America and the World

DAVID IGNATIUS: When we think about America and the world, we tend to assume that Europe is a static and unchanging area about which we know everything there is to know. We forget that over the past twenty years, Europe has changed as much as any region in the world.

The European Union has been created and has expanded beyond western Europe to bring in diverse new members. Europe has created its own currency, confounding the expectations of many who thought it was impossible. It’s in many ways a very different place. What is this new Europe? What makes it different? And what new security issues does it present for the United States? Zbig?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: What is new about Europe is clearly the highly institutionalized effort to transcend traditional national sovereignty. That is a remarkable achievement. The United States was “a more perfect union.” But at its founding it was a more perfect union of mostly Anglo-Saxons plus slaves and some residual Indians. The creation of the European Union out of so many distinct nations and languages is historically unique.

Looking at it from the American point of view, I would say that it is in our interest that this Europe, one, be larger; two, that it be politically more defined; three, that it have an increased military capability of its own; and four, that it be allied with the United States. Let me just add a word briefly to each.

Europe should be larger in the sense that the creation of a historically and culturally defined Europe is still unfinished business. From the American point of view, it is desirable that Turkey be in such a Europe because an excluded Turkey is likely to become more like a Middle Eastern country and so bring the Middle East to Europe.

Europe should be politically more defined in the sense that if Europe is our partner, we want it to be able to take decisions that are viable in a variety of fields, ranging from the socioeconomic through the political and military.

Third, I would like Europe to be militarily more capable because a great many of our shared problems have to do with security. Sadly, the transatlantic dialogue so far has involved demands from the United States that the Europeans share our burdens—which they’re not capable of doing. In turn, the Europeans demand that they share in the decisions but profess to be incapable of assuming the burdens. A militarily more capable Europe would be better able to really act as an ally. Nicolas Sarkozy recently proposed a standing corps of some sixty thousand men to which the six leading countries of Europe—France, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland—would each contribute ten thousand.

And last but most obvious, I think that while America is still the paramount country in the world despite the costs of Iraq, we really need Europe as an ally because that will maximize our shared influence. But also, in many issues that we’re concerned with, the European perspective is a little more historically sophisticated, perhaps in some ways a little wiser. I think we would benefit from a genuine partnership with Europe in which we share decisions as well as burdens.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: I agree with Zbig that the new issue is the transcending of national sovereignty. It is new and in many respects unique. The EU is fundamentally dissimilar organizationally to the United States. Although the U.S. is frequently looked at as a model, the EU is breaking new ground. It’s very much a work in progress. There’s a lot of ambivalence both in Europe and in the United States about where it’s going and even about whether it’s desirable.

The United States has been ambivalent about the EU for a long time. On the one hand, we argue as Henry Kissinger did: If you want to call Europe, what’s the telephone number? On the other hand, we’re very leery of a unified Europe. In many respects we would rather deal with Britain, France, Germany, and so on separately.

In Europe, the ambivalence is over whether they want to develop the [European] Coal and Steel Community established in 1948 into a union, like the United States of America, or something looser, more of a confederation? This question has gotten into the debate over deepening or broadening the EU. Do you focus on adding more countries or strengthening the ties among current members? The French, for a time, wanted to do both. Well, it’s extremely hard to do both because the more you broaden, the more you diversify the interests and attitudes and perspectives that you have to bring together into a union that can really coalesce.

IGNATIUS: Do you think, Brent, that this broader Europe will retain the coherence that the tighter EU used to have? I sometimes hear Europeans asking, what do we really have in common with Slovaks, with Cypriotes, with all these diverse people we’ve brought into the new Europe? Have we fundamentally weakened the character of our union?

SCOWCROFT: That’s the dilemma. As Zbig says, there’s a lot of desirability in extending Europe. Turkey is a classic example because Turkey geographically straddles Europe and Asia. But the broader you get, the more likely it is that you will have a less cohesive structure. That not withstanding, I think it is critically important to have Turkey in the EU.

Let me say one other thing, on the military side. Zbig talked about a European military. But one of the real conflicts with the U.S. that has come out of the development of the EU is over its military role and that of NATO. That conflict is being somewhat sublimated now, partly because the European states are not prepared to put money into their defense establishments. But for a long time, the French especially were trying to persuade the EU to create a military organization separate from, and in some respects in competition with, NATO. Operations jointly with NATO would be on a completely voluntary basis.

These particular currents are not so prominent right now. There’s kind of a lull, because Europe is somewhat exhausted with taking on so much and trying to absorb it. And the military issue is relatively quiescent. But these are the issues we face. They’re unique because we’ve never before faced the creation of a great power by deliberate action.

BRZEZINSKI: The paradox in all this is that the European Community, as it expanded, renamed itself the European Union. But what’s really happened is that the European Union has become the European Community as a consequence of enlargement.

The European Community of ten or less was much more cohesive. In fact, if a real European Union had been created back in the late 50s, we probably could have had a single European state involving France, Germany, and several others. Now we have a much larger Europe which calls itself a union. And it is economically and socially very successful. But it has yet to define itself politically, and from the American point of view, it would be good if it did. I think probably it will, because it is moving slowly in that direction.

The question arises most acutely in the defense area. Europeans don’t want to spend too much on defense. They’re willing to support and be part of NATO, which gives them a sense of security. But it is growing increasingly clear that the Atlantic Alliance, facing the kind of global problems we have been talking about in these sessions, is not going to be able to act if only one party makes the decisions and assumes the major burdens. Europe has to recognize that. I think we have learned that our power, while decisive, is not conclusive. A closer relationship between America and a more defined and militarily self-sustaining Europe is beginning to be perceived by both sides as a mutual interest.

That will raise, of course, the question, where does this Europe end? I happen to think Ukraine should be part of it. And almost all the members of the EU are members of NATO. Therefore, if Ukraine ever becomes a member of the EU, it will seek to be a member of NATO.

That, at some point, will raise some complicated questions about the nature of the European relationship with Russia, which we discussed rather fully in the last chapter. But I see this historic progression as something that far-sighted leaders on both sides of the Atlantic now recognize as desirable. And I think it is almost inevitable, unless the West commits suicide.

IGNATIUS: But is it really in America’s interest that Europe have its own strong, independent defense force? We keep calling on the Europeans to do more of this. But if they really did have their own independent defense capability outside NATO, wouldn’t that raise problems for us?

BRZEZINSKI: One has to ask, “Independent for what?” I don’t think it’s likely that Europe is going to have an independent capability for a really large new war. I don’t think Europe is going to have an independent capability to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops abroad. But the Europeans can certainly have much more capability than the expeditionary forces, essentially the size of a battalion, that they selectively dispatch to some parts of Africa—often requiring help from us even with transportation. Europe can do much more without straining itself, but also without becoming so independent that the security linkage between America and Europe would grow diluted or even be ripped apart.

SCOWCROFT: My sense is that the Europeans are strategically exhausted. In the twentieth century they fought two grueling, lengthy wars that have taken a toll on their populations, their politics, their whole outlook. And they can’t bring themselves to see the need for strong military force, especially since we have so much. So while I agree it would be useful if they did more militarily, it seems to me that for some time, while they recover their élan, we should accept a division of labor in which we do more of the military part and the Europeans do the things that they do well, which includes rebuilding and reorganizing states in the way that they do to bring them into the European Union. We should work very closely with them but recognize that hectoring them about the need for more forces is not going to be helpful.

BRZEZINSKI: Right, but I have a bit of a reservation here. The reservation is not in the merits of the case you’re making, Brent, but more in the political consequences if we have that kind of division of labor. Take Afghanistan, for instance. The Europeans will be in Afghanistan doing good things, building roads, schools, whatever—which maybe they can do better than us. And we’ll be there fighting and bleeding.

I don’t think the American public will view that as an alliance in the long run. We will resent it. I think we have the right to expect the Europeans, in spite, as you say correctly, of their strategic fatigue—we have the right to expect them to be more responsible for the state of the world. They are lagging behind us. But incidentally, I also see the British being willing to take that responsibility, the French increasingly willing, as well as some of the smaller allies like the Poles and the Dutch. The real problems are Germany and probably Italy. I think that can be overcome.

SCOWCROFT: But I’m saying that they can do and are willing to do much more on one side. And we ought to recognize and not demand an equal effort because if we do, the eventual consequence will be separation.

SCOWCROFT: Well, for example, a Paddy Ashdown kind of figure might have gone in and been able to play the role Ashdown played in bringing Bosnia together politically and economically. He might have been able to attract more economic resources than the United States, as a way of balancing our military presence, and, in addition, really unify our collective effort in Afghanistan.

BRZEZINSKI: Let me be clear, then, about what you’re saying. Even if America assumes the larger share of the burden of fighting and leading, would you expect the Europeans to increase their role? Or would you give them an exemption?

SCOWCROFT: I would not give them an exemption, no. I agree with Bob Gates when he says we cannot have a two-tiered NATO. But we should not just continuously beat up on them for not carrying their share of the military burden because it’s much more complicated than that. We need to be understanding and realistic so that the alliance as a whole can maximize its impact.

IGNATIUS: Turning to some of the things that worry Europeans, I think at the top of the list is what we sometimes refer to as Eurosclerosis—the sense that this old continent, even as it remakes itself and the European Union expands, just has demographic problems. It’s not reproducing its population in many key European countries. The Scandinavian countries, Germany, Italy, have such low birth rates that the need to import labor will grow and grow if their economies are going to work. That makes some Europeans very pessimistic. Zbig, as someone who was born on that continent and came to America as a young man, do you share that fundamental demographic pessimism about Europe?

BRZEZINSKI: I don’t have, from the top of my head, the remedy for the demographic problem. And I have to confess that I don’t know too much about it. But it does seem to me that there is some evidence to suggest that demographic projections should not be viewed as one-directional. If one projects a declining population, one should not assume that will always continue, nor the opposite, that a population increase will continue. Most of the projections of the size of the world population have been drastically revised over the years. I think that some European countries are already beginning to see some changes in the number of children per marriage.

But, yes, there is a problem. I imagine Europeans will try to deal with it somewhat like others are trying to deal with it, through social policies that encourage larger families and by accepting larger numbers of immigrants. Countries that are not accustomed to assimilating outsiders will probably exercise caution about accepting a large numbers of immigrants with religious and cultural differences. I think this is why, for example, workers from places like Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland are more welcomed in the west. Romanian peasants are now, quite literally, filling empty villages in Spain where the native inhabitants have either died off or moved to the cities. In Ireland there’s a huge Polish community, and not only masses in Catholic churches but radio broadcasts of soccer matches and so forth are also in Polish.

BRZEZINSKI: That’s a different issue. European unions, of course, don’t like it. But the countries are welcoming them. I accept the proposition that Europe has been badly hurt by the traumatic experiences of two world wars and is now deeply aware that war should be the last instrument of policy, and that this has led to a reluctance to think of security problems that are distant from Europe. Yet today, most of the problems Brent and I have been discussing are problems that not only challenge America, they also challenge Europe. If America doesn’t deal well with them, Europe and its way of life are going to suffer. And that could mean the end of the West. Among those who think about the future, there is an awareness that neither the traditional geopolitical problems nor the new global problems will be addressed effectively unless America and Europe really work together.

SCOWCROFT: That’s a very important point, because it’s critical that the countries that have common views about man and his relationship to society and the state—and that means the Atlantic community—work together. These ideas are not commonplace to much of this new globalized world. Working together, we advance what we think is the fundamental truth of how to organize society. If we’re not together, we have much less chance of success.

IGNATIUS: When you say common views, I take it you mean ideas about individual freedoms, in contrast to the more collectivist view of how life and society work that we see more in Asia. Am I right?

SCOWCROFT: Yes, though I don’t know if I would put it that way, because it’s not just individual versus collective. It is protection of minorities as well. It’s many things.

SCOWCROFT: Rule of law. Much of the world has not, historically, developed that way. It’s not that one’s right or one’s wrong, necessarily. But we believe deeply that the world is made up of individuals, and that government should seek the maximum good for the maximum number. I think that by joining together, with our different skills, Europe and America can promote those ideas better than if we’re squabbling the way we have in recent years.

BRZEZINSKI: The bottom line is, if America and Europe do not consult and act together in some systematic fashion, there will soon be no West, because neither America alone nor Europe alone can sustain a new world, turbulent and changing as it is. So it is critically important that America and Europe fashion a truly workable decision-making process.

That requires two things. It requires, first, that Europe itself develop a decision-making process that really is coherent, sustained, and operational. That’s not going to be easy, but the recent constitutional changes are beginning to significantly move Europe in that direction. We will have, before long, a European president. In fact, who ought to be that president is already becoming the subject of an interesting political discussion.

We’ll have a European foreign minister. And if some of the plans for a large European military capability move forward, there will be something that begins to approximate a European army—which nonetheless will not be capable of significant independent action without American participation.

Secondly, we have to have a transatlantic decision-making process that actually gains legitimacy and respect, and proves that it is operational. For example, I think the G8, or the G7 as it used to be, has become discredited for a variety of reasons, including its misuse of the term democracy to define membership. But we should strive for some transatlantic organization like that, involving America, probably Canada, and the EU. I don’t think it can come into being instantly. But if we were willing to take the initiative, I think we’d find more and more Europeans responsive. It might even push Europeans towards a more deliberate decision-making process. I think our next president would find this a very fertile area for really historic innovation.

The Atlantic Charter, incidentally, provided for this. The Atlantic Charter was a little bit lost in the 1945 division of the world into spheres of influence. So this is not a new idea. But it may be a timely one.

SCOWCROFT: That’s an interesting idea. Europe, in past years, has strongly resisted that kind of thinking—especially the French, who for a time wanted to drive the United States out of Europe because they felt that was the only way Europe could unify. As long as we were around, we were the big guys and Europe would never develop the way the French thought it should.

That’s one of the reasons I say the unification of Europe is very much a work in progress. There are any number of currents and countercurrents. I think we have to be cautious. But we should at least improve our collective decision-making. NATO used to play a much more central role than it does now. During the cold war, the NATO Council was a serious decision-making body.

SCOWCROFT: And common objectives. We don’t have anything like that now. I still bear scars from discussions with Europeans who were proposing particular points of view. If we countered those points of view, they would claim we were objecting because we didn’t want them to consolidate into a community.

We also can’t forget what’s going on inside Europe. I spoke to a Polish group about two years ago, and they told me they didn’t regain their independence as a sovereign state only to turn it over to Brussels. Europe is ending one phase and maybe beginning another. The phase which is ending is the French notion that they will dominate Europe through a Franco-German entente. What we’re seeing now instead is the French under Sarkozy talking to the British and worried about the Germans as the big power in Europe. And the current trends in Germany are not exactly conducive to a vigorous, stimulative Europe.

Over the short run, there are going to be these starts and stops. The best course for the United States is to welcome progress toward consolidation but to be very patient and prepared to make the most of the transatlantic community, whatever its current state and mood may be.

IGNATIUS: What about how the two powers relate to the rest of the world? Does the European system of democracy travel better than America’s? We’re often a bit messianic in our promotion of democracy. We have specific ideas about how it should occur. Are the Europeans more effective in promoting democracy because they’re less evangelical? Do they provide a better model for transition to democratic government?

SCOWCROFT: There have been three general trends in America on this issue. The first I would call the Washington-John Quincy Adams trend, in which we saw ourselves as the shining city on the hill. We believed democracy was the way to go. We were an example of man’s ability to live in peace and harmony with his fellow man. If others wanted to adopt our system, fine. But, as John Quincy Adams put it, we go not in search of monsters to destroy. We’re the well-wishers of all who seek freedom and liberty. We’re the guarantors only of our own.

The second trend began with Woodrow Wilson, who found the Washington-Adams foundation too constraining and believed we needed to be evangelizers of democracy. There’s been a debate ever since about whether we accept countries as they are and work with them, or try to turn them into democracies.

The third takes place after 9/11 with the Iraq War. It constitutes an emendation of the Wilsonian ideal. It’s now our goal or our mission to spread democracy, if necessary even by force. The Europeans, on the other hand, possibly from their experiences with colonialism, are much more modest in what they do.

IGNATIUS: Zbig, when you look at the European success in absorbing the former communist states of Eastern Europe so rapidly in this expanded European Union, you do have to see it as, among other things, an astonishing success in inculcating the values of democracy and very quickly providing and encouraging democratic forces and structures. We brag about being the city on the hill, and we’re talking about democracy every other minute in our foreign policy promotion. What can we learn from the Europeans, who’ve actually been building democracy in formerly communist Eastern Europe?

BRZEZINSKI: Well, I would qualify the message inherent in your question. For one thing, the United States was far more supportive of the democratic movements in the former Soviet bloc than the Europeans. The Europeans tended to try to ignore it. Chancellor Schmidt even said he fully understood why martial law had to be imposed in Poland. And so the Solidarity movement was then crushed. We supported these movements, whereas Europeans tended to be more accepting of what they thought was an unavoidable reality.

Secondly, some of the central European countries have traditions of democracy that are as deep as western Europe’s. Poland had the Magna Carta just after Britain. It had the second constitution in the history of political systems, after the American and before the French. Czechoslovakia was a viable democracy before it was overrun by the Nazis. There are traditions in central Europe that were revitalized when the Iron Curtain disappeared. Western Europe certainly encouraged and helped consolidate this revitalization.

Generally the Europeans have not been evangelical in their promotion of democracy. They tend to view it as inherent to themselves and to be somewhat skeptical about trying to proselytize it. We have been proselytizers. But also, like the Europeans, we have been oppressors. We tend to forget that aspect of our history. We overran Hawaii, threw out the local queen, and destroyed the local culture for the sake of agricultural interests.

BRZEZINSKI: It’s Manifest Destiny, exactly. Look at what we did in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Allegedly we were liberating the Filipinos. But we actually waged a war against their guerilla-type resistance, a very energetic and bloody one. And we only gave them freedom some forty years later, after the Japanese overran them and drove us out. When we came back the second time, we weren’t so oblivious to Filipino aspirations for democracy. So while our record of evangelizing democracy is on the whole not that bad, it has had its downsides, both in terms of using democratization as an excuse for other objectives, as in Iraq, and in terms of some significant departures from a universal commitment to democracy when it was convenient to us to do so.

Still, there is a difference. Americans are a more outreaching people. Americans tend to a kind of universal activism. Europeans are more preoccupied with what they are and would like to nurture and preserve it. Maybe by combining the two, we can achieve a closer transatlantic communion that would be healthy for both of us.

IGNATIUS: Do you, Brent, see any areas where we can learn from the Europeans? Rather than this American hyperpower, as the French like to say, assuming it’s got the answers to everything, are there areas where Europe has answers that you like better?

SCOWCROFT: I think Europe has a much more methodical, organized—sometimes to the point of tedium—way of doing things. We tend to start and stop, either go full-speed ahead or do nothing. And that’s why I say we ought to take advantage of those European talents for encouraging people, showing them how to change, showing them how to modernize, showing how to run an economy and a political system. They do that better than we do. The leadership issue, I don’t know. It’s changing so rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic that it’s hard to generalize.

IGNATIUS: The Europeans are good at orderly rule sets. It’s easy to make fun of Brussels and all of these people endlessly writing little rules and regulations. But the reality is that they establish a very reliable platform for doing business in these recently communist states.

BRZEZINSKI: Absolutely. There’s no doubt that Brussels and its emphasis on regulation and orderly procedures is a wonderful contribution to the transformation of eastern and central Europe.

I would say we can learn from the Europeans more in terms of internal affairs than in the kind of issues we have been discussing. In the more developed parts of Europe there is a real absence of the kind of social iniquities and disparities that exist in the United States. These disparities are not healthy. I don’t think they are in keeping with our values. But we have been rather indifferent to them for specific historical reasons. I think we have a lot to learn there from Europeans, who in that respect have moved towards a more just and genuinely democratic society than ours.

The Europeans have also done better than we have in dealing with some fundamental infrastructural problems. A lot of what we once associated with American dynamism during the industrial age has now become antiquated. The absence of railroads, for example, is scandalous. I take the Acela to New York quite often. It’s like sitting on a third world train, shaking, moving slowly, always late. European railroad transportation is a whole different world. They have trains that we’re not even dreaming of building yet.

SCOWCROFT: One of the fundamental differences between Europe and the United States is that Europe has developed in such a way that they’ve had to get along with each other. As a result of geographical limitations, they’ve increasingly lived in larger urban units and therefore have had to have rules for behavior, rules for managing people’s interaction with each other. People who couldn’t stand that kind of confining regulation tended to come over to the United States.

As communities on the U.S. east coast started to develop the same need to manage people’s interactions, those who chafed under regulation moved to our open and empty west. As a result, the U.S. has developed a much stronger tendency to resent government. Hence the motto that government is best that governs least.

SCOWCROFT: Yes, we have, though the subject of too much government is still a live political issue here. We tend to be intolerant, impatient with each other, and our politics tends to be more volatile than the politics of Europe.

IGNATIUS: Well, Europe remains more orderly, certainly. When you travel there, you see the way they protect their environment, protect their old treasures. Zbig, what do you see and feel when you look at the new Poland? This is the land of your birth. It’s been transformed by war and the aftermath of war as much as any country on earth. What do you see there now?

BRZEZINSKI: I think Poland is quite rapidly becoming a genuinely European state. Certainly its current political leadership, which has widespread social support, is very European. And some of its top personalities are, so to speak, of the European class. That is to say, one does not feel that they are culturally or politically inferior to the better elements of the west European political elite. So in that respect, there’s a lot of movement. The young people, particularly, are becoming very comfortable with the new European reality.

Physically, the country is changing dramatically. I think the fact that Poland and Ukraine were awarded the Euro soccer championships for 2012 is going to give a lot of impetus to this evolution, because it’s also producing infrastructure: new airports are needed, new stadiums and also new highways, again creating the enormous possibility for rapid movement of people.

All of that is to the good. But there are legacies of the past. There was a period in Poland when the political leadership was very extremist, both politically and in its religious values. The country has some very backward, traditional farming regions with almost a peasant culture—which are, however, dramatically benefiting from membership in the EU. When Poland voted for membership in the EU, the farmers tended to vote against. They are now the strongest beneficiaries and the biggest enthusiasts for Europe, a little like the French farmers, who benefit exactly the same way.

BRZEZINSKI: Yes. All in all, I’m rather optimistic about Poland. And because of that, I’m also optimistic about Ukraine, which is increasingly similar to Poland in terms of its potential and less and less adhered to Russia.

IGNATIUS: Brent, it happens that a European diplomat came to see me today, doing a study for his government about bilateral relations with the United States. He said to me, “We worry that the transatlantic relationship is breaking down.” He was thinking of all the issues we’ve talked about that pull America’s attention away from Europe and towards the Middle East, China, this new looming Asia. And he said, with a tone of resignation, “We just worry that the next administration’s attention inevitably will shift from Europe and our traditional relationships and be focused elsewhere.” It’s a widely held fear. What’s the right answer to give to that diplomat?

SCOWCROFT: That that’s more an aberration than a new pattern. I think it is true; our attention really is focused elsewhere. It’s partly a consequence of the end of the cold war and thus the end of the glue that forced us to shelve our differences because of the greater common threat.

Once the Soviet threat disappeared, those differences came to the fore. Then there was France’s notion, as I mentioned earlier, of itself as the leader of Europe. Finally there was our Iraqi incursion, which split the Europeans.

And even before the Iraqi incursion there was Afghanistan, where NATO invoked Article Five of its charter for the first time in its history. In effect, the Europeans were saying, “We’re with you.” Our response was “Thanks. If we need you we’ll call you. Don’t call us.”

Our incursion into Iraq was widely unpopular in Europe. The French saw its unpopularity as a way to put themselves at the head of European public opinion and drive the United States out of Europe. Of course, the British did not see it that way.

So we’ve gone through a period of abjuration. Zbig and I are saying the same thing. A strong Atlantic community is vital for the United States and for Europe. Eventually that idea will come to prevail over the disturbances of the past ten years.

BRZEZINSKI: It certainly is a fact that the global center of gravity is shifting to the Far East. And the six-hundred-year-long dominance of the Atlantic countries in the world is subsiding. But still, if you look at the combined intellectual, economic, and military resources of North America and Europe, it is quite clear that if they can be mobilized intelligently and focused on a constructive policy, that Atlantic community still has an important, and in many respects preeminent, role to play. But it depends a great deal, overwhelmingly, on what Brent and I have been saying. Can we generate a shared strategic direction? Can we find an equitable balance between the sharing of decisions and the sharing of burdens? Can we define goals that are not just self-serving but which address the larger dimensions of the global economy?

If we can do that, then the West will remain the preeminent region in the world for some decades. Even if we are more attentive to the Far East, Japan needs us at least as much as we need them, and probably much more. China, for all its potential for global leadership, will still be, for the next several decades, a country with massive infrastructural problems and poverty. India has yet to prove that it can sustain its national unity. They’re a population of a billion people who are still mostly politically inactive and not yet mobilized. We don’t know what will happen when that population, so differentiated in ethnicity, language, and religion, becomes genuinely politically awakened.

So the West has a role to play. But it really requires a kind of leadership that is capable of setting a direction and of collaborating across the Atlantic. Hopefully we will have that.

Will the Europeans have a similar leadership? That’s much more difficult. But I do attach a lot of significance to something which in this country has not been given enough attention, the Lisbon Treaty and the fact is it’s moving forward. And even the Poles you talk about, Brent—who are leery about giving up too much of their sovereignty so soon after they’ve regained it—just voted the other day, overwhelmingly, for the Lisbon Treaty even though the nationalist party opposed it. If everybody else in Europe ratifies it too, that will be another step toward real European unity. If they elect even a symbolic president, but one with some stature and historical vision, it’s going to be the beginning of a new game.

SCOWCROFT: David, your question may be a product of “old-think.” If you look at the trends in the world today, it may not be right to say power is moving to Asia because the global forces at work are diminishing national power, changing its nature, and diffusing it. As a result, a few years from now, where the focus of what we usually think of as power lies may not seem so important. Globalization is redefining the nature of national power.

It may be far more important to be able to present a vision that will attract people toward producing a better world. The world is creating wealth at a faster rate than the population is growing. With the right organization, we ought to be able to take care of more people and give a better life to everyone. So to ask, “Are you worried the West is fading?” may be to pose the wrong question. I think that in terms of culture and ideas that is not the case. And comparisons in terms of national power may be less significant than in an earlier age.

BRZEZINSKI: That’s a very good insight, and let me give you an example. Look at the dilemma the Chinese leadership has with the Tibetans. It’s the poor Tibetans who have this vast country, with its enormous resources and power, in a tizzy. Why? Because traditional power can’t solve the problem. The Chinese could massacre every single Tibetan if they chose. Why aren’t they doing it? They’re very angry. They’re furious, in fact. But they’re worried about a lot of other things.

BRZEZINSKI: Precisely. But why are the Olympics so important? Because there’s a new concept of influence and power in the world. Chinese national dreams and their pride are connected with the Olympics, and they don’t want to sacrifice them. This speaks exactly to Brent’s point, that we now have a sort of globalized interdependence in which other values and objectives complicate the traditional notion of power.

IGNATIUS: As borders open, as electronic pathways for knowledge open, not even the strongest, most authoritarian government is able to control that. We saw that in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We’re seeing it now in China.

It’s this theme that each of you, in different ways, has addressed in all of our conversations: maintaining openness as a principle, maintaining respect for the rights of individuals in this western European, American sense that Brent’s been talking about. It’s a crucial value.

Let me raise a final dollars and cents, or dollars and euros issue. As we’re having this conversation, international financial markets measure the relative worth of Europe and America, as reflected by our currencies, in rather worrying ways for Americans. The euro is trading many days at about one dollar and fifty cents. Our cities are swamped with European tourists who are picking up clothes and electronic appliances at what for them are ridiculous bargains. But these currency values are telling us something important about Europe and America.

Some people say that the euro will emerge as a rival to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and that the financial capital of the world is going to be London and not New York because London, for all kinds of reasons, is a better place to do business with this diverse world than New York. What do we learn from this very striking change in valuation of the euro and the dollar and from the growing importance of London relative to New York as a financial capital?

SCOWCROFT: I think we’ve learned that the world is much more deeply interconnected than we thought. We have tended to think that, especially economically and financially, we are a unit unto ourselves, and we’re finding out that’s not so.

I think we’ve made some serious mistakes. But having Europeans buying cheaper American goods means that they will buy more American and fewer European goods. The net will be an improvement in our balance of trade.

There are now new forces that tend towards rebalancing. There’s an imbalance growing between the oil producers and the consumers and between cheap producers like China and consumers. They result in new elements, like the sovereign wealth funds, that help restore the balance. But we act as if we’re immune from all of these developments. One of the reasons London is becoming the world’s finance capital is that we have created restrictions that make it unattractive to do business in the United States.

We have to realize we’re an intimate part of a very different world. When we cut interest rates to stimulate the domestic economy, we also increase the price of oil. I think we need to broaden our views and consult more with others rather than acting as if we’re completely independent.

BRZEZINSKI: I’ll just add that this is an area where American-European cooperation will be just as important as it is in geopolitics and security. Clearly, the present travails of the United States demonstrate that both positively and negatively. Look at what’s happened to some major Swiss banks because of the temptations of the American housing market.

Beyond that, we as a country over the last decade or two have become self-indulgent in how we operate financially. The indebtedness of the United States has reached dramatic proportions. It’s raising questions about the long-range viability of Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs. We have waged a war for which we have refused to pay even one cent through social sacrifice, whether imposed on the rich or shared with the poor. We have chosen to borrow instead. It shouldn’t be surprising that there is some loss of confidence in the United States, some question marks about the dollar. Fortunately, no one has been rash enough to try to penalize us for this by dramatically shifting large amounts out of U.S. treasuries and into euros. But if we don’t begin to respond to this situation, there will be pressures to move in that direction.

We have to ask ourselves whether the lifestyle we have adopted, and the almost exclusive emphasis on the acquisition of material goods as our definition of the good life, is really a healthy response to the reality of an interdependent world.

To take one specific example, for every hundred Americans, we have about eighty-eight cars. For every one hundred of India’s one billion people, they have one and a half cars. Just think of the energy shortages, pollution, and climate change that will follow if the Indians and Chinese and others decide that the way to have a good life is to be like us. So our practical problem, which is part economic and part philosophical, is ultimately a global problem. And that’s something we, also, have to start thinking about.

SCOWCROFT: Your example may be a dangerous one, because as I understand it the rate of increase in the purchase of cars in India and China is astonishing. Apparently they have adopted our model of the good life.

One of the things we need to remember is that world wealth is being created at a rapid rate, a rate that is historically perhaps unique. What we don’t know is how to distribute it, how to use it, how to take advantage of it to make the world a better place.

IGNATIUS: The theme that I hear from both of you is that even as Europe changes and expands, the cultural values that Europe and America share remain strong and essential. They’re what defines the West. The question is how we can work with the Europeans to advance those ideas, to work effectively together for goals that we share.

Europeans worry that more transatlantic cooperation means more European deference to American desires. They think, especially during the Bush years, that they’re moving in a different direction, toward a society that takes care of its citizens better, toward a culture that’s less raucous and violent than American culture. Often they look at us and throw up their hands. They don’t want to live the way Americans live. They want to live as Europeans. So this tension between America and Europe, and also the great bond that holds the Atlantic Alliance together, is as much about soft power, about those indefinable cultural values that we share, as it is about hard power and decisions about NATO deployments or an independent European security pillar. Am I right, Zbig, that at the end of the day, when we think about Europe, we’re thinking about shared cultural values?

BRZEZINSKI: It’s both. There’s a quip that I sometimes make, that to make the American-European relationship really viable we need regime change in America and we need a regime in Europe. We need regime change in America because we need to reassess what is happening in the world and to redefine the American role away from the self-serving assertions that became so fashionable with the Neocons. And Europe needs a regime, literally. There is really not yet a genuine political regime in Europe.

The military and political structures we’ve been talking about are needed to provide a framework in which our shared cultural values can be channeled in positive directions, and a framework which is also capable of defending these values. For all of these things, America and Europe are indispensable to each other.