By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
The edifice of the "international community" and the project of
constructing a "world order" rely on the unity of liberal ideals at
the core of the organizing principle of the transatlantic
partnership, Western Civilization. Yet, the recent intercourse
between its constituents - the Anglo-Saxons (USA and UK) versus the
Continentals ("Old Europe" led by France and Germany) - revealed an
uneasy and potentially destructive dialectic.
The mutually exclusive choice seems now to be between ad-hoc
coalitions of states able and willing to impose their values on
deviant or failed regimes by armed force if need be - and a
framework of binding multilateral agreements and institutions with
coercion applied as a last resort.
Robert Kagan sums the differences in his book:
"The United States ... resorts to force more quickly and, compared
with Europe, is less patient with diplomacy. Americans generally see
the world divided between good and evil, between friends and
enemies, while Europeans see a more complex picture. When
confronting real or potential adversaries, Americans generally favor
policies of coercion rather than persuasion, emphasizing punitive
sanctions over inducements to better behavior, the stick over the
carrot. Americans tend to seek finality in international affairs:
They want problems solved, threats eliminated ... (and) increasingly
tend toward unilateralism in international affairs. They are less
inclined to act through international institutions such as the
United Nations, less likely to work cooperatively with other nations
to pursue common goals, more skeptical about international law, and
more willing to operate outside its strictures when they deem it
necessary, or even merely useful.
Europeans ... approach problems with greater nuance and
sophistication. They try to influence others through subtlety and
indirection. They are more tolerant of failure, more patient when
solutions don't come quickly. They generally favor peaceful
responses to problems, preferring negotiation, diplomacy, and
persuasion to coercion. They are quicker to appeal to international
law, international conventions, and international opinion to
adjudicate disputes. They try to use commercial and economic ties to
bind nations together. They often emphasize process over result,
believing that ultimately process can become substance."
Kagan correctly observes that the weaker a polity is militarily, the
stricter its adherence to international law, the only protection,
however feeble, from bullying. The case of Russia apparently
supports his thesis. Vladimir Putin, presiding over a decrepit and
bloated army, naturally insists that the world must be governed by
international regulation and not by the "rule of the fist".
But Kagan got it backwards as far as the European Union is
concerned. Its members are not compelled to uphold international
prescripts by their indisputable and overwhelming martial
deficiency. Rather, after centuries of futile bloodletting, they
choose not to resort to weapons and, instead, to settle their
differences juridically.
As Ivo Daalder wrote in a review of Kagan's tome in the New York
Times:
"The differences produced by the disparity of power are compounded
by the very different historical experiences of the United States
and Europe this past half century. As the leader of the 'free
world,' Washington provided security for many during a cold war
ultimately won without firing a shot. The threat of military force
and its occasional use were crucial tools in securing this success.
Europe's experience has been very different. After 1945 Europe
rejected balance-of-power politics and instead embraced
reconciliation, multilateral cooperation and integration as the
principal means to safeguard peace that followed the world's most
devastating conflict. Over time Europe came to see this experience
as a model of international behavior for others to follow."
Thus, Putin is not a European in the full sense of the word. He
supports an international framework of dispute settlement because he
has no armed choice, not because it tallies with his deeply held
convictions and values. According to Kagan, Putin is, in essence, an
American: he believes that the world order ultimately rests on
military power and the ability to project it.
It is this reflexive reliance on power that renders the United
States suspect. Privately, Europeans regard America itself - and
especially the abrasive Bush administration - as a rogue state,
prone to jeopardizing world peace and stability. Observing U.S. fits
of violence, bullying, unilateral actions and contemptuous
haughtiness - most European are not sure who is the greater menace:
Saddam Hussein or George Bush.
Ivo Daalder:
"Contrary to the claims of pundits and politicians, the current
crisis in United States-European relations is not caused by
President Bush's gratuitous unilateralism, German Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder's pacifism, or French President Jacques Chirac's anti- Americanism, though they no doubt play a part. Rather, the crisis is
deep, structural and enduring."
Kagan slides into pop psychobabble when he tries to explore the
charged emotional background to this particular clash of
civilizations:
"The transmission of the European miracle (the European Union as the
shape of things to come) to the rest of the world has become
Europe's new mission civilisatrice ... Thus we arrive at what may be
the most important reason for the divergence in views between Europe
and the United States: America's power and its willingness to
exercise that power - unilaterally if necessary - constitute a
threat to Europe's new sense of mission."
Kagan lumps together Britain and France, Bulgaria and Germany,
Russia and Denmark. Such shallow and uninformed caricatures are
typical of American "thinkers", prone to sound-bytes and their
audience's deficient attention span.
Moreover, Europeans willingly joined America in forcibly eradicating
the brutal, next-door, regime of Slobodan Milosevic. It is not the
use of power that worries (some) Europeans - but its gratuitous,
unilateral and exclusive application. As even von Clausewitz
conceded, military might is only one weapon in the arsenal of
international interaction and it should never precede, let alone
supplant, diplomacy.
As Daalder observes:
"(Lasting security) requires a commitment to uphold common rules and
norms, to work out differences short of the use of force, to promote
common interests through enduring structures of cooperation, and to
enhance the well-being of all people by promoting democracy and
human rights and ensuring greater access to open markets."
American misbehavior is further exacerbated by the simplistic
tendency to view the world in terms of ethical dyads: black and
white, villain versus saint, good fighting evil. This propensity is
reminiscent of a primitive psychological defense mechanism known as
splitting. Armed conflict should be the avoidable outcome of gradual
escalation, replete with the unambiguous communication of
intentions. It should be a last resort - not a default arbiter.
Finally, in an age of globalization and the increasingly free flow
of people, ideas, goods, services and information - old fashioned
arm twisting is counter-productive and ineffective. No single nation
can rule the world coercively. No single system of values and
preferences can prevail. No official version of the events can
survive the onslaught of blogs and multiple news reporting. Ours is
a heterogeneous, dialectic, pluralistic, multipolar and percolating
world. Some like it this way. America clearly doesn't.
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AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,
PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International
(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com