CIAO DATE: 01/04

The New Transatlantic Security Network

Abstract

The United States and its European allies often found themselves at loggerheads in the 1990s. Disputes over arms control, peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, the environment, and the role of the United Nations (UN) were frequent. European governments repeatedly accused the United States of being disengaged and not living up to its responsibilities as a global power. When it did, they feared U.S. power and its disdain for multilateral approaches to international problems.

The Republican victory in the U.S. presidential election of 2000 intensified European concerns and complaints. Indeed, George W. Bush had strong unilateral impulses, and he promised to walk away from the climate negotiations, the negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. Bush insisted on developing a national missile defense for the United States and the necessity of increasing the U.S. defense budget. His administration derided the Clinton and European approaches to North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and the Middle East, and it lambasted European governments for not doing enough in terms of burden sharing, particularly in the Balkans.

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon brought only a temporary halt to this transatlantic bickering. Within months, Europeans could again be heard complaining about U.S. hubris and Washington’s disdain of international rules. They feared that the U.S. responses in the war against terrorism would be primarily-and excessively-military in nature. The French newspaper Le Monde, which on September 12 had published an editorial under the banner "We are all Americans," would five months later lead with the headline "Has the United States gone crazy?" Mainstream conservative American commentators would deride Europeans as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

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