iCES Occasional Paper 06
15
Transatlantic Partnerships: EU-USA Nick Witney It is a great pleasure to be here and I guess that I am present on the strength of the report on transatlantic relations (Shapiro & Witney 2009) which my think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, published about a year ago. It was co-authored with Jeremy Shapiro who at that point was with the Brookings Institution and shortly afterwards went into the State Department where he now works as the senior policy advisor to Philip Gordon. So I would like to say that, if what we said a year ago about US attitudes towards Europe wasn't right then, it is certainly right now, at least in the State Department. I want to run over briefly the argument made in that paper, because it was only 12 months ago and I do not think it has been invalidated; in fact, it has been reinforced by subsequent events. The basic thesis of the report at that time was that dramatic global power shifts were under way: a situation in which America was rapidly moving from its brief spell as hyper-power to the rather different position of being primus inter pares (‘the first among equals’). Certainly, it remains the most powerful nation on earth but is less able to dictate to the rest of the world. Our view was that Americans understood this and were adapting accordingly but that Europeans were in denial about what was going on. We clearly see the rather intelligent way in which Americans understood that they need to establish networks of strategic partnerships around the world, to find people to help them to do the things they want to do. Hence the ‘reset’ with Russia, and the G20. A couple of days ago the Indians found themselves being informed that they, together with the Americans, would define the 21st century. I don't think Europeans have really absorbed this sort of change in world affairs at all. There is just a vague discomfort at the sense of America drifting off: looking towards the Pacific, being less ‘Atlanticist.’ Fundamentally, on this side of the Atlantic, we remain deeply psychologically attached to the way the world worked in the 20th century. We enjoyed a great deal, under which we acknowledged and followed American leadership and, in exchange, we got for ourselves a junior role in the partnership – the West – which ran the world. I think we are finding it tremendously difficult to accept that, at last, that deal is no longer on offer