Being There: North America and the Variable Geometry of European Security
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Author | David G. Haglund |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209104600105 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
DAVID
G.
HAGLUND
Being
there:
North
America
and
the
variable
geometry
of
European
security
For
some
decades
it
has
been
fashionable,
though
not
obligatory,
for analysts
on
both
sides
of
the
Atlantic
to
conceptualize
Euro-
pean
and transatlantic
security
arrangements
in
geometric
terms.
One
thinks,
in
this
regard,
of
the
seminal
contribution
made
to
the
discussion
of
both
North
American
and
transatlantic
security
by
John
Bartlett
Brebner's
wartime
classic,
North
Atlantic
Triangle.'
Indeed,
the triangle
appears
to
be
a
popular
meta-
phor,
capable
of
sustaining
generalizations
about
security
arrangements
that
far
transcend
Brebner's
original
concern,
which
was
to
show
how
Canada's
security
and
political
interests
would
be
best
advanced
in
a
world
in
which
the
United
States
and
Britain
pursued
common
aims.
Today,
the triangle
may
stand
as
shorthand
for
Western
Europe,
for
the
European-
North
American
security
relationship,
or
even,
as
Robert
Wolfe's
contribution
to
this
issue
suggests,
for
the
Atlanticist
world,
Director,
Centre
for
International
Relations,
Queen's
University,
Kingston,
Ontario.
This
article
has
its
origins
in
a
1988
grant
application made
by
the
School
of
Policy
Studies
of
Queen's
University
for
a
project
on
'Canada and the
United
States
in
a
Changing
Global
Context.'
That
project
was
generously
funded
by
the
Donner
Canadian Foundation,
to
whom
I
am
very
grateful.
Some
other
sources
of
support
deserve
my
gratitude
as well,
both
for this
article
and
for
other
research
on
European
security
I
have
been
doing
in
the
past
year.
It
is
a
pleasure
to
acknowledge
the
Military
and
Strategic
Studies
Program
of
the
Department of
National
Defence,
the
Canadian
Institute
for
International
Peace
and
Security,
the
North
Atlantic
Treaty Organization, and
Queen's
University,
which
accorded
me
a
sabbatical
leave
in
the
1989/9o
academic year.
i
John
Bartlett
Brebner,
North Atlantic
Triangle:
The
Inteiplay
of
Canada,
the
United
States,
and
Great
Britain
(New
York:
Columbia
University Press
1945).
InternationalJournal
XLVI
winter
i9go-i
82
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
which
is
bounded
more
by
common
institutions
and
values
than
by
the
borders
and
oceans
of
geography.2
Among
those
who
follow
the
debate
over
European
security,
there
is
another
geometrical
construct
that
has
gained
currency
in
recent
years,
namely,
the
notion
that
the
building
of
a
Euro-
pean
(often meaning
a
West
European)
security
order
must
pro-
ceed
by
means
of
'variable
geometry.'
There
are
different
ways
of
interpreting
this
figure
of
speech,
although
for
the
most
part
it
can
be
regarded
as
a
statement
of
conviction
that
building
Europe
requires
that
some actors
in
its
affairs
exercise
a
decid-
edly
more
managerial,
and
therefore
more
'unequal,'
role
than
others
in
the
construction
of
a
new
defence
and
security
r6gime.
There appear
to
be
two
major
schools
of
thought
on
variable
geometry.
The
presumption
of
some
who
employ
this
imagery
is
that
Europe
cannot
be
'made'
from
the
top
down
and
certainly
cannot
be
made
at
all
if
unanimity
of
purpose
among
the
current
members
of
the
European
Community
(EC)
is
a
prior
condition.
Instead,
a
small
group
of
countries
-
among
whose
number
must at
minimum
be
France
and
Germany
-
are
to
be
delegated
the
task
of
stimulating
the
forces
of
integration:
in
effect,
a
new
Europe
will
be
built much
as
that
of
the
postwar
period
has
been
built,
on
the
basis
of
policy
co-ordination
and
functional
integration
involving,
at
least
initially,
only some
of
the
Commu-
nity's
current
members.
Against
this
view
is
a
competing
claim
to
architectural
sagac-
ity,
one
that
also
draws
on
the
idea
of
variable
geometry.
This
model,
articulated
by
the
president
of
the
European
Commis-
2
Robert
Wolfe,
'Atlanticism
without
the
wall:
transatlantic co-operation
and
the
transformation
of
Europe.'
The
European
Commission's
president
has
recently
written
of
the
'Japan-United
States-Ec
triangle':
see
Jacques
Delors,
'Europe's
ambitions,'
Foreign
Policy,
no
8o(fall
199o),
16.
The
same
geometrical
metaphor
has
been
employed,
to
more modest geographical ends,
by
a
high-ranking
French
defence
official
who
has
predicted that
'the
triangle
extending
from Athens
to
Copenhagen
to
Lisbon
cannot
go
on talking
about
a
European
central
bank,
a
common
currency,
pollution regulations,
or
free
trade
without,
sooner
or
later,
being
confronted
by
the
issue
of
its
own
defence.'
Gdrard
Dominique
[pseud],
'Pour
une
c•.E
de
la
defense,'
Le
Monde,
i i
avril
1990,
2.
BEING
THERE:
NORTH
AMERICA
AND
EUROPEAN
SECURITY
83
sion,
Jacques
Delors,
and
other
European
federalists,
has
the
Community,
and
even
better
the
Commission,
providing
exactly
the
kind
of
leadership
that
the
first
school
(let
us
call
them
the
confederalists)
insists
is
the
prerogative
of
a
select
few
states
in
Europe.
Where
the confederalists
stress
the
differentiation
of
capabilities
and
interests
among
Community
members, the
fed-
eralists have
as
their
geometrical
referent
the
'other'
Europe,
which
is
broadly
held
to
comprise
all
those
European
countries
not
now
members
of
the
Community.
In
this
conceptualization,
Europe
is
first
created
by
the
deepening
of
the institutions
of
integration
within
the
EC;
it
cannot
be
brought
into
existence
if
the
latter
is
broadened
too
quickly
and
too
comprehensively.
Later,
it
will
be
possible
to
move
towards
pan-European
integra-
tion
schemes
in
defence
and
other
policy
domains.
It
should
not
be
thought,
however,
that
the
confederalists
have
anything
against
the
logic
of
deepening;
to
the contrary,
they
can
be
just
as
committed
as
the
Brussels
bureaucrats
to
a
filling
out of
West
European
integration,
even
if
they
envision
a
rather
different
mechanism
for
its
accomplishment
than
the
attempt
to
tran-
scend
sovereign
reality,
namely,
the
co-operation
of
sovereign
states.
More
recently,
in
the
aftermath of
the
revolutions
of
1989,
a
third
set
of
claimants
for
the
right
to
design
the
security
struc-
ture of
the
new
Europe
has
arisen:
the
pan-Europeanists.
If
the
confederalist/federalist
debate
is,
at
bottom,
an
in-house
struggle
over
who
should
be
dominant
in
building
Western
Europe,
the
pan-Europeanists
have
their
sights
set
on
a
different
set
of
chal-
lenges,
one
that
seeks to
embrace
all
the
members
of
the
Euro-
pean
system
and
does
so
with
institutions and
mechanisms
that
supplement,
and
in
some
cases
replace,
those
that
have
been
instrumental
in
the forging
of
ties
between
the
twelve
members
of
the
Community.
Thus,
common
metaphors
aside,
there
are
some
significant
differences
among
those
proposing
to
wield
the
conceptual
plumb
lines
and
carpenters'
levels
of
the
new
European
security
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