Soft Balancing Between Friends: Transforming Transatlantic Relations

Abstract

US experts either deny that soft balancing is taking place or claim that it arose in response to US unilateralism since 2001. Yet, for several decades before 2001, European economic integration resulted in de facto soft balancing of US primacy within the West, and the 1991 claim for a EU security role began to counterbalance US leadership in European security. Soft balancing between friends is tempered by economic interdependence and more difficult to detect than counterbalancing by China or Russia. Yet, EU soft balancing is as real as US counter-counterbalancing. Asymmetrical roles in the NATO alliance still reflect the post-1945 transatlantic balance of power in spite of the EU's growing economic weight. In the post-1991 security environment, however, the EU can pursue a symmetrical partnership. US security leadership in Europe is still welcomed by European Atlanticists. However, the European Security and Defence Policy of 1999 and the European Security Strategy of 2003, together with the development of a European Defence Industrial and Technological Base and first EU crisis management missions in the Balkans and Africa, have given substance to the EU's claimed security role. De facto soft balancing by the EU is transforming the West and also advancing the transition to multipolarity.

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