A Transatlantic Truce: Isn't It Pragmatic?
MUNICH, Germany — The annual Munich security conference, known as Wehrkunde, serves as a useful barometer of transatlantic relations. Every year, various defense and foreign policy muckety-mucks and hangers-on from the United States and Europe gather at the fancy Bayerischer Hof hotel here for a couple of days of gabbing and gorging.
Two years ago, when I first attended (in my official capacity as a hanger-on), the conference was held on the eve of the Iraq war, and tensions were running high. The U.S. delegates were warned not to leave the hotel for fear of being set upon by packs of -- no kidding -- violent pacifists. I went outside anyway to watch the confrontation between tens of thousands of protesters and endless ranks of green-clad riot police. Inside the hotel, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made the case for war, but German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer pointedly declared, "Excuse me, I am not convinced." Everyone left muttering about how NATO had reached a nadir.
This year, the conference convened last weekend amid an outpouring of transatlantic goodwill. The bitter debates over the invasion of Iraq had been superseded by universal joy over the recent outcome of that invasion -- Iraq's first free elections. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had just completed a triumphant tour of European capitals in which she wowed even the hard-to-please French. The Americans are eager to extend an olive branch because they realize that even the lone superpower can't go it alone; the Europeans are eager to reciprocate because they know they'll have to live with that cowboy in the White House for another four years.
In Munich, there was nary a protester in sight and everyone at the conference was on his or her best behavior. The U.S. Defense secretary even joked about how he was no longer going to pick fights with the Europeans -- "That was Old Rumsfeld." Yet U.S.-EU tensions were not difficult to spot beneath all the bonhomie.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was too ill to attend, but he set off a stink bomb in the auditorium when his speech (read by his defense minister) declared that NATO "is no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and coordinate strategies." He suggested setting up a high-level panel to review U.S.-European relations -- a suggestion interpreted by the American delegates as an attempt to emasculate NATO and cut Washington out of the loop of European decision-making.
