Friendly Fire: The Near-Death of the Transatlantic Alliance

Abstract

Elizabeth PondWashington, DC: Brookings Institution Press/European Union Studies Association, 2004, xiv, 141pp, US$16.95 paper (ISBN 0-8157-7153-3)This book is the fifth in a series of monographs on the United States and the European Union, sponsored by the Pittsburgh-based European Union Studies Association. Series planners made an excellent choice in getting Elizabeth Pond to detail the origins, nature, and implications of the rift that developed within the western alliance over the Iraq War of 2003. Pond, an American journalist who has long been based in Germany, where she edits Transatlantic Internationale Politik, does an effective job dissecting NATO's most recent crisis. Depending upon how one regards the eternally trouble-prone alliance, this latest dispute was either a tedious case of more-of-the-same or something far different, and much more menacing. Pond, as the subtitle makes clear, opts for the latter evaluation.Those who would disagree would note not only that NATO has made a career out of transcending crises, managing more often than not to come out of them stronger than it entered, but that even to conceive of the dispute over the Iraq War as a fight is to exaggerate greatly the degree to which it pitted a monolithic Europe against the US. The reality is that most European states (though not the continent's various publics) sided with the US and Britain, so much so that one might be tempted to say that if what transpired was an institutional near-death experience, it was rather more the European Union and less NATO that looked to be teetering on the brink of destruction.Pond's claim is that the fire this time burned with a hotter intensity than the alliance members were used to, fed by a varied mixture of geopolitical and ideological tinder. The ending of the Cold War removed Europe's felt need for American protection, with one result being that the Europeans have proved unable over the past decade to resist criticizing America for being, well, too American for their tastes. Though she does touch on this aspect, Pond hardly dwells upon it, with the result being to understate the pre-Bush tensions that so began to trouble transatlantic harmony during the 1990s. Mostly, she argues, the change in alliance fortunes was of more recent provenance, and mainly America's, not Europe's, doing. Specifically, neo-conservatives within the Bush administration were able to seize upon the events of 11 September in such a way as to leave no doubt that for them, allies were going to be useful in a radically different manner from the Cold War era. It was the neocons, spearheaded by Paul Wolfowitz and supported by Donald Rumsfeld, who undercut the alliance by effectively telling the European allies, don't call us, we'll call you in the war against the Taliban in early 2002.The Europeans, says Pond, were slow to get the message. But when they did respond, they did so in differing ways, with the Germans (surprisingly) and the French (less surprisingly) teaming up to lead the opposition to Washington. Pond is especially good at depicting the German debate over the war and the broader implications thereof, and her coign of vantage in Berlin offers the reader a refreshing change of perspective from that gleaned from more customary observation perches in either Paris or Washington. …

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