It's
no longer the booming 90's and everyday things look more and more bleak. The economy is
less robust and everyone seems to be on edge. In spite of my political beliefs, I often
argue with my friends and come to the defense of the current administration.
I explain away
current happenings in economic terms as business cycles. Even in biblical days, there were
times of plenty and times of little. Grain had to be stored in the time of plenty for when
there was none. I believe that the same economic downturn we are now experiencing would
have happened even had we had a President Gore. However, the current president and his
administration are not helping the situation.
With the aftermath
of World War II came the literal marriage and what the Chicago Tribune recently
called “the most successful
international bonding of all time,” of a young and upcoming superpower and what
we now refer to as old nation-states. The alliance produced the Marshall Plan and NATO,
fought and won the Cold War and created the most prosperous and peaceful assembly of
democracies in history.
The apparent
breakdown of the alliance does not seem to be a priority in a Washington under President
George W. Bush who is now fixated on terrorism and what he calls this “axis of
evil.” By the way, is this axis fictional? Ok let me stop.
Can anyone tell me
why we are going to war with Iraq? Why are we stretching our resources in war when real
people are hurting at home? So many people have lost their jobs, have lost their pensions,
have lost their hope, their dreams, etc., So many Americans are literally in need of
health care, food, shelter, education, etc., So many Americans are buried in debt and only
keep sinking deeper.
Does anyone care
about the deficit or the national debt? What the hell is that anyway? Hmmm!!! I guess we
won’t hear these terms again for a while. In New York City the “debt
counter” as I call it has started again. Many states have budget deficits and many
municipalities are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Are we going to go
into Iraq all by ourselves defying the rest of the world? Maybe we are just going to go
with the United Kingdom? Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair has questioned if we have
the support we need. Are we really going to go in without the blessing of the United
Nations? There is a big difference between
now and when former President George Bush, the father, fought Saddam. Has anyone stopped
to think that U.S. unilateralism is weakening our ties with our allies?
It’s not in our
best interest to act unilaterally. Why not pressure Iraq to allow United Nations
inspectors back in and then if they do not we can at least have some “pretext”
to go to war. I am on the side of those who believe that if the U.S. is going to go to war
with Iraq, the American people through Congress should have a say. It is necessary to know
what the parameters are. To go in without Congress having a say, with a possible bill of
70 to 80 billion dollar, and if we topple Saddam to remain in the region for maybe ten
years, is really a matter not to be taken lightly.
And who puts our
President in a position to be dictating to other countries who their leaders should be? Is
this AMERICA? Is this truly the American way? Is this what the founding fathers intended?
How can President Bush tell the Palestinians that their elected leader must go? Or to the
people of Iraq that Saddam must go or he will be toppled? Or authorize his assassination?
While no one expects
the United States and the European Union to sever ties or to become enemies, this American
contempt/unilateralism/strategy is bound to affect the alliance. While we may have shared values and experiences
with some allies, we do not necessarily have shared interests.
As reported in the Chicago Tribune, “the 50-year history of the alliance is
filled with spats and hard words--over trade, missiles, Cold War strategy, American saber
rattling, European appeasement, Disney movies and Big Macs. But these were fights within
the family, between allies who always seemed to kiss and make up.”
The answers are not
clear and we are definitely going through unchartered territory. I believe however, that
that is no excuse. Of course we need to defend our homeland and we need to punish those
who threaten and harm us. Nevertheless, we also need to focus on the economy. I hope that
the current President won’t make the mistake his father did.
Below is part of
an article carried by the Chicago Tribune printed July 28th, 2002
In a Tribune examination of the state of the alliance, leading
European foreign policy and defense officials, and political analysts from Berlin to Paris
to London and Brussels agree that what's happening now is different.
"It's normal to criticize each other, and normal for Americans to be very tough in
defending their interests," said Gilles Andreani, a French foreign policy scholar.
"But this is a new attitude, a contempt toward Europeans that we never saw before.
"Americans can have their way on this planet without Europe," Andreani said.
"For the first time, you hear Americans saying that we don't want to be in a position
where we need Europeans."
The next big flash point, and the most crucial one, is expected to involve any U.S.
decision to invade Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. European leaders, all of whom backed
the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, say they will support an attack on Iraq only if Bush makes
a solid case that it is aiding terrorism and if the United States first wins UN Security
Council support. Otherwise, Europeans may well oppose any attack, which could help hasten
the collapse of the alliance.
European officials see the new relationship as the result of three separate but
interlocking trends:
The end of the Cold War. In the Soviet-American struggle, Europe was the front line and
the focal point of U.S. policy. That ended 11 years ago, with the collapse of communism.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 only dramatized this shift of American attention from
Europe to more global threats.
The unprecedented power of the United States, coupled with the unilateralism of the Bush
administration. American officials are making it clear that European consultation and
cooperation is more hindrance than help. A Europe devoted to international law and
institutions faces a Washington that rejects any international restraint on its power. A
half-century habit of trans-Atlantic conversation has been replaced by an unconcealed
scorn in Washington for the Europeans.
The success of the European Union in creating a zone of peace in which war is virtually
unthinkable. This success has led to sharp cuts in European military spending over the
last decade and a relative military weakness. As a result, the United States has stopped
counting on European help in battle.
U.S. contempt alleged
Some of this, like the fallout from the end of the Cold War, is inevitable. Some, like the
replacement of a war-torn Europe by a continent at peace, is positive and has active U.S.
support.
But some seems almost deliberate. Many European officials admit that Europe, in its
single-minded construction of the EU, has turned inward, away from global issues, and has
not kept up its end of the military balance. But the same Europeans say that the Bush
administration's open contempt for Europeans' positions is widening the gap and is
squandering the political sympathy that the United States enjoyed across Europe after
Sept. 11.
NATO, the military alliance that won the Cold War, is not strong enough to bridge this
gap.
"Europe is not willing to be bullied, but the United States is not willing to be
restrained," said Mark Leonard, director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a London think
tank with ties to the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"The continents are without doubt drifting apart," agreed Hugo Young, a leading
British political columnist, in the Guardian. "They have interests in common, but
also interests around which America, as now led, has the power and the hardness to insist
on non-negotiable policies that we can take or leave."
American officials fanned out across Europe this summer to spread the word that U.S.
priorities and interests have changed, post Sept. 11. The Europeans are being told that,
if they want to change their worldviews, too, then they are welcome to stay in the
alliance. If not, America will go on without them.
The European reaction to this varies from country to country. European officials seem
baffled and confused by the U.S. policy and are wary of alienating Washington, loath to
criticize the Bush administration for fear of making matters worse.
Germany, grateful for U.S. support through the Cold War and anxious to keep the alliance,
has been reluctant to criticize Washington. Blair prides himself on working quietly with
Bush to influence U.S. policies: Political sources in London say part of this is
"damage control," to limit the extremes of U.S. unilateralism.
The French, as usual, are more ready to say what the rest of the continent is thinking.
"Very few European countries are used to saying no to the United States," a
French diplomat said. "France has a long history of debate with America, but other
countries aren't so used to this."
Split more apparent
European officials agree that the U.S.-European split has become more visible and bitter
under Bush. The Clinton administration riled Europeans with its post-Cold War
triumphalism, rubbed in its military superiority in Kosovo, and refused to ask Congress to
sign the Kyoto treaty on global warming.
But the real shocks to the system have come thick and fast under Bush, including the total
rejection of Kyoto, the breaching of the anti-missile treaty and the pursuit of a missile
defense system, the "axis of evil" speech that named Iraq, Iran and North Korea
as global villains, among others. But several recent events have hardened Europeans'
concerns into a real fear of where the United States is going.
The first was the American reaction when its NATO allies, immediately after Sept. 11,
invoked NATO's Article 5 for the first time in its history. That article says, in effect,
that an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on all of them, and the allies' action was
intended as an act of solidarity with Americans and offer of all-out help in the fight
against terrorism. The United States never accepted the offer and has made relatively
little use of European military help since then.
The second shock was the war on terrorism itself, or rather the overwhelming U.S. focus on
the war on terrorism and its tendency to see other world problems in the anti-terrorism
context.
Then came differences of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, with the Europeans
condemning one-sided U.S. support for Israel and the Americans seeing anti-Semitism in
Europe's more balanced approach.
More recently has come the administration's attempt to undermine the new International
Criminal Court, which all European nations see as a first step toward a global rule of
law.
Part of the trans-Atlantic problem is a failure on each side to understand the deep
emotions that drive the other.
Chris Patten, the EU commissioner, has been a leading critic of American unilateralism.
But he admits that Europeans just don't grasp "the consequences of 9/11 for American
policymaking and the American psyche. I think that we in Europe have to make a greater
effort to comprehend the impact of that atrocity.
"We in Europe have had to live with instability for most of the last century,"
from two world wars to the postwar wave of domestic terrorism in most European nations,
Patten said. For that reason, he said, it is too easy for Europeans to see terrorism as
part of the landscape, a problem like many others, rather than as an unprecedented assault
on a nation that always considered itself invulnerable.
But the Europeans feel that Americans don't understand their devotion to non-military
solutions or their pride over the consensual if bureaucratic way they have built their
continent. Nor, they feel, do Americans understand that Europe's support for the ICC,
Kyoto and other international treaties is not a spasm of political correctness but a
reflection of deep values.
"There's one fundamental difference, and it's not just Kyoto or the ICC," said
Christoph Bertram, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs
in Berlin. "It's whether truly international issues should be met with a truly
international approach. This is a deeply held view in Europe. On this point, we need to
quarrel."
The European press is full of criticism of Bush as a gun-happy cowboy--cartoons in The
Guardian of London regularly portray him as a monkey wrapped in an American flag--and
Europeans laugh at him. But European officials shun these caricatures, aware that some of
America's most effective leaders also lacked the kind of polish and sophistication that
impresses continentals.
"This atmosphere doesn't depend on Bush as a person," said Hubert Vedrine, until
recently the French foreign minister. "[Ronald] Reagan and [Harry] Truman weren't
sophisticated either, but they were very effective."
But Europeans also see the triumph of a provincial, conservative, overtly Christian part
of America that is alien from the United States they once knew.
Europe today is basically a secular society, Andreani said, and has a hard time dealing
"with a government that may be pragmatic but has its values--religion, a certain
order of society--so upfront. For our secular society, the idea that a presidential
candidate would explain how he feels about Jesus is bizarre."
----------
The series
Sunday: The Atlantic alliance between the U.S. and Europe is breaking down amid different
visions of a changing world and their roles in it.
Monday: The U.S. says it is fighting a war on terrorism. Europe says there is no such war
and no need to attack Iraq.
Tuesday: In a changed post-Cold War world, what role exists for NATO?
Wednesday: The European Union is a huge success, and that's part of its problem with the
U.S.
