U.S. missiles negotiations with Poland & Czech Republic a bad idea

Here we go again, playing off the divisive "old-Europe" and "new-Europe" neoconservative scorecard.

What else to make of the American initiative to try and place anti-missile systems in Europe by working through Poland and the Czech Republic. If the threat from missiles launched from the Middle East and/or North Korea is real (and I believe it is prudent to consider this threat to U.S. and EU security) would it not have been better to deal at the U.S.--EU level rather than with individual states in Europe? The former approach carried the risk of longer negotiations but would force EU wide discussion of this important security issue, which would result in a far stronger agreement, especially in the face of growing Russian opposition and criticism from Germany.

Ofcourse there is always a risk that EU public opinion would not be convinced that the risks of a rogue missile attack outwiegh the benefits, but isn't that a risk worth taking? As it is, public opposition and the razor thin parliamentary balance in the Czech Republic might well derail the plan and another opportunity to strengthen defenses and begin to rebuild the transatlantic alliance by recognizing the desire of Europeans for ever-closer union will been lost.

NATO: Corpse on a horse?

U.S. President George W Bush has called on other NATO members to step up their battle against Afghanistan's Taliban. He said that NATO had to hold true to its founding principle - "an attack on one is an attack on all."

This must have come as a real surprise to NATO members. Immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 NATO, for the first time in its history, invoked Article 5 of its Charter—the one that states “an attack on one is an attack on all,” and offered to fight shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. as it prepared for war in Afghanistan. A magnanimous gesture, that was immediately rejected by the U.S. The American side felt NATO was ill prepared to fight a real war and would be more of a hindrance than a help. After spending billions of dollars and an enormous amount of political capital to keep NATO going, the first time the organization wanted to march into war it was judged incompetent.

If this is the entity on which the future of Afghanistan now depends, I’d say the Afghanis ought to be really concerned about their future security! I can just see the Taliban shaking in their boots.

Does anyone out there disagree with me and still believes NATO can save Afghanistan?

More importantly: do we still need NATO?

Bravo! Chancellor Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the EU and the U.S. to establish a single market through the harmonisation of EU and U.S. regulations on financial instruments and goods. This is an excellent idea and the American side should welcome it.

The $3 trillion EU-U.S. economy's depth and complexity has kept the transatlantic alliance from fraying further, so anything that strengthens these ties should be embraced.

Realizing that trade negotiations are stuck in the Doha round's machinations, Chancellor Merkel wisely proposed the two sides side-step these contentious issues and focus instead on making the financial and business infrastructure and plumbing work more smoothly. " Ms Merkel said she wanted to create a single market for investors, with common rules on intellectual property, financial regulation and even car emissions," The Guardian reported. "German experts believe a single EU/US financial market could be created by 2015, cutting trading costs by 60% and the cost of capital by 9%," the paper said.

"I feel it is very important that trans-Atlantic economic relations are intensified," the German newspaper Der Spiegel's blog reported from her keynote speech in Davos. "History shows that close trans-Atlantic economic integration is always the impetus for boosting economic growth," she said.

The Chancellor cited European investment in the American rail network in the 19th century and the post-World War II Marshall Plan as examples of successful trans-Atlantic integration. "The U.S. is still the European Union's most important trade partner, as it was in the past," she said. "We are also the most important investment partners for each other."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she wants to see "ever-closer economic co-operation" between the 27-nation EU and the U.S.", reported the BBC. The EU has achieved its historic success by working on an ever closer union, and Ms. Merkel astutely recognized that calling for a "big-bang" approach to U.S.-EU economic cooperation would be a difficult undertaking, but moving ahead a project at a time is a proven recipe for success, as the EU has demonstrated over the last 50 years.

All this was a prelude to the Chancellor's Washington, D.C. meeting with President Bush on January 13, 2007.

By all accounts the two leaders got along well. It would have been nice to see a high-level EU-U.S. working group set up to move Ms. Merkel's proposal to action. Perhaps this can still happen. All those who are concerned about the future of the transatlantic alliance should be calling their political representatives; business leaders ought to be up front supporting Ms. Merkel's initiative. American media needs to explain the importance of this development for American and European jobs and standards of living, and for strengthening the the EU-U.S. alliance.

My EU/US views on public radio

On Friday, January 19, 2007, Laura Knoy, host of The Exchange on New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) invited me to discuss my book on her call-in radio program that is heard by upwards of 150,000 listeners in New Hampshire, Vermont, and the Boston area of Massachusetts. You may listen to the program on an MP3 player, or a Microsoft Windows Player.

The EU's investment in America is enormous (over $3 Trillion, ie. for my European readers, $3,000 billion) and spread throughout America. For example, over a billion dollars have come to my home state of Vermont (population: 625,000) and the investment supports 7,200 jobs, more than half of which are in manufacturing. It was interesting to engage with the bright and informed audience that called in to question me as you'll hear.

Foreign Policy Association book reception/New York

On January 23, 2007 a standing room only crowd attended a discussion of my new book America & Europe After 9/11 and Iraq: The Great Divide. It was hosted by New York's Foreign Policy Association and you can view my remarks and the discussion here.

The video is about one hour long, and the audience included diplomats, business executives, teachers and interested New Yorkers. Among the press was the Turkish service of the Voice of America. This tape was shown in Turkey later in the week. To tell you the truth, I was surprised at the large turnout. Could it be that people are starting to realize that there is a world beyond Iraq?

The VOA reporter asked what I thought about Turkey joining the EU? That, I replied is an internal EU decision, but that I agreed with Ana Palacio (former Spanish Foreign Minister) who told me that the EU had made a promise to Turkey that it could join the EU, and that promise had to be kept.

Business links will not protect EU-U.S. alliance for long

If the political side were to turn really sour, there might be domestic pressures in Europe to treat the United States more as a competitor than as an ally.
Ambassador Hugo Paemen, former EU Head of Delegation to the U.S.

The $3 trillion transatlantic business relationship employs around 15 million people and is the biggest and deepest commercial relationship between two continents in recorded history. Just about as many Americans work for European firms as Europeans do for American firms. China might grab all the headlines, but for now the size of the EU-U.S. commercial link dwarfs those from developing countries. For instance, the total number of manufacturing workers employed by U.S. affiliated companies in China is less than half of the manufacturing workers employed by American firms in Germany alone.

Without this huge business relationship the political ties between Europe and America would have been in worse shape than they are now. But we shouldn't take this status for granted. Politics can quickly seep into the business sphere. Remember the 2003 U.S. steel tariffs against Europeans? The EU gave notice that if the tariffs were not removed within a few weeks, the EU would target goods from politically sensitive American states and put tariffs on them. The states were selected based on their importance to the American President who was running for re-election. The tariffs were quickly removed. What might have happened had they not?

China, India, Brazil, and the Middle East are emerging as the commercial giants of the twenty-first century. The transatlantic economic link will become less important 20-30 years from now than it is today. Even more important to re-negotiate a new alliance now.