With the United States increasingly shifting its economic and diplomatic focus from Europe to the Pacific Rim and given the persistent challenges of the debt crisis, the importance of the historically-strong alliance between the United States and European Union may lessen in the future, Dutch diplomat Marcel de Vink said in a lunch discussion at the Rockefeller Center on Friday.
De Vink, the head of the political department at the Royal Dutch Embassy in Washington, spoke in a roundtable setting to an audience of five undergraduate and graduate students and Rockefeller Center staff about the changing relationship between the United States and the EU.
"There is enormous potential for the transatlantic relationship, but it's something that we need to work on and it's not self-evident," de Vink said.
Changing demographics in the United States are transforming American politics from a Eurocentric focus to a global perspective, de Vink said.
Furthermore, powerful economic developments in Asia are contributing to the "historical inevitabilities" that will diminish Europe's role on the world stage, de Vink said.
The shift in economic growth and market development from Europe to Asia is changing the relationship between the United States and the EU, de Vink said. Nevertheless, this historically powerful economic and political alliance is continuing to influence geopolitics in significant ways, he said.
"The economic relationship between the Netherlands and the United States is strong, but if you take Europe and the United States, that is the strongest economic relationship there is in the world," de Vink said. "The choices of [Chancellor Angela] Merkel in Germany may actually affect the reelection of the [U.S.] president it has a big impact."
The future of the transatlantic alliance will be significantly impacted by the European debt crisis, a "systematic problem that requires a systematic solution," de Vink said.
Another dimension of transatlantic relations is the current trajectory of imbalanced participation among nations in NATO that threatens this historically powerful military alliance.
"If the Europeans do not do more burden sharing and they let the Americans foot the bill by not investing in necessary military capabilities that the alliance needs, then I think in a changing world you might not necessarily see the same kind of commitment to NATO by the United States in the long run," de Vink said.
De Vink stressed that American relations with the EU as a collective of countries are separate from the "privileged" relations many of the member countries have with the United States. The Netherlands, for example, supported American military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan even while other member countries of the EU opposed the wars, de Vink said.
"If you actually zoom in, and on a lot of different themes, we do so much more with the United States than we would actually do with a lot of different European countries," de Vink said.
Despite close economic and political ties within the EU, the nation states nevertheless maintain their individual autonomies. In 2003, France and the Netherlands rejected a referendum held for establishing a European constitution, de Vink said.
"We are not the United States of Europe' like you have here in the United States," de Vink said. "It's a bunch of sovereign nations that do a lot of things together."
A strong supporter of the EU and the Eurozone, the Netherlands also conducts autonomous economic activities with the United States. The Netherlands is the third biggest investor and seventh biggest trading partner with the United States, de Vink said.
The close economic ties between the United States and the Netherlands may be attributed to the similarities in the two nations, he said.
"It is part of a cultural thing. I think Americans like to work with the Dutch and vice versa," de Vink said. "There is the same mentality, the same open mind, a very hands-on approach."
Kyle Krater, a program officer for the Rockefeller Center, organized the discussion after being contacted by de Vink, who is visiting New Hampshire for the Republican presidential primaries.
"[De Vink's] willingness to speak candidly on a number of sensitive topics was also appreciated, and in turn, the students in attendance were respectful and informed," Krater said.
Maryna Marchanka GR'13, a Belarusian who attended the discussion, was interested in American foreign policy toward Europe.
"It is rare that Dartmouth hosts talks on U.S.-EU relations that sparked my interest in the lecture," Marchanka said. "De Vink did not only address this issue, but also commented on recent developments inside the EU and its relations with Eastern Europe, which was of particular interest to me."
Mbumbijazo Katjivena '12 found de Vink's views on the transparency of the Dutch-U.S. relations particularly interesting, he said.
"The fact that a lot of the economic partnerships seemed to be private and not necessarily accessible to other European nations made me think about how that could potentially be problematic for the EU, since what one nation does kind of affects the rest of the EU," he said.
The lecture was sponsored by the Rockefeller Center and the Dickey Center for International Understanding.
