Friends? Foes? Disconnected Strangers?
By Jeffrey Gedmin, Jonathan Rauch, Mark Steyn, Michael Kelly, Jonah Goldberg, John O'Sullivan, Andrew Sullivan

A symposium featuring

Jeffrey Gedmin, Andrew Sullivan,
Jonathan Rauch, Mark Steyn, Michael Kelly,
Jonah Goldberg, and John O'Sullivan

A One-Sided Alliance

By Jeffrey Gedmin

God help you if you're loved by the Germans. It started at the moment Chancellor Gerhard Schröder pledged his country's "uneingeschränkte Solidarität" (unrestricted solidarity) with the United States in the war against terrorism.

Around that same time, Ulrich Wickert, a prominent German television anchor, mused that George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden really share the "same patterns of thinking." Composer Karl-Heinz Stockhausen contended that the attack on the World Trade Center was a work of art. The German fashion designer Joop blamed America for the atrocities. It was our fault, apparently, that Arabs felt humiliated. German solidarity seemed to know no bounds.

Today Mr. Schröder steadfastly rejects involvement in an American "adventure" in Iraq. A leading parliamentarian has likened the U.S. President to a Roman emperor; the justice minister thought Adolf H. was the more appropriate comparison. Indeed it's commonplace for politicians and commentators to cite three reasons why the U.S. wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power: 1) America wants oil; 2) America wants to dominate the region; and 3) America wants to bully its European allies.

It has become a strange debate. After fighting for years to have sanctions against Iraq lifted--they only hurt common people, we were told--Europe now extols the virtues of those economic sticks. After participating enthusiastically in a military intervention in Kosovo without a U.N. mandate, Europe now argues that only the United Nations can offer American self-defense a proper legal and moral basis.

Clearly, we have a problem. The Germans may be especially prickly, but all of Europe is following a similar pattern of conflict with the U.S. The issues have varied: Kyoto, the International Criminal Court (ICC), a treaty to ban land mines, criticism of the death penalty in the U.S., the European Union's "Critical Dialogue" with the mullahs in Tehran. For at least a decade now, European elites have been trying to tell us that they want a new world order; that their vision is not ours. They are desperate to re-negotiate the transatlantic relationship. They want more power and independence.

Fair enough. But America should take European advice on foreign policy with a grain of salt. Remember that leading Europeans argued initially against the liberation of Kuwait, against the enlargement of NATO, against scrapping the old ABM Treaty, against the use of force on Slobodan Milosevic, against missile defense, against military action in Afghanistan.

All the while, Atlanticists have tried to keep faith in Euro-American unity (I was one of them). Some explained it was just Bill Clinton's weak leadership. Others opined that when center-right governments returned to power in Europe there would be a more cooperative spirit.

Actually, Tony Blair has done fine in the U.K. When the Tories finally return they may indeed steer Britain even closer to America, but they will never steer the rest of Europe anywhere. It's laughable, of course, to think that a different political constel-lation in France would significantly change U.S.-French relations--even if Gerhard Schröder is doing everything he can to improve those ties. Conservatives in Spain and Italy have helped, perhaps, on the margins. But Edmund Stoiber, Chancellor Schröder's conservative challenger in Germany's recent elections, is the kind of "pro-American" who rejects the U.S. economic model at home, wants to impose the Kyoto Treaty and the ICC on the whole world, and thinks the U.S. has too much power in the world. "Niemals"--absolutely never--said Mr. Stoiber during the campaign, when asked whether he would permit the U.S. to use its bases in Germany to attack Saddam Hussein if the Americans moved unilaterally.

Since the Cold War ended, the transatlantic alliance has been kept alive by the hope that even if the flesh was weak, the spirit was still willing. Western Europe has bad demographics (aging populations and declining birth rates); a heavy commitment to high social spending and weak economic growth; and dwindling defense expenditures. When Germany sent modest forces to Afghanistan, it had to borrow aircraft from the Ukraine to get them to the field. Recently, Berlin's defense minister protested American war plans by threatening to remove Germany's half dozen biological and chemical weapons-detecting vehicles from Kuwait. He had better keep the Pentagon's number handy, because without help from the Americans (or someone else) the Germans do not have the airlift to get their equipment out.

Of course, we're likely to get through Iraq with the Europeans. More than anything they are afraid of being left out. But beyond that? Once upon a time, it was hoped that the inclusion of the central Europeans would re-invigorate the trans-atlantic alliance with a fresh dose of idealism and pro-American sentiment. As NATO heads to its next summit in Prague, prepared to enlarge again, it could yet happen. But time is running out. How long can an alliance really function when key allies believe that building themselves up means cutting America down?

Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin.

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America Won't Listen to Europe's Appeasers

By Andrew Sullivan

In London and Paris, Berlin and Brussels, the papers are full of war speculation: demands that parliament be recalled, rumors of cabinet resignations, and polls showing George W. Bush's unpopularity. But in the imperial capital, thousands of miles away, a strange calm prevails. Despite the efforts of anti-war newspapers such as the New York Times, polls consistently show that up to 70 percent of Americans support war against Iraq. Americans are not blithe about it: Their sons and daughters will die. But neither will they ignore a threat to the West as dangerous as any we have faced.

The American response to European resistance is best summed up by a slightly impatient sigh. If Europeans opposed even the war in Afghanistan, what chance is there they will support war against Iraq? Americans have seen it before. They'll see it again. Meanwhile, they have work to do.

But at a deeper and more worrying level, it's increasingly true that many Americans simply don't care any more what Europe thinks. And why on earth should they? Militarily, Europe is a dud and well on the way to becoming a complete irrelevance. Europeans couldn't even prevent genocide in their own continent in the 1990s. Britain apart, Europeans have contributed a minuscule amount of the resources to de-fang al-Qaeda. Despite September 11, they continue to cut defense spending so savagely that, except for the U.K., they are virtually useless as military allies.

If someone who won't lock his door at night starts complaining about the only cop on the beat, sane people should wonder what has happened to his grip on reality. Similarly, it is one thing for Europeans to say they are ceding military responsibility to America to maintain international order. It is quite another for Europeans then to object when America takes them at their word. And the need for such order has not gone away in the last decade. It was once impossible to conceive that terrorists could destroy New York, or Rome. But they are on the verge of that capability, and last September proved that they would not hesitate to use it.

The average American therefore feels like asking Europeans: Just what about September 11 do you not understand? These fanatics want to kill you and destroy your civilization.

The prudential equation when it comes to dealing with Saddam is that he is a tyrant doing all he can to get biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, has invaded a neighboring state, used chemical weapons on his own people, subsidizes terror elsewhere in the Middle East, and has ties to Islamic terrorist groups around the world. Doesn't the benefit of the doubt shift toward those who would dethrone him? And doesn't the mass grave of 3,000 people in New York tilt the equation a little?

When religious leaders argue that the U.S. is more morally troubling than a butcher like Saddam, you know the forces of appeasement are as powerful today as in the 1970s and the 1930s. Were it not for America, al-Qaeda, with support from Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Hamas, would still be ensconced in Afghanistan planning more attacks on the West. Yet the European response to the mission has been increased criticism.

Victor Davis Hanson sums up a common American view of European complainers: "The Middle East? Shame on you, not us, for financing the terrorists on the West Bank.... Racism? Arabs are safer in America than Jews are in Europe. That 200,000 people were butchered in Bosnia and Kosovo a few hours from Rome and Berlin is a stain on you, the inactive, not us, the interventionist. Capital punishment? Our government has executed terrorists; yours have freed them. Do the moral calculus."

There are, of course, deeper reasons for Europe's aversion to American power. By unilaterally disarming itself, Europe makes a statement about how the world should be governed: by diplomacy, international agreements, pooled sovereignty. But the only reason the European Union can exist is because American military force defeated the Nazis. All of Germany is part of the E.U. only because American military might defeated the Soviet Union. Europhiles don't realize that the only guarantor of European peace is American force. Europeans should pray for it in order to save their own political achievement.

Europeans may believe that national interest is a thing of the past and military power an anachronism. Within the confines of a few European countries, they may be right. But in the wider world, especially the Middle East, history hasn't ended and a new threat to world peace is rising. If Europeans believe it can be palliated by diplomacy or appeasement, they are misreading their own times as profoundly as they did in the 1930s.

The question for European leaders is whether they want to be adult players in a new and dangerous world. Grow up and join in--or pipe down and let us do it. That's the message America is sending. It's a message long, long overdue.

British-born journalist Andrew Sullivan is proprietor of the Web log andrewsullivan.com.

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The Real Problem is European Elites

By Jonathan Rauch

In September, when dismay over a growing rift between America and Europe was rife, the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations announced the results of an ambitious transatlantic survey. People in America and six European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland) were asked about Iraq, foreign policy, and each other.

Predictably, a firm majority of Europeans--60 percent--said the United States should invade Iraq only with the approval of the United Nations and the support of allies. Less expectedly, 65 percent of Americans said exactly the same thing. Half the Europeans named global warming as a major threat to their vital interests--as did 46 percent of Americans. About three fourths of Europeans and Americans expressed strong support for the U.N., and pluralities or majorities on both sides believed that the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and NATO should be strengthened.

People on both continents liked and disliked the same countries, with the important exception of Israel, and they also liked each other. Europeans gave America a favorable rating of 64 percent, which was only 6 points below the rating they gave the European Union. Nearly 80 percent of Americans wanted strong E.U. leadership in world affairs, and more than 60 percent of Europeans wanted strong American leadership in world affairs.

Spot the crisis?

In some areas, of course, Americans and Europeans disagreed vigorously. But the overall message was clear: The American and European publics are much closer in outlook than are their leaders. With an important exception (which I'll come to), U.S.-European relations are sounder than they look.

The cultural divide is real, but it is not new. Americans have always tended to regard Europe as sophisticated but unprincipled, and Europeans have long seen America as vigorous but naïve and self-righteous. While the gap narrowed in the second half of the last century, that was mostly due to the common Soviet threat and Europe's postwar dependence on America. Today's culture gap is a return to normalcy.

The U.S.-Europe asymmetry in military power is awkward, but it is a manageable problem. So is the political asymmetry that puts America reliably to the right of Europe. Disagreements over values (capital punishment, genetic engineering) and priorities (global warming, Iraq) are troublesome, but at bottom alliances are built on common interests, and America's and Europe's broad interests--in democracy, in trade, in defending core freedoms--coincide more closely now than ever.

Two centuries ago America was at war with Britain. One century ago it was at war with Spain. Just 60 years ago it was at war with Germany and Italy. Then, for a while, Europe seemed headed for socialism--soft or possibly hard. Today America may be more tough and Europe more tender, but from al-Qaeda's point of view the U.S. and the E.U. are Tweedledum and Tweedledee, their disagreements rancorous but comically minor.

There is one serious concern: Through the European Union, the International Criminal Court, and other multilateral structures and agreements, Europe is vesting ever more authority in bureaucratic internationalism. Multinational entities such as the World Trade Organization, NATO, and the U.N. have existed for a long time, but Europe is increasingly vesting core government prerogatives--the power to prosecute and judge, the power to regulate and make law, and soon perhaps the power to tax and make war--in bodies that are accountable to governments, not voters.

To some extent this is a well-intentioned effort to reduce economic and political friction. But to a considerable extent it is also, I believe, a deliberate attempt by Europe's political elites to usurp power from the sort of people who eat at McDonald's, wave national flags, and drive cars for fun: that is, from mainstream European voters.

One result is the entrenchment of a European political class that is well to the left of Europe's electorate. The risk is that bureaucratic internationalism will give Europe a continent-wide case of Japanitis, its rulers out of touch and unpopular, its policies out of kilter yet impervious to reform.

The deeper problem is that bureaucratic internationalism is fundamentally inconsistent with democratic values. Yes, American democracy features undemocratic elements (the federal courts, the Federal Reserve), and they are very powerful; but they are also exceptional and surrounded on all sides by elected officials. The plan of Europeans talking of "ever closer union" is to take governance ever further from voters. On principled as well as pragmatic grounds, this is a tendency that America will increasingly be called upon to resist, even at the cost of transatlantic rows like the one over the International Criminal Court.

Europeans are wrong to see bureaucratic internationalism as a stabilizing influence. In the long run, the unmooring of public decision making from popular sovereignty is a recipe for capricious policies and unstable politics. You would think that Europeans, of all people, might appreciate this.

Jonathan Rauch, writer in residence at the Brookings Institution, is a contributor to National Journal and The Atlantic Monthly.

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Goodbye Europe

By Mark Steyn

I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark. What's wrong with the Islamic world is relatively straightforward. With Europe, it's harder to foresee any happy endings. The good news is we won't have to worry about another Hitler or Mussolini because, on present reproductive trends, the Italians and Germans are going to be out of business in a couple of generations. Few people have ever been in less need of lebensraum. Instead, the European Union figures it will require another 50 million immigrants in the next few years just to maintain a big enough working population to fund the lavish social programs its vast retired army of baby boomers expects to enjoy.

The main source of European immigration is Muslim youth from North Africa and the Middle East. Whether these are the chaps to keep Hans and Pierre in the style to which they've become accustomed is a moot point: According to some Scandinavian statistics, 40 percent of those on welfare are immigrants. And, while it's not true that every immigrant on welfare is an Islamic terrorist, it's a good rule of thumb that every Islamic terrorist in Europe has been on welfare, living in radicalized ghetto cultures with nothing to do but sit around the flat plotting the jihad all day. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, who recently held a pro-Osama rally in London, has demanded the imposition of Islamic law in Britain, and at one time called for the assassination of then-Prime Minister John Major. Given that it's Mr. Major's ministry, and now Tony Blair's, that has financially supported Sheikh Omar ever since he arrived 15 years ago, that seems a tad ungrateful.

In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, Europe's young Muslims are less assimilated than their parents and grandparents. Instead of becoming more European, they're becoming more Islamist. If the "root cause" of September 11 is Islam's difficulty with modernity, we shouldn't be surprised that this manifests itself less in Indonesia than in Holland, the epitome of the boundlessly tolerant post-nationalist state, a liberal utopia of cannabis cafés and gay marriage--for now. Sheikh Omar's demand for the imposition of sharia doesn't seem so absurd when you consider that in 20 years the majority of the Dutch under 18 will be Muslim.

A multiculturalist society has a hard time even discussing these things. In the advanced technocratic Euro-state, almost any issue worth talking about has been ruled taboo. Continental voters, faced with a choice between Eurodee and Eurodum, have been turning elsewhere. The beneficiaries of this tune-out, in Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and elsewhere, don't have much in common--some are maverick magnates, some fascist nostalgists, others gay hedonists. What unites them is what they're against: the traditional European cultural consensus that's now sleepwalking its way to suicide.

In Holland, a militant vegan killed the flamboyant homosexual nativist Pim Fortuyn during the election campaign. Surely the first time in Dutch political history that a fruitarian had killed a fruit Aryan. This murder is an apt summation of what Marx would call the "internal contradictions" of the rainbow coalition.

Popular politicians who survive their campaigns shouldn't expect a congratulatory telegram from the grandees at the European Union. In February, the Belgian foreign minister, speaking on behalf of the E.U., threatened sanctions against Italy if its citizens voted for Umberto Bossi's Northern League. Those Continentals who attacked President Bush for presuming "to tell people who they can vote for" when he gave an anti-Yasser Arafat speech forget that in Europe they do it all the time.

Before it too offended the E.U., the perfect emblem of the post-war European state was Austria, where regardless of how you voted you wound up with the same center-left-right coalition government. That was the whole point. Europe's post-war political structures were specifically designed to stifle the populace's baser urges. Indeed, Europe has been so focused on what went wrong in the past it's been blind to what might go wrong in the future. The future is now here. A collapsed birthrate, accelerating immigration, lavish welfare, an evasive political culture, phony transnational structures: For Europe, this is the Perfect Storm.

Mark Steyn is a columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph and Canada's National Post.

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Antidote to Europe

By Michael Kelly

European public opinion--as represented in the European press--is mostly limited to elite opinion. And for decades, much of this elite class has cherished a sneering and jingoistic contempt for America and for American values. This attitude fulfills an obvious psychological need: As the former global ruling class of Europe saw America emerge overwhelmingly dominant in economic, political, military, and cultural terms, a natural response was to insist on Europe's moral and intellectual superiority.

Sometimes this leads to hypocritical posturing. Nowhere is this more risibly obvious than in the outrage expressed by European politicians over Bush's position on the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Bush did not kill Kyoto. He buried its moldering corpse. Kyoto called for the United States to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by an insane 30 percent, which would have devastated not only the American but also the global economy. Developing nations, including two of the biggest polluters, India and China, were exempt from the accord. In 1997, the Senate declared by a vote of 95 to 0 that it would ratify no treaty that did not include everyone, effectively sinking Kyoto. And as for morally superior Europe, not a single major E.U. nation has yet ratified the accord.

America was created as an antidote to Europe. American "unilateralism," as its critics call it, has not produced anything like perfect leadership. But there are worse "isms" than unilateralism; three are imperialism, fascism, and communism. A century of American resolve, often in the face of European disdain, created a continent where not one of these lives as a serious force. Not bad.

Michael Kelly is editor of The Atlantic Monthly. A longer version of this piece appeared in the Washington Post.

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Irritating and Irrelevant

By Jonah Goldberg

When you're out of power, you can obstruct. You can criticize. You can be unified in your "dismay" at the hard decisions of others. You can second-guess and pound the table. Sometimes these outsiders have something interesting to say, but sometimes they're just whiners and complainers. The beauty of the English language is that it has a word for such people. We call them "the Europeans."

O.K., that's a bit misleading. Most Europeans are decent, well-adjusted people. But when we're speaking of international politics "the Europeans" doesn't refer to these citizens; it refers to the continent's horde of bureaucrats, journalists, literati, and activists whose mental fecal impaction is so profound they cannot grasp--decades after the fact--that they are now the backseat drivers of history.

The last few years have sent European elites into paroxysms of idiocy. Environmental activists in Sweden planned a mock trial of President Bush as a "climate criminal." Throughout Europe, editorial pages brim with accusations that Bush is a dunce, a tool of the oil companies, no better than the Taliban.

For a decade, French bookstores have been saturated with anti-American treatises like Who Is Killing France? The American Strategy, American Totalitarianism, and No Thanks, Uncle Sam. The latter bestseller was written by a member of the French Parliament who concluded, "It is appropriate to be downright anti-American."

Of course, American contributions to world politics make those of "the Europeans" look downright malevolent. Europe's most significant political achievements in the twentieth century were: World War I, World War II, communism, fascism, colonial oppression, post-colonial upheaval, intellectual nihilism of every flavor, and now appeasement of pretty much anyone willing to say nasty words about the United States.

It's this last point that gets to the heart of the matter: Certain segments of the Left, both abroad and at home, simply believe that America is always wrong. Therefore anyone in opposition to America must be right. This explains why Hollywood morons and French intellectuals alike find the taste of Fidel Castro's posterior so palatable. This is also why "the Europeans" on the U.N. Human Rights Commission refuse to condemn Chinese human-rights abuses. They denounce American multinational corporations while permitting their own companies to trade with brutal nations like Sudan and Burma.

Europe is the historic birthplace of Western civilization, and therefore the world shall always owe it gratitude and respect. But Europe is not the future. We shouldn't think that Europe's perspective is completely irrelevant, but we shouldn't allow the histrionics of "the Europeans" to distract us from taking the right route.

Jonah Goldberg edits National Review Online.

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United We Should Stand

By John O'Sullivan

America's ultimate interest in Europe is that European nations be reliable allies in a united West committed to liberal democracy. The combined power of America and Europe is so overwhelming that if the West remains united, it will dominate world politics and shape global rules along liberal democratic lines indefinitely.

What makes this an uncertain enterprise is the growing ideological disagreements within and between Western countries on the nature of the liberal democratic order and the classical system of nation-states it sustains. Progressive opinion holds that national sovereignty is discredited, patriotism atavistic, military force outmoded as a means of settling disputes, and that as a result power is rightly and inevitably shifting from nation-states to transnational organizations.

These new views are promoted most vigorously in Europe. In frustration, some Americans have concluded that Europe should be left to cultivate its post-modern garden, while America gets on with running the world.

But in reality, both the "American" and "European" viewpoints are found in both continents, and they are finely balanced in several important countries. There is no reason to concede Europe to the "national-interest-is-defunct" camp without a struggle, as this would only strengthen that faction everywhere--including in America, where the Democrats, the academy, the foreign policy establishment, and the media have already bought into much of the utopian internationalist view, as the Iraq debate has revealed.

Within Europe, attitudes are both varied and malleable. Small nations such as Belgium or Luxembourg are the firmest supporters of the shift from nation-states to supra-national organizations, for the understandable reason that it augments rather than restrains their international influence. Being small nations, however, their ability to engineer that shift is very limited.

Germany has been the main stronghold of post-nation-state politics since the end of the Cold War. It remains the most pacifist political culture in Europe, but as its recent election demonstrated, those political strains are now mixed with an assertive German nationalism. That is producing a unilateralism that unsettles some other Europeans. France in particular might feel pushed somewhat toward the "American" view by unease over Germany's assertiveness during its election.

In Britain the debate between traditional national interests and a post-modern internationalism is very much an open contest. Though the Labour Party elite is infused with post-modern attitudes, most voters remain firmly attached to national symbols such as the pound sterling, hostile to further integration in a post-national Euro structure, and still prepared to play a military role on the world stage. They may have allies in the new democracies of central and eastern Europe, which are understandably keen to keep the national sovereignty they have just regained, generally preferring to trust their security to NATO and the U.S. rather than to international rules.

What transforms all these varied states into one post-national "Europe" is one thing only: the European Union. It is E.U. rules and institutions that represent the stronghold, the missionary order, and police force of the "European" view in world politics. The E.U. bureaucracy doesn't always manage to enforce its outlook on member states, but it increasingly tries to prohibit independent action outside of E.U. collective policy as it moves toward "ever-greater union." And the E.U. is animated by a spirit of rivalry toward the U.S. and of hostility toward "American" values. One example will illustrate all these points: If the common European foreign policy had been fully in place in the last few years, Britain would not have been permitted to join the U.S. in the air campaign to enforce the "No Fly Zone" over Iraq.

It is therefore clearly in America's national interest to shape a new Atlantic framework in which the E.U. would gradually lose its dominance within Europe. The steps towards such an outcome might include:

1) Replacing the venerable State Department policy of encouraging European "integration" in all circumstances with a policy of support for a decentralized, deregulated, free-trade Europe of nations;

2) Seeking closer bilateral relationships with European friends like the British, the east Europeans, the Italians, and the Spaniards;

3) Strengthening transatlantic institutions where they exist (like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's proposed NATO Rapid Reaction Force), establishing them where they don't (like a new transatlantic free trade area, TAFTA), and fostering an active transatlantic exchange.

If U.S. policy even began to move in these directions, it would galvanize those forces in European politics sympathetic to the "American" outlook. Ultimately, the Europeans would have to surrender their dream of independent superpower status, and the Americans would have to accept a degree of real European influence over alliance policy. But bound together, America and Europe would be able to ensure that the West continues to shape the direction of our world. That would surely be a better aim than our present policy of encouraging European states to integrate into an anti-American structure and then complaining that they seem increasingly anti-American.

British-born John O'Sullivan is editor in chief at United Press International in Washington, D.C.