Enough, children

Date: 01/03/03

American anti-Europeanism does less damage than European anti-Americanism. But it is still worrying

THE spoof Google search doing the rounds in Washington, DC, runs: “Your search - French military victories - did not match any documents. No pages were found. Did you mean French military defeats?” An affable Frenchman might merely find it odd that Napoleon is unknown in America, despite selling a chunk of it to Jefferson, but other barbs will hurt. “What do you call a Frenchman advancing on Baghdad?” “A salesman.” On American talk shows, it is open season on continental Europeans, especially those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

Politicians seem to have caught the tabloid spirit. “I am particularly disgusted”, thunders a California congressman, “by the blind intransigence and utter ingratitude of France, Germany and Belgium. The failure of these states to honour their commitments is beneath contempt.” Richard Perle, a Republican hawk, now says that France should no longer be considered an ally. The speaker of the House mutters about boycotting Beaujolais.

Now, as is the nature of these debates, people are trying to argue that it is overdone. Stanley Hoffman, a Harvard professor, dubs the outbreak “one more episode in a long history of disagreements”, albeit a bit worse than usual. Taking to task a long piece on anti-Europeanism in the New York Review of Books, Gerard Baker of the Financial Times argues that most Americans do not care enough about Europe to be anti-European.

So how furious are the Americans? Certainly, American anti-Europeanism is a marginal phenomenon in comparison with its evil European twin. A (real) Google search generates 401 references to “anti-Europeanism in America” and 22,300 to “anti-Americanism in Europe”. Americans do not march in their millions against the policies of the French or German governments. They do not set fire to bistros or establish academies to protect their cultural patrimony. European culture is welcomed as elegant, or derided as snobbish; it is not feared (though perhaps it should be: most of the trashiest American “reality TV” shows originated on the continent of Shakespeare and Rembrandt).

Self-assurance is often the difference. Americans do not define themselves in opposition to Europe, as Europeans sometimes do to the United States. American capitalism is not the alternative to the European social market. America, to its inhabitants at least, is just America, the city on the hill. Opinion polls show that Americans are more patriotic than most Europeans, and alongside that patriotism goes a sense of superiority. We're the best. Europeans are not so lucky, but neither are Canadians, Mexicans or anyone else. This self-confidence takes some of the edge off American hostility, just as it sharpens Europe's.

Moreover, there has always been an undercurrent of American hostility towards Europe - or at least some European countries - which coexists with friendlier feelings and which should make the current spate of derision less of a shock. Some of it is ethnic-based. Irish-Americans long disliked their country's “special relationship” with Britain. There is also a streak of isolationism. Americans are rightly proud of thrice helping to rescue Europe from its suicidal follies - but, in both hot and cold wars, American governments had to overcome popular reluctance to get involved.

This undercurrent is not specifically anti-European, though. America does not have a long intellectual history of anti-Europeanism comparable to, say, the anti-American tradition in France. It is hard to imagine the American bestseller list boasting titles like “The Anti-European Obsession” or “The European Enemy”, as France's has. America does not fear France or Germany as it feared the Soviet Union 25 years ago; or even as it feared Japan (in industrial terms) 15 years ago; or as it may yet fear China.

All this makes American anti-Europeanism different in scope from its opposite across the pond. It is more marginal, indifferent and shallow. But that does not make it irrelevant. At a time when many Americans and Europeans disagree about basic strategic assumptions, the current vitriol is disturbing. Opinion polls show a sharp drop in American fellow-feeling to Europeans in general and the French in particular. That can be put down to the quarrel over Iraq. But the polls also show a more gradual decline in Americans' perception of their “vital interest” in Europe, and this trend may prove harder to reverse.

Burger-eating war monkeys

The most dangerous part of America's anti-Europeanism, just like its mirror-image in Europe, is its willingness to ignore specific facts for the sake of a good stereotype. “The current stereotype of Europeans”, writes Robert Kagan in his new book, “Of Paradise and Power”, “is easily summarised. Europeans are wimps.” Which is all very well - except that half the members of the European Union and almost all the applicant members support a tougher line on Iraq than France and Germany do. European peacekeepers hold the Balkans together and form much of the Afghan peacekeeping force. Those cowardly French, like the rest of NATO, invoked Article Five, offering military help to America after September 11th.

More to the point, the Bush administration shares some of the blame for the emerging caricature. Donald Rumsfeld's crack about “Old Europe” contained at least a kernel of truth, but, like lumping Germany with Libya and Cuba, it pandered to a stereotype. The White House has done little to restrain vociferous chaps like Mr Perle from hammering the French on a daily basis. Naturally, Mr Bush's people will claim that the Germans started it (by running an anti-American election campaign). And American resentment is a reaction to anti-Americanism. But that misses the point. America is the only possible leader of a western alliance. The more the White House stoops to the playground antics of its critics, the more it encourages them. From a true leader, a little effortless superiority is called for.

Commentary feature. America's anti-Europeanism does less damage than European anti-Americanism. But it is still worrying.

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