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Immanuel Wallerstein: "The Aftershock" by Jerry W. Shepperd 03 March 2003 20:28 UTC |
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Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm
Commentary No. 108, Mar. 1, 2003
"The Aftershock"
If the attack on the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001 can be considered to
have been a political earthquake for the American people, the U.S. is now
suffering from the aftershock. The most recent and most dramatic instance
of that aftershock has come from across the Atlantic and reveals the
tectonic shift that has gone on largely unnoticed in the last
decade.
What was so unsettling about Sept. 11 was the fact that the U.S., for the
first time in its history, felt vulnerable. A direct assault of such
magnitude within the continental United States had been previously
unknown and unthinkable. The immediate response of most of the rest of
the world -
all of whom had lived with such kinds of vulnerability for a long time -
was massively sympathetic. Remember the now classic editorial in Le Monde
of Paris the day after: "We are all Americans now."
In less than 18 months, the Bush administration has squandered all that
sympathy and now finds itself diplomatically isolated. This is the second
great shock, the aftershock of Sept. 11. Since 1945, the United States
has pursued its global policies with the assurance that it had secure
allies - western Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea. However much one
ally or another had reservations about this or that policy, and however
much the fuss they may have made (a tactic for which France was
particularly famous), the United States always counted on the fact that,
when the moment of decision came, these allies would be behind the United
States.
Up until February 2003, the U.S. government has been sure that such
deferral to their leadership in world affairs by the allies was a
constant on which they could rely. Suddenly this has changed. France and
Germany are now leading a "coalition of the unwilling,"
supported by Russia and China, and overwhelmingly by world public
opinion. When the massive peace demonstrations occurred on Feb. 15 across
the world, the largest demonstrations were in the three countries that
have most ostentatiously supported the U.S. position on Iraq - Great
Britain, Spain, and Italy. In
the beginning of March, the U.N. Security Council is going to vote on a
U.S.-British-Spanish resolution to legitimate military action against
Iraq. They are being met by a French-German-Russian
"memorandum" which, in effect, says that there is no
justification yet for military action.
It is very doubtful that the U.S. resolution can get the nine votes it
needs, even if there is no actual veto.
The immediate result has been a shouting match between the U.S. (with
Great Britain) and France and Germany. It has been much more shrill on
the U.S. side than on the Franco-German side. Jacques Chirac, a
conservative politician who has spent time in the U.S. and who has long
been considered one of the French political leaders most friendly to the
U.S., is being vilified and even demonized. How has the relationship of
Europe and America deteriorated to the point that the press is asking
whether it can ever be repaired, whether we are in the midst of a
divorce? To understand that, we have to take the story from the
beginning, that is, from 1945.
In 1945, the United States was all-powerful, and western Europe was
suffering badly from the economic destruction of the war. Furthermore, a
good 25 percent of western Europe's population was voting for Communist
parties, and most of the others genuinely feared that the combination of
their internal Communist parties plus the immense Red Army, stationed in
the middle of Europe, represented a real threat to their survival as
non-Communist states. The alliance of western Europe with the United
States, concretized in the creation of NATO in 1949, had the strong
support of a majority of the population which feared U.S. isolationism
more than U.S. imperialism. The U.S. encouraged and supported the
establishment of European transnational structures, primarily as a way of
making acceptable to the French an involvement of west Germany in the
alliance structures.
By the late 1960s, the material and political base of European enthusiasm
for the Atlantic alliance began to fritter. Western Europe had revived
economically and was no longer dependent on the U.S. Quite the
contrary! It was becoming an economic rival. The internal strength of the
Communist parties began to dissipate. A Soviet threat began to seem quite
distant. Meanwhile, U.S. enthusiasm for European institutions began
to wane, as a strong Europe began to seem a risk for the Atlantic
alliance. The U.S. encouraged British adhesion, in the hope of diluting
Europe (as indeed de Gaulle charged at the time). And later, the U.S.
would press for rapid expansion "eastwards" in a similar
hope.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989/1991 represented a disaster,
from the point of view of U.S. control over its allies. It undid the
major justification for U.S. leadership. Of whom was western Europe
supposed to be afraid now? The U.S. searched for a substitute for the
Soviet Union to offer western Europe as a reason for faithful adherence
to U.S. leadership. Basically, what the U.S. offered was the class
interest of the "North" against the "South" - the
common interest of the U.S. and western Europe in global order,
neoliberal globalization, and military containment of the countries of
the "South" (that is, continued and intensified insistence on
no nuclear proliferation).
These were common interests, indeed, but none of them posed the urgency
of the erstwhile Soviet military threat. And western Europe felt that its
approach to particular problems was at least as intelligent and useful as
that of Washington. In the days of the first President Bush and of
Clinton, these differences led to serious arguments, but the arguments
remained civil. Along came the hawks of the second President Bush. They
were not interested in debating the fine points of what to do in Iraq,
Palestine, or North Korea. They felt they knew what to do and they were
anxious to make sure that western Europe accept, as it had once upon a
time, the unquestioned leadership of the U.S. They inherited an old
American contempt for the Europe the immigrants had left
behind.
However, the geopolitical realities are quite different today. Western
Europe feels that Bush's policies in Iraq are as much aimed at them as at
Saddam Hussein. They see Bush trying to destroy the possibility of a
strong and politically independent Europe, at precisely a very delicate
moment in the constitutional construction of this Europe. Furthermore,
the defeat of the Socialists in France and the victory of the
Social-Democrats in Germany were both serious setbacks for Bush. The
defeat of the Socialists in France allowed France, with its curious
constitution, to have a president who had the authority to be decisive,
because he didn't have to share power with a prime minister of another
party. Chirac saw France's interest in asserting its Gaullism
unreservedly. In this Chirac has the overwhelming support of French
public opinion and politicians, which a Socialist prime minister would
never have had. In Germany, on the other hand, only a Social
Democratic-Green coalition could have taken the clear stand the
government has taken, and found it politically rewarding.
All the bluster of Rumsfeld about how "old Europe" was isolated
has been shown to be unfounded. There is not a single country in Europe,
including eastern Europe, where the polls are not against the U.S.
position. The U.S. that advocates preventive wars and would engage in
them unilaterally is seen as a far greater danger than an encircled and
constrained Saddam Hussein. Europe is not anti-American, but it is
definitely anti-Bush. Meanwhile, the same thing is happening in East
Asia, where Japan, South Korea, and China are aligned against the U.S.
approach to handling North Korea.
We shall never go back to the old ways. What will happen now depends a
lot on the actual military process of the Iraq war. Europe may emerge
much strengthened or in tatters. But U.S. ability to count on automatic
support from western Europe and east Asia is probably gone
forever.
Immanuel Wallerstein
First published in Yale On Line
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to
others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites,
provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To
translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including
commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at
iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax:
1-607-777-4315.
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