"Does the Western World Still Exist?"
by Immanuel Wallerstein
This is not a question about cultural history, but about contemporary geopolitics. From 1945-2001, few persons doubted that there was something in the world political arena we could call the "West" or the "the Western world." To be sure, there were some quibbles about who was included in it. Some countries were obviously part of it: the United States; the western European states; and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But at the fringes, there was argument. Was "eastern" Europe part of the Western world? Was Turkey? And what about Japan? Was it an honorary member of the West, as in the definition of the apartheid regime of South Africa, which designated the Japanese as "honorary Whites"?
But since the Bush regime embarked on its unilateral and macho march through the planet, relations of the United States and "Europe" have become strained. And the world's politicians and media have come to recognize that the geopolitical unity of the "West" is no longer a self-evident proposition. After the U.S. conquest of Iraq, Tony Blair has set himself the public task of restoring the unity of Europe and the United States, which of course means that it is a task that requires effort, one whose prospects are uncertain.
The New York Times Sunday Magazine Section of April 27, 2003 contains two articles, both by British publicists. They have very different tones. One is by Timothy Garton Ash and is entitled "How the West Can Be One." And the other is by Niall Ferguson, and he uses the very different title of "The Empire Slinks Back." A close reading of the two articles reveals the nature of the debate between the erstwhile Establishment center and the newly-powerful far right.
Ash is the Director of European Studies at St. Antony's College at Oxford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford (hardly a locus of radicalism). He is well-known for his extensive writings on east-central Europe, both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He writes what is called a "plaintive letter" to his "dear American friends." The opening line is: "We must put the West together again." The article concentrates on two issues - the Middle East, and France. His views on the Middle East are quite similar to the ones Blair has been espousing publicly. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of creating a "viable Palestinian state." On France, he believes they did act in his view in an "outrageous" manner concerning the Iraq war. But he says, nonetheless, that "the French-bashing in Washington has gone too
far," since "Churchill was right: the Europe we want cannot be built without France." He pleads for a "less arrogant United States."
When we turn to Ferguson's article, the tune is quite different. Like Ash, he has links on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a professor of financial history at New York University as well as a senior research fellow of Jesus College at Oxford. His subtitle is "Why Americans don't really have what it takes to rule the world." And he deplores this. He accuses the United States of a "chronically short time frame." He is afraid that Americans "lack the spine for long-term administration," which he says the British had in their heyday. He notes that a segment of the British elite were willing to "spend their entire working lives...far from the land of their birth, running infernally hot, disease-ridden countries." In contrast, "the products of America's elite educational institutions are the people least likely to head overseas, other than on flying visits and holidays."
His conclusion? "So long as the American empire dare not speak its own name - so long as it continues this tradition of organized hypocrisy - today's ambitious young men and women will take one look at the prospects for postwar Iraq and say with one voice, "Don't even go there.'"
So Ash despairs that the United States will take the imperial path, unilaterally and arrogantly. And Ferguson despairs that the United States will not take the imperial path, which requires that they persistently occupy infernally hot, disease-ridden countries. Who is right? As in so many of these arguments, both are right. Ash is right that the United States cannot successfully go it alone - militarily perhaps, but not politically. And Ferguson is right that the U.S. elite is absolutely unready to serve as "District Officers" in the Third World.
Ash is pleading with the Bush regime to return to the foreign policy of yesteryear, based on a meaningfully collaborative Atlantic alliance. Ferguson is pleading with them not to do so, and to shed the hypocrisy of pretending to be starry-eyed idealists amidst a sea of terrorists. It seems to me likely that neither will get the U.S. policy for which they are pleading. The U.S. hawks will veto, have already vetoed, doing what Ash asks the United States to do. On the other hand, the U.S. hawk policy is over time politically unacceptable not only to the American electorate but to the U.S. elite, for precisely the reasons Ferguson adduces. Most Americans feel more comfortable being isolationist than being imperial overlords, however much they relish splendid military victories.
While the United States agonizes politically about its future world policy (and despite Bush's current high ratings in the polls, which are quite transitory, the United States is indeed agonizing over this question), Europe will continue painfully to construct itself - as Europe, not as a part of the "the West" or of the "Atlantic world." How can I say this when, at the moment, the United States seems far more politically unified than Europe, which seems to be in a state of acute and overt internal conflict?
There are really two reasons. One is economic, and one is cultural. The economics are rather simple to expound. On the one hand, Europe shares with the United States its interests in maintaining the present core-periphery split in the world-economy, with all the advantages that structure provides for the North. On the other hand, Europe is clearly an economic rival of the United States, and this rivalry will become more intense in the coming decades. So Europe has to balance its gains from a common front of the North in such arenas as the World Trade Organization, and its losses from a continuing economic advantage to the United States over it because of the role of the dollar, sustained as it is by U.S. military and political pressures on Europe.
If Europe fails to break the privileged role of the dollar, it is doomed to second-place status. Europeans are smart enough to realize this. Will they then sacrifice their class interests as integral members of the "North," if they have a major fight with the United States? Not necessarily, because they believe that U.S. strategy as the North is less efficacious than the one they wish to pursue, and that the U.S. position on North-South questions is compromised by their simultaneous struggle against Europe. Europe thinks that a different North-South policy is not only in their own best interests but in that of the United States as well (even if the U.S. doesn't realize this). It seems likely therefore that Europe will not call off its economic struggle with the United States, which revolves around both international financial arrangements and investments in new leading products.
And in order to pursue their economic interests, Europe will now construct an independent military force, against which both Blair and Powell have recently once again voiced their vigorous opposition, an opposition tinged with considerable concern that they will not be able to stop it.
As for the cultural factor, we have to go back a bit in history. The United States is culturally an offshoot of Europe. And up until 1945, both in Europe (including, if not especially, Great Britain) and in the United States, Europe was the elder brother. The post-1945 realignments turned Europe into the younger brother. And they have never really appreciated this turnaround. Europeans by and large swallowed it during the Cold War. But Europeans see no need to swallow it any more. Here, even the most conservative Europeans share the sentiment. Notice the cultural disdain in Ferguson's arguments. Actually, his disdain is little different in terms of cultural politics than Ash's plaintiveness. Ash is simply more polite.
Europe's cultural pride is by and large absolutely incomprehensible to most Americans. It always has been. The French-bashing so prevalent today is not anti-French; it is anti-European. And the Europeans know it. Ash is not alone in seeing this clearly. Does the West still exist? It hasn't disappeared entirely in geopolitical terms, but it does seem incredibly weakened.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University
Commentary No. 112, May 1, 2003
(with the expressed and friendly authorisation of Immanuel Wallerstein for the publication on www.paris-berlin-moscou.org)
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