Victor Davis Hanson: More Continental Drift? - The rationale behind a new world order

victorhanson.com ^ | August 18, 2005 | Victor Davis Hanson

[NZerFromHK]

The new chasm between Europe and the United States seems to widen still — even as transatlantic diplomats assure us that it has narrowed — despite a common heritage and a supposedly shared goal of global democracy, free markets, and defeating terrorists. Europeans sell arms to autocratic China that will threaten democratic Taiwan. They legitimize the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and mostly caricature the American efforts at democratizing the Middle East. All this follows the past appeasement of Yasser Arafat, strife over the Kyoto protocols and the International Criminal Court, and the use of the United Nations to hamstring the United States in the war that followed 9/11.

What is behind this divide? Is it that the U.S. is militarily strong while the wealthy Europeans have made themselves essentially impotent — classic ingredients for deep-seated envy?

Or did the close of the Cold War bring an end to the shared purposes that used to paper over the cracks of innate cultural differences? Americans tend to wish for less government and more personal freedom. They are more religious, aggressive, and acquisitive. Europeans instead prefer statism and an enforced equality of result. Far more of them are irreligious, pacifist, and more interested in leisure than in national progress and personal wealth. Now that they have no fear of the Soviet army, they have little need for us — or so they think.

[NZerFromHK]

A good article that unfortunately can't be reproduced entirely here due to copyright restrictions. Click on the link to read everything.

[NZerFromHK]

Some paragraphs worth noting:

"Proponents of the old transatlantic alliance shrug and say things will improve. Some allege that George Bush's cowboyism is to blame for the current rift. With a bit more astute diplomacy and softer voices — or someone like a French-speaking John Kerry as President — we could get along as well as in the past.

Really? Euro-U.S. relations may have returned to civility and even shared commitment after the recent attacks in London, but our real closeness is probably over. NATO is comatose — a Potemkin alliance without a mission. It has devolved into Americans trying to shame affluent Europeans into buying a few more planes to add to their dreadfully feeble fighting forces — which lack any reflection of the vast wealth and population of Europe."

...

"Careful reading of American history does not suggest a natural U.S. partnership with Europe. Rather, our past shows frequent antipathy, punctuated several times by violent hostilities: most recently in 1898, 1914, and 1941. Apart from the special British-American companionship, solidarity between the U.S. and continental Europe was more likely a Cold War exception, not the rule. For 50 years the United States stayed engaged with Europe specifically to ensure that intercontinental squabbles would never again devour American blood. The Soviet Union served as a sort of ancient Persia — an enemy colossus that kept feuding Greek city-states friendly for a while, until the common threat faded and their innate suspicion returned."

...

"The United States is rapidly becoming a universal nation. Continuing immigration, our democratic society, our ethnic and racial assimilation, our common popular culture, our meritocracy, and shared material dreams have created equal and unified Americans out of nearly all the tribes and races of the globe. Europe, for all its socialist pretenses, is a much more stratified and narrow society, plagued with unassimilated minorities. It is hard to imagine a Colin Powell, Alberto Gonzales, or Condoleezza Rice running the key ministries of France, Italy, or Belgium.

For four out of ten Americans today, their physical and spiritual origins have nothing to do with Europe — they are offspring of Asia, Latin America, or Africa.

Demographic and immigration realities mean that our ostensible blood link with Europe will continue to thin. Like it or not, more Americans are coming to know and care less about Europe — and more about China, Korea, Mexico, India, and the Philippines. The teaching of French, German, and Italian is sliding, while Spanish and Chinese rise.

Red-state/Blue-state tension in America reflects a similar divergence between America and Europe. As the United States becomes more conservative, it increasingly sees Europe as a fringe San Francisco or Massachusetts, not a mainstream Grand Rapids or Ohio. Europe's rhetorical intrusions into our recent Presidential election confirmed that Europeans more often embrace agendas that bother Americans — pacifism, radical secularism, utopian environmentalism, blind support for the U.N., socialized health care, government steering of the economy, redefinition of marriage, strident abortion rights, and open euthanasia."

[IronJack]

VDH always touches the intriguing issues of the day. The roots of this gulf would make an excellent research paper, if not an entire book. Are they the result of the inevitable cultural dispersion? Are they an evolutionary manifestation? Will the increasing cultural difference create competition and stresses, or will all cultures eventually move in the same direction, just at different speeds? Those kinds of pressures are what shapes our future, and the future our sons and daughters will know.

[happyathome]

VDH is a classic essayist of a sort we haven't had in a long time. This guy takes age-old themes culled from 2,000 years of reocrded history, and relates them to modern American issues in a way that is informative but never condescending. Great stuff.

[untenured]

Allow dissident Europeans to enjoy fast-track immigration to the United States. Welcoming folks from Europe who wish to join the American experience will send a powerful reminder to European elites that there were reasons their own people left their shores in the first place. Special warm immigration considerations for Europeans should replace the military alliances that used to knit us together.

I suspect that Europe is full of creative, risk-taking people stifled by the initiative-smothering welfare state and labor regulation. (I see some of them in my classes.) Before the Iraq war I heard someone say that the best revenge against Old Europe would be to double their immigration quotas. It's petty, but in my darker moments I'd like to vacuum out their best, brightest and most ambitious as much to smite them as to help us. In my brighter moments I'd like to do the same thing to push them to reform, except that I don't think it will be enough.

Immigration, Then and Now.

[atomicpossum]

Quietly cultivate friendships with eastern European countries, and encourage stronger relations with countries and governments that have signaled shared interests with the U.S., like Britain, Denmark, Holland, and Italy, who all have reason to be wary of the French-German axis.

Don't forget Poland.

[NZerFromHK]

I'm constantly reminded of an ancient Chinese proverb "When the geese are gone, the bows are stored; when the cunning hares are dead, the hunting dog is killed." i.e. when something outlasts its usefulness it is put aside.

Europe is a very rationalistic and scheming lot. The wanted Americans after WWII because the big bad Soviet wolf was there. Charles de Gaulle wanted Americans out in the 1960s because he figured the united European Economic Community already had enough force on their own to dispel the Soviet Union as opposed to the weak post-WWII years when Western Europe was in ruin. De Gaulle also betted that Brenshev was no Stalin and he was not interested to really conquer Western Europe. But the majority thought Uncle Sam should stay for a while because they weren't sure of the Soviet's power.

Fast forward to the 1990s. The Soviet Union is gone, which makes Europeans think they don't need you anymore - I saw them openly said so on European forums long before anyone know who Dubya is. The WOT essentially don't change anything because they figure Muslims are targeting the United States and a couple of countries closest to you, like Australia for instance, and not the entire West.

All of this shows that the Cold War alliance was just an alliance of convenience. When there is no common interests, it is natural for the alliance to wither away.

[neverdem]

bump & a ping

[John Lenin]

The best thing we could do is open up our imnmigration to Eastern European contries and slow the Latin Ameircan exodus. Face it, we need another 100 million people in this country to prop up our own socialism and keep the economy humming. The Latin Ameircan exodus will be the downfall of this country if it is not halted.

[RightWhale]

Since the immigration door was slammed shut in 1921, the most recent immigrants have been assimilated and are now American. Prohibition was the last attempt to drive a wedge between the old population and the recent immigrants, who still had strong ties to Old Europe. All that is over.

The recent spate of illegal immigration is mild in comparison, since the newest immigrants are from nearby and are already American. There is a legitimate question about Moslem immigrants due to the state of war, but probably not as big a question as about German immigrants during WW I and Japanese immigrants during WW II.

There could be several books in this depending on emphasis.

[steel_resolve]

You know, maybe it's the beer buzz I have right now, but this article really upset me. I don't want this to happen to Europe. I like visiting Europe and like it or not they are our ancestors. Why can't they get their act together?!? Blows me away...

[NZerFromHK]

Even if you don't take them, Australia, New Zealand or even Canada already have wide doors to welcome them. 27% of Australian populations are foreign born, although I admit over half of immigrants are actually British or New Zealand-born - not really migrants comparatively.

[Archon of the East]

Why can't they get their act together?!? Blows me away...

I'm sure some will complicate this issue but I see it simply as the difference between enlightenment European style versus American style. Lets not forget the Soviet influence throughout old Europe's leftist's also.

[Sam Cree]

I guess the chasm is widening because Europe is moving leftwards much faster than we are. We are still on the same road, though.

[Albion Wilde]

What interested me particularly was the second-to-last paragraph:

"We must keep Europe in mind in all questions of U.N. reform. The European Union deserves one collective U.N. veto befitting its new transcontinental nationhood, not multiple votes as at present. India and Japan should assume their rightful places at the Security Council table next to the single European vote. And we should press for a General Assembly composed only of elected governments, rather than the present mix of democracies and rogue regimes that often look to Europe for tolerance, subsidies, and trendy anti-Americanism."

I think Hanson's really spot on with his analysis that the UN should no longer be dominated by all those European votes and crackpot dictatorships. The voting needs to be realigned accordingly. A separate vote for France, Germany, England, etc is really unbalanced against us.

[Malesherbes]

Atomicpossum is right. There is a tendency to forget Poland - a country of 38 million relatively young well-educated people with a strong sense of their own history and culture. Poland is and will be a better ally than most of the countries of western Europe.

[Tolik]

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[Tolik]

Thanks for the ping

[NZerFromHK]

I agree. They are proclaiming loudly that they are making one new nation called Europe. As part of the deal you wouldn't get more than one. Germany didn't keep its second seat when it was reunified in 1990.