Dromoland: a US-EU effort to re-engage

WorldView Paul Gillespie US representatives emphasise that President George Bush has devoted this month to repairing relations…

WorldView Paul GillespieUS representatives emphasise that President George Bush has devoted this month to repairing relations with Europe ahead of the formal transition to Iraqi sovereignty next week.

He is aware that his administration does not have all the answers to the problems it faces around the world, many of them caused by its own unilateralism. The US needs to listen more to its European critics and reach compromises that can enable it to get what it wants more effectively - but not everything it wants.

The objective has been pursued at the G8 summit in Georgia, at the Security Council negotiations on Resolution 1546 about the Iraq transition, in the Quartet talks about the Israel-Palestine conflict, at the D-Day celebrations in France and will be continued at Monday's NATO summit in Istanbul.

Today's EU-US summit in Dromoland Castle is part of this wider transatlantic effort to re-engage. This gives it a political importance far greater than previous such summits, which have often been technocratic affairs dominated by trade disputes.

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In briefings ahead of the summit both sides emphasised that this intensified dialogue has made a real difference to US policies. The declarations adopted at Dromoland today on counterterrorism, Iraq, the Middle East, HIV/AIDS, and Sudan/Darfur will reflect this official convergence, they say. So will the heavy emphasis on accelerating the deep EU-US economic relationship.

This will send a message that political leaderships want to put the bitter conflicts of the last year behind them, even if they continue to differ on many concrete issues and how they should be tackled.

On the International Criminal Court, the death penalty, the Kyoto Protocol and the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons, the respective EU and US positions are well known to the other side.

Things are different on the ground and, indeed, at think-tank conferences which are a regular feature of EU-US dialogue. There is a profound gap between popular attitudes to the relationship in Europe and that of their political leaders, echoed in policy debates among specialists on security and foreign policy.

Will official convergence narrow that gap, showing it is caused by conjunctural factors (not least the forthcoming US elections), or is it structural and more deep-seated, marking a long-term divergence of values?

The gap was deepened by the revelations on prisoner abuse. A cynical attitude to the US-dominated Iraqi transition - delicately expressed by a British diplomat who told the Daily Telegraph that "the Iraqi government will be fully sovereign, but in practice it will not exercise all its sovereign functions" - feeds into it.

This showed up plainly in the European Parliament elections, when electorates voted against governing parties which had supported the US in Iraq where they had the opportunity.

It is also clear in Eurobarometer surveys of EU opinion, as Richard Sinnott shows in a book of essays on EU-US relations published by the Institute of European Affairs to mark today's summit (An Indispensable Partnership, EU-US Relations from an Irish Perspective, ed Joe Carroll and John Travers).

Questions asked in the 15 EU member-states in autumn 2002 and in the spring and autumn of 2003 (and in the 10 accession states in the last poll) show a wide EU variation in attitudes towards the US and whether it plays a positive or negative role regarding peace in the world, the fight against terrorism, growth of the world economy, the fight against world poverty and protection of the environment.

Ireland is consistently among the most positive attitudes towards the US, with Greece, France and Spain at the other end.

As Sinnott suggests, this gives Ireland a potential brokerage role in the transatlantic relationship; but it must be played in the knowledge that the majority of its partners have a much more negative assessment of the US. Attitudes in the 10 new member-states are much more favourable to the US - and much more in line with Ireland's.

Eurobarometer 60 in autumn of last year asked the same questions about the EU in its then 15 states. In contrast to the largely negative views of the US evaluations of the EU's role were positive across all five issues. This is most marked on peace in the world, where Europeans evaluate the EU at plus 51 points compared to the US at minus 26 points, a gap of 77.

US specialists say the burgeoning European Security and Defence Policy is far down the US list of strategic priorities. Its stand-alone military planning cell was attacked in Washington when first floated by France, Germany and Belgium last year but quietly approved when Tony Blair asked George Bush about it last December. Washington doesn't care too much about it because it is never likely to be muscular.

There is an inherent ambiguity about US attitudes to closer European defence integration; but since Washington will certainly not take the EU into account in crises unless it has such capabilities the EU should simply stop talking and just do it.

Even then the US has the option to work bilaterally with coalitions of the willing in large crises; it finds the EU highly reactive on geo-strategic issues to a US agenda, abdicating any global role.

As for the distinction between soft and hard power which looms so large in transatlantic commentary, which blade of the scissors cuts the paper?

Such nonchalant arrogance drives some European policy specialists crazy. But they have to acknowledge its truth. They say the key question is whether the EU is serious about attaching strings to its soft power.

The constitutional treaty approved last week develops the EU's international role and keeps the veto on foreign policy. But it permits enhanced co-operation in security and military affairs, which could bypass the reluctant.

Maybe that is why French officialdom remains suspicious about an Irish president of the Commission.