To: bela_ghoulashi who wrote (111059 ) 8/12/2003 3:42:31 AM From: bela_ghoulashi Respond to And an elaboration, cited by den Beste himself:ctl.idealog.info But he makes an even deeper mistake by assuming that this is even something which is susceptible to centralized decision and control. It's true that Washington can decide how to arm and use our military, and what treaties to negotiate and which to ratify. But most of the soft power he described is unconscious and undirected; it isn't a deliberate strategy, and as such it isn't really possible to change it. Hollywood will continue to make movies with the goal of making lots of money, without little consideration of indirect political effects. but what he doesn't mention is one of the reasons why European attempts to get us to do this through peer pressure will fail: Europeans aren't our peers. I don't think that Europeans really understand just how little the average American cares about Europe. Most Americans have no idea which countries are which on a map of Europe (though I am dubious that Europeans would be very good at naming the states of the United States, despite many of our states having larger economies than many of their countries). Most Americans only speak English, and the most common second language is a South American Spanish dialect. Europe just doesn't matter much to Americans. This shouldn't be surprising, as I've written before, Americans are largely the descendants of people who didn't want to be in Europe. All of their harping isn't going to bother us much because we're just not going to hear it. If you're really interested, you can watch the BBC in some places, and our public television stations often play British murder mysteries and comedies. That's about the extent of European press than you're going to find in America: if France and Belgium and Germany and Italy rant and rave about us being uncooperative with them, how will Americans find out about it? Oh, they'll probably see some snippet on the evening news about some ugly man with bad teeth saying stupid things which are generally angry at us, but that's hardly going to make a truck driver say, "Damn it, whoever that ugly guy with bad teeth is, he wants us to ratify Kyoto, so let's ratify the treaty".The Europeans can jabber all they want, but the Atlantic ocean is big and sound doesn't carry very well over it. Peer pressure is often quite effective, but it has to come from your peers. In America, our peers are mostly just other Americans.
