The West Has Never Been One
By Michael Totten | Related entries in Foreign Policy, HistoryOn September 11, 2001, and for a period shortly thereafter, the United States felt like one unified country for the first time in my life. Of course there were cranks on the left- and right-wing fringes who felt America had “asked� to be terrorized, who thought pacifism or isolationism were the answer to the worst attack on our own soil in history. But they were as far away from the political center as they could be. The center, on September 11, was hundreds of millions of people in size.
I had spent my entire adulthood rather far from the political center, on the left. But once the center moved dramatically leftward and swept me up in it, I decided things were better there. No longer was I a political minority railing at the majority. Those who did continue to rail at the majority – the Noam Chomskys and Jerry Falwells – clearly were lunatics. Those on both the center-left and the center-right were my political friends, so to speak, and I decided it needed to stay that way.
The minute regime-change in Iraq was placed on the table the political center imploded. It just couldn’t hold. Perhaps that’s natural when we’re not actively under attack in real time. But I’ve felt ill at ease since it happened. In The Art of War Sun Tzu said, when describing ways to defeat an enemy: “When he is united, divide him.� We have become divided, and we’ve become divided in war time. Al Qaeda did not do this to us. We did this to ourselves.
Also worrying is how Western Civilization is divided against itself. Many Europeans and Americans are not even on speaking terms these days. France is the favorite Western punching bag of even many liberal Americans - and many Europeans as well when they aren’t trashing the United States as the new evil imperialist Empire. Anti-Americanism in Western Europe often goes well beyond mere criticism and ventures deep into the territory of vituperative hate-mongering. And it has been matched by a nascent and often nasty anti-Europeanism in the United States. It’s sad. We are all threatened by totalitarian Islamists. How to best respond to that threat is precisely where our intra-Western battle lines are drawn.
It’s nothing new, though. Somehow many (most?) Americans have come to believe that European countries are supposed to be our allies now because they were always our allies in the past. Anguished cries, mostly from the liberal left, that “we must not alienate Europe� have become a common refrain ever since September 11. I think I understand where this sentiment comes from. The center in Western politics is a dangerous gaping void, and it’s a dangerous gaping void during war time. Reaching out to Europe, and chastising those who refuse to do so, is an honorable attempt at seeking the center just as I seek the center myself in the United States.
The problem is that not all Europeans are our natural allies. We may wish they were and imagine they are, but some of them just aren’t. Many are old enemies. Many were enemies not in ancient history but within living memory.
Only 15 years ago half of Europe was communist. When my grandfather was my age half of Europe was fascist - and it was mostly not the same half. Fascist sympathizers arose, sometimes in great numbers, in countries that were not actually ruled by fascists themselves. Likewise many communist sympathizers arose, in even greater numbers, in countries that were not controlled by communists. Liberalism is a product of the West, but so are the most vicious forms of illiberal totalitarianism.
There were plenty of French people on the right and the left who willingly and proudly joined the Nazi regime at Vichy. France walked out of NATO in 1966 and spent the remaining years of the Cold War triangulating between the Soviet Union and its former allies. Spain was a fascist country for almost half the 20th Century, and it was still fascist as recently as the 1970s. A significant chunk of Germany was communist in 1990, and all of it was fascist in the 1940s. Illiberal anti-Americanism isn’t a new phenomenon in these countries at all.
Before the anti-totalitarian wars against communism and fascism the United States fought several wars against Western European imperialists: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, not to mention World War I.
We have never been allies with “Europe.� More often than not we’ve been in a state of war or at least a cold standoff with one or more European countries since the founding of our nation. It is overwhelmingly the normal state of affairs. (Do not forget that Bill Clinton’s most significant foreign policy excursion was a sustained bombing campaign on a modern European capital city.)
And it’s not just the United States that has trouble with this or that European country or axis, depending on the decade. The entire West has and has had this problem, and The Onion hilariously summed up the worst of it in a satirical 1914 newspaper headline.
August 5, 1914 - WAR DECLARED BY ALL - Austria Declares War on Serbia Declares War on Germany Declares War on France Declares War on Turkey Declares War on Russia Declares War on Bulgaria Declares War on Britain - Ottoman Empire Almost Declares War on Itself
Only since the fall of the Soviet Union has Western Civilization even been able to think about declaring the West a war-free zone. We get along better now with Europe (as a whole) than we ever have. It’s not good enough, in my view, but there it is. The unity that Americans briefly experienced after September 11 is something we can hope to rekindle. But we can’t rekindle anything of the sort across the West. That remains to be forged for the first time.
What’s most worrisome about the West’s internal division isn’t that it’s new. It clearly is not. It’s that we face – for the first time – a truly common enemy that isn’t Western at all. It’s not Russia this time, nor is it Germany. The Terror War isn’t driving the West apart, but isn’t enough to encourage the West – all of the West, including France, Spain, Germany, and the old Warsaw Pact nations – to come together as one.
Perhaps a feeling of Western-wide unity simply isn’t possible unless huge numbers of Europeans are massacred by Islamists. But so far the country with the highest death toll from Islamist violence in Europe is Spain. And the election immediately following the massacre in Madrid pushed Spain out of the American foreign policy orbit and into the anti-American French and German alignment instead. Spain might remain there for the duration of the conflict no matter what happens. That doesn’t mean Spain will be an enemy (far from it), but Spain may not ever be anything like a reliable battlefield ally. Spain never was a reliable battlefield ally in the first place, though, so there’s nothing new there.
It is easy for Americans to unite around a center, at least when we’re actively under attack, because we have a common history of peaceful coexistence with one another. It has been a long time since the Civil War ended. The same simply cannot be said of Western Civilization as a whole. Western Civilization, until only the utmost recent of times, has been carving itself to bloody pieces since the time before “the West� even made sense as a concept.
The Terror War gives us the opportunity to unite for the first time. If we manage to pull it off, it will be for the first time. It’s a project well worth embarking on - a necessary project, actually – but we must remember that Western unity needs to be created not restored. That’s harder. It’s at least as hard as building a country. And look at how much trouble the European Union is having with creating a mere federation. It’s not merely America’s fault, nor the Bush Administration’s fault, that we aren’t there yet.
It’s hard to be a centrist in American politics. As much as I wish it were otherwise, it may be impossible to be simultaneously a centrist in Western and American politics. Splitting the difference between the US and France, for example, will put you very far indeed from the middle of US opinion. The center in American politics – for now anyway – must be American.
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July 14th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
I agree with Michael’s assessment that the West has never been one. World-shrinking technologies like the Web and telecommunications have created miracles, but threaten nightmares. Putting planet Earth on a pinhead means that everyone’s problem is everyone else’s problem too. There’s hardly any precedent for One World, much less One West. Or even One America, France or Germany, when you look underneath the skirts.
In this era, ‘Centrism’ is likely to be a morphing condition. It will require constant adjustment, attention, reaction and proaction. It’s tricky, and for the whole of the West, it’s never happened before. Not fully. Are you up to the task?
July 14th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Oh, dear, my Spanish friend won’t like this column very much, lol. He insists, and argues with some persuasion, that the only reason Franco was able to hold power in Spain is that Eisenhower didn’t bring U.S. pressure to bear on him to force him out.
Yet with the same sane brain he insists it was wrong for the U.S. to bring the hammer down on Saddam to force him out.
One of the strongest strains of Western Civilization, especially compared to its sisters around the globe, is individualism. And for historically explainable reasons, that quality is today most highly distilled in America. In its most admirable form, that means sticking to what you know is right, regardless of what the majority around you says and does. Insults like “unilateralist” and “partisan” can disguise a slap at that admirable quality.
Christopher Hitchens, probably based on his lifelong “contrarian” career, seems to appreciate it and has written about it here and there. There’s a more recent example, which I can’t now find, but here’s one from the run-up to the Iraq war:
July 14th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
I don’t think America will unite absent a real threat to the country’s existence, like we faced in global fascism or expansionist communism. The country briefly rallied behind Bush to the tune of 90% approval right after 9/11, but too many people profit from division for such unity to last. In some ways, that’s sort of what democracy is all about.
I do believe the reason America appears especially divided now is twofold - one, there is simply a lot more discourse, with 24 hr news channels and blogs; second, US politics now teems with innumerable advocacy groups whose mission is to confront, confront, confront.
If you despair of the center, take heart in the popularity of relative centrists like Glenn Reynolds and Bill O’Reilly. We should also be glad our Presidents are elected the way they are, because it forces ambitious politicos like Hillary Clinton and John McCain to move toward the center.
July 14th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
You could be right about us not being able to rally around a specific cause, however, I think as time goes by most Americans will see exactly how destructive extremist Islamic jihadists are, especially if a Dem gets into the White House and makes it a top priority. Dems will follow a Dem’s logic because he/she will explain the situation in a manner different than the “you’re either with us or against us” and “don’t question us” polemics we’ve been offered so far by this Administration.
And certainly with all due respect TallDave, Glenn is a centrist but O’Reilly is most definitely not.
Sure, Bill purports to be a “populist”, but somebody who seemingly takes so much joy in bashing liberals, calling names and making up facts is not trying to unite anybody. He’s the lynchpin of Fox’s noise machine and he knows what drives ratings. I appreciate his stances on the death penalty and border control, but his show and his views and his rhetoric simply strikes me as disingenious and opportunistic.
However, I do agree that our current divisions do help our leaders move more towards the sensible center. I would those same divisions also help blogs move there too. ;-)
July 14th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Dems will follow a Dem’s logic because he/she will explain the situation in a manner different than the “you’re either with us or against us� and “don’t question us� polemics we’ve been offered so far by this Administration.
Well, I must have missed the speech where he said “Don’t question us.” But imho we don’t need nuance for the GWOT; we need guts and resolve and straightforward talk. I tend to think Repubs have probably prosecuted the GWOT more effectively than Dems would have for three reasons: 1) they don’t kowtow to the UN, 2) they aren’t afraid to go to full-scale war to remove terrorist regimes where that advances the cause, 3) they actually came up with an audacious plan to end terrorism long-term: seriously promote democracy in the Mideast. Would Al Gore have gone to war in Afghanistan? Tom Wolfe, among others, has listed the various reasons he probably would not have, whatever he might claim now that removal of the Taliban is a fait accompli.
Glenn is a centrist but O’Reilly is most definitely not.
Conservatives, like Ann Coulter for one, would disagree. She can’t stand him; says he looks at both sides of an issue and instinctively picks a position in the middle. I agree with the ratings part, though.
Fox’s noise machine
You have to remember, journos are overwhelmingly liberal. That’s just a fact. Fox tilts right by comparison to other networks, but objectively is probably the closest thing to centrist in TV news, which is why they stomp their competitors into the dirt so thoroughly despite being utterly loathed by the rest of the press.
July 14th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
I am hopeful that Spain will rejoin us after their next election cycle. Spainish national pride has to be hurt by the appearance of backing down on 3/11. They a have a very liberal country to defend from those who might consider same sex marriage (for example) an insult to Islam. And they know that occupying the territory of an old Caliphate makes them an eventual target.
I would argue that all liberal countries are our natural allies in this struggle. But it will need to become clear to them that thier hard won liberties are truly at risk, and that it is not a struggle for simple economic or political advantage.
July 14th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
“And they know that occupying the territory of an old Caliphate makes them an eventual target”
Who knows this? The Spanish? Was there any history before the seventh century?
Do we forget about the Iberians,CeltsCarthaginians,Romans and Visigoths?
This is the most preposterous argument ever made. Say the British decided it was time to reclaim their empire. How do you think people would react?
July 14th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Zoon Politicon: Say the British decided it was time to reclaim their empire. How do you think people would react?
Probably the same way they act now. There has to be an upper theoretical limit to hysteria.
July 14th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
TallDave, we’ll just to agree to disagree.
The whole “overwhelmingly liberal” is a myth plain and simple. Bill Kristol himself has said as much in 2000: ‘The press isn’t quite as biased and liberal. They’re actually conservative sometimes,’ Kristol said recently on [CNN's Reliable Sources].
Earlier in 1995 he said the same thing: ‘I admit it,’ Kristol told The New Yorker. ‘The whole idea of the ‘liberal media’ was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.’â€Â?
Am I saying that more journos aren’t Dems? No. The numbers prove that out. However, I worked at a Fox affiliate for a time when I was just out of college. I found that a majority of the on air talent, the people actually reading the news and putting the emphasis on particular words are conservative. I will admit that a lot of the below the line talent leans left, but not so much as it affects their ability to strive for objectivity. So whatever liberal bias people think exists gets cancelled out once it’s on air.
And frankly, it’s people like Ann Coulter who are trying to rip this country in two, so her opinion on where O’Reilly stands politically is of no interest to me. And other pundit’s opinions don’t interest me either. And besides, O’Reilly is just a bully so I’d rather see his voice maginalized in favor of somebody who doesn’t threaten people and scream at them.
As far as Fox News goes, they stomp thier competition because they have more dogfights, period. It’s classic marketing. Claim you’re the outsider standing up for truth, justice and fairness and people who are disenfranchised will believe you. Everybody loves their choir to preach to them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not discounting the entire network. I think Chris Wallace is pretty good and so is Greta Van Sustren. However, the very fact that Brit Hume can be a so called “Fair and Balanced” news anchor the entire week and then be a bonafide conservative commentator on Sunday simply proves that Fox’s ethics are out of whack.
July 14th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
The problem is that not all Europeans are our natural allies. We may wish they were and imagine they are, but some of them just aren’t. Many are old enemies. Many were enemies not in ancient history but within living memory.
Only 15 years ago half of Europe was communist.
Interestingly enough, many, perhaps most, of the countries in that half are now among America’s staunchest allies: Poland, Bulgaria, and Albania come to mind. It’s not most of the population, and because of their relatively small populations and relative poverty, they aren’t able to contribute on the scale that the UK or Australia can, but they are very pro-American.
July 14th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Cripes this is an illegible font! I had no idea pixels were so expensive.
July 14th, 2005 at 7:33 pm
Jim,
What browser and video settings are you using? It looks fine on my system.
July 14th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
Jim,
Try holding down CTRL and scrolling your mouse wheel. That changes the font size. I do this by accident now and then.
Justin,
The whole “overwhelmingly liberal� [media] is a myth plain and simple.
No, I think the Pew polling has put this firmly in the camp of “established fact,” nonspecific comments by Kristol notwithstandng. It found journalists are liberal by 5:1 — 35% liberal to 7% conservative — and that’s by their own admission.
And frankly, it’s people like Ann Coulter who are trying to rip this country in two, so her opinion on where O’Reilly stands politically is of no interest to me.
Regardless, she’s a far right luminary and her opinion carries a lot of weight on the right, but if you don’t like Coulter (she can be a bit shrill), I could cite other conservatives who are equally disdainful of O’Reilly. He’s relatively centrist. Center-right, at least.
As far as Fox News goes, they stomp thier competition because they have more dogfights, period.
Ah, the old “Fox News is Jerry Springer” canard. Doesn’t really hold up; Fox gets more viewers than the three other networks combined and they all have dogfights too. The only real qualitative difference between Fox and the rest of the news is the same one people are always attacking it over: it’s more conservative.
However, the very fact that Brit Hume can be a so called “Fair and Balanced� news anchor the entire week and then be a bonafide conservative commentator on Sunday simply proves that Fox’s ethics are out of whack.
I don’t see why, Dan Rather did the same thing for what, 30 years? No one said anything until he aired a crazy piece based on forged docmuents.
Objectivity is an unattainable goal. No one is objective. Not me, not you, not anyone. What all the news media should do is just admit they’re biased and be honest about which way they tilt while remaining true to the facts. Brit, at least, gives viewers some idea of where he stands by being on the panel.
TallDave, we’ll just to agree to disagree.
I disagree. (Just kidding!) Well, we all have our different viewpoints. I enjoy a vigorous fact-based debate. Something I even learn something.
July 14th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
Sometimes I even learn something.
July 14th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Michael,
Using IE 6, I had to bump the size up from Smaller to Medium to read the blogpost, then from Medium to Larger to read the comments. That’s at 1024×768 on a 17″ screen. My Smaller setting is fine for most websites. This required two bumps up.
July 14th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Michael: Excellent analysis and one I have not seen anyone else suggest. Having worked for a German company I can say that they have a very different perspective that we do.
I watch Fox and the Factor all the time and while I will admit that O’Reilly can be a bully, and is egotistical, I continue to be impressed with his ability to get both sides of an issue out there. He uses guests from all over the political spectrum, including respected bloggers ,and will give them their say if they play by his rules.
I believe that overall he is sincere and that he is center-right. He clearly is not a political partisan.
He enjoys bashing the looney left and the looney right but right now, the looney left is a lot more vocal, or at least gets a lot more attention.
As for the dogfights, nothing on Fox approached the old “Crossfire”.
July 14th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
I have to take issue with the claim that the West has never been “one.” Just before WW1, it was. One could cross Europe without so much as a passport. Trade, travel, everything was easier. Border crossing outposts were on the lookout for hostile armies and the occasional anarchist, but travelers, businessmen, and the idle rich making the Grand Tour could move about without molestation. The flow of goods was relatively (not completely) unrestricted. Overseas Western countries enjoyed the same freedoms of trade and travel, although of course the intervening oceans did get in the way, especially during iceberg season.
All that ended in 1914 and has yet to return.
As far as waiting for Europe to wake up to the menace which confronts it both internally and externally, there seems little point. Uncle Sam will just have to do the heavy lifting …. again. I suspect that by the time the current dire crisis is over, Europe will be reduced to a condition of negligible importance. Spengler, writing back in 1917, was right, but he conflated The West with Europe - a major error.
But unity is overrated. I remember September 11 pretty well, and I don’t remember being united. There was that intellectual ho’ Sontag telling us how it was all our fault, and the execrable Chomsky (a prof at my alma mater, sorry to say) whining the same tune. Phooey, you can’t wait for unity before you start fighting back.
July 15th, 2005 at 12:42 am
Certainly since Roe vs. Wade the USA has not been united; nor was the Democratic Party “united” after the 1964 Civil Rights Act — when millions of Dems voted Wallace in 1968 (to let Rep Nixon beat Dem Humphrey). Political Correctness was born in a burst of anti-racist (very good) anti-war (questionably good) pro-promiscuity (likely bad) “idealism”.
The media is Leftist/PC biased, but especially anti-authority biased. When the BBC is unwilling to use the term “terrorist” — that is bias.
The USA did not lose any major battles in Vietnam. Yet we lost the war — because the media was against it, and created an intellectual environment saying it was a mistake to fight evil communism there, so the US should leave. When the US left, evil commies took over and, despite no war opposition, proceeded to murder hundreds of thousands in Vietnam, and a couple million in Cambodia.
The media, and the vast majority of Baby Boomers, in opposing the US fight in Vietnam was supporting “anything is better”, and thus accepting genocide. While denying that’s what they favor.
Was it a mistake for the US to leave Vietnam? If resulting genocide doesn’t prove it WAS a mistake, then how can any results ever prove a prior policy is a mistake?
This is relevant to Clinton’s Rwanda strategy: deny genocide, take no action, allow genocide … apologize later. This is the UN’s attitude in Sudan, with Int’l Criminal Court indictments, unenforced, taking the place of real action. [Why is there FAR more press coverage of Abu Ghraib than of Darfur? prolly Leftist press bias; though possibly ratings.]
There is usually more unity in being against something, some policy with bad results, than there is in being FOR something — since every policy has bad results.
Better than asking for unity, truly overrated, is to ask for respect for disagreement and a “loyal opposition”. But again, loyal to what? I hope you remain loyal to the truth about tradeoffs, and try to explain the costs of different policy proposals.
July 15th, 2005 at 3:20 am
Mike,
I was referred here by Instapundit and I like your take on things. Interesting how actual history and perceived history seem to be different. Big dirigible for example; I think it was probably common for certain people who traveled by certain modes of transport to be able to cross Europe untouched. However, I can certainly imagine Jews in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe having trouble with border crossings. A few palms probably needed greasing.
I also find myself in wholehearted agreement with Tall Dave re: Al Gore taking it to Iraq (or not as the case may be). Thank God for the Bush administration policy of democratizing the Middle East. That’s the American way; not retrenchment or retreat. Gotta give the President credit: we were supposed to have a more “humble” foreign policy when he was elected. I even thought it sounded right at the time. But when we were attacked, our leaders came up with a vision that fits our ideals and actually could work. It was a sea-change in our foreign policy, and deservedly so. Try to be on the side of freedom, always. We see our allies among the former satellites of the Soviet Union because they know what freedom means, having been without it for so long. I’m personally impressed by the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, a Thatcher-in-the-making indeed. I’ve heard her eloquently support our anti-terror efforts in the same clear way that Tony Blair does.
July 15th, 2005 at 4:36 am
Jason, your belief that the interest of Bush and this administration in the Middle East is to bring democracy and peace to the region is endearing, really. Shouldn’t it be clear by now that the only interest in this region are the riches in the form of oil that are deep under the ground. If the US wants to continue burning up oil like it is doing at the present rate, additional sources will have to be used, and since the Middle East has about the largest reserves, it is obvious that a certain stability needs to be found before the oil companies want to do some investments. And in the end all of the lobbying $’s of the oil companies need to pay of as well, right?
Michael, your quote above “because we have a common history of peaceful coexistence with one another” may be true in the way that you have not seen an internal conflict on your soil since the Civil War, but being at peace with yourself has not meant being at peace with the rest of the world. Plenty of examples are present where the US intervened openly (Vietnam, Panama, Iraq) and more clandestine (Chili, Nicaragua, …), I can see a certain paradox here.
Being a citizen of Belgium, I am still grateful for the invertention of the US in WW2, without your assistance Europe probably would be very different now. Having said that, it is my belief that governments do not take action out of sheer compassion, there always is a hidden agenda. The interests of the US in Europe simply were too high for the US not to intervene. If we look at how the countries under the US influence changed their way of living, I guess in the long run the war investment has more than paid of.
July 15th, 2005 at 9:21 am
Thanks for that great tip on font size changing, by holding the CTRL key and changing with mouse wheel, TallDave. GREAT one.
BTW, for those who aren’t even familiar with the old fashion way, or don’t have a Wheel Mouse(shame), at top of IE Browser click VIEW, TEXT SIZE, select size.
BTW TallDave, I actually thought you were being facetious when you listed O’Reily as a centrist. I even laughed at that neat ‘embedded’ bit of fun. You were having some fun with us…..weren’t you?
July 15th, 2005 at 9:23 am
BTW, Great article MTJ.
July 15th, 2005 at 9:27 am
That should have been MTC, Michael Totten Centrist. :)
July 15th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Well stated MJT.
Entangling alliances seem worth much less than they cost.
July 15th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
MIke,
It’s working fine now too for me. Not my machine, so I takes what I gets.
You point out something that ought to be obvious but isn’t. If Europe were unifeid, they’d have something like a common language. They’d be at a level of political integration like China’s. Only someone completely ignorant of European history, like that stupid animal, Ischinger, the German ambassador to the US, would babble on about how the Europeans, unlike the crude Americans, have found a higher way to resolves disputes among “nations” (his term for their tribal states.)
You point out further somethinfg else that should be obvious, the degree of disunity within the US. This is not some artifact of the Civil Rights Era or the evil media. The Civil War didn’t blow up out of nowhere. You English were despising each other when you got here, Puritans loathing Virginia gentlemen and vice versa. We have managed pretty well not only despite that but because of that. We are pre-adapted for just about any eventuality.
July 15th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
“but being at peace with yourself has not meant being at peace with the rest of the world. Plenty of examples are present where the US intervened openly (Vietnam, Panama, Iraq) and more clandestine (Chili, Nicaragua, …), ”
Marc, do you remember the admonition to pull the log out of you own eye first? As for wars on other people’s continents, the Europeans are in no position to boast - The Ivory Coast “civil war”, the mess in Rwanda that France triggered, Vietman, as a matter of fact, and and most disgustiing at the moment , the engineered impasse over Darfur. Do you think these are or were alll due simply to European incompetence, or do you think there may have been other reasons? Do you think Sudan’s oil figured at all in France’s calculations concerning Darfur?
The notion that Europe is at peace with the rest of the world is laughable. The rest of the world is not at peace with Europe, as of 7/7. If you think you are so subtly playing the Chinese against the Americans and that is why they are making nice with you for the moment, go find a Chinese-speaker to explain to you what the expression “yi yi zhi yi” means.
Maybe it’s because you live in languages where every sentence has to have a subject, but you seem to think there is a causal link between someone’s intent and the action that ensues. Does Bush and Co. have to have the purest intentions for their actions to result in something good? You have heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences, I hope.
July 16th, 2005 at 7:35 pm
The West Has Never Been One
Michael Totten’s first
essay for the new centrist blog Donkelephant is a winner. I believe a good
bit of the left vs. right conflict would be tempered by a better recall of what
I call "true history" (distinct from "media history&q…
July 17th, 2005 at 11:16 am
Only 15 years ago half of Europe was communist.
That’s, at best, very imprecise.
France walked out of NATO in 1966 and spent the remaining years of the Cold War triangulating between the Soviet Union and its former allies.
You’re not talking about Finland by any chance? Say what you want about France, but without them the EU wouldn’t exist at all.
Only since the fall of the Soviet Union has Western Civilization even been able to think about declaring the West a war-free zone.
Huh? I’m not really sure what your definition of “war” and “the West” is, but it is commonly accepted that the West consists of Europe and the US and there haven’t been any wars in these areas since WW2, with the exception of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, happening after the collapse of the USSR.
Perhaps a feeling of Western-wide unity simply isn’t possible unless huge numbers of Europeans are massacred by Islamists.
The Terror War gives us the opportunity to unite for the first time.
Let’s just say, that seeing these two sentences in close proximity gives me a rather eerie feeling (think: FOXNews).
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:44 am
[...] Boiling ‘The West’ down to a single caricature is telling. When has the West ever been one? Michael Totten says that it never was on the same page. Why should we all be on the same page now? Is a common threat really a uniter? I doubt it. Common threats more often expose rifts that are normally glossed over. That seems to be the case now. [...]