Europe’s Best Interest: Staying Close to Number One CHRISTOPH BERTRAM E arlier in 2002, a shrewd Canadian diplomat at one of the many meet­ings on European-American relations posed a question which has since rankled in my mind and has become even more pertinent since:»Do you Europeans want to be allies or a counterweight to the us ?« The Europe­ans present answered with what has been their credo for the past forty years or so, namely that a strong transatlantic partnership requires a con­fident and strong Europe; counterweight-Europe was thus essential for alliance-Europe. This, however, increasingly lacks conviction. At best, it is a long-term vision, at worst an alibi. Perhaps one day, the nations of the European Union will have grown so close together that they have be­come a single strategic actor on the international scene, with coherent policies and both the will and the means to implement them. But in the long in-between years until that lucky day, the states that make up the European Union will have to accept that they lack what it takes to be a counterweight. They will have to decide whether they want to be allies or not. And since not being allied to the strongest country in the world is not very wise, they will have to be good allies. What Europe Lacks For proud Europeans, this may sound like a call for submission. Does not the European Union even before its new round of enlargement count more citizens than the United States, have a higher gnp , is a trade power second to none with the Euro a financial heavy-weight now equalling the Dollar? The answer to all these questions is»yes«. But while these are ma­jor and impressive achievements which qualify the Union as a super­power in economic and financial terms, they do not – at least not yet – translate into strategic power. At first glance, this is puzzling. Economic and financial matters play a much greater role in international affairs today than they did during the ipg 1/2003 Bertram, Europe’s Best Interest 61