Transcript of the presentation of Guillaume Parmentier

I am particularly happy to be talking to you now because I think that at this time when the international system is clearly changing very fast, it is very important that European countries discuss the matters and agree or at least begin to agree on where they want the international system to go. And I think it is perfectly appropriate for a Frenchman to talk about the Transatlantic relationship0 because we are clearly one of those countries that have a defined position of this relationship, although sometimes the way that it´s been represented in the press or in the media has not been totally keeping with reality.

One of the difficulties of course is that the French-American relationship has always been a complex one. We were there from day one, indeed before day one, but it has always been a little complex. The US Secretary of State recently said that the French-American relationship has been a "marriage counseling" for 225 years, and than he added, "but the marriage is strong and I look forward to another 225 years marriage counseling."

There are many reasons why this relationship is complex. One of the first ones is that we are two countries which have defined their modern identity during the period of Enlightenment, which has given us a sort of global message that we want to deliver to the world. These two global messages are not incompatible but they are not identical. But they have one thing in common, which is the extreme arrogance. Because both countries think that they have defined the model that is good for the others. And they find it very difficult to understand that the others do not adopt it. To be honest if one has to define the French-American relationship in a nutshell, that´s how I would define it.

But what I´d like to do is to go beyond this and particularly to go beyond the recent events and try to think of the cause of this recent Transatlantic rift.

It seems to me that what we are seeing today is a new United States and a new Europe. I do not mean the new Europe in the sense that Mr. Rumsfeld mentioned. It is always a surprise for me that the person who is the oldest Secretary of Defense in the history of United States would find being old something which is not particularly good.
Obviously, the 11th of September has been an extraordinary trauma for the American nation. And this is something that, frankly, in Europe, we have not really understood. We have not understood it because for us, this was in a sense, the culmination, the magnification of something that we had known for many-many years. We´ve had bombs in the French metro, we´ve had them in department stores, where many were killed. But the effect of 11th of September on the American nation, which of course was bigger than these, has gone beyond that. For the Americans, and I think this is the case for really a very wide majority of the population, this is an epoch-making event, there is a "before" and an "after", and we cannot think in the same manner "before and after". The image that I always use is that the United States feels like a family where a rape has taken place and the trauma is absolutely enormous and affects everything. We may regret that, but that is the fact.

This has been utilized, or, if you prefer, instrumentalised, extremely skillfully and brilliantly by the present administration. The president was in a very week position before September 11. The circumstances of the elections were, sort of, exceptional, and his administration had not really found its feet. The divisions were very visible and went with clear criticism of the administration. 11th of September was the time for the emergence of George W. Bush as a leader. He expressed in his own word the feelings of the American nation. Sometimes for us, you know, a "dead-or-alive" sounds a little unusual, especially coming from a head of State, but that was what the Americans felt.

America discovered that it was a vulnerable nation. I mean it was vulnerable before but now they discovered it. And the threat came in a way which was unexpected, spectacular, theatrical, and that stroke the nation. It is quite clear that domestic political circumstances from that day on, played considerable role in the definition of American foreign policy. This is not surprising, and not shocking. Democracies have to govern democratically in every respect, but the main question from our point of view now is that this changed the way American foreign policy is devised. One example of this is that Carl Rove - the president´s domestic policy adviser- who had certainly no influence on the foreign policy before the 11th of September, started to have more influence on it afterwards.

This changed the way America has handled the various policies. The US is traditionally a country ruled by a Constitution where power attracts counter power. No decision can be made which had not been endorsed by at least two of the constitutional powers. And therefore this is a nation that lives on the opposition.

The 11th of September changed this because we have now an administration that is on the offensive, and every one who has questions about the policies of the administration -including the Republican Party- is on the defensive. I can give even two examples.

The advisers to the President´s father last summer expressed quite clearly, sometimes forcefully, their opposition to a war on Iraq, but their advice was completely ignored. Despite the fact that they had very powerful arguments.

Another example is the midterm elections. Not only did the Democrats put aside any foreign policy criticism of the administration, but even on domestic politics, they were on the defensive.

This is an administration that increases expenditure on defense to an enormous level - the defense budget in the US is already more than 400 billion dollars, and in three years it should be around 500, which is no means small. At the same time, they reduce taxes and try to embed the reduction of taxes for all time to come. Even me, who is not a great mathematician, can see that there is a limit to what I can do in respect to increasing all expenditure and decreasing all resources. The Democrats had a boulevard ahead of them to attack this, and they didn´t use it, they didn´t dare use it. Because criticizing the administration is to be labeled as being unpatriotic. And in the atmosphere of post September 11th no one can be labeled as unpatriotic without paying a very heavy political price.
But that is a very serious problem because it means that there is no opposition. Therefore the system is not working normally. It´s not the first time in American history for such a thing to occur. Last time this happened to this degree was at the very end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, in the Jackson period. It looks like a very short period in the American history but it lasted for 25 years. At the time, the United States was a peripheral, provincial power, which had importance only in America and the Pacific, and essentially trade drove its foreign policy.

Today this is happening in the most powerful country in the world, a country which, from the military point of view, is second to none, and which has extraordinary influence on every issue in the international system. One sees the effect this changes the way foreign policy is discussed even in the ruling circles in Washington.

My good friend, Bob Kagan wrote an article which has had an enormous influence. I got his article translated into French and I had no problem with its content. It is a very intelligent, very well-written article, but it has a profound failing at the root of it. This is that it mistakes power with force. If we read this article, which, of course, is very powerful, if you read it, you will see that it believes that the only exercise of international power that matters really is the full application of force. And this is blatantly untrue. There are many in fact infinite situations in which this is not true. The Transatlantic relationship just to mention one - even when it is difficult - cannot be handled by force. Even the right-wing Americans do not think of overrunning France, that, I know.

But speaking seriously, even in situations of crisis, if you look at the example of the Middle East, the Americans have huge military weapons that is extraordinary, but they can´t use it to impose peace in the Middle East. The fact that they are powerful, helps, but the fact that they are military powerful, helps little. So much for Kagan.

But this has become not only believed by many Americans in the position of power, but it has become embedded also in the way the Americans make their budgetary decisions. The US is an extraordinary country. You use the word "defense" or the word "security" and you get the money you want. Essentially you do. In fact sometimes the Pentagon has to accept weapons that are forced upon it by the Congress. I gave the figures earlier of military expenditure of United States, these figures are very impressive, but when you think about the real threats of the US meets, none justifies this sort of expenditure.

But at the same time, the US finds it extremely difficult to finance the normal diplomatic effort. The record of United States on international aid is a small one. Especially if one looks at the figures properly and one takes away the support that is given to Israel, where the standard of living is about the same as that of Italy, and the amount that is given to Egypt, which is a poor country, but is not helped for a reason that have anything to do with its poverty. US cultural diplomacy suffered enormously in the past few years and I could go on and on. Therefore it is not surprising that the American body politic -every time it looks at an international crisis- tries to use its comparative advantage.

I repeat, the US is second to none in every dimension of policy, but there is no dimension of policy where it dominates as massively as it does in the military field. In trade and economics, the Europeans are on the same level. In culture, the US is very powerful but there are many regions in the world where American culture reaches only a very superficial level. To me, McDonald´s is not culture. But in the military field, there is no possibility in the foreseeable future of any country for even approaching the level of the United States. This is true even for countries like China, which could be the only one that could possibly reach this level of the US. As far as Europe is concerned, this is unthinkable. And of course the administration has affirmed quite clearly its decision that no country or group of country would be allowed to approach the US in this respect. This is in fact the most telling point in the strategic review that was approved last October.

What we are witnessing? This situation where the Americans value and in fact overstress the military dimension of foreign policy, is contrary to the mainstream of foreign policy throughout History. The Americans have brought to Europe what we call wrongly- "Wilsonism" and what they call "internationalism". It is a very clear idea according to which an intelligent conception of the national interest means taking into account the legitimate security interests of others in one´s own calculation of the national interest. That has become the basis upon which Europe has been built science 1945. This is the culture of compromise. It is something that was completely alien to the European tradition. Europe was a land of nationalism, the nationalism of the 19th century. And the United has brought this Wilsonism to us and we swallowed it, made it our own so deeply that now the Americans say that this is a European idea.

At the same time, there is the development, in the United States, of a completely different point of view, one that believes in the naked affirmation of power. Of course I am not saying that the United States has become a threat to the rest of the world. But what I am saying is that the US body politics thinks in such narrow national terms today, and I would even say sometimes, narrow Washingtonian terms. There is no influence of the rest of the world that is tolerated. US decisions are made with taking domestic considerations into account. Well, that´s what was called nationalism in the 19th century.

And therefore as the Europeans became American the Americans are becoming European. The coalition that is on power today is an example of that. There is an extraordinary alliance between neoconservatives and the nationalist of the US. The neoconservatives are not conservative at all, they are revolutionaries. They are the people who want to change the world. They are hiper-wilsonian. The nationalists on the other hand (the Rumsfelds, the Cheneys) are conservatives; they don´t want to change the world. They want to make sure that American power prevails. And you can see the consequence of that in the clashing analysis of what should be done in Iraq. The neoconservatives want to stay in Iraq. They want to make Iraq into a democracy. Good luck to them, but that is the aim. They want to make the all Middle East into a series of democracies. This is may be crazy but that is their view. And if it succeeds it is an extraordinary achievement. The problem is not with the aim; the problem is with the realism of it.

That is not at all of the position of the conservatives. The conservatives wanted to get through with Saddam Hussein, because he was defying, challenging the American power. He was sticking his nose at America. The position of the conservatives, nationalists, is to go "in-and-out," that is, it is not our business what happens after the military victory, we don´t have to take care about it. They have a very traditional view of the international power.

That is the difficulty. One sees the consequences of the difficulty as well in the attitude of the US towards NATO. This is an attitude that has changed completely in the case of Kosovo, exactly at the time when Hungary joined NATO. Traditionally the US saw NATO as a useful instrument to make sure that the Europeans agree on the main international issues. Kosovo was an eye-opener for the Europeans and it was an eye-opener for the Americans.

The Europeans discovered that the whole planning at NATO was not to be done at a multilateral level. SHAPE, the international headquarter, is in reality a dummy. The real business is placed at the American headquarter near Stuttgart. A small number of American officers at the Yukon, in the presence of one foreigner, planned the operation of Kosovo, I live to understand which nationality he was. But I think you understand it too. And therefore the Europeans -who participated in the operation - had to make sure that they have an influence, after all, the sent men and women and equipment to danger, so they use the means that they had at disposal, and it was the political wing of NATO and it is through the Council, with diplomats and with the very close control of the political masters that many military decisions were eventually made.

So what is NATO? NATO is an organization that is too multilateral for the Americans and too dominated, or too unilateral, if you prefer, for the Europeans. It is an organization where the American military takes political decisions and the political control, and where the politicians make the military decisions. This is not a recipe for success. And therefore the Americans have become very suspicious of the NATO, too multilateral, not effective enough.

We saw that when -on 12th of September 2001- NATO came up with the decision to use article 5 of the Treaty, that has never been used since the beginning of the Organization. And the Americans were not interested. This administration -in its own peculiar manner- made it perfectly clear that they had certain contempt.

And again in Afghanistan, again now in the present circumstances, NATO has became an organization whose role it is to manage problems after the United States has won by military means, like clearing the broken windows after the Americans, or if you prefer, doing the dishes after the Americans have done the cooking.

That is not a very satisfactory division of labour, although we also have a new Europe. Europe is hesitating as to the direction that it should take. This is a very difficult moment. The international system is changing, Europe has to enlarge, which brings into question the decision-making process, and we have to wonder what we want to do. Are we interested in Europe as an international power, or are we interested in Europe as a sort of area for welfare. In other words, are we interested in what the French called Europe puissance or are we interested in building Switzerland like sometimes the Germans seem to be interested in. If we look at the surveys in Germany, the model for Europe is Switzerland for large number of people. OK, don´t take this too seriously, but still.

The question of finality is a very important one. And of course we cannot really decide on the methodology if we don´t know the finality. But I think the analysis of many Americans, especially Kagan´s reasoning, according to which what this represents may be weakness, is not a correct one. I spent a long part of my carreer in defense business, NATO and the defense minister´s private office, before our ambassador, in a much more junior capacity. I clearly think that the Europeans have to take the traditional dimension of power much more seriously. I am politically on the side of the present government, and the decision to increase the military spending substantially is, I think, very sensible. But this is not the only dimension of the power. The present world doesn´t allow the use of force in many circumstances.

What I think is happening is that Europe is developing slowly into a real power. And we should not be worried because it is slow. It took more than 60 years after the American Constitution, for the US to become a power. I don´t say that it should take 60 years for us too but it should take time. We are in a faster world too. But Europe is developing into what I call a sort of prototypical type of power. There is a preference for the non-use of military means, even in confronting a crisis.

But one has to say that if you look at European history, this is not very surprising. For more than two centuries, Europe defined its security needs in the function of a single threat, the French threat, than the German threat, than a combination of the German and Soviet threat, and than the Soviet. This is gone, thank goodness. This is the first time in three centuries that we can live without an overwhelming threat.

Of course it also means that it is more difficult to convince our public that spending vast amounts of money on defense is necessary. But we should spend more. It is difficult to convince our public to spend vastly more. It would be absurd to try to match the United States. It would be impossible, and it would not be necessary. Because I think the Americans overspend and of course some of their needs are not similar to ours, and we do not have the same needs necessarily.

What the Europeans are doing is building an ability to convince. We are going back in the sense to what the Americans used to do. A great trend of the American foreign policy over the years was the ability to enforce and to convince at the same time. The Americans had always an ability to force, but they were very good at convincing people in that what was the policy of the US, was also in their own interest. The best example is of course the Marshall plan what unfortunately Hungary was forced to refuse, but there are many other examples.

What can be feared today is that Americans are loosing this ability to convince, but the Europeans are certainly trying to develop it. I was talking a sort of contemptuous terms earlier of the Europeans doing the dishes and the Americans doing the cooking, but if one looks at this, one finds that in reality it is very good and fine and very admirable for the Americans to arrive somewhere with the powerful weapons and many new uniforms, and change the situation on the ground.
But who will bare most influence on the societies? The country that comes in and changes the situation but leaves very fast, or the countries that help write the constitution, set up the legal system, the economic rules and stay the course.

Look at the Balkans today. Of course the Americans are feared and revered, but the constitutions, the legal systems are built in the image of Europe, which is perfectly natural because Balkan´s a part of Europe at least geographically.

But the fact is that there is a problem of leadership in the world, of monopoly of leadership, but I am not sure that there is also an issue of moral leadership. Who is the moral leader? Is it the country that comes in and out, or is it those countries that take the problem of others sufficiently seriously to stay the course? Why doing what they are doing today, especially in this administration? The Americans run a high risk. It is very seriously a risk of relinquishing the baton of the moral leadership in the world. And if it is for anyone to take, it is for the Europeans. And I land on this.

There are two conceptions of foreign policy that are confronted today. It doesn´t mean that we are fundamentally hostile, but it means that we see the world in very different ways; with very different eyes and more worryingly that we see increasingly different ways. I have the confidence in the way the US functions as a Constitution. The internationalist tradition is not dead. If you look at the American polls, the American´s opinion is not that far from the European. And of course there are some nationalist elements in Europe but our body politics see the world in very different ways. Nothing is more important for the transatlantic relationship than to try and bring these points of view closer.