n the last six months we have witnessed an unprecedented
level of hostility voiced toward America by an array of European
intellectuals, EU officials, and those in the media from London to
Rome. At a time of war we expect such enmity from our enemies in the
Middle East. Americans are accustomed to such opportunistic
broadsides from Cuba and China — and of course venom from the
lunatic states of North Korea, Libya, Iran, and the like. Yet it is
unnerving to hear constant European recriminations over everything
from Guantanamo Bay and our injunction of the word "Axis" to plans
to topple Saddam Hussein and preserve Israel.
As sort of an
informal survey, I counted talking heads that I have listened to
recently on public and cable television. In the last five weeks, I
have heard eight from India, and six from Russia. All were
reasonable, supported more or less the efforts of the United States
to combat terrorism, and seemed genuinely to appreciate American
institutions. In contrast, the last 13 European allies I saw —
French officials, British journalists, and EU bureaucrats — have
uniformly voiced dissatisfaction with America. In some cases they
express an almost visceral dislike of the United States. Perusal of
some European magazines and newspapers reveals a similar continuum
of disdain.
There are two general themes to their unhappiness
— other than simple envy. First, European criticism is without a
doubt deeply embedded in aristocratic socialism. We Americans
somehow are purportedly cutthroat and exploiting in our manner of
capitalism, and yet manage to allow our unwashed, crass, and
parochial classes to define our culture. Do they hate us for
trampling upon our less fortunate — or allowing our less fortunate
to trample high culture and so dominate the American landscape from
McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Britney Spears to Oprah, Nascar, and Jerry
Springer?
Second, the
Europeans also don't have a clue about America's world role — past,
present, or future. And their ignorance has manifested itself in a
variety of ways throughout this crisis. Everyone from Swedish relief
officials to Bono whines that in proportional rather than absolute
amounts of foreign aid, we Americans are tight-fisted and do not
give generously to the Third World countries. Forget the billions
that we do hand out — and whether such blanket donations without
prerequisite conditions of Westernization make countries like Egypt,
Palestine, North Korea, and Pakistan worse rather than better.
Instead consider that Americans, unlike Europeans, spend billions in
defense that in real terms are not directly tied to the security of
the United States, but rather ensure global trade, tranquility, and
security.
Just how much
"foreign aid" is a multibillion-dollar carrier battle group worth,
when it patrols the Mediterranean or the Sea of Japan and so has the
effect not of stealing foreign resources, but rather of ensuring
that Turks and Greeks are not at war, that Koreans do not blow each
other up, or that China keeps away from Taiwan and Japan? Unlike
simple food or money, this type of "foreign assistance" is quite
risky to its benefactors — and more likely to be resented,
caricatured, or misrepresented. Sending in an air wing to Kosovo can
save thousands; sending in the Red Cross or the U.N. tragically
cannot. GPS-bombs, not Amnesty International, are more likely to
keep killers away from Big Ben and the Vatican. Should we not deploy
carriers, frigates, and planes the world over, both the Europeans
and the Third World would not enjoy a stable global community, but
one that would either sink into the chaos of a Mogadishu, Monrovia,
or Kabul, or find its stability only in the law and order of a
Baghdad, Peking, or Havana.
Nor do
Europeans understand that the United States is rightly or wrongly
engaged in one of the most radical experiments in emigration and
assimilation since the Irish arrival during the great famine over a
century ago. We may well have eight-ten million legal and illegal
immigrants from Mexico inside our borders. Here in California some
cities — like my hometown and dozens nearby — have seen their
populations swell to between 70 and 90 percent Hispanic immigrants.
Some studies suggest 90 percent of the arrivals, in large part from
Oaxaca and Michoacan, have no formal education past the eighth
grade. Of all those born in Mexico who now reside in California,
only 60 percent will finish high school. In the CSU system, the
largest university in the world, 47 percent of all students must
take remedial classes.
And how has the
United States dealt with millions of aliens from the third world
crossing its borders illegally? Despite the rhetoric of the race
industry, it has been mostly humane in its great experiment to
transform millions that had no opportunity to become literate into
American naturalized suburbanites in a generation. The entire
survival of our immediate neighbor Mexico is built on two
assumptions: billions in cash remunerations must be sent back by its
citizens living illegally in the United States, and millions of them
must leave and head north rather than march en masse on Mexico City
to seek redress of grievance. Taken in that context, the United
States is not merely giving billions of dollars in foreign aid the
world over, but in fact trying to vent the social unrest of much of
Mexico and Central America — in the same way that we were the
safety-valve for Europe for much of the nineteenth century. Let
Italy, Holland, or Austria allow 10 million from Bangladesh,
Nigeria, or Mexico to cross their borders rather than merely send
food and medicine abroad.
Europeans also
have a strange way of looking at the history of the twentieth
century. Just because on two occasions they have wrecked their
civilization and suffered greater tragedy than we is no reason to
forget the origins and remedies of those great calamities. Let us
remember that Germany, Austria, France, and England almost ruined
Western culture between 1914-18. Only the belated entry of a million
American soldiers stopped the bloodletting. Two decades later,
deviant states in Italy and Germany nearly ruined the West a second
time — in the process eliminating 6 million of Europe's finest
citizens. Western Europe — the bedrock states of the EU of Holland,
France, and Belgium — could do little and capitulated in a matter of
weeks. All were liberated only due to the efforts of muscular and
unsophisticated Americans. I suppose that concern with Europe is why
we said "Hitler first," even though it was the Japanese, not the
Nazis, who had attacked us directly and were the most immediate
threat.
There is no
need to recount the half-century of the Cold War. Despite the shrill
nonsense of Euro-Communists and socialists, few doubt that had
America not stood firm in creating NATO, the entire continent would
have been conquered in the manner of Eastern Europe. Then there are
the minor affairs, beyond the Berlin Airlift and the American
assurance to risk New York and Washington to stop Soviet armor from
reaching Bonn and Paris. The British created Israel, and then bailed
with the rest of Europe when it became clear that continued support
would endanger the friendship of their former colonial subjects —
now full of oil and terrorists — in the Gulf, Syria, Egypt, and
Iraq. The Europeans most recently sat paralyzed in fear as 250,000
of their neighbors were butchered in the former Yugoslavia — and
that was after Soviet tanks were being melted for scrap.
So there is a
sad pattern to this sad century. We did not beg to get involved in
two world wars. The Soviet Union was no threat on land to us. We
didn't know much about the Middle East or the Palestinian problem or
Serbia. But somehow we certainly were needed for something by
someone to prevent a catastrophe.
The Europeans
apparently talk only to our elites on the East Coast, who in turn
apparently worry whether they are treated politely or rudely in
London or Paris. But the vast majority of Americans simply could not
care less. They do not think K-Mart or Target are crass; they eat
fast food instead of hour-long lunches because they work at hectic
40-50-hour a week jobs that would send much of Europe into a
revolution. They are trying to assimilate millions of some of the
poorest people in the planet into their culture — a far more
daunting task than reuniting East and West Germany.
In this regard,
Europe should pay closer attention to America's demography as well.
Some of us teach classes made up of 60-70 percent from immigrant
students from Mexico, the Punjab, or Southeast Asia. These newcomers
have little immediate cultural or emotional ties with Europe. Even
two decades ago, all my Hispanic friends in our local community were
vehemently cheering on Argentina, and damning rumors of American
assistance to England. By 2050, a quarter of the population will be
of Hispanic heritage; perhaps another 20 percent Asian and African
American. Their view of Europe will be predicated on its attitudes
in the here and now, not on a reservoir of good will based on a
common emotional bond or ethnic heritage.
Yet in the past
six months, our European allies have been frittering away almost all
of America's past positive sentiments toward the continent. After
the European reaction to the aftermath of Sept. 11, I doubt
seriously whether America would wish to intervene as we did in 1999
in Kosovo. Should there be chaos in the Aegean, should there be a
falling-out between Russia and Eastern Europe, should there be a
missile attack on a European capital from Iran or Iraq, should China
make demands on the EU, there would now be zero support in
the United States for the use of American troops abroad. As we have
seen — thanks to Europe — Article V of NATO now means little, if
anything. Nor is this growing reluctance to aid Europe a return to
American isolation or knownothingism. Americans in contrast feel
strongly about their obligations to Japan and Latin America, and
their thawing relations with India and Russia.
So the problem
is not with us, but with the Europeans. And if the dividends of
their new utopian and increasingly unfree EU are what we've seen in
the present crisis, it may well be that we can only remain friends
by being allies no longer.
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