Charlemagne. Let’s talk – but where?

Are NATO and the European Union partners or rivals?

IT USED to be said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union were in the same city, but on different planets. As George Bush will have noticed this week, the two Brussels-based organisations are just ten minutes apart by motorcade. But they have always had different missions and cultures. NATO is a military alliance, invented during the cold war to deter the Soviet Union; the United States is by far its biggest and most powerful member. The EU grew out of the European Economic Community, a title that encapsulates everything that sets it apart from NATO: it is purely European and its business has always been primarily economic.

Even today, the cultures of the two organisations are different. The EU is based in a string of grandiose offices in the centre of Brussels; its operatives are technocrats in suits; and its administrative culture is built along French lines. NATO is based in a compound in suburban Brussels that looks like a cross between an office park and a military base. Like the EU it is full of civil servants and diplomats, but they rub shoulders with a lot of uniformed officers with crew cuts. The atmosphere is brisk, military and American-accented.

Socially, the two remain worlds apart. NATO people mix with NATO people, and Eurocrats hang around with fellow Eurocrats. But with the end of the cold war, the missions of the two organisations began to change - and to bump against each other. After the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO lost its original raison d'etre; prompted by America it has sought a new relevance, partly by taking on such “out-of-area” operations as Afghanistan. Meanwhile the EU has been developing a common foreign and security policy and even a fledgling military arm. Both NATO and the EU are now creating “rapid reaction forces”, potentially drawing upon the same pools of soldiers. Britain's Tony Blair, who has backed the EU's military ambitions, has repeatedly assured the Americans that they are intended to complement - not duplicate or rival - NATO.

Yet an implicit rivalry remains, and was a subtext underlying Mr Bush's visit to Europe. For the Americans, NATO is still, as Mr Bush put it in Brussels, “the cornerstone” of the transatlantic relationship. But just before Mr Bush's visit, Gerhard Schroder, the German chancellor, appeared to put the opposite view, when he said that “NATO is no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and co-ordinate strategies.”

This contradiction is about much more than which set of Brussels offices has the most congenial meeting rooms. It is ultimately about how the transatlantic relationship is structured, and whether the Europeans will deal with the United States individually or as a single block. A senior French diplomat explains that his country sees NATO as so dominated by the United States as to be little more than a tool of American foreign policy. France's vision is that the EU should develop its common foreign and defence policy to the point where it speaks with one voice within NATO. At that point, the French hope, the transatlantic alliance would become a partnership of equals. This idea skates over the fact that there would continue to be a huge mismatch in military might between the United States and Europe. But its political implications still make it deeply unpopular with the Americans. A senior American diplomat in Europe has gone so far as to say that the formation of a European caucus within NATO would be “the death” of the organisation.

In a presidential visit dedicated to celebrating a renewal of the transatlantic relationship, both Europeans and Americans were anxious to avoid pushing too hard on this sensitive spot. Mr Bush was careful to pay his respects to both NATO and the EU. He attended a NATO summit on the morning of February 22nd, and moved on to a conference and dinner at the EU headquarters later the same day. His European hosts noted delightedly that this was the first time that an American president had stepped inside the European Commission - and they lapped up Mr Bush's every reference to his support for European unity.

Cowboys and Indians

But did these genuflections mean that Mr Bush - through either naivete or conviction - has suddenly accepted the idea that the Europeans will henceforth deal with the United States as a block, even within NATO? Hardly. It seems more likely that the Americans are adopting a wait-and-see attitude. They know that any overt American attempt to thwart European unity might play into the hands of “Euro-nationalists” like France's Jacques Chirac. And the administration also knows that the Europeans are less united than some of them might wish.

The European split over Iraq went far beyond the merits of deposing Saddam Hussein. It showed that there are two broad approaches to security within the EU. One group of countries believes that their security ultimately depends on the United States. As a senior Czech diplomat once put it: “One lesson we learnt from the 1930s, no more security guarantees from France.” These instinctive Atlanticists include Britain, Poland and most of the rest of central Europe, as well as the Netherlands and Italy (at least when the centre-right is in power). Another group, which includes France, Belgium and (in certain moods, and under certain governments) Germany, wants an autonomous European defence identity, as a key to achieving the “multipolar world” that Mr Chirac so often praises.

In Brussels, Mr Chirac met Mr Bush for a dinner, accompanied by an exaggerated (and unconvincing) display of friendship. Mr Bush was asked whether he intended to invite his guest to his Texas ranch. He laughed and said he needed a “good cowboy”. Mr Chirac smiled back. But it is precisely because the French fear that, within NATO, they will always just be cowboys on an American ranch that the rivalry between the EU and NATO will not disappear anytime soon.

Commentary feature asks whether the EU and NATO are partners or rivals - and what is the US attitude to the developing defence dimension of the EU.

• Primary Source