NEW YORK—Last Thursday, during an event at New York University, a panel of experts gathered to discuss the present and future of the transatlantic partnership between the United States and the European Union.
The guests breached a wide range of topics from the rise of populism in Europe and the Hungarian election to the expected upcoming surge of automated jobs throughout the globe, all of which will play a role in the shaping of US-Europe relations. The conference was co-sponsored by the NYU School of Professional Studies, the Remarque Institute and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies.
The general sentiment among the panelists was that the divisions that plague Europe—both intercontinentally and in terms of the Union’s partnership with the United States—pose a real threat to normalized postwar international geopolitics.
William Drozdiak, from the Brookings Institution, said that Europe is at a crossroads, a continent split between a North-South economic gap, as well as a growing East-West rift sparked by the rise of “illiberal” governments coming to power in Hungary and Poland, among other countries. The latter of which, he said, results largely from an increased influx of refugees from across the Mediterranean.
“What we are witness is a debate in Europe over whether the way to vanquish this right-wing nationalist populism is to have the mainstream parties move to the right and try to co-opt their views, or as [France’s] President [Emmanuel] Macron has said, no, we need to have a great leap forward toward more integration, more Europe, as a way of defying populism,” said Drozdiak. “And this debate is just beginning now.”
The United States, on the other hand, is a wild card, said Vera Jelinek, from New York University. When combining President Donald Trump’s volatile nature and supposed preference for isolationism with the similarly reactionary anti-globalist movements throughout Europe, the future of international relations has become increasingly challenging to predict.
Drozdiak also noted that there is a good chance that German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has long been considered the closest thing to a steward of stability in Europe, is coming to the end of her tenure, which will leave a leadership vacuum on the pro-integration side. (Unsurprisingly, he pointed to Macron as the head of state most likely to step into the void.)
The mostly-predictable US-European relationship of the last seven decades has been thrown into flux and could be altered in a significant manner in the upcoming years.
That said, Stephen Sestanovich, from Columbia University, made clear that he thinks there is a certain “romanticization” of the past and the U.S. and Europe have faced similar challenges numerous times since the culmination of World War II. But he did acknowledge that the current situation presents some historically unique challenges.
“One of the things that is definitely an issue—can Europe act like a great power?” he said. “The EU was not meant to act like a great power. The premise of it really was that the cooperation with the United States as an international matter would be a kind of substitute for it. That is definitely a question now.”
Some of the other chief concerns addressed by the experts were the unpredictability Russian President Vladimir Putin, climate change, cyber security, and a rapidly growing global population.
While all of the panelists preached caution, the consensus was that there is a likelihood that tensions in Europe and the United States will simmer and, in some cases, an even more unified international order could result precisely because of the overload of global crises. For instance, Jelinek said that issues like climate change and water shortage, as well as extremism—which will continue affect every part of the world—will likely bind nation-states together and force them to be strategic. The problem, she said, is that it is unclear where the necessary leadership to ensure that unity will come from.
Tamas Meszerics, an Hungarian member of the European Parliament, said that the future will ultimately come down to human choices.
“If Europe is able to hold its own in security teams and its immediate environment, that would change the security landscape,” he said. “That does not require major investment. What it does require is political will. And I see some of kind of hope for that emerging in Europe.”
Photo: The flag of the European Union, seen in Karlskrona, Sweden by MPD01650 (2011). Licensed under Creative Commons.
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