Europe has always been more than the sum of its parts. For more than a thousand years, it has been an evolving idea. Today the European idea is closer to what has been envisioned along the way than at any time in history. Within the wink of an historical eye—a half century—Europe has emerged as one of the greatest experiments in international affairs. A group of 27 states has created structures and policies which form a unique blend of markets, a common currency, and the capabilities to pool national sovereignty for the good of the union of the half billion people they represent. Its success can be measured by the desire of many more states waiting and wishing to join this club, for which they must work hard to qualify.
Amid all these accomplishments, Europe is still evolving with accompanying debates and constant discussions about its next steps. As the debate over the Lisbon Treaty made clear, the European Union is still made up of member states developing forms of shared sovereignty while wanting to maintain some balance of authority among themselves and the governance of the EU. European integration continues to increase its reach and impact on the domestic structures of the member states. This has not been without resistance. If it is going to be capable of generating legitimacy and therefore the ability to govern at the European level, there is a need to find new equations of representative and participatory democracy within the framework of the EU.
As a historical comparison, the experience of the United States in the nineteenth century might be helpful. Before the Civil War, the United States was referred to in the plural, as in “The United States are….” After the Civil War assured the preservation of the country, the verb turned to “is,” underlining the concept of the United States as one country. Europe may not be able to aspire to becoming a United States of Europe for now, but the aspiration of achieving a sense of unified purpose behind the idea of Europe has long been at the foundation of the European movement.
An important dimension in the European evolution includes the need to examine the role of the EU on the global stage. The evolution of the last fifty years has seen the mission of European integration move through a period following World War II in which the priority moved from establishing a framework of peace and order on a continent which had known centuries of war, to the need for the EU to see itself as part of a transforming global order, one in which it can and must play an important role as a strategic Europe.
The defining cornerstones of the European movement have included the commitment to the rule of law, conflict resolution, the priority of human rights, and the commitment to shared sovereignty and multi-level governance to deal with shared challenges and opportunities. While that has defined Europe in its efforts to date, today and tomorrow will require that Europe not only live up to its own standards but that it also meet its responsibilities on the global stage.
While those goals are enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty and institutionalized in the creation of a High Representative for Foreign Policy and the European External Action Service, full implementation will be slow to take effect. The track record of European integration is one of process leading to consensus which leads to policy. Because it involves multiple decisionmaking centers, it can be a frustrating experience for those watching from the outside. Yet the weight and influence of the EU generates significant capacities of value not only to the EU members but to the multiple partners it interacts with around the globe.
Seen from an American perspective, Europe is a unique, important, and also difficult partner across a range of shared challenges and opportunities. There is an enormous set of interests which bind the United States and Europe together, while others underscore differences. Just as the vast network of transatlantic economic ties dwarf all others, they also generate frictions in their interdependence and asymmetries. There are shared sets of values and goals in a world shaped by both threats and needs that impact the entire globe, even though there are divergent approaches to pursuing them: energy supplies, nuclear proliferation, an endangered climate, the pathology of terrorism, and the increasing demands of billions of people who want an equitable share of the world’s resources and opportunities—all these represent the twenty-first century agenda for Europe and the United States.
In all of these issues, the United States and the EU are challenged to think and act as global players. Just as globalization is changing the nature and implementation of national power and influence, the United States and Europe can bring unique combinations of resources to deal with the need for a security framework in which both sides have a stake and shared capabilities. For more than sixty years, that point has been defined by NATO. But as the EU has been working to enhance its ability to make viable decisions ranging from the economic to the political and military, the challenges of meshing the two institutions remain significant. They have been aggravated by the economic recessions and the domestic arguments on both sides of the Atlantic over priorities at home and abroad.
This comes at a time when there is a problem in generating a defining mission for mobilizing the power and resources of the transatlantic community. During the Cold War, that mission was defined as the defense of freedom through common security. During the past two decades, with a transformed global landscape, that mission has become a more complicated process in the face of a diffusion of threats, challenges, and power itself. Europe became more immersed in its own process of deepening and expansion while the United States, particularly after the September 11 attacks, became more immersed in its own struggles to develop a new understanding of both vulnerability and global capacities to respond to a changing equation of American power, purpose, and influence.
The centrifugal forces emerging from these trends have pushed and pulled on transatlantic relations, making consensus building on both sides of the Atlantic as difficult as across the ocean. This has made finding a shared strategic direction difficult. Yet we are challenged to build an equitable equation between burden-sharing, decisionmaking, and power-sharing in the changing framework of a world in which boundaries of many kinds erode in the face of an increasingly complex web of interdependence. Such an equation was formed after World War II and created the foundations on which today’s EU and the transatlantic alliance were to be built. As a result, some of those former boundaries have become bridges, such as in Europe, where Cold War divisions were replaced by decisions to build a larger, more inclusive community of nations.
Today there is a need for a new equation and it can now be built with a new basis of partnership, one in which the European side can and must be capable of defining and implementing a strategic role for itself, confident of its capabilities and values, aware of its interests, and able to define its parameters. There are multiple platforms on which to exercise this capacity, well beyond Europe, be it in the Middle East, Africa, in relations with Russia, or within the web of international organizations in which the EU and its individual members play a critically important role. And there is a degree of urgency in many cases, which can often outpace the process of European decisionmaking.
Within the EU, it will be a complex debate for some time to come as to how that strategic role will be realized. And that debate cannot be contained within the closed quarters of political elites but must be carried out in the public squares and fora at multiple levels if the results are to both be understood and supported by the European community at large.
The United States must also pay close attention. But Europe should be taken for what it says it wishes to be and held up to its own standards. A strategic Europe will have the capability to think beyond the focus on itself and to lift its gaze, capacities, and engagements beyond its borders and boundaries of today to a global arena tomorrow. In doing so, the European idea will continue to evolve and will also continue to be more than the sum of its parts.
Jackson Janes is the executive director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
To reinvigorate debate over European foreign policy and Europe’s role in the world, Carnegie Europe is publishing a series of essays from leading policymakers, diplomats, experts, and journalists on Strategic Europe over the coming weeks. A new essay will appear every day.
