Overview: No phone number for Europe

By Robin Oakley
CNN.com European Political Editor

LONDON, England (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once complained that he didn't know Europe's telephone number. What he meant was that when a crisis blew up, Americans did not know who to turn to as the authentic and immediate voice of European opinion.

That question has not completely been answered, even though the EU now has a High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy in the shape of former NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana and a Foreign Affairs Commissioner in the shape of former British Minister Chris Patten.

Decisions may be made increasingly in Brussels, but they are not yet made by the European Commission. That is one reason why Washington has for years been quietly encouraging moves towards greater integration in Europe.

Another reason is that U.S. leaders are conscious that the ghost of isolationism always stalks their own backwoods. Voters back home, unless spurred by TV images of genuine suffering, do not always see the need for American money, armaments or troops to be committed to helping out in the comparatively rich continent of Europe.

U.S. politicians are conscious that a continent that has developed a single market is becoming an economic rival; but they consider that a price worth paying if Europe can be induced to pick up the tab pretty well in full for its own future defence.

At the same time, there is some nervousness in the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon about the development of a European Union defence dimension.

After the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Washington encouraged the Europeans to develop their own capacity for conflict resolution and crisis management. Now, the United States fears that this could mean a weakening of NATO.

Hence the warning this October from U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen to NATO defence ministers gathered in Birmingham, England, that while the United States backed the development of a European rapid reaction force with "wholehearted conviction," it did not want to see a planning bureaucracy developed separate from NATO.

The defence game and the degree of U.S. involvement in Europe has changed -- both with the collapse of the Soviet empire under the strain of trying to match former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's arms spending, and the expansion of NATO to include former Soviet bloc countries from Eastern Europe (or at least those vetted as suitable by the United States).

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