For those Americans who wanted to get their girlfriends a nice Chanel dress or French lingerie for Valentine’s day but have now decided to boycot French fashion because of the Anti-American tendencies of the French government, some of the items available here may offer at least some relief.
Schlagwort-Archive: transatlantic relations
Seriously, guys.
Sorry for the lack of updates. I will write more later, but this one could not wait.
I just checked the MIT’s blogdex and found an “instapundit.com” entry ranked #38. The entry links this article concerning the increasing isolation of France and Germany following yesterday’s Aznar-Bush advertising campaign. Today, Slovakia and Albania signed up, too. Remember Albania? The county that virtually attacked the US in Barry Levinson’s “Wag The Dog“?
Anyway, Albania is not what I wanted to talk about. As Glenn Reynolds rightly notices –
The article goes on to minimize (if that’s possible) the military importance of Albania and Slovakia.
But then he says something which I could not find in the article he linked to and which really makes me wonder about the quality of information out there these days.
He goes on to say –
“But that’s not the point. The point is that — despite (or because of) their diplomatic anschluss — France and Germany are now isolated within the E.U. Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.”
Excuse me? Let me repeat it for your reading pleasure.
“Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.”
How far is Europe from the US again? Seriously guys, it does make a huge difference to say that
a) the joint European position, which EU foreign ministers agreed on last Monday is about to splinter as a result of non-reconcilable positions – as actually stated in the linked article – or that
b) the EU, a supranational entity with a common market, which is performing governmental, legislative and judicial functions for its member states could be disbanded because of a foreign policy dispute regarding Iraq. However important the Iraq-question may have become – such a proposition is sheer and utter nonsense.
Mr Reynolds also rather doubts the proposition, adding that –
“[t]hat probably won’t happen…”
No, it will CERTAINLY NOT happen. I really wonder if this proposition has actually been made, and if so, by whom? And why?
It is this kind of avoidable disinformation does make me angry. Seriously.
Now we’re talking…
Now look at that.
If ‘old’ Europe’s support were indeed as damn irrelevant to the US administration as many of its senior officials have repeatedly stated – why, then, would someone like Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s defense advisory board and one of the key figures behind the Bush administration’s Irak policy, find the time to appear on German tv for a six minute interview on the day of the President’s “State Of The Union” address?
And believe it or not – while firmly restating the well known simple WMD based argument for attacking Iraq – he often referred to European “friends“, not weasels, that do not share the US administration’s point of view in many respects. I have to say, for someone who (seriously?) stated after last year’s German election that
“[t]he best thing would be for [German chancellor Gerhard Schröder] to resign…”,
this appears to be a quite remarkable change of communication strategy.
So maybe Bush won’t add France and Germany to the “Axis of Evil” tonight ;-). And maybe, his speechwriters have realised by now that they are not simply writing for their neoconservative constituency. Maybe, they have realised that a lot of Americans do care about the world’s, and thus – also – ‘old’ Europe’s opinion, and that international opposition can damage approval ratings – at least before America goes to war. Maybe they have realised that Harvard’s Joseph Nye may have had a point (even though he was a Clinton official, and thus also some sort of honorary weasel) when he described The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone. Maybe they have realised that, tonight, their words will be examined by the entire world.
Maybe this is wishful thinking. But maybe, the world will be spared from another “Axis of Evil” tonight – I certainly hope so.
I recently read a review of “The Right Man”, a book containing some insights into the Bush administration, written by David Frum, a former speechwriter. In this review, Jeffrey A. Tucker writes –
“Remember the famous “Axis of Evil” phrase? It was originally “Axis of Hatred,” and it was written by Frum. Why? Frum writes: “Bush decided that the United States was no longer a status-quo power in the Middle East. He wanted to see plans for overthrowing Saddam, and he wanted a speech that explained to the world why Iraq’s dictator must go. And from that presidential decision, bump, bump, bump down the hierarchy… to me.”
Again, what can this mean? Bush knew he wanted to get rid of Saddam but didn’t know why? He hires people like Frum to drum up some, any, rationale?”
Stories like these do not automatically disqualify the political goal to oust Saddam. But they are clearly not helpful to win a sceptical world’s support. So now, let’s hear what the US President is going to tell us this year. Oh, and while we’re watching, we might as well have a little fun.
USA Oui! Bush Non!
The Nation’s Eric Alterman has written a rather witty account of the myths concerning European anti-Americanism enstrangement. It’s a bit like the Timothy Garton Ash piece – but written looking at the Eiffel Tower instead of the Empire State building. And it’s a bit more fun to read.
One of the most surprising things he says is that for him, even these days, Europe is the cooler America. He even (somewhat) denies that there is real Anti-Americanism in Europe –
“You can tell a lot about a continent by the way it reacts to Bruce Springsteen. Tonight, at the Bercy Stadium, the typically multigenerational, sold-out Springsteen audience could be from Anytown, USA. […] You can’t be anti-American if you love Bruce Springsteen. You can criticize America. You can march against America’s actions in the world. You can take issue with the policies of its unelected, unusually aggressive and unthinking Administration, and you can even get annoyed with its ubiquitous cultural and commercial presence in your life. But you can’t be anti-American.”
– and –
“What most Europeans seem to recognize is that this is a big, beautiful and damn complicated country. For every George Bush, we have a Spike Lee. For every Charlton Heston, we have a Paul Newman. For every Lee Greenwood, there’s a Lauryn Hill or a Wynton Marsalis.”
However, he draws the same conclusion regarding the American political and social divide as Garton Ash and so many other do these days. And he cites an article from “Le Monde Diplomatique” sharing my opinion that “old” Europe might have even gone along with a US led invasion of Iraq had the case been made by Bill Clinton instead of W –
“It’s not as if Europeans can’t stand the idea of a conservative Republican President. To a surprising degree, they warmed to Ronald Reagan, as Alain Frachon, who writes about foreign affairs on the editorial page of Le Monde, explains. ‘When Reagan was President, we never had the impression he was motivated by fundamentalism. He was divorced. He had worked in Hollywood. But this George Bush is totally foreign to us. He quotes the Bible every two or three sentences. He is surrounded by Christian fundamentalists. He says he has no problem sleeping after sending someone to death. There was a dose of charm, humor, of Hollywood to Reagan. But not to Bush. It’s another world and one we find extraordinarily hypocritical. No one told us that the Republicans had moved this far to the right.’ Things were quite different under Bill Clinton. As Serge Halimi, the leftist editor of Le Monde diplomatique, the publication that is frequently accused of being the intellectual home of the anti-American worldview, argues, ‘The hostility to US policy would be lessened with Clinton in the White House, even assuming that these policies were exactly the same as Bush’s.'”
And just as I do, Mr Alterman believes there is hope for the eagle and the weasel –
“There is a pro-American world out there, in Europe in particular but elsewhere as well. It is just waiting for an America it can respect as well as admire. For all the intentional insults this Administration has thrown their way, our European well-wishers have not given up on what’s best in us, no matter how often they feel forced to voice their frustration with the leaders our fundamentally flawed political system presents them with.” (emphasis added)
But there is one thing in the article which, I think, is not exactly true, and which some people in the British Tory party will find clearly insulting –
“Even most of the conservative parties in Europe are to the left of the Democrats in [America].”
Oh my, should Ian Duncan Smith read this he will make them shift even further to the right…
Clinton, The Honorary Weasel
Timothy Garton Ash must have read my last entry ;-) and turned it into what I think is a brilliant piece on “Anti Europeanism in America, published in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.
Of course, his essay was already being printed when the “axis of weasel” became popular last weekend. But at least he remarked the popularity of “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” to describe the French.
According to Mr Garton Ash a study should be written about Sex And The Continents –
“If anti-American Europeans see “the Americans” as bullying cowboys, anti-European Americans see “the Europeans” as limp-wristed pansies. The American is a virile, heterosexual male; the European is female, impotent, or castrated. Militarily, Europeans can’t get it up. (After all, they have fewer than twenty “heavy lift” transport planes, compared with the United States’ more than two hundred.)”
Confirming the importance of listening to each other which I emphasized in my last entry he states that –
“As a European writer, I would not want to treat American “anti-Europeanism” in the way American writers often treat European “anti-Americanism.” We have to distinguish between legitimate, informed criticism of the EU or current European attitudes and some deeper, more settled hostility to Europe and Europeans as such. Just as American writers should, but often don’t, distinguish between legitimate, informed European criticism of the Bush administration and anti-Americanism…”
He states that American claims of indifference concerning the European attitude towards America are probably vastly overstated –
“Certainly, my interlocutors took a lot of time and passion to tell me how little they cared. And the point about the outspoken American critics of Europe is that they are generally not ignorant of or indifferent to Europe. They know Europe – half of them seem to have studied at Oxford or in Paris – and are quick to mention their European friends.” –
at least as long as more informed people are concerned. In Mr Garton Ash’s opinion –
“[i]n fact, the predominant American popular attitude toward Europe is probably mildly benign indifference, mixed with impressive ignorance. I traveled around Kansas for two days asking people I met: “If I say ‘Europe’ what do you think of?” Many reacted with a long, stunned silence, sometimes punctuated by giggles. Then they said things like “Well, I guess they don’t have much huntin’ down there” (Vernon Masqua, a carpenter in McLouth); “Well, it’s a long way from home” (Richard Souza, whose parents came from France and Portugal); or, after a very long pause for thought, “Well, it’s quite a ways across the pond” (Jack Weishaar, an elderly farmer of German descent). If you said “America” to a farmer or carpenter in even the remotest village of Andalusia or Ruthenia, he would, you may be sure, have a whole lot more to say on the subject.”
In the end, he also seems to conclude that a lot of America’s Amti-Europeanism simply mirrors the political and social divisions within the United States –
“Anti-Americanism and anti-Europeanism are at opposite ends of the political scale. European anti-Americanism is mainly to be found on the left, American anti-Europeanism on the right. The most outspoken American Euro-bashers are neoconservatives using the same sort of combative rhetoric they have habitually deployed against American liberals. In fact, as Jonah Goldberg [ “National Review Online editor and self-proclaimed conservative “frog-basher”, according to Garton-Ash ] himself acknowledged to me, “the Europeans” are also a stalking-horse for liberals. So, I asked him, was Bill Clinton a European? “Yes,” said Goldberg, “or at least, Clinton thinks like a European. […] There is some evidence that the left-right divide characterizes popular attitudes as well. […] It seems a hypothesis worth investigating that actually it’s Republicans who are from Mars and Democrats who are from Venus.”
The last interesting point he makes is one indicating that the solution to the current quarrels could indeed lie in the Middle East – just not in Iraq. When asking when the problem became a media issue he finds that is was –
“[i]n early 2002, with the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. The Middle East is both a source and a catalyst of what threatens to become a downward spiral of burgeoning European anti-Americanism and nascent American anti-Europeanism, each reinforcing the other. Anti-Semitism in Europe, and its alleged connection to European criticism of the Sharon government, has been the subject of the most acid anti-European commentaries from conservative American columnists and politicians. Some of these critics are themselves not just strongly pro-Israel but also “natural Likudites,” one liberal Jewish commentator explained to me. In a recent article Stanley Hoffmann writes that they seem to believe in an “identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States.”[20] Pro-Palestinian Europeans, infuriated by the way criticism of Sharon is labeled anti-Semitism, talk about the power of a “Jewish lobby” in the US, which then confirms American Likudites’ worst suspicions of European anti-Semitism, and so it goes on, and on.[A problem] difficult for a non-Jewish European to write about without contributing to the malaise one is trying to analyze…”
But there’s hope the Eagle and the Weasel are not going to keep fighting forever, as he says with reference to the argument that Russia united the West, and the Middle East separates it –
“[c]oolly examined, such a division is extremely stupid. Europe, just next door and with a large and growing Islamic population, has an even more direct vital interest in a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Middle East than the United States does. Moreover, I found two senior administration officials in Washington quite receptive to the argument – which is beginning to be made by some American commentators – that the democratization of the greater Middle East should be the big new transatlantic project for a revitalized West. But that’s not how it looks at the moment.”
And why doesn’t it look like that at the moment? Because (many, not all of) the most prominent Republican administration officials in the US show a clear lack manners when it comes to talking to a lady – oops, to Europe. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.
Living Like Weasels.
“Weasel! I’d never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard’s; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of a chin, maybe two brown hair’s worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside, He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window.
The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key. Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So.”
– from the American writer Annie Dillard’s essay “Living like Weasels“, taken from her book “Teaching A Stone To Talk” (click here for a NY Times feature reviewing her work.)
I hate that this blog is getting more and more mono thematic. But as you all know, the world’s news agenda is being congested by the whole Iraq thing and some weird spin-off topics that weasel through the web. So now that we in the “old Europe” have finally been given the opportunity to realize which creature in the animal kingdom best represents us, I thought reflecting on the deeper meaning of this little excerpt of Ms Dillard’s essay could be one of the better ways to calm down and stop the useless transatlantic venting for a moment.
Alright, I have to admit – I did have a laugh about “The Axis of Weasel”. It’s not exactly a great joke, and the rhyme is far from perfect, but, yes, it is, in a twisted way, somewhat funny.
But not all that is being said and written on both sides of the Atlantic is funny these days. Long gone the days when the people responsible for published opinion on both sides of the pond actually listened to what those on the other side had to say. Long gone the time when they made an effort to actually understand reasons behind public policy, public discourse, and public opinion and even tried to discern them.
I remember talking to an American friend in May 2002 stating that mutual US-European misunderstanding seemed to be growing – and I thought it was bad back then.
There are some voices of moderation on either side – but it seems no one listens to them anymore. Moderation and serious arguments seem to become increasingly unfashionable and superseded by an articficial war of words – The “Axis of Weasel” seems to me like a Blogosphere-adapted version of the Albanian invasion featured in Barry Levinson’s movie “Wag The Dog” – so go and get your “Stop the Axis of Weasels” wallpaper here. Anyone volunteering to write the theme song – “I guard the Iranian border, I guard the American dream” ?
In the end, no joke is going to help those who want to strike to weasel out of their responsibility to make a clear-cut, convincing case that a possible loss of life is a price worth paying for ousting Saddam at the time being. But those who want to strike – as well as many of those who support them – do not seem to care about the world’s opinion that this case has not yet been made. But what I suppose is even more damaging to their argument than what have to say is the way they say it. Just imagine the difference in European reaction had the same case be brought forward by a Clinton administration. See what I mean?
Maybe it is difficult to understand for some Americans that it is the William Safires and Donald Rumsfelds of this world whose rantings give a lot people the impression – not just in old Europe – that it is more important to contain the American administration’s intention to dissolve the concept of national sovereignty not through negotiations but through military might. It is them who lead to the perception that the US today are no longer the good guys but those who have to be stopped. If you are interested in a TIME Europe survey (non-representative, but n~300,000 clicks!) asking people which country they belive which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003, click here. Let me just say that about 83% percent of the respondents share the opinion that it is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Rationally, it is hard to find arguments to back such a claim. Emotionally, it is sufficient to turn on CNN.
If the whole confrontation is not part of a superbly staged good-cop, bad-cop game to credibly back the weapon inspector’s engagement in Iraq – and I doubt it is – I believe the core of the transatlantic rift is about R-E-S-P-E-C-T. A lot of Americans seem to think they deserve everyone’s support in words and deeds because they regard their actions as moral and opposition to a moral position as logically amoral. Vice versa for those who oppose a war. Europe and the US need to develop a new discourse. “Texan-style” black & white is going to remain an important element of US political fashion even if the next presidential elections should produce a democratic president. Likewise, the the more nuanced European discourse will remain. No Clinton is going to be in the White House anytime soon.
So we have to bridge the gap. It will not be helpful to continue exchanging notes confirming mutual allegations of arrogance or perceived treason. The following part of Annie Dillard’s essay should be read carefully by the powerful American eagle as well as the European Weasel.
“And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton ~ once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?”
Respect is what it’s all about.
Parallels.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about some historic parallels that could provide a usually forgotten perspective concerning the “transatlantic rift“.
I’ve been thinking about a tale of exploitation from Eastern Europe. At least from the 1980s on, probably even before, Eastern European satellite states materially exploited the Soviet Union because they traded administratively overpriced low quality manufactured goods for world market priced raw materials. The Soviets probably knew what was going on, but thinking about Poland’s Solidarnosc experience they supposedly realised that there was a price to pay for continued hegemony in the 1980s.
I know I am restating the obvious but as the world does certainly not suffer from scarcity of misunderstanding these days – let me be clear about this: I am by no means implying that the US-European relationship is even slightly reminiscient of the Russian Cold War imperialism in Eastern Europe.
I should also say that the argument below is based on the assumption that the Iraqi government will be changed forcefully at some point this year, which I am, personally, very sceptical about. My position is probably most accurately reflected by the French one. I’m against war. But if I can’t avoid it anymore, I would at least like to retain some influence over the process, please.
Well, one interpretation of the (generalised) European attitude towards American activities to improve the reliability of Middle Eastern natural energy resource supply as well as US attempts to reshape the political landscape of the region by redistributing the oil profits – ok, the last argument is clearly speculative, but popular large scale redistributions of formerly privatised oil-income would be the obvious starting point for me if I were to convince sceptic Arab polulations of my good intentions as a hegemonic power and the benefits of “democracy” – could be that Europe is taking advantage of American policies in a way reminding me of the former Eastern European trading patterns. It could be that Europe behaves as a rational free rider of American policy.
The world oil market is one big pool and everyone gets the same prices. Given such a pool, it is probably correct to assume that a straightforward American control of the oil-to-market interfaces in the Middle East will also benefit the European economy – in case oil prices as well as oil price volatility come down as a long term result of increased security in the region.
But should the overall impact of a hostile takeover be unfortunate (in all possible respects), Europe will still be able to say, ‘look, Dubya, we told you so.’ Then, however, Europe might be forced out of its free rider position because its clout in the region will have grown substancially. Then it will be expected to act accordingly.
Either way, and moral troubles aside for the moment, things don’t look too bleak for Europe. If the US policy will be succesful in the short run –(definition: get rid of Saddamq quickly and without too many civilian and American victims, not too much bad press, no upward impact on the oil prices that would further shock a world economy already in doldrums, and most importantly, no large scale terrorist attacks in the US (and to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the West.)) – as well as in the long run – (definition: bringing unused Iraqi oil reserves to market thereby reducing the salience of Saudi Arabia as swing producer (easy part), establishing a pro US government as well as a longer term presence in Iraq as a local home base for the “New Great Game” (less easy), redistributing Oil proceeds in a way beneficial to the long term goal of helping the “Islamic reformation”, that is, education, education, education (very difficult), shaking up the Arab peninsula in order to get rid of the weak autocratic regimes without creating too many Mohammed Attas) – it is clearly good for Europe.
In this case, it’s also going to be a bit good cop, bad cop (or Venus and Mars…) – the US might want reduce her visibility as hegemonic power and European nations would step in to manage the nation-building process. European politicians mostly talk about this kind of burden-sharing engagement as “picking up the reconstruction bill“.
But let’s face it – even if that were the case, if the overall outcome of the conflict is not too desastrous, it would probably be a good investment and enhance the European clout in the region. And given that nation-building (including the redistributive policies mentioned above) will in all likelihood be paid out of oil revenues (which the US will not be able to use to pay for the invasion itself) it looks like it’s predominantly the bad cop that will pay the bill this time.
Of course, the free rider argument does not explain the current situation in its entirety. But it does shed some light on the fact that European governments might have had to choose from a slightly different set of policy options if it weren’t for the determined American military presence. Do you really think that Europeans would be able to pose as noble minded people all the time if they had to the dirty work of ensuring energy supply themselves?
Hardly.
Wise Words.
Those of you, my gentle readers, who are frequent visitors will certainly have realised that the issue of the seeming “transatlantic rift” has received considerable attention in this blog. Now I just received an email from a very knowledgeable American friend telling me about his understanding thereof. And he comes up with a very good one-phrase summary of the issue, which I decided to share with you –
“I think the most accurate “truism” about transatlantic relations is that for Americans 9/11 changed the world, but for Europeans 9/11 changed America.”
Of course, the sentence contains a lot to argue with. But none the less, I think it does capture the current transatlantic climate as accurate as it is possible for a single sentence. Wise Words.
Another Tale of Mars and Venus: The two Americas.
The Carnegie Endowment’s Robert Kagan’s quip that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus – citing the famous “Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships” to describe why American and Europe seem to be drifting apart in value terms has quickly become a household argument in published opinion. And for a reason: Last year’s US foreign policy as well as the European reaction has provided plenty of opportunity to interprete the US-European couple’s relationship as one in which one wants to make love and the other one war. Right or wrong, there seems to be a growing lack of understanding for the other one’s position on both sides of the pond.
In September last year, I already linked some documents providing some scientific context regarding the seemingly growing transatlantic rift. This week, the Economist provides us with the results of three recent studies – and tells Europe to think about American diversity. The article includes a very interesting diagram plotting some country’s relative positions in a multivariate value-space.
And in this diagram,
“America’s position is odd … On the quality-of-life axis, it is like Europe … But now look at America’s position on the traditional-secular axis. It is far more traditional than any west European country except Ireland. It is more traditional than any place at all in central or Eastern Europe”.
The reason for this strange position is, according to the economist, is,
“…to generalise wildly, that [the] average is made up of two Americas: one that is almost as secular as Europe (and tends to vote Democratic), and one that is more traditionalist than the average (and tends to vote Republican).”
I guess, a lot of people suspected this kind of division all along. But it’s always good to get some figures to back up the argument. And there’s one more thing that is strikingin this study – that all of Europe is indeed clustered in the same corner. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is something to the argument of common European values.
I will close with a brief note to my British friends: Have a loook at the British position on the value plot – you seem indeed to be a part of Europe – socially, you’re not even a bit of an “awkward partner”. Great news, no?
Still in love! Bush caught nibbling Schroeder’s earlobe!
Prague. 21/11/02. In what must be regarded as a striking revelation given recent public rows, the two world leaders weren’t ashamed to demonstrate their feelings toward each other publicly during yesterday’s NATO summit in Praque. The only remaining question is what George W whispered in Gerhard’s ear. I suppose it was something like “And they all believed we were actually fighting. We should do that more often! See ya later…”