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We in Europe need to wake up to the reality that we cannot afford a weak America.

Far from enhancing Europe’s position in global affairs, America’s failures have also been ours, from securing peace in the Middle East to curbing Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

Conversely, success has come to us when Europe and the United States have acted in close partnership, whether it was winning the Cold War or building a global economy.

With Nicolas Sarkozy in the Elysée Palace, Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, Gordon Brown in Britain and Angela Merkel displaying real European leadership, those of us who believe that strong trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific relationships are essential for the survival of our common values and economic systems see a fleeting opportunity to re-cast America’s relationship with its allies.

While the shortcomings of the Bush administration’s foreign policy are all too obvious, the spirit of “Schadenfreude” needs to end. Enough with the “I told you so” approach to dealing with shared problems and challenges. The next American president, regardless of party affiliation, is likely to have a radically different agenda than the Bush administration. Helping shape that agenda is something Europeans must have a hand in. All too often, Europe has taken high-minded, even populist, positions on global issues - positions that have failed to pass the reality check of the world as it is.

A distracted United States is not paying proper attention to any of the numerous crises that bedevil the planet. The Americans no longer have the power or the authority to act as the world’s “indispensable power.” Whatever political capital the United States gained over the 9/11 attacks has been thrown away. How can the West reverse this growing marginalization?

We must redefine the Western partnership in global affairs for the next decade and create a real spirit of trans-Atlantic strategic solidarity:

On Iraq, President Horst Köhler of Germany is right when he asserts that Europe is also directly affected by developments in the region, and that Europeans have a clear responsibility to contribute to the process of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

In the Middle East, Europe should engage in fighting those who reject the existence of Israel—Iran and Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah—as a complement to American efforts in the region.

Europe has reluctantly joined the Bush administration in demonizing Iran, but we seem to have forgotten that North Korea has actually detonated a nuclear weapon. Europe cannot continue to act as if Pyongyang’s activities and the negotiations to denuclearize the country are little more than a diplomatic footnote.

Europeans must also reassert the primacy of NATO in the West’s decision-making processes. If the United States had gone through a NATO consultation process on the viability and utility of its forward-stationed ballistic missile defenses, instead of just assembling another flimsy “coalition of the willing,” the project might have gone ahead without giving Russia a propaganda bonanza.

Finally, Europeans should acknowledge and address the potentially enormous detrimental effects of Beijing’s emergence as the major beneficiary of America’s diminished global power and leadership. China has massively increased defense spending and is transforming its army into a modern force capable of launching and sustaining strategic offensives. Its strategy is obvious: to aggressively reposition itself in the worldwide race for increasingly scarce natural resources, an approach that is bound to have a considerable impact on American, Japanese and European access to those same resources. Able to draw on a considerable reservoir of international goodwill, the European Union is uniquely capable of mounting an effective challenge to such Chinese ambitions, and not only in Africa and South America.

A stronger Japan, one with a more forceful but sensitive foreign and defense policy, must be another component of the Western response. We must recognize that helping the Japanese construct such policies is as much in Europe’s interest as it is in America’s or Japan’s.

With new European, Japanese and - soon - American leaders, it is time to build a fully integrated trilateral strategic partnership. And we need to act quickly, before events overwhelm all of us.

Margarita Mathiopoulos, chief executive officer of EAG European Advisory Group , is professor of U.S. foreign policy at the University of Potsdam and chairwoman of the Trans-Atlantic Forum of the Free Democratic Party of Germany.

This is a shortened version of an op-ed in The International Herald Tribune published on June 15, 2007. Republished by permission from the author.


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