Engaging the Allies: U.S.-European Relations

JIM LEHRER:

And now, what's happening to the U.S.-European relationship under President Bush, as seen differently by Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who also held other cabinet positions in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations; and Jessica Tuchman Mathews, former foreign policy official in both the Carter and Clinton administrations, now president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Jessica Mathews, how serious are the differences and tensions between the United States and Europe now under President Bush?

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

I would say… well, let me put it this way: Every European that I've talked to over the last many months says that the relationship is the worst that they can remember, and that stretches anywhere from ten to forty or forty-five years.

JIM LEHRER:

The worst they can remember?

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

Yes.

JIM LEHRER:

In a general way, what is the complaint?

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

That the United States…

I'd say there's two central themes: One, that the U.S. defines what is… attempts… believes it should and can define what is right in the world, and that anybody that disagrees with it is ipso facto wrong and if they could only see the U.S. argument, they would agree with it. And that the U.S., at the same time, forces rules on others but doesn't abide by them themselves.

So that there's a double standard in the U.S. approach to the rest of world.

JIM LEHRER:

Mr. Schlesinger, do you see any merit to those criticisms the Europeans have of the U.S. right now?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

Well, let me point out at the outset that this is a periodic thing with the Europeans.

When Jimmy Carter came into office, he was promptly bashed by the Europeans. Gradually their views of American presidents improve. When Reagan came into office, another change in party, he was bashed by the Europeans. He was a wild cowboy who was going to cause trouble by denouncing the Soviet Union as an empire of evil. In the early Clinton years, he was denounced.

And it's kind of periodic. As time goes by, the European attitudes towards an American president improves. That's different from here.

Here we start with a honeymoon and then it goes downhill. There it starts in the pits and improves.

JIM LEHRER:

Why? What's your analysis of why it's that way?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

Well, the they're kind of roughing up an American president in order to get him to be more accommodating to their views.

What you see in Europe is a gathering together, a decision of the European nations to surrender part of their sovereignty. On the basis of that, they turn around and say that the Americans are acting unilaterally because they are cooperating amongst themselves. But the…

JIM LEHRER:

You mean in forming the European Union and doing other things together.

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

Right.

And the Americans simply won't do what they have insisted the Americans do, like endorse the ICC —

JIM LEHRER:

The ICC?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

The International Criminal Court — and the Kyoto Accord and so forth.

It's a question of a difference in policy. As a matter of simple reality, they ought to get used to the fact that when we have a change of party and a change of administration, there are going to be differences from the prior administration.

JIM LEHRER:

Now, how do you see it? Do you see it just as a normal course, just… JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: No, I don't. I think there's something different going on here.

And it's not all the Bush administration. I see more continuity in a disagreement, a rift that's been getting wider and wider.

But look at the pattern. Jim mentioned the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Treaty on climate. But that's only the beginning.

The U.S. and Europe have also disagreed on the ABM Treaty. We come back to that. But on the Land Mine treaty, on the Biodiversity treaty, on the question of whether to put a verification mechanism on the Biological Weapons Control treaty, on the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, on a treaty to limit export of small arms.

This is a very, very long list and all the early ones on that list, which were voted on at the U.N., were approved by votes of 140-7, 160-2; in the case of the Climate treaty, 178-1. And every single one of those, all of Europe voted one way and the U.S. voted another.

The countries that voted with the U.S. on that whole list were China, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq — only two democracies — in one case, Israel, in one case India.

Now, this is a pattern between two sets of countries that share a common set of values and presumably goals for the world, that's kind of hard to explain. And I think it is…

I think it does come, as Secretary Schlesinger said, from in part from the fact that Europe is engaged in this really historic political invention of the European Union and of pooling sovereignty, and it sees it as valuable, a whole different set of tools.

And the U.S. is at a time when, for two decades, we've been paying very little attention to everything but the military tool in our international relationships.

And this is causing a really deep divide.

JIM LEHRER:

Deep divide? And what would you add to her… how would you interpret the same list that she just gave as to what's going on?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

There is no denying that we are not following the European agenda and that there's a great deal of resentment in Europe that we do not follow their agenda. The simple reality, though, is that with the disappearance of the Soviet threat, the Soviet Warsaw Pact threat and the loss of a sense of danger on the part of the Europeans, they are freer now to disagree with us than they were during the great period of the Cold War. And they are disagreeing more.

They have a much more… much better established agenda now that they're moving toward the European Union. And in addition, most of the governments have been led by Socialists or by the Green Party and you will recall that some of the same leaders marched against — demonstrated against the United States in the '70s over Vietnam and in the '80s over the deployment of the Pershing missile.

JIM LEHRER:

I took out a quote from a piece you wrote a couple of days ago in Financial Times.

Let me read this to you: "Continental Europe appears to be becoming a larger Sweden, moralizing about the defects of American actions."

Is that what you're talking about here, too?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

I think that that's right. I carefully said continental Europe because I wanted to exclude the British from that.

The British government has been quite different. Tony Blair has been a bridge between the Americans and Europe. Sometimes he gets trampled on because of that role. But the Europeans have very little to do. What they do is to carp about the Americans in a whole range of issues that Jessica has laid out.

JIM LEHRER:

That's all it is, is carping?

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

Well, the Europeans are good at whining and at carping about the U.S. role, but it's more than that, because it this isn't just the European agenda, as the votes I suggested indicate, it's the world's agenda.

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

And one of the things that ought to concern us is: How do you be the world leader when on issue after issue after issue, you're in not just the minority but a tiny minority and a group of countries that we find extremely distasteful, right? These are the evil ones, right?

So there's something that ought to make us think here. And you know, on any one of these particular issues, you make a case on the merits. It's the pattern that suggests a change.

JIM LEHRER:

Go ahead. Sorry. Finish.

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

Well, I was just going to say that I think that what is happening is, in part, is that the world is now ready to move on major issues when Europe is united on them over American opposition, and we have not been very adept at dealing with that situation.

JIM LEHRER:

What is the harm that comes from this? What is the damage that is being done, if any? In other words, why does this matter?

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

Well, the first reason is legitimacy and credibility as a leader, right? We're outside the tent on issue after issue after issue. The second is our ability to shape these regimes themselves. Again, we're outside the tent, we don't get to play. We don't get to be part of the group that makes the rules. And these are the regimes that will shape the rules of the road in this globalizing world.

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

I think that the United States will be, to a large extent, shaping the rules of the road in the future.

JIM LEHRER:

Why? Why?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

Simply because of our economic and military strength. We are the dominant world power for this era.

The fact that the United Nations will vote one way or another does not mean very much because if you take something like the Kyoto Accord, it applies to nothing but the advanced industrial nations. And it will be recalled, that the Senate voted something like 98-0 against the principles of the Kyoto Accord when President Clinton was in office.

It should come as no surprise to Europe that the Senate, with that kind of vote, was not going to ratify it. Indeed, Clinton did not send the Kyoto Accord to the Hill for that reason.

JIM LEHRER:

Is it a mischaracterization of your view that, okay, this is difficult, but it's nothing to get all excited about, nothing… no harm is going to come to us or to the world or even to Europe as a result of these differences or as a result of the stress?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

I prefer to have a unified alliance, as we had during much of the cold war, but not throughout its entirety.

On the other hand, if we have serious problems with certain actions that the Europeans are pressing upon us, there is no obligation, if we are the leader simply to follow their agenda.

JIM LEHRER:

Do you agree?

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

Yes, I agree on an individual basis. But I would say, when you look at a list of 12 issues, then you have reason to ask yourself what you're doing and whether that makes sense. And I… you know, the other reasons that you asked, what does it matter?

JIM LEHRER:

Yeah, sure.

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

It matters because the tool that we have on with which we can act alone is military power. And of course even then you can't act alone. You need agreements for bases; you need rights to fly over other people's air space. We can't do anything alone really. There are very few countries where we could just maybe take an aircraft carrier, park it in international waters and not fly over anybody's air space.

So even military action you can't act alone, but you're not going to control proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that the president talked about alone. It cannot be done.

It requires deep and willing international cooperation.

So if we recklessly spend that political capital, if we throw it away, it won't be there when we need it.

I think, Jim, that the… one example very recently, the reason that the U.S., in part, backed off, I believe, not pressuring Israel to accept the U.N. investigative team into Jenin was in part because we were standing outside the tent on the International Criminal Court and it was partly because of that that Israel was… that Israel was worrying about. So where did we have the standing to pressure them?

I think that the U.S. has, by and large, and very much more so under this administration, downgraded the importance of international cooperative action. And that's really the core of the disagreement with the Europeans.

JIM LEHRER:

Is that the core of the disagreement?

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

We have not grounded… downgraded the cooperative action with our allies. We are working very closely with them on intelligence matters, on the question of proliferation that Jessica raises.

It is in the interest of all countries, including Russia, including the European countries, to work with us to prevent further proliferation.

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

But not necessarily in exactly the way we choose to do it.

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

Oh, that is quite right. For example, on the issue that was raised earlier with respect to the help of the Russians for the Bashir reactor, what they are doing is the same thing.

JIM LEHRER:

In Iran.

JAMES SCHLESINGER:

In Iran. What they are doing is the same thing that we say prevents proliferation in North Korea.

So there is every opportunity to differ with details of our policies.

On the other hand, there is no reason for us to fall in line with others simply because we are described as the leader and, therefore, we must behave.

JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS:

I think there's one other…

JIM LEHRER:

We have to leave it there. Thank you both very much.