File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 353


Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 17:45:14 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: fyi/Rorty on Kerneuropa


Cologne 21-Nov-2003

HealantHenry-AT-aol.com schrieb  Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:55:49 EST:

> http://www.dissentmagazine.org/
>
> Humiliation or Solidarity?
> The Hope for a Common European Foreign Policy
>
> by Richard Rorty
>
> This article was written in response to a statement, authored by Juergen
> Habermas and co-signed by Jacques Derrida, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine
> Zeitung on May 31, 2003. It called upon the nations of "Kerneuropa" (Donald
> Rumsfeld's "Old Europe"-France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux, and Portugal) to
> adopt a common foreign policy. The Habermas-Derrida article was called "February
> 15th, or What Binds Europeans Together"-a reference to the day in 2003 on
> which mass demonstrations against the Iraq War were held in London, Rome, Madrid,
> Barcelona, Berlin, and Paris. It was also the day on which, in Habermas's
> words "the newspapers reported to their astonished readers the Spanish prime
> minister's invitation to the other European nations willing to support the Iraq
> war to swear an oath of loyalty to George W. Bush, an invitation issued behind
> the back of the other countries of the European Union."

An "oath of loyalty to George W. Bush"?? Habermas' rhetoric here is less than honest.

> Other European
> philosophers (Umberto Eco, Adolf Muschg, Fernando Savater, and Gianni Vattimo)
> published statements along the same lines in the leading newspapers of their
> respective countries, also on May 31. The text below, representing an American
> reaction to the Habermas-Derrida initiative, was published in German in Sueddeutsche
> Zeitung on May 31. The Habermas-Derrida article was published in English in
> the September 2003 issue of Constellations.
>
> - Richard Rorty
>
> President Bush's national security adviser has said, according to newspaper
> reports, that Russia will be forgiven, Germany ignored, and France punished.
> Whether or not Condoleezza Rice actually used those words, they express the
> attitude of the Bush administration toward nations that failed to join the Iraq
> War coalition. Disagreement with Washington by foreign governments is being
> treated by the Bush White House not as honest difference of opinion but as the
> failure of knaves and fools to accept guidance from the wise, farsighted, and
> benevolent.
>
> Rice herself (the former provost of my university) is a very sophisticated
> and knowledgeable scholar, and so it is unlikely that she thinks of European
> leaders in any such simplistic way. But her insistence on the need for America to
> retain total control of global affairs is consonant with the remark that the
> American press is now attributing to her. Presumably she thinks that people
> such as Joschka Fischer and Dominique de Villepin, though neither fools nor
> knaves, must nevertheless be publicly humiliated, in order to help ensure a stable
> world order. For such stability, on her view, will be possible only if
> America's hegemony goes unchallenged.
>
> More frightening than the bullying tone adopted by President Bush's advisers
> is the fact that European heads of government and foreign ministers are now
> reverting to their bad old habits. They are competing with one another for
> Washington's favor. After so many decades of dependence, it is very hard for
> Europe's leaders to stop judging their success in foreign affairs by the extent to
> which they are on cordial terms with the great imperial power. But just insofar
> as they continue to do this, it will be easy for Washington to set them
> against one another-to make them behave like schoolchildren vying for the teacher's
> favor.
>
> Juergen Habermas and Jacques Derrida argue that "Europe must, within the
> framework of the United Nations, throw its weight in the scale in order to
> counterbalance the hegemonic unilateralism of the United States." If the statesmen of
> "Kerneuropa" adopt the stance that Habermas and Derrida recommend and act in
> concert to assert their independence of Washington, the U.S. government will
> do everything possible to turn American public opinion against them. Refusal to
> accept the American magisterium will be viewed by most of the American media
> as a sign of moral weakness. Washington will also do its best to set the
> members of the European Union against one another, in order to ensure that
> Kerneuropa's audacity does not become an example for the EU as a whole. For the last
> thing Washington wants is a Europe that is sufficiently united and
> self-confident to question America's hegemony.

Europe "sufficiently united and self-confident" -- come back maybe in a couple of
centuries.

> If the citizens and governments of
> Kerneuropa act as Habermas and Derrida hope they will, Washington will use every trick
> in the book to get them back in line-to make sure that their countries' votes
> in the United Nations are determined by decisions made by Rice and her
> colleagues on the National Security Council. For Bush's advisers suspect that if the
> EU had held together-if its member governments had been unanimous and
> vociferous in their repudiation of Bush's adventurism-they would never have been able
> to persuade the American public to agree to the war in Iraq.
>
> If the citizenry and the governments of Europe do not seize the hour, if they
> do not carry through on the repudiation of American unilateralism manifested
> on February 15, Europe is unlikely ever again to play a significant role in
> determining the future of the world.

Famous last words.

> The leaders of France, Germany, Benelux,
> Italy, Portugal, and Spain cannot postpone the choice they have to make: whether
> to accept the humiliating subservience that Washington hopes to impose on
> them or to break free by formulating and pursuing foreign policy initiatives to
> which Washington will react with incredulous outrage.
>
> For Americans who were horrified by the willingness of their fellow citizens
> (and of the Democratic Party) to support Bush's Iraq War, the acquiescence of
> European statesmen in American unilateralism would be a tragedy. For if
> Washington does force Germany to beg not to be ignored and France to plead for
> relief from punishment, then the next time an American president decides to embark
> on an exciting military adventure there will be no significant countervailing
> pressure from abroad. Remembering what happened the last time that
> Washington's will was defied, European governments will be loath to instruct their
> representatives at the UN to question the latest American initiative.
>
> The Bush administration's view that a permanent pax Americana, one whose
> terms are dictated by Washington alone, is the world's only hope has as a
> corollary that the United States must never permit its military power to be
> challenged. That claim is made explicit in a policy statement titled "The National
> Security Strategy of the United States," which asserts, "Our forces will be strong
> enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in
> hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
>
> It is possible that even Democratic presidents will, in the future, reiterate
> this claim to permanent hegemony. The bullying tone adopted by the Bush
> administration may be one that all future American presidential candidates feel
> compelled to adopt in order to show themselves "strong" and "resolute" in "making
> war against terrorism" (an expression that will be invoked, as David Bromwich
> has pointed out in these pages, to excuse anything the American government
> may choose to do). This may be the case even though men like John Kerry, Howard
> Dean, and Richard Gephardt (the most plausible candidates for the Democratic
> presidential nomination next year) understand, as President Bush does not, that
> no empire lasts forever. They are farsighted enough to know that American
> economic and military dominance is bound to be transitory, and to suspect that
> insistence on perpetual military supremacy will, sooner or later, produce a
> confrontation with China, Russia, or both-a confrontation that may end in nuclear
> war. But this knowledge may not suffice to make them change the direction of
> American foreign policy.
>
> This means that the European Union is the only likely sponsor of an
> alternative to Washington's project of a permanent pax Americana. The leaders of the
> still-fragile regimes that govern Russia and China are too preoccupied with
> their own hold on power, and with domestic problems, to ask themselves questions
> about the best course for the world as a whole.

And Germany, for instance,  is not "too preoccupied with domestic problems"? It's main
concern is trying to keep its Titanic Sozialstaat afloat, that cocoon of security that
pads Germans against the dangers and unpleasantness of the world, including lulling them
into pacificism. Without a credible military force and the willingness to act when needs
be, the EU will remain totally ineffective in world politics for it cannot present any
credible alternative to US foreign policy.

As it is, Germany (I only know this one EU country intimately) will continue to screw
itself up with German Gruendlichkeit, such as 206 taxation laws and 96,000 taxation
regulations -- and I'm not kidding. If anyone tries to simplify taxation in this country
(there's been a federal government committee working on simplification of taxation for
YEARS), people start screaming about Steuergerechtigkeit (taxation justice). And the
state's bureacrats with all their privileges do not want anything at all to change.
Germany today is still DISCUSSING reforms that were carried out in Australia in the
seventies -- that's an entire generation ago!

It's not just that EU countries have not put sufficient resources into the military. Since
the mid-seventies, Germany has been allowing its entire education system to slide into
dilapidation. You should see the state of some the schools and universities here! A friend
of mine told me this week that his kid's school cannot afford to replace broken windows!
Whereas today the caring German social welfare state puts all of 4.4 per cent of GDP into
education, in cold, ruthless US capitalism, this figure is 7.7 per cent! And yet the
Germans remained arrogant and complacent about their education system up until the recent
PISA study in which Germany was near the bottom of the pile, which was a big shock for the
smug German psyche -- I personally still remember how German officials regarded my
education as second-rate because I was an Australian.

European societies and their economies have to free up to be more vigorous, proactive,
adaptable for any vigorous, unified EU foreign policy to become at all possible. Social
security cocooning and social inertia are at high levels here. But tough competition on
capitalist world markets will tear away this all-too-cozy cocoon sooner or later. (Over 4
million unemployed in Germany at present and rising and still no foreseeable prospect of a
diminution.) To talk in this context of proud European traditions that must be conserved
is simply a diversionary tactic for complacency and arrogance and ignorance of the world.

> Their resentment at
> Washington's arrogance will remain tacit. They can afford to wait for their own day to
> come-the day on which they tell Washington that they can and will challenge its
> military power. If America refuses to recognize that that day will come sooner
> or later, and if Europe does nothing to offer an alternative scheme for world
> order, then nothing is likely to change. Sooner or later we shall recreate
> the situation that prevailed during the cold war-nuclear powers daring each
> other to be the first to launch their missiles.
>
> The rulers of at least a dozen countries will soon have their fingers on
> nuclear triggers. To believe that Washington can forever hold all these rulers in
> awe would be folly, yet it is a folly that seems likely to prevail. "The
> National Security Strategy of the United States" makes no reference to eventual
> nuclear disarmament, only to nonproliferation, where "nonproliferation" means
> that only regimes that acknowledge American hegemony have the right to possess
> nuclear weapons. That document pretends that the danger of nuclear confrontation
> ended when the cold war ended and takes for granted that American and Russian
> submarines, each of them armed with enough warheads to destroy ten great
> cities, will lurk beneath the oceans for generations to come.
>
> Prior to the Bush administration, American statesmen usually paid lip
> service, at least, to the idea that the pax Americana was a transition to something
> better. Most of them realized that American hegemony was a makeshift that would
> have to do until something more enduring became possible-something like a
> veto-free United Nations functioning as a global parliament, equipped with a
> permanent peacekeeping military force and able to carry out a program of global
> disarmament. (I once heard a former Republican secretary of state say, in
> private, that he would be willing to trade a considerable measure of American
> national sovereignty for nuclear disarmament.) For Bush and his advisers talk of
> such a rebuilt UN is pointlessly idealistic, a refusal to face up to reality, a
> romantic retreat into a dream world.

A veto-free UN is definitely a mere dream. Above all, France would have a lot of political
and diplomatic influence to lose in any rebuilt UN. How does one constitute a UN that is
capable of a unified resolve to deal with wars on the planet?

> If any projects for a new international order put forward by the EU are to be
> of use, they will have to embody the idealism that America has seemingly
> become unable to sustain. The EU will have to put forward a vision of the world's
> future to which Washington will react with scornful mockery. It will have to
> offer proposals for rewriting the Charter of the United Nations and for putting
> the UN in charge of a program of global nuclear disarmament. It will have to
> dream dreams that will strike Realpolitikers as absurd. But, as Habermas and
> Derrida point out, some of Europe's recent dreams have come true. They are
> right to say that Europe has, in the second half of the twentieth century, found a
> solution to the problem of how to transcend the nation state. The EU-just as
> it stands, even prior to the adoption of a constitution-is already the
> realization of what the Realpolitikers thought was an idle fantasy. If the sense of
> shared European citizenship becomes entrenched in the first quarter of the
> twenty-first century in the way in which the sense of shared American citizenship
> became entrenched in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the world
> will be well on the way to a global confederation. Such a confederation has been
> recognized, ever since Hiroshima, as the only long-term solution to the
> problem created by nuclear weapons.
>
> "Why," Habermas and Derrida ask, "should not Europe . . . devote itself to
> the broader goal of defending a cosmopolitan world-order based on international
> law against competing initiatives?"

Cosmopolitan? Germany, this parochial, xenophobic country supporting cosmopolitanism?
That's a laugh. Just look at the way Germany makes its aliens feel at home (I am one of
them)! Foreigners are treated with suspicion, especially the Turks. The German state makes
an alien's life hard in all sorts of major and minor ways. The largest country in Europe
is still aeons away from any laudable, convincing leadership role in the world.

> Why not indeed? If Europe did that, it
> might just save the world, something that American policy cannot do. At best,
> America's "national security strategy" can only postpone disaster. It can only
> keep things going for another generation or two. If there is ever a time when
> public opinion must force politicians to be more idealistic than they feel
> comfortable being, this is it. For all the reasons Habermas and Derrida give, the
> citizens of Kerneuropa are in the best position to exert such pressure.
>
> If February 15 comes to be seen, as Habermas and Derrida hope it may, as the
> "birth of a European public sphere," the beginning of a new sense of shared
> European identity, that would change everyone's sense of what is politically
> possible. Such an upsurge of idealistic self-redefinition would be responded to
> around the world, in the United States and China as well as in Brazil and
> Russia. It would break the logjam that we are now trapped in. It is, as far as I
> can see, about the only thing that might.

This is pie-in-the-sky idealism and utterly useless. The way of thinking in Europe has to
change more fundamentally in the social sphere beyond just opening up another chat-room or
launching huge anti-everything protests that serve as a nice day out for the kids.
Bureaucratic regulation and a cozy, sclerotic system of institutional vested interests
have to be swept away.

US business people and politicians (like J. Snow) are known for referring to Continental
Europe as "sclerotic", and one could be forgiven for thinking that this is just another
instance of US arrogance. Unfortunately, it is much too mild a term. The Europeans have
lost the plot in a world that opens up as a manifold of know-hows for setting-up and as a
manifold of opportunities for gain. The dream of a cozy social welfare state lasted from
about 1950 to 1975. The western Europeans didn't notice that the dream was over and kept
on dreaming of social justice while the entire social and economic fabric decayed.

Just one small sign of European decline: the largest European software company, SAP,
announced this week that it is expanding its operations in India. The new Indian facility
will employ around 1,500, even more than are employed at SAP's German headquarters. Asia
is indeed emerging as a force to be reckoned with.

> Bush's apologists in the American media are likely to dismiss such
> initiatives as Habermas's and Derrida's as just further examples of the envious and
> resentful anti-Americanism that is recurrent among European intellectuals. Such a
> charge would be completely baseless. Both philosophers have profited from
> their frequent and extended visits to the United States to gain a deep and
> thorough understanding of America's political and cultural achievements. They are
> well aware of America's world-historical role as the first of the great
> constitutional democracies, and also of what America has done for Europe in the years
> since World War II. They appreciate that it was idealistic Wilsonian
> internationalism in the United States that led to the creation of the United Nations.
> They know that the unilateralist arrogance of the Bush administration is a
> contingent misfortune-neither inevitable nor expressive of something deeply
> embedded, and irredeemable, in American culture and society.

While talking about U.S. arrogance or that of a particular government, we should also talk
of French arrogance and German arrogance, and above all about European complacency.

> Both Europe and America contain many millions of people who see clearly that,
> despite all that America has done for the cause of human freedom, its
> assertion of a right to permanent hegemony is a terrible mistake. Americans who
> realize this need all the help they can get to persuade their fellow citizens that
> Bush has been taking their country down the wrong path. The solidification of
> the European Union into a powerful independent force in world affairs

I would welcome the EU as "a powerful independent force in world affairs". But then
Europeans would have to shift from their defensive, dithering and endlessly diplomatic
stance on the world stage which is aimed merely at securing a comfortable, protected way
of life.

The challenge to US military hegemony in the world will come from China, not from the EU.
That seems plain enough. US military hegemony is only a short interlude. A globe enmeshed
in a web of international trade patterns has a better chance of finding some peaceful
balance than any alternative vision I can see on the horizon at present. Europeans should
fight for fair competitive rules of play on the world markets if they want to be
idealistic. Then they would really have to feel the pain of having to change their way of
life.

Putting aside violent and murderous Islamist terrorists (who have to be defeated), the
many Muslim revivalists from Marocco through to Indonesia put their faith in studying the
Koran and following it, believing that then the world will be in order and that everything
(including the economy) will fall into place by the grace of Allah. Regarding the West as
"sick" will not make the challenge represented by the West go away.

> would be
> viewed by that segment of American opinion not as an expression of resentful
> anti-Americanism but as an entirely appropriate and altogether welcome
> reaction to the danger that the direction of American foreign policy poses for the
> world.
>
> Richard Rorty teaches philosophy in the comparative literature department at
> Stanford University.
>
>

"Many things are terrible, but nothing stirs that is more terrible than humankind."
Sophocles
Europe seems to have forgotten this, too.

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