Euro-sneers abound, let them eat cake

Speaking as some one who genuinely spans both European and American cultures--a true Anglo-American, as it were--I find this kind of generalized philosophizing as exhausting, unhelpful, and vague as "European" philosophizing about America.

There are many different countries in Europe. They have many different attitudes to the US, based on their own histories, and American involvement in their countries since the War. But none, that I know of, have this "adolescent" envy, based on a hatred of what they really want, but are unable or unwilling to make sacrifices for.

Any one who is inclined to accept this drivel should remind themselves of a principle in personal relations: Whenever our rationale for dismissing a criticism of ourselves is profoundly flattering to ourselves, we should be suspicious: We are probably fooling ourselves.

Just so, the idea that Europeans hate Americans because they are richer, free-er, more revolutionary, and dynamic, etc. etc.--well, it should make all thinking people immediately dubious.

Jason

You must hang out in different cafes than I do, my friend. Excerpt from an email I received last week from a friend traveling in Australia: "...most european kids are very anti-american politicallly but consume all things american -- it is so ironic and frustrating to sit next to a european wearing nike shorts and oakley sunglasses who just finished singing the words to train's latest song but is now railing on america and how we think we are so great and that bush is a fool and our policies are flawed, etc., etc." This experience has been shared by me and literally dozens of people I know in the last year alone. Not sure where you've been hanging your hat, but I sure wish there were more of the folks you describe in Europe.

Well, I concede that my cafe in "Europe" is the Travellers Club in London, where the average age is 70, and every member except myself is an ex-spy who loyally served the "Special Relationship"...

But, still, to dismiss the different criticisms of America in Europe as a mixture "adolescent" envy, error, and hypocrisy (watch as those cowardly Euros snivel under the US's defense umbrella, etc.), does a disservice to the substance of European criticism. It is, in fact, the kind of "ad hominem" attack you normally despise.

To take the example I know best: The UK has been a stalwart, if unequal, partner in the War on Terror (more on the reckless destruction of the once great British Army by successive Labor and Conservative governments another time). And yet he UK has profound reservations about American judicial process in detaining suspects in the War on Terror, and have refused to blindly sign off on American unilaterism on the subject. This almost reached the status of a diplomatic embarrassment when the Lord Chancellor said that he would not deport Al Qaida suspects to the US if they were to given capital trials without a jury. To say that the British do not live in the "real world of power" and its concommittant obligations is to fail to grapple with the British critique. It is to replace that critique with a straw man--an idea of a British high judge being "liberal" and "unrealistic" about the role of a super power engaged in War. In fact, no country in the World, including America I would argue, has thought more about these difficult issues than the UK--most recently during the long, long conflict in Northern Ireland.

Touche, my friend. Given the boundaries of this forum for discourse, I have taken the liberty of cartooning certain aspects of this worthy debate. Please take with proper grains of salt.

Still, I will admit to feeling a certain smug satisfaction when uttering "If it weren't for us, you'd all be speaking German" (smug because it's true).

Last, do know that like many Brits, I view the U.K. as a largely separate entity from the continent and have much less quarrel with their politics or the general British gestalt. Also, I am a huge fan of Tony Blair, although several of my Tory friends despise him mightily.

Cheers!

Jason, You dismiss "generalized philosophizing as exhausting, unhelpful, and vague" and then proceed to make generalizations (such as the contention that “But none, that I know of, have this "adolescent" envy, based on a hatred of what they really want, but are unable or unwilling to make sacrifices for.”)! Which is it: do you feel that all generalizations are unhelpful or that the specific generalizations in this article are wrong? Certainly there is an important point that Europe is not a monolith--and the UK is certainly often at odds with the continent--but you cannot deny that there are waves of anti-Americanism that sweep throughout Europe. This is so obvious it's not worth debating: you can find it talking to people on the street, reading their newspapers, and listening to their political leaders. Certainly there are different causes for these sentiments, but you cannot dismiss the notion that disagreements between Europeans and Americans stem, in part, from our different vantage points--and specifically our different positions of power. Imagine, for example, the kind of moral indignation of "unilateralism" that you ascribe to the British occurring instead in the 19th Century. Did this national consensus against "unilateralism" exist when the sun never set on the British Empire? Of course not. I don't seem to remember reading of much indignation about "unilateralism" in Germany under Hitler, or Bismarck for that matter, or in France under Napoleon, or Russia under Stalin, etc.

The point is that weaker nations tend to favor multilateralism and international agreements (as the US did in the 19th Century) while stronger nations tend to resist these constraints on their power (as the British did in the 19th century.) One of the ironies in this instance is that not only are the Europeans some of the biggest recovering unilateralists the world has ever seen, but the conditions that enable the multilateral dreams in Europe are made possible by the great unilateralist of the day: the US. Through its power, the US solved Europe's "German problem," they solved Europe's USSR problem, and they now are the only force strong enough to protect Europe should it ever fall under attack again. How important is this? The massive xenophobia in Europe ought to give some indication about how much the Europeans enjoy the implicit protection Americans give them.

Do many British have concerns about how Americans detain suspects in the War on Terror? Undoubtedly. But one man’s multilateralism is another’s unilateralism. The British conditions on handing over prisoners is not multilateral, it is unilateral. It is precisely what the Americans are accused of: putting one’s interest above that of one’s ally’s. So the whole concept of multilateral/unilateral is a chimera. Only countries who are weaker argue that stronger countries should abandon their own self-interest for the sake of the former. Europeans, in fact the world, simply use that argument to try to gain leverage that they don’t merit on the basis of power.

None of this is to say that the US shouldn’t respect international opinion, shouldn’t engage in dialogue with free nations, and shouldn’t do its best to work harmoniously with democracies around the world. It should. But the appeal to righteous indignation in an attempt to get one’s way shouldn’t be confused for what it actually is: a tactic by the weak to get what they couldn’t otherwise obtain through strength.

Finally, it is important to note that the US’s so-called “unilateralism”—really merely the pursuit of its own national interest when they conflict with the interests of other nations—is distinct from the “unilateralism” of the past international powers, who were almost universally interested in controlling, on a political and military basis, other nations and an attempt to build empire. America is the first great, global superpower to eschew empire. Put differently, we are the first superpower to define its own interests NOT in terms of global domination but rather universal human rights, democracy, peace and prosperity. So what’s different about the US is not its “unilateralism” but the ends of said unilateralism—more virtuous than any that came before.

Which is it? I think that while it is GENERALLY true that Europe is anti-American at the moment, every country in Europe has different reasons for its anti-Americanism, based on its culture, history, and political institutions. And that given the uniformity of dislike that America is currently engendering in its oldest, and best allies, Americans should take European criticism a little more seriously.

And not pass it off with generalized points about America's virtue and Europe's powerlessness.

In short, Europe has valid reasons for disliking America at the moment that the US must engage with.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we should ignore the European critique. But what is to account for the "uniformity of dislike that America is currently engendering in its oldest, and best allies"? You seem to be suggesting that this this trend is the responsibility of the US and our fault, as it were. I am suggesting that many of the differences on multiple fronts share a common root cause: that Europeans simply look at the world differently than Americans, due in part to their different relative positions of strength in the world.

For example, as Robert Kagan points out (http://www.r21online.com/archives/000189.html), if you are camping in the woods and spot a bear, you may decide, if your have a gun, that the risk of being mauled in your sleep compells you to go out and hunt that bear. But if you only have a knife, your risk assesment may be quite different--and you may instead feel it is better to stay in the tent and take your chances. Both rational perspectives and equally reasonable, but different because of the different circumstances.

Undoubtedly a liberal such as yourself would agree with many of the European critiques of America since they tend to be more liberal (if you will permit a generalization.) But I reject the notion that because Europe is more liberal, we should be too (just as I would reject the notion that we should be more like countries in the Middle East or Asia just because they disagree with us.) The trend has been towards greater division between the US and Europe, and I find Kagan's explanation persuasive.

Europe and America are drifting apart and I couldn't be happier. Some of the things our 'allies' say about us makes me boil and makes me wonder what it would be like if we weren't 'allies'. I guess Europe is now going to try, for the first time in about 60 years, to run itself without the desperate US support they needed in WW2. But I'm highly dubious, and I really do believe that they're only doing this because they realise they're...ummm...How shall we say?...Losers. Let's see them try to build an empire with, what?, 12 different languages. It won't work. It's against the laws of physics. And after all of those outragious things they've been saying about us, who do you think they'll crawl back to? Yes, the 'greedy', 'god fearing' and all of that garbage US of A. I can't wait to see their faces when, yet again, they need our help.