The poverty of anti-Americanism

So here we have it: Respondees in the latest attitudes poll undertaken in the five major Member States of the European Union—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—see the United States as the world’s biggest security risk. Thirty-two percent of Europeans see Washington’s foreign, security and defence policies as destabilising, while only nineteen percent see China as a bigger threat. Seventeen percent see Iran as the worst challenge, whereas eleven percent see Iraq as most problematic, and another seven percent highlight Kim Jong Il’s hermit state of North Korea as most dangerous. Even more suprisingly, a mere five percent of Europeans see Vladimir Putin’s increasingly wild and truculent Russia as the primary threat to world peace, even though the Kremlin has threatened to re-target European cities with nuclear missiles.

These results are alarming, and show a profound level of moral and conceptual exhaustion on the part of many Europeans. Imagining that America is a bigger danger than Russia, Iran or China is a self-indulgence of the worst kind. The United States actively works with Europe to constitute a better world. As the European Security Strategy says: ‘Acting together, the European Union and United States can be a formidable force for good in the world. If we build up capabilities and increase coherence, we will be a more credible actor and a more influential partner.’ Quite. We—Europeans—need to understand that threats to our security emphatically do not originate from Washington. It is one thing to dislike the right-wing administration of George W. Bush, but quite another to imply that such an administration is worse, less legitimate or more dangerous than sinister and oppressive autocracies in places like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Each of those countries have threatened or have challenged European values, interests, power and authority in recent years. Washington has threatened to do no such thing, and actively encourages European attempts at building more effective foreign policies, security policies, military capabilities and institutions at the level of the European Union. America is our biggest commercial partner, shares most of our common values, and is entwined with our history. In short, America is a product of European expansion, energy and dynamism—and we should be proud of both.

Two other lines of argument can be put together here: Firstly, it is quite possible that many Europeans, particularly on the political Left, have built up an image of America that is so utopian that they become hyper-critical when the United States fails to meet their exemplary expectations. No country is perfect, especially when that country is the world’s leading power, responsible for the security of large geopolitical spaces and regions. There is nothing wrong with viewing a foreign country in a highly positive light—above all one as powerful and successful as the United States—but when this turns into an obsession, it begins to reveal a certain moral and intellectual fatigue on the part of those who have constructed utopian imaginaries in the first place. Here, we in Europe (and specifically in Britain) must gain far more confidence in ourselves, rather than looking elsewhere for socio-political and cultural inspiration.

Secondly, while the United States has often been somewhat reckless when forced to intervene diplomatically, politically and militarily in non-Western societies—for example, the failure to create adequate post-invasion planning in Iraq—it is often reacting to a threat, rather than deliberately provoking one. American interventions in Afghanistan came as a reaction to Islamist terror attacks on New York and Washington; there was no alternative to terminating al-Qaeda terror bases or the heinous and illegal Taleban regime supporting them. We cannot negotiate with Islamists whose strategy is to overturn the normative foundations of Western civilisation with their dark and twisted worldviews, predicated as they are on a perverted and politicised Islam. Such people can only be killed and repressed, often with the application of massive armed force. Likewise, American action against Saddam Hussein’s cruel regime in Iraq was an attempt to ‘drain the swamps’ of oppression, stagnation and hopelessness in Mesopotamia, as well as reducing the threat from weapons of mass destruction. We need to understand that the world beyond our continent is not always the same as Europe. In many places, it is brutal, chaotic and jungle-like. We must be prepared to inject a dose of realism in our foreign and security policies and be ready and willing to apply power in the service not only of our own security, but also for the betterment of humanity.

Criticising our greatest friend on the other side of the North Atlantic is not a viable strategy, but is divisive and dangerous. Anti-Americanism is an impoverished worldview, and has no place in a confident Europe during the twenty-first century.