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Rationally Speaking.
N. 34, March 2003
America, Europe,
and the rest of the world
How deep is the current divide between Europe
and the United States in terms of how to conduct
international affairs? Alarming notes have been
sounded on both sides of the Pond to the effect
that the rift risks breaking up NATO and rendering
the United Nations “irrelevant” (to
use the rhetoric of the Bush administration. Usually,
the French are being singled out for leading the
rebellion against the US hegemony, even though
an overwhelming majority of European citizens
have been voicing their opposition to the current
US policy on Iraq, even in “pro-American”
countries such as Britain and Italy.
As it is often the case in complex matters, one
cannot form a reasonable opinion just by listening
to alternative ways of spinning the same stories
in the media (assuming that one bothers to check
directly what the French or British press say,
since American media are becoming more and more
homogeneous thanks to their ownership by an increasingly
smaller number of multinationals). It was therefore
refreshing to see actual data from a large survey
of American and European attitudes conducted by
the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).
The picture emerging from the study is more complex
and nuanced than what we tend to hear trumpeted
by talking heads and media pundits.
It comes down to the following: Europeans are
inclined to agree with Americans on more issues
than either of them agrees with the rest of the
world (this is good news for people who are worried
about the collapse of the West). However, there
are major areas of disagreement that might make
for a very interesting upcoming decade in geopolitics
(and this is the good news for those who are interested
in a more open discussion of international issues).
Let’s take a look at some of the details.
First off, Americans and Europeans really like
each other, and this goes even for the French.
On a scale of 0 to 100, Americans rate European
countries between 61 (Germany) and 76 (Great Britain),
which is much higher than they rate any other
country except Canada. Conversely, the Brits rate
the US at 68, and the rest of Europe doesn’t
go any lower than the Dutch’s 59. Furthermore,
Europeans and Americans see the same threats in
the world, with terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism
ranking the highest. And, both sides agree that
war on Iraq would be justified, if backed by the
United Nations (complete opposition to the war
run at only 13% in the US and 26% in Europe at
the time the survey was conducted).
However, worldviews start to diverge when one
digs a bit deeper. Generally speaking, Americans
find the world a much more threatening place than
Europeans do. Most importantly, the two also differ
on their analysis of why some threats are there
to begin with. For example, 55% of Europeans think
that US foreign policies have directly contributed
to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001
(and I would add that a good case can be made
that they are not far off the mark).
Americans and Europeans also sharply disagree
on how to fix the problems they face. Only 19%
of Europeans would like to increase their country’s
military spending, as opposed to 44% of Americans
(and one need to notice that the US already allocates
significantly more money to the military than
European countries do). On the other hand, Europeans
are much more willing to spend their resources
on foreign aid, since a large majority of them
sees that as a much more effective key to long-term
planetary peace and prosperity. This divergence
has major consequences for the whole concept of
“superpower”: Americans think that the
key to superpower status is a strong military,
while many Europeans want a united Europe to become
a superpower in the sense of cultural and economic
interaction with the rest of the world, opposing
more military spending by either their own countries
or the European Community as a whole.
If one broadens the horizon beyond the immediate
concerns of war and terrorism, other interesting
similarities and differences emerge: Americans
are only slightly more supportive of globalization
than Europeans, and about half of both Americans
and Europeans think that global warming is a high-priority
threat. However, 66% of Europeans are opposed
to some degree to biotechnology, against only
45% of Americans. Perhaps the largest divergence
of opinions manifests itself on immigration: 66%
of Americans consider it a threat of the highest
level, while only 38% of Europeans agree with
that assessment (of course, there are differences
among European nations themselves, with Italy
being on the most worried about immigration).
What are we to make of all this? On the one hand,
declarations of an insurmountable divide between
the US and Europe are obviously blown out of proportion:
we are not witnessing the big schism of Western
culture just yet. On the other hand, it would
be foolish for anybody (and especially for rather
single-minded American politicians) to underestimate
the areas of divergence between the two major
blocks of world democracies. And please, stop
telling the Europeans that they should get in
line because America saved them during World War
II: gratitude is an important value, but wishing
to translate it into perennial and unquestioning
allegiance is a bit insulting. And one thing nobody
needs is to add any additional insult to the dialogue
between the two major democratic blocks of the
world.
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Next month:
Animal rights?
© by Massimo Pigliucci, 2003
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