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February 14, 2003
European anti-Americanism
During a conference call of the 
we
were asked to say what we are doing to keep our spirits up during this
time of looming war. Most of my friends and colleagues reported practically
useful or spiritually worthy activities that they have embarked on recently
to bolster their spirits—ranging from playing music to rediscovering
grammar school friends to co-teaching a course with Noam Chomsky (literally). All
I could think of was our family decision this morning to follow the instructions
in the newspaper and buy plastic sheeting for an emergency shelter room.
(Unfortunately, all the sheeting is gone from local stores).
Although I probably should focus on the damage that we may be about to do in the Middle East, my actual thoughts range from fear for my family, to irritation at the way the Bush Administration handles diplomacy, to equally profound irritation with the European anti-War movement. Everyone's instinct in a time of crisis is to use it for pre-existing political ends, whether they want to bash American culture or impose US power on the Middle East. Each group interprets everyone else's motives as narrowly selfish or self-indulgent. And all the parties act so as to confirm the worst interpretations of their enemies.
Posted by peterlevine at 4:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
European anti-Americanism
This blog is becoming interactive! My friend Lars Hasselblad Torres sent me the following email, which I quote with his permission: "Hey peter, scouted out your blog today, and noted your irritation with European anti-war movement. Is it safe to say their anti-americanism, or is it their tactics to get in the way of Bush policy? Anyway, thought you might find 'of paradise and power: america and europe in the new world order' of interest: robert kagan lays out a hobbesian vs. kantian mood form each." Lars then followed up with a set of good references to the whole question of US-European relations, including this link to the Foreign Policy Association. To Lars' list, I would add Timothy Garten Ash's good New York Review piece that collects virulently anti-European comments by senior US officials. These are at least as inflammatory and unjustified as the anti-American comments that set me off.
I suppose my suspicions about European anti-Americanism were born a long time ago, especially in graduate school in England. There's a lot of bad faith and scapegoating on the European left: a desire to attribute bad things to the US when European countries are just as responsible. I also think that people on the European left tend to attribute undesirable features of American life to something intrinsic and cultural about us—for instance, "American individualism"—when the causes of our problems apply to them as well. Three examples:
- I was in Britain when American teenagers started mass shootings in high schools. Universally, British pundits attributed these crimes to a profound sickness in US culture. I would have said that the "epidemic" of school shootings (which involved about 1 in every ten million students) was not a symptom of anything; it was a copy-cat phenemonon. Indeed, copy-cat school killers subsequently turned up in France, Scotland, and Germany.
- European critics generally analyze vulgar popular culture as a reflection of American culture, although European and Japanese firms generate a considerable amount of it; the US also produces a mighty stream of high culture; and the demand for the worst products is global. So I think it's largely irrelevant to interpret Hollywood and pop music as "American" phenomena.
- Our social policy is more conservative than the norm in European, although the gap is not as big as Europeans tend to think. (They focus on the federal government and don't realize that our states take 8.5 percent of GNP in taxes and spend it on domestic programs. As a result, the government's share of GNP is almost exactly the same—30 percent—in the US and in Sweden.) In any case, I do not believe that our social policy is more conservative because of American individualism or some other feature of our culture. We have a median family income of $62,228 (for 4-person families). At that level, people don't believe that they will benefit from social spending, except to support retirement and local public education. Hence the solid support for Social Security and Medicare and local education. In Europe, median family incomes are lower—but rising. Hence the political center in Europe is gradually drifting right, and will not stop soon.
Which brings us to the current debate about Iraq. I think the French and others are completely right that we should postpone an invasion and try to strengthen the inspections. But to what extent is this difference of opinion a result of a cultural gap between the Europeans (allegedly "from Venus") and the Americans ("from Mars")? The US has an offensive military capacity that the Europeans lack, singly and collectively. So perhaps the US must play bad cop in order to allow the Europeans to play good cop. Absent a military threat from the US, there would be no inspections, and the Saddam regime would go completely unchecked and unchallenged. This would be morally unacceptable to the European left, especially if European companies continued to do profitable business with Iraq. If this is right, then there are not different cultures on either side of the Atlantic. Rather, the West is one culture; it relies on a powerful military that happens to be headquartered in the USA.
None of which excuses the ham-handed and sometimes offensive way in which Rumsfeld and other Bushies handle diplomacy ....
Posted by peterlevine at 4:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack