I always liked Clinton. From the beginning, through the highs and lows and until the end, I liked him. Just before Christmas he made some comments (refer below).
In the Clinton era, Europeans were happy about the American president. Even in the Monica Lewinsky period, the affection continued and even increased in many quarters. The Europeans appreciated his politics and his view of the world.
The current president is less appreciated. This week his Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld, called France and Germany “old Europe”. Relations are at a new low. To dismiss the the two driving force countries behind the EU, a region of 370 million people, as being the “old Europe” shows the point to which it has come. This approach is ratcheting up anti-American feeling across the continent. The feeling on the streets is strong. Mention America at a cafe and you’ll soon get a scowl.
The comment from Rumsfeld about old Europe was made in the very same week that the entire German and French governments gathered in Versailles to remember their past and reflect on their future. A European identity is emerging and there is no doubt Germany and France – the two powerhouses of Europe – are the key are the key to the new Europe. Britain remains isolated off the coast. A different currency in so many ways.
Continental Europeans are fed up with the attitude of the US. They resent the “you are either with us or you are against us” stance of the US. This is not just the feeling of some. It is the feeling of the overwhelming majority. Most of the governments on this continent, including the two most influential, disagree with the US policy. They feel they should be able to disagree without being branded as an enemy.
The promise of the 21st century for an evolving European identity revolves around multilateralism and faith in institutions. The EU and the Euro could not exist without this mindset. In the past decade or so, Europe has undergone a revolution. Communism has fallen, the EU has been created and continues to expand. A new currency, the Euro, has been introduced seamlessly. All the while, a common identity is forming bit by bit.
Diversity will always be the essence of this continent, but an emerging pride in uniquely European shared values is a feature of the new Europe. Everyone knows the driving force behind the new Europe has been France and Germany.
To call these two countries “old Europe”, is insulting and incorrect. Germany and France are the very essence of the NEW Europe! The new members of the EU will come from the East but they come to join an order that has largely been set by the countries Rumsfeld dismisses as “old Europe”. No one is forcing them to come. They come to join a group of nations with some shared values that are hard to beat.
These “old” European countries are setting an order, a multilateral order, the likes of which this world has never seen. It is too easily forgotten or dismissed.
If Rumsfeld and others feel they can dismiss Europe as “old” or identify the two largest countries as “problems”, they will find they are buying some trouble.
Of course it is true that European and American values coincide in so many ways. Democracy, the rule of law immediately come to mind. After that there is some divergence. Europeans will never give up the social contract. Despite Margaret Thatcher saying “there is no such thing as society”, on this side of the English Channel, society tends to even come before the individual.
This is a continent that has been torn by war and all kinds of turmoil. For Europeans, consensus, social cohesion, fairness, secular rational values and respect for multilateral institutions come higher on the agenda. Europeans are also more comfortable with higher degrees of ambiguity and can see shades of grey. They are particularly aware of anything that smacks of dogma or absolutism.
I feel torn between the two. I’ve lived in the US and know that many cliches about America are totally unfair. On the other hand, as a friend of America, Rumsfeld’s comments made me cringe and drew me much closer to the European attitude.
As the war of words intensifies, I was most struck by the comments of another person I have long admired, Joschka Fischer. This week the German Foreign Minister said in English, “Cool down, cool down”. Cool words from a cool individual. A nice circuit breaker in a trans Atlantic battle that sometimes seems to be getting out of control. Schroeder is not so popular but there is something about Fischer, this Green man who has a knack of saying the right thing at the right time. The four words and the way he delivered them were the most eloquent of this wretched week.
When the only solution seems to be increasing emotion, wild statements and hatred, sometimes it takes someone with vision to see beyond it. Cool down, cool down.
When America was about to erupt right after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy heard the news while at a rally in Indiana. The country was tearing itself apart. Robert Kennedy emerged from his car shaken and announced to the crowd:
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black … Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
The above he delivered impromptu beside a car. I’ve always thought RFK was remarkable. He was also killed. Europe loved RFK.
There is a practical side to disarming the creep, Saddam Hussein, which I strongly support. I believe he will develop weapons and they will be deployed. That said, I think a strength in difficult times is to listen. Robert Kennedy spoke at a time of crisis in his own country. The world is now in crisis and we would do well to now apply the words he used for his own country to the world.
The question remains how “to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life in this world”?
Doing things together and less sniping between friends would be a start.
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The United States should lead, not dominate
by William J. Clinton, December 16, 2002
William J. Clinton is the former president of the United States. In this article he echoes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s Nobel peace prize acceptance speech last week calling on the United States not to act unilaterally but work with the United Nations.
The United States stands at a unique moment in human history, with our political, economic and military dominance. But within 30 years the Chinese economy could be as big or bigger than ours. The Indian economy could be as well if they stop fighting with Pakistan and wasting money on armaments. Within 30 years, if the European Union continues to become more united politically and economically, it will in turn grow more influential politically and economically. Then, in an interdependent world, we can lead but not dominate.
The United States will be judged based on how we used this ‘magic moment’. Did we try to drive the world into the 21st century? Did we try to force people to live by our vision? Or did we instead try by leadership, example and persuasion to build a world in which people will treat us in the future the way we’d like to be treated because of how we acted at our moment of ascendancy?
My mentor, Sen. J. William Fulbright, once said the best thing America could do was to be “an intelligent example of the world through material helpfulness without moral presumption”; that ‘‘we should make our own society an example of human happiness, make ourselves the friends of social revolution and go beyond simple reciprocity in the effort to reconcile hostile worlds”. He said he would far prefer to see us be a“sympathetic friend of humanity rather than its stern and prideful schoolmaster”.
Now, of what relevance is that in the present day? Does that mean America should not have a strong military? No. Does that mean we should never use it? When force is required to save massive numbers of lives? No. But it does mean that we should be humble enough to remember that there are rarely any final solutions in human affairs. Therefore, quite often the way we do something is as important as what we do.
We must recognize that our global interdependence, while a wonderful thing for those of us well positioned to take advantage of it, is still very much a mixed blessing. Our openness to one another in a world full of political, religious, economic and social divisions also increases our vulnerability and intensifies the pain and alienation of those who feel shut out from the blessings of interdependence. After all, on Sept. 11, Al Qaeda used the same open borders, easy travel and access to information and technology that we take for granted to kill 3,100 people from 70 countries, including more than 200 Muslims.
So the question is: What is America’s responsibility at this moment of our dominance?
I believe it’s to build a world that moves beyond interdependence to an integrated global community of shared responsibilities, shared benefits and shared values.
We must support the institutions of global community, beginning with the United Nations. The United Nations is an organization still becoming, still imperfect. We have not always done our part in it, but it is all we have, and now that we live in an interdependent world, it must have our full support in building an integrated global community.
We must have a sound security strategy using the power of America to prevent the actions of and punish the people who mean us harm.
And we must also remember the example of Gen. George C. Marshall and the Marshall Plan, of Sen. Fulbright and the Fulbright Program, and build a world that has more friends and partners and fewer terrorists. That is the purpose of foreign aid and debt relief, of fighting AIDS and putting all the world’s children in school. We should not be too utopian in our expectations, but always utopian in our values and vision.
From the dawn of human society up to the present time, we have been bedeviled by a persistent curse: the compulsion people feel to define the meaning of their lives in positive terms with reference to those who are like them racially, tribally, culturally, religiously, politically, and by negative reference to those who are different. People then feel compelled to oppress those who are different when they are small and powerless enough not to prevent it. Increasingly wider circles of interdependence, however, have taught people to accept the humanity of those they once degraded.
Indeed, the whole course of human history can be seen as a constant struggle to expand the definition of who is ‘us’ and shrink the definition of who is ‘them’. From the dawn of time until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was never really possible to build a global community of cooperation, in which we celebrate, not just tolerate, our diversity, on the simple theory that our differences make life interesting, but our common humanity matters more.
When the United Nations was set up, global community was not possible because of the Cold War. Then, in the 1970s, China started moving toward the rest of the world. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. So we’ve had just 13 years to work on finding practical expressions of the dream of an integrated community of nations.
To further that goal, we ought to be working with other countries on banning nuclear testing, reducing global warming, establishing an International Criminal Court and strengthening a convention against biological weapons. I am disappointed that the current administration has withdrawn from, or failed to strengthen, agreements in each of those areas. It sends the wrong signal to the world just at the time when we need more and stronger alliances to help us target terrorists and defend our nation.
But despite these setbacks, I remain an optimist. In the last 13 years, the European Union has grown together, the United Nations has proved to have greater capacity to deal with problems in the Balkans and elsewhere; Russia and China have moved closer to the West; the Good Friday Accord was adopted in Northern Ireland; we had seven years of progress toward peace in the Middle East before Yasser Arafat rejected my last proposal, which he now agrees all parties should embrace; and the world’s wealthy nations began to do more, with the global debt-relief initiative and increased funding to fight AIDS.
We have no choice but to learn to live together, to choose cooperation over conflict, to give expression to our common humanity by following simple rules: everyone deserves a chance, everyone has a role to play, we all do better when we work together, we’re not as different as we think.
We do not yet have the institutions to run that kind of world. That is the work of politics, and in that work there will always be differences of opinion, conflicts of interest and values, and as we see today even in the simple evaluation of the evidence.
But, on balance, I think the world is moving in the right direction because it has become inconceivable that we can solve the problems of the world without solving them together. All of us should do our part to see that it happens as soon as possible.
This article was first published in clinton