WHICH MAKES THEM THE ETRUSCANS? :

America, with relish, spits on Britain : As far as the US right is concerned, new Labour is now on a par with other whingeing Europeans. Time has run out on the Blair-Bush alliance (John Lloyd, 8th July 2002, New Statesman)

How can new Labour, with its policies on Northern Ireland, acquiesce in the US demand that Yasser Arafat, the democratically elected leader of the Palestinians, must go? How can new Labour, with its overt commitment to develop international justice, agree that US soldiers be exempt from the attentions of the ICC? How can new Labour, whose leader electrified his party conference last September with a speech that committed his movement to saving the poor, look kindly on a US administration that refuses to rise to the African challenge, and thus compromises Blair's commitment?

Britain is now considered, by the right-wing US commentators, to be of a piece with the other whingeing Europeans. In an important essay, "Power and Weakness", just published in the Hoover Institute's Policy Review, Robert Kagan writes that the European states have, since the war, become progressively concerned with their own construct - the European Union - and with their material well-being. The US, meanwhile, became the only state capable of dealing with the realities of a nasty, brutish world. "Because they are so powerful, [Americans] take pride in their nation's military power and their nation's special role in the world . . . Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise . . . it has become dependent on America's willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics."

The lines are drawn. For many on the US right, it seems they are drawn with relish--as if they could at last tell Europe where to stick its moral superiority and its wonderful traditions. For Blair, however, the challenge is larger: it is to find a way of convincing the US that it remains great by allowing its greatness to be constrained by law and hobbled by observation of democratic choice. Forty years ago, the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, compared his role with President John Kennedy to that of a Greek with an impatient Roman. Are the Americans prepared to trust, or even listen to, Greeks, when they bring advice they don't want? It seems increasingly unlikely.

A nearly great column until that unfortunate bit of delusional Euronostalgia at the end; for the sad truth is that today America is both Greece and Rome. We alone defend, though in a too desultory a manner, the great Western traditions and values (making us Greece) and we alone have the might to maintain that defense (making us Rome).

If you happened to see the PBS Frontline on Northern Ireland last night you'll recognize that there's not a whits difference between dealing with Gerry Adams and dealing with Yassar Arafat--both are blood-soaked butchers and evil men. Each should be dangling at the end of a rope, not sitting across a bargaining table. If you've followed the misadventures of the Europeans and their War Crimes prosecutions you'll have noted that they've gone after Milosevic, not for his despicable socialist tyranny, but for fighting Islam in a tad too rough a manner and they've gone after Augusto Pinochet for disposing of socialist tyranny and making Chile a vibrant capitalist democratic nation. And if you look at what Europe's Labour parties have done to "save the poor", which is nothing more than put them on the dole, you'll wonder whether Africa really needs that kind of "help".

As these examples show, the Europeans still haven't even come to grips with the reasons that we became Rome and surpassed them. Nor do they yet comprehend that they are in a state of quite precipitous decline. They persist in the belief that because the majority will continually vote itself ever greater government benefits and because their parties will cravenly allow them to do so that they remain a shining exemplar to the world, displaying the glory of democracy. In fact, as they could easily learn from us, if they'd get over their utterly inappropriate superiority complex and their love affair with socialism, it is America that is uniquely great precisely because it has a system and a culture that are profoundly distrustful of the "democratic" impulse.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2002 4:09 PM