Analysis: Big winner from EU expansion: Washington

The European Union's coming enlargement to 25 members, including many former Soviet bloc countries now entering NATO, seems sure to increase the United States' overall influence in Europe and within the EU — while putting aside for the time being the idea of an emergent Germany leading the continent from Berlin.

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The entry of these essentially pro-American countries of Central and Eastern Europe into the EU, according to a German official, also signifies the end of any attempts within the EU to define itself and its evolving foreign and security policy as aligned against the United States.

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"You can no longer muster a majority for that," said Karsten Voight, the German Foreign Ministry's coordinator for German-American relations.

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These orientations, previously a subject of wary articulation in public, are now being openly acknowledged by EU policymakers as they prepare for a summit meeting in Copenhagen on Thursday and Friday that will open the community further eastward and address Turkey's possible membership.

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For policymakers in several European countries, the new members-to-be from the old Soviet world, after a decade's transition from subjugation, remain existentially concerned with maintaining their national independence and identity. This means that the new EU members continue to see the United States, rather than any European neighbor or the EU itself, as the principal guarantor of their young democracies, and the essential political reference point in creating a future that is secure and prosperous.

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As far as the controversial candidacy of Turkey goes, the United States, at virtually no cost and at high profit in its relations with Ankara, has been the single, unequivocal backer of its entry into the EU for decades. Until recently, much of Europe appeared to be satisfied with making long-term assurances to Turkey on eventual membership that some EU leaders clearly hoped they would never have to fulfill.

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With Turkey's future in the EU still vague, the increase in American influence in the EU is channeled through the former Soviet satellites.

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"What they want to join is the euro-Atlantic community," said Denis MacShane, Britain's minister for Europe, using a phrase heard with frequency these days that reflects the newcomers' mindset blending the EU and NATO increasingly together. "They want the Atlantic to be the same width as the Oder or Dneipr rivers."

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Although the United States through James Baker 3d, when he was secretary of state, specifically talked as the Berlin Wall came down of forging a more "organic" relationship with the EU — perhaps with less conviction than opportunism — it has obviously no interest now in speaking officially about a development that is to its advantage, but enormously sensitive in relation to European self-esteem.

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President Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland caught that note recently in insisting, "To say that we're a Trojan horse of the United States" in the EU "is unjust." But he also asserted that "there would be no Europe without American democracy," and that the EU's stringent conditions for entry meant risking "what there is left of enthusiasm" for joining the organization.

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German leaders were reported struck by the bluntly pro-American tone of a recent initiative of the so-called Vilnius Group, 10 former Soviet bloc countries, presenting themselves as part of a potential coalition committed with the United States to the disarming of Iraq.

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A declaration by the group, virtually all EU candidates, coinciding with the NATO summit meeting in Prague in November, showed them to be ahead in terms of support for the Americans than many of the EU's senior member states. In describing their ultimate goals in being participants in both the EU and NATO, the countries spoke of their commitment to peace and stability throughout the "euro-Atlantic community."

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All the same, America's increased insertion in the process of European unification is not what history might have expected.

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In the early 1990s, following Germany's reunification and the fall of the Soviet Union, it was widely assumed that Germany would be the dominant beneficiary of Europe's opening to the East. Besides the economic advantages of Berlin's proximity, it was often thought that Germany would provide political leadership for the countries of the old Soviet orbit and in the process emerge as the essential political force, East and West, in all of Europe.

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As discussions about shifts in Europe's political center of gravity to Berlin became commonplace, countries like France or the Netherlands guardedly expressed concern about German predominance in a reorganized and revitalized Europe.

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But reality worked in other ways. In Germany, the last decade has been one of economic stagnation, with a vast drain of resources going toward absorbing the debris of East German Communist rule. In the process, the old West German type of high-cost, low-risk capitalism virtually disappeared as a model for development.

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While the German economy has remained predominant in commerce with Eastern Europe, its power diminished overall in European and international terms. At the same time, neither Germany's political reach nor Germany's comfort in acting as an initiator or defender of democracy palpably increased.

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In the end, Germany was seen less as a prime mover in opening up NATO membership to the former satellite states, than as a hard, largely self-interested bargainer laying down tough economic and social conditions for the individual applicants' entry into the EU. In the process, what 10 years ago was once the notion of Eastern Europe (or Turkey) lining up in grateful allegiance behind Germany on a unified Continent, disintegrated.

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Voigt, the Social Democrat who serves as the German Foreign Ministry's coordinator for American relations, put the situation this way: "The Germans are needed, but they have to think more generally. There is a problem, and it involves the view of a Germany acting provincially."

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More important, with the addition of the former Soviet bloc countries to the EU, Voigt said: "Any concept attempting to define the EU as an organization that is basically against the United States is no longer able to muster a majority. That temptation is finished. As an enlarged Europe comes into being and defines itself, that view of (an antagonistic) Europe, or that American analysis of what the EU means, is overtaken."

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This interpretation or perception appears to have reached some of France's most sophisticated European planners, a number of whom have been the most prone to regard an expanded EU as creating a global force to counter-balance for the United States.

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Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission, now talks, for example, of a Europe whose ambition is to be "influential." This contrasts with the French notion of "Europe puissance" — or roughly, Europe as a competitor for world political power — that has had extensive appeal in Paris.

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But interpretations of the significance of the growth of American influence through the enlargement processes, and at a time the EU is trying a more unified foreign policy and security approach, is not characterized only as one of advantage to the United States.

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Poland, for example, has been describing itself as a bridge to understanding between the United States and Europe.

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Friedbert Pflueger, the foreign policy spokesman of the Christian Democrat grouping in the German Bundestag, said flatly that the "influence of the United States will be fostered by the Central and East European countries which look more to the U.S. than to Europe."

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But he analyzed the circumstances as essentially positive ones, especially in a situation where opinion polls and politicians in Europe, as well as the substantially higher economic growth rates projected for the United States than for the EU in 2003, have recently emphasized their conflicts and differences.

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"This double enlargement by Central and East European countries," Pflueger said, "is a great chance. The idea that these new countries could serve as a bridge has real importance to both sides of the Atlantic, which are growing apart."

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