With Us or Against Us Read online

  unique mix of moralistic religiosity, minimal provision for public

  welfare, and maximal market freedom—the “American way of life”—

  coupled with a missionary foreign policy ostensibly directed at exporting

  that same cluster of values and practices. Here, the United States is

  ill-served by globalization, which highlights for the world’s poorer

  countries the costs of exposure to economic competition and reminds

  West Europeans, after the long sleep of the Cold War, of the true fault

  lines bisecting the hitherto undifferentiated “West.” Indeed, a truth

  that is clearer now than even just a few years ago is that in many crucial

  respects, Europe and the United States are actually less alike than they

  were 50 years ago. This observation flies in the face of claims about

  “globalization” and “Americanization” advanced not just by enthusi-

  astic proponents of the process, but also by its angry critics. Yet there

  is less to the promise of a new American century than meets the eye.

  In the first place, we have been there before. It is a cardinal tenet of

  the prophets of globalization that the logic of economic efficiency

  must sweep all before it (a characteristically nineteenth-century fallacy

  they share with Marxists). But that was also how it seemed at the peak

  of the last great era of globalization, on the eve of World War I, when

  many observers, likewise, foresaw the decline of the nation-state and a

  future age of international economic integration.

  What happened, of course, was something rather different, and

  1913 levels of international trade, communication, and mobility

  would not be reached again until the mid-1970s. The contingencies

  of domestic politics trumped the “laws” of international economic

  behavior, and they may do so again. Capitalism is indeed global in its

  * * *

  28

  T ony Judt

  reach, but its local forms have always been richly variable and they still

  are. This is because economic practices shape national institutions and

  legal norms and are shaped by them in their turn; they are deeply

  embedded in very different national and moral cultures.

  Partly for this reason, the American model is not obviously more

  appealing to people elsewhere and its triumph is far from assured.

  Europeans and Americans live quite different sorts of lives. More than

  one American in five is poor, whereas the figures for continental

  Western Europe hover around one in twelve. In their first year of life,

  60 percent more babies die in the United States than in France or

  Germany. The disparity between rich and poor is vastly greater in the

  United States than anywhere in continental Europe (or than it was in

  the United States 20 years ago); but whereas fewer than one American

  in three supports significant redistribution of wealth, 63 percent

  of Britons favor it and the figures are higher still on the European

  continent.

  Even before modern European welfare states were established,

  most employed Europeans had compulsory health insurance (since

  1883 in the German case), and all Western Europeans now take for

  granted the interlocking mesh of guarantees, protections, and supports

  whose reduction or abolition they have consistently opposed at the

  polls. The social and occupational insecurity familiar to tens of mil-

  lions of Americans has long been politically intolerable anywhere in

  the European Union. If fascism and communism were the European

  reactions to the last great wave of laissez-faire globalization, then

  “welfare capitalism” is Europe’s insurance against a rerun. On prudential

  grounds, if for no other reason, the rest of the West is not about to

  take the American path.

  But what of the claim that Europeans, like everyone else in the

  world, will have little choice? Much is said about the coming ineluctable

  triumph of American economic practice at the expense of the lumber-

  ing, unproductive, inflexible European variant. Yet handicapped as

  they are by all the supposed impedimenta of their statist past, the

  economies of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands last year were

  actually more productive for each hour worked than that of the United

  States, while the Irish, the Austrians, the Danes, and the Germans

  were very close behind.21

  Between 1991 and 1998, productivity on average actually grew

  faster in Europe than in the United States. The United States, nonethe-

  less, outpaces Europe in gross terms. This is because more Americans

  work; the state takes less from their wages (and provides less in

  return); they work longer hours—28 percent more than Germans and

  * * *

  A New Master Narrative?

  29

  43 percent more than the French; and they take shorter vacations or

  none at all.

  Whether Europe (or anywhere else) would look more like America

  if the American economic model were adopted there is a moot point.

  The modern American economy is not replicable elsewhere. The “war

  on terror” is not the only matter in which the United States is criti-

  cally dependent upon foreigners. The American economic “miracle”

  of the past decade has been fueled by the $1.2 billion per day in

  foreign capital inflow that is needed to cover the country’s foreign

  trade deficit, currently running at $450 billion per year. It is these

  huge inward investment flows that have kept share prices up, inflation

  and interest rates down, and domestic consumption booming. If a

  European, Asian, or Latin American country ran comparable trade

  deficits, it would long since be in the hands of the International

  Monetary Fund. The United States is uniquely placed to indulge such

  crippling dependence on foreign investors because the dollar has been

  the world’s reserve currency since World War II. How long the

  American economy can operate thus before it is brought pain-

  fully to earth by a loss of overseas confidence is a much-debated

  topic; as is the related claim that it was these rivers of foreign

  cash, rather than the unprecedented productivity of the new high-tech

  sectors, that drove the prosperity of the 1990s.22 What is clear is that

  for all its recent allure, the American model is unique and not for

  export.

  Far from universalizing its appeal, globalization has, if anything,

  diminished foreign enthusiasm for the American model: the reduction

  in public ownership of goods and services in Europe over the past

  20 years has not been accompanied by any reduction in the state’s

  social obligations—except in Britain where, tellingly, governments

  have had to backtrack in the face of public opposition. And it is

  because they inhabit such very different societies that Europeans and

  Americans see the world so differently, and value sharply contrasting

  international processes and outcomes.

  But Europe, especially “old Europe,” is much more in tune than

  the United States with the thinking of the rest of the world on every-

  thing from environmental threats to international law, and its social

  legislati
on and economic practices are more congenial to foreigners

  and more readily exportable than the American variants. U.S. domestic

  policy and politics are poorly adapted to the complexity of today’s

  world. And it is the United States, not Europe that is increasingly

  dependent on foreign investment to feed its deficit-laden economy

  and sustain its vulnerable currency.

  * * *

  30

  T ony Judt

  Thus when American leaders throw fits of pique at European

  dissent, and provoke and encourage internal European divisions, these

  might reasonably be interpreted as signs of incipient weakness, not

  strength. Real power is influence and example, backed up by under-

  stated reminders of military force. When a great power has to buy its

  allies, bribe its friends, and blackmail its critics, something is amiss.

  The energetic American response to 9/11 may thus be misleading.

  The bedrock reality is a world from which the United States will either

  retreat in frustration or with which it will have to engage on cooperative

  terms. Either way, the “American era” is passing.

  *

  *

  *

  And yet America is still esteemed and even revered overseas, not

  because of globalization but in spite of it. America is not epitomized

  by MTV and McDonald’s, or by Enron or WorldCom. America is not

  even particularly admired abroad for its awesome military establish-

  ment, any more than it is respected for its unparalleled wealth. If

  American power and influence are actually very fragile, it is because

  they rest upon an idea, a unique and irreplaceable myth: that the

  United States really does stand for a better world and is still the best

  hope of all who seek it. Radical anti-Americans acknowledge the force

  of this myth, even as they disparage it.

  What gives America its formidable international influence is not its

  unequaled capacity for war but the trust of others in its good inten-

  tions. That is why Washington’s opposition to the International

  Criminal Court does so much damage. It suggests that the United

  States does not trust the rest of the world to treat Americans fairly.

  But if America displays a lack of trust in others, the time may come

  when they will return the compliment. The greatest threat to America

  is that in the face of American neglect and indifference, the American

  image will fade and “large proportions of key societies [will] turn

  against the United States and the global values of free trade and free

  society.”23

  This process is already well under way. “Anti-globalizers,” environ-

  mentalists, advocates of a European (or French) “alternative model,”

  all share a common anti-Americanism that takes its cue from U.S.

  behavior and serves as a broad church within which the discontented

  of the world can now congregate. Whether this coalition of senti-

  ments and interests will ever move beyond rhetorical unison is unclear

  and perhaps unlikely. Europeans may see themselves as increasingly at

  odds with the United States, but from the point of view of much of

  * * *

  A New Master Narrative?

  31

  the rest of humanity, the wealthy West still looks like a single bloc with

  fundamentally similar interests.

  But it may be that today’s transatlantic schisms and distinctions will

  come to matter more, not less, in years to come. Long-standing social

  and cultural contrasts are being highlighted and reinforced by irre-

  solvable policy disagreements. Already the schism over the U.S. war

  on Iraq has revealed something new. In the early years of the Cold

  War, anti-American demonstrations in Europe took their cue from

  Soviet-financed “peace movements,” but the political and economic

  elites were firmly in the American camp. But today’s mass anti-war

  protests require no manipulation, and the widespread anger toward

  the United States is a new development.

  This is not good news for America’s European allies—as Aznar,

  Blair, and their collaborators wrote in their controversial open letter of

  January 30, 2003, “Today more than ever, the transatlantic bond

  is a guarantee of our freedom.” But it augurs ill for America, too. If

  the world needs the United States, the converse is no less true.

  If anti-Americanism becomes the shared default sentiment of much of

  humanity, then America will be compelled increasingly to resort to

  force, or the threat of force, to achieve its own ends, having lost the

  means to persuade or convince friends and foes alike. The outcome

  would be further suspicion and dislike, very possibly triggering a new

  American retreat from international responsibility. It is an unappealing

  prospect.

  Notes

  1. Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War over Iraq. Saddam’s

  Tyranny and America’s Mission (Washington: Diane Pub. Co., 2003),

  pp. 120–121.

  2. See The Economist, January 4, 2003.

  3. For Czech and Polish attitudes to war with Iraq, see The Economist,

  February 1, 2003. For Spanish opposition to Aznar, see El País, February 3,

  2003.

  4. See the survey of transatlantic attitudes in a poll conducted by the Chicago

  Council on Foreign Relations and the German Marshall Fund of the U.S.

  at www.worldviews.org. For NATO member-state defense expenditures,

  see La Republica, February 11, 2003. The critical views of a Central

  European diplomat were expressed in a private communication. Like many

  other politicians from former Communist Europe, he was reluctant to air

  his criticisms of American policy in public.

  5. See Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the

  New World Order (Knopf: New York, 2003), and my review in The New

  York Review of Books, vol. 50, no. 6, April 10, 2003.

  * * *

  32

  T ony Judt

  6. See Craig Kennedy and Marshall M. Bouton, “The real transatlantic

  gap,” Foreign Policy, November–December 2002, based on a recent

  survey by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the German

  Marshall Fund. For American views, see www.gallup.com/poll/

  releases/pr030228.asp. In late February 2003, 59% of Americans

  opposed a war on Iraq without UN support.

  7. Emmanuel Berl, Mort de la pensée bourgeoise (Paris: Bernard Grasset,

  1929; reprinted, 1970), pp. 76–77; André Siegfried, Les États-Unis d’au-

  jourd’hui (Paris: Colin, 1927), quoted in Michel Winock, Nationalisme,

  antisémitisme et fascisme en France (Paris: Seuil, 1982), p. 56. See also

  Georges Duhamel, Scènes de la Vie future (Paris: Mercure de France, 1930);

  Robert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu, Le Cancer américain (Paris: Rieder,

  1931); and my own “America has gone mad: anti-Americanism in histor-

  ical perspective,” in Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956

  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 187–204.

  8. For Simone de Beauvoir, see her L’Amérique au jour le jour (Paris:

  Morihien, 1948), pp. 99–100. Sartre was commenting on the trial and

  execution of the Rosenbergs. For Le
Monde, see the editorial “Mourir

  pour le Coca-Cola,” Le Monde, March 29, 1950.

  9. For German representations of the price of Americanization, see Rainer

  Werner Fassbinder’s Marriage of Maria Braun (1979); or Edgar Reitz’s

  Heimat: Eine deutsche Chronik (1984), where the American impact on

  “deep Germany” is depicted as far more corrosive of values than the pas-

  sage through Nazism. And it was Václav Havel, no less, who reminded

  his fellow dissidents back in 1984 that rationalism, scientism, our fascina-

  tion with technology and change, were all the “ambiguous exports” of

  the West, the perverse fruits of the dream of modernity. See Václav Havel,

  “Svedomí a politika,” Svedectví, vol. 18, no. 72 (1984), pp. 621–635

  (quote from page 627).

  10. Philippe Roger, L’Ennemi américain: Généalogie de l’antiaméricanisme

  français (Paris: Seuil, 2002).

  11. See Philippe Mathy, Extrême Occident: French Intellectuals and America

  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and L’Amérique dans les

  têtes: Un siècle de fascinations et d’aversions, edited by Denis Lacorne,

  Jacques Rupnik, and Marie-France Toinet (Paris: Hachette, 1986).

  12. Thierry Meyssan, 11 septembre 2001: L’Effroyable Imposture (Chatou:

  Carnot, 2002), p. 23. In the same key, see Andreas von Bülow, Die CIA

  und der 11. September (Munich, 2003). A representative selection of

  British views, none of which descends to the paranoid absurdities of

  Meyssan or von Bülow, can be found in “What we think of America,”

  Granta, vol. 77 (spring 2002).

  13. Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Pourquoi le monde déteste-t-il

  l’Amérique? (Paris: Fayard, 2002), Peter Scowen, Le Livre noir des États-

  Unis (Paris: Editions Mango, 2003); Noël Mamère Patrick Farbiaz,

  Dangereuse Amérique: Chronique d’une guerre announcée (Paris: Ramsay,

  2002).

  * * *

  A New Master Narrative?

  33

  14. We are back in May 1944, when Hubert Beuve-Méry, future founder and

  editor of Le Monde, could write that “the Americans constitute a real

  threat to France. . . . [They] can prevent us accomplishing the necessary

  revolution, and their materialism lacks even the tragic grandeur of the