Posted on 02/27/2003 4:16:52 PM PST by MadIvan
Like a vast silver eagle, the USAF military transport plane swooped over the city of Frankfurt, past the fairytale towers of the banks glittering in the sun, bound for the Gulf. My German companion muttered imprecations under her breath. "We are afraid of them now," she said. She did not mean al-Qa'eda, let alone Saddam Hussein. She meant the Americans. "Bush and Rumsfeld mention us in the same breath as Libya and Cuba. Is this how it begins?"
The Americans have been based at Frankfurt for nearly 60 years. But for how much longer? Protectors and protected have fallen out. Gerhard Schröder is the first German chancellor since Hitler not to be on speaking terms with the American president. They both speak English, but they do not speak the same language.
On Wednesday, George W. Bush reminded Europeans, and Germans in particular, of America's democratic mission: "After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies. We left constitutions and parliaments." But the Germans hear only the voice of the zealot. Joschka Fischer told his diplomats after visiting Washington that the Bush Administration was dominated by ideologues. "I have a nose for these people," declared the foreign minister who, in a youthful rebel phase, took to beating up a policeman.
The Americans have always been demonised by some Europeans; what is new is that political elites no longer feel any obligation to defend them. Tony Blair and his anti-war critics, inside and outside the Commons, do not merely disagree: they do not argue on the same plane. It is not that Blair and Bush have failed to "make the case", rather that, instead of listening to their advocacy, the jury of European public opinion prefers to place them in the dock.
How has it come to this? Robert Kagan, an American based in Brussels, has come up with the most persuasive answer so far. "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world," as he puts it in the arresting first sentence of his new book, Paradise and Power, out next week.
Kagan is the first to admit openly that the marriage may be on the rocks, which is why he has deservedly shot from the obscurity of a think tank to become the most talked about intellectual on either side of the Atlantic.
What does Kagan mean by claiming that Americans and Europeans do not occupy the same world? The different worlds he has in mind are intellectual ones. The Europeans, he argues, believe they inhabit a "post-historical paradise" ruled by international law, from which power politics is banished and the Kantian vision of "perpetual peace" is realised.
"Meanwhile," he continues, "the United States remains mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world." The Kagan thesis has become such a talking point because it offers an explanatory framework for the unprecedented bitterness of the transatlantic row over Iraq. Kagan insists that this is no passing dispute, of the kind that Western leaders have often had before, but a yawning "strategic chasm", reflecting irreconcilable differences in psychology and power. To speak of "the West", as we did throughout the Cold War, no longer makes sense of a world in which the Allies cannot agree about what the alliance is for.
Why has this divergence of world views occurred? Kagan's original article was entitled "Power and Weakness", and a central part of the argument is that the European aversion to power, especially as manifested in American policy, is a direct consequence of military weakness. As the disparity between European and American forces has grown since the end of the Cold War, so the attitudes of each side to external threats have parted company. The ideological and material differences between Europe and the US reinforce one another, and "the divisive trends they together produce may be impossible to reverse."
Kagan sums up his analysis in an even more startling phrase: "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." The implication that Americans are martial and virile, while Europeans are effeminate, has already earned its author a rebuke from Timothy Garton Ash, who warns in Prospect magazine: "The real danger now is that vulgar Kaganism will become popular on both sides of the Atlantic because people either believe Kagan's 'dual caricature' or - and I think this is happening - are looking for ways to emphasise the gulf."
It is rather hard to accuse Kagan of being complicit in his own vulgarisation, when he has gone to great pains in his book to avoid anti-European bias. The book itself is anything but vulgar. In only a hundred pages, Kagan ranges over history and strategy, philosophy and economics. If Kagan has been misunderstood, it is probably because he has not been vulgar enough.
Kagan is perfectly aware that his Texan Martians and French Venusians are caricatures. But caricatures may well embody an essential truth. Europeans do often see Bush as a cowboy, for example, and Kagan thinks they are not entirely wrong: "The United States does act as an international sheriff, self-appointed but widely welcomed nevertheless," he writes. "Europe, by this Wild West analogy, is more like the saloon keeper. Outlaws shoot sheriffs, not saloon keepers. In fact, from the saloon keeper's point of view, the sheriff trying to impose order by force can sometimes be more threatening than the outlaws."
But Kagan's prognosis is less gloomy than his diagnosis. He does not believe that the US will withdraw from its global responsibilities; if its leaders were tempted to do so, September 11 forcibly reminded them that, abroad, Hobbesian anarchy predominates. While he does not expect the gap between European and American military power to do anything but widen, he believes that the two world views need not necessarily come into conflict: "There need be no 'clash of civilisations' within what used to be called 'the West'."
The task is, rather, to "readjust to the reality of American hegemony". This may be harder for Europeans than for Americans. But the European "civilising mission" to extend the frontiers of their earthly paradise to embrace all humanity cannot be accomplished without allowing America to pursue what has become its manifest destiny: to subdue the enemies of civilisation.
What Kagan and this article also fails to say is that it is morally wrong to expect that the Americans should just "pick up the tab" for defence. I am proud that my country is willing to pay the "blood price", because it means we are making a statement as a people that there are things worth fighting for. There is absolutely no excuse for other European nations not doing the same thing; we are free, our duty to freedom is to show the necessary rigour and courage to defend it.
Regards, Ivan
They believe that complicated and persuasive language in a treaty is binding to willfully illiterate barbarians.
Rome had its Vandals, Visi-goths, and Celts; Modern Europe has it's Mugabe's, Hussein's, and Kim's.
Idealist Kangan can prophesize all he likes. But there WILL be a revolt WITHIN the EU eventually.
You heard it here first!
Like a vast silver eagle, the USAF military transport plane swooped over the city of Frankfurt, past the fairytale towers of the banks glittering in the sun, bound for the Gulf. My German companion muttered imprecations under her breath. "We are afraid of them now," she said. She did not mean al-Qa'eda, let alone Saddam Hussein. She meant the Americans. "Bush and Rumsfeld mention us in the same breath as Libya and Cuba. Is this how it begins?"
Be afraid. Be very, very, afraid.
Mr. Ash.
*sigh*
You are a serious scholar, aren't you? Why is it so hard for you to understand that Robert Kagan is your friend?
I cannot think of anyone who is kinder and more understanding to Europeans than Kagan.
If you happen to stumble into this "right-wing American forum", you should click on this FreeRepublic thread: Old And In The Way (Decline and Fall of Europe)".
I suspect that by now, many Americans are closer to Mr. Zinsmeister's view than to Mr. Kagan's. More's the pity. I am very unhappy about this widening gulf between the United States and Europe. But you, Mr. Ash, and your conceited, vain belief in the European way of "strength from weakness" are a chief culprit in this development.
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