Kerry and us

If Europeans are from Venus and Americans are from Mars, then what is John Kerry? The macho neo-cons mock him for the effeminate attention he gives his hair and imply he is unpatriotically too close to old Europe. But at last week's defining Democratic convention it was Mr Kerry the soldier that was the focus of all the attention. A Mars in touch with his feelings, decisive in saving a comrade from the Vietcong or his daughter's hamster from drowning, he promised to make the world safer by building alliances with people like us Europeans.

The US was not mentioned in the policy interview with Minister Michael Frendo that this newspaper carried yesterday. But Europeans debate whether the role of the EU ought to be that of a counterweight to the US. Would a Kerry victory change the way Europeans consider the question?

One familiar argument says that the salient differences between Europe and the US are too deep for them to be bridged by a change of administration. Religion, guns, capital punishment, economic inequality... The argument goes that these are differences that go beyond domestic arrangements. They colour how the US and Europe see the world. Hence, Europe must strive to be a counterweight to US economic, political and cultural power.

However, these differences can be challenged in more than one way. Timothy Garton Ash, in his recent work Free World (Allen Lane), discusses these challenges in detail but they can be stated briefly: Looking closely at Europe, one will see considerable variation on each of those points, some countries like the UK and Ireland being closer to the US on economic considerations, while sections of Europe are closer to the US on religiosity, etc. And Europeans are divided on what attitude to take towards the US - even (the test of fire) French intellectuals.

Second, Americans themselves show considerable variation. In preparation for his book, Mr Garton Ash asked the Ipsos-Reid polling group to include a few questions posed by him in their regular survey of American public opinion. It turns out that there are significant differences between Democrats and Republicans on US relations with Europe. More Democrats than Republicans think that Americans might learn something from Europeans about diplomatic solutions; more Republicans think that Europeans are too willing to seek compromises. And "55 per cent of Democrats and just 34 per cent of Republicans chose 'It is imperative that the United States allies itself with European countries, even if it limits its ability to make its own decisions'".

On the basis of these answers, Mr Garton Ash suggests that a President Gore would have handled the aftermath of 9/11 differently and we might conclude that so would President Kerry.

But Mr Garton Ash's book enables us to take the argument further than simply saying that Europeans might have a vested interest in, at this stage, a Democrat President. The book actually argues that it is stupid for Europe to think it can be a counterweight to the US: The alliance between the two might be in crisis but both sides need each other. The US ultra-nationalism (versus ordinary patriotism) of people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld feeds, and is fed by, the kind of European snobbish resistance that Mr Garton Ash calls Euro-Gaullism (since it is associated mainly with France).

What we need, he says, is more Euro-Atlanticism and more US multilateralism. And each helps strengthen the other and the general cause of the spread of freedom in the world.

While that conclusion is not original, nor rare, I think the book is worth reading with a Mediterranean perspective in mind. That is not how it was written: Mr Garton Ash built his reputation on his reportage on Eastern Europe, and his comments on places like Turkey just repeat the commonplaces of sending signals to the Muslim world. But maybe because of these gaps, two themes emerge more clearly.

First, while there is something that might be called "Euro-Gaullism" - or a broadly European stand against the US - when it comes to treaties and protocols on the environment, economic trade, trade in arms and the International Criminal Court, there is no European equivalent of US (ultra) nationalism when it comes to the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, that is, the region where the US comes closest to being an imperial power.

In fact, US dominance over Europe is so great here that it is even cultural. European cultural snobbery is nowhere so deluded. The big ideas that Europe uses to consider its relations with the southern Mediterranean - the "clash of civilisations", the "end of history" - have their origins in the US.

Of course, Europeans often mention these ideas in order to contradict them. But it is telling that the intellectual agenda is being driven by the US - right up to the setting up of the Euro-Med centre of dialogue between cultures and civilisations.

In this respect, President Kerry would make no difference. It is up to us Europeans to propose different ways of seeing the southern Mediterranean; ways that would change these countries into truly fellow stakeholders in the fate of the sea that they and Europe share.

ranierfsadni@europe.com