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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (30849)	5/26/2002 9:52:16 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Slightly different take on Europe: From "National Review" May 23, 2002, 12:35 p.m. We Kant Get There from Here Our European problem. By William R. Hawkins President George W. Bush is off to Europe, visiting Germany, France, Russia, and Italy in connection with a NATO summit in Iceland. The chances of this trip improving U.S.-European relations are about as bleak as they were at the start of May when Bush held a summit with leaders of the European Union. The trans-Atlantic trade war continues to escalate. French President Jacques Chirac on May 17 criticized the United States over its "protectionist" policies to support steel, wood, and agricultural production. Yet, the EU has imposed the same safeguard tariffs on surging steel imports as the U.S., and has a very protectionist agricultural policy supported by massive subsidies and a scare campaign against American biotechnology. So there was more than a whiff of hypocrisy in the EU's recent notification to the World Trade Organization that it may impose sanctions on U.S. products including steel, textiles, and fruit. The EU has also threatened tariffs against $4 billion of American exports unless the United States complies with a WTO demand that it change how it taxes exporters. And the European Commission wants a WTO challenge against the increased agricultural subsidies contained in the 2002 farm bill Congress passed, and which President Bush signed May 14. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, made up mostly of European industrial nations, also rebuked the Bush administration on it trade policies. Speaker after speaker lined up last week to condemn the U.S. for its actions and to warn that it could undermine the upcoming Doha Round of WTO talks. Further ill will was generated by the unprecedented decision by WTO, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank officials to publicly criticize the United States. It is easy to dismiss these debates as simply the result of competing interests and high stakes, the very nature of the international economy. When EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy complains that Washington is "acting only to protect is own interests" most Americans simply reply "of course, that's the duty of U.S. leaders." But the stakes are not just commercial. The NATO summit has raised other questions about U.S.-Europe ties. Recent conflicts from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans have suggested that the allies might soon be unable to fight together on the same battlefield. European military technology and deployed forces have fallen so far behind American capabilities that even third-world powers now appear intimidating. Indeed, European participation in joint operations seems aimed mainly at gaining political influence to restrain American actions rather than in contributing to a common war effort. Writing in the June issue of Policy Review, Robert Kagan argues: It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power ? the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power ? American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power...It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace." Immanuel Kant wrote his essay "Perpetual Peace" in 1795, heavily influenced by the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The wars of the French Revolution had already started, and would run to 1815. The two centuries that followed exhibited more perpetual war than peace, but did not stop utopian thought. The Kantian doctrine contains the three basic principles at the core of all liberal models of world order: national disarmament, global free trade, and a world federation government. The goal is to make it impossible for any nation or people to possess the means to act on their own. In Kantian doctrine, unilaterialism is a cardinal sin and the concept of national interest is a heresy. The creation of the EU was a Kantian labor. Charles DeGaulle first envisioned a united Europe that would harness a pacified German economy to French political leadership. Such a superstate would stand as a third power between the Anglo-Saxons (the U.S.-British special relationship) and the Russians. But DeGaulle was a man of the old right, thinking about power politics. His vision was taken over by more "enlightened" thinkers on the French left, especially by Jacques Delors, a socialist who was president of the European Commission during the critical period 1985-1995. Delors's top assistant and protégé was another socialist, Pascal Lamy. In his sympathetic book Jacques Delors and European Integration, George Ross counts Lamy as one of the "militants [who] use everything they have to win." With the Soviet Union gone, many Europeans now see the United States as "the last Superpower" blocking a Kantian future. If American freedom of action can be curtailed through economic pressure and international organizations ? especially the WTO acting as a Kantian world federation, then Europe will be free to pursue its idea of a "European social model" and work to impose it on the rest of world. Thus President Bush's visit will be greeted in Europe by hostile commentaries about his crude "axis of evil" speech and his desire to build missile defenses. He will be criticized for his rejections of the Kyoto climate treaty and the International Criminal Court. Bush's attitude towards Cuba, Iraq, and Iran will be denounced as "reckless" by Europeans who simply want to do business with these regimes in an imagined Kantian world. As Lamy has said, the best way to get applause in the European parliament is to stand up and denounce America. And clapping along are those liberal pundits on this side of the ocean who are always eager to cite European criticism as "proof" of America's sins. At the dawn of the new century, the greatest danger to American independence, security, and prosperity may not come from avowed enemies armed with weapons of mass destruction, but from supposed friends bent on controlling the U.S. economy in order to hobble the American giant. William R. Hawkins is senior fellow for national-security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council in Washington, DC.

To: tekboy who wrote (30849)	5/26/2002 10:18:38 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A small fraction of the money spent on the recent tax cuts, for example, could underwrite generous compensatory benefits for those who would lose jobs because of truly open US markets. Hmm... It is my sense that the US is probably the greatest practitioner of "free trade" already.. We've certainly been its biggest advocate.. However, when faced with direct governmental subsidization of competing economies, as well as currency manipulations aimed at making their exported goods more competitive than US goods, I think we have to apply the same kind of will and "brinksmanship" we institute in military operations. If your competitor perceives that you lack the resolve to institute retaliatory trade restraints out of the principle of abiding by free trade, they'll take direct advantage of your naivete... This is what the Japanese and Europeans have done.. manipulating their currencies in such as way that a stong dollar is maintained to subsidize their exports to the US, rather than taking the necessary steps to encourage domestic consumption... But then they complain about the "intolerable" US trade deficit and the risks to the global financial system... But they depend upon that very trade deficit to subsidize their economies.. Hawk@fairtradenotfreetrade.com