1997 Kiev actually worked out an agreement with Atlantic alliance, according to which it can call for NATO consultations if and when it feels its security is threatened. It has thus far gotten away without overt punitive actions by Moscow. Warsaw, however, did not want to leave the matter at that. Polish Foreign Minister Bronislav Geremek visited Kiev in mid-November and announced the creation of an Institute for the Promotion of Ukrainian Economic Reform to fall under direct supervision of the Polish finance ministry. Ukrainian President Kuchma pointed out that, in contrast to Moscow, Kiev had always supported Polish

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membership in NATO, whereas Geremek stressed that the independence of the former Soviet republics is of the utmost importance to Warsaw, because the democratization of Russia can only succeed if Moscow abstains from all imperial ambitions.26 When reform-minded Ukrainians seek motivation to further enhance Western ties, they need only look to Belarus, whose government signed a loose political union pact with Russia in 1996 and is otherwise sliding back into old Soviet ways. The authoritarian governing style of President Alexander Lukashenko has been described as “soft-core Stalinism,” because he has, according to Human Rights Watch, reversed nearly all advances made in terms of human rights and rule of law. In the runup to the NATO decision on expansion, Russia toyed with the idea of political fusion with Belarus. To Moscow’s credit, however, there is little real enthusiasm in the Kremlin for the idea of union with such a retrograde state.27

France, Germany, and Friends If there is an answer to the question “Where is Europe?” a good part of it surely is to be sought in the Franco-German relationship that has been the engine of the European integrative project of the past 40 years. That relationship is at a crossroads, even more so since President Chirac gambled with early legislative elections in May 1997 and lost his parliamentary majority to the Socialists. The poll was a reminder of the primacy of domestic politics—Chirac reasoning that he was more likely to secure a new majority in 1997 rather than in March 1998, after which the fiscal austerity of the 1998 budget might well have eroded support—and it removed at a stroke the popular mandate upon which Chirac’s radical rethink of national security rested.28 This is not to say that all progress need necessarily be stopped but rather that the Elysée no longer has legislative support for the order of priorities it struck after 1995 and that the direction of French foreign and security policy is less certain. President Chirac’s losing electoral gambit is unfortunate, because in some important respects the reforms launched under him demonstrated more realism than the Kohl government’s devotion to European monetary union and self-absorption in 1993–1994 with the constitutional implications of German troops to Yugoslavia in peacekeeping or combat roles. After having advocated for three decades greater Western European independence from the United States, France is now possibly more

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concerned than any other state to keep America entangled in the Old Continent. Presently France wants both progress toward European security self-reliance and a continuing American commitment. If these goals of French policy seem contradictory, the reason for this in French eyes is that contemporary circumstance applies contradictory pressures to European security: If Washington’s commitment to Europe cannot and should not be taken for granted, then European states must fashion both an identity, ESDI, and a measure of capability that is not beholden to American indulgence. Yet because for the time being European capacity cannot hope to replace American capacity, Washington must remain engaged in Europe to an extent that permits Europeans to take it for granted. Hence the Chirac government’s enthusiasm for the Eurocorps and its conversion to Atlanticist true believer, and hence the support for both NATO’s Combined Joint Task Force concept and the Eurocorps’ integration into the Atlantic alliance combined with a French insistence that a European head NATO’s Southern Command. By the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 Gaullism appeared to be reaching the limits of its utility anyway. The changes Paris has been promoting for itself and Europe do not signal the desertion of its goals so much as an awareness that serious adaptations can no longer be deferred, and that France’s interests will be “better served from within an alliance where Paris has its hands on both the military and political reins.”29 By contrast, Bonn’s defense policy has been a study in plodding continuity. German Defense Minister Volker Rühe said late in 1996 that Germany’s best contribution to NATO would be to maintain conscription and the capacity to draw on 680,000 well-trained soldiers in wartime. This is in large part warmed-over Cold War thinking, and Rühe’s rejection of the notion that Germany would be better advised to develop a smaller but fully professional army is based on a belief that if Germany gave up conscription “we would lose the Americans.”30 The statement goes a long way in the direction of saying that the Bundeswehr’s primary raison d’étre is to ensure that the United States has no alibi for European disengagement. To the limited extent that defense reforms have been undertaken in the Federal Republic, they promise to generate less rather than more German military capacity. Viewed from Paris, the lack of a radical restructuring in the Germany military appears to be a deliberate attempt to excuse Germany from the mobil, rapid-deployment operations that are likely the norm of security tasks in post–Cold War Europe. Volker Rühe’s observation that Germany did not intend the Eurocorps to be a latter-day Afrikakorps was a warning that Bonn wanted no part of French

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adventures in sub-Saharan Africa, but to France it sounds like a clever turn of phrase to defend Germany’s fundamental introversion.31 That being the case, the Chirac reforms had the merit, as Alyson Bailes expressed it, of possibly drawing German defense “out of its shell” by posing for Bonn the prospect of a serious continental rival within NATO.32 With French policy now somewhat hamstrung by cohabitation, European security would possibly benefit from nothing so much as deep, positive, and pragmatic British involvement. Happily, the Blair government promises to abandon sixteen years of Conservative Europhobia, yet would do well to retain Britain’s traditional skepticism about European institution-building. Britain’s notion that existing institutions should remain roughly as they are—aside from some strengthening of the WEU’s mandate in politico-military consultation and intelligence sharing—while European states increase their proportional contributions to NATO in such a way as to justify a stronger voice in its leadership, speaks to the substance rather than rhetoric of an ESDI. An especially forthright pursuit of this idea by London might inject some clarity into the security debate and wean the continental states from their architectural diversions. So long as formulaic fudges can be hailed as progress, asks Bailes, “where is the pressure for Germany and, indeed, other states to bear the pain and cost of modernizing their intervention capabilities?”33 In most respects Britain has been a poor mediator between Europe and the United States, particularly as the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major have often been unable to approach relations with a reunified Germany with not so much as a good imitation of maturity. A good deal of Britain’s problematic relationship with Germany is derived of a deeprooted resentment at being bested at the end the century by the former enemy of two world wars. But from a continental perspective Britain’s resentment is bewildering. Why should one of the few European states to be spared German occupation between 1939 and 1945 dwell on such selfindulgent bitterness about the European past?34 The Blair government’s comparatively positive disposition to the European project is therefore a refreshing change. In any event, an ESDI worthy of the name will not evolve organically from the progress of European integration, nor can it be driven ahead by a Paris/Bonn axis that itself is under the strain of divergent priorities. It is necessarily a work for Anglo-French-German leadership and will require fundamental changes to the overarching logic of British foreign policy, including a willingness to set aside both Anglo-French rivalry and London’s traditional nostalgia for a unique bilateral relationship with the

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United States. These would amount to truly radical reorientations, but without them it is fairly easy to predict that an ESDI will become no more than another great idea in Europe’s vast arsenal of acronyms.35 With regard to British ideas for strengthening the Western European Union, the WEU would do well to draw some instruction from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). A creature of détente, the former CSCE was originally a comprehensive security institution, addressing hard and soft security responsibilities for the membership of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Cathal Nolan rightly points out that since the end of the Cold War, the OSCE has focused increasingly on human rights, the rule of law, and the promotion of democratic procedures as security-building features of a preventive nature. In Yugoslavia the OSCE endured humiliations along with virtually every other international organization involved, yet has gone on to concentrate its efforts where they are most effective, in promoting the legal norms and the institutional mechanisms that protect ethnic minorities and hold fragile governments to civilized standards of human rights. Additionally, its has drawn closer to the United Nations by becoming a UN organization under Article 52 of the UN Charter, while resisting the temptation to be drawn away from its regional mandate for specifically European security. The latter has helped to enhance its effectiveness, whereas the former promises to give it a certain independence from other European institutions by involving relatively disinterested states such as Canada and Sweden in preventive security issues. The WEU will develop a role for itself in the redefinition of European security in theory and practice only if it cultivates a similar regard for its own institutional integrity, working as a bridge between NATO and the EU, especially as a politico-military liaison, rather than allowing itself to become domesticated as another EU institution. In late 1997 the OSCE took on the challenge of reversing the political decay of Belarus by dispatching a mission to Minsk. Its goal is to help reestablish, with the government’s cooperation, adherence to the rule of law and respect for democratic procedures. 36 Belarus was also on the agenda of the OSCE’s ministerial troika—the foreign ministers of Norway and Poland and the permanent secretary of state of Denmark—in their January 1998 meeting in Warsaw, as were OSCE field activities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, the situation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and other regional issues. 37 Interestingly, the ministers strongly supported an enhanced OSCE role in Croatia, especially after the expiry of the mandate of the United Nations

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Transitional Administration. In early 1998 some 250 human rights monitors were active in the country, for the very good reason that the government of Franjo Tudjman has given observers solid ground to suspect its intentions to allow Croatia to develop a mature democracy. If, as Max Weber insisted, politics is much like the slow boring of thick boards, the same is doubly true of the travail of liberal human rights. The OSCE has the capacity of criticism but no powers of punitive sanction. It shows nonetheless a healthy capacity for innovation. If it sticks tenaciously to the achievement of limited but substantive goals, it can make some of the most durable contributions to European peace.

Europe North and South It is encouraging that whenever the Tudjman government in Croatia misbehaves, the EU is quick to cut off PHARE funding in punishment. The use of carrot-and-stick macroeconomic, trade, and financial incentives to provide the socioeconomic base of liberal-democratic governance in Central and Eastern Europe is a product of Europe’s historical experience with macroeconomic chaos and the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Both Sperling and Mazzucelli place the EU at the center stage of economic security for the reason that the EU’s very existence is itself a product of that history, and its policies derived from the successful project of domesticating Western European politics after 1945. The EU, moreover, is as vital to the continent’s economic security as is NATO to military capacity. Sperling touches on an issue critical to the long-term prospects of the new Eastern European market economies, namely the question as to whether the integrationist philosophy of Western Europe from 1957 to 1992 is the most appropriate model to apply to post-Communist systems during a period when globalization is the phenomenon of the wider world economy. The course of the Anglo-Saxon/continentalist debate will depend on the economic and political experience of the most promising Eastern European candidates for EU membership before and after accession to the EU. In a sense the debate is false, because it reflects fundamentally different goals in philosophical preferences, the statist and corporatist traditions of Western Europe representing a preference for social cohesion over flexible labor and dynamic capital markets preferred in Britain and North America. The more interesting long-term question, perhaps, is whether the political economy that Maastricht represents can itself survive

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a genuine opening to the East and whether major Western European governments and publics are willing to watch their economies be transformed by the aspirations of the their Eastern neighbors. How much “creative destruction” will Europe abide? A rapid transition to mature market economies by the Central and Eastern European states is in some respects as potentially destabilizing as more hesitant change. This is because Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Estonians, and others seek full membership in Europe for social and cultural, as well as economic, reasons. Popular disillusionment with economic and political change can be fueled by socioeconomic dislocation, and the interethnic conflict that follows results from a rush for the security of group identity when individual ambitions are thwarted. Whenever economic change runs too far ahead of the ability of fledgling political parties to broker compromise and legitimate further reforms, it is in many respects already too late for the OSCE’s preventive diplomacy and time for sterner measures of intervention—the kind of intervention the EU has hitherto proved incapable of mounting alone. If it is true, as one European diplomat contended with reference to Bosnia, that “only Washington is even capable of contemplating a strategic vision,”38 apart from implementing it, the stakes of EU-driven policies for digestible transformation of the CEE states are about as high as they can be, since it would fall to the United States to deal with the consequence of failure. No region of Europe has benefitted more from the end of the Cold War than the Baltic states. As an economic region incorporating Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia with Poland and Sweden, the Baltic is alive again as a European inland sea after decades in hibernation. Trade and investment are rising. But there is a shadow cast over the region by an uncertain security situation. Russia opposes NATO membership for the Baltic states, a goal vital to those states themselves. Political conditions in Estonia and Latvia—especially those that deny voting rights to the large number of ethnic Russians living on their territory—aggravate the situation further. Moreover, Russia is especially sensitive to the cases of the three northern Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, relative to former members of the Warsaw Pact such as Poland, because these states were only five years ago an integral part of the Soviet military infrastructure proper. Russian ambassador to Finland, Yuri Deryabin, has said that a NATO alliance abutting on Russia’s border would necessarily require countermeasures by Moscow. Sweden and Finland have been important supporters of the aspirations of the Baltic states, yet both remain as officially neutral as they were during the Cold War. They have

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stakes in the economic renaissance of a Baltic region stretching all the way to St. Petersburg, a city of ten million with enormous market potential for its Baltic neighbors. But this assumes good relations with Moscow. Former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd has suggested the creation of a Baltic security subzone, which would include the three little Balts plus Finland and Sweden, as a unit separate from both NATO and Russia. None of these states like the idea. The former Estonian foreign minister, Juri Luik, probably has the right interpretation: This would amount to shifting overall regional security responsibility from the United States and Germany to Sweden and Finland, both a diplomatic dodge and an arrangement with no real security credibility.39 Yet despite all these military uncertainties, EU and German efforts in economic security are much more focused and comprehensive in the Northeast and Baltic than in the Southeast and the Mediterranean. This is most clearly evident from the vantage point of Ankara, capital of Turkey. It is fair to say that the Turks have sought to be part of Europe since the Ottoman Empire first arrived at the gates of Vienna but that Europe has not been forthcoming. Modern Turkey has associate status in the EU, yet since German reunification it has had to watch its application for full membership, an application dating to 1963, slip behind those of the former Warsaw Pact states. Partly as a consequence of Europe’s failure as a security community in the former Yugoslavia, especially the priority given Slovenia and Croatia contrasted with the longtime arms embargo against BosniaHerzogovina with its Muslim population, Ankara has found it necessary to become newly innovative in defining its own security concerns in the dangerous neighborhood of the eastern Mediterranean. It has quarrels with Syria over water rights to the Euphrates River and the penetration of Turkish territory by Kurdish secessionist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerillas operating from Syrian soil, and is also interested in achieving a comfortable balance of power in the region for dealing with such problems as the political direction of a post-Saddam Iraq. Cooperation with Israel brings both expertise and potential strategic advantages to the task. The armies and navies of Turkey and Israel have entered into a number of cooperative arrangements, while Ankara is permitting Tel Aviv to gather intelligence on Syria and Iraq from Turkish soil. There is the added dimension of Turkey’s twentieth-century national mission to become a prosperous secular and democratic state in the face of the challenge posed by the electoral appeal of fundamentalist Islam.

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Efforts to contain the fundamentalist appeal, ranging from repeated threats by the army to intervene to defend the secular state to the outright banning of the Islamic Refah Party as unconstitutional, have occasioned routine EU warnings that Turkey is in the process of spoiling its chances of membership. When the Islamic issue subsides, Brussels turns to the matter of Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish minority as yet another reason for holding Ankara at arm’s length. Former prime minister Tansu Çiller observed that it is very difficult for Turks to accept that countries that had been in the Communist bloc could now take a place ahead of Turkey along with neutralist states such as Sweden. In return for its loyalty to NATO generally and the Western cause during the 1991 Persian Gulf War specifically Ankara gets lectures from Western Europeans on human rights standards. Could the official EU policy toward Turkey, she asked, be a thin veil for religious prejudice?40 Both Israel and the United States have lobbied Brussels on Turkey’s behalf. If anything, Washington is more aware than Brussels of Turkey’s new diplomacy and its implications for the region, while the EU states, individually or collectively, do little to encourage Ankara to view EU membership as a plausible life-line to political stability and economic prosperity.41 Instead, successive Turkish governments have had to witness European leaders laying claim to a legitimate interest in the affairs of the Middle East, as President Chirac did in Jerusalem’s Old City in October 1996, while the EU balks at the idea of eventually replacing American peacekeepers in Bosnia and scolds Ankara over human rights. In response Turkey has felt less constrained by civility toward Greece on the status of Cyprus. The prophetic value of Samuel Huntington’s thesis The Clash of Civilizations 42 possibly has its best friend in ham-handed European diplomacy. Brussels’s impotence in the Algerian crisis has in large part been the result of Algerian contempt for European interference. It is hard not to wonder whether such contempt itself is not a product of Europe’s failure to protect Muslims in Bosnia and refusal to acknowledge the European credentials of Turkey.

Community and Anarchy The EU’s efforts to keep Turkey diplomatically at arm’s length while engaging in a moral critique of its domestic affairs are part of a dubious attempt to carve out a separate peace for a prosperous EU in the face of the arc of crisis to its East and South. The flight of Kurdish refugees

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from Turkey to the ports and cities of the signatory states of the Schengen Agreement represents a classic example of the new Europe’s nobler aspiration to be an open society and free market internally in collision with its determinedly narrow interpretation of Europe’s vital security interests in the eastern Mediterranean.43 The Kurdish refugee problem, of course, is only one of the more recent episodes in the larger picture of massive migration that has taken place in Europe since the end of the Cold War. By 1996 some nine million people had moved between or within the twelve countries of the Confederation of Independent States, the largest and potentially the most destabilizing population movements in any region since World War II.44 As a consequence Europe finds itself at a crossroads in determining how to deal in practical terms with challenges to its social fabric and standard of living on the one hand and threats to the physical security of its citizens on the other. The federal attorney’s office in Bonn recently announced that it would no longer define the Kurdish PKK organization’s operations in Germany as terrorist and would henceforth classify them as criminal; at the same press conference, however, it was announced that Germany remains a prime target for the secret service activities of a host of Eastern European and Middle Eastern states, many of whom are involved in acquiring the technology for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Partly in response to this, the Kohl government has undertaken to relax Germany’s restrictive laws against police bugging and wiretapping activities. 45 The change is just another increment in the adjustments being made within and between European states both to prevent and to deal with the kind of nightmarish scenarios outlined by Williams and Woessner in Chapter 5 of this volume. Cooperation among EU states has made possible substantive progress in policing the EU, but effectiveness could be bought at the high price of eroding the privacy and personal liberties of law-abiding citizens to an extent that a neglect of public accountability undermines public support for the very idea of living in one indivisible market.46 Europe today, then, is between the logic of anarchy and the logic of community both in terms of the potential external threats to its security and also in terms of the quality of day-to-day life of European citizens. Certainly, there is no guarantee that a more ambitious European contribution to regional security would of itself attenuate the activities of international terrorist and criminal organizations that constitute perhaps the most direct and immediate physical threat. A Europe unwilling or unable

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to deal with crises on its periphery, however, runs the risk of importing the consequences of such crises to its core. It is a sure bet that a failure by the EU states, or by a select group thereof, to take at face value the American challenge to embrace the burden of a real rather than a theoretical partnership will mean that Europe becomes progressively less able even to influence events just beyond its borders. It is hard to imagine how a continued policy of drift and abdication will not mean that the policing of European security turns progressively inward until it undermines the liberal freedoms that Europeans of this century have paid such a high price to rediscover.

Notes 1. Foreign Policy Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 2, September/October 1992, p. 8. 2. Financial Times, May 4–5, 1996, p. 2; May 15, 1996, p. 6. 3. Susan L.Woodward, “Bosnia after Dayton: Year Two,” Current History, Vol. 96, No. 608, March 1997, pp. 98–99. If education is any measure, Bosnia tends toward apartheid. Opposition parties are charging that the governing coalition is favoring segregated education, for minorities in regions where they represent 20% or more of the population, most notably of “national faculties” such as history and language. Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 10, 1997, http:// www.sueddeutsche.de. 4. Michael Stürmer, “Cap in Hand to Uncle Sam,” Financial Times, March 1, 1996, p. 18. 5. Washington Post, October 29, 1997, p. A24. 6. Paul Cornish, “European Security: The End of Architecture and the New NATO,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 4, 1996, p. 752. 7. See also Christian Pippan, “Die Europäische Union nach Amsterdam: Stärkung ihrer Identität auf internationaler Ebene?” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Vol. B47/97, 1997, pp. 30–39. 8. Werner Kaltefleiter, “Rakentenabwehr für Europa,” Zeitschrift für Politik, Vol. 43, No. 3, 1996, pp. 235–261. 9. Financial Times, October 16, 1997, p. 2. 10. Financial Times, April 3, 1996, p. 9. 11. “NATO’s New Force Structures,” NATO Basic Fact Sheet, No. 5, January 1996; Financial Times, April 6–7, 1996, p. 5; Trevor Taylor, “West European Security and Defence Policy: Maastricht and Beyond,” International Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 1, 1994, pp. 15–16. 12. Steven Kull, “The American Public, Congress and NATO Enlargement, Part I: Is There Sufficient Public Support?” NATO Review, Vol. 45, No. 1, January 1997, pp. 9–11. 13. Stanley Sloan, “Transatlantic Relations: Stormy Weather on the Way to Enlargement,” NATO Review, Vol. 45, No. 5, September/October 1997, pp. 12–16. 14. Taylor, “West European Security” p. 11.

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15. Ellen L.Frost, Transatlantic Trade: A Strategic Agenda (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997), p. 79. 16. Handelsblatt, January 13, 1998, http://www.handelsblatt.de/cgi-bin. 17. Werner Link, “Historical Continuity and Discontinuity in Transatlantic Relations: Consequences for the Future,” in Miles Kahler and Werner Link (eds.), Europe and America: A Return to History (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1996), p. 53. 18. “The Lagging Partnership,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 3, May/June 1994, p. 65; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 24, 1994, p. 2. 19. Financial Times, November 20, 1996, p. 2; February 22–23, 1997, p. 8; Washington Post, January 14, 1997, p. A15. 20. Andrew J.Pierre and Dmitri Trenin, “Developing NATO-Russian Relations,” Survival Vol. 39, No. 1, 1997, pp. 5–19; Gebhardt von Moltke, “Building a Partnership for Peace,” NATO Review, Vol. 42, No. 3, 1994, pp. 3–7. 21. For example, Michael E.Brown, “The Flawed Logic of NATO Expansion,” Survival, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1995, pp. 34–51, and Coral Bell, “Why an Expanded NATO Must Include Russia,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1994, pp. 27–41. 22. George Kennan, the intellectual father of the Cold War policy of containment, seemed to lose all equilibrium. He described expansion as “the most fateful error of American policy in the whole post–Cold War era,” and figured more prominently among the strong reactions to the alliance’s emerging policy than either Russian President Boris Yeltsin or his foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov. See New York Times, May 15, 1997, p. A16. Also Richard L.Kugler and Marianna V.Kozintseva, Enlarging NATO: The Russian Factor (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1996), p. 194. 23. On the logic for a continuing containment of Russia see Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 24. New York Times, May 15, 1997, p. A16. 25. Financial Times, July 23, 1997, p. 3. 26. Kugler and Kozintseva, Enlarging NATO, pp. 166–170; Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 17, 1997, http://www.sueddeutsche.de. 27. Washington Post, November 12, 1997, p. A20; Financial Times, November 25, 1996. p. 3; Handelsblatt, January 14, 1997, p. 1. 28. Financial Times, April 23, 1997, p. 13, and May 27, 1997, p. 3. 29. Alyson Bailes, “Europe’s Defense Challenge,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 1, 1997. p. 16. On the Gaullist legacy in the post–Cold War era see Philip H. Gordon, A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 186–202. 30. Financial Times, November 20, 1996, p. 2. 31. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, January 6, 1988, http://www.nzz.ch/online. 32. Bailes, “Europe’s Defense Challenge,” pp. 16, 20. Thomas Durrell-Young, The Normalization of the Federal Republic of Germany’s Defense Structures (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1992), pp. 14–15. 33. Bailes, “Europe’s Defense Challenge,” p. 18. 34. Financial Times, May 25–26, 1996, p. 9.

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35. See Sir Michael Howard’s important thoughts on the crossroads Britain has reached in “1945–1995: Reflection on Half a Century of British Security Policy” International Affairs, Vol. 71, No. 4, 1995, pp. 705–715. 36. OSCE Secretariat, Press Advisory, No. 66/97; Das Parlament, December 26, 1997, p. 1. 37. OSCE, Press Release No. 06/98. 38. Quoted in Washington Post, May 29, 1997, p. A26. 39. Financial Times, May 3, 1996, p. 13. 40. The European, December 9–15, 1994, p. 8. 41. Wall Street Journal, May 30, 1996, p. A1, A4; Washington Post, June 2, 1996, p.A24. 42. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 43. In 1997 the greatest number of Kurds entered the EU through Italy and Belgium, both of whom are signatories of the Schengen Agreement dating to 1985, according to which they and seven other EU states will permit the free flow of people across their borders. Once an individual seeking political asylum is cleared for entry by the customs official of one the Schengen states, that individual has automatic access to all other states of the agreement. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, January 7, 1998, http://www.nzz.ch/online. 44. Financial Times, May 23, 1996, p. 3. 45. Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 13, 1998, http://www.sueddeutsche.de; Washington Post, January 9, 1998, p. A23. 46. John Benyon, “Policing the European Union: The Changing Basis of Cooperation on Law Enforcement,” International Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 3, 1994, pp. 497–517.

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List of Contributors John Baylis is Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His major recent publications include The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO, 1942–1949 (1993); Ambiguity and Deterrence: British Nuclear Strategy, 1945–1964 (1995); Anglo-American Relations since 1939 (1997); and The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (1997), edited with Steve Smith. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Klaus von Beyme is Professor of Political Science at the University of Heidelberg. He is widely published in both comparative politics and international relations. His books have dealt with both West and East Germany. They include The Political System of the Federal Republic of Germany (1983) and Policy-Making in the German Democratic Republic (1982). Gary Geipel is Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute, where he directs the Heartland Project on the Atlantic Link. He is author of numerous articles in academic and popular journals on European politics and transatlantic security. Geipel’s Hudson publications include an interdisciplinary future study, Europe 2005, and three edited volumes, Rethinking the Transatlantic Partnership (1996), Germany in a New Era (1993), and The Future of Germany (1990). Carl C.Hodge is Professor of Political Science at Okanagan University College in British Columbia, Canada. In 1996–1997 he was Senior Volkswagen Research Fellow and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., and Visiting Scholar at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. 363

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He is author of The Trammels of Tradition: Social Democracy in Britain, France, and Germany (1994) and All of the People, All of the Time: American Government at the End of the Century (1998). With Cathal Nolan he coedited Shepherd of Democracy? America and Germany in the Twentieth Century (1992). Andreas Kintis works for the WEU Presidency Office at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was formerly Graduate Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Hull and founding editor of its newsletter, Insight, and Research Officer at the Centre for European Studies, University of Leeds. In 1996 he was awarded a NATO Research Fellowship for a two-year project, “NATO and the WEU: Interlocking or Interblocking Institutions.” He has published widely on European security issues. Heinz Magenheimer is Director of Research at the Academy of Defense in Vienna, Austria, and Editor for the Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift. His publications include Die Verteidigung Westeuropas (1986) and Eurostrategie und Rüstungskontrolle (1992) and numerous articles on security policy as well as strategic arms control issues. Paul Marantz is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the International Relations Program at the University of British Columbia. He is author of From Lenin to Gorbachev: Changing Soviet Perspectives on East-West Relations (1988) and is coeditor of The Decline of the Soviet Union and the Transformation of the Middle East (1994). Colette Mazzucelli is International Program Director, Budapest Institute for Graduate International and Diplomatic Studies (BIGIS) and Visiting Scholar, Institute on East Central Europe, Columbia University. She is author of France and Germany at Maastricht (1996). Michael Meimeth is a Professor of Political Science at the Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Universität des Saarlandes, Germany, where he specializes in French security policy. Cathal J.Nolan teaches international relations at Boston University. He has written more than thirty articles and reviews on democratic foreign policy and the normative dimension of international relations. His books include Principled Diplomacy: Security and Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy (1993) and the enormously popular Longman Guide to World Affairs (1995). He edited Ethics and Statecraft: The Moral Dimension in International Affairs (1995) and coedited Shepherd of Democracy? America and Germany in the Twentieth Century (1992). He is currently finishing Beyond the Pale: American Diplomacy and Russia’s Jews, 1865– 1997 and is writing a two-volume encyclopedia of world affairs.

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Axel Sauder is a Research Fellow at the Research Institute of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik in Bonn and Berlin. He is author of Souveranität und Integration: Französische und deutsche Konzeptionen europäische Sicherheit nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges, 1990–1993 (1995). James C.Sperling is Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron. He is coeditor of The Federal Republic of Germany and NATO: 40 Years After (1991) and coauthor of Recasting the European Order: Security Architectures and Economic Cooperation (1997). Gerhard Wettig is Director of the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne, Germany, and Acting Editor of the German foreign affairs review Aussenpolitik. Edward M.Whalen is a U.S. Air Force Colonel and is Air Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn. Colonel Whalen served in the Pentagon as the European planner for the Joint Staff, was a fighter squadron commander during Operation Desert Storm, and has spent twelve years in Europe in various U.S. Air Force and NATO positions. He is currently a doctoral candidate in International Relations at George Washington University. His other degrees include a Master of Management from Golden Gate University and a Bachelor of History from the U.S. Air Force Academy. Phil Williams is Director of the Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is author of Drug Trafficking and National Security and coeditor, with Stuart Croft, of European Security Without the Soviet Union.

INDEX Adler, Emanuel, 18, 20 Amsterdam, Treaty of, 289–292, 327, 328 Andrussovo, Treaty of, 41 Aron, Raymond, vii Atlantic Community, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 122, 229–230, 235–237, 240, 243, 331–332 Atlantic Declaration, 56 balance of power, 2–3, 23 Balkan states, 38, 41, 46, 153, 168, 173, 175, 191, 238, 245, 263, 282, 283, 316 Balladur Plan, see France Baltic states, 34, 36, 37, 38–39, 41, 43, 73, 88, 171, 188, 218, 219, 220, 258, 313, 341–342 Belarus, 37, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 63, 78– 79, 336 biological weapons, 94, 96, 101, 103 Bismarck, Otto von, 34–35 Bosnia-Herzogovina, 1, 6, 21–22, 25, 36, 154, 157, 173, 175, 239, 245–246, 257, 259, 263, 264, 266, 268, 269, 281, 287, 288, 315, 325–326, 330, 339 Bretton Woods monetary regime, 67 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 29, 218 Buchan, Alistair, vii–viii Bull, Hedley, 78 Bush, George, 169, 183, 194, 195, 283

Canada, 299, 301, 304, 306, 309, 314, 316, 339 Carr, E.H., 14, 25, 28 Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), vii, 7, 8, 9, 10, 18–19, 20, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35–40, 43, 46, 51, 55, 57, 60–61, 62, 63, 74, 77, 82–83, 85, 121, 123, 148, 149, 150, 152, 158, 166, 167, 168– 169, 171– 172, 185, 187, 212, 221, 222, 223–224, 234, 247, 257, 260, 267, 270, 280–281, 334 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 312 debt of, 64–65, 66 ethnonationalism, 177 and EU, 77, 81–89, 239, 275–276, 278–279, 34–341 intermediate Europe, 36–40, 42, 44–45, 46 macroeconomic environment of, 56–57, 58, 65, 67, 75 monetary union and, 79–80 NATO, 266 Chechnya, 104, 213, 214, 315, 339 chemical weapons, 94, 96, 101, 103 Chirac, Jacques, 118, 124, 150, 154, 336.343; defense reforms, 124–127, 127–128, 130, 131, 133, 136–137, 337, 338 civil power, 33–34, 108–109 182 Germany as, 34, 79, 176–177, 181–184, 186 Clausewitz, Karl von, 29, 269 Clinton, William, 24, 173, 198, 239, 245, 258, 334 367

368

Cold War, vii-xii, 1, 3, 4, 8–9, 22, 33, 43, 45, 51, 59, 66, 89, 93, 112, 117, 120, 159, 208–212, 238, 274, 306 end of, 275, 310–312 collective security, 5–6, 67 Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), see NATO Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 57, 156, 159, 189, 273–297, 316 Confederation of Independent States (CIS), 36, 82, 83, 88, 111, 150, 171, 217, 316, 332 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), (see also OSCE), 16, 17–18, 21, 28, 149, 150, 193, 299–300, 314, 333 Baskets I, II, III, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307 Cold War, 300–314 confidence and security-building measures (CSBMs), 303, 305, 306, 312 human rights, 299–300, 301, 303, 305, 307, 308 liberal-internationalism, 300, 306 Soviet system, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311–312 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), 27, 36, 43–44 cooperative security, 16–21, 23, 25 Council of Europe, 18, 20, 21, 218, 316 crime, 86, 93–114, 344 transnational, 97–98, 101–102, 106–108, 257, 280 organized, 106–112 Croatia, 36, 156, 167, 173, 192, 197, 284, 288, 339–340 cyberterrorism, 104–105, 269 Czechoslovkia/Czech Republic, ix, 6, 23, 28, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 74, 76, 78, 88, 101–102, 111, 171, 184–185, 188, 209, 212, 222, 223, 265, 266, 304, 313, 330 Dayton Peace Accord, 198, 257, 315, 325, 326 democracy, 55–56, 57, 58, 65, 67, 82, 171, 257, 270 and trade, 60–61, 65, 68, 69, 185 and debt, 64–65, 66, 68 Delors, Jacques, 276, 278–279, 279–280, 284–285, 288

REDEFINING EUROPEAN SECURITY

Deutsch, Karl, 15–16, 26 ethnonationalism, 83–84, 87, 177, 193–194, 196, 197, 199, 214–215, 280 Eurocorps, 20, 125, 126, 132, 152, 156–157, 188, 190, 264, 337–338 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), 57, 81, 184 European Community, see European Union European Defense Community (EDC), xi, 188, 262 European Economic Community (EEC), 15 European Monetary System (EMS), 56 European Monetary Union (EMU), 57, 58, 74, 79, 80–81, 168, 170, 275, 276, 277–278, 279 European Political Cooperation (EPC), see European Union European Recovery Program (ERP), 63–64, 84 European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI), 118, 122–123, 125, 127, 128, 130, 137, 148, 150, 151, 156, 157, 158, 188, 189, 190, 195, 198, 200, 260; 262–264, 265, 270, 271, 281, 328, 330, 337, 338–339 defense procurement, 131, 191, 329–330; and WEU, 262, 328 European Union (EU), viii, 1, 3, 8, 10, 18–19, 20, 21, 32, 34, 36, 38, 39, 42, 46, 51, 56, 57, 58, 60, 69, 73, 74, 76, 80, 85, 95, 99–100, 105, 107, 110, 137, 167, 187, 234, 238, 239, 259, 270 bureaucratization, 314, 327–328 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 57, 156, 159, 189, 238, 273– 297, 316–317, 327, 328 defense capacity, 150, 156, 247, 265, 289, 330–331, 341 economic diplomacy of, 80–89, 168, 170, 184, 247, 259, 279, 285, 340, 341, 342 enlargement of, 57, 58, 59, 62, 67, 68, 77, 78–79, 86–87, 158, 167, 168– 169, 172, 187, 234, 247, 278–279, 340–341 European Political Cooperation (EPC), 282–287 European Council,

INDEX

87, 286, 327 NAFTA, 233–234; OSCE, 314, 316 Petersberg tasks, 291 PHARE program, 76, 81, 83, 87, 340 Single European Act (SEA), 62, 275 Turkey, 342–343 Yugoslavia, 193, 194, 263, 281–289, 325 France, x–xi, 31–32, 34, 63, 68–69, 75, 79, 80–81, 94–95, 167, 258 Balladur Plan, 151, 153 Chirac reforms, 124–127, 131–132, 133–134, 136–137, 336, 338 and ESDI, 118, 122–123, 262, 265 Gaullism, 118–121, 124, 129, 134, 137, 138, 145–146, 147–149, 157 and Germany, 120–121, 125, 126, 132– 133, 136, 147–148, 152, 156–158, 159, 172–173, 188–189, 190, 277, 329, 336–339 and NATO, 119–120, 121–122, 125–126, 127, 128, 129, 130–131, 134–136, 145– 146, 148, 149–151, 152–153, 154, 155, 158, 159–160, 173, 260, 261–262, 263, 337 nuclear capacity, 119, 120, 123, 129, 131, 131–132, 134, 137, 147, 148–149, 173, 182 in Persian Gulf War, 124–125, 133, 140 n14, 151 security policy of 117–143, 147–164 Yugoslavia, 125, 127, 138, 151, 325 de Gaulle, Charles, x, 118, 137 Gaullism (see France) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), see WTO Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 166, 168, 170, 192–193, 194, 197–198, 277–278 geopolitics, 2, 29–49, 64, 75–76, 77, 78–79, 80, 82–83, 97, 158, 171, 172–173, 184, 187, 188–189, 194, 199, 207, 219, 277, 282, 333 Germany, x–xi, 2–3, 29, 31–35, 36, 40, 43, 63, 73, 78.95, 97, 101, 102, 120, 135, 236, 241 Bundeswehr, 173–174, 181–182, 183, 190, 191, 200 as civil power, 34, 79, 167, 176–177, 186, 233 Carolingian completion, 168, 169–170 and CEE states, 66, 73–81, 87, 158, 171–172, 183 defense procurement, 174, 191 economic

369

diplomacy of, 74–74, 76–77, 168, 169, 170–171, 172, 175, 178, 183, 184–186, 201 exceptionalism, 177–178, 187–188 European Union, 167, 168–169, 170, 175, 181, 184, 186, 277–278, 279, 280–281 foreign policy, 165–179, 174–175, 186, 187, 199–200, 327 and France, 120–121, 132, 135, 136, 148, 149, 156–157, 159, 165, 167–168, 173, 178, 188–189, 190, 329, 336–338 Green Party, 175–176, 177 and NATO, 130, 136, 149, 155, 165, 167, 181, 183, 185, 187–188, 222, 263, 265, 337 Ostpolitik, 182–183, 190, 276–277, 303, 308, 309 Persian Gulf War, 184 and Poland, 166 reunification, 76, 149, 158, 165, 168, 173–174, 177, 183, 184, 188, 189, 196, 234, 277, 279, 305 and Russia, 75, 79, 169, 170, 172–173, 183, 187–188, 196, 212, 303 troop deployments, 175–176178, 196, 198 and U.S., 169 Yugoslavia, 168, 175, 192–200, 325, 327, 336 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 28, 32, 167, 183, 276, 310 Gray, Colin, 29 Great Britain (see United Kingdom) Group of Seven nations (G-7), 56, 57, 58, 66, 69, 276 Group of Twenty Four nations (G-24), 63–64, 81, 276 Haushofer, Karl, 30, 31 Helsinki Final Act, 16, 279, 299, 300–301, 303–305, 306, 308–309, 311 Helsinki II, 314 Herzog, Roman, 80, 86, 200–201 Hoffmann, Stanley, 13 Howard, Michael, viii human rights (see also CSCE, OSCE) 16, 17, 18, 109, 199, 239, 259, 299–300, 302–308, 310, 311, 313, 315, 318, 339–340 Hungary, ix, 6, 23, 28, 34, 35, 36, 38, 44, 45–46, 65, 74, 76, 78, 79, 83, 86, 88, 171, 185, 188, 209, 212, 223, 265, 266, 276, 313, 330

370

Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF), 182, 183, 188, 194–195; Treaty, 147 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 57, 58, 66, 68 Islam, 35, 94, 99, 220, 258 Italy, 94, 87, 103, 107, 258, 265 Kennedy, Paul, 29 Kinkel, Klaus, 169–170, 176, 185–186 Kjellén, Rudolf, 30–31, 32, 47 Kohl, Helmut, 32, 34, 76–77, 78, 156, 165, 167–168, 169, 172, 182–183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 191, 194, 195–196, 198, 200, 201, 278, 279, 327, 344 ten-point program, 207 Lea, Homer, 29 Lebed, Alexander, 42–43 liberal tradition, 13–14, 15, 22, 23, 25, 78, 300, 306 and trade, 61 Maastricht, Treaty of, 32, 57, 58, 62, 65–66, 67, 68, 79, 167, 175, 189, 262, 273–281, 287, 290, 313, 327, 340–341 macroeconomics, 55–59, 66, 67, 68, 74, 79–80 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 29 Makinder, Halford John, 29 Mediterranean, x, 9, 94, 97, 99, 187, 188–189, 239, 258 Mearsheimer, John, 21 mercantilism, 52 Middle East, x, 8, 9–10 military forces, 123 rapid deployment, 123 missile defense, 94, 97, 258, 269, 329 Mitrany, David, 15 Mitterrand, François, 31–32, 122–123; defense reforms, 124, 126, 127, 149, 151, 153, 156, 167–168 North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), 19, 69, 150, 151, 185, 260, 316 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), xi–xii, 1–2, 3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–9, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28,

REDEFINING EUROPEAN SECURITY

32, 34, 36, 38, 56, 66, 67, 68–69, 96, 117, 118, 173, 175, 187, 209, 259, 270, 271, 276, 289, 309, 313, 316, 317 Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), 126, 128, 129, 134–135, 154, 155, 190, 263, 264, 337 Dayton Accords, 198, 239; ESDI, 262–263, 270 France and, 119–120, 121–122, 125–126, 127, 129, 134–135, 137, 145–146, 148, 150–151, 153, 154, 155, 159 enlargement of, 36, 38–39, 40, 42–43, 43–44, 45–46, 51, 57, 59, 62, 68–69, 77, 78, 150, 151, 153–154, 166, 169, 172, 173, 187, 212, 218, 220–223, 225, 242, 245, 260, 265–267, 330, 332, 333–334, 341 peacekeeping, 154, 245, 260 rapid reaction force, 126, 267–268, 288 Russia, 220–221, 258 strategic doctrine, 121–122, 129, 131, 131–132, 148–149, 259–260, 330 Yugoslavia, 259, 263, 326 nuclear weapons, 93, 96, 101, 102, 103, 104, 111, 112, 119, 120, 121, 123, 125, 137, 148, 151, 182, 235, 255, 257, 266, 267, 270, 274, 305 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 60, 63, 78, 81–82, 171 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) (see also CSCE), xii, 17–18, 19, 20–21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 69, 198, 218, 259, 265, 270, 271, 299–323, 333 confidence and security-building measures (CSBMs), 299 and EU; 314, 316–317, 333 liberal-internationalism, 318 observer and rapporteur missions, 315–316, 339–340 Russia, 317, 333 small state influence, 316, 317 Yugoslavia, 315, 328 Paris, Charter of, ix, 6, 16–17, 302, 312 Partnership for Peace (PfP), ix, 19, 39, 69, 153, 218, 247, 260, 265, 313, 333 Persian Gulf War, 124–125, 184, 247, 264, 268, 280, 283, 343

INDEX

Poland, ix, 6, 23, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 65, 66, 74, 76, 78, 88, 158, 165, 171, 172, 184, 185, 188, 212, 222, 223, 265, 266, 276, 284, 313, 317, 330, 335–336 power projection, 267–268, 270 Rapallo, Treaty of, 165, 173 realist tradition, 13–14, 15, 21, 22–23, 25, 78, 117, 118–119, 138–139, 146, 175, 289–290 refugees, 344 revolution in military affairs (RMA), 268–269, 270, 329 Rodionov, Igor, 23, 27, 332, 333 Rühe,Volker, 187–188, 337–338 Russia, 2, 4–5, 6–7, 8, 9, 10, 22, 23–24, 32–33, 34, 35–36, 37, 38, 39, 63, 65, 69, 73, 82, 84, 86, 87, 97, 104, 121, 151, 152, 154, 158, 165, 173, 174, 177, 290 Baltic states, 218, 341 Central Asia, 219, 220 Chechnya, 104, 213, 214 China, 219, 220, 221 Cold War, 208–212 CSCE, 302–303, 306 democracy, 171, 209, 215, 221, 224–225, 225–226, 270, 332, 334–335 disintegration, 213–214, 221 economy, 221, 223, 224–225, 334 elections in, 45, 171, 209, 212, 225 geopolitics of, 40–46, 75, 78–79, 80, 104, 172, 212, 215–220, 333–334, 335 and Germany, 183–184, 196 Helsinki Accords, 302–308, 309 Marxism-Leninism, 210–211, 213 military capacity, 212–213, 215, 257 NATO, 218, 220–225, 258, 260, 265, 332–333, 334, 341 organized crime, 93–94, 96, 101–102, 102–103, 106, 107–108, 214–215, 219 security policy, 207–227 recidivism, 217–218 Soviet system, 208–210, 214, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311–312 Ukraine, 218, 335 Yugoslavia, 221, 257–258 security, defined, vii–ix collective, 5–6, 67–81 and crime, 86, 96–97, 106–112 and cyberterrorism, 104–105 and

371

democracy, 55–56, 82, 85–86, 196–197, 199, 302, 317–318 economic, 53–54, 75–77, 79, 81–84, 171 economic and military, 51–53, 54–55, 67–68, 69259 ethnonationalism and, 83–84, 191–200, 280 and finance, 63–67, 84, 105, 109–110, 110–111, 156 Helsinki norms, 305–306 and macroeconomics, 55–59, 74–75 and international society, 78, 83, 85 refugees, 280 and trade, 59–63, 67, 75, 77, 81, 85 Single European Act (SEA), 62 Slovakia, 36, 38, 39, 73, 78, 83 Slovenia, 36, 38, 45, 73, 192, 197, 265, 284, 285 Soviet Union (see Russia) Spykman, Nicholas, 29 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), 27 Stürmer, Michael, x–xi terrorism, 97–98–101, 102, 344 Thatcher, Margaret, 32, 168 Treaty on European Union (TEU), see Maastricht Turkey, x, 63, 102, 219, 258, 264–265 EU aspirations, 342–343 Ukraine, 34, 38, 41–42, 63, 78–79, 83, 89, 158, 212, 218, 219, 258, 335 NATO expansion and, 42, 45, 335–336 United Kingdom (UK), 29, 31, 32, 63, 94, 167, 182, 189, 209, 220, 261–262, 264, 265, 276, 277, 278, 325, 326, 329–330; foreign policy, 338–339 United Nations (UN), 23, 29, 35, 154, 155, 169, 176, 197, 200, 217, 241, 242, 243, 244, 316, 339 United States of America (USA), xi, 1, 3, 4, 9–10, 22, 40, 46, 56, 58, 60, 63, 65, 67, 69, 75, 94, 98, 99, 100, 103, 105, 118, 119, 122, 127, 130, 165, 170, 188, 209, 211, 213, 274, 276, 306–307 Atlanticism, 229–251 Bush administration, 169, 183, 194, 195,

372

283 Cold War, 238 Congress, 244– 245 Clinton administration, 154, 198, 239, 245, 258, 329, 334 Dayton Accords, 198, 325, 326 defense spending, 242, 243, 247, 255, 260 economic interests, 230–235 European Union, 230–231, 233–234, 237, 247, 290, 331–332 foreign policy, 237–238 and France, 134–135, 146, 147, 148, 149–150, 150–151, 153, 154–155, 158 and Germany, 169, 181–182, 183, 186, 189 NATO, 222, 230, 231, 234, 241, 242, 243, 260, 261–262, 262–263, 270, 303, 304 isolationism, 229, 231, 237, 239, 241– 242, 244, 248 Persian Gulf War, 124, 247, 283 public opinion, 240–243, 247, 330–331 Reagan administration, 230, 309 Russia, 218, 230, 304 trade, 231–232–233, 241 troop deployments, 236, 239, 241, 244, 245–246, 260, 263–264 unilateralism, 242–243 Yugoslavia, 151, 230, 245– 246, 247, 263, 282–283, 325, 326 Versailles, Treaty of, 32, 35, 165, 197 Walesa. Lech, 39

REDEFINING EUROPEAN SECURITY

Warsaw Pact, ix, 1, 9, 19, 59, 96, 121, 209, 256, 267, 270 weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), 98, 101–104, 257, 258, 269, 270, 279 Western European Union (WEU), xii, 18, 20, 21, 34, 57, 62, 135, 150, 152, 155, 169, 187, 189, 190, 259, 262, 263 264–265, 270, 271, 292, 328, 339 and CJTF, 264 and ESDI, 262, 264 Yugoslavia, 283, 284 World Bank, 66 World Trade Organization (WTO), 60, 63, 234 World War 1, 83, 238 World War II, 54, 55–56, 63, 77, 83, 222, 223–224, 244, 271, 274 Yeltsin, Boris, 7, 45, 46, 171, 214, 217, 219, 223, 225, 258, 332 Yugoslavia, x–xi, 3, 36, 39, 45, 73, 97, 122, 125, 127, 138, 145, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157, 168, 177, 191–200, 218, 221, 222, 238, 245–246, 256, 260, 263, 264, 301, 315, 325–327, 339 European Union, 273–297, 281– 289 refugees, 195