The European Connection

 
For several months, it has been clear that the partnership between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is an engine for European integration. They have agreed to disagree in some issues, such as France’s mare nostrum idea of a Mediterranean Union, yet in most issues they are together. Examples of that are global warming and how to deal, by and large, with the global economic downturn.

Today, they took it to the next level, publishing a long op-ed in Le Monde, published simultaneously in the German press. As the Gaullist Sarkozy prepares to rejoin the NATO high command, which President De Gaulle abandoned in one of his many acts of self-assertion forty years ago, the op-ed promised increased security cooperation. Quite revealing was the op-ed title: “Security – Our Common Mission.”

Security cooperation is a much-talked about principle since the creation of the Common Security and Defense policy doctrine in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, but little has been achieved in practical terms, despite the hard work of people like Javier Solana. The new proposition centers around a European defense strategy that actually cooperates with the US, while maintaining a usable and well-stocked military force built upon cooperation.

Without real European federalism, it may be difficult to have French and German soldiers fighting along one another, but the programs proposed by Sarkozy and Merkel – including the stationing of German soldiers in a base in France for the first time since the end of occupation in 1945 – is most definitely a promising first step. With a potentially nuclear Iran and a belligerent Russia in the cards, the world needs a strong Europe, both diplomatically and militarily. The plan foresees that kind of cooperation, as well as a stronger NATO and better ties with President Obama. 

And just like the European Steel and Coal Community sixty years ago, Franco-German cooperation is a useable blueprint for the rest of Europe. Hopefully, one day we may have a European defense policy, a (real) European foreign minister, and a (true) European High Military Command. So that the next time Henry Kissinger feels like calling Europe, he can actually get through.

Attraction May Go Beyond Diplomacy