After the Iraq war, a new balancing act in U.S.-European relations
Excellent article over on the IHT by one John Vinocur.
For those of you who are new here, the debate on US-EU relations has been very active on this blog of late. An article by George Monbiot prompted me to speculate on my long held belief that a US-EU war is a possible scenario in the future. It also sparked quite a debate on my local boards, some 120 posts and 1500 page views.
Vinocur supports the claims I made recently, when he says:
Yet all this is accompanied by a new kind of concern in Europe that the United States might be making the "disaggregation" of Europe - dealing with like-minded individual parts rather than the unified whole of its aspirations - the basis of future American policy. Coming out of the Iraq experience in which the Bush Administration may believe it successfully isolated its opponents, disaggregation or "cherry-picking" in relation to the EU would bring the United States into contradiction with its traditional position in favor of European integration. More important, it would turn America into a perceived opponent of what the project for European unity retains of idealism and political ambition. -Vinocur
But by supporting the incumbent members of the EU, the many Eastern European nations, and then deriding the Western members, surely it is in American interests to split Europe. Afterall, it is a stated aim in many strategy documents of the US not to allow any competitor to the US to arise. Splitting Europe over Iraq seems like a helpful side effect for this cause. - Gavin Sheridan
But if the State Department is pushing this idea of 'disaggregation' as Vinocur puts it then that means it's Colin Powell's doing - doesn't it? I am not sure if I feel good about that.
And Vinocur does not make the point I do - I think he gives a great analysis but he misses the gaping hole - if US policy in the future follows this pattern, and I think the Iraq war showed the first example of this policy, then I think EU-US relations will steadily deteriorate over the next number of years.
We will see the further integration of East European nations into the EU, and then, perhaps within a generation, an EU-US cold war.
11:36:41 PM 
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