Posted on 08/12/2002 7:31:05 PM PDT by Sawdring
The foreign-policy gap between Europeans and Americans is getting bigger again
LAST autumn it all seemed very different. Galvanised by outrage at the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Europeans rushed to align themselves with the United States. Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, proclaimed “unlimited solidarity” with America. The editor of France's left-leaning Le Monde wrote a front-page editorial headlined “We are all Americans now.” Tony Blair got a standing ovation in Congress in recognition of Britain's staunch support for the United States.
Almost a year on, the mood has changed. On August 5th Mr Schröder, hitting the campaign trail in Hanover, warned the United States against “playing around with war or military action” in Iraq. On the same day, Le Monde published another front-page piece, this time lamenting the mutual “incomprehension” between Europe and the United States and the “mood of indifference, indeed of mistrust, towards France and Europe, in the entourage surrounding President Bush.”
Mr Blair remains grimly determined to be the Americans' staunch ally. But British voices raised against participation in an attack on Iraq now range from the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, to top retired generals and backbench MPs in Mr Blair's own party. An opinion poll for television's Channel 4 in Britain this week showed 52% of Britons against joining an American-led attack and just 34% in favour.
So what has changed? The shock of September 11th has certainly faded much faster in Europe than in America. But even soon after the attacks it was already clear that while Europeans would go along with an assault on Afghanistan, they were sceptical about taking on Iraq. This remains so, both among elites and among the public. Polling by the Pew Research Centre in April showed that 69% of Americans favoured military action against Saddam Hussein, compared with 46% in Britain and France and 34% in Germany and Italy.
Disagreement about Iraq is linked to divergence over Palestine. Simplifying a little, conventional European opinion is that the Middle East will never be stable until the Palestinians have their state, and that to attack Iraq before then risks setting the region on fire. The hawks in Washington see things the other way around. They argue that Iraq destabilises the Middle East because it stokes Palestinian militancy. But talk in Washington of “regime change” in Iraq, Iran or even Saudi Arabia causes huge anxiety in Europe, where people fear where American policy is going to lead them. Henning Riecke, of the German Council for Foreign Relations in Berlin, says that German opinion seems to be at least as alarmed by “American bullying” as by any threat from Iraq.
Anti-Americanism in Europe is not new. Nor, during the long cold war, were rows across the Atlantic unusual. But what Europeans are now seeing is what they regard as a new kind of “anti-Europeanism” in Washington. Articles by George Will and Charles Krauthammer, two influential American commentators, arguing that European hostility to Israel revealed the continent to be in the grip of rampant anti-Semitism, outraged policymakers in Europe. Scarcely less comforting are jibes from right-wing Republicans about “euro-weenies” or articles like one by Walter Russell Mead, of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, arguing that “Americans just don't trust Europe's political judgment. Appeasement is its second nature. Europeans have never met a leader—Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Qaddafi, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein—they didn't think could be softened up by concessions.”
Have the doves flown the coop? Of course there are more moderate voices, on both sides of the Atlantic. Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, is hailed in Europe as Washington's voice of reason and multilateralism. France, always regarded as the most anti-American of the big European countries, has a new foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, who stresses the common values and interests that tie his country to the United States.
But do they, still? Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the gulf between Europe and America is a sense that basic values and interests are diverging. This idea was crystallised in a recent article by Robert Kagan, an American writer, which has been much circulated and discussed in Brussels. He argues that the EU, being weak, has an interest in a “self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and co-operation”, while the United States believes that “international laws and rules are unreliable” and “true security and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.”
Many European policymakers think Mr Kagan has defined a real difference of approach, of which Iraq is a perfect example. France and Germany both say that they will support an attack on Iraq only if it is endorsed by the United Nations. Only the British endorse the American argument that Iraq's breach of its ceasefire terms is authority enough.
In the long run, European discomfort with an American war of pre-emption against “rogue states” cannot but widen the Atlantic gap. Does it matter? Mr Kagan argues that America can maintain global security without much help from Europe. And if the Europeans keep squawking? “The day could come, if it has not already, when Americans will no more heed the pronouncements of the EU than they do [those of] ASEAN or the Andean pact.”
Richard Haass, head of policy planning at the American State Department, said something similar to a conference in June of the EU's Institute for Security Studies. The danger was not of some crisis across the Atlantic but of a European “loss of relevance”. Americans felt they had finished the post-war and post-cold war job of making Europe whole and free. To remain influential in America, he said, Europe would have to engage in places such as the Middle East and Asia where America feels its new challenges lie.
Understandably, few Europeans believe that a lone American sheriff can enforce global order. The Europeans are acutely aware of their military weakness. But many argue that the United States may need international law and international consent more than it realises. One senior official in Brussels cites the observation of Henry Kissinger, usually regarded as the high priest of realpolitik, that American power must ultimately rest on a “moral consensus” that the United States is a force for good in the world.
That consensus has already eroded in Europe. When the Pew Centre pollsters asked if America was acting mainly in its own interests in the “war on terrorism”, 80% of French people and 85% of Germans agreed. And so did 73% of Britons.
Well, I'll be damned, the Euroweenies (no hyphen) finally got something right!
Brothers and Sisters! Can I get an Amen!
When "Our brave allies" as a group couldn't deal with Yugoslavia, The land of the disposable car, I decided that anything that came out of their leaders mouths that had to do with the military should be waded up and thrown away. Just like a Yugo.
a.cricket
All European Freepers are, of course, declared exceptions to this blanket statement.
I'd say that this is utterly true, but understates the nature of the divide that separates the US from the continentals, and to a lesser extent, the UK. The US, and its people, are not only more realistic in this regard than the Euros, but are further divided in that there is a consenus in the US that objective good and evil exist in the world, that it's possible to distinguish the two, and that we're on the right side in this battle. This viewpoint is socially unacceptable just about everywhere in Europe, and on American colleg campuses.
I'm only concerned that the divide is getting smaller, because we're succumbing to the relativism and deconstructivist nonsense now prevalent in Europe.
Very good piece.
Thanks for posting it.
If the Europeans do not stand up to the Muslims now, they will wind up living in an Islamic theocracy.
I am waiting.
Rebuttle please?
(Insert sound of cricket, here.)
Yep.
"I'm only concerned that the divide is getting smaller, because we're succumbing to the relativism and deconstructivist nonsense now prevalent in Europe."
I disagree, the media would have it be so but it isnt...for the most part, even Liberal Americans cannot hide their kneejerk reaction judge according to moral & righteous standards. Average Americans [If there is such a thing] still have an ability to discern what course is required when confronted with evil.
This is about all I need to hear from Mr. Kissinger.
It's a shame that, after all his years in government work, he still doesn't understand that US power will be used according to the 'moral consensus' of the US people.
And that morality stands up to scrutiny better than the judgment of any other nation or international body in history.
What I would like to know from the Eurocrats is whether they plan to succumb to or suppress Islamic nationalism as it rises in their countries in the next several decades. In fact, we will solve the problem for them....again.
We've had a good case of it in America since Sputnik. Maybe since Korea. Can't do systems anymore, it's just global warming and endangered species these days.
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