Dear America ... ... a letter from Europe

Source

I like the sentiment, but I hope American voters pick the best person to serve the best interests of America first.

What is best for America is best for the world.

America to Europe: the past 8 years notwithstanding, we've got your back.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! The last eight years we've had their back more than ever. Give me a break.

Only because what is best for the world is best for America.

Hopefully when people vote, they will think outside of our borders and start thinking about the entire world and not just themselves and their pocket book.

but since americans have very little influence on who is elected president in the long run, I hold little hope

Nice sentiments, however they ignore the other, more fundamental issues that continue to divide Europe and America. It isn't just the war, though the disagreements over it certainly dramatized the underlying divide.

The truth is Europe didn't carry its share of the load during the Cold War, and today still shows every inclination to expect a continued powerful voice in our affairs without commensurate joint support in dealing with the issues before us. This, somewhat patronizing, letter admits no acknowledgment of this fact, and without it, I doubt that America will respond as the author wishes.

I for one am not persuaded.

I don't agree that Europe didn't carry enough of the load in the Cold War. The load's very need was generated by two super powers on either side acting like paranoid children and they can't be faulted for not being as enthusiastic about partaking in the madness as the US was.

I'm also curious as to what you consider "our" affairs that you feel they shouldn't have an influential voice on.

I could imagine that most Americans didn't notice the Cold War besides reading about it.

And I'm, too, interested where Europians should keep their mouths shut because it's an US-affair.

Robert, you can take Western Europe as unwilling bystanders if you wish. Nevertheless, had there been only one super power instead of two, and the one were called The USSR, their involvement would have been much greater, though perhaps briefer.

robert wrote :







perhaps we should modify charlie wilson's musings to :

Well, hamburger, the oil embargo of circa 1973 proved that what was good for General Motors was not good for America. What was good for Honda (Civic) was.

PS: I knew you were being facitious without the

Well the text of the Fabian letter congratulates us for helping to defeat facism, but failed to even mention that other great European political innovation - socialism & Soviet style Communism. I found the omission a bit interesting.

The letter went on to invite us to repudiate our sitting president, and join them in together solving the world's problems. I find that a bit intrusive, and I suspect that if America piously invited (say) Germans to repudiate their elected government you too would find that a bit intrusive as well.

While Germany was indeed right on the border of the Cold War, and in addition was generally more faithful to its promises to NATO than were the other European powers, I'm sure you are not suggesting that the U.S failed to do its part.

You and I differ strongly over what constitutes the good society. I believe in a social contract and recognise that it needs to be paid for by taxation and organised by public authority. But in our shared commitment to democracy, the rule of law and the indispensable inviolability of private property rights, we share core western values. In principle, we can debate the appropriate political philosophy that should inform our respective countries’ economic and social organisation while respecting each other’s differences.

The trouble is that I, and millions of my fellow Europeans, no longer trust that the leadership of today’s America respects these differences. The administration of George W. Bush believes that the economy and society of the United States are the goal to which others should aspire and compare themselves with; that alternative ideas – even within the western tradition – are aberrant; that the US has a sacred duty to itself to give no quarter in asserting these beliefs; and that America has a special destiny to project them abroad.

Indeed, the current administration apparently believes the US is so special that the rules that apply to lesser nations – respecting international laws, upholding international institutions, observing the Geneva Conventions – should apply to it only selectively.

You may object that this characterisation is unfair; but if so it has been earned by the way the Bush administration has conducted itself over the last three and a half years. It has fought a war of choice in Iraq that broke fundamental canons of international law – the culmination of its policy of unilaterally breaking international treaties that developed into the doctrine of pre-emptive unilateralism in the wake of the atrocities of 11 September 2001. Its treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison has offended the United Nations Convention against Torture.

Meanwhile, it has arbitrarily divided Europe – where the great post-second world war achievement was to entrench capitalism and liberal democracy – into “old” (sclerotic, socialist, pacifist) and “new” (willing to join a coalition of the willing in the “war against terror”). Divide and rule, coupled with a deep disdain for European beliefs and values, has been deployed to serve a policy of aggressive unilateralism in which the US is above the law.

I believe this is not only against US interests, but it is a betrayal of what America should stand for. America is an inspiring concept; the symbols of the statue of liberty, the American flag and the Capitol have meant hope, liberty, freedom of expression and respect for the law. The US has made mistakes, certainly, but the world has believed it is essentially benign and a force for good. It is bad enough in itself that all that is now in question. But it is also self-defeating - because the US, although awesomely powerful, is not an island. It is embedded in a network of international interdependencies – first and pre-eminent, certainly, but still embedded in the same rules that apply to all.

Two truths underline this interdependence. The first is economic. The United States owes the rest of the world approaching a net $3 trillion, the consequence of decades of current account deficits that are set to continue. Asia and Europe want to export to the US; but the US is a willing importer – indeed two-thirds of US merchandise imports are through the affiliates of US multinationals who locate production overseas because it is more competitive than producing in America. This is a relationship in which everyone wins, but it is dependent upon foreigners’ – especially Asian central banks’ – willingness to continue to add to their holdings of dollars.

At some stage in the future (nobody can predict whether it will be five months or five years) there will be a tipping-point in which dollars are sold rather than bought, and in massive quantities. The US will be unable to raise protectionist tariffs on imported goods that are largely produced by its own companies in order to square the books; it will have to raise interest rates to persuade foreigners willingly to lend to it with incalculable consequences for its indebted consumers. The way to minimise the pain will be to internationalise the solution with formal support from the Europeans and Asians through international institutions – anathema to America’s current way of thinking.

The second truth of the US’s interdependence is Iraq and the war on terror. Building a broad coalition within the aegis of the UN to challenge Saddam would have been slow and inglorious, but it would have been legitimate and the cost in terms of lost lives and billions of dollars would have been shared. It would also have had a better chance of achieving the goal that the US wanted - building a viable democratic state in Iraq, or at least one that respected the rule of law. Instead, the US has earned the opprobrium of an invader; reconstruction in Iraq is dangerous and insecure; and now, as the mayhem spreads to Saudi Arabia, there is a real threat to western oil supplies.

The US needs friends; but to win them back – and Europe is only too anxious to be won back – it needs to change course. To continue as it is will jeopardise its own interests and those of the west. Instead, it needs to accept its interdependence and offer leadership based on a commitment to shared values and international law. This means recognising its economic vulnerability and accepting that its low tax model may not be the best for the rest of us. Even if America thinks that it is best, we in Europe have every right to be different - and America should respect us for this, not seek to overturn our model of life and economy.

Yours,

http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-letterstoamericans/article_2032.jsp

In politics, despite growing up in the age of demonstrations against US policy on Cuba and Vietnam, I had no illusions about the Soviet empire and no sympathy for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament–style unilateralism. It would not have needed the D–Day anniversary or the death of Ronald Reagan to remind me how many west and east–central Europeans owe their freedom to the sacrifice of blood and treasure by America.

Of course, US post–second world war foreign policy has been open to criticism – most of its interventions in Central and South America, as well as its support for dubious causes and regimes in tactical pursuit of US global objectives elsewhere, have shown that any commitment to “democracy” is honoured as much in the breach as in the observance.

But for the most part, and certainly to the end of the cold war, the US tried to act in concert with allies anywhere outside its direct sphere of influence. One of the key differentiating characteristics of the Iraq war has been the chosen divisiveness of its original course. The coalition of the willing (or coerced) has gone out of its way to abuse the unwilling. Doubters (witness Hans Blix) have been demonised and whole nations (witness the French) accused of cowardice, treachery and worse.

One of the reasons why Iraq has become such a polarising issue has been the selective amnesia of the United States (and United Kingdom) government. Its long–term support for Saddam Hussein – through the decades of expunging political opposition, gassing his own citizens, invading Iran – has been airbrushed from history. This, even though the misery of Iraqis after 1991 was attributable at least as much to ruthlessly applied United Nations (but US–led) sanctions as to Saddam’s iniquity.

Meanwhile, the orchestrated furore over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was dismaying in its dishonesty. If the Israeli air force could wipe out any potential Iraqi nuclear threat with a single sortie (as in Osirak in 1981), and if the Israeli chief of staff could say that he lost not a minute’s sleep worrying about Iraq as a source of danger, why should the world’s only superpower publicly speculate about mushroom clouds emanating from Iraq? The baying chorus of certainty about Iraqi WMD was rooted in deception and misrepresentation.

The invasion of Iraq – foolish, wicked or counter–productive, according to one’s viewpoint – will eventually be resolved, but it is likely to leave an enduring legacy of lingering anti–Americanism in large parts of Europe and the Muslim world. The image of America will be fixed as one of a rampant, unaccountable superpower listening to no outside voices as it pursues its own agenda.

Even more damaging for the United States, and for those who most admire it, is the possibility that the backlash against the Iraq adventure will make the US more hesitant about interventions that it might really need to make in the future. In addition, the impact of domestic legislation (like the Patriot Act) as repressive as anything since the early days of the post–war communist scare, intensifies concern that the cause of democracy may have suffered its biggest setback in America itself.

At one level, America’s institutional self–balancing mechanisms seem already to be exerting themselves. The official 9/11 commission has exposed the incompetence and complacency that allowed the conspirators to accomplish their ghastly mission, despite repeated and explicit warnings of what they were planning. David Kay, of the Iraq Survey Group, pressed the administration to acknowledge its WMD errors, even to the point of contemplating that the entire affair was an elaborate Iranian intelligence sting. It was Sixty Minutes and the Washington Post that illuminated the horrors of Abu Ghraib (not the many vocal media critics of US policy overseas). It was a US army general, not the Red Cross, who most completely catalogued the torture regime tolerated by his senior officers.

But even if the Bush administration rediscovers the virtues of diplomacy, can it learn the lessons of Iraq? For all the denunciations of “rogue elements” betraying the honour of US arms, Bagram and Guantanamo will remain standing after Abu Ghraib has been flattened. The hundreds of stored digital photographs, showing such consistent patterns of abusive behaviour, surely demonstrate official tolerance – or sanction – for what happened.

Few, inside or outside Iraq, can regret the deposing of Saddam. But even the best of causes require legal sanction, international consent, a clear balance of advantage and orderly implementation if they are to achieve their optimum effect. It is a bitter irony of the invasion that Iraq has now become – as it never was before – a fruitful recruiting ground for al–Qaida. Worse still would be if it left America resentful, frustrated, mistrusted and divided – unsure if it is a society that endorses torture or abhors it. That is the legacy I fear.

Best wishes,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-letterstoamericans/article_2057.jsp

What a load of submissive dribble. Ha! As if Europe is to blame for any of this...

That would be really quite funny, since the Fabian Society is part of the Labour Party, a socialist party. And the Fabian Society is .... even more socialistic
(Did you know, George, that I'm a Fabian? :wink: )



No.

I'm quite familiar with the Fabian Society and find that just one of many reasons to recognize the letter as the patronizing and offensive thing it is, and to treat it with the contempt it so richly deserves.

The other reason is that it is a European letter.

If it was a speech given by one of the Republican candidates, george would find it a lot less offensive.