The question of how the international community should deal with Saddam Hussein, Iraq's ruthless dictator, is rightly the year's dominant theme. In one sense it has been answered: the UN is and will continue to be involved, and the US has and will continue to play the leading role. Containment of Iraq by intervention is the method that now seems most likely. In the process of reaching this decision, however, several long simmering issues have come to the fore.
One, of course, concerns the supposed "clash of civilizations": how do we keep a focused and limited conflict between the UN and Iraq distinct from the need to maintain a relationship of dialogue between world religions? Another question may seem more parochial to some but is of equal significance globally: what are we to make of the differences between Europe and America that have become so manifest in the Iraq debate? Is this its own form of "clashing civilizations."
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
No doubt, the differences that now exist between America and Europe are profound, and are not confined to a temporary cooling of German-American relations or to a half-serious exchange of invectives about "gun-slinging America" and "old Europe." Indeed, even intellectuals are caught up in the emotional undertones.
When British historian Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the New York Review of Books, distinguished the US and Europe by paraphrasing the title of a bestselling book, saying that "Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus," some American readers objected to the sexual portrayal of an effiminate Europe and a macho America. Yet Garton Ash is among the most pro-American Europeans, whose views of a united Europe are closer to those of his many friends in the "new," postcommunist Europe than to those of France or Germany. But views about what Europe is and should be are actually at the heart of today's anti-Americanism.
The countries of Europe are moving inexorably towards the "ever closer union" that the founding Treaty of Rome demands.
There is a single market, crowned -- at least for most EU members -- by a single currency; there is a constitutional convention that will propose a new basic treaty, perhaps by mid-June; there are ambitious plans for a common foreign and security policy and other common policies. So what is the problem?
One problem -- probably the most fundamental -- is that European integration no longer fires the imagination of Europeans.
There are still Euro-enthusiasts, but among the peoples of Europe indifference and, in some places, mild hostility, prevails. Even the common currency has so far not really caught on; it is useful, but somehow "foreign." Underneath all this is the niggling question: why are we doing all this? What is the compelling reason that provides the driving force behind "ever closer union"?
In the 1950s, the answer was simple: Europeans should never go to war against each other again. On the contrary, they need to stand together against the Communist threat.
Fifty years later, these goals are no longer relevant. Economic union has benefited many; but it is not the type of driving force that inspires. More recently, the idea of a "European identity" has been in vogue. The EU supposedly expresses it. But how is this identity to be defined?
This is the point at which many begin to use language that defines Europe by distinction, indeed by contrast, to the US -- Europe as the anti-America. Throughout the Cold War, what was then the Soviet Union provided a raison d'etre for European union; in the era of globalization, it is the US.
Comparing and contrasting the two sides of the Atlantic has a long pedigree, of course. European culture and American commerce, European profundity and American materialism -- these are ancient and tired themes. Most would today use more subtle language.
They point to what they regard as America's unfettered capitalism and hold up Europe's social market economies against it. Internationally, Europe likes multilateral arrangements, whereas America prefers to go it alone.
From the other stereotypical point-of-view, Europe wallows in the complexity of issues whereas America likes simple lines of conflict -- you are either for us or against us. It is easy to see how the belief in such differences affects the Iraq debate.
The result is that many leading Europeans begin to define their intentions for the Union by contrasting it to the USA. The euro must hold its own against the dollar -- and hurrah! -- it is now above parity. European foreign policy must provide a counterweight to that of the hyperpower across the Atlantic.
On closer scrutiny, such facile phrases are deeply disturbing. The eight (and now nine or more) governments that signed the Aznar/Berlusconi/Blair statement supporting the US realized this. They insisted on undivided Western values, the values of enlightenment and liberty. These values are shared between Europe and America -- and some others -- and they are worth defending in an alliance.
When it comes to values, any attempt to divide the American and the European traditions is misguided. It may be that these shared values make it more difficult to find the much-desired European identity. But feeding anti-American sentiment, however unintentionally, into the European construction would be intellectually dishonest, morally suspect, and politically dangerous for all freedom-loving Europeans.
Ralf Dahrendorf is a member of the British House of Lords, a former Rector of the London School of Economics and also a former Warden of St. Anthony's College, Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences
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