OLD AMERICA:

Bridging the Atlantic Divide (Philip H. Gordon, January/February 2003, Foreign Affairs)

U.S.-European differences on matters of policy and global strategy or governance are certainly nothing new. What is striking today, however, is that some serious observers are starting to conclude that the fundamental cultural and structural basis for a transatlantic alliance is eroding. Author Francis Fukuyama, who 13 years ago was declaring the triumph of common Euro-American values and institutions to be the "end of history," now speaks of the "deep differences" within the Euro-Atlantic community and asserts that the current U.S.-European rift is "not just a transitory problem." Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute Berlin -- once a bastion of Atlanticism -- talks about Europe's "pathology" regarding the use of force and argues that U.S. and European views of security are now so different that "the old Alliance holds little promise of figuring prominently in U.S. global strategic thinking." Columnist Charles Krauthammer has not been alone in asserting that NATO -- once the centerpiece of the transatlantic alliance -- is "dead."

No one, however, has done more to advance the notion that Americans and Europeans are growing apart than analyst Robert Kagan, who began a summer 2002 article in Policy Review with a bold thesis: "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." In the long and perceptive analysis that followed, Kagan argued that the disparity in power between the United States and Europe has grown so great that when it comes to "setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies the United States and Europe have parted ways." Kagan's suggestion that "the day could come ... when Americans will no more heed the pronouncements of the EU than they do the pronouncements of asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] or the Andean Pact" certainly grabbed the Europeans' attention. The article had hardly been printed when it began to be circulated on e-mail lists and cited in dozens or even hundreds of newspaper articles around the world. It was reprinted or excerpted in Le Monde, Die Zeit, the International Herald Tribune, and Commentaire and was even distributed to European Union officials by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. It should perhaps come as no suprise that the article struck a chord, especially in a Europe already led by Bush administration policies to believe that the United States no longer saw Europe as a valued ally. [...]

For all the talk of a transatlantic rift in the post-September 11 world, the fact is that basic American and European values and interests have not diverged -- and the European democracies are certainly closer allies of the United States than the inhabitants of any other region are or are likely to become anytime soon. Although their tactics sometimes differ, Americans and Europeans broadly share the same democratic, liberal aspirations for their societies and for the rest of the world. They have common interests in an open international trading and communications system, ready access to world energy supplies, halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, preventing humanitarian tragedies, and containing a small group of dangerous states that do not respect human rights and are hostile to these common Western values and interests.

Certainly, the Texan George W. Bush and the deeply conservative cabinet members who surround him, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, have little in common with most of their European counterparts. To use Kagan's terms, the Bush team represents a particularly "American" perspective; on issues such as religion, abortion, gun control, missile defense, the use of force, multilateralism, and the environment, they are about as far from "European" positions as Americans get. It thus stands to reason that their ascent to power was read as a step toward an increasingly "American" America, and that their subsequent policies -- given a further boost by the challenge of global terrorism -- have crystallized the apparent differences across the Atlantic.

It is less clear, however, that Bush's election really represented a fundamental shift in American values, or that these values have grown more "American" over time as Europe's have become more "European." After all, Bush's opponent in the last election, Al Gore, won some 540,000 more votes than Bush did, and Gore did so on a platform that was much closer on most issues to the European norm. The 2000 and 2002 congressional elections were also divided right down the middle between Democrats and Republicans, suggesting very little change in America's political and ideological balance, notwithstanding the dramatic change in the national leaders' approach. The point here is not to suggest that the Bush approach to domestic and world affairs is not widely supported in the United States or that most Democrats are not more "American" in their outlook than most Europeans. It is, rather, to underline that the alleged U.S.-European divide today would look very different had Gore polled a few more votes in Florida two years ago or had the Supreme Court taken a different view of the Florida recount. There would still be real differences over the Middle East, the environment, and Iraq, as there were during the Clinton years, but it is hard to believe they would be anywhere nearly as brutal as they are today.

There's an outstanding point here--one I wish I'd thought of first--though not quite the one he's making: the Old Europe is really the New Europe, while America right now is Old America. Mr. Gordon, typically for such essays, fails to consider the impact of demographics and the Welfare State on the nature of democracies and their stance vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Had he done so it seems unlikely that he'd hold out any hope for Europe getting serious about its military and geopolitical inadequacies. There seems absolutely no prospect of nations that are in decline, with shrinking and aging populations, being willing to divert resources from retirement and other social welfare programs towards national and global security endeavors. Europe then is a "new" kind of democracy--a democracy that is mainly focussed on redistribution of wealth and which is blithely dying along with the nations where it prevails. This much seems certain.

The important thing to recognize though is that there's no reason to be confident that America will resist this brave new world. Mr. Gordon imagines a future where Europe and England might converge once again at a point where Europe would be a significant factor in world affairs. But what's far more likely is that they will converge at a point where America joins Europe in complacent suicide. It is our great good fortuine that George W. Bush is president at this time and that he's forcefully pushing a stunningly retrograde vision of Americanism--lower taxes; privatized entitlement programs; faith-based social programs; military confrontation with anti-Western nations and movements; etc. As Mr. Gordon suggests, things would be much different if Al Gore had prevailed in December 2000. In fact, we'd have significantly higher taxes, almost certainly be permanently locked in to large scale government-run entitlements, and we might well be drifting into the same kind of regime of socialized medicine that the European nations have. There would be no movement to restore a moral dimension to the delivery of social services. And, while Mr. Gore is certainly enough of a patriot that he'd be pursuing al Qaeda, we may never have attacked Afghanistan and would definitely not be extending the war to Iraq, N. Korea, Iran, the Phillipines, Colombia, etc.. And as government spending on ourselves took an ever greater portion of our wealth, it would be less and less feasible to mount a serious military campaign or even to maintain our current defenses.

So the question is: in the years to come will we follow a Bush-like vision of an "American America" or a Gore-like vision of a European America? We know what we'd like to see, but which seems more likely?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 13, 2003 7:29 PM