11th Annual Graduate Student Conference
Georgetown University
February 2, 2007
Comments by Wess Mitchell
Thank you MAGES class of ‘07 for inviting me here to speak tonight. It's good to see so many familiar faces and old friends in the audience.
You know, the last time I sat here in this room it was next to my friend and mentor, the late Professor Greg Flynn. And as any of you who ever took a class with Prof Flynn will remember, there was one sure-fire way to get a bad grade on a paper in Prof Flynn's class and that was to fail to answer the famous question, "So What?" If you didn't answer that question, he'd hand your paper back with the words "So What?" written across the top of it and you'd have to re-write it. So in honor of Prof. Flynn, I'd like to talk about what I see as the "So What?" of tonight's topic and I plan to do this (by way of comparative advantage as the only American on the panel) by looking at the topic entirely from the perspective of US policymakers. What relevance does the existence of euroskepticism in the so-called "New" Europe hold for the United States? I think this is an important question to ask because the term itself, the term "New" Europe as it is used in the title of tonight's roundtable is itself a recent US creation that many analysts have described as the appropriation of euroskepticism as an informal instrument of US policy in Europe.
Let me say up front that when I use the term euroskepticism, I'm referring to the doubts that exist - not at the popular or cultural or economic levels, but the doubts that exist at the level of foreign policy elites about the ability of the EU to provide public goods that advance the national security interests of its individual member states - in this case, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
A lesson I think the US took away from the Iraq War was:
That we can exploit these doubts to our benefit,
That when push comes to shove, the CE's will break ranks with their Western neighbors
That this kind of "cherry-picking" strategy (as it was called) can work to America's strategic advantage.
But in the period since the Iraq War, I think a lot of commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have come to see this American strategy of cherry picking as a temporary aberration and are waiting on a fresh start when the next Administration takes office. But I think this assumption is wrong and I'd like to use the next few minutes to explain:
1. Why I think the incentives continue to exist for the US to continue using an Iraq War-style cherry-picking strategy in the years ahead,
2. Why the Central Europeans themselves are likely to continue to be receptive to this kind of strategy,
3. And why, in spite of these incentives, I think this kind of strategy is likely to do the US more harm than good.
First of all, contrary to hopeful predictions about a fresh start in transatlantic affairs after the end of the Bush Administration, I believe that the incentives continue to exist, and are likely to increase, for Washington to continue its Iraq War strategy of cherry-picking Central European allies - regardless of who's in office. And I think there is one simple reason for this and that is that, for the US, the value of allies - even small and medium-sized allies like Poland and the Czech Republic - is increasing, largely as a result of ongoing changes in the structure of the international system:
- The value of allies today is greater than it was under bipolarity, when US collected allies the way a child collects pennies for his piggy bank and used them basically as a buffer against the other pole in the system.
- And the value of allies today is also greater than it was under the brief period of unipolarity, when allies were seen as basically disposable.
- In the multipolar system that I believe is currently emerging, the value of allies suddenly increases, more or less in proportion to the number of active poles in the international system.
At a time when fewer and fewer countries are willing to partner with the US, the availability for Washington of a bloc of 10 countries that are among the most pro-American in the world, with a combined population of 100 million citizens, represents a virtually irresistible opportunity for the US - even if taking advantage of this opportunity comes at the expense of the integration project.
So assuming that this is correct, and that the US still has reasons to want to exploit divisions in Europe, this leads me to my second question, which is: how likely are the Central European countries themselves to be receptive to this kind of strategy? I think the answer is that they'll be more receptive than some people may think. I see a couple of reasons for this:
One is the geopolitical nature of euroskepticism in Central Europe. Central Europeans are skeptical about the ability of the EU to underwrite the national security of their region. They live in a rough neighborhood. They're more attuned to hard security concerns than their Western European counterparts, and frankly, they've been abandoned by the West before - at least twice in within living memory. And I think this anxiety is going to grow stronger, not weaker in the years ahead as a result of three disturbing overall trends in the Euro-Atlantic space which include:
- The stalling of the European project,
- US disengagement from European Affairs, and
- Increased Russia's assertiveness
Add these three trends together and you have a compelling reason for the Polands of this world to want to see the US continue to play a more active role in European affairs.
The second reason I think the Central Europeans will be receptive to US cherry-picking is the nature of the European integration project itself. The EU, at heart, is basically an attempt at creating a regional unipolarity, and this of course is not a frictionless process: it is guaranteed to provoke regional countermeasures and animosities. And in this kind of setting, I think there'll always be openings for an intelligent external player to exploit European cleavages.
So, the bottom line of all of this is that there will continue to be incentives on the US side to exploit euroskepticism in Central Europe and there will continue to be incentives in Central Europe to accept these US overtures and defect from the European consensus. Assuming that this is correct, the question is: should the US construct its policies in accordance with these incentives? And really, I think this is a question that can only be answered on the basis of US interests.
Viewed through the lens of US interests, the answer would appear at first to be yes. The reason is that there's a greater, more obvious, more immediate payoff that comes from cooperating with the "New" Europe on an opportunistic, bilateral basis (of going directly to Warsaw or Budapest or Prague) than the payoff that comes from foregoing this opportunity and waiting on the EU to get its act together in foreign affairs.
But I'd like to close by pointing out what I see as two pitfalls of the cherry-picking approach that should make US policymakers careful about how actively they seek to exploit euroskepticism in Central Europe in the years ahead:
The first is that this kind of approach has some unattractive unintended consequences. While a strategy of exploiting cleavages in Europe does indeed create opportunities for the US, it also has the unintended consequence of creating opportunities for other external powers in ways that may damage US interests. The same divisions that Washington profited from and helped to exacerbate during the Iraq War also make it easier for Russia (for example) to cherry-pick the EU in the energy field - an area where the US, ironically, is now promoting a common EU energy policy.
And this points to a second problem with the cherry-picking strategy, which is that it's ultimately self-defeating. Collectively, the "New" Europe makes up 30 percent of the votes in the European Council and almost a quarter of the votes in the EU Parliament. But the US only derives a benefit from having this pro-US bloc in the EU to the extent that these countries are actually listened to in EU decision-making circles. If these countries are seen by their neighbors as some kind of disruptive, pro-American fifth column, their effectiveness within the EU becomes marginal at best. A Poland that is seen by its neighbors as America's "Trojan Donkey" (as one German newspaper put it) is not a Poland that is exercising a great deal of political influence in the EU.
So as I see it, those are two concrete reasons why the US should be careful about how actively it seeks to exploit currents of Central European euroskepticism to its own advantage. The beauty of the "New" Europe is that the goodwill is there, now, already - it's only in attempting actively to press this advantage that the US loses it. While it's desirable for the US that the countries of this region continue to support us (and I think they will continue to do so) it is important that Washington not be seen as encouraging their support too enthusiastically to the detriment of their relations with Western neighbors. I think US policymakers need to keep their eye fixed on what America's core interest in Europe is, and that is stability and this is the one and really the only reason that the US has an interest in seeing the creation of a more integrated Europe in the first place. A determined strategy of cherry-picking is not a good way to promote stability in Europe. And I believe this larger, permanent goal should outweigh any fears about a hypothetical EU superstate, because America's got bigger things to worry about in the world than playing divide and conquer in Europe.