I like Timothy Garton Ash. I have long read him in The New York Review of Books, and his reports on dissidents in the Eastern bloc were very fine. I think he almost has something here. But Europe will not any time soon provide a real balance to American power, if only because it is still too dependent on America to do the heavy- lifting, as was clear in Bosnia and Kosovo, and is enormously clear in out of theater operations. This is unlikely to change quickly.
Additionally, the United States remains the economic powerhouse of the world, and Europe will only be a viable rival when it finishes resucitating its Eastern part, and when it begins to drop some of its drole inefficiencies to become truly competitive.
Besides, already countries like France have to set content limits on movie theaters and subsidize their film industry in order not to be run over by Hollywood. The dissemination of American pop culture is inevitable, since it represents the most modern country to date, and much of what the rest of the world aspires to become.
I would say, then, that there is nothing to be done about the situation, in any systematic sense, for the foreseeable future. |
