Europe's Lost Vision of Itself: in the shadow of the U.S.

by Marcia Pally

Internationale Politik, October 2005

Prologue:

After voters in France and Holland rejected the EU constitution, Lee Wook Hun of South Korea’s Foreign Ministry told International Herald Tribune (June 14, 2005), "South Korea favored an integrated EU because it would allow Europe to speak in one voice and give more stability to global order. That would give more predictability to Europe's foreign policy and would allow it to play a more active role in such issues as the North Korean nuclear problem.” Lee Wook Hun’s hopes for Europe’s global potential are clear. A confederated EU would add to global stability and act as a mediator to prevent violent conflict. What is curious is that Europe’s hopes are not. The vision of a grand EU — its global power and responsibilities — seems to have faded from view. For those looking for a global power other than the US (and the emerging China), this is a disappointment.

In the debates leading up to the constitutional referenda, one topic not much discussed was Europe’s position on the world stage. Votes were based on national concerns, not European much less international ones. They were protectionist, looking not to EU responsibility to its perimeter (Balkans, Ukraine) or other parts of the world but to protection from them. The position of EU foreign-policy secretary doesn’t exits; the proposed EU Foreign Service is stalled. In the failure to arrive at the next EU a budget, even when the new countries offered to forego over €1.5 billion, the EU appeared squabbling and unlike a world leader. Across Western Europe, anti-EU sentiment is running high, as though people have lost interest in the global leverage that size and integration bring. Yet Europeans had over the last decade been warming to their increased strength and especially to their role as ‘counterbalance’ to the US. While they were voting against the constitution, 85 percent in France said they preferred an EU that was a military rival to the United States. In Pew Research Center and German Marshall Fund surveys of the past year, 59% of the European public, 73% of the French and 60% of Germans no longer wanted the US to take a world leadership role; 75% of the French, 63% of Germans and 56% of the British said they wanted Europe’s military and foreign policy to be more independent of the US. Toward that end, the EU in 2003 established an autonomous European military planning “element” independent of NATO.

How should we understand this ambivalence? Europe is running up against internal contradictions that limit its own aims. The first is between Europe’s economic and political ambitions and its postwar suspicion of political ambition. The second is between Europe’s ambitions and its assumptions about the US. The first is well-known in Europe and the second, nearly taboo: Europe wants to be a world player yet assumes the US will, in the end, handle the planet.

This contradiction has plagued the EU project since the end of the Cold War: On one hand lies Europe’s robust criticism of US policies as short-sighted, quick-fix, unilateral, and aggressive, and on the other hand lies its reliance on the US to act responsibly in geopolitical matters. On one hand, Europeans want to address world problems with the wisdom gleaned from its history. Many see the continent-wide rallies against the war in Iraq as the birth of an independent EU. On the other hand, the faltering approach taken to EU development suggests that in the end, Europeans are not terribly uncomfortable leaving the bottom line and tough calls to the country they have roundly censured.

One reason given for European ambivalence, especially since the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes, is EU expansion. With Eastern European Atlanticism, owing to US security guarantees, pitched against the West’s critique of the US, the larger EU does not have enough ‘glue’ to emerge as a global player. This, however, confuses causes with effects. First, many Eastern European countries have been frustrated by the US since the Iraq war. (Poland, for one, did not get its Visa requirement lifted or the economic contracts in Iraq that it expected.) More importantly, Eastern European countries want economic development and security. The first is already more easily gotten from Western Europe. The second would be as well, if the EU exerted its geopolitical leverage with Russia: 50% of Russia’s trade is with the EU. Eastern Europe’s reluctance to shift loyalty more substantially to the EU is thus a result of Western Europe’s retreat from the world stage, not its cause. In short, Western Europe’s faltering on EU integration disappoints Eastern Europe, whose enthusiasm and loyalty would strengthen Europe’s global position. Why is Western Europe shooting itself in the foot?

One can also dismiss European ambivalence about its global role as tactical: no sense in the EU taking on a global role more independent of the US before it has a foreign policy and defense force to do so. But Europe is not moving very fast towards that foreign policy or defense force. Why not?

In Germany, these two contradictions — about political ambition and about the US--stand in high relief, and I’ll focus on it here. Germany is at once ambivalent about grand political schemes and one of the EU’s strongest advocates. It remains one of America’s closest partners even while criticizing it. A writer for Die Zeit recently told me, “We think we are part of the empire; we think we know America from the inside” — to love, honor, and chasten, I thought.

The EU and its Contradictions

The EU is a momentous success. Historically, it is not frequent that sovereign states and former enemies implement a cooperative structure that keeps the peace and enhances prosperity. It is true that the EU has problems of governance. The powerful Commission is not politically accountable; Parliament may not introduce legislation and is dilatory in demanding that right. The EU lacks a powerful representative body, filled for instance with members of the national parliaments, so that its policies were the product of negotiation among representatives and accountable to their constituencies. But the answer to these problems is not to lose sight of EU potential but to build the necessary political structures. For the EU has been successful not only for itself. It has become a model of success for others, a confederation that East Asians, Africans and Latin Americans see as a guide. It has provided significant help to other nations. Europe’s foreign aid comes to $30 billion annually, or 70% of worldwide development assistance (1). (For comparison, America’s is $16.8 billion, 1/4 or $4 billion of which is marked for military purposes [2]). It has put forth the use of diplomacy and economic leverage as solutions to geo-political problems — “soft power” as an ideal. Others have before, but have not followed through. But here is the possibility of a powerful, well-organized, rich and technologically expert federation taking this as official policy. It was a moment of moral and well as political advancement to see Poland assist the Ukraine as Western European nations had assisted it.

Yet it is this vision of a vigorous EU that is burdened by contradictions. In four arenas it seems that the EU wants both to be a global power uncoupled from the US and rely on it: in the speed of EU foreign policy formation, in Europe’s ability to live up to its criticisms of the US, in EU planning for cases of crises, and in EU planning for conflict with the US. First, the European assumption seems to be that the much-censured US will nonetheless be responsible for global matters while Europe slowly aligns the foreign policies and militaries of 25 countries. The rejection of the constitution prolongs the process, and evidently Europe is willing to live with that.

Second, one would expect Europe, in developing its policies, to live up to its criticisms of the US. Yet, while chastening the US for its aggressive ‘hard power’ approach, European nations did not use their economic ‘soft power’ to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq, for instance. Each nation preferred instead to protect its own economic interests (a common European criticism of the US), a preference that deepened in the June, 2005 budget row. While criticizing the US for its paltry global economic aid, the EU has maintained its protectionist barriers against the third world, hobbling its efforts to escape poverty. While criticizing US abuses in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, Europeans annually consider lifting the arms embargo on China, turning a blind eye to its abuses. The US may be inconsistent in enforcing its human rights standards, but the point of the EU model is to distinguish itself from such bad behavior.

Third, it is not clear who — other than the US — will take matters in hand if diplomacy and soft power fails. The UN Security Council hasn’t had much success in such circumstances. It would be a significant victory for the EU approach if it persuaded Iran to give up its uranium program in exchange for economic cooperation and security guarantees. But neither Iran’s mullahs nor the new government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appear likely to do so. What then? At present, Iran is comfortable: it has started uranium conversion at Isfahan and threatens enrichment at Natanz, while it benefits from its considerable trade with the EU, especially Germany. But for the EU, with strong interests in preventing an arms race in the Mideast, the clock is ticking. When negotiations first began, the EU said it would join the US if Iran broke its promises-- a policy which again relies on the US to do the right thing in such a tough call. Fourth, does the EU have a plan for conflict with the US? Europe might find itself at odds with the US over Iran, China, Russia, or an EU defense force independent of NATO. Yet there seems to be little discomfort in Europe about America’s likely prevailing in such conflicts. This leaves not only the rest of the world but Europe itself in US hands.

The source of Europe’s contradictions (1945 – 2005)

These contradictions weaken the EU both as a model of confederation and as a global power that takes charge of geopolitical problems because it brings something better to them than others do. Where do these contradictions come from? Short-term, they come from the Cold War period, during which Western Europe, and especially Germany, became rightfully suspicious of grand political visions, owing to the devastation of its continental and colonial wars, and to the incinerators and gulags of the 20th century. Europe’s conclusion that it had had enough of militarism was the start of the Coal and Steel Union, formed to keep France and Germany from hostilities over resources. The contradiction Europe now face is that its suspicion of totalitarian visions is keeping it from the EU vision it embraced in order to prevent totalitarianism. It would be good if Europe did not get stuck in this jam. More cynical observers, American Republicans among them, say Europe is hiding in it, to avoid the frustration and expense of acting as the power responsible for getting the geopolitical job done, without US backup.

Europe’s suspicion of grand political visions was ostensibly a critique of all such schemes. But tacitly the US was exempted, for a while. Indeed, Europe delegated grand visions to the US and assumed it would handle the big geopolitical jobs because of its benign foreign policy, or at least because rational self-interest made the US a reliable world leader. This was a Euro-centric view: American self-interest appeared benign because it dovetailed with Europe’s Cold War interests. Much of Latin America and Asia had a more violent experience of American foreign policy. Nonetheless, it was a strongly-held view especially in Germany, which embraced the American promise that US-style democracy and international agreements were the ways never again to be the world’s arch-perpetrator. It was also this view of the US which led Europe’s postwar generation to outrage when its found that American covert operations, “economic imperialism,” nuclear build-up, and “small wars” like Vietnam violated the political premises Europe and Germany relied on. (3)

In short, it was the belief in a rational US that led Europe to its second contradiction: between assuming that international geopolitics will be handled by a reliable US and Europe’s ambitions globally, especially where it finds the US to be no longer just or reliable. Germany, though it has had a strong vision of the EU, is not leading Europe toward it. Shortly before the 2004 presidential election, a Berlin bar owner expressed this neatly to The New York Times, “Bush took away our America. I mean we love America…We believe in America and American values, but not in Bush. And it makes us angry that he distorted our image of the country which is so important to us.” The palimpsest of the esteemed America remains also in the explanations Europeans give for its disappearance. They do not claim that the ugly America comes from the basic fascistic nature of the people or kamikaze dedication to expansion of the realm. They assume that America is at base driven by reasonable ideals and may again be a just world leader. John Le Carre told The International Herald Tribune that he is “waiting for the real Americans to come back.” (2004, Jan. 20).

This double view of America as just and ugly, and the contradiction it creates for Europe about its own ambition, have confounded EU development. For if the American political core is democratic and rational, US belligerence (in Europe’s view) may be partial and temporary. If America pursues rational self-interest in stable democracies and economic freedom, Europe may be able to evade grand visions and rely on American global leadership. This would mean the EU is not derelict in its global responsibilities because they are being handled by others. The “real Americans” may come back.

This is misleading and unhelpful to Europe. Europe cannot avoid a foreign policy by waiting for the real Americans. There are not two American foreign policies, the “real” and the ugly, though there may be administrations with different styles. US foreign policy has been consistent since Jefferson: expansionist in support of domestic wealth, through land purchase, “spheres of influence,” economic hegemony, and military operations--as was the foreign policy of European powers in the 19th century. This is unremarkable. More than that, this one US foreign policy, which much of Europe condemns, stems from what it admires: America’s vitality, self-reliance, and optimism. This energy, reasonable or unreasonable, is not divisible. What Samuel Huntington calls the American Creed — liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, laissez-faire economics and “progress” — and what Anatol Lieven calls Jacksonian nationalism — defensive, violent, intolerant--are tethered at the source, at the rough, 350-year-old tradition of daring, expansionist, visionary, impatient can-do-ism.

The energy that rebuilt postwar Europe as a buffer against the Soviets, which Europeans call visionary, is of a piece with the energy that tried to “save” Southeast Asia and Latin America from communism, which Europeans call hubristic and destructive. They were both Creed and Nationalism. The fix-it vision that brought institutions Europeans praise--the Marshall Plan, UN, Bretton Woods, OECD, and NATO — also inspired the 2003 war in Iraq, which for many Americans was to bring democracy to the Mideast. For the American “neo-cons” whom Europeans mock, the effort in Iraq is of the same can-do daring that made America airlift a blockaded Berlin.

Europe will not get only their “real Americans” — just and rational. To the extent that Europeans lose sight of this point — that the American energy they want will also get them what they don’t want — they will misunderstand the US, and they will be unable to anticipate US actions worldwide. They will be caught off guard by America’s visionary aggression. Expecting the rational leader to come forth and handle things, Europe will forfeit its potential and misjudge its responsibilities on the world stage.

The source of Europe’s contradictions: States and tinkerers (1700 – 2005)

The contradiction between Europe’s political ambition and its reliance on the US comes from the postwar era only in part. It comes also from long historical differences between the US and Europe. Most important is the difference between continental statism and Anglo-Saxon improvisatory, fix-it energy. In particular, Germany’s reliance on governmental systems is not the dark efficiency of Nazism; nor should one confuse it with popular conceptions of Germany’s “authoritarian personality.” A reliance on systems does not predict which sort of system — authoritarian, liberal — will be relied upon. In the modern era, not the worst but the best things have come to Germany from the state.

Britain industrialized on the innovations of tinkerer-inventors and private investors. The prestigious Royal Society, which gave us Boyle, Hooke, and Newton, had no government support and relied on (often insufficient) private funds. British production and commerce grew under the spirit of Ricardo and Smith and with funding from barely-regulated stock exchanges. In the early 19th century, English law limited government involvement in private contracts, including terms of labor, and in provision for the poor (4). Prussian industry by contrast was imported by Frederick the Great to generate materiel and taxes to fund his armies; his tax collectors became a large, disciplined civil service. In contrast to stock exchanges, continental Europe developed its central banks, and loans were roughly coordinated with the rest of the national economies — a system that, with modification, is used today. In Prussia, Frederick also instituted one of the continent’s most generous immigration and asylum policies — tolerance from the top--the better to attract people to his growing economy and civil service.

Unlike England, where the aristocracy had pressed for greater power over the king, the Prussian Junkers were in league with him as their source of military commissions. And unlike in England and France, he was the modernizing force. It was the king who brought in relative freedom of the press, uniformity of law and its application, and ethnic and religious tolerance. Supervision of daily life was light. It was the king again who forbade priests from torturing unbelievers into salvation. No witches were burned; even sodomy and bestiality went unpunished. One Prussian minister told his French counterpart in 1799, “The salutary Revolution which you effected from the bottom upwards will take place gradually in Prussia from the top downwards.” (5) To keep the public’s loyalty from Napoleon, Prussia’s government again instituted economic and social reforms. A parliament and people’s sovereignty however were not adopted. In Prussia, progress came from above.

The government’s Zollverein in the 19th century coordinated an efficient, powerful market among German states and enriched them, especially Prussia, by encouraging--and controlling-- international trade. It again was the king’s advisors who, after 1848, suggested increased democratization — as a gift from the state to the people. Marx revealed the statist assumptions behind his revolutionary ideals. To combat the corrupt capitalist state, he proposed another, socialist one. Yet the idea that government must protect the people was not only a Marxist claim. Throughout the century, government was seen not only as an industrializer but also as the only entity able to protect the traditional Gemeinschaft shattered by instrumental capitalism. By Bismarck’s day, government responsibility for Soziale Veranwortung and Daseinsvorsorgestaat was assumed by those on the left and right. Bismarck developed the first system of state social services. (Much of Europe soon followed: workmen’s compensation, for instance, began in England in 1880, in Austria in 1887, in France in 1899.) His unification of Germany made the modern nation-state not the child of popular efforts but of government planning. The system of German democracy which has endured since WWII was implemented by an occupying government.

This tradition is quite a distance from America’s individualist self-reliance and the suspicion of government that has endured from Shay’s Rebellion to populists like Arnold Schwarzenegger (regardless of government’s involvement in infrastructure and economic development). Modernity could not be thought to have shattered the Gemeinschaft in a country that had none to begin with and to which people came to start anew. Government is seen not as a shield from capitalism but a hindrance to it, to be kept in check. America’s industrialization, known in Germany as “predatory capitalism,” was considered a “Golden Age” stateside (6).

In key ways, Germany and the US enjoy opposite constraints: America, its pragmatic, impatient, fix-it-ism, Germany, its faith in its meticulous, perpetual structure, each with its strengths and pitfalls. This difference can be seen in each country’s economy. The US has a weak social net and less regulation of business but higher rates of entrepreneurial ventures and self-employment, owing to its traditions of self-reliance, “small government,” and liberty as absence of restraint. Germany has greater regulation of business and a stronger social net even with present cutbacks, and it looks to government to address high unemployment and low growth, as does much of Western Europe.

The frequent diagnosis of low economic growth in Germany (1.3% in 2004 and 0% estimated for 2005) and high unemployment (20% in the East, 11.6% nationally, of whom 38% or 1.8 million are long-term unemployed) is costly health insurance, the euro, investment in former East Germany, and movement of capital to low-wage countries. The consequences are grave in light of Germany’s low birth rate and growing numbers of pensioners. Low growth reduces profits that support growing medical and pension costs (even if production occurs in low-wage countries). It decreases the number of jobs in Germany, which support social services and lower unemployment, and it depresses consumption. The German household savings rate is one of the highest at 11% of annual household income, but people won’t spend because low growth prompts fears of unemployment now and, among young workers, fears of early “retirement” when pensions are insufficient.

Yet German growth rates began slowing more than 20 years ago, before the euro, unification, etc. In this period, the German economy grew 1.3% a year on average, the US economy, 3.2%. Germany’s health care costs less than America’s — 14% of the US GDP and less than 11% of Germany’s — and in any case, health care can be paid for if the economy is growing. Spending in the East has reduced overall German economic growth by 0.3% annually since the mid-1990s (7).

Assuming nonetheless that Germany’s economic problems stem in part from these factors, the stressed economy is not helped by its relative inflexibility and the inflexibility of the education system. This does not single out German workers as inflexible, as some in corporate management would have it. Rather it points to a network of expectations, habits, laws that emerge from Germany’s history and may deserve another look.

For instance, even in the less regulated US and UK, during the 2001 recession government employed not neo-liberal but Keynesian approaches to boost growth and employment: direct government spending and job-creation, government contracting with private companies, and government boosts to private sector growth and consumption, including tax cuts and low interest loans (8). Germany can do some of this, though the European Central Back and the Stability and Growth Pact, which aim to prevent inflation, limit government debt and thus spending. But Germany’s debt is high, meaning it is not permitted to spend more to jump-start the economy, because growth is low (giving government a smaller tax base) and unemployment high (both a smaller tax base and higher social insurance costs). Tax cuts under Schroeder also did not spark a consumer-led growth in the economy because people, afraid of job loss, continued to save at Germany’s impressive 11% rate. In short, Germany is limited not in its neo-liberal options but in its Keynesian ones. Moreover, the jobs-and-apprenticeship program of Agenda 2010 had little impact. While Hartz IV reforms made Germany a less expensive place to do business and thus boosted productivity (9), it too did not create many new jobs. Neither did the “400 euro jobs, ” taken mostly by students and full-time workers wanting to work less, but not adding new jobs in aggregate. Hartz IV also added 8 billion euros to Germany’s debt.

So Germany appears to be in a vicious circle. But the US and UK were helped additionally by a fourth factor, their start-up work cultures. These are influenced by government and by citizen habits and expectations. Regulatory costs facing new businesses in America come to 1.7% of annual per capita income; equivalent costs in Germany come to 32.5% (in Italy, roughly 45%) (10). These costs are especially damaging since Germany’s global advantage, like that of any developed country, is high tech and advanced professional services, where ideas are often hatched in small new companies. As Germany shifts to these areas, these costs harm a larger sector of the population.

Yet government does not impose regulation and its costs on its citizens. Rather, the German public supports government regulation, from which it has historically benefited. Government generates thick, thorough procedures from the same faith and expectations that make people expect and rely on them. In 2003, 68% of Germans reported believing that their fate is determined by forces outside their control, as did 50% of the French while 32% of Americans did. The classic Protestant ethic of discipline and hard work, which functions well in an organized, efficient system, is not the same as entrepreneurial risk-taking. Perhaps this outlook and consequent reliance on governmental systems deserves re-evaluation. Between 1970 and 1995, half the difference between the US and the (higher) German unemployment rates resulted from the flexibility and mobility of the US labor market itself (11). Yet in 2005, nearly 2/3 Germany’s unemployed were unwilling to relocate for a new job, over 50% even of the unemployed under age 34 (12). This is impressive considering the plenitude and low costs of housing in much of the country.

In the end, the German government can lower start-up costs, but banks must also ease their traditionally risk-averse policies lend to new business, and people must start them. Self-employment has started to rise (by 0.4 million jobs this past year) but changing jobs in Germany remains a long process; changing careers is very difficult. Starting a new business in mid-life is by no means mainstream. One does not go back to school at 35, much less 45 or 50 as people do in the US and UK, to retrain (which has the quality-of-life benefits as well). Continuing Education programs are just now beginning to emerge.

The solutions posited for Germany’s economic problems at times repeat them. German Atlanticists believe the US has the better, neo-liberal system and they want the government to import as much of it as possible. Others want the government to leave the present system unchanged, and the new Left Party wants more progressive taxation and a shift of social insurances further onto corporations. (Indeed in the 1960s, tax rates for the highest corporate earners were 70-80% in both Western Europe and the US). But the assumption that government is the agent responsible for economic movement is common, from leftists to neo-liberals, who paradoxically want the government to fashion an American-style economic program in which Germans no longer look to government to fashion programs. What additionally are members of society responsible for? The government can support mid-career re-training and it can lower start-up costs and interest rates. But if the state succeeds in programming increased entrepreneurialism, then it hasn’t.

Conclusion: The Convenience of Europe’s Contradictions

In Europe and especially Germany, so rightly appreciative of state systems, two things are missed. One is a gut feeling for unintended consequences and “unreasonable” responses. In the EU, this appears as a lack of planning for crises, for when diplomacy and carrots do not persuade. It hobbles Europe’s ability to anticipate how people and countries will act, and weakens its ability to plan and respond. It is difficult, for instance, for Europeans to see why Iran would reject an economic offer that would open doors to the world. But it has. And how will the EU respond if Iran counters Security Council review with higher oil prices for Europe — as Iran has threatened? The other thing missed is a feel for America’s optimistic, aggressive energy. Little wonder that Europeans imagine the US, in the end, will see its rational self-interest as Europeans do. After all, we in the West (especially Germany and US) are in the same system.

Up to here, this is an honest mistake, a cultural misreading. But this misread of America lets Europeans elide over contradictions in dealing with the rest of the world. It allows them to develop an EU foreign policy at their own unurgent pace, assuming the US will handle the globe in the meanwhile. For those who were hoping for Europe’s soft-power approach, the retreat from integration is deeply saddening.

I suppose if Europeans took their criticisms of America seriously, they would move more effectively to exercise their own program. For one thing, the EU lacks a defense force to support its own diplomacy and aims. While bi-national military operations have begun and EU Security and Defense Forces are engaged in 13 international peace-keeping projects (in Bosnia Herzogovenia and the Congo, for example), these are modest moves. The African Union, its peacekeeping mission in Darfur, and the New Partnership for Africa's Development deserve more support from its former colonizers, but this too requires an EU defense force and a mandate that clarifies its role in peace-keeping and peace-making. Perhaps most obviously, Joschka Fischer is one of the few politicians who has the trust of both the Palestinians and Israelis, yet his office sees him as having an EU mandate to bring the parties to the table only in several years, and then with US involvement. Why?

The US is constrained diplomatically and militarily by oil geopolitics. Is this not an opportunity for the EU to switch to alternate fuels? The benefits of gas-and-oil-independence politically as well as environmentally would be enormous, on top of the financial gains of owning patents to new technologies and getting in on the ground floor of infrastructure-building. Germany is ahead of most countries in research and implementation of alternate-energy electric grids and cars, especially through its renewable energy laws which have boosted alternate-fuel industries that employ 120,000 people. (13) But there is not yet a critical mass of political support for this potential or sufficient numbers of start-up energy companies such that research does not fizzle and renewable energy laws could not be rolled back. The EU too is in a position to pool its funding and researchers for a renewable-energy program that would support new technologies at the local and state levels. The key arguments against such as idea are that alternate fuels are not market-competitive and, in the case of hydrogen-powered cars, that a fuel infrastructure is needed. But this is rather like saying that in 1905, Europe lacked gas stations and that gas-fueled cars were not yet competitive with the horse. (14)

Rejection of the constitution and anti-EU sentiment suggest that many Europeans don’t see themselves acting in concert on the world stage. Still they believe, as we’ve seen, that the EU should be independent of the US in security and diplomatic matters. How shall that be done? A sense of confederation and global leverage comes from joint political action. The matter before Europe is not “identity” but what the European project will be economically and politically across the globe. The more Europe brings its approach to world problems, the more it will continue to do so. But the more Europe assumes American action, the more it will get it.

Perhaps American global leadership is not a bad idea. Perhaps the Atlanticists are right — or they may be proved right by Russia if it pushes west or southward, as a more active Russia could serve as a NATO-strengthener. Europe can always find reasons for its reticence on the world stage, but then Europe will have to face whatever comes of American activity in the meanwhile.

Notes:

(1) Prestowitz, C. (2003). Rogue nation: American Unilateralism and the failure of good intentions. New York: Basic Books, p. 240; Radermacher, F. (2004). Global Marshall plan/A planetary contract for a worldwide eco-social market economy. Hamburg: Global Marshall Plan Initiative, p. 62.