-Caveat Lector- Comment http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,887751,00.html
Europe? Frankly, America doesn't give a damn... The 'cowboys' in the White House were raised in an anti-European culture Todd Gitlin Monday February 3, 2003 The Guardian Across the vast and tangled expanse of the United States of America, these days it isn't hard to spot disdain and contempt for that reputedly miasmic entity known in Washington as "Europe". Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brought these sentiments to a boil recently when he dismissed the anti-war climate of "Old Europe", meaning the French and German governments. "Old" in his lexicon means loser: not virile, not vigorous, incapable of defending itself against marauders. Old Europe is a museum of that wretched and bloody "history" which Francis Fukuyama famously declared to have "ended". Rumsfeld's disdain is as old as America, an extension of Europe, which in a certain sense founded itself as the anti-Europe - democratic and neither royal nor aristocratic, vigorous and not effete, pragmatic and not committed to hidebound tradition. In one long strand of American opinion, Europe meant culture, while America meant either nature or God or a combination. But still, America needed Europe - its ideas, its investment, its markets, its unwanted "huddled masses yearning to breathe free", at times its cachet. Beneath the disdain sparkled the green-eyed monster. The cultural side of anti-Europeanism has a long, thick history. Throughout the 20th century, American culture defined itself as the fundamental against the complex, the bold against the hesitant, the redskin against the paleface. Against the opera, there was Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Against symphonies, there was jazz. Against Proust, Joyce, and American wannabes like Henry James, there was Hemingway, with his Old Testament cadences. (Never mind that he was an expat too.) The European movie talked, the American movie moved. Arnold Schwarzenegger could become an American icon, not despite his limited facility with the American language, but because of it. "I saw a Rohmer movie once," says a character in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975). "It was like watching paint dry." And this from one of Hollywood's most sophisticated directors. Still, today's anti-European clichés coexist with the Americanisation of sorbet, Heineken, merlot and, for that matter, The Weakest Link and Survivor. As American television reduces its high-culture imports, public radio and television stations play the BBC news. For America's university students, study abroad (largely in Europe) has never been more popular - at least as of September 10 2001. So what exactly is this American anti- Europeanism of which so much is heard these days? It is the corollary to a distinct political style - which happens to be the style that rules from Washington. The anti-Europeanism in circulation now is an accompaniment to the messianism of the administration in power. It is heavily regional - a product of the Sunbelt, which consists of the old Confederacy plus the mountain states and the prairie, counting roughly half the national populace. Texas is its heartland. Oil is its definitive industry. The heartland of anti-Europe was Reagan's America and now, minus California, it is George W Bush's. This Sunbelt imagines itself ruggedly self-sufficient. It likes to think of itself as six- shooter country. Diplomacy means follow the leader. Watching UN-mandated inspections is, well, like watching paint dry. All the American elites agree that what changed politically in the 20th century was that Europe needed America. The interrupted Thirty-one Year War of 1914-45 shattered European claims to an exalted place at the heights of western civilisation. In the eyes of America's Atlanticists, Yankee indispensability in the second world war extended into the cold war. The proof of America's leadership of the "free world" would lie in its ability to bring Europe along. For men like Dean Acheson, Clark Clifford, McGeorge Bundy and the recently deceased C Douglas Dillon - the "wise men" of the Truman, Kennedy and Johnson administrations - esteem was not a zero-sum game. If Europe had proved not only decadent but dependent, a rejuvenated America had as one of its central missions the revival of Europe. The problem was to make sure that Europe was up to its new role as willing but subordinate partner. When Bush's America disdains Europe, it also sneers at the American north- east. To them, "Washington, DC" is an insult, and "New York City" is where Europe begins. This counter-elite rules today as fervently and exclusively as in Reagan's 80s - more so, since they control all the branches of government. Rumsfeld is from Illinois, but his plain-spoken disdain speaks for the whole cowboy elite. And not only for them, but also for their constituents. During the 2000 campaign, Bush's America - 544,000 votes smaller than Al Gore's America - was not uncomfortable with the prospect of a president whose curiosity about the world was nil, who had barely been out of the US and didn't seem to mind. Indeed, Bush's lack of acquaintance with Europe or anywhere else was, for some, a recommendation. Because all they wanted from the rest of the world was oil and cheap labour, they didn't mind Bush saying during one campaign debate: "We must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course." In their hearts, if they thought about Europe at all, they doubted that Bush was the humble sort. September 11 reignited their paranoia - and bluster. The al-Qaida massacres, and the Democrats' inability or unwillingness to fight Bush, gave a minority president the gift of a Republican Congress. In part because the Senate is disproportionately skewed to rural, his party now rules all branches of government. But given the opposition's weakness, it is all the more striking that American public opinion fails - or refuses - to be enamoured of cowboy unilateralism. After months of war talk, Bush's bravado has not swept the country beyond his immediate base. Contempt for Europe - or any other continent - is simply not popular. Neither is contempt for the United Nations. For months now, public opinion polls have registered the conviction that war in Iraq must have Security Council sanction. Even in the Republican heartland, Bush's constituents are not saddling up. Even after his messianic State of the Union address, Americans at large are unconvinced of the need to rush to war. There's no evidence either that Americans overall enjoy riling Europe, Old or New. Just as John le Carré was wrong to declare recently that "88% of Americans want the war", there is little reason to fear that most of America sneers at the Kyoto protocol; or at the International Criminal Court; or at most of Europe's commitments - or, indeed, at Europe. · Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, is the author of Media Unlimited and the forthcoming Letters to a Young Activist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Forwarded for your information. 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