Europe - U.S. Relations

What do you see as the prospect for Europe - U.S. relations in the future? We've had our disagreements about trade. We've had our lack of consensus on the Bosnian issue. And we no longer have the Soviet Union as a common enemy. What does the present situation mean for the future of our relations?

We need a very fundamental reconsideration of the relationship. As far as I know, and I'm following rather closely what's published here, there is not a real concept -- on this side of the Atlantic nor on the other side.

One thing is very interesting. The Soviet Union collapsed, it doesn't exist anymore. Nevertheless, my feeling is that, fundamentally speaking, there remains a kind of relationship between the United States and Russia. It's very interesting that a certain number of important decisions (you were talking about Bosnia) were not taken by the Europeans but were finally determined by the United States and Russia.

We in Europe, in my view, we have not been able to develop a new concept of a relationship between the Community and the United States. We have our trade quarreling; well, when you have $160 billion of trade, how could you avoid some quarreling? It's just the consequence of a very intense relationship in trade matters.

But first, there is a certain ambiguity in Europe as far as the United States is concerned. Where you have the real "Atlantica," the Dutch are typical Atlanticans; the UK is Atlantic; France is much less; Germany is seeking its position. I had expected, and I have said it and written it, that the United States will focus on Germany. They haven't done that until now. Most likely the reason is that the Germans have no power in foreign politics. Well, they have of course, they are a big country, they have fuels. But they have no army, or they have an army but they can't use it. So, I was thinking that the center of gravity in Europe would be displaced from France and the UK to Germany after German unification. Perhaps it will come in the future, for the moment I don't see it. I see the United States [and] Russia.

What we should do, what I have advocated many times but people are not very interested in it, very likely because we have not yet defined our position, we should have a solid treaty with the United States. We have treaties with the whole world, with the Canadians. We have treaties with Russia and we are improving it at the moment. We have no treaty with Japan, we have no treaty with the United States. It's very interesting. I don't know why it is, but sometimes I have thought that we in Europe have contractual relations where we think we are equivalent or better. I don't know. But it's a typical situation that with our real competitors in the world, at this very moment we have no particular treaty relationship. I don't talk about China and I don't talk about India, that's another story in itself. We should have that relationship with the United States which would go beyond trade, and we could do quite a bit of things.

There is this globalization of the economy. When you have a merger, a major merger in Europe has enormous impact in the United States, not always but very often. And the other way around. Why shouldn't we look into these kinds of things, not from our autonomous points of view only, with all the extraterritoriality questions that brings about? Why shouldn't we do that in a more common way? That, I think, would teach us a process of living within a world where there is just one superpower, when the European Community is trying to establish itself as a political power speaking with one voice, which of course, is extremely difficult given, again, the intergovernmental tendency I was mentioning before.

Foreign policy, security policy, is the last line of defense of the national state, as you know. So it's not without reason that we have difficulties here. But we have to recognize the point. So I see a period of uncertainty, ambiguity. I'm not sure that Clinton knows exactly what he wants with Europe. There is some uncertainty on the American side as well, but that's not the end of the world, provided we are prepared to look seriously into what is needed.

Professor Andriessen, I'm sorry to say our time has run out.

No, you don't mean it.

Yes, I regret to say. But this has been a very informative discussion. The universities of your country are very fortunate that you're coming back to teach, and it's a shame that we can't have you at Berkeley for longer than the two weeks. But thank you very much.

I was very happy to have the opportunity to be here. I have once given a lecture at Harvard University, but this was the second United States trip.

So we beat out Harvard this time! Thank you very much for joining us today. And Gretchen, thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation on International Affairs.

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