History’s Rhyme: A Re-Evaluation of Trans-Atlantic Relations Prior to the Iraq War.

Conventional wisdom holds that, in the months prior to the war in Iraq, the NATO alliance was shaken in unprecedented fashion by disagreements between the US and some of its European allies regarding the proper course of action to take in Iraq. The argument of this paper, however, is that far from demonstrating either NATO’s irrelevance or weakness, trans-Atlantic relations in this period demonstrated exactly why the NATO-based security arrangement continues to be relevant, and furthermore, that it is functioning precisely as it was intended. What, exactly, did transpire between the allies during these months? Germany, along with France, attempted to dictate to the rest of Europe what European foreign and security policy should be. And what did the rest of Europe – barring the Benelux countries – do in response? They effectively balanced against the German-French initiative by rallying around the US position. That is to say, what occurred in Europe in late 2002 and early 2003 was a version of what has always occurred throughout European history whenever one or more powers have attempted to dominate the security arrangement of the region, namely, the rest of Europe grouped together to balance against the potential hegemon. Prior to the 20th Century, the key to maintaining the balance of power in Europe lay with Britain, which acted as Europe’s offshore balancer, ready to throw its support to those states fighting a potential hegemon. Two world wars and the commencement of the Cold War, however, convinced western leaders that Britain was no longer capable of effectively playing the balancing role. As such, NATO was established as a means by which Europeans could effectively maintain Europe’s power balance, tying as it did the US into the European security architecture and thereby turning the US into Europe’s offshore balancer. As NATO’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, once noted, “NATO is there to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Put another way, the US was turned into Europe’s offshore balancer to prevent Europe’s two most likely hegemons from making a run at conquering the continent. In the wake of the Cold War, however, the Russian threat has receded into the background while simultaneously Germany has moved into its proper leadership role as Europe’s most powerful state. While the US’s balancing role in Europe has therefore become less relevant vis-à-vis Russia, its balancing role vis-à-vis Germany remains very relevant indeed. Why the relevance of this role remains so widely misunderstood is two-fold: 1) A lack of appreciation of the fact that NATO was created not simply as an anti-Soviet institution, but as an anti-European-hegemon institution; as such, people under appreciate the relevance of NATO with regard to Germany. 2) A lack of understanding of the nature and purpose of power dynamics in the EU, leading to a failure to understand how a militarily weak Germany can nonetheless be a ominous threat to its neighbors. It is precisely these two key points, therefore, that this article addresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]