Common Dreams / Published on Sunday, February 20, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
President George W Bush arrives in Europe this week in the belief that the European Nato allies can be persuaded to 'turn away from the disagreements of the past' and open 'a new chapter' in transatlantic relations, as Condoleezza Rice, on her European trip, advised them to do. He is likely to go home without the concessions he wants.
He wants more help from the Europeans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably in other places yet to be announced; European backing for American policy on Iran (and Syria and Israel/Palestine); and no European arms sales to China. Those are Washington's priorities. There is a further list of secondary issues, commercial as well as political.
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the United States today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.
American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.
The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society. To most Democrats as well as Republicans, 11 September was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.
The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power.
This claim rests on the argument that an international system in which there is more than one major power is no longer acceptable. Two years ago, Condoleezza Rice told the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London that 'multi-polarity' in the past had been 'a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war but did not promote the triumph of peace'. As a theory of political society, she said, it stands for rivalry and competition. 'We have tried this before. It led to the Great War ... '
This obviously is untrue. The simultaneous existence of major as well as minor powers was the political reality throughout modern history, despite efforts to overturn it, most recently by Hitler and Stalin.
A traditional diplomacy of 'balance of power', meant to keep the peace, failed in 1914, and in 1938 the existing balance of power was deliberately destroyed by a hegemony-seeking Germany - in part made possible by an isolationist United States's refusal to intervene in Europe's affairs.
Speaking in Paris last week, the Secretary of State asked, 'why should we seek to divide our capacities for good, when they can be much more effective united? Only the enemies of freedom would cheer this division.' The alternative she proposes is an American-led international system that replaces Nato's principle of equality and collegiality with hierarchy.
Nato today has an internal multipolarity. The treaty requires consensus on actions, which means that differences of opinion can block US initiatives. The Bush administration prefers 'coalitions of the willing' to avoid this problem, although the fragility of the Iraq coalition does not encourage its use elsewhere.
The third basic disagreement is that the US has repudiated the system of absolute state sovereignty that has governed international society since 1648, and is the basis of modern international law.
This was an early casualty of the Bush administration's National Security Strategy, announced in 2002, which declared that preemptive attack had become an American policy option in the war against terror. The US then renounced, 'de-ratified', or simply abandoned a series of treaty commitments. These included Geneva standards on the treatment of prisoners and the prohibition of torture. The US has deliberately chosen to place itself outside the regime of international law, to which all of the European Union nations are committed.
The American claim to a dominating or hegemonic position in international affairs is bipartisan. The Clinton administration made it; the Bush administration makes it; John Kerry made it during last year's presidential campaign. It says that America's power itself imposes a right or responsibility to suppress terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and 'rogue states', and to enforce international order.
Any challenge to American primacy by another state, or by the European Union, is perceived a cause of international instability and therefore a potential source of disorder or war.
This American role is avowedly benevolent, and in the eyes of many Americans, certainly including President Bush, it is of divine origin (Woodrow Wilson also believed this). Within the present administration, there are those who believe cosmic forces are in play and responsible for America's emergence as the sole superpower. The American belief in a divine commission goes back to its religious origins in the 17th century, and is not open to logical refutation. Even secular interpretations of American destiny assert a moral claim, expressed thus in the 19th century: 'The United States has achieved the highest possible form of political system and that this great system can be extended to the rest of humanity ... Because America is exceptionally good, it both deserves to be exceptionally powerful and by nature cannot use its power for evil ends.'
Current transatlantic conflicts are thus not mere political disagreements. They derive from the nature of the evolving relationship between the US and a European Union that considers itself the sovereign legatee of the European powers of the past, and has a conservative commitment to the preservation of international order.
The claim America now makes is that destruction is a creative principle in politics as well as economics. 'Creative destruction' produces new order. This is a form of Utopianism.
The American challenge is to the fundamental claim of other nations to sovereign autonomy. In the immediate future this is likely to be managed rather than solved. Many European governments are undoubtedly willing to accept Washington on Washington's terms, as has Tony Blair's Britain.
Some, as already happens, will resist those terms and attempt to develop a European mid-term or long-term counter-power, which will not necessarily be military.
But throughout history nations and other political forces have been disposed to challenge claims to universal power. This is the source of current tensions. It is the closest thing to a natural law that history can offer. 'Stuff happens', whether intended or not, to use Donald Rumsfeld's language. Uneasy lies the crown, even for republics.
William Pfaff's most recent book is The Bullet's Song, Romantic Violence and Utopia, published by Simon & Schuster.
