when harry met grietje: marital politics in the transatlantic

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

                                                                                                 Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty

Since the establishment of NATO in 1949, and subsequently the European Union in 1993 a general trend of postmodern politics in our Atlantic cousins has decidedly taken over. Celebrating the end of two centuries worth of infighting on the continent with increasingly more inclusive treaties and economic organizations has a way of putting the U.S. off. The joint venture that inextricably binds America with the continent, NATO, is, for better or worse, the only military conscription that obligates the U.S. to intervene on behalf of Europe, and Europe to do so in return.

However, since the end of the second World War, and further still, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. American strategic interests have largely become divergent from those of Europe. Clinton’s commitment to intervention in small scale ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and east Africa cemented the U.S. reputation as an overweening super power. However, it wasn’t until the invasion in Iraq that the opinions of the United Nations and NATO took a back seat to America’s international security interests. While this wasn’t a significant departure in American foreign policy priorities (NATO bombing of Bosnia in 1995 was accomplished without U.N. consent because of the fear of Russian veto, exists as an example) the National Security Strategy of 2002 delineated what commonly became known as the Bush Doctrine, and despite it’s substantive revision vis a vis the strategy of 2006, unilateral pre-emption dominated US policy for the next six years. 

Europe’s impatience with our perceived excess has created innumerable tensions since the invasion of Iraq. Operation ENDURING FREEDOM has brought these tensions into sharp focus. From the unwillingness of certain nations to commit troops to districts of Kabul where actual conflict is happening, to frustrations as simple as the inability to communicate without using radio transmission that’s commonly accessible to insurgents belies not only the shortcoming of military inoperability but of basic social incompatibility. The emblematic rift that was singularly represented by the Atlantic eponym of NATO has turned Afghanistan into a playground with bullies and wallflowers.