The drive to create an EU diplomatic corps is supported by the US administration, not so much as an end in itself but rather within the wider context of Washington favouring a common European foreign policy. The old adage attributed to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger - “who do I call if I want to call Europe?” - is still often cited in discussions around the US capital. Whenever the subject of transatlantic relations comes up, US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other US officials tend to make positive noises about the Lisbon Treaty, the document that provides the legal basis for the new EU corps. That said, there seems little interest in the details of how it comes about.

An EU diplomatic corps furthers US interests - potentially - by helping to unify EU and US positions on hot button foreign policy issues. For example, the US administration has been pleased with the way the EU and US have worked together in agreeing new, tougher sanctions - at UN, EU and national level - against Iran to prevent it developing nuclear weapons. Washington recognises the value of the transatlantic diplomatic community speaking with one voice when deciding what to do in the hot spots around the world, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Africa. This has in fact generally been the case for decades and should not be viewed as a new policy direction taken by the Obama administration. For example, it was so even in the later years of the administration of George W. Bush, a presidency generally viewed as a nadir in transatlantic relations. Bush’s initial scepticism of the embryonic common EU defence policy, with the military and police missions it entailed, gradually subsided as his administration became persuaded that its benefits outweighed its disadvantages.

There does remain, however, a sizeable segment of the political class in Washington - predominantly the conservative wing of the Republican Party - which casts a colder eye on the nascent EU diplomatic corps. The influential conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, for example, is constantly sounding alarm bells about the dangers of US bilateral relations with individual European countries being undermined by intra-EU integration. There is particular concern about the future of the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the United Kingdom and about a potential weakening of NATO, which has been the bedrock of transatlantic defence cooperation since World War II. Probed in a recent interview by Europolitics about the risk of an EU diplomatic corps rendering national embassies redundant, the new EU Ambassador to the US, João Vale de Almeida, replied “that is an issue for the member states”. At the same time, he stressed that integrating national diplomats into EU delegations, as provided for in Lisbon, would “add value” to the EU delegations “by bringing in freshness”.