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This article was downloaded by: [VUB Vrije University Brussels]On: 14 May 2014, At: 00:24Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Europe and America in a New CenturyDavid P. Calleo
Published online: 11 Dec 2013.
To cite this article: David P. Calleo (2013) Europe and America in a New Century, Survival: GlobalPolitics and Strategy, 55:5, 211-224, DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2013.841822
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I
For most of modern history, Europe has been America’s Signicant Other.
For the past half century in particular, an alliance between the two has
dominated world politics. But how long can this alliance be expected to
last, and in what form? How well does it t the world likely to evolve in
the twenty-rst century?
The present close relationship was not inevitable, as a study of its history
indicates. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the
transatlantic relationship was governed by American isolationism. Thisamounted to a diplomatic trade-o where the United States refrained from
being drawn into European power politics and European states refrained
from intervening in the Western Hemisphere. The trade-o held until the
world wars of the twentieth century. Of course, the United States was
hardly unaware of Europe over this long stretch. America was, after all, a
nation whose population was based primarily on constant European immi-
gration. Events in Europe like the Potato Famine, the revolutions of 1848
and Italian unication had major consequences for the ow and character
of America’s imported population. Immigration reproduced in the United
States something like Europe’s own diverse patchwork of vigorously com-
peting nationalities. But nationalist cohabitation in America was not always
peaceful. New immigrants often arrived with their old antagonisms intact.
Closing Argument
Europe and America in aNew Century
David P. Calleo
David P. Calleo is a University Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Dean Acheson Professor at its Paul H.
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a Survival Contributing Editor.
Survival | vol. 55 no. 5 | October–November 2013 | pp. 211–224 DOI 10.1080/00396338.2013.841822
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212 | David P. Calleo
Absorbing this rich diversity peacefully has been a Herculean task for the
American Republic.
Paradoxically, America’s population of European immigrants is one
factor in explaining the long persistence of America’s isolationist policytoward Europe. Playing an active role in Europe’s rivalries would have
been hazardous for America’s own multinational consensus. Meanwhile,
to satisfy its lust for space, America had its own West, where the military
threat was seldom formidable, and where internal antagonism among
America’s national families could more easily be avoided, at least until ter-
ritorial expansion grew inextricably linked to the slavery question.
The Second World War saw American isolationism towards Europe
replaced by America’s active pursuit of European hegemony. In the process,
the United States transformed itself from isolated giant to global leader. The
transition was pregured as America entered the First World War in 1917.
Despite America’s still limited military participation, President Woodrow
Wilson was soon seizing the political high ground with his plans for a
League of Nations. Wilson’s grand initiative failed to win stable support
at home. The campaign to support it was bungled and illness incapacitated
Wilson himself. The country gradually reverted to its isolationist tradition.But a quarter of a century later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who
had been assistant secretary of the navy in Wilson’s war cabinet, had suc -
ceeded where Wilson had failed.
As in the First World War, America’s participation in the Second World
War quickly took a hegemonic form. As Japan was plunging the United States
into the war, Roosevelt was imagining a full set of new institutions for global
security, nance and trade – institutions in which the United States would
play the leading role. Despite his early death, Roosevelt’s visionary schemes
– the United Nations and its economic oshoots – were rmly established
and live on to the present day. FDR’s assertive diplomacy proved conta-
gious for America’s elites. As early as January 1941, Henry Luce, owner and
editor of Time magazine, was proclaiming the ‘American Century’. By 1943,
the Republican presidential candidate of 1940, Wendell Willkie, was touring
the country at Roosevelt’s behest, aacking the isolationists in his own party
and touting the virtues of ‘One World’ led by America.
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Europe and America in a New Century | 213
The renewed Wilsonian ambitions of the 1940s were greatly reinforced
by another hegemonic American vision, the product of a patrician geo-
political school which gathered in the early twentieth century around
FDR’s distant Roosevelt cousin Theodore, president from 1901 to 1909.The group included John Hay, Henry and Brooks Adams, and the Senator
from Massachuses, Henry Cabot Lodge. It was strongly inuenced by
America’s own naval strategist with a geopolitical vision – Alfred Thayer
Mahan. This ‘realist’ school of American imperialists had quite dierent
assumptions from Wilson’s liberals, and in the end has had perhaps greater
inuence over American foreign policy. Mahan taught that the global state
system requires a hegemonic leader – preferably a naval power with an
imposing manufacturing and nancial base. Britain was the nineteenth-cen-
tury model. According to Mahan, Britain would be surpassed as America
fullled its own continental destiny, and thereby grew able to deploy
much greater naval power worldwide. Mahan died in 1914. He and his
friends had been in no hurry to displace the British and, in fact, the First
World War precipitated the breakdown of British hegemony before the
United States was ready. But American imperialists could not be indier-
ent, any more than the British, to the prospect of Germany becoming thecontinental hegemon, uniting Europe’s resources for projecting power into
the world. Thus Wilson’s America went to war against Germany, despite
the resentment of the country’s large and inuential German popula-
tion.1 Paradoxically, at the war’s end Senator Lodge, Mahan’s principal
political disciple, led the ght in the Senate to prevent the United States
itself from joining the League of Nations. Part of Lodge’s disaection
was philosophical and aesthetic. Mahan’s was a realist vision, rooted in
Machiavelli and Hamilton, whereas Wilson’s was an idealist project, rooted
in Locke and Jeerson. Lodge was also leery of international commitments
that would infringe on the Senate’s own power over America’s foreign
policy.
The popular backlash against Wilson’s League had among its sources
a reaction from German America, concentrated in the Midwest. Wilson’s
failure demonstrated the essential fragility of any domestic popular base for
vigorous American leadership abroad, above all in Europe. The presidential
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214 | David P. Calleo
election of November 1920 saw Warren Harding elected overwhelmingly
on a platform condemning Wilson’s conduct and opposing the League of
Nations. His Democratic opponent, James Cox, supported both Wilson and
the League, and was crushed.The old isolationist hostility to involvement in European aairs persisted
throughout the 1920s and 1930s, reinforced by German-American resent-
ment at the Eastern Establishment’s preference for Britain and France.
Midwestern banks poured money into Weimar Germany. When war broke
out in Europe once more, Roosevelt, although increasingly commied to
the Allied cause, found it dicult to edge the United States into it. It took
the Japanese aack on Pearl Harbor to engage the US openly. Even then,
Roosevelt was worried that he would not be able to justify joining the war
in Europe. He was greatly relieved when, shortly after Pearl Harbor, Hitler
himself declared war on America. Thereafter, Roosevelt rmly continued to
give the war in Europe priority over the war in Asia. Roosevelt proved to be
a superb war leader, who successfully fused Mahan’s realism with Wilson’s
idealism. Thanks to him, Americans were nally ready for, as he put it, their
‘rendezvous with destiny’. He was greatly assisted, of course, by the loath-
some character of the Nazi regime.
II
America’s victory in the Second World War, followed by the Cold War, radi-
cally changed the domestic framework for American foreign policy. Fear
of the Soviet Union proved in many ways a perfect catalyst for overcom-
ing the old domestic divisions that had hitherto inhibited America’s pursuit
of hegemony in Europe. This proved true despite the populist appeal of
Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunting directed at America’s
foreign-policy elites and popular among former isolationists. But thanks to
the brutal, irreligious and generally odious character of the Soviet regime,
American popular support for a hegemonic alliance to contain communism
was long lasting. The Cold War created the Federal Republic of Germany and
transformed it into America’s closest ally. NATO came to be prized either
as a protectorate for the homelands of America’s European populations, or
as the best hope for the liberation of the homelands already occupied by the
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Europe and America in a New Century | 215
Soviets. Hence NATO’s enduring popularity in the United States and post-
war America’s European-centred foreign policy.
Meanwhile, partitioning the world with Stalin and Mao narrowed the
scope of America’s hegemonic pretensions and overburdened the Sovietswith theirs. Thus, despite the Soviet Union’s heroic military victories over
the Germans in the Second World War, in the end it was the United States
that emerged as the victor. The Cold War that followed saw the US allied not
only with Western Europe, including the major part of Germany, but also
with Japan. America’s hegemonic leadership was, for the most part, grate-
fully accepted. America’s hegemony could truthfully be called an “empire
by invitation”.2 In contrast to America, Russia had only one major ally –
China – with whom its relations were generally hostile. America’s victory in
the Cold War was thus hardly surprising – as much a triumph of diplomacy
and economics as of military power. Meanwhile, West European states,
beginning to unite in their European Community, grew skilful in manipu-
lating the superpowers to undermine the bipolar division of Europe.
The Soviet collapse in 1991 ended the Cold War and introduced an amor-
phous new post-Cold War era that has now persisted for over two decades.
Given America’s long tradition of isolationism, with no Soviet Union and,as yet, no reliable substitute enemy, an obvious question hanging over these
years is whether, or for how long, support for the Cold War’s transatlan-
tic alliance will persist. There are numerous signs of American impatience:
the intellectual elite of the American right have a tendency to see Europe
– in particular continental Europe – as the source of uncongenial communi-
tarian tendencies that are anti-individualist and ‘un-American’ culturally,
politically and economically. Above all, neoconservatives tend to hold
Europeans in contempt for their relative military weakness. By contrast, the
libertarian wing of the American right has tended to grow increasingly
restive at their own country’s huge defence budget, including the still heavy
US investment in NATO.3 This opposition is hardly surprising, as America’s
defence spending is much higher than anyone else’s.4 Meanwhile, liberal
economists in the US have grown increasingly critical of the EU’s reluc-
tance to adopt America’s package of neo-Keynesian remedies for the
current global nancial crisis – quantitative easing, in particular.5
Arguably,
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216 | David P. Calleo
the EU’s rejection of these remedies amounts to a European rejection of
American economic leadership in a major crisis. Meanwhile, studies show
a ‘values gap’ between the American and European publics.6 In short, it is
not surprising that partisans of the Atlantic Alliance are feeling embaledand insecure.7
III
To restore enthusiasm for an active global alliance, both Americans and
Europeans need a fresh narrative that explains the new post-Soviet world
and convincingly indicates the appropriate American and European roles
in it. Among Americans four grand narratives appear to be on oer: unipo-
lar , declinist , pluralist and anarchic. While these are not entirely distinct, each
implies dierent global roles for the United States and Europe, and a dier-
ent relationship between them.
According to the unipolar narrative, the Soviet collapse has left the United
States the only remaining superpower, free to pursue global hegemony so
long as America’s own domestic base will support it. Of course, hegemony
always has opponents, at home and abroad, and its exercise needs to be
managed skilfully. The George H.W. Bush administration, for example, wasprompt to intervene internationally but careful to cultivate the support of
its European allies, while, at the same time, being wary of encouraging too
much European military autonomy. The George W. Bush administration,
by contrast, often thought the US might be stronger without its European
allies.
The declinist narrative carries a quite dierent message. According to
declinist theory, America’s hegemonic role is unlikely to last. This is because
a hegemon, carrying the principal burden of sustaining the order and secu-
rity enjoyed by everyone else, inevitably exhausts itself. While the free
riders grow stronger from the benets, the hegemon grows weaker by pro-
viding them. As hegemony fades, the world grows increasingly chaotic. A
new hegemon eventually arises. It is not hard these days to nd trends that
suggest America’s nancial and psychological exhaustion or the world’s
disorder. Nor is there any lack of speculation that China will be America’s
eventual successor.
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Europe and America in a New Century | 217
Our third, pluralist , narrative sees a global future dominated not by a
hegemon, old or new, but by several rising regional powers – perhaps, too,
by a variety of non-state actors and interest groups capable of coordinat-
ing on a global scale. Whereas a unipolar or declinist narrative calls for ahegemon or hegemonic aspirants, the classic recipe for peace in a plural-
ist system is a stable balance of power, upgraded into a concert to prevent
hegemony, while collaborating to maintain an orderly, law abiding and
prosperous system of states.
The anarchic narrative imagines a plural world of interdependent states,
rising and falling without a stable balance of power or eective institu-
tions to produce a concert. This is the outcome widely feared from a global
system with highly competitive Asian powers whose interests are dicult
to reconcile with those of the richer but increasingly less competitive trans-
atlantic states.
These four narratives, in all their variations, have faded in and out over
recent years. The 1980s – with the ‘twin decits’ of the Reagan adminis-
tration – were the golden age of declinism. These early declinists were
concerned not with Soviet strength but with American economic weak-
ness. The Soviet collapse in 1991 sent the declinist narrative into eclipse andinstead brought forward the unipolar narrative. The inuence of this tri-
umphalist view remained strong in the rst Bush administration, through
the Clinton administration and into the second term of the George W. Bush
administration. By then, the signs of America’s decline had grown increas-
ingly compelling. The American public was weary of indecisive wars;
politics was beginning to be aected by the widespread perception that
the average citizen’s living standards had been slipping as America’s pre-
eminent economic position was challenged by the rising great powers of
Asia, China especially.8 Meanwhile, the banking crisis in America that
erupted in 2006 soon spread to Europe. American weakness was leading to
global disorder and nancial chaos, just as declinist theory had promised.
In eect, the declinist narrative, foretelling the end of American hegemony,
was also pointing to an anarchic result.
The shrinking credibility of the unipolar narrative, along with the resur-
gence of the declinist and the prospect of the anarchic, naturally feed a
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218 | David P. Calleo
new interest in a more collaborative approach to managing international
aairs. In eect, US policy has grown more accepting of a plural system.
This means recasting, but not necessarily abandoning, the traditional alli-
ance. East European states, still frightened by Russian ambitions, wouldprefer the traditional NATO to continue indenitely. But even the more
secure Europeans, who have wanted to see the new Russia as an oppor-
tunity rather than a threat, have all along remained content for a formal
Atlantic alliance to continue – as a way of maintaining a balanced frame-
work of order in the face of big and hostile neighbours. So long as Russia or
Iran have unfriendly governments, Europeans are unlikely to throw away
their American protection. Nor, however, are they willing to pay too high
a price for it – as the history of transatlantic relations during the George W.
Bush presidency makes clear. Europeans resist any American connection
that locks them into a hostile relationship with their Russian and Muslim
neighbours. Their hope is ultimately to embrace these neighbours in a coop-
erative pan-European system. Thus, despite the discouraging features of the
Putin regime and the lingering fears of the recently liberated East European
states, major West European governments are wary of allowing any NATO
expansion that would restore the old Cold War antagonism.American foreign policy has gradually adopted these European perspec-
tives. Instead of pursuing the isolated omnipotence of the unipolar view,
the Obama administration touts a strategy of ‘constant engagement’. It has
hoped in doing so to reverse the transatlantic disaection of the Bush years
and to rejuvenate the old alliance, but without designating Russia as the
ocial enemy. Obama’s America has also assiduously avoided trying to
exploit military and diplomatic dierences among the allies. In particular,
it has avoided the old game of rounding up the smaller European countries
and piing them against the bigger. It encouraged the Anglo-French inter-
vention in Libya. It provided support when needed, but was careful not to
take over the project. Uncharacteristically, the United States has sought ‘to
lead from behind’. Obama’s US has also ‘reset’ its relations with Russia,
to discourage Russia-baiting among the East European states and give
support to the big West European states trying to develop stable relations
with their giant neighbour. Obama has not completely abandoned this strat-
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Europe and America in a New Century | 219
egy, despite the discouraging climate since Putin’s return to the Russian
presidency. The US has tried, moreover, to adjust its Iranian policy to suit
European perspectives, which traditionally have been more hopeful about
negotiation.These American policies have certainly improved the atmosphere for
transatlantic relations. But it remains to be seen whether common interests
are strong enough to keep a close transatlantic alliance together. The US
and the EU states have competing as well as common interests – in relations
with Russia and the Islamic world, or in any new world order generally.
Relations with China are certainly vital to both Americans and Europeans,
but their policies towards China may not be easily compatible. Each is, after
all, competing to ll the role of China’s principal Western partner. In short,
even a strong EU would not necessarily always share the same perspectives
and interests as a strong United States. Thus it seems far from certain that a
close transatlantic alliance must endure.
Since the 1970s an increasingly globalised economy has been shaken by a
series of nancial crises. The most recent, still very much with us, has already
provoked a serious decline in Western condence and solidarity. While the
gloomy prospects and immediate dangers of the present breakdown have been studied exhaustively, analyses of the longer-term implications are in
shorter supply.
* * *
If we assume that the EU and the US somehow do avoid being dragged
down by the present nancial and political crisis, and allow ourselves to take
a very long view – say, to mid-century – how might Europe and America
relate to each other then? The answer will probably depend greatly on how
each evolves domestically. Today’s EU remains in the midst of a lengthy and
still inconclusive dening of its constitution. But since the European states
do collectively have large resources, the ultimate outcome of their consti-
tutional evolution may well impose signicant changes on the rest of the
world. If Europe’s sovereign states, while remaining in a confederal union,
somehow nd the formulas needed to manage their own interdependence
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220 | David P. Calleo
successfully, Europe is likely to remain a major force in the world – both
for its amassed resources but also by the example it sets. If a confederal EU
holds together, it will remain one of the world’s largest economic systems.
If it is still more a confederacy than a federation, it will probably remain dis-inclined to dene itself primarily as a military power. Instead, it will most
likely present a model that favours diplomatic bargaining and conciliation.9
Europe’s natural instinct will be to reach out to Russia and the Muslim
world, to entice them into its own orbit of stable peace and prosperity.
If Europe does evolve in this fashion, it may prove ideally suited to
acting as a mediating power between the United States and China. Europe’s
constitutional character would accord well with its geographical posi-
tion, occupying, as it does, the cape of the Eurasian continent. Indeed, the
institutions and practices of confederal Europe might be the model for
building a world system that permied the mutual accommodation of rising
Asia and a still vigorous West. In short, Europe could be a critical balancer
in the evolving institutions for global order, a role for which its own confed-
eral character would have prepared it. In this sense, the success of Europe’s
confederal experiment should be seen as a critical interest for the whole
world.These expectations, however, assume that Europe succeeds without
having to abandon its present confederal structure. Many people now
believe, however, that to survive the EU will need to turn away from its
traditional constitution toward a more centralised American-style federal
model. Given its resources and imperial traditions, if the EU does travel very
far down this path it might gradually nd itself becoming a superpower.
Having such a Europe would point rmly toward our third narrative – a
multipolar world of several great powers. If such a plural global system
does emerge, the odds for a peaceful and tolerably just global order seem
more promising – as long as a relatively rational and conciliatory Europe
remains a major player.
The rearmation of such a Europe despite today’s nancial crisis,
combined with the geopolitical and scal consolidation of overstretched
America and a more measured pace for China’s rise – taken together with a
successful reform of the monetary system – would suggest a more rational
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Europe and America in a New Century | 221
and hopeful future for the world. Much, of course, will depend on whether
Europe collectively can continue to develop its own model successfully – in
other words, whether it can nd the right balance in its own aairs between
conciliation and eectiveness. Europe’s importance for shaping the world’sfuture suggests a heavy responsibility for today’s leaders and opinion-mak-
ers – a challenge perhaps not well enough understood in either Europe or
America.
Instead, underestimating Europe’s importance has already become a bad
transatlantic habit in the twenty-rst century. Doubtless, Americans cling
too jealously to their global responsibilities and imagine too central a role
for themselves in the world’s future. For Europeans, however, presuming
their own weakness has become too convenient a way of escaping responsi-
bility for the future, of taking a vacation from history. No one should deny
America’s contribution to the last century. But possibly Europe will have
more to oer to the present. Since the Second World War, Europeans have
built a remarkable confederal system – one that retains its nation-states but
within a superstructure that demands mutual regard and encourages the
search for common interests. At present, it is passing through a delicate
moment of constitutional redenition. It may fail, but the record of the pastseveral decades suggests it may not. Out of its own terrible experiences,
post-war Europe has created a durable continental formula, one that may
well oer tomorrow’s more plural world its best hope for a sane future. The
European Union is Europe’s gift to world history. It should not be thrown
away in retrograde quarrels among citizens and leaders suddenly deprived
of their generosity and vision. Europe’s historic education has been too
expensive to be allowed to fail.
Notes
1 For an account of the German-
American positions during the
First World War, see Frederick C.
Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German-
Americans and World War I (DeKalb,
IL: Northern Illinois University Press,
1974).
2 Geir Lundestad, ‘Empire by
Invitation? The United States and
Western Europe, 1945–1952’, Journal
of Peace Research , vol. 23, no. 3,
September 1986, pp. 263–77.3 See Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and
Power: America and Europe in the New
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222 | David P. Calleo
World Order (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2002), which builds further on
his Policy Review article ‘Power and
Weakness’ (no. 113, June–July 2002,
pp. 3–28), where he famously sum-marises the dierent priorities in the
Europe–US relationship: ‘Americans
are from Mars and Europeans are
from Venus’ (p. 3). Scholars from the
Cato Institute – a libertarian think
tank – have commented on the US
‘overinvestment’, and EU ‘underin-
vestment’ in NATO over the years. See
Doug Bandow, ‘NATO Has Become a
Form of U.S. Foreign Aid’, 2012, and
Ted Carpenter ‘Armed, Overbearing
and Dangerous’, 2013, etc. Others,
such as former Congressman and lib-
ertarian Ron Paul, a staunch supporter
of reducing government size, espouse
a US exit from NATO altogether (see
comments made in interview with
CBS News’ John Dickerson, 8 July
2010, hp://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6658752n).
4 The President’s Budget for Fiscal Year
2014 shows that in 2012, US defence
spending amounted to about 4.4%
of GDP. Oce of Management and
Budget, ‘The President’s Budget for
Fiscal Year 2014’, Historical Tables:
Table 3.1 – Outlays by Superfunction
and Function: 1940–2017, hp://www.
whitehouse.gov/sites/default/les/
omb/budget/fy2014/assets/hist03z1.
xls. Data from the IISS in The Military
Balance 2013 shows that this dwarfs
any of its Western neighbours or the
European countries, which as a whole
spent ‘only’ 1.52% of their GDP on
defence.5 Paul Krugman, a self-proclaimed
Keynesian and columnist for the
New York Times , in his blog, ‘The
Conscience of a Liberal’, regularly
makes this critique. See, for instance,
Paul Krugman, ‘The Austerity
Delusion’, New York Times , 24 March2011; ‘Those Revolting Europeans’,
New York Times , 6 May 2012.6 Pew Research Center, ‘The American–
Western European Values Gap’, 17
November 2011 (updated 29 February
2012).7 An indication of the insecurity about
transatlantic ties can be gauged
from articles from institutions such
as the Center for Transatlantic
Relations (SAIS) in its ‘Transatlantic
Topics’, EU–US area, or conferences
such as the Wilson Center’s ‘The
Transatlantic Relationship: Problems
and Prospects’, which describe the
many challenges ahead and how con-
nections between the partners can and
must be strengthened, if the alliance is
to exist in the future.8 See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall
of the Great Powers: Economic Change
and Military Conict from 1500 to 2000
(New York: Random House, 1987);
David P. Calleo, Beyond American
Hegemony: The Future of the Western
Alliance (New York: Basic Books,
1987).9 The notion of the European Union as
a ‘civilian power’ was early described
by François Duchêne (1973), who
saw the EU (or the contemporary
European Community) as a model
structure for how ‘inuence … can be
wielded by a large political coopera-
tive formed to exert essentially civilian
forms of power’ and, in his view,
should be a ‘civilian group of coun-
tries long on economic power and
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Europe and America in a New Century | 223
relatively short on armed force’. In the
40 years following Duchêne’s charac-
terisation of the EU, the notion, which
over time also evolved from its origi-
nal meaning, has been and still is very
much alive. In ‘Beyond the Civilian
Power Debate’ (Politique Européenne ,
no. 17, 2005/3), Karen E. Smith sheds
light on what the term has come to
mean and on the (ongoing) debate.
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This publication can be purchased online at www.iiss.org/publications/adelphi
or at www.iiss-routledgepublications.com
ADELPHI books
Emile Hokayem is Senior Fellow
for Regional Security at the Middle
East ofce of The International
Institute for Strategic Studies. He
was previously Political Editor of The
National, in the UAE, and a Middle
East analyst at the Stimson Center,
in Washington DC.
Adelphi 438; published May 2013; 234x156; 212pp; Paperback: 978-0-415-71738-0; £9.99
This Adelphi is also available in Kindle format from Amazon
BY EMILE HOKAYEM
‘ A well-argued, informative account of the Syrian conict by an expert
who has tracked the crisis every step of the way. An important read for
those interested in understanding the evolution of the revolt and the dire
prospects for Syria’s future.’
Roula Khalaf, Middle East Editor of the Financial Times
‘ This book offers the most timely and sophisticated analysis of the
tragic war in Syria. Its author is one of the most subtle and perceptive
observers of the Syrian political scene and relies in his arguments and
presentation on primary sources, eldwork and in-person interviews with
a whole range of actors from Syria and the region. You will not nd a
better work on both the history and current dynamics of this conict.’
Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University
‘ Emile Hokayem provides deep insight into the complexities of Syrian
society and the demise of a strong state, and, most usefully, walks the
reader through the maze of conicting agendas and interests of the
regional players. It is an authoritative account of the most dynamic
and difcult period of modern Syrian history. Hokayem’s work will be a
valued tool for regional security studies, as Syria’s tragedy is likely todrive the agenda for regional analysis in the years ahead.’
Ellen Laipson, President and CEO of the Stimson Center and Director of
their Middle East/Southwest Asia program
As an upbeat and peaceful uprising quickly and
brutally descended into a zero-sum civil war, Syria
crumbled from a regional player into an arena in which
a multitude of local and foreign actors compete. The
volatile regional fault lines that run through Syria have
ruptured during this conict, and the course of events
in this fragile yet strategically signicant country will
profoundly shape the future of the Levant.
Emile Hokayem’s rst-hand experience and sober
analysis provide up-to-date insight into the myriad
opposition groups, the conicting external interests
and the murky calculations of the Assad regime.
Tracking the seeds of dissent that laid the groundwork
for rebellion, he looks at how Syria’s largely apolitical
society mobilised and at the unpredictable dynamics
that have been unleashed as the protest movement has
radicalised and militarised. In the face of such profound
challenges to its four decades of authoritarian rule,
Hokayem also assesses the continued resilience of a
regime that has escalated beyond the point of return.
SYRIA’S UPRISINGAND THE FRACTURINGOF THE LEVANT