Iraq and the End of the Atlantic Bargain
By Marco Overhaus

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Standing side by side with the leaders of World War II's victorious powers on the coast of Normandy to commemorate D-Day, Gerhard Schröder declared that his attendance marked "the final end" of the postwar era. In June 2004, sixty years after the invasion of Allied forces to liberate Europe from Nazi rule, he became the first German Chancellor to be invited to this highly symbolic event. Shortly afterwards, Schröder and U.S. President George W. Bush celebrated their "most friendly conversation for a long time" on the fringes of the G8 Summit meeting on Sea Island, Georgia, and declared that their dispute over the Iraq War was "history." This sequence of events has given rise to the hope that finally Germany and the United States can leave their past acrimony behind, reassert their stable relationship and focus on the common challenges ahead. Unfortunately, this optimism might well turn out to be premature.

When Schröder spoke of the "final end" of the postwar era, he had in mind Germany's full rehabilitation as an equal member of the western community. With his remark, he was correct in another respect?one that he probably did not have in mind. The "War on Terrorism" in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the military intervention in Iraq demonstrated the decline of Atlanticism that has marked the post-World War II era for more than fifty years and which has formed the basis for NATO's success. As the Cold War unfolded and the West confronted a clear enemy to the east, the stability of transatlantic relations rested upon a quasi-"constitutional bargain" (G. John Ikenberry): The United States was willing to lead (and to provide the bulk of political and military resources for the common defense) and to grant to Europeans the ability to make their voice heard in Washington. In return, Europeans were willing to follow the American lead as long as Washington exercised ?strategic restraint? and took their fundamental interests into account.

If one now looks back to the Iraq crisis in 2002 and 2003, it becomes clear that these principles did not apply anymore. While the Bush administration was more than willing to take the lead in toppling Saddam Hussein's regime, it did not bother to consult its European allies. To Europeans, the decision-making process in Washington appeared impenetrable. Across the Atlantic, the case of Iraq revealed fundamental differences on the use of force and the shape of the international order. As a result, at least half of the European governments (and the overwhelming majority of populations) was not willing to follow the American lead anymore. The shifts in transatlantic relations are more likely to be long-term than temporary as the mutual security dependence has declined considerably since the end of the Cold War and as social and demographic changes in the United States are likely to make Europe even less of a focus of American foreign policy in the future.

Most recently, German and American policy-makers have discovered the "Broader Middle East" and fundamentalist terrorism that originates from the region as the new defining challenge of the Atlantic Alliance. While Germany (along with France) has strictly opposed any direct NATO peacekeeping role in Iraq, it supported the Alliance's decision after the Istanbul Summit to train Iraqi security forces. In February this year, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer responded to an earlier plan of the Bush administration and presented the idea of a new transatlantic initiative on the Middle East to the audience of a security conference in Munich.

For a start, the Middle East does not appear to be the right vehicle to renew the transatlantic partnership. The agendas on both sides of the Atlantic differ considerably. While the Fischer proposal aims at the modernization of the region (including socio-economic development from within), the Bush administration is more focused on democratization (which includes targeted measures to tackle bad governance and corrupt regimes from the outside). Moreover, Europeans see the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a precondition for Arab modernization, while Washington is more ambivalent in this respect. Finally, although Joschka Fischer placed NATO explicitly at the center of his transatlantic initiative, it is far from clear what function a military alliance can play when the task at hand is political and economic transformation. Against this backdrop, it is not too surprising that the summits on Sea Island and in Istanbul only produced vague statements on the issue.

To acknowledge that important differences exist and that the transatlantic relationship is undergoing long-term structural changes does not mean it should be written off. On the contrary, such an acknowledgment would be a necessary first step to base relations within the Alliance on a more realistic and enduring basis. What would be appropriate further steps to "re-construct" the transatlantic relationship? Firstly, NATO again has to become a central discussion forum across the Atlantic on all security concerns of importance to both sides. Discussion also includes disagreements or even open disputes. Too often in the past, NATO has tried to avoid disputes at all costs and has rather excluded contested issues from the agenda. The future of European and international order, the pre-emptive use of military force, or policies to tackle the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction should be put on NATO's agenda not in spite of but because of the existence of diverging perspectives. Secondly, NATO should again focus on its integrative functions. The Alliance is perfectly suited to keep German, French, Polish, and American militaries engaged with each other and to ensure that these countries' armies still can fight together if they have to. In the future, this function will still be significant even as the American commitment to European conflicts cannot be taken for granted anymore.

Thirdly, NATO should streamline its tasks and concentrate on those trouble spots where it is already engaged and where a consensus among member countries on its proper role exists. This is clearly the case in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Any misconceived activism to send NATO troops to ever new missions in order to keep it relevant will do more harm than good. Finally, the EU has to become more serious with regard to its European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). Today, Europe urgently needs the ability to provide its own leadership in military and defense policy. In the past, Germany and other EU members have all too often relied on American leadership within NATO. The recent proliferation of bilateralisms, trilateralisms, and other "minilateralisms" in ESDP has demonstrated how ineffective political leadership without the United States still is. As one of the largest EU member states, Germany still has a special responsibility to mobilize sufficient "soft power" within the EU to help construct such leadership. For this task it has to regain much of its credibility as an integrationist force which it has recently lost. But Berlin will also have to invest more into "hard power" in order to keep its multilateral pledges within ESDP (and within NATO). Standing at the beaches of Normandy, Chancellor Schröder understood the historical significance of his D-Day invitation. It is now time that the German government also understands the consequences of "the final end" of the post-World War II era for transatlantic relations and for the German responsibility within Europe.

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AICGS is grateful to the German Marshall Fund of the United States for its generous support of this essay series.

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Marco Overhaus is research assistant at the Chair for Foreign Policy and International Relations at the University of Trier, Germany.