re What are they smoking over there?
Steven den Beste speculates that America and Europe are involved in a profound misunderstanding of each other's principles. He compares it to WWII, where America and Japan, operating by quite different codes, each considered that they were fighting an opponent without honor, and the conflict spiraled down to barbarity.
I'm not sure what I think of this but it is an interesting read, with links to some thoughtful articles. Excerpt (den Beste is interesting but he really does need an editor):
With respect to the diplomatic conflict now between France/Germany and the US, are we seeing an equivalent case where the cultural axioms of the nations involved are so deeply in conflict that neither side actually understands how what it is doing is perceived by the other side? And if that's the case, then have the steps which have lead us to the potential destruction of the UN, and NATO, and maybe even the EU been a series of horrendous accidents? That may be part of what's been happening.
This article from the Wapo describes how anti-Americanism is becoming more widespread and pervasive in Europe. Polls have shown that opposition to the US in Germany may approach 90%, and it's nearly as high in France and some other countries on the Continent. In such an environment, it's natural that politicians would want to try to ride that kind of wave to take power, or to hold it.
What is the source of it? Opinions vary, and it may come from many sources. Lee Harris says that a lot of it comes from neo-Marxism. Marx preached (ahem) that there was an inevitable course of economic history, where socialism would inevitably replace capitalism as the masses got tired of being exploited, but in America it hasn't happened, and it keeps not happening, and modern Marxists see the US economy as a repudiation of principles they hold to be absolute. So deep down they are rooting for the US to be hurt because only then can the Marxist Millenium (in a real sense it's a secular version of the Christian Millenium) take place and create the world socialist post-national utopia Marx promised them all would come, someday.
Kagan says that much of it comes from a rising perception by Europeans that they no longer matter. After 600 years of Europe being the center of the world, and Europe's leaders being the movers and shakers, suddenly they've realized that Europe has become a backwater, and they damned well don't like it. The Wapo's article says:
"The Americans are pushing their weight around and doing it with rhetoric that may go down well in some parts of the U.S. but rubs us the wrong way all of the time," said Christoph Bertram, research director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "And the fact we're aware of our continuing dependence on the U.S. doesn't help. It's American power, but also the rhetoric of American power that has exacerbated the sense of weakness, alienation and uneasiness that we see all over Europe."
Fonte says that we're actually seeing the beginnings of a new Cold War, between the basic American ideal of nationalism, populism, capitalism and representative democracy and a newly emerging concept of world governance he refers to as "Transnational Progressivism".
But one thing which is emerging is that Europeans are more cynical about public statements and often don't take them seriously. They posture and lie routinely and don't think that this is particularly noteworthy. And the basic source of confusion may well be that Americans are actually listening to what they say, and actually taking them seriously, and actually assuming that the Europeans are telling the truth.
Thus where the Europeans expect the Americans to largely ignore their criticisms, instead the Americans are reacting to them. Public postures for purposes of pandering to the home folks are actually being listened to in Washington, which is reacting with anger and rising suspicion.
Nor is this necessarily totally wrong. Some of the criticism truly has been nothing more than posturing, but much of it has been sincere in a "ha ha only serious" kind of way. But where this kind of chiding is maybe seen by the Europeans as a subtle way to hint that the Americans should maybe consider modifying their attitudes, the Americans are interpreting it as betrayal, alienation, active opposition. Increasing the severity of the chiding seems to cause no modification of American policy, which is puzzling; can't they see that they're committing a faux pas? We're just trying to cue them in that their fly is open, and instead they're in fighting stance and threatening to rearrange our faces. What is this?
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