American Future blog -European Anti-Americanism
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By Marc Schulman on Europe
From Blimpish:
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Robert Kagan's Mars and Venus analogy still rings true, and its main driver - Europe complacency built on American-provided security - has only been reinforced by the US (with allied support) doing the dirty work in Iraq. It's easy to carp and moralise when your security is provided for free.
There's a deeper cause of anti-Americanism within European nations, too. Many (most?) have entered a spiral of decline, and their elites (which tend to be more dominant than in the Anglosphere nations) are seemingly incapable or unwilling to take the necessary corrective action. The evidence of this decline - economic stagnation, demographic crisis, institutional failure - is increasingly plain, especially in countries like Holland. There was an article in Foreign Affairs a few years back which pointed out that anti-Americanism in the Arabic world was often driven by corrupt regimes seeking to blame their ills on the world's only superpower. The same trend is happening in Europe - it is easier for a Government to point the finger at US failings (if such they are) than to accept quite how bad its own problems have become. During the run-up to the Iraq War, the behaviour of Chancellor Schroeder pretty much followed this line. [...]
The distance between political discourse in the US and in most European nations remains simply immense. The cultural establishment in Europe interprets and presents the current US administration as grotesque Right-wing extremism. In its mind, Kerry (and before him, Clinton) was a European-style politician, who might concede some Right-wing red meat for electoral purposes but was otherwise just another one of them. They rarely stop to consider that European 'normalcy' wouldn't even be an option for a US presidential candidate these days: no signing up to Kyoto; no allowing the UN to decide on security matters; no expansion of welfare to European levels.
Remember that the bizarre accusations over the US response to the tsunami crisis - one day, the US wasn't doing enough; the next day, they were cynically trying to buy Islamic support - were but a month ago. The US will only truly be liked by European nations if it minds its own business, and backs them up whenever (and by however much) they ask for it. The moment it seeks to advance its own aims, then its global influence will attract criticism.
Such is the price of global supremacy. |
