Dear Philip. Talk of "friendship" in international relations is always a slippery business, but informed Europeans know you really are a friend of Europe. You take Europe seriously - whereas one of the biggest problems in transatlantic relations at the moment is that most Americans do not. You know what you are talking about. And you propose a new transatlantic deal.
So do we. In my new book, Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of our Time, I argue, as the subtitle suggests, that the crisis which climaxed over Iraq exposes a tremendous opportunity - and a historic imperative - for Europeans and Americans to work together on a new agenda of world politics. I find many other Europeans thinking along similar lines. So this is not just a matter of Europeans "responding" to a magnanimous American offer of co-operation. It is a matter of two old partners sitting down to thrash out a new deal. Two partners drastically unequal in military power, to be sure, but if you consider economic power and what Joseph Nye has called "soft power," the asymmetry is less acute.
I agree with much of what you say about a new deal, but agreement is boring - so let me begin with a disagreement. I do not think this new deal should be attempted this summer, nor should its litmus test be Iraq. Rather, we need first to know the complexion of the new administration in Washington and - less importantly - in Brussels.
If it is George Bush again, then we Europeans will have to work with what may perhaps - and I share your cautious hope - be a slightly more multilateralist version of the current administration, sobered by bitter experience in Iraq and perhaps shorn of some of its more offensive members. That will still be very difficult, both because of the nationalist attitudes of many Bushies and because of the now profound and probably ineradicable anti-Bush sentiment in Europe. (Yes, there is worrying anti-Americanism too, but mainly the feeling is anti-Bush.) If your new president is John Kerry, and we have the right constellation of political leaders in Europe, including the new European commission president and EU "foreign minister," then this will be a vastly more promising opportunity to relaunch the relationship.
So let us keep our powder dry until November. And let us not make Iraq the test case. I entirely agree with you that Europeans have as vital an interest as Americans in Iraq not descending into such violent chaos that al Qaeda can declare it a victory. However, it is unfair to say that European forces "are already helping, but frankly not very much." Let us be clear: 90 per cent of the responsibility for the current mess in Iraq lies with the Bush administration, only 10 per cent with Europeans. For the overall crisis of the west, responsibility is much more evenly divided between Europe and America. Perhaps it is even 50:50, taking the entire 15 years since the end of the cold war. But for Iraq, it is 90:10.
This was a war of choice, not necessity. It was Bush's war. He invaded Iraq without the UN-sanctioned legality of the Bosnian intervention or the democratic legitimacy of the Kosovan one. He was told by Colin Powell that the china shop warning applied to Iraq - "if you break it, you own it" - but his administration turned out to be woefully unprepared for owning the place. Much of the current mess in Iraq can be traced back to failures of American planning, occupation policy and soldiering. Not to mention the shame of Abu Ghraib.
None of this is for a moment to deny the failure of Europe. As Bush advanced to war with Iraq, Europe presented a ridiculous spectacle. The neo-Gaullist grandstanding of Chirac and Schr?der culminated in the grotesque finale of France campaigning for votes against the US in the UN security council, on an issue that the US considered vital to its national security. Meanwhile, rather than working to forge a common European position, Tony Blair hurried out ahead as overeager cheerleader for intervention in Iraq, on what turned out to be false claims from secret intelligence.
Given that history, Iraq is not the place to launch the transatlantic new deal that we both wish to see. Yes, with the new UN resolution we should work together as best we can to ensure that Iraq does not turn from quagmire into catastrophe. But that is not where our discussion should start on 3rd November, when we know who the new president is. Rather, we should start by agreeing on what are the strategic challenges of our time, and how best to address them.
I agree that Europe should take more seriously the threats of WMD, terrorism and rogue states. I agree that Europe should develop a more serious military force, and be prepared to use it. But to regard this as the key breakthrough is to accept the one-dimensional intellectual agenda of the Bush administration, which reduces power to military power and the complex politics of our time to a single "war on terror."
If one steps back and asks what the global challenges to the free really are, any shortlist must include: the tormented politics of the wider middle east; the dramatic economic rise of the far east; the imperative of development for the nearly half of humankind living on less than $2 a day; and the climate change which last year gave Europe its hottest summer for 500 years. None of these can be solved by military force. A hammer is no use because these are not nails. And none of these challenges can be addressed effectively if Europe and America work separately - let alone against each other.
Take the wider middle east. Only pressure from Washington will bring Israel to negotiate a two-state solution based on the 1967 frontiers. Europe can help a great deal on the Palestinian side, and with the subsequent construction of a viable, civilised and, in the end, democratic Palestine. Iraq is another part of the jigsaw. So, as you say, is Iran. Europe and America both have experience with a subtler politics, not of invasion and occupation, but of encouraging political reform from above and the emancipation of societies from below. At best, that is what we did in central and eastern Europe. Such politics - half cold war, half d?tente - is well suited to Iran.
Beyond that, we have the Arab world, plagued by dictatorship and backwardness even amid its oil riches. US pressure on states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt is indispensable, but it is Europe that lies just across the Mediterranean - the middle sea which once united rather than divided the countries around it. It is to Europe that tens of thousands of young Arabs come every year, despairing of prospects in their own lands. It is to Europe that Arab exports would naturally go if we opened our markets to them. And it is the EU that, by agreeing to open negotiations for Turkey's membership, could signal to the whole wider middle east that a Muslim country with an Islamist government can be accepted as part of the liberal democratic west (or what I call the post-west). In short: you cannot do it without us; we cannot do it without you.
I could make the same case, in different ways, for each of the other challenges. On climate change, for example, the biggest growth in carbon dioxide emissions is likely to come from the industrially developing countries, and China above all. But we cannot expect China to exercise self-restraint unless we do so ourselves. In this respect, Europe has been doing much better than America, which - especially under this oilman president - is lagging far behind. Without American commitment, China will never be persuaded and Europe's efforts will be of little use. And let us remember the observation of a leading climate scientist, John Houghton, that climate change is also a weapon of mass destruction. Only by taking the whole list of challenges do you see which tasks fall to Europe, which to America, and how the two fit together. We Europeans need to find more helicopters for Afghanistan, and you Americans need to find more filters for your chimneys and car exhausts.
The EU and the US will always be very different kinds of power in the world. That should make our co-operation easier, not more difficult. You mention two important EU achievements: integration and enlargement. Further enlargements, including those to include Turkey, the Balkans or Ukraine, would bring major benefits for the US as well. But we in Europe also need to develop something else: a neighbourhood policy. We need a set of carrots and sticks to induce our neighbours in north Africa, the middle east, the Caucasus, Russia and central Asia to respect their own citizens' and their neighbours' rights, to solve disputes peacefully and to develop the rule of law, markets, civil society and, eventually, democracy. Our long-term goals will be similar to American ones, but the instruments we use will be different.
This autumn, we shall be looking for a new American administration to make two fundamental commitments. First, to work wherever possible with allies. We hear that loud and clear from John Kerry. Second, to support a more united Europe. These are not the same thing. It is possible to want to work with allies, but to prefer to pick and choose those allies from among the disunited states of Europe. That is what Bush has done. It will take some energetic reassurance to convince us that Washington has really decided to support European unity again.
The EU also has to make two fundamental commitments. First, that it wishes to be a serious force outside its own borders, especially in its own wider neighbourhood, stretching from Casablanca to Vladivostok. Second, that it wishes to do this as a strategic partner and not as a rival of the US. This is not simple, since the EU is composed of 25 nation states, each of which still has its own voice in foreign policy.
So at the moment, Europe is speaking with many voices, while America is speaking with one voice but saying the wrong thing. Your job is to get America to say the right thing; ours is to get Europe to say it in unison.
