Chapter One: Beyond the War on Terror

Abstract

The damage that has been done to the transatlantic alliance will not be repaired through grand architectural redesigns or radical new agendas. Instead, the transatlantic partners need to restore their consensus and cooperation on key security challenges with a limited agenda that reflects the essential conservatism of the transatlantic partnership during the Cold War and the 1990s. There will inevitably be big challenges, such as the rise of China, where transatlantic disparities in strategic means and commitments preclude any common alliance undertaking. Yet such limits are nothing new. The absence of a common transatlantic commitment to counter-insurgency in Iraq may cause resentments, but so too did the lack of a common commitment to counter-insurgency in Vietnam.

This paper suggests ten propositions for future transatlantic consensus that is to say, ten security challenges for which the allies should be able to agree on common approaches. These run the gamut from an effective strategy to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear-weapons capability to transatlantic leadership for international cooperation against global warming. If pursued with seriousness and a reasonable degree of transatlantic unity, these propositions could constitute the foundations of an effective partnership. They are, in the authors view, the basis for a consensus on the most pressing security challenges of the twenty-first century.

The time is right for this kind of serious re-dedication to alliance purposes. There has already been some effort to repair the damage; moreover, new leaders are in place in or coming to the countries that were major protagonists of the transatlantic crisis: Germany, France, Britain and, in 2009, the United States. It is possible that these four new leaders will be better able to put the disputes of the recent past behind them. This extended essay is a guide to the possibilities, and also the limits, of a new start.

Notes

1. The current consensus between Europeans and Americans that terrorism is the security threat of greatest concern predates 11 September: at the 1999 NATO summit in Washington, for example, terrorism alone was cited as an actual, rather than a potential, danger to the alliance, constituting ‘a serious threat to peace, security and stability that can threaten the territorial integrity of States’. Washington Summit Communiqué, ‘An Alliance for the 21st Century’, 24 April 1999, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-064e.htm. Opinion polls show a similar convergence, not only in the ranking of the threat but also in the perception of its intensity. In 2002, 86% of French people perceived terrorism to be a ‘very big’ or ‘moderately big’ problem for their country, compared with 87% of Americans. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2002 Global Attitudes Survey, Final Topline, p. 23, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/165topline.pdf.

2. Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations, Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations (‘Schlesinger Report’) (Arlington, VA: Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations, August 2004), p. 16.

3. See for example a survey conducted by Populus in July 2006, which revealed that 13% of British Muslims regarded the bombers of 7/7 as ‘martyrs’, Alexandra Frean and Rajeev Syal, ‘Muslim Britain Split Over “Martyrs” of 7/7’, The Times, 4 July 2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-2254764,00.html.

4. See Stern, The Economics of Climate Change.

5. Michael Howard, ‘What’s in a Name?’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 1, January–February 2002, pp. 8–13. The European approach to this issue is informed by long-standing experience of the value to counter-terrorist campaigns of denying the existence of a state of war, as it has been evidenced in relation to the IRA in Northern Ireland, ETA in the Basque province of Spain, the Baader–Meinhof group in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy. The 2006 French white paper on domestic security measures against terrorism explicitly states that ‘France has decided to remain within a peacetime logic. The fact that it is using its armed forces in the fight against terrorism does not contradict this choice’, and declares ‘We must marginalise those who undertake terrorist acts, reminding everyone that these are not warriors, but criminals. You do not go to war against criminals’, Secrétaire général de la defense nationale, White Paper on Domestic Security Against Terrorism, Paris, 2006, pp. 114 and 117, http://www.ambafrance-bd.org/IMG/pdf/livre_anglais.pdf.

6. The White House, The President’s State of the Union Address (Washington DC: The White House, 29 January 2002), http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html.

7. The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington DC: The White House, September 2002), p.15, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.

8. The White House: The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington DC: The White House, 16 March 2006), http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/intro.html.

9. ‘I’m a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office on foreign policy matters with war on my mind … And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is.’ George W. Bush, Meet the Press, NBC, 8 February 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/.

10. Richard Haass, ‘Drop the “War on Terrorism” Metaphor’, The Daily Star (Lebanon), 12 August 2006.

11. See ‘A Strong Military for a New Century’, speech delivered by John Edwards, former US senator, New York, 23 May 2007, http://www.cfr.org/publication/13432/ and ‘Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’, speech delivered by Barack Obama, US senator, Chicago, 23 April 2007, http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/dynamic_page.php?id=64.

12. A French justice official later said that ‘the government gave the FBI “everything we had” on Moussaoui’. Romesh Ratnesar and Michael Weisskopf, ‘How the FBI Blew the Case’, Time, 3 June 2002.

13. Dana Priest, ‘Help From France Key in Covert Operations: Paris’s “Alliance Base” Targets Terrorists’, The Washington Post, 3 July 2005, p. A01.

14. ‘Regierungserklärung von Bundeskanzler Schröder zur aktuellen Lage nach Beginn der Operation gegen den internationalen Terrorismus in Afghanistan’, 11 October 2001, http://archiv.bundesregierung.de/regierungserklaerung,-59425/Regierungserklaerung-von-Bunde.htm (translation by author).

15. Priest, ‘Help From France Key in Covert Operations’.

16. See for example Michael Inacker, ‘Deutsche Soldaten jagen Al Qaida’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 24 February 2002.

17. Barry Lando, ‘Terrorism Cooperation: Despite Pinpricks, France Quietly Helps U.S.’, International Herald Tribune, 16 May 2003.

18. Adam Roberts, ‘The “War on Terror” in Historical Perspective’, Survival, vol. 47, no. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 101–130.

19. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter (London: The Stationery Office, July 2002), p.10.

20. 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, pp. 9–11.

21. Six French nationals, detained at Guantanamo and then held upon their return to France, were tried in July 2006 for the crime of ‘criminal conspiracy in relation to a terrorist enterprise’. The trial was disrupted by the revelation that French government agents had interviewed the detainees during their imprisonment at Guantanamo. New hearings are now scheduled for December 2007. Craig S. Smith, ‘6 Former Guantanamo Detainees on Trial in Paris’, New York Times, 4 July 2006; Michel Moutot, ‘French Intelligence in Spotlight in “Guantanamo six” trial’, Agence France Presse, 27 September 2006.

22. Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Alleged Secret Detentions and Unlawful Inter-State Transfers Involving Council of Europe Member States, Draft Report, 7 June 2006.

23. See Olivier Roy, ‘Intifada on the Housing Estates or a Young Underclass in Revolt?’, http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/0501-ROY-GB-2.pdf; originally published as ‘Intifada des banlieues ou émeutes des jeunes declasses?’ in Esprit, no. 12, December 2005.

24. See for example Spencer Ackerman, ‘Religious Protection: Why American Muslims Haven’t Turned to Terrorism’, The New Republic, 12 December 2005, pp. 18–21, 28–30.