Constructive engagement or diplomacy of coercion

In his book Power and Paradise, Robert Kagan, an American right-wing intellectual, expressed his frustration over what he called Europe's disrespect of the American way of handling international politics. He wrote: "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. Europe … is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and co-operation.

It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realisation of Kant's Perpetual Peace. The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security still … depend[s] on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus".

True reflection

Regardless of the conditions which had led to such a conclusion, Kagan's argument is a true reflection of a deepening cultural divide between Europe and the US. This divide expresses itself clearly in the Middle East where the two global powers seem to be at odds on almost every single issue of interest: Iraq, Iran, Libya, political Islam and the Palestinian question. In all these areas, the US appears to be less patient with diplomacy and more inclined to use force. The Europeans, by contrast, favour the carrot over the stick approach and resort to persuasion more often than coercion. Kagan believes, however, that the different attitudes of the US and Europe in the international arena reflect the different weight of military power that stands behind them. America is strong enough to impose its will on the entire world, whereas Europe uses diplomacy quite often to conceal its military weakness.

In terms of the distribution of power among states in the international system and their ability to perform certain actions, Kagan's argument sounds logical, but in terms of strategic thinking, the American scholar misses the point that diplomacy remains the state's raison d'état and that war is one way of serving it. He, furthermore, ignores that diplomacy and inducement can, more often, achieve what war, or the threat of war, cannot. This point was made clear earlier this month when the foreign ministers of the three big powers in the EU – France, Britain and Germany – led a concerted effort to defuse international tensions over Iran's nuclear programme. European diplomacy succeeded in convincing the Iranian government to allow unlimited UN inspections of its nuclear facilities and to suspend its uranium enrichment programme. This success was hailed in Europe as a reassertion of the efficacy of diplomacy and dialogue over the use of unilateral diktats and threats by the US.

More important, perhaps, the differences between Europe and America on how to deal with a wide range of international issues reflect the different weight of the interests involved. They also precede the current divide across the Atlantic. Europe's opposition to Washington's policies toward Iran, for example, started as early as 1995 when President Clinton signed the "D'Amato Act", calling for imposing sanctions on foreign companies which invest more than $40 million in Iran. Europeans have bitterly criticised the Act on the ground that it represented an extra-territorial application of US law. For historical, commercial and cultural reasons, Germany led the campaign against the US policy, advocating a "critical dialogue" with Iran. France has also shown a strong opposition to Washington's policies toward Iran. Former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin argued that "No one accepts that the US can pass a law on a global scale. The famous D'Amato Act is perhaps valid for Americans, but the United Nations has not decided to place an embargo on Iran, as it has for example on Iraq".

Europeans showed their resolve and unity soon afterward when on November 1996, the European Council adopted a proposal ruling out that it would comply with the D'Amato Act. The real test for Washington came on the following September when the French oil giant, Total, signed a $2 billion deal to develop Iran's South Pars offshore gas field.

Economic dividends

The EU warned Washington of acting against the French company and gradually forced it to abandon the application of the Act on European enterprisers. This case demonstrated that economic dividends have the efficacy to unite the Europeans and facilitate agreement over a common position to defend their interests.

Indeed, the vanishing of the Soviet threat has made the US and Europe even less tolerant of their differences over issues that raise questions of interest as well as values. French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, made this latter point clear during his recent visit to Tehran: "Regime change can not be a policy on its own in today's world… . Of course, in rare situations, we have to address [some] problems by military means. But you have to have the support of the international community... . If there is one country that imagines it can solve this matter alone, we are going to see more vengeance, more difficulties, more problems, and the world is going to be more unstable."

To the dismay of the Bush administration, the EU delegation did not succeed in convincing Iran to totally abandon the nuclear option, but for Europe this may have never been its intention. Europe was, probably, more occupied in presenting its success in Tehran as a vindication of diplomacy and a great achievement of the multilateralist, multipolar world view at the expense of the unipolar vision espoused by Washington. Whatever the US may think of the EU's mission in Tehran, it must be worry about the possibility of Europe's leading powers coming to agree on a common foreign and security policy. This evolving prospect may come to characterise future European cooperation with Britain, France and Germany forming the basis on which an enlarged EU could function.

Dr. Marwan Al-Kabalan is a UK-based scholar in international relations.