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After three years of U.S.-European bickering, transatlantic relations
are, on the official level, on the mend. The trip of the
newly-appointed Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to Europe to pave
the way for President Bush's European tour and the warm welcome she
received from European officials make die-hard Atlanticists optimistic
again. But this amicable atmosphere hides the structural alterations in
the relationship, the multitude of issues that have to be addressed by
the partners, the institutional complexity of the relationship today,
and the still-disapproving mood in the European public towards the
current administration.
On the one hand, there are Europeans who proceed from the fact that
history has closed the Fulda gap and with it the massive strategic
dependence of Europe on the Americans and who regard Russia as a
comrade, China as a far-away power, and the possible threat by Iranian
nuclear missiles presumably as something they can deal with through
diplomatic means alone. All of this is regarded as grist for the mills
of a "strategic Europe" separated from the U.S. The bigger part of the
European strategic community, however, knows that Europe and the world
are much better off with a strong transatlantic connection and is again
trying to tie the transatlantic knot. However, it is not clear what
this means in concrete and conceptual terms. On the other hand,
Washington has changed its attitude to emphasize American power and to
stress its capacity to form flexible coalitions.
Moreover, the current diplomatic effort to take the Europeans into a
"common boat" is still missing a coherent architectural conception.
Since the Eisenhower/Kennedy period, the leading notion in studies of
the transatlantic architecture has been "partnership". However, this
term has many different meanings and raises numerous questions. Is
there, for example, a difference between a U.S.-European and a U.S.-EU
partnership? Should partnership compartmentalize or link economic,
political, and military components? Is equality in resources and
political structure a prerequisite for the implementation of the
partnership model? In addition, how do the different partnership models
relate to such older architectural concepts as Atlantic Community and
Atlantic Union, and to newer ideas such as global governance?
The purpose of the project would be threefold: (1) to look at the
development of the various concepts for the transatlantic relationship,
their aims, and their open and hidden assumptions and preconditions;
(2) to examine the linkage between the current development of the EU's
CFSP/ESDP and those concepts; and (3) to speculate about how much the
EU's future development will change the transatlantic architecture.
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