Many Europeans feel themselves "increasingly marginalised" by what they see as the White House's newly unilateralist foreign policy, Ireland's EU commissioner tells a US audience this evening.
Mr David Byrne says events since September 2001 suggest a widening gulf between US and EU interests, a concern heightened by "conflicting messages" about US commitment to the UN and other international bodies.
In a speech, to be delivered at Harvard University tonight, he says that if the US retreated from a multilateralist approach to international disputes, this would have major consequences for the EU's defence and foreign policy: "If we are to play a greater role as a stabilising factor in the world then we need to have the wherewithal to take on these responsibilities."
Mr Byrne says that between enlargement and the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the EU had reached a "crucial juncture" in its history, at a time of "extraordinary geopolitical tensions" in the world.
Against this background, the drafting of an EU constitution is "a bold, ambitious task which is provoking a huge debate on the type of Europe we want". This debate was nowhere more intense that on the question of defence and foreign policy, where any decisions would "go to the heart of sovereignty for many member-states," he says.
The defence argument is dominated by three factors, Mr Byrne adds, two of them internal and one external.
Firstly, enlargement means that from next year, the EU will have borders with relatively unstable regions, with the risk that local conflicts could spill into union territory. Consequently, the union needs to move from mere peace-keeping under the so-called Petersberg Tasks, to conflict prevention and a capacity to respond to threats.
The second internal factor is economic - the fact that national defence budgets mean "poor value overall" for money spent. But the third and external factor dominating debate is the "international context," and what many see as the US withdrawal from multilateralism. "Put simply, we have become used to a benign US looking after international defence needs. If the US becomes less committed to multilateral dispute resolution, then the EU has to face up to the consequences."
Any move towards common defence would have to be accompanied by a common foreign policy, he adds, and the disarray over the US/UK policy on Iraq has thrown attempts at such an approach into "stark relief".
The "geopolitical conjuncture" now requires statesmen and women to "set the foundations for a safer world", concludes Mr Byrne. "In the wreckage of WWII we found them on both sides of the Atlantic. We need them again now."
