----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Mensah" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 12:03 PM
Subject: [unioNews] Does the West have a future?


<H3>Does the West have a future?</H3>
By Graham Barrett
November 4, 2003

Among the casualties still struggling to recover from the battle of
Baghdad is the Western alliance as our source of reassurance in a
world that lurches from one threat to another. Iraq symbolises the
divisions that have opened up in the trans-Atlantic partnership on
one issue after another, from the Palestinian-Israeli dispute and
terrorism to agricultural trade and tariffs, global warming and the
role of international institutions.

What was until this year a gentle process of divergence since the
collapse of the Soviet Union as common enemy is now rapidly
solidifying into rival interpretations of what the West means. The
pace can only quicken if George Bush is re-elected.

A similar problem afflicts the European Union as it prepares to try
to digest 10 more member states that are torn between a hankering for
American military guarantees and the call to embrace pan-European
goals as defined by France and Germany.

All these conflicting emotions raise the question of whether the
Western alliance can survive. Business and personal ties will endure
and prosper. But the ideological and institutional frameworks for co-
operation will deteriorate, making it harder to agree on challenges
such as a failing Middle East, the advance of international crime,
abuses of human rights and global poverty.

The rise of international terrorism seemed at first to provide a new
common foe. But while sharing some - although by no means all - of
the American obsession with Islamist extremism, the Europeans and
indeed many Australians differ sharply with the Bush team's response.
It drives to the heart of all those shared values that define the
West: democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression, respect for
human rights and international conventions.

To a popular European way of thinking, developed over decades of
substituting consensus for conflict, they have been compromised by,
among other things, an American total war on terrorism that includes
a Guantanamo Bay-style of policing and justice as well as a
unilateralist invasion of Iraq. To an American way of thinking, such
a European outlook is typical of those who are unable to
differentiate between good and evil, and who remain unreliable
ingrates after twice being rescued from destroying themselves as well
as enjoying protection from Soviet hegemony.

Intriguingly, just to demonstrate that history still enjoys a nice
twist, they have swapped styles in international relations, with the
Franco-German alliance embracing Wilsonian ideals while the United
States, supported by Britain and Australia on Iraq, has gone
Bismarckian. To adapt Churchill's quip that the British and Americans
are divided by a common language, the Europeans and Americans are now
divided by common values as the extent of the differences in their
political, philosophical and social cultures becomes increasingly
evident.

As Clash of Civilisations author Samuel Huntington recently described
one aspect of it, "Americans are generally deeply committed to God
and country, and, overall, Europeans seem to have rather weak
commitments to both". If, as Justice Louis Brandeis once
noted, "There is in most Americans a spark of idealism", there may be
in most Europeans a splinter of cynicism.

Demographic differences will accentuate the gap in coming years as
the US absorbs its future from Latin America and Asia while the flow
into the EU comes from North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern
Europe.

As Bush throws himself into his re-election campaign and the EU
greets its new members while trying to negotiate and ratify a
constitution, each side of the Atlantic will be self-absorbed.

Bush and his potential rivals know that whoever wins the presidency
will have sold the American people on the idea that there is no
substitute for toughness on national security. Rediscovering the
virtue of multilateral co-operation is fine as long as it works to
Washington's advantage, so the approach goes, but, if it doesn't,
unilateralism will do nicely. France, Germany and fellow foundation
members of the EU know, meanwhile, that their new eastern partners
are inclined to American thinking on security. Having squirmed free
of the Soviet Union, security and stability are priorities for Poles,
Hungarians and Czechs.

Waving goodbye to Americans is not their idea of a good time. Yet
shrugging off the US is precisely what is now on the agenda for the
EU, as the French and Germans seek to develop a European substitute
for NATO.

The French, who have never come to terms with the limits of their
influence, can only assert themselves on the global stage by
persuading the EU to their will. Despite Europe's military decline,
they are trying to turn the EU into a counterweight to American power
as a way of clinging to their claim of speaking for Europe.

While the US now defines itself through what some would call an
obsessive war on terror, the French are defining themselves through
what others would call an obsessive anti-Americanism. While the
Americans try to win a long and expensive war, and the Europeans
settle to the long and expensive task of moulding a 25-member union,
the danger is that the gap will widen to a point that imperils global
interests.

Atlanticists are arguing that the US and the EU are responsible for
the effective functioning of the global economy and cannot provide
appropriate leadership if their own relationships are dysfunctional.

A similar concern applies to security. If the Europeans follow the
Franco-German push for a discrete military capability, the Americans
will be much more inclined to pursue unilateralist - or isolationist -
 approaches to global security issues.

A divided and squabbling West is a weakened West, distracted and
compromised in its ability to promote democracy, freedom and greater
prosperity in a world where other causes - not all of them
appetising - are jostling for attention.

How ironic it is that at the very time when the West needs to be
doing everything it can to understand the forces at work in the
Islamic world, it is experiencing growing difficulty in understanding
itself. How sad it is, too, that having devoted many summit
conferences over recent years to assembling a set of global
improvements, the West's commitment to meeting its aims is in trouble.

Some observers are asking why Iraq, with the second-biggest world oil
reserves, is destined to receive about $US50 billion ($A70 billion)
in aid and development when only a fraction of this sum is available
for global causes such as helping the 2 billion people living in
serious poverty, the millions of people condemned to death by HIV-
AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, huge environmental problems and other
mass maladies.

This lack of balance is largely a function of a divided and
distracted West, the only global enterprise capable of showing the
way forward.

***
Graham Barrett was an external affairs adviser to the World Bank from
1995 to 2003 and is a former European correspondent and foreign
editor of The Age.

Copyright  © 2003. The Age Company Ltd



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