Pacific News Service, 3 October 2001

Quid Pro Quo - Europe Needs U.S. to Recognize EU Power

by Andrew Reding

As the Bush administration responds to the Sept. 11 attacks by announcing a “war” or “crusade” against “evil,” Europeans are reminded of the growing political and cultural differences between Europe and the United States. PNS Associate Editor Andrew Reding is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute. He is a dual national of the United States and the European Union, and recently returned from Europe, where he studied European integration.

The crisis over terrorism is amplifying Europe’s ambivalence toward the United States.

Europeans were stunned by the barbarity of the attacks on America. They continue to be grateful for the U.S. role in defeating fascism and containing communism. They very much want to cooperate to combat the scourge of terrorism, as highlighted by the unanimous vote in NATO to invoke its collective security provisions on behalf of the United States.

But Europe is growing increasingly uncomfortable with the United States on two counts. One is political. European governments greatly resent the Bush administration’s tendency toward unilateralism, as reflected in the abandonment of the ABM and Kyoto treaties. The other is cultural. Europeans feel very uneasy about what they see as the growing influence of religious fundamentalism and jingoistic nationalism on U.S. policy.

Today’s Europe is not the Europe of a generation ago. The Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain, which formerly split the continent, have fallen. The European Union already encompasses 15 countries with a combined population greater than the United States, and will soon expand to include another 12 nations. Internal border checks are gone. In just three months, local currencies will vanish in most of the EU, and 300 million people will begin using a single currency, the Euro.

The one exception is the United Kingdom, which has one foot in the EU and another firmly outside. Just as it maintains border checks and is holding to the pound sterling, Prime Minister Tony Blair is unequivocal in his support of the United States.

But it’s another story on the continent. From its new capital — Brussels — the EU is demanding an equal partnership with Washington. President Bush greatly offended Europeans earlier this year by making it clear the United States would act alone in foreign policy, based on its national interests. Now Bush is in the embarrassing position of having to ask the Europeans for help. The quid pro quo, if there is to be any common front at all, is a U.S. embrace of multilateralism, with due recognition of Europe’s growing power and influence.

As Europe pulls together, its citizens are also realizing that they have an overarching identity and culture. At the same time, they are experiencing an ever-widening cultural gap with the United States.

Much of the gap is attributable to differences in levels of religious and patriotic devotion. Church attendance is at an all-time low in Europe, and a growing number of Europeans say they identify more as Europeans than by their nationality.

When President Bush uses words like “war” or “crusade” to describe the U.S. response to terrorist attacks, alarms ring all over Europe. The words may play well in Peoria, but in Paris, Madrid and Berlin, they have an unpleasant undertone of national and religious fanaticism. And in the new cosmopolitan Europe, Muslims — especially Turks and North Africans — are a significant and increasing part of the urban population.

When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson suggest that the terrorist attacks may have been God’s punishment for America’s departure from Christian morals, Europeans flinch even more. In fact, by those standards, Europe would have been a much more logical target. Prostitution is legal in Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Gay and lesbian marriage is a reality in the Netherlands. Belgium has just decriminalized possession of marijuana. Beer is sold in Coke dispensers in Brussels. Nakedness is permitted on public beaches throughout Europe.

From the modern European perspective, it is puritanism that is the sin against nature — not sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.

Just as Europeans cannot understand American prudishness, neither can they comprehend the U.S. penchant for guns and violence. Possession of handguns is illegal in Europe. And all 15 EU countries have abolished the death penalty.

From the European point of view, the United States, though in many ways a great nation, has all too many points in common with the forces with which it is in conflict. Its government is unduly responsive to the interests of religious fundamentalists. To conform to religious notions of morality, it denies its citizens all sorts of personal freedoms. And its gut response to violence by Islamic extremists is to respond with calls for a “war” and “crusade” against “evil.”

How, Europeans wonder, is that so different from calls for a “jihad” against the “Great Satan”?

return to index and cover page