new immanence in danger

Hardt worries that antiwar protests promote backward-looking
anti-Americanism.


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A trap set for protesters
Michael Hardt
Thursday February 20 2003
The Guardian


There is a new anti-Europeanism in Washington. The United States, of course, 
has a long tradition of ideological conflict with Europe. The old 
anti-Europeanism generally protested against the overwhelming power of European 
states, their arrogance, and their imperialist endeavours. Today, however, the 
relationship is reversed. The new anti-Europeanism is based on the US position 
of power and it protests instead against European states failing to yield to 
its power and support its projects.

The most immediate issue for Washington is the European lack of support for the 
US plans for war on Iraq. And Washington's primary strategy in recent weeks is 
to divide and conquer. On one hand, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, with his usual 
brazen condescension, calls those European nations who question the US project, 
primarily France and Germany, "the old Europe", dismissing them as unimportant. 
The recent Wall Street Journal letter of support for the US war effort, on the 
other hand, signed by Blair, Berlusconi and Aznar, poses the other side of the 
divide.

In a broader framework, the entire project of US unilateralism, which extends 
well beyond this coming war with Iraq, is itself necessarily anti-European. The 
unilateralists in Washington are threatened by the idea that Europe, or any 
other cluster of states, could compete with its power on equal terms. (The 
rising value of the euro with respect to the dollar contributes, of course, to 
the perception of two potentially equal and competing power blocs.) Bush, 
Rumsfeld and their ilk will not accept the possibility of a bi-polar world. 
They left that behind with the cold war. Any threats to the uni-polar order 
must be dismissed or destroyed. Washington's new anti-Europeanism is really an 
expression of their unilateralist project.

Corresponding in part to the new US anti-Europeanism, there is today in Europe 
and across the world a growing anti-Americanism. In particular, the coordinated 
protests last weekend against the war were animated by various kinds of 
anti-Americanism - and that is inevitable. The US government has left no doubt 
that it is the author of this war and so protest against the war must, 
inevitably, be also protest against the United States.

This anti-Americanism, however, although certainly justifiable, is a trap. The 
problem is, not only does it tend to create an overly unified and homogeneous 
view of the United States, obscuring the wide margins of dissent in the nation, 
but also that, mirroring the new US anti-Europeanism, it tends to reinforce the 
notion that our political alternatives rest on the major nations and power 
blocs. It contributes to the impression, for instance, that the leaders of 
Europe represent our primary political path - the moral, multilateralist 
alternative to the bellicose, unilateralist Americans. This anti-Americanism of 
the anti-war movements tends to close down the horizons of our political 
imagination and limit us to a bi-polar (or worse, nationalist) view of the 
world.

The globalisation protest movements were far superior to the anti-war movements 
in this regard. They not only recognised the complex and plural nature of the 
forces that dominate capitalist globalisation today - the dominant nation 
states, certainly, but also the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade 
Organisation, the major corporations, and so forth - but they imagined an 
alternative, democratic globalisation consisting of plural exchanges across 
national and regional borders based on equality and freedom.

One of the great achievements of the globalisation protest movements, in other 
words, has been to put an end to thinking of politics as a contest among 
nations or blocs of nations. Internationalism has been reinvented as a politics 
of global network connections with a global vision of possible futures. In this 
context, anti-Europeanism and anti-Americanism no longer make sense.

It is unfortunate but inevitable that much of the energies that had been active 
in the globalisation protests have now at least temporarily been redirected 
against the war. We need to oppose this war, but we must also look beyond it 
and avoid being drawn into the trap of its narrow political logic. While 
opposing the war we must maintain the expansive political vision and open 
horizons that the globalisation movements have achieved. We can leave to Bush, 
Chirac, Blair, and Schröder the tired game of anti-Europeanism and 
anti-Americanism.

· Michael Hardt is professor of literature at Duke University, North 
Carolina, and co-author with Antonio Negri of Empire

hardt@duke.edu

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