I've been re-reading Richard Holbrooke's excellent and only moderately self-aggrandizing Bosnia memoir, To End a War. It offers a plethora of insights into how, with Holbrooke presumably as Secretary of State, a Kerry administration actually might navigate this troublesome transatlantic relationship.
Throughout the book, Holbrooke shows concern that unless America acted forcefully to stop the killing in the former Yugoslavia, it would forfeit its leadership position in Europe and leave the Western alliance in tatters. In his role as special negotiator, Holbrooke usually acted without consulting the Contact Group, the entity nominally responsible for Bosnia that included Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. He recognized that most of the time their objections to being cut out could be mitigated by allowing them to blow off steam or grandstand in the press. He and his team put up with a great deal of obstructionism and pettiness, yet he remained committed to keeping them on board because he recognized that at the end of the day, the Western alliance was more useful than not, and allowing it to fall apart could be disastrous. To reiterate, the goal was not to submit American foreign policy to European whim and weakness, but rather the reverse: to maintain America as the leader of Europe and ensure that the Europeans were acting relatively in concert with American interests. Moreover, it was important to show the Bosnians Serbs that they were completely isolated. If Holbrooke had to kiss un peu de coule to further that end, so be it.
Here's an anecdote from Chapter 15 of the book that illustrates my point:
Before we left for the region, there was the usual round of meetings with Foreign Ministers and other officials. The most important session was with French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette in his suite at the United Nations Plaza Hotel in New York. De Charette did not share President Chirac's friendly, open style, or his admiration for American culture. [who knew? -Ed.] He was a classic high French official, elegant, aloof, always sensitive to real or imagined insults toward himself or France--a distinction that he did not seem to acknowledge. Yet even though his mission was to show that France still stood at the pinnacle of influence in Europe, on the day before our meeting he said to a group of reporters: "As President Reagan once remarked, 'America is back.'" De Charette was under pressure from his colleagues to show that the Foreign Ministry still mattered. To the annoyance of many professional French diplomats, we had been handling sensitive issues directly with Chirac's small but efficient staff at the Elysee Palace, headed by Jean-David Levitte, a brilliant young diplomat who served as Chirac's national security advisor.Does that sound like a man eager to hand over American foreign policy to France to you?
My meeting with de Charette was a microcosm of the complicated relationship between the United States and France. De Charette began with a complaint. "The French press," he said, "is saying that the United States had taken over the negotiations and left France standing on the sidelines." He expressed suspicion that we were already secretly arranging a peace conference in the United States. "It must be held in France," he said. "If not Paris, then in Evian on the Lake of Geneva. We can seal the resort hotels off from the press, and provide a calm and controlled atmosphere." He added that the European Union had agreed that France should host the peace talks--something both Germany and Britain firmly denied when asked a few days later.
I assured a skeptical de Charette that no decision had been made on the location or timing of the talks, but told him frankly that I favored an American site. De Charette proposed that we start the talks in the United States and move them to France after a predetermined time, say, two weeks. I said I did not think this woudl work, but added that perhaps we could consider a formal signing ceremony in France. As we left his hotel suite, de Charette took my arm and said, "This is very important to me and to France."
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