TIPO DE INVESTIGACION

Although NLR largely ignores European values as a criterion of relevance in its discussion, the climate of uncertainty and crisis after the American-led Iraq invasion does precipitate a self-critical enquiry into Europe’s role in the world and the question of what European values amount to.

Some of the key allegations and criticisms which NLR adduces against the European response to the US invasion can be summarized from Tariq Ali’s article ‘Re-colonizing Iraq’.49He paints the picture of a completely feeble Europe at pains to please the American empire whilst tearing itself apart, and compares the inability of European countries to thwart the Iraq invasion to the failure of European Social Democratic parties to prevent the outbreak of the First World War. Then as much as now, these protests amounted to no more than “worthy sentiments” (p. 6) which dissolved into thin air. The alleged split between the European countries was, in Ali’s estimation, intentionally hyped up in the media rather than a real rift. He notes sarcastically how the story was reported by a gullible media.

The Franco-German initiatives aroused tremendous excitement and consternation among diplomatic commentators. Here, surely, was an unprecedented rift in the Atlantic Alliance. What was to become of European unity, of NATO, of the ‘international community’ itself if such a disastrous split persisted. Could the very concept of the West survive? (p. 11).

The hyped-up fear about the survival of the West was, however, always baseless. There was no real danger of such a split, since the countries involved - France and Germany - soon faltered and toed the line once the invasion began. Therefore it comes as no surprise that “[t]he vast bulk of official opinion in Europe, and a substantial chunk in the US, is desperate to begin the post-war healing process.” (p. 19). The alleged “healing” only amounts to a continuation of the lies told over the Iraq invasion, and imply a false sense of compromise

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between Europe and the US. In reality, “healing” only serves the purpose of obtaining “retrospective cover for the invasion” (p. 19). Ali ends his article with advocating a complete rejection of any form of cooperation with the United States.

These strong statements reveal the depth of the crisis for the European community. The alleged differences and rifts between Europe and the United States, which supposedly “endangered” the unity of the West, as Ali scoffs, were no more than the feeble and unprincipled posturing of countries such as France and Germany for their own national audiences. All in all, Europe has exposed itself as spineless and unable to exert a real counterforce against the US but has instead become part of the “United States of the West”; an expression used as the cover title for another article in NLR from January 2003,50to which I would now like to turn.

The teaser in the table of contents for this article, authored by Régis Debray51 and translated from the French for NLR, reads: “[w]hy does a malcontent Europe not simply sue for union with the global hegemon, discarding its wisps of independence to exchange proud membership of the American Empire for today’s sullen servility?” (p. 4). The article is a witty spoof letter, written by an imaginary French diplomat who has assumed American citizenship and who writes back to his “European friends”. The fictional diplomat satirically suggests forming a union between the US and Europe so that, he says in addressing the Europeans, “your voice will be heard” (p. 38). After all, in the current cumbersome and inconvenient system in which Europe is nominally independent from the United States, its role in the world appears to be confused: “What role will Europe settle for in America’s march across Asia – 50

By ‘cover title’ I mean the title of the article on the cover of the issue, which differs here from the title in the journal. Here the ‘United States of the West’ is replaced with the less polemical title, ‘Letter from America’,NLR, 19 (2003), 29-40.

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Régis Debray is a political activist, adviser and writer with an adventurous and sometimes improbable political career. Active on the French Left of the 60s, he went to Latin America, where he joined Che Guevara’s guerrilla group. He also spent four years in a Bolivian jail for his “resistance activities”. Back in France, he served as special adviser to Mitterand on foreign affairs during the 1980s. In yet another turnaround to his political career, he has most recently sat on the commission under President Chirac on the issue of banning the wearing of the hijab in French schools, which it contentiously advocated. See Ian Birchall, ‘Debray’s Memoirs: Tears of a Clown’, International Socialism: A Quarterly of Socialist Theory, 116 (2007) <http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=375&issue=116> [accessed 12 December 2008].

staffing a first-aid post on the Afghan frontier? Patrolling the Gulf in a paddle boat? Providing after-sales service for the Middle East?” (p. 30). More preferable and convenient for everyone involved would be a swift and painless formal union of Europe and the United States.

As well as pointing out the fact that Europe is politically completely dependent on the US, the letter goes on to sardonically comment on the inanity of European culture and lack of distinct European values. He quips:

is there a single value proclaimed in European speeches that America has not more successfully put into practice? Peace? Both world wars came out of Europe. Democracy? Over here, the community elects even the sheriff and the judge (p. 38).

As for differences between the cultural tastes, American mainstream culture has subsumed European tastes anyhow. Thus, all things considered, Europe’s identity appears inchoate and lacks self-confidence, while America is certain what it stands for. This is evident for Debray in the American dollar bills which “proclaim America’s eternal faith in God and in itself: a combat currency, splendidly messianic, with its roll-call of heroes, eagles, arrows, olive branch and the All-Seeing Eye”. In comparison, the hollowness of the Euro bills display the “emptiness of the supermarket state” (p. 39), which are “[n]otes from no- man’s land that show featureless bridges and windows opening on the void. No portraits, no landscapes, no maxims – have the Europeans no achievements, no history?” (p. 39), he asks in mock exasperation.

Culture, economics, politics – all these aspects are in fact part of a value system that is essentially American. Therefore, Debray demands that instructions are given to “our international-law specialists to draw up a conversion plan, transforming a region of common values into one of shared sovereignty.” To this effect, all that would be necessary would be “three extra initials on the passport, some flags to run, bilingual messages to be played on internal flights – the necessary adjustments would hardly be noticed at all. Your signature here, please, at the bottom of the page” (p. 39).

Debray’s hyperbole aside, the idea that Europe and America should formalise their union to form the “United States of the West” provides a drastic form of satire to describe the state Europe finds itself in asNLRsees it. Not only

has Europe squandered its integrity by allowing the war to happen, as Ali argues, but it is completely dependent to and has become upstaged by the US. Despite the evident differences in style and tone of the analysis, bothEspritand

NLRarrive at the conclusion that Europe is so closely associated with American values that they have become interchangeable and must be more accurately defined as broadly “Western” – or, as NLR would probably say – neo-liberal values.

Yet while it is clearly possible for the two journals to agree that Europe lacks an identity, analysis diverges again on the question of how Europe might sharpen its profile. For while Espritconsequently aims to reassert Europe’s role in the world as a harbinger of enlightened, cosmopolitan liberalism,NLRrejects any such notions as intellectual delusions. The ideas are dismissed out of hand since the “reality” of Europe’s role in the world simply does not conform to the grandiose aspirations whichEsprit formulates. Gowan admonishes that there is not the slightest indication to suggest that European “politics of cosmopolitan liberalism” (‘Pax Europæa’, p. 135) will be able to make any dent in the minds of Washington policymakers, nor does he see any evidence that Europe has the political will-power or resources to back up this “fantasy of European global dominance” (p. 137). In any case, he keeps reminding the reader, “Europe as based upon – indeed the embodiment of - liberal norms” masks the fact that these norms are in fact “a thicket of positive laws for particularistic capitalist interests” (p. 136).

Along the same lines, Susan Watkins acerbically argues that Europe has time and again since 1989 displayed its inability to live up to its self-appointed norms. For Watkins, the debacle over Yugoslavia in the mid 1990s was the first of many episodes in which Europe failed to put its ideals into action and proof, if necessary, that “the post-Cold war era has seen it [the EU] locked into a subordinate role within the US hegemonic system” (‘Continental Tremors’, p. 20).

Once moreNLR withdraws into an initially combative, but then ultimately defeatist tone which fails to come up with any alternatives to Europe’s role in the wake of the Iraq disaster. Whereas the lack of distinctive European values

as a counterbalance to the US is stressed in the strongest terms and while it dismisses the notion of Esprit’s “universal Europe” - which is only logically consistent within NLR’sreasoning - there is no immediate suggestion as to how Europe might step out of America’s shadow. However, after the May 2005 rejection of the Constitutional Treaty the model of a social Europe rises to the surface again.