The
Europe and the America we want
Ralf Dahrendorf and Timothy Garton Ash
Translation by Denis Thouard (from German) and Douglas (from French)
French original: "L'Europe et l'Amérique que nous voulons"
(Le Monde, 2003/07/09)
One could almost say we are witnessing the rebirth of Gaullism, with two small variations. This time it is not about France’s glory but the glory of western Europe. And it is not so much politicians but intellectuals who are carrying the banner of a European identity that is defined as against America. Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida agree with Charles de Gaulle insofar as they find encouragement for their efforts in the street, in the general ambition of the anti-war demonstrations of the greater European cities on 15 February 2003.
In their argument, the two philosophers summon up the support of a colleague, Emmanuel Kant. They think, says Derrida at the start, “in a framework, if not in a manner that dates back to the Kantian tradition.” Habermas concludes by writing of a “Kantian hope in a global politics.”
This is also a reply to the American neo-conservative Robert Kagan, who, in his famous pamphlet “Power and Weakness,” sought to crown Emmanuel Kant as the philosopher-king of the European Union.
Kant himself gave philosopher-kings short shrift, “because the possession of power inevitably corrupts the free exercise of reason,” but he has earned his place as the thinker who anticipated the European Union. But yes! We are Kantian! But in the portraits drawn by Habermas and Kagan, that of the euro-Gaullist intellectual and that of the American neo-conservative, each of which confirms the other, one can hardly recognize the great Enlightenment thinker that was Kant. “The Europeans,” writes Kagan, “have passed from the world of Hobbesian anarchy to the Kantian world of perennial peace.” The philosopher of Königsberg could have had no doubt that such was the way others would interpret the title of his essay, ironically taken from the sign outside a Dutch inn, Zum ewigen Frieden or “to eternal peace,” namely that of the graveyard.
No. Both authors are confusing Kant with Rousseau. Emmanuel Kant was carved out of an altogether different wood, much harder than that of the Genevan who dreamed of Arcadia. Not only did Kant know of power, but he even thanked nature for “incompatibility, for the vanity that competes jealously, for the insatiable desire to possess and even to dominate.” Only the “unsociable sociability” of men, or their multiplicity, faction and “antagonism,” could make them emerge from the idyllic Arcadia where, “in mutual love, perfect frugality and harmony, all talent would forever wither in the bud.”
We are Kantian. Like Kant, we seek an ultimately cosmopolitan society of citizens, universally administering law, ever imperfect and rife with conflict but, above all, open. A renewed Europe can contribute considerably toward this, as America has done for more than two hundred years and always in new ways.
Furthermore, there is more to Europe than what Habermas attributes to the present and future Europeans. At times, his Europe reminds one of West Germany before 1989. Of course, “the experiences of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century” and the “warlike past” recall both executioners and victims. But is religion really so impolitic in all of Europe? In Ireland? In Poland? In Britain, where Parliament goes as far as to pray publicly at beginning business? And “the emancipation of civil society from the the tutelage of an absolutist regime” was not a British, Italian or Swiss phenomenon.
Europe needs renewal. But this cannot be accomplished by attempting the self-determination of Europe as the un-America, even the anti-America. Every attempt at defining Europe as against America will not unite Europe but divide it. This is what the Iraq crisis has shown. Habermas interprets the demonstrations of 15 February as a unanimous response of the European peoples to the “declarations of loyalty to Bush” that eight heads of state and government, lead by José Maria Aznar and Tony Blair, had published shortly beforehand.
This is a false interpretation in three respects: firstly because the demonstrations were not in fact a reaction to the “letter of the eight;” secondly, because this letter, signed by European statesmen who are as well known for their obsequiousness as Vaclav Havel, was more a recognition of Western values and transatlantic relations than of George W. Bush; and thirdly, because the letter was solely born as a reaction to the isolated Franco-German front formed against a second resolution at the UN. Thus this attempt at creating an “avant-garde core of Europe” did not unite the Continent but divided it.
No. To the contrary, the driving force behind European renewal must be an applied Enlightenment politics that unite Europe and America and that still win over more of the world’s statesmen with their success and force of conviction. The Kantian hope for world government is the shining face of globalization. Europe’s particulars, its efforts and successes, must be taken into account in this. They can also serve as a model. We will name a few.
On 1 May, 2004, the European Union will number 25 states. Fifteen long (too long) years after the first breach in the Iron Curtain, a dream is being becoming a reality, a dream of unifying Europe, of Europe’s salvation, or, as George Bush Senior has said in a more condensed manner, a Europe that is “whole and free.” Not yet entirely whole: many who are part of it remain on the outside for the moment.
But the clear majority of European states that fought bloody wars in previous centuries will belong for the first time to a single community of states equal before the law, politically and economically peaceful. (For external security, it is for the moment the UN and the Americans who are in charge). This has never before been the case in Europe. This exists on no other continent. These states seek also to make a constitutional pact. Hadn’t we rather make May 1 2004, which unites us, rather than 15 February 2003, which divides us, as the date for Europe’s birth?
Another of Europe’s important amenities is linked with its enlargement: these are the political criteria decided on by the European Council in Copenhagen in 1993 for candidate nations. These “Copenhagen criteria” require above all stable democratic institutions, the rule of law, the respect of human rights and the protection of minorities. Additionally, they call for market economies, including independent central banks. Well beyond the founding treaties, in this the European Union has become a model for the establishment of freedom, the acceptance of which it has not hesitated in demanding from candidate nations. Europe has shown that she is ready to invest actively in favor of a liberal order.
“Europe’s welfare states,” writes Habermas, “were for a long time models themselves.” (It should be noted that this stated in the past tense). In fact, there were always grand inequalities between those states that indulged in costly welfare states and those that could not afford this, including the majority of states of central and eastern Europe. New Zealand and Canada (and some states in the United States) are closer to to the “European social model” than many European countries. It is however, correct that Europe has developed a wide array of variants, functioning more or less on democratic capitalism. What they have in common is that they have sought to accomplish the principal goal stated by Adair Turner: “to unite a dynamic economy and the liberating action of private enterprise with the ideal of a society that includes all, while knowing that the free market cannot accomplish everything.”
Such principles lead us back to Kant. The “cosmopolitan point of view” is to act such that our deeds can been taken as the principles of a cosmopolitan society universally administering the law. The road to that place may seem long, the goal may seem wholly inaccessible, but it directs what we are doing and what we are not doing. Neither all the versions of the European Union that are today contested, nor all the administrations in Washington have followed these maxims. Nevertheless, they describe both the Europe and America that we want and their common goals.
Ralf Dahrendorf is former rector at the London School of Economics and was secretary of state under Willy Brandt in Germany and now sits in the House of Lords in Great Britain. Timothy Garton Ash is director of the Center for European Studies at Saint Antony's College, Oxford.
Translated from the German by Denis Thouard
[Posted 2003/07/18]
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