Conservative Vision for U.S. Policy Toward Europe
by John C. Hulsman, Ph.D., and Nile Gardiner, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #1803
October 4, 2004 | Executive Summary | |
For the better part of the past 50 years, each suc*cessive U.S. Administration has eventually come to the same conclusion about America’s relations with Europe. Every effort at closer European integration is to be welcomed tepidly, as it is assumed that a pros*perous Europe would prove more pro-free market, more pro-Atlanticist, and more pro-American. How*ever, in the wake of the transatlantic divide over the Iraq war and the public diplomacy calamity that has followed, such a simplistic analysis does not explain the schism at the heart of the post–Cold War transat*lantic relationship.
Rather than continuing the pattern of merely reacting to fundamental changes in Europe, at both the state and European Union (EU) levels, the United States should proactively approach the transatlantic relationship with fixed conservative principles in mind that guide its reaction to specific policy proposals. Specifically, four strategic, diplo*matic, and analytical principles, which have politi*cal, economic, and military dimensions, should guide Administration thinking on the North Atlan*tic Treaty Organization (NATO), the EU, and, criti*cally, how to revive the overall transatlantic relationship:
Europe will remain the foundation of all future U.S. coalitions well into the 21st century.
A Europe in which national sovereignty remains paramount, where states can react flexibly, suits the American national interest.
The U.S.–British alliance must remain pivotal to long-term U.S. strategic thinking.
The European Union must be seen as it is, not as many Europeans might wish to see them*selves, if American policies are to be success*ful. The EU collectively is far weaker than its federalist adherents proclaim. Simply put, it is considerably less than the sum of its parts.
The Strategic Dimension
The Centrality of Europe. Whatever the global issue—be it tracking down al-Qaeda, the Doha free trade round, Iran’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Arab–Israeli conflict, or Iraq—the United States simply cannot act effec*tively without the support of at least some Euro*pean powers. But neither is the world one in which a concert of powers dominates. Whatever the issue, the U.S. remains first among equals. This global power reality makes America’s courting of allies vital while also confirming U.S. leadership.
Indeed, the U.S. must accept these paradoxical truisms at the same time.
First, there is no other part of the world where political, diplomatic, military, and economic power can be generated in sufficient strength to support American policies effectively. The cluster of international powers in Europe—led by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland—has no parallel in the rest of the world. There are simply a larger number of major powers with which to ally in Europe than any*where else. Three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are European; only one is from Asia.
Second, despite rhetoric from EU Commission officials in Brussels, these European powers rarely agree on the majority of the great global issues of the day. As a result, the U.S. must engage Euro*pean states on an issue-by-issue, case-by-case basis to maximize its diplomatic effectiveness, gaining the greatest number of allies for the larg*est number of missions. The U.S. must use the widest range possible of diplomatic, political, and military tools to advance its general interests in Europe.
A Europe of Nation-States. The second conser*vative principle that should drive America’s new transatlantic relationship centers on the impor*tance of national choice and sovereignty. A Europe in which states react flexibly according to their unique interests, rather than collectively according to some utopian ideal, best suits American inter*ests. Clearly, a Europe exercising supranational imperatives regarding foreign and security policy means that a lack of unanimity would hamstring American efforts to form coalitions, be the issue political, military, or economic.
For example, to see that such a negative process already exists, one need only look at the current state of U.S.–European trading relations, in which a supranational EU Commissioner, Pascal Lamy, has advanced the collective European trading agenda. However, the EU of today consists of countries that have not reached a consensus on the very principle of free trade. Hence, the EU looks at free trade from a lowest-common-denominator perspective: It can proceed only as fast as its most protectionist mem*ber allows. This adherence to supranationalism keeps largely free-trading nations with more open economies—such as the U.K., Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Estonia— from following their own specific sovereign interests and developing closer and mutually beneficial trad*ing ties with the U.S.
This one-size-fits-all approach does not fit the modern political realities of the continent. Euro*pean countries have politically diverse opinions on all aspects of international life: free trade issues, attitudes toward NATO, relations with the U.S., and how to organize their own economies. For example, Ireland is a strongly free-trading country, is traditionally neutralist, has extensive ties to the U.S. through its history of immigration to the New World, and is for a large degree of economic liber*alization. France, by contrast, is more protection*ist, more skeptical of NATO, more statist in organizing its economy, and more competitive in its attitude toward America. Germany falls between the two on issues of free trade and rela*tions with the United States, is more pro-NATO than France but values U.N. involvement in crises above that of the alliance, and is for some liberal*ization of its economy in order to retain its corpo*ratist model.
This real European diversity ought to be reflected politically, as it is now, in terms of each state’s control over its foreign and security policy. A more centralized Europe simply does not reflect the political reality on the ground.
The Diplomatic Dimension:
The Anglo–U.S. Alliance
The place to start in practically reforming the transatlantic relationship is to underscore that the U.S.–U.K. special relationship must remain a cor*nerstone of U.S. strategic thinking. The U.K. is likely to remain America’s paramount ally for the foreseeable future. That is why it remains in Amer*ica’s fundamental national interest to help the U.K. maintain both its sovereignty and its flexibility to continue playing this pivotal role.
Since joining the European Economic Commu*nity (which later became the European Union) in 1973, Britain has had an uneasy and sometimes tumultuous relationship with Europe. During this period, the EU has evolved from a largely out*ward-looking economic grouping of nation-states into an inward-looking political entity with ever-greater political centralization. The British have found their national sovereignty gradually eroded by EU laws and regulations.
Despite highly publicized efforts by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to place the U.K. at the “heart” of Europe, disillusionment with Britain’s EU membership has grown in the past few years. The British public, which has for centuries taken pride in its country’s position as a global leader, has become increasingly skeptical of the notion of a united Europe as the possible new cornerstone of the U.K.’s foreign policy. A recent ICM poll on Europe, commissioned by the New Frontiers Foundation, revealed that 59 percent of Britons believe that the UK “should take back powers from the EU and develop a new global trade and defence alliance with America, some in Europe, and other countries across the world.” Just 30 per*cent of respondents agreed that Britain “should join the euro and Constitution and aim for a polit*ical union in Europe.”[1]
The U.K. is vital to American strategic interests, and the future direction that it takes in Europe will directly affect the United States. Economically, it is hard to imagine how two countries could be closer. In terms of foreign direct investment—a key determinant of economic integration in the age of globalization—between 1995 and 2003, 64 percent of total U.S. investment in the EU went to the U.K. In terms of total EU investment to the U.S., 62 percent of total investment originated in the U.K.[2] In addition, the U.S. and U.K. easily remain the largest sources of foreign direct invest*ment in each other’s country.[3] These staggeringly close financial ties between the world’s largest and fourth largest economies are, by themselves, enough to make the U.K. a primary national secu*rity interest of the U.S.
Militarily, along with France and the U.S., the U.K. is one of only three NATO powers capable of a sustained global military presence in terms of both lift and logistics.[4] They are the only Atlantic allies that can participate in the entire military spectrum, from high-end, technologically intri*cate major war fighting through low-end peace*keeping. It is also helpful that both France and the U.K. are unique in Europe, with a genuine geopo*litical grasp of military realities (partly due to their colonial histories) and a political tolerance for casualties, and this state of affairs is unlikely to change.
Of 1.5 million soldiers available to NATO’s European members, fewer than 100,000 can actu*ally be deployed.[5] It is highly unlikely that any other NATO power besides the U.K. and France will obtain a significant global reach in the medium term.
Even beyond its vital economic ties to the U.S. and its military prowess, the U.K.’s proven political slant toward America is perhaps the single greatest asset in the relationship for the United States. The U.K. and the U.S. have a unique, longstanding tra*dition of diplomatically siding and working inti*mately with one another, as demonstrated in World Wars I and II, the Cold War, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the fight against al-Qaeda.
This political affinity—the product of a com*mon cultural heritage, a common commitment to free markets and free elections, and a common geopolitical view of the world—means that the two great nations have an ingrained habit of work*ing together. This political closeness, reinforced by common economic and military ties, is without parallel in the world. It illustrates why the U.K. is so vital to U.S. coalition-building and is likely to remain so in the future.
The Analytical Dimension
Seeing Europe As It Is. The U.S. must follow the conservative thinker Edmund Burke’s advice and see the world as it is, not as some might hope it to be. This means that for America’s transatlantic policy to be successful, Europe must be evaluated warts and all, and not viewed as many Europeans might wish: Not only does an overly supranational Europe not suit America’s interests, but Europe collectively is far weaker than its federalist adher*ents proclaim.
Simply put, Europe is considerably less than the sum of its parts. In fact, in the wake of the Iraq war, at the macro level, Brussels looks economically scle*rotic, militarily weak, and politically disunited. This dismal reality must be recognized if America’s new transatlantic policy is to be successful.
Economically, the Franco–German–Italian core of the euro-zone has structurally high unemploy*ment. Over the 12-month period ending in April 2004, joblessness rates averaged 9.4 percent in France, 9.8 percent in Germany, and 8.5 percent in Italy.[6] Staggeringly, according to the Organisa*tion for Economic Co-operation and Develop*ment, during 1970–2000, the euro-zone area did not create any net private-sector jobs.[7]
Even more damning for Europe’s collective eco*nomic well-being, its demographic problems— tied to the continent’s overly generous safety net— make the preservation of its way of life highly dubious in the medium term without radical reform. In fact, according to The Economist, Europe’s pension problems will become “a night*mare”[8] as Europe’s birthrate continues to drop and its population ages. As a result, the workforce will groan under the burden of supporting ever more pensioners with lavish benefits. Unless Europe as a whole—currently, Ireland has the problem well in hand—deals with this massive problem, it will be consigned to the status of an aging economic theme park.
Militarily, the collective picture also remains grim. Despite a market that is slightly larger than that of the United States, Europe spends only two-thirds of what the U.S. spends on defense and pro*duces around 20 percent of America’s deployable fighting strength.[9] German defense spending has dropped to a laughable 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Given Europe’s eco*nomic malaise, even the current level of spending and capability is in peril. As Richard Perle bluntly put it, Europe’s armed forces have already “atro*phied to the point of virtual irrelevance.”[10]
Politically, contrary to any number of mislead*ing European Commission communiqués, the Europeans remain critically divided on the seminal issue of war and peace. Regarding what to do about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the fundamental issue of the past 18 months, one sees a complete lack of coordination at the European level. Ini*tially, the U.K. strongly supported the U.S.; Ger*many’s militant pacifists were against any use of force (whether sanctioned by the U.N. or not); and France held a wary middle position, favoring intervention only if the U.N. (i.e., Paris) retained a veto over American actions. It is hard to imagine the three major European powers staking out starker and more different foreign policy positions.
The basic reason for this is obvious: National interests still dominate foreign policy making at the most critical moments, even for states ostensibly committed to some vague form of supranational*ism. For the European powers, Iraq has never been primarily about Iraq. What happens in Baghdad, its geopolitical ramifications, has always been periph*eral to European concerns about the war. Iraq has been fundamentally about two things for European states: their specific attitude toward post–Cold War American power and their jockeying for power within common European institutions.
Europe remains torn asunder by conflicting points of view on these two critical points. One camp, championed by France, is distrustful of American power and strives to dominate a central*ized EU in such a way that it becomes a rival to America as a pole of power. The other camp, led by Britain and the Central and Eastern European states (“New Europe”), sees American power as something to be engaged and traditionally views a more decentralized Brussels as best for the constit*uent members of the union.
The European divide, which transcends the debates over Iraq, was exemplified by the recent controversy over who should succeed Romano Prodi as President of the European Commission. France, Germany, and Belgium, all of whom were in the anti-war camp, supported Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who chaired the notori*ous “chocolate summit,” a meeting of European states determined to coordinate opposition moves against the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq. Britain, Italy, Poland, and Portugal all opposed Verhofstadt and supported the war.[11] Conse*quently, the pro-American camp put forward the name of Chris Patten, the U.K.’s Commissioner, only to have French President Jacques Chirac make clear that he would not accept a British can*didate. His deep resentment of Britain’s successful rallying of opposition to Franco–German dominance within the EU obviously played a part in these political shenanigans.[12]
On the critical question of the future course of the EU—with Germany for deepening integration and widening membership, the U.K. for widening membership but not much deepening, and the French stressing the deepening of EU institutions— one finds a cacophony of European voices rather than everyone singing from the same hymnal.
by John C. Hulsman, Ph.D., and Nile Gardiner, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #1803
October 4, 2004 | Executive Summary | |
For the better part of the past 50 years, each suc*cessive U.S. Administration has eventually come to the same conclusion about America’s relations with Europe. Every effort at closer European integration is to be welcomed tepidly, as it is assumed that a pros*perous Europe would prove more pro-free market, more pro-Atlanticist, and more pro-American. How*ever, in the wake of the transatlantic divide over the Iraq war and the public diplomacy calamity that has followed, such a simplistic analysis does not explain the schism at the heart of the post–Cold War transat*lantic relationship.
Rather than continuing the pattern of merely reacting to fundamental changes in Europe, at both the state and European Union (EU) levels, the United States should proactively approach the transatlantic relationship with fixed conservative principles in mind that guide its reaction to specific policy proposals. Specifically, four strategic, diplo*matic, and analytical principles, which have politi*cal, economic, and military dimensions, should guide Administration thinking on the North Atlan*tic Treaty Organization (NATO), the EU, and, criti*cally, how to revive the overall transatlantic relationship:
Europe will remain the foundation of all future U.S. coalitions well into the 21st century.
A Europe in which national sovereignty remains paramount, where states can react flexibly, suits the American national interest.
The U.S.–British alliance must remain pivotal to long-term U.S. strategic thinking.
The European Union must be seen as it is, not as many Europeans might wish to see them*selves, if American policies are to be success*ful. The EU collectively is far weaker than its federalist adherents proclaim. Simply put, it is considerably less than the sum of its parts.
The Strategic Dimension
The Centrality of Europe. Whatever the global issue—be it tracking down al-Qaeda, the Doha free trade round, Iran’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Arab–Israeli conflict, or Iraq—the United States simply cannot act effec*tively without the support of at least some Euro*pean powers. But neither is the world one in which a concert of powers dominates. Whatever the issue, the U.S. remains first among equals. This global power reality makes America’s courting of allies vital while also confirming U.S. leadership.
Indeed, the U.S. must accept these paradoxical truisms at the same time.
First, there is no other part of the world where political, diplomatic, military, and economic power can be generated in sufficient strength to support American policies effectively. The cluster of international powers in Europe—led by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland—has no parallel in the rest of the world. There are simply a larger number of major powers with which to ally in Europe than any*where else. Three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are European; only one is from Asia.
Second, despite rhetoric from EU Commission officials in Brussels, these European powers rarely agree on the majority of the great global issues of the day. As a result, the U.S. must engage Euro*pean states on an issue-by-issue, case-by-case basis to maximize its diplomatic effectiveness, gaining the greatest number of allies for the larg*est number of missions. The U.S. must use the widest range possible of diplomatic, political, and military tools to advance its general interests in Europe.
A Europe of Nation-States. The second conser*vative principle that should drive America’s new transatlantic relationship centers on the impor*tance of national choice and sovereignty. A Europe in which states react flexibly according to their unique interests, rather than collectively according to some utopian ideal, best suits American inter*ests. Clearly, a Europe exercising supranational imperatives regarding foreign and security policy means that a lack of unanimity would hamstring American efforts to form coalitions, be the issue political, military, or economic.
For example, to see that such a negative process already exists, one need only look at the current state of U.S.–European trading relations, in which a supranational EU Commissioner, Pascal Lamy, has advanced the collective European trading agenda. However, the EU of today consists of countries that have not reached a consensus on the very principle of free trade. Hence, the EU looks at free trade from a lowest-common-denominator perspective: It can proceed only as fast as its most protectionist mem*ber allows. This adherence to supranationalism keeps largely free-trading nations with more open economies—such as the U.K., Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Estonia— from following their own specific sovereign interests and developing closer and mutually beneficial trad*ing ties with the U.S.
This one-size-fits-all approach does not fit the modern political realities of the continent. Euro*pean countries have politically diverse opinions on all aspects of international life: free trade issues, attitudes toward NATO, relations with the U.S., and how to organize their own economies. For example, Ireland is a strongly free-trading country, is traditionally neutralist, has extensive ties to the U.S. through its history of immigration to the New World, and is for a large degree of economic liber*alization. France, by contrast, is more protection*ist, more skeptical of NATO, more statist in organizing its economy, and more competitive in its attitude toward America. Germany falls between the two on issues of free trade and rela*tions with the United States, is more pro-NATO than France but values U.N. involvement in crises above that of the alliance, and is for some liberal*ization of its economy in order to retain its corpo*ratist model.
This real European diversity ought to be reflected politically, as it is now, in terms of each state’s control over its foreign and security policy. A more centralized Europe simply does not reflect the political reality on the ground.
The Diplomatic Dimension:
The Anglo–U.S. Alliance
The place to start in practically reforming the transatlantic relationship is to underscore that the U.S.–U.K. special relationship must remain a cor*nerstone of U.S. strategic thinking. The U.K. is likely to remain America’s paramount ally for the foreseeable future. That is why it remains in Amer*ica’s fundamental national interest to help the U.K. maintain both its sovereignty and its flexibility to continue playing this pivotal role.
Since joining the European Economic Commu*nity (which later became the European Union) in 1973, Britain has had an uneasy and sometimes tumultuous relationship with Europe. During this period, the EU has evolved from a largely out*ward-looking economic grouping of nation-states into an inward-looking political entity with ever-greater political centralization. The British have found their national sovereignty gradually eroded by EU laws and regulations.
Despite highly publicized efforts by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to place the U.K. at the “heart” of Europe, disillusionment with Britain’s EU membership has grown in the past few years. The British public, which has for centuries taken pride in its country’s position as a global leader, has become increasingly skeptical of the notion of a united Europe as the possible new cornerstone of the U.K.’s foreign policy. A recent ICM poll on Europe, commissioned by the New Frontiers Foundation, revealed that 59 percent of Britons believe that the UK “should take back powers from the EU and develop a new global trade and defence alliance with America, some in Europe, and other countries across the world.” Just 30 per*cent of respondents agreed that Britain “should join the euro and Constitution and aim for a polit*ical union in Europe.”[1]
The U.K. is vital to American strategic interests, and the future direction that it takes in Europe will directly affect the United States. Economically, it is hard to imagine how two countries could be closer. In terms of foreign direct investment—a key determinant of economic integration in the age of globalization—between 1995 and 2003, 64 percent of total U.S. investment in the EU went to the U.K. In terms of total EU investment to the U.S., 62 percent of total investment originated in the U.K.[2] In addition, the U.S. and U.K. easily remain the largest sources of foreign direct invest*ment in each other’s country.[3] These staggeringly close financial ties between the world’s largest and fourth largest economies are, by themselves, enough to make the U.K. a primary national secu*rity interest of the U.S.
Militarily, along with France and the U.S., the U.K. is one of only three NATO powers capable of a sustained global military presence in terms of both lift and logistics.[4] They are the only Atlantic allies that can participate in the entire military spectrum, from high-end, technologically intri*cate major war fighting through low-end peace*keeping. It is also helpful that both France and the U.K. are unique in Europe, with a genuine geopo*litical grasp of military realities (partly due to their colonial histories) and a political tolerance for casualties, and this state of affairs is unlikely to change.
Of 1.5 million soldiers available to NATO’s European members, fewer than 100,000 can actu*ally be deployed.[5] It is highly unlikely that any other NATO power besides the U.K. and France will obtain a significant global reach in the medium term.
Even beyond its vital economic ties to the U.S. and its military prowess, the U.K.’s proven political slant toward America is perhaps the single greatest asset in the relationship for the United States. The U.K. and the U.S. have a unique, longstanding tra*dition of diplomatically siding and working inti*mately with one another, as demonstrated in World Wars I and II, the Cold War, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the fight against al-Qaeda.
This political affinity—the product of a com*mon cultural heritage, a common commitment to free markets and free elections, and a common geopolitical view of the world—means that the two great nations have an ingrained habit of work*ing together. This political closeness, reinforced by common economic and military ties, is without parallel in the world. It illustrates why the U.K. is so vital to U.S. coalition-building and is likely to remain so in the future.
The Analytical Dimension
Seeing Europe As It Is. The U.S. must follow the conservative thinker Edmund Burke’s advice and see the world as it is, not as some might hope it to be. This means that for America’s transatlantic policy to be successful, Europe must be evaluated warts and all, and not viewed as many Europeans might wish: Not only does an overly supranational Europe not suit America’s interests, but Europe collectively is far weaker than its federalist adher*ents proclaim.
Simply put, Europe is considerably less than the sum of its parts. In fact, in the wake of the Iraq war, at the macro level, Brussels looks economically scle*rotic, militarily weak, and politically disunited. This dismal reality must be recognized if America’s new transatlantic policy is to be successful.
Economically, the Franco–German–Italian core of the euro-zone has structurally high unemploy*ment. Over the 12-month period ending in April 2004, joblessness rates averaged 9.4 percent in France, 9.8 percent in Germany, and 8.5 percent in Italy.[6] Staggeringly, according to the Organisa*tion for Economic Co-operation and Develop*ment, during 1970–2000, the euro-zone area did not create any net private-sector jobs.[7]
Even more damning for Europe’s collective eco*nomic well-being, its demographic problems— tied to the continent’s overly generous safety net— make the preservation of its way of life highly dubious in the medium term without radical reform. In fact, according to The Economist, Europe’s pension problems will become “a night*mare”[8] as Europe’s birthrate continues to drop and its population ages. As a result, the workforce will groan under the burden of supporting ever more pensioners with lavish benefits. Unless Europe as a whole—currently, Ireland has the problem well in hand—deals with this massive problem, it will be consigned to the status of an aging economic theme park.
Militarily, the collective picture also remains grim. Despite a market that is slightly larger than that of the United States, Europe spends only two-thirds of what the U.S. spends on defense and pro*duces around 20 percent of America’s deployable fighting strength.[9] German defense spending has dropped to a laughable 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Given Europe’s eco*nomic malaise, even the current level of spending and capability is in peril. As Richard Perle bluntly put it, Europe’s armed forces have already “atro*phied to the point of virtual irrelevance.”[10]
Politically, contrary to any number of mislead*ing European Commission communiqués, the Europeans remain critically divided on the seminal issue of war and peace. Regarding what to do about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the fundamental issue of the past 18 months, one sees a complete lack of coordination at the European level. Ini*tially, the U.K. strongly supported the U.S.; Ger*many’s militant pacifists were against any use of force (whether sanctioned by the U.N. or not); and France held a wary middle position, favoring intervention only if the U.N. (i.e., Paris) retained a veto over American actions. It is hard to imagine the three major European powers staking out starker and more different foreign policy positions.
The basic reason for this is obvious: National interests still dominate foreign policy making at the most critical moments, even for states ostensibly committed to some vague form of supranational*ism. For the European powers, Iraq has never been primarily about Iraq. What happens in Baghdad, its geopolitical ramifications, has always been periph*eral to European concerns about the war. Iraq has been fundamentally about two things for European states: their specific attitude toward post–Cold War American power and their jockeying for power within common European institutions.
Europe remains torn asunder by conflicting points of view on these two critical points. One camp, championed by France, is distrustful of American power and strives to dominate a central*ized EU in such a way that it becomes a rival to America as a pole of power. The other camp, led by Britain and the Central and Eastern European states (“New Europe”), sees American power as something to be engaged and traditionally views a more decentralized Brussels as best for the constit*uent members of the union.
The European divide, which transcends the debates over Iraq, was exemplified by the recent controversy over who should succeed Romano Prodi as President of the European Commission. France, Germany, and Belgium, all of whom were in the anti-war camp, supported Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who chaired the notori*ous “chocolate summit,” a meeting of European states determined to coordinate opposition moves against the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq. Britain, Italy, Poland, and Portugal all opposed Verhofstadt and supported the war.[11] Conse*quently, the pro-American camp put forward the name of Chris Patten, the U.K.’s Commissioner, only to have French President Jacques Chirac make clear that he would not accept a British can*didate. His deep resentment of Britain’s successful rallying of opposition to Franco–German dominance within the EU obviously played a part in these political shenanigans.[12]
On the critical question of the future course of the EU—with Germany for deepening integration and widening membership, the U.K. for widening membership but not much deepening, and the French stressing the deepening of EU institutions— one finds a cacophony of European voices rather than everyone singing from the same hymnal.