Uncle Sam puts Europa in her place

Date: 22/05/1997

WHILE Europeans may on the whole take due credit for creating the world's largest trading bloc of sovereign states, once in a while something comes along which puts them in their place.

Just such an occasion is next week's European tour by US President Bill Clinton, marking the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan and inconveniently reminding Europe of its ignominious past.

On 5 June 1947, US Secretary of State George C Marshall offered the continent still reeling from world war the now legendary aid package which bears his name.

The credit for European integration and reconstruction between Marshall's graduation day speech at Harvard and Clinton's planned unveiling of a Dutch statue in 1997 may be claimed by the likes of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, but without the United States the EU would never have happened.

From the late 1940s to the early 1950s, more than 10.8 billion ecu ($13 billion) of development aid, and untold other sums in military assistance, were pumped into Europe in a desperate American bid to stem the growth of Communism.

The preconditions? Peaceful and profitable coexistence, the dismantlement of barriers and liberal trade.

Under these terms, the foundations were laid for half a century of prosperous western European commerce and ruinous eastern European oppression and - perhaps through fortune or perhaps through fate - the ultimate collapse of the Russian empire.

Ironically, it also provoked deep concerns in Europe about US imperialism and sown the seeds of a long-standing coolness towards Washington, the legacy of which is only just being overcome.

Exactly how Clinton chooses to commemorate these events and achievements will be interesting, but, whatever he says overtly, the symbolic timing of the celebrations as East-West lines are drawn anew cannot be ignored.

It is as if fate were reminding the EU that when it comes to global politics, Uncle Sam is still very much in charge.

Nevertheless, it is equally clear that late 20th century Europe does not intend to bow its head in gratitude, nor does Clinton's United States expect it to.

The Marshall Plan anniversary will be a useful media stunt, but will play a very definite second fiddle to the biannual EU-US encounter in The Hague which precedes it.

Marking one and a half years of the New Transatlantic Agenda (NTA), Clinton, Commission President Jacques Santer and Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok will talk trade and politics during one of the most highly charged periods of global history since the collapse of Communism.

Their most high-profile, concrete task will be to sign, or push ahead, a number of recalcitrant mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) between EU and US industry. But the less quantifiable political chit-chat will in many ways be more important.

US extraterritorial legislation on investment in Cuba, the EU's tougher political - but not economic - stance on Iran, and China's entry to the World Trade Organisation are all likely to cause some high-level soul searching. So too will NATO expansion into central and eastern Europe, EU-US cooperation in the region's transition to market economics and the role of Turkey in the 21st century.

How far the EU and the US can progress beyond a purely trading relationship - which will remain the central plank of any cooperation - and begin to act in tandem on the global stage is one of the most important questions facing liberal democracy as it jockeys for position in the 21st century.

The need for both sides to at least talk about it was broached by the Union when, in December 1995 - building on work by the low-key Transatlantic Policy Network - it launched its much-celebrated New Transatlantic Agenda to much American applause.

According to Manuel de la Camara, then adviser to the Spanish EU presidency, the timing was propitious for a number of reasons.

“The Clinton administration was already in its third year, and had acquired sufficient maturity to deal with such an initiative. On the European side, the Maastricht Treaty was up and running. This kind of cooperation becomes more possible as the EU develops its common foreign and security policy further.”

According to its supporters, the NTA's successes have already been notable. Euro-American cooperation has blossomed in Bosnia, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. Policy-makers, businessmen and women and academics at all levels are sharing information like never before.

A common transatlantic trade and foreign policy may still be a long way down the road, but considering that before the NTA “everything was very dispersed with very little cooperation”, according to De la Camara, the emergence of a new diplomatic synergy is a genuinely important development. Nonetheless, those hoping for earth-shattering policy announcements in The Hague next week are likely to be disappointed.

While Europe and the US are ideologically aligned to an impressive degree, differences of emphasis and methodology - and simple competition - will continue to give rise to disputes for some time to come.

There will be no joint EU-US Iran strategy announced next week, and the timetable for Chinese accession to the WTO will remain a source of friction. A recent Euro-American compromise on business with Cuba may have led to a temporary truce, but the two sides' fundamental differences of approach are still in place.

What the summit will do is to celebrate transatlantic successes in the telecoms and information technology trade, and rubber-stamp deals on customs cooperation and chemical precursors for illegal drugs.

It will mark cooperation in humanitarian operations, proclaim advances in establishing joint research programmes and possibly announce further ties in central and eastern Europe.

Finally, leaders will demand more joint action in the fight against global drugs traffickers, call for cooperation on North Korea's nuclear energy programme and proclaim the mutual recognition of veterinary standards.

But Messrs Clinton, Santer and Kok may have to go further if they are to satisfy the Brussels-based Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN), an organisation of politicians and business leaders which gave birth to the whole project in the early 1990s.

According to a TPN report which has been presented to national governments, “the New Transatlantic Agenda has triggered unprecedented joint EU-US action across a broad front. But this new momentum cannot be sustained without concerted political support, and a strategy for timely completion of the agenda.”

Its members are demanding a clear 'road map', with timetables and target dates, for completing the transatlantic market-place and mechanisms for greater cooperation between government and industry.

They are also calling for more economic and monetary cooperation (in advance of the introduction of the euro), a permanent political dialogue for dealing with rogue states, and a joint strategy for those countries put on indefinite hold for EU and NATO enlargement.

The TPN argues that unless Europe and the United States set aside their short-term rivalries, and recognise their natural alliance in the wider scheme of things, they will find the going increasingly tough in the 21st century. And that will perhaps require more foresight than is being shown at the moment.

Today, there is little to challenge western predominance, and the competitive rush for Asia still characterises much of the transatlantic relationship.

As a result, The Hague summit's likely rhetoric may look slightly empty, especially in the wake of French President Chirac's tour of China in a scramble for industrial contracts.

But at least the rhetoric is there - say supporters - and that should by no means be taken for granted.