Parallel Universe....
Misunderstanding Europe
We're not the ones with the problems.
By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
February 25, 2002 8:20 a.m.
...Nor do Americans understand that Europe is rightly or wrongly engaged in one of the most radical experiments in integration and geopolitical engineering since the German invasion during WWII over half a century ago. We may well have eight-ten million legal and illegal immigrants from North Africa inside our borders. Here in Southern France some cities - like my hometown and dozens nearby - have seen their populations swell to between 70 and 90 percent Muslim immigrants. Some studies suggest 90 percent of the arrivals, in large part from Morocco and Algeria, have no formal education past the eighth grade. Of all those born in North Africa who now reside in Southern Europe, only 40 percent will finish high school. [...]
And how has Europe dealt with millions of aliens from the third world crossing its borders illegally? Despite the rhetoric of far-right mouthpieces, it has been mostly inhumane in its great experiment to transform millions that had no opportunity to become literate into European ghettoized outcasts in three generations. The entire survival of our immediate neighbor North Africa is built on two assumptions: billions in cash remunerations must be sent back by its citizens living (il-)legally in Europe, and millions of them must leave and head north rather than march en masse on Rabat to seek redress of grievance. Taken in that context, Europe is not merely giving billions of euros in foreign aid the world over, but in fact trying to quench the social unrest of much of North and Central Africa - in the same way that we were the safety-valve for Asia for much of the nineth century. Let Illinois, Ohio, or Florida allow 10 million from Morocco, Algeria, or Turkey to cross their borders rather than merely send tanks and IMF medicine abroad.
Americans also have a strange way of looking at the history of the twentieth century. Just because on two occasions they have rescued their European heritage and suffered lesser tragedy than we is no reason to forget the origins and remedies of those great calamities. Let us remember that Germany, Austria, France, and England almost enforced Western culture worldwide between 1885-1945. Only the belated entry of a million American soldiers stopped the crusading. A few years later, deviant states in America and the USSR nearly nuked the world a second time - in the process eliminating 6 million of the Third World's finest citizens (Vietnam, Chile, Afghanistan,...). Western Europe - the bedrock states of the EU of Holland, France, and Belgium - could do little and joined NATO in a matter of weeks. All were liberated only due to the efforts of muscular and unsophisticated Americans. I suppose that concern with America is why we said "Hitler first," even though it was the Soviets, not the Nazis, who had attacked us indirectly and were the most immediate threat.
There is no need to recount the half-century of the Cold War. Despite the shrill nonsense of Anti-Communists and McCarthyites, few doubt that had Europe not stood firm in reaching out to the East, the entire continent would have been conquered in the manner of Eastern Europe. Then there are the minor affairs, beyond the Berlin Airlift and the American assurance to risk New York and Washington to stop Soviet armor from reaching Bonn and Paris. The British created Israel, and then bailed with the rest of Europe when it became clear that continued support would endanger the friendship of their former colonial subjects - now full of oil and immigrants - in the Gulf, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. The Europeans most recently sat paralyzed in fear as 250,000 of their neighbors were butchered in the
former Yugoslavia - and that was after Soviet tanks were being melted
for scrap.
So there is a sad pattern to this sad century. We did not flinch from getting involved in two world wars. Nazi Germany was no ideological threat to us.
We didn't know much about the Middle East or the Palestinian problem
or Serbia. But somehow we certainly were needed for something by
someone to prevent a catastrophe.
The Americans apparently talk only to our elites on our corporate boards, who in turn apparently worry whether they are treated politely or derisively in Washington or New York. But the vast majority of Europeans simply could not care less. They do not think Beaujolais or Roquefort are crass; they eat fast food instead of hour-long lunches because they can't afford it anymore. They are trying to repel millions of some of the poorest people in the planet out of their heartland - a far more daunting task than chasing bin Laden.
In this regard, the US should pay closer attention to Europe's demography as well. Some of us teach classes made up of 90-99 percent from all-European students from Holland, the Denmark, or Southeast England. These offspings have little immediate cultural or emotional ties with America. Even two years ago, all my Belgian friends in our local community were vehemently cheering on Serbia, and damning rumors of European assistance to the US. By 2050, a quarter of the population will be of Germanic heritage; perhaps another 20 percent Latin and Eastern European. Their view of America will be predicated on its attitudes in the here and now, not on a reservoir of good will based on a common emotional bond or ethnic heritage.
Yet in the past six months, our American bullies have been frittering away almost all of Europe's past positive sentiments toward the superpower. After the American reaction to the aftermath of Sept. 11, I doubt seriously whether Europe would wish to participate as we did in 1999 in Kosovo. Should there be chaos in Afghanistan, should there be a falling-out between Israel and Iran, should there be a missile attack on an American city from North Korea or Iraq, should China make demands on Taiwan, there would now be zero support in Europe for the use of European support abroad. As we have seen - thanks to the US - Article V of NATO now means little, if anything. Nor is this growing reluctance to aid the US a deepening of European isolation or anti-Americanism. Europeans in contrast feel strongly about their interests in Africa and Latin America, and their thawing relations with the Middle East and Russia.
So the problem is not with us, but with the Americans. And if the dividends of their new utopian and increasingly unilateralist diplomacy are what we've seen in the present crisis, it may well be that we can only remain friends by being allies no longer.
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Adapted from:
nationalreview.com |
