by Simon Parais : Student, Elizabethtown College PA, USA / European Studies Department Daniel Berzsenyi College


17/01/2005

Introduction

Political Dimension

Economic dimension

Cultural and social dimension

Conclusion

Political Dimension

1. A Broader Perspective

When speaking of the transatlantic relations we have to mention that besides the EU-U.S. relation, historically there are other countries/regions involved in the dialogue: Africa and South America. In 2020, the term transatlantic relations refers to the various connections between the U.S. the EU, Latin-American and also African countries. However, the focus of this paper is on the change and process of relations between the European Union and the US.

2. Global Governance

“When the two halves of our Western civilization act in concert, we rule the world;
when we divide, each suffers. It is therefore in the interest of all our peoples
to work for the improvement of our relations.” (Radek Sikorski)

In the year of 2020 global governance means a global network of international organizations first such as the World Bank, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the UN on one side; secondly the economic and political relations between Europe and the United States and last but not least NGOs, academia and the mass media ’ . The best achievements of the EU in global governance are the cases of the Kyoto Treaty, the International Criminal Court and the Human Security Response Force. After ten years Russia joined to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the United States also accepted the implementation of the Treaty, planning to reduce CO2 emmissions by 45% by 2025 compared to 1995. In the case of ICC, with a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the European Union in 2012, they agreed on the implementation of a clause, which changed the Rome Statute’s claim about the exercising jurisdiction over U.S. citizens in special cases. Under the Human Security Doctrine, European forces are fighting for the insecure against human rights violations. Global civil society - the global network of NGO’s, civil movements and also organisations like Greenpeace - is playing a key role in the so-called global governance process.
The most important change in connection with globalization and global govarnance was the reform of UN Charter in 2012. Luckily enough the EU was able to make its voice heard, and common European interests were incorporated in the new system. In spite of the historical over-representation of European countries in the UN, the reduction of power did not mean an overall decrease in EU influence and the reallocation of votes resulted in an image such as that the EU is considered as a unity and not as separate states.

 

3. The New Tripolar World Order

The raison d’étre of transatlantic relations have disappeared with the fall of communism, but strong economical and cultural ties postponed the realisation that the U.S. and the EU have different views on key issues. China with its 7 percent GDP growth per annum became the second only to the U.S. economy. In 2020 China’s population and economic strength resulted in a shift in the global order, and from periphery it came into the center. China with the second largest population in the

world now accounts for the 13% of world GDP and 20% of world trade, militarily the U.S. is still the largest none comparable to its military spending (only 3% of its GDP in 2015), but there is a growing concern that China will soon start spending on military developments.
The European Union with a renewed institutional system after the ninth enlargement now has more than 590 million citizens, the largest single market in the world and its GDP spending on research and develepment is the highest compared to other states. New regional ’hegemonies’ like South Africa and Brazil and also Japan and Russia are developing rapidly, but the international relations are dominated by a new tripolar share of political-economic-and military power.

 

4. Security and Defense Policy

In 2006 when the European Security Strategy had been accepted with the ratification of the European Constitution in 25 member states, there was a certain fear among American decision-makers and scholars that the EU wanted to be a competitor to the U.S. It has turned out to be false since the European Union, with its current 150.000 Rapid Reaction Force and its formulating 200.000 common European army was involved in more than a dozen military and peacekeeping operations in cooperation with NATO and other forces. In these years, and in the previous decade, it seems that there is indeed a need for European values and forces defending those values. This essay is subtitled Anticipation and the new world order, because in the recent past anticipated issues like Islam, preemption, global warming, multilateralism have played a major role in the successful rebirth of transatlantic relations.In 2020 the EU’s ESDP is 14 years old, fulfilling the criteria of the Petersberg tasks with the military use of the GALILEO global positioning system (since 2010). The United States developed its own missile defense shield, however what is more important than that is space warfare, according to the Transformation Flight Plan, to obtain a global view and defend the U.S. (launch counter-attacks) from space against other countries if necessary. The largest problem when this project was under planning was the unilateral way of looking at international politics from the U.S. side. However, after the terrorist attacks against Washington D.C., Los Angeles, London and Warsaw in 2008, decision-makers realized that the fight against terrorism cannot be won by going into war against nation states and that there is an urgent need for further cooperation and development of intelligence agencies, which in turn caused a lot of legal problems in connection with personal privacy.
The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) of the U.S. to prevent terrorists to be able to acquire dangerous biological, chemical or nuclear weapons has been signed by more than 60 countries.
As Bahnzoff pointed out there was less chance for the EU to become unilateralist than for the U.S. to move back to the field of multilateralism; and by 2020, the economical success that Europe has shown resulted in that the U.S. had confidence in the power of the EU and they also realized that common problems can only be solved by common solutions and that legitimacy depends on creating a wide international consensus .
The failed idea of trying to democratize the Middle East has led to wars and global economical imbalance. In 2010, after the European Union realized that U.S.-led war on terrorism did not reach the expactations - insurgency, growing global network of terrorists - was a sign for a need for change in the policymaking. After long years of negotiating, and with the acceptance of Turkey in 2016, the European Union was able to get out a UN Security Council Resolution saying that pre-emption is not acceptable in international relations, so it did not give legitimacy and chance for the U.S. to be able to pre-emptively attack another country creating a more multilateral environment with this achievement.

 

5. EU30

What belongs together grows together- said Willy Brandt a long time ago and looking at the current economical success of the European Union it could seem correct. As a result of several reforms, the EU of 30 member states in 2020 is a global player. One of the key elements to be able to achieve this was the creation of an effective decision-making system with the use of the 65 and 55% thresholds for the qualified majority voting. The changing of the rotation of the Presidency of the Council of the European was a decisive change as well. The so called Lisbon strategy has been updated and then completed in 1016. Based on the Kok report and also the active participation of the civil society and academia, the goals were made much more precise and achievable.
The sui generis nature of the European Union is still prevailing and the slogen of unity in diversity successfully met with practice (until the sixth accession there had been some negative voices blaming the EU for using too much rhetoric instead of action. Today the majority of EU policies are under co-decision (now called ordinary legislation), giving more power to the European Parliament and at the same time reducing the democratic deficit. However, there were some heated debates about how the EU could have a common foreign policy without real political base (representation) for it. Then the institution of a Common Foreign Minister and a European Federalist Party in the EP were introduced.
One of the biggest challenges ahead of the EU beside enlargements, sustainable development, Lisbon strategy and unity in foreign policy was that the outside world started to prefer to mention and negotiate with the European Union instead of separate member states. Of course, the author does not want to paint a too rosy picture about the successes of EU and the wellness of transatlantic relations. There are still major problems ahead not only of the EU but also the world: aging population, global warming, terrorism, fragile global economic environment and especially resource shortages—including water. Briefly we can say that between 2000 and 2020 the EU saw more reforms than during the whole history of European integration.

Simon Parais
ELIZABETHTOWN COLLEGE
ELIZABETHTOWN, PA, USA
NOVEMBER 2004