THE UNITED STATES AND THE EUROPEAN PILLAR Also by William C. Cromwell POLmCAL PROBLEMS OF ATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP: National Perspectives (with Nigel Forman and Josef Joffe) THE EUROGROUP AND NATO The United States and the European Pillar The Strained Alliance William C. Cromwell Professor ofI nternational Relations The American University, Washington, DC Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-21775-5 ISBN 978-1-349-21773-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21773-1 ©William C. Cromwell 1992 Foreword© Josef Joffe 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1992 ISBN 978-0-312-06831-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cromwell, William C. The United States and the European pillar : the strained alliance I William C. Cromwell. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-06831-8 1. Europe-Foreign relations-United States. 2. United States -Foreign relations-Europe. 3. Europe-Foreign relations-1945- 1. Title. D1065.U5C73 1992 327.4073'09'045-dc20 91-28402 CIP For Ellen Contents Foreword by Josef Joffe ix Preface xiii 1 The Formative Period of Atlantic Relations and the European Pillar, 1948-55 1 2 What Kind of European Pillar? 16 The Kennedy Administration and Atlantic Partnership 16 De Gaulle's Counter-design 26 The Denouement 37 3 The European Impulse Revived: European Defence Cooperation and the United States, 1968-73 42 4 The European Impulse Revived: The Birth of European Political Cooperation, 1969-73 57 5 The Nixon Administration and Europe, 1969-73 70 6 A Moment of Truth: The 'Year of Europe' and the Atlantic Crisis of 1973174 79 The Year of Europe 79 The Middle East War and the Oil Crisis 86 The Crisis and Atlantic Relations: Outcome and Assessment 92 7 The United States and the European Pillar in the late 1970s and the 1980s 101 American Ambivalence Toward European Unity 101 At Issue: The Iran Hostage Crisis 106 At Issue: The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan 110 At Issue: The Polish Crisis of 1981182 115 At Issue: The Soviet Gas Pipeline Dispute 118 At Issue: The US Bombing Raid on Libya 122 vii Vlll The United States and the European Pillar 8 Other Regional Issues 131 Central America 131 The Middle East 139 9 European Pillars in the 1980s 155 Political Cooperation 155 Defence Cooperation 166 10 The United States and the European Pillar in the 1970s and 1980s: Concluding Assessment 180 11 The United States and the New Europe in the 1990s 199 The Transformed European Setting 199 Architecture for the New Europe: the European Community - Germany and Eastern Europe 202 Architecture for the New Europe: the Atlantic Alliance 217 Architecture for the New Europe: the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 232 Conclusion and Prospects 239 Notes 249 Select Bibliography 264 Index 267 Foreword BY JOSEF JOFFEI Though a source of unending crisis and frustration, the Atlantic Alli ance represents a most distinguished chapter in the annals of Ameri can foreign policy. America's lasting entanglement in the affairs of Europe marks the maturing of a great power and the final break with a tradition born in the rejection of the Old Continent. Acquired almost in a fit of absentmindedness, America's new role and responsibility did not come easily, but the returns of that investment have muffled the doubters and vindicated those who -like Truman, Acheson and Vandenberg - pushed and cajoled the nation into shouldering the burden of leadership. Having left Europe to its own devices in 1919, the United States had another war on its hands a mere twenty years later - only a far bloodier and more perilous one than World War 1. By contrast, the commitment undertaken in the late 1940s has paid off beyond the most optimistic of calculations. Though the defeat of Germany merely brought a more fearful challenger to the door, World War III was not to be the fate of Europe and America. Instead, there was peace-the longest peace in the history of the European state system. And there was more: the expansion and consolidation of democracy in a part of the world that had given rise to the twin totalitarianism of Communism and National Socialism. Finally, America's lasting intrusion pacified a half-continent which had been the fountainhead of almost permanent war for centuries. Gauls and Germans overcame their 'arch enemy', the nations of Western Europe linked hands in the grand enterprise of integration, and rivalry gave way to community because the United States had transformed the rules of the ancient self-help system. Stronger than France, Britain and Germany, the United States pulled the sting of rivalry, insuring each and all against the risks of cooperation. Protecting the Europeans not only against the Soviet Union but also against each other, the United States laid the indispensable foundation of community among those who, in the past, had only known discord and strife. Partition and heavily armed confrontation was the price of peace. But that story began to develop a brighter side exactly forty years ix X The United States and the European Pillar after the birth of the Alliance in 1949. Worn down by ideological as well as economic failure and unable to convert great military strength into lasting, much less legitimate, influence, the Soviet Union let go of its East European empire in 1989. One year later, President Gorbachev virtually declared his country's surrender in the cold war by consenting to the unification of Germany under Western auspices. At last, Europe now has the chance to grow together again in peace and freedom-precisely the great purpose of American foreign policy in the past forty years. Yet here too success will breed its own problems. If the cold war is truly over, then the Atlantic Alliance will not survive in its traditional shape. Indeed, no alliance has ever lived past vic tory; logically, the idea of alliance requires the idea of a foe and a threat. If the Soviet Union completes its withdrawal from Eastern Europe while eschewing a new form of dictatorship, then the threat will wane along with the urgency of alliance and the necessity of America's enduring entanglement. In that case, the great question of the next 40 years will be: Can Europe's ultra-stable order- in the last analysis a gift of the United States- persist on its own? Or will the rules of the self-help system reassert themselves, souring the magnificent record of European integration? Will the United States retract too, or might it even be pushed into withdrawal by Europeans tired of the burden of the US military presence? What about the future of free trade, whose foundations were also laid after World War II when the United States opened its markets to both Western Europe and Japan? With the military bond fraying, neither the US nor the EC might muster the will (previously con ditioned by security dependence) to resist protectionist pressures at home. In revolutionary times, history is not necessarily the best guide for the future, but without an understanding of the past, any attempt to peer beyond the horizon of current affairs would be as enlightening as reading tea leaves. In this book, William Cromwell offers some indispensable tools for analysis and perspective. By elucidating the evolution of the Euro-American relationship, the author lays bare its functions and structures, its conflicting interests and abiding dilem mas. And the moral of the story is hardly without relevance for the future. The history of the Alliance has been the history of its crises. But it has also been the record of a most successful experiment in interstate relations. Otherwise, we could not explain the amazing longevity of this compact.