On Wed, 2002-10-09 at 06:48, Frank Bergmann wrote:
>
> A more reasonable explication of the EU - US differences (according
> to some American journalist cited in a German magazine, can someone
> help me?) is that the American public perceives the rest of the world
> basically as a thread, against which you have to defend yourself using
> power.
This is not a correct assessment.  The American public couldn't care
less.  However, the US intelligence community correctly perceives a
threat, and it isn't the third-world.  Many European and other developed
nations aggressively engage in covert operations against American
interests.  Its been going on for years and isn't even news.  Things
have stepped up in recent years and the US DoD is none too pleased.  For
better or worse, the US is relatively good at that game too.  As with
most backwater wars, they are proxies for the interests of the big
players.
Find a current list of the top intelligence threats to the US.  You'll
find that half the countries on that list are European.  Most people are
unaware of how aggressive these things have gotten in recent years.
> On the other hand the Europeans are used to the peace of their cozy
> post-war system where external security is not an issue. All security
> threads can be resolved by giving money to the threatening people
> and to integrate them into the wealthy sphere (Balkan, Palestinians,
> ...)
Bullshit.  The European governments ruthlessly suppress real opposition,
obviously some more than others.  US SpecOps are often brought in to do
dirty work inside Europe for European governments (usually with
government "advisors" along for the mission).  I've always wondered what
the deal was such that we got involved at all.  The point being that
we've acted as assassins for European governments inside their borders
against their own citizens under the auspices of those governments, and
in recent years, not ancient history.  I know SpecOp guys who left the
military specifically because of the circumstances of some of these
missions while they were posted for that duty. I'm certainly glad I was
never assigned missions in that theater, because there is a lot of
covert nastiness going on in nominally friendly European democracies.
Regardless, giving money to people that threaten you has never created
meaningful peace in the history of civilization.  We call it extortion
under any other guise.
> A lot of the current EU - US issues can be explained by this difference
> of perception, such as the current American unilateralism (nobody wants
> to help us!), the American arrogance towards Europe (they don't want to
> do anything, so why should we ask them?) and the growing rejection of the
> American policy in Europe (they want to abolish the law!).
Europe is looking increasingly like a basket case.  Whatever problems
the US is having these days, Europe looks worse and is going downhill
faster.  Why the US would want to emulate European behavior or the
European way of doing things is beyond me.
The US asking for major policy advice from Europe is like asking a quack
for medical advice.  I really don't see what is wrong with "unilateral"
anyway.  Why should anyone join a stampede that is heading for a cliff?
I hope the incessant knee-jerk conformist screeching that Americans see
coming from Europe doesn't actually represent the views of Europeans.
For various reasons I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the US government,
but the premises of the argument against them here are lame.
> My personal point is that few Americans (percentage of overall population)
> have ever left their country, while even German construction workers
> regularly spend their holidays in Spain. So I'm not surprised that
> paranoia is growing.
I'm betting you are underestimating the actual percentage.  The vast
majority of people I know have lived, worked, and traveled outside the
country at one time or another.  And I doubt Europeans have traveled
anywhere near as much in the Western hemisphere as Americans have.
Despite the best efforts of France, Europe is *still* not the center of
the universe.  I'll throw you a bone though: most Americans do consider
Europe to be drifting into irrelevancy and therefore ignore it.  But
from the perspective of an American, how could you NOT look at it this
way?  The impact of Europe on America has diminished greatly over the
years.
I love the smell of Euro-chauvinism in the morning.
First, you assume that the North American continent is ethnically and
culturally homogenous.  Anybody that has actually traveled throughout
North America knows this isn't true; there are more than five major and
very distinct cultures and societies in the US alone, never mind the
hundreds of diverse regional sub-populations, some of which are truly
foreign.  Apparently Europeans confuse speaking the same language with
having the same culture.  That would be like saying Mexico is culturally
identical to Spain because they nominally speak the same language.  A
Wyoming rancher has almost nothing in common culturally or socially with
your average person living in San Francisco, despite speaking the same
language and nominally living in the same country.  If I want to visit a
wildly different culture for the holidays, I'll go to Oakland, New
Orleans, or similar -- they are far more different from where I live
than some countries I've traveled to.  And a lot of these places are
farther from where I live than Spain is from Germany.
Second, the State I live in is the size of Germany.  When I travel to a
neighboring State (which I do regularly), how is this not equivalent?
In fact, I probably travel much farther for the holidays than your
German construction workers.  If you look at the EU as a single country,
only then does your analogy become comparable.  What kind of ridiculous
superiority do Europeans get from having (relatively) tiny countries?
In truth, I find Europe to be about as culturally homogeneous as the
US.  There are a lot of cultural similarities across the EU with
relatively minor local deviations that vary with distance in ways very
similar to the US.  The only real difference is that Europeans have
dozens of different languages, which is hardly something I would call an
advantage.  Although there are a couple parts of the US where I can't
understand a word they are saying either.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com