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No. 394

April 4 , 2001

Death Knell for NATO?

The Bush Administration Confronts the

European Security and Defense Policy

by Christopher Layne

Executive Summary

tration will have to come to grips with the ques-

One of the first foreign policy challenges

tion of whether the alliance--in its current

President George W. Bush and his foreign policy

form--has a future.

team must face is the changing nature of the

It is unclear what course the Bush adminis-

transatlantic relationship. For several years, U.S.

tration will chart for transatlantic relations.

policymakers have been increasingly concerned

Some top administration officials, notably

that the European Union's goal of acquiring the

Secretary of State Colin Powell and National

capability to pursue an autonomous foreign and

Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are extremely

security policy--the European Security and

wary of U.S. involvement in Balkan-style peace-

Defence Policy--will undermine NATO's role as

keeping missions. Logically, they should wel-

the primary guarantor of European security.

come ESDP and the RRF, because those EU ini-

U.S.-European tension over ESDP and NATO

tiatives offer the most realistic hope for the

came sharply into focus during the Clinton

United States to extricate itself from Kosovo and

administration's closing months. Washington

to avoid such commitments in the future.

and its European allies became locked in an

The Bush administration should not be dis-

increasingly bitter dispute about the relationship

suaded from rethinking the U.S. role in Europe

between the EU's proposed Rapid Reaction Force

by fears that it will be charged with "isolation-

and NATO, specifically about whether the RRF

ism." American internationalism can exist with-

should be embedded within the NATO frame-

out an ongoing U.S. military presence in Europe.

work or constitute an autonomous European mil-

Here, the Bush administration should revisit the

itary capability separate from NATO.

views of Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster

The U.S.-EU controversy about ESDP and the

Dulles, leading Republican internationalists who

RRF is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

welcomed the prospect of a truly independent

Underlying the current discord are fundamental

Europe rather than feared it, and who regarded

questions about the nature of the U.S.-European

the U.S. role in NATO as temporary, not perma-

relationship, about American grand strategy, and

nent.

about NATO itself. Inevitably, the new adminis-

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Christopher Layne is a visiting fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and at the Center for Social

Theory and Comparative History at the University of California­Los Angeles.