Which country in Europe announced yesterday that the EU should expedite the development an independent defense identity, build its own military transport aircrafts rather than buy American, bolster the EU’s procurement agency and have an EU Foreign Minister attend NATO meetings?
Although this reads like the French national security strategy, it is in fact Poland who announced these priorities for its 2011 Presidency of the European Union. One of the most EU-realist, pro-American, NATO-supporting countries announced yesterday that even energy security – previously its most pressing priority in Brussels – would take second place to the development of a European defense identity.
This announcement comes just days after President Obama unceremoniously abandoned Poland and the Czech Republic by reneging on the Bush-era agreement to place elements of the U.S. missile defense shield there. For Poland, this decision was a bridge too far; already disappointed by America’s failure to grant them visa-free travel, and President Obama’s lack of appreciation for its significant Afghanistan deployment, Warsaw has seemingly chosen a European route rather than the Atlantic one.
In December 2008, The Heritage Foundation stated:
“When President-elect Barack Obama finally makes his decision about whether to proceed with deployment of U.S. missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, he should know that the implications of that decision will reach far beyond Warsaw and Prague: It is a decision on which the future of the transatlantic security alliance itself rests. If the United States chooses to abandon its Central and Eastern European allies as well as its obligations to NATO, it will hand the European Union a blank check to pursue an autonomous defense identity, independent of NATO, and will reduce America’s influence within the transatlantic alliance significantly.”
President Obama should be in no doubt that America will lose out in this equation. The militarization of the EU embodies the worst elements of European animosity toward the United States and will fundamentally undermine the NATO alliance. And replacing individual European allies with a single EU foreign minister is a monumentally bad idea, as Dr. Henry Kissinger noted in 2001:
“When the United States deals with the nations of Europe individually, it has the possibility of consulting at many levels and to have its view heard well before a decision is taken. In dealing with the European Union, by contrast, the United States is excluded from the decision-making process and interacts only after the event, with spokesmen for decisions taken by ministers at meetings in which the United States has not participated at any level.... Growing estrangement between America and Europe is thus being institutionally fostered.”
By abandoning the Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama not only made America less safe, he threw away important bilateral allies in Europe, and endangered the transatlantic relationship. It may take decades for America’s leadership in Europe to recover.