New Century, Old Question: Can Europe Keep Up?

By LOREN B. THOMPSON

LOREN B. THOMPSON is chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute.

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In 1968, French journalist J.J. Servan-Schreiber published a hugely influential book called The American Challenge, which argued that Europe was falling behind the United States. It was not the Soviet Union that worried him so much as the U.S. economic and technological "colossus" (as he called it) whose multinational corporations were invading Western Europe. Unless Europe transformed itself into a truly integrated regional economy capable of keeping up with the United States in the computer and aerospace industries, he warned, it would be permanently relegated to second-class status.

Today, a third of a century later, the Soviet Union is gone, and the European Union (EU) really is beginning to resemble a unified market. Arianespace, a European consortium, leads the world in commercial space launches, and Airbus has surpassed Boeing in commercial aircraft sales. But, as the Western alliance's spring air offensive over former Yugoslavia demonstrated, whether Europe can keep up with the pace of technological innovation in U.S. weapons systems is still an open question.

Servan-Schreiber's book was the most seminal study of trans-Atlantic relations in his generation because it crystallized the misgivings of many European policymakers and intellectuals about America's expanding global role. Today, those misgivings have grown even greater. The value of U.S. security guarantees is less apparent to many Europeans, while the global influence of the United States seems to be approaching something akin to hegemony.

The Clinton administration has been careful not to overplay its hand--especially in Europe--but it is hard for Europeans to overlook how dominant the United States has become on the world stage. It spends as much on defense as all the countries of Europe combined (Russia included); from biotechnology to the Internet, it dominates virtually every new technology of the digital era; two-thirds of global trade is conducted in dollars; and American culture is routinely assailed on every continent for overwhelming traditional values with materialism and sensuality.

European nations are no less susceptible to the appeals of chauvinism and envy than other countries. Indeed, they may be more susceptible because it was not so long ago that some of them dictated global economic, technological, and cultural standards. With the waning of Russian military power and Japanese economic influence, there is no external force more useful to serve as a rallying point for a common European identity than the great democracy to the west.

Just as the threat of communist aggression provided the impetus for a common alliance among the previously fractious countries of Western Europe 50 years ago, so the fear of being subverted by U.S. power and values now gives urgency to the European pursuit of a common persona. In Servan­Schreiber's day the impulse was tempered by awareness of the looming danger to the east; with that danger now dissipated, fears of the U.S. challenge can have free rein over the popular mind.

Against this backdrop, some of the goals that the Bush and Clinton administrations have pursued in Europe in the post-Cold War era look rather implausible. The notion that European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would provide suitable partners for coalition warfare was cast into doubt by the experience of the Kosovo campaign. The theory that defense research and production should be rationalized on a trans-Atlantic basis has been disproved by the business strategies of industrialists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And the belief that open trade in military goods could be achieved within the alliance has gradually run aground on the twin shoals of U.S. security concerns and European economic protectionism.

The last year of the "American Century" provided considerable evidence for the thesis that NATO without a Soviet threat is a questionable proposition over the long run. Despite some remarkable diplomatic and military successes during the year, the undertow of trans-Atlantic doubt and resentment seems to be running ever stronger, while the currents favoring common action are weakening. That is the main focus for a review of European affairs in 1999, and the obvious place to begin is Operation Allied Force--the Kosovo campaign--which unfolded over former Yugoslavia during the spring of 1999.

Coalition Warfare in the Balkans

It was supremely ironic that NATO held a Washington summit in April of last year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the alliance's founding in the midst of the first major European military campaign the allies had ever jointly prosecuted. After a decade of trying diplomatically to contain the efforts of Slobodan Milosevic to fashion a Greater Serbia out of the ruins of former Yugoslavia, the allies finally resorted to the collective use of force against his military and political apparatus. Operation Allied Force began on the third day of spring with a gradually expanding bombing campaign, and by the time it was successfully concluded 11 weeks later the last spring of the second millennium was nearly gone, along with much of Serbia's infrastructure.

The Kosovo campaign was a remarkable operation--not just because of its military prowess, but also because of the ability of the Clinton administration to hold together an ambivalent alliance. That diplomatic achievement came despite a scenario in which many of the campaign's underlying military assumptions were proved wrong, and even when it became apparent that Republicans in the Congress would not follow the tradition of muting partisan criticism in wartime. There is no need to recapitulate the partisan rhetoric surrounding U.S. involvement, but it is useful to review how wrong much of the alliance's reasoning for the campaign turned out to be.

First of all, few alliance leaders anticipated the air campaign would last longer than a week. Because the wily Serbian dictator had repeatedly backed down when confronted with Western threats, it was widely assumed that a few demonstration strikes would be sufficient to prove NATO resolve, and Milosevic then would seek some sort of accommodation. Indeed, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise was redeployed to the Persian Gulf from its NATO mission in the Adriatic shortly before hostilities commenced. But Kosovo turned out to have such heavy symbolic importance for Milosevic--whose post-communist political career had been based largely on appeals to renascent Serbian nationalism--that he did not retreat.

Quite the opposite: Serbian military and paramilitary forces in Kosovo seized the initiative by greatly accelerating the "ethnic cleansing" of the province. This was the Western alliance's second miscalculation. Its carefully sequenced plan of gradually escalating bombing had no ready answer to the forcible expulsion of nearly a million Albanian Kosovars--raising the specter that Milosevic's moves would present the West with a political fait accompli in the form of a thoroughly "cleansed" Kosovo.

After a week of light bombing--impeded in equal measure by poor weather and political micromanagement--the alliance resolved to expand the air campaign. The number of aircraft committed was doubled to 900, while the range of targets was broadened. By mid-April, 14 of NATO's 19 nations were contributing planes to the campaign, and four dozen European bases were actively supporting the air war. The USS Theodore Roosevelt and other Navy and Marine Corps ships and aircraft arrived to add their muscle to the operation.

But as the bombing expanded to tactical military targets in Kosovo and infrastructure targets around the Serbian capital of Belgrade, new problems with the allied air campaign became apparent. The suppression of enemy air defenses, regarded as the vital first step in any sustained bombing effort, proved far harder to accomplish than had been anticipated. Serbian forces operating in Kosovo also were hard to find, at least in part because of a shortage of allied ground-surveillance aircraft. In both cases, the Serbs showed considerable skill at exploiting mobility, concealment, and deception to foil allied targeters.

Another serious problem was the poor quality of many European planes committed to the fight. European aircraft generally lacked the low observables, secure communications, reliable identification friend-or-foe, and electronic-warfare gear needed to maximize survivability in hostile airspace. Fortunately, the Serbian air force was driven from the skies during the early days of the conflict, and ground-based air defenses were mostly last-generation technology with limited range and electronic countermeasures. Nonetheless, if the United States had not provided continuous electronic-warfare support from Navy and Marine Corps EA-6B Prowlers, Western losses might very well have been extensive.

With notable exceptions like the French Mirage 2000, the Europeans also lacked the sort of precision-targeting capability and "through-the-weather" munitions favored by their U.S. counterparts to maximize lethality and minimize collateral damage. U.S. forces flew 70 percent of all allied strike missions and used 80 percent of the precision-guided munitions employed. In the end, U.S. Air Force and Navy strike assets were more than sufficient to accomplish most military objectives, but the picture of European air power that emerged from the campaign was not encouraging for proponents of coalition warfare. As one senior U.S. officer disparagingly commented, "We slipped some training wheels on the Europeans and put them in the middle of the freeway; after a few days, we said, 'we better get these kids out of the road.'"

Shortfalls in European military capabilities were exacerbated by weak political resolve. France--which at 100 aircraft provided the second largest contingent of allied air power after the United States--opposed targeting Belgrade's key economic assets such as the electrical power grid until early May. Italy and Greece resisted sending any signals that suggested allied willingness to use ground forces. Russia gave material and rhetorical support to the Serbs. The difficulty of coordinating European leaders and their forces was so daunting that U.S. commanders actively sought to exclude their planes from many missions.

But for all these problems, by early June the allied air offensive had begun to take a heavy toll on Serbia's economic, military, and political infrastructure. Serbian air defenses had succeeded in downing only two Western planes--both pilots were rescued--while almost all of the allied munitions were hitting their intended targets. In an air war that saw 38,000 aircraft sorties and 26,000 bombs and missiles employed, only 20 cases of significant collateral damage were reported. At least one of those cases, the unintended B-2 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, involved poor target intelligence rather than an errant munition.

The stealthy B-2 proved particularly impressive despite having to fly 30-hour nonstop circuits from the central United States, delivering 650 satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions against over a hundred different targets in a mere 49 sorties. U.S. Navy planes flying 3,100 sorties (1,700 strike sorties) from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt also performed very well, accounting for nearly half of all the damage done to the
Serbian power grid and political apparatus. Navy and Marine Corps EA-6B Prowlers provided support jamming for all allied aircraft (including the stealthy ones), and the Navy also launched three quarters of the 219 cruise missiles used in the campaign. The sea-launched Tomahawk proved to be an extremely reliable 24-hour-a-day all-weather weapon, accounting for the destruction of nearly 50 percent of key fixed targets. It also was effective against mobile targets, destroying 85 percent of the parked aircraft, missile launchers, and early-warning radar sites it attacked.

It is not hard to see why allied leaders assumed such a vast array of airborne firepower would compel Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. But it did not--at least not all by itself. Serbian forces were so dug in around Kosovo that they seemed able to ride out the allied assault from the air indefinitely. Serbia's infrastructure had taken a pounding, but by late May allied planners were beginning to run out of targets and Milosevic still had not capitulated.

As June began, Britain and the United States were seriously considering a ground invasion despite the strong opposition of other members of the alliance. It seems likely that his awareness that planning for a ground operation was underway is the principal reason that Milosevic finally accepted allied terms on 3 June--just as constant allied reiteration earlier in the campaign that there would be no ground operation probably stiffened his resolve. Other factors in Milosevic's change of heart probably included the prolonged loss of electrical power and water pressure in Belgrade due to bombing; Russia's insistence that it could not continue to aid Serbia; and a ground offensive by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that drew Serbian forces out of their hiding places in the province, enabling allied aircraft to target them more effectively.

Allied bombing ceased on 10 June. Data released by Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark indicated that Serb forces in Kosovo had lost 93 tanks, 153 armored personnel carriers, 339 other military vehicles, and 389 artillery pieces and mortars. But the Serbian Army and paramilitary units that came out of Kosovo after the fighting ended still appeared defiant, and Milosevic was able to win several last-minute concessions such as Russian participation in the occupation of the province. At year's end, Milosevic was still in power, and the military apparatus that provides much of the basis for that power appeared to be largely intact. NATO's pronouncements of a great Western victory seem at least somewhat exaggerated, therefore.

Lessons for the Alliance

In the immediate aftermath of the Kosovo campaign there was much relief in Western capitals that allied war aims had been achieved without a ground invasion. The alliance had managed to maintain a united political front throughout the controversial bombing campaign, had suffered minimal combat losses, and had reversed the eviction of Albanian Kosovars from their homeland. The exile of Serbian Kosovars--and crimes of revenge at the hands of ethnic Albanians--soon commenced. By year's end, international observers in Kosovo accused former members of the KLA of orchestrating a campaign of hate and violence to rid the province of Serbs.

The sense of relief that NATO experienced in June also was tempered by recognition of how surprisingly difficult the campaign had been. Considering that half the world's great military powers had been arrayed against a backward Balkan rump-state of 10 million that spent less on its military in a year than the Western alliance spent in one day, the results seemed something less than decisive--especially since Europe's last dictator was still in power in Belgrade.

Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and NATO's southern region during Operation Allied Force, detected some worrisome signs in the air campaign's fitful progress. A late summer briefing drafted by his staff--and leaked to the news media--argued that micromanagement by NATO's political leaders had permeated "every aspect of planning and execution" in the operation, undercutting the alliance's military effectiveness. Instead of decisive operations, his staff charged, the alliance had waged "incremental war." Excessive concern about collateral damage had created "sanctuaries and opportunities for the adversary" that were eagerly exploited. Finally, a "lack of credible threat of ground invasion," the briefing stated, "probably prolonged the air campaign."

Ellis called for a debate of the role that politics (and politicians) should play in future military operations. Clark and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short, who led the allied Kosovo air campaign, expressed similar sentiments. However, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, gave a speech in November arguing that gradualism and heavy political oversight are probably inescapable features of coalition warfare, at least when it is conducted by a diverse, democratic alliance. This view was shared by senior members of the Clinton administration, who were more attuned to the political requirements of successful coalition warfare than many military operators. Some senior U.S. officers privately praised Clinton for persevering with the air war despite constant partisan criticism in the Congress.

One area where U.S. political and military leaders were in agreement, though, was that the performance of European forces in the Kosovo operation left much to be desired. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) after-action review on Kosovo, released to Congress in mid-October, noted that parallel U.S. and NATO command-and-control structures and systems complicated operational planning and the maintenance of unity of command. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton said that the United States needed to work with its allies to enhance NATO's contingency planning process, to develop an overarching command-and-control policy, and to enhance procedures and conduct exercises strengthening NATO's political-military interfaces.

European members of NATO had proved to be deficient in virtually every facet of military technology--from airlift to precision targeting to aerial refueling to electronic warfare to airborne surveillance. Even in relatively inexpensive technologies such as secure communications links the allies were wanting--proof, Ralston said, of how "foolish" some of their investment priorities were.

The most obvious reason for the shortfalls, said German Gen. Klaus Nauman, the retiring chairman of NATO's Military Committee, was that European members of the alliance "were very generous in giving themselves a peace dividend" when the Cold War ended. Although the regional economy of the European Union is similar in size to that of the United States, European NATO nations collectively spent only 60 percent of what the United States did on defense. And when their larger population was factored into the comparison, the Europeans spent barely half as much as the Americans in per capita terms.

But that was only the beginning of the problem, according to Cohen. At a September conference of NATO defense ministers in Toronto, he complained that the European members of NATO further diluted the value of their defense spending by failing to coordinate with one another, thereby, producing fragmented and duplicative investment programs. European NATO countries "spend roughly 60 percent of what the United States does and they get about 10 percent of the capability," Cohen said. "That has to change."

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott delivered a similar message three weeks later at a conference in London commemorating the founding of NATO. Talbott warned that if the disparities in budgetary burdens and military capabilities reflected in the Kosovo operation are not corrected, the American public (meaning Congress) would gradually tire of contributing to European security. The potential for congressional criticism became all too apparent in November, when the U.S. Army gave two of its 10 active-duty divisions the lowest possible readiness ratings because they had brigades tied down on peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Of course, the Europeans have contributed the vast majority of the 30,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and 50,000 in Kosovo. The question members of Congress and the Clinton administration were asking was whether the Europeans could contribute significantly to the more demanding challenge of peacemaking. The Europeans had sought to be responsive at the alliance's April summit in Washington, embracing a "Defense Capabilities Initiative" aimed at enhancing their interoperability, mobility, intelligence, communications, and logistics. The 58 separate goals of the initiative, if actually implemented, would go a long way toward addressing U.S. complaints that the Europeans have not been sharing the security burden equally.

But "paper is patient," as an old German saying observes. Whether the declarations at the Washington summit and subsequent meetings will translate into sustained increases in military investment on the part of the Europeans is unclear. The government of Germany sent a discouraging sign after the summit when it signaled its defense budget for next year would probably be cut, rather than increased, in order to address more pressing domestic obligations. Because Germany's economy is so much larger than that of the other European NATO members, any failure on Berlin's part to fund more ambitious military spending plans would almost surely doom European efforts to catch up.

A further complication was introduced by France, which has not actually been part of the alliance's military structure since President Charles de Gaulle pulled it out in 1966--but nonetheless constantly offers suggestions for improving NATO's role in European security. In mid-November the French government released an assessment of the Kosovo operation that conceded its military was deficient in key warfighting technologies. The findings were similar to an earlier lessons-learned report compiled by Great Britain. But, unlike the British study, the French assessment went on to complain that "part of the military operations were conducted by the United States outside the strict framework of NATO and its proceedings."

That was a somewhat surprising criticism coming from France, since Paris had been the main impediment to unrestricted use of U.S. air power throughout the campaign. However, complaints about U.S. unilateralism were a frequent theme in French pronouncements on the meaning of Kosovo during the summer and fall of 1999. A French Senate report in August warned of "crushing American superiority" in cutting-edge military capabilities, and it asserted that during the Balkan operation "the United States had a virtual monopoly of information on the opponent but did not always share it with its allies." The French generally concluded from such findings that Europe needed to be less dependent on the United States for the means of conducting warfare.

Other European states felt the same way, but perhaps not as passionately as Paris. In early October, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana relinquished his position in the alliance to become the EU's first High Representative for a Common Foreign and Security Policy. EU leaders gave the former socialist a mandate to devise a common defense identity for the union by the end of 2000 that would enable it to act autonomously from the United States if security objectives diverged. The Clinton administration responded warily to this move, worrying that the EU might eventually eclipse NATO in European security arrangements--excluding the United States from a central role in the process. The Wall Street Journal commented that the Europeans and the United States were "behaving like a husband and wife preparing for a messy divorce."

Whether it will actually come to that is unclear. EU security plans at present are so nebulous that they may never amount to much--especially if members refuse to spend more on their militaries. Even within Europe, the membership of NATO and the EU are not coterminous. Ireland and Sweden are part of the union but not of the alliance. Turkey is a key member of the alliance, but its perennial applications for membership in the union have been blocked by Greece. How these complexities would be sorted out in a pan-European security framework is anyone's guess. It also is not clear if the EU could muster the assertive political leadership needed to galvanize action when dealing with a crisis comparable to that encountered in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo--leadership traditionally provided by the United States in NATO's political and military frameworks.

For all the uncertainty, though, it was clear by the end of 1999 that most European nations saw in Operation Allied Force a message that change is needed. Even the United Kingdom, with stronger ties to the United States and weaker ties to the continent than other EU members, seems persuaded that Europe needs a more unified security posture to match its increasingly integrated marketplace and legal structures. Indeed, some observers thought they saw implicit market support for a unified defense establishment during the year in the cross-border merger moves of major European military suppliers.

Defense Industry Integration

Last year began with British Aerospace's acquisition of the Marconi Electronics defense and missile business owned by the General Electric Company (U.K.)--creating a $20 billion military and aerospace enterprise. That move disappointed some U.S. policymakers who had hoped to see a trans-Atlantic merger of military suppliers. But since the new combination only involved British companies, it did not really further the integration of Europe's or NATO's defense industries.

A more portentous development was announced in October, when DaimlerChrysler Aerospace agreed to merge with France's Aerospatiale Matra to create the world's third largest defense and aerospace company (after Boeing and Lockheed Martin). A week later, Aerospatiale, British Aerospace, and Finmeccanica agreed to merge their missile business. Since Finmeccanica was already partnered with British Aerospace's Marconi unit in a missile venture and DaimlerChrysler's missile lines were about to be merged with those of Aerospatiale, the end result would be a single pan-European missile producer.

The exclusively European character of these combinations provoked consternation in the United States, where Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre and other senior Pentagon policymakers had been urging European military suppliers to merge with U.S. defense contractors so that the industry could be rationalized on a trans-Atlantic basis. By late October, though, Hamre was saying that the vast scale of the new European enterprises effectively precluded major trans-Atlantic mergers.

The marketplace thus has produced a series of business moves that reinforce the European urge to pursue a security role separate from and independent of the United States. U.S. defense companies are increasingly pessimistic that they will be able to sell their products in Europe in the future. And since the Airbus commercial airliner consortium will be jointly owned by British Aerospace and the new DaimlerChrysler/Aerospatiale combination, economic considerations are likely to encourage a further European sense of isolation from U.S. interests. Unless Russia suddenly regains its former stature as a looming threat to the collective security of the West--an improbable development--U.S. and European interests are likely to continue diverging.

The Helpless Giant

It is a measure of how greatly the European political landscape has shifted since the end of the Cold War that an assessment of regional security developments in the past year could have gotten this far without turning to the subject of Russia. The Russian economy and political culture showed little sign of recovery in 1999 from the depressed conditions of recent years. Per-capita gross domestic product has plummeted by a third since the beginning of the decade. In real terms--after accounting for inflation--Russia's economy today is about half the size of the Soviet Union's economy in the late 1980s, when it was already lagging far behind the West. Corruption and inefficiency are rampant, in part because the government of President Boris Yeltsin has allowed political considerations to drive the restructuring of state-owned enterprises. Many state enterprises have been kept alive despite abysmal productivity, sapping the strength of a nascent private sector. When privatization does occur, Yeltsin's cronies are often the main beneficiaries.

Other parts of the former Soviet Union are struggling too. The gross domestic product of the Ukraine has contracted at an average annual rate of 11 percent since 1988, producing such widespread dissatisfaction that nearly half of the electorate voted for communist and socialist candidates in the first round of presidential balloting in mid-autumn. The Ukrainian economy today is estimated to be about 40 percent of its size in the late 1980s. In general, the further east former communist countries are located, the bleaker their economic circumstances. Poland and Hungary have fared reasonably well, with per-capita wealth levels approaching twice the Russian figure. How much of this differential is due to geography--proximity to the open markets of Western Europe--and how much is due to culture or political inertia is unclear.

What is clear to many Russians is that their nation no longer controls its fate. With health trends similar to an underdeveloped country and chronic political infighting creating widespread disillusionment with democracy, the public seems increasingly willing to back any leader who can put an end to the decay of the Yeltsin era. That concerns other European leaders, whose domestic and defense agendas are predicated on the assumption that Russia will not revisit its former expansionist policies.

Even if radical nationalists or reform communists seized power in Moscow, though, it would be a long time before the Russian military could regain its former stature. An October assessment by DOD's National Defense University found that "the Russian armed forces are in disarray, and will require two to three decades to recover." The collapse of Russian military power is so profound, NDU warned, that a political vacuum has been created in Central Asia. The latest round of fighting in the Southern Caucasus is one manifestation of this.

Another manifestation is the grow-ing Russian dependence on nuclear weapons in its defense posture. Gen. Ralston, who has been designated to succeed Gen. Clark as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in late October that "as conventional capabilities erode, they [the Russians] will rely more on their nuclear forces." Ralston warned that "we have to do everything we can to make sure Russia does not become a failed state." Unfortunately, Congressional support for aid to the beleaguered states has waned as evidence emerged that the Russians were diverting funds to other purposes. Congress even slashed funds for the demilitarization of Russian nuclear forces--despite hearing that 4,800 nuclear warheads, 365 intercontinental missiles, and 49 bombers have been destroyed under the Nunn-Lugar program.

Russia's nuclear establishment today is a pale shadow of its Cold War scale. Although its 17 nuclear-weapons production facilities still employ 100,000 scientists and engineers, annual output of warheads has fallen from 4,000 at the height of the Cold War to perhaps 200 today. The Russians are deploying a new single-warhead, mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) (the SS-27) to replace multiple-warhead missiles banned by the second round of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks--even though the Duma has not actually ratified the treaty--but the new systems are appearing at the rate of only one per month. Plans for a new class of ballistic-missile submarines have been delayed, forcing the Navy to defer decommissioning of Delta III submarines. Even the Russian early-warning system is in disrepair, providing such unreliable coverage that the United States has stepped in to provide assistance.

Against this backdrop, Russian threats about U.S. plans to build a thin national missile defense system ring hollow. Russian leaders claim the system--designed to counter small nuclear attacks by rogue states such as North Korea--will compromise their nuclear deterrent. Any move to modify the 1972 ABM (Antiballistic Missile) treaty, they say, may provoke a surge in Russian offensive deployments. Some Western European governments take this threat seriously, but the Clinton administration and Republican-led Congress seem less than impressed. It now looks likely that, despite European apprehensions the United States will decide to go ahead with the start of construction of a defensive network in June 2000.

So where does all this leave Europe at the end of the American Century? Much as Charles Dickens described it in A Tale of Two Cities at the time in history when the United States was being founded. It is the best of times and the worst of times, a period of peace and prosperity in the West, depression and dissolution in the East, and hope mixed with apprehension among the states caught in between. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder captured Europe's uncertainty about the future when he commemorated the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November, pointing out that it was on the same day in 1938 that the Nazis launched the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews that foreshadowed the Holocaust. Imperialism, Fascism, Communism--they all seem today to be part of Europe's past. But what the future holds is no more settled than it was when the century began.