"Renewing the Transatlantic Relationship: Prospects for Europe and the United States in an Emerging Multipolar World"

The Ashburn Institute held its 4th global conference, entitled “Renewing the Transatlantic Relationship: Prospects for Europe and the United States in an Emerging Multipolar World”on November 13-14, 2008. The conference was co-sponsored by the Ashburn Institute and the European Union Center of the School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. The timing of the conference was very appropriate given the change of leadership in the U.S. and the unique window of opportunity for a more multilateral approach to global governance. Twelve participants from eight countries answered the challenge of addressing the issues of cooperation and competition between the U.S. and Europe.
The conferences organized by the Ashburn Institute are unique. They bring together graduate students and young scholars from around the world who want to make a difference. They do research, discuss and present papers on today’s most urgent problems. They bring together a unique combination of solutions and ideas because they all come from different backgrounds and have different educational and cultural experiences. The mission of the Ashburn Institute focuses on giving these individuals a voice. By organizing conferences and engaging students, scholars and policymakers in a dialogue, the Ashburn Institute pursues its educational goals.
The conference was hosted at the University Oklahoma’s Norman campus. Professor Mitchell Smith, Associate Professor of International and Area Studies and Co-Director of the European Union Center at the University of Oklahoma and Robert Frantz, Director of the Ashburn Institute started the conference with opening remarks. They both emphasized the importance of the transfer of power in Washington D.C. 2009 brings high expectations and uncertainty for the United States, after electing the new president, and for the international community in general. Some of the challenges faced by global powers are new but they are extremely severe.
The current financial crisis, arguably the worst since the Great Depression, requires the new vision and structure for global financial architecture. The threats to national security ceased to be limited to the issues of nuclear weapons and conventional arms controls. New, and no less challenging, security threats exist today. They include, but are not limited to global terrorism, conflicts over natural resources, environmental and demographic issues. The conference sought to identify the ways of how to deal with these threats. The participants also tried to address the concerns over the U.S. unilateralism, which has characterized global politics of the last decade, and whether it will continue to be a source of discontent.
 In November 2008, when most countries in the world experienced financial troubles and the question of default became a concern for some nations, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain made a critical proposal on global financial stabilization. Brown’s proposal showed that countries other than the U.S. can also be sources of valuable solutions to problems. The financial and economic crisis may have positive unintended consequences, as Professor Smith pointed out, by creating multiple sources of power and influence due to of the global nature of the problems.
What are the possible areas for cooperation between the U.S. and the EU? Dorly Castaneda argued that a solution to domestic conflicts in Columbia and regional stability in Latin America depends on labor division between the U.S. and the EU and cooperation at lower levels of government. Cooperation on economic, human rights, environmental issues in Columbia likely will have a positive spillover effect on the military policies.
An important question of the EU’s capacity to influence American foreign policy was raised by Brandy Joliff and Virginie Perez Woods. They suggested that issue salience was a crucial factor accounting for variation in the outcome. In the cases of ‘hard power’ disputes, such as the Iraq war, the EU’s relative inability to influence U.S. policy decisions depended on the high priority of the issues to the U.S.’s national security. In the ‘soft power’ case of global climate change, the EU’s ability to influence American policy is expected to be stronger, given the weaker salience of the issue to U.S. interests. Importantly, Joliff and Perez Woods point out that in order to understand the dynamics of foreign policy change, one needs to account for two dimensions of issue salience: salience for the general public and for the elites. The panel on the prospects of foreign policy cooperation between the U.S. and the EU was complemented by Anna Viden’s discussion of the possibility for common ground in Afghanistan. Viden concluded that domestic constraints and national military culture determine military and peacekeeping participation and shape the ways how states and societies view national security.
With the rise of new emerging economies, such as China, India, and Brazil the United States and the EU face the dilemma of integrating these states into global decision-making. Before the economic crisis spread in late 2008, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) were seen as one of the major engines of the global economic growth. Stronger economic growth in these states contributed to the rising demand in energy production, resulting in negative externalities for the global climate change. Pietro De Matteis and Katrina Murray analyzed the opportunities for cooperation between the US, the EU and China. As De Matteis suggested that the underlying concern about a policy of engaging China and other BRIC countries into the energy security framework is the collective action problem. Given that in the institutional apparatus cooperation between the EU and the U.S. has not been very successful, increased cooperation with more players involved in the near future seems unlikely. At the same time, both De Matteis and Murray were confident that the relationships with China would take a central place in the foreign policy of the U.S. and the EU.
While De Matteis and Murray analyzed the prospects for cooperation at the nation-state level, Robert Shum suggested that cooperation on climate change might be more effective at the regional and inter-regional level. Moreover, embedding the climate change framework into a larger framework of cooperation (economic or financial) seems more likely to result in creation of informal norms of climate friendliness.
The security pillar of the transatlantic relations has not become less important since the end of the Cold War. New, non-conventional threats are faced on both sides of the Atlantic. They include, but are not limited to conflicts over ethnicity, resources, and terrorism. Simon Riesche’s argument focused on the ability of the European Union to provide regional security. Riesche showed that in the aftermath of the Bosnia conflict, the EU was able to combine both the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches in stabilizing the region. However, as disagreements among the EU members on the question of Kosovo independence has shown, the question of the EU formulating coherent foreign and security policy continues to be a major challenge. Riesche argued that the recent military conflict between Russia and Georgia necessitates re-assessing the transatlantic security framework between the EU and the U.S. and calls for a more unified and coordinated response to new security threats.
The EU and the US, as major global powers, face a dual challenge of external and domestic security. However, even though global security is a key concern in the transatlantic relationship, it is still a relatively low priority for other major actors, such as Russia and China, as Patryk Pawlak argued. Pawlak stressed that success of dealing with today’s security challenges depends on integrating Russia and China into the global security framework. In her analysis of the global security arrangements and the new confrontations with Russia, Anastasia Shapochkina seemed to agree that failures to include Russia in active decision-making with the West might explain Russian animosity regarding the expansion of NATO and installation of American anti-ballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe.
In today’s interdependent world, no country is insulated from the adversities of the economic, financial crisis or terrorist threats. As we have learned, events on one part of the world have dangerous spillover effect on global stability. It is clear that in cooperation in all spheres depends on successful engagement of all powers – major and minor – in a dialogue. Increased interdependence among nations brings more opportunities and more tools for dealing with security concerns, economic and financial problems, and with challenges of global climate change. While globalization offers new tools for addressing those challenges, it also presents new threats and dangers. By identifying the dangers, recognizing the opportunities and offering policy solutions, the academic community serves a useful purpose.

Max Kovalov
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
The University of Oklahoma
maksym@ou.edu