CONTRARY TO THE TWO DOMINANT,
ALBEIT DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED, TYPES of forecasts that were both highly
fashionable a few years ago, it appears more and more clearly that the
headaches related to the EU-NATO conundrum are here to stay. Those who, in view
of the initial difficulties of establishing mutually acceptable relations between
the two organizations, were talking about teething problems likely to be replaced,
in due course, by a harmonious insertion of the new-born European Security and
Defence Policy (ESDP) into the Atlantic system, were just as wrong as those who
saw in it yet another occasion to toll the death knell of the North Atlantic
Alliance. As it is, neither of the two scenarios seems close to becoming a
reality any time soon.
The reason is very simple:
transatlantic relations have arrived at a stalemate point. A crucial, though
precarious, moment of balance, characterized by the fact that the United States
is no longer able to prevent Europe from gradually moving towards more independence,
while the Europeans are not yet ready to fully achieve their emancipation. In
EU-NATO terms, this equation is reflected, on the one hand, by the US incapacity
to block the launching of European defence within the frameworks of an organization
of which they are not part (the EU), and on the other, the attachment of Europeans
to the upholding of an organization (NATO) that institutionalizes their subjection
to American pre-eminence in the security field.
This article proposes to
focus on relations between the EU and NATO, by highlighting the political
interests and strategic designs which determine progress or, most of the time,
the blockages and pseudo-progress one can witness there. Indeed, two problems, closely
related to one another, come out as the bottom-line from any analysis, whether
it bears on the European integration or NATO, or a fortiori on the relations
between the two. The first one is linked to the nature and general evolution of
the transatlantic relationship, the second to the modalities of various
integration mechanisms. For the European countries, when it comes to their
relations with the United States, these two problems appear in limpid terms:
dependence versus autonomy, and integration versus sovereignty. The key aim of
this article is to raise and to decipher these stakes such as they appear in
the different fields (institutional contacts, cooperation on the ground, planning,
capabilities, assigned missions and procurement) of the relationship between
NATO and the EU. In order to better put the subject into its context, the first
section is devoted to the relations between the Atlantic Alliance and European
defence before the latter was taken charge of in the EU framework, notably with
the launching of ESDP in June 1999. After the enumeration of the major issues
around which all initiatives and debates are articulated as from this date, the
article will finish with an outline of what could be deemed the only scenario
which, on both a strategically realistic and democratically legitimate basis and
under radically different conditions from those experimented until today, could
guarantee a lasting preservation of the transatlantic partnership.
Brief survey of the past
By way of introduction, some
defining elements in the historical context of the current EU-NATO relations
will be underlined. However, before this is possible, it is important to make a
clear distinction between structural continuities and the
(Hajnalka Vincze, The EU-NATO syndrome: spotlight on transatlantic realities, Journal of Contemporary European Research, Volume 3 Issue 2, Summer 2007, 75,800 characters)
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