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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: FaultLine who wrote (59720)	12/4/2002 3:02:16 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) of 281500

This isn't up to the standard of the debate between Patton and Perl. But I think the best things posted here the last few days regarding US/Europe difference was the pairing of the two articles from Policy Review. policyreview.org policyreview.org Between the three of them Kagan, Asmus and Pollack give us a pretty good description of the sources of the differences between US and EU. Europe is dealing in its local endgame of putting to rest its history of war and replacing it instead with a new history of negotiated integration. This is the result of the cold war when the circumstances allowed Europeans not to concern themselves with security vis a vis each other and could rest under the NATO security apparatus. In the process Europe has come to emphasize negotiation, diplomacy but this is not applicable to much of the world beyond Europe. The US has had to continue with a concern for military power because it was the prime armourer behind the cold war, it encouraged the European integration after WW2 for obvious reasons, and guaranteed its safety. So as Europe turned inward with its concerns the US remained looking outward with a militant stance and for good reason: the utopian soviet ideology was expansive and had to be resisted, not negotiated with. What has happened is that Europe has become diminished miliarily while the US has become more powerful. The europeans are nervous of the US power and the US is doubtful of the efficacy of European negotiating. They are both right. This is a bit of a charicature but close enought to reality. The chauvinists both sides of the Atlantic play it to the hilt. In this respect, I think Perl had the more powerful position because outfits like the present Iraq regime and the islamofascists can't be negotiated with along the usual forms. That's a fact which can't be dodged or honestly denied. Perl also had the better argument with regard to international law. The UN is a useful treaty organization but is not licensor of all intervening measures countries might take. This for practical, legal and moral reasons. I think the US has made its position more difficult by formally adopting preemption as a policy. That should always, no matter how often it might be done, be presented as an exceptional measure.

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