The
last week America has taken
charge of the world
By
Jonathan
Power
May 31, 2002
LONDON - That was a week and a half that was. The
primary American transatlantic relationship has been
moved eastward, away from London, Paris and Berlin to
Moscow. Nuclear war between east and west has been
consigned to the history books. And if on cue the new
nuclear powers on the Indian subcontinent have rattled
their rockets ready to unleash Armageddon on Asia, not on
Europe as we had been brought up to fear. Meanwhile it
has become clear that the Bush administration now
considers its job all but done in Afghanistan. The
bombing has given the American people their pound of
flesh. Reconstruction and all the other idealistic goals
of nation building can be left to the Europeans.
If the U.S. sees a role for itself in this part of the
world any longer it is only as an emergency interlocutor
to try and talk the Indians and Pakistanis out of their
nuclear madness. But if it ends in nuclear war America
"has no dog in that one", and the Europeans can be left
with the responsibility of helping bury the millions of
dead and clearing up the political mess. If I had thought
ten years ago that before all my children had grown up
I'd have to write a column that began like that I'd have
turned myself into a mental institution. A decade ago the
Cold War seemed really over. My children could enter
adulthood without the fears that haunted my own
childhood. Democracy was spreading fast. Human rights was
the new buzz word and war of a major kind that had made
the twentieth century the bloodiest in mankind's history
seemed not only unlikely but irrelevant in a world where
the forces of globalisation had now become so dominant
that no one had to spell out the truth that if we didn't
all hang together we'd hang separately.
Ten years ago the centre of gravity was moving back
towards Western Europe. European civilization had
dominated the world for better or worse for 400 years and
was about to do so again. America, rescuing Europe during
and after World War 2, had briefly taken command but now
was slipping gradually back to its old isolationist role,
with the rest of the world, or at least their elites,
rather thankful as they cast a wary eye on a culture that
seemed both so superficial and so violent. Europe, as the
Union tightened, culminating in the decision to create a
common currency, appeared to be regaining its old step of
setting the political and cultural pace for the world.
Whereas in previous centuries it had been the Renaissance
and the re-birth of art, the Reformation and the
intellectualisation of religious thought, and the
Enlightenment and the freeing of political ideas, now it
was a sense - it yet had no word to describe it - of
creating a civilization that was to flourish without
conquest, that would cooperate without violent diction or
action, that would seek only to propagate the causes of
electoral politics and the rule of law for solving both
society's and the world's disputes.
It wasn't Milosevic who blew a hole in all that. It
was obvious that ex-Yugoslavia was merely a throwback to
an era the rest of Europe had long matured out of and
once the small group of leaders and agitators had been
sidelined that problem would take care of itself.
Likewise it wasn't the seemingly sudden bursting of
ethnic disputes and wars all over the place that douched
us with cold water. Again the fears were overdone, the
problems ridiculously extrapolated forward - "Where will
it end? Will it end with 5,000 countries?" asked the U.S.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher. In fact as early
as 1993 the number of ethnic disputes began to fall
dramatically as did indeed the number of wars.
It was simply that Osama bin Laden made George Bush's
day. Without the destruction of the World Trade Centre
this most unintelligent, uncharasmatic and unvisionary of
recent American presidents would have faded into
obscurity and much of his hard-bitten, imperialistic
programme with it. Putin's Russia would never have
countenanced giving up the fight on the renunciation of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Nor would Western
Europe. Putin's Russia would never have stepped forward
to embrace America with the personal warmth that Putin
has exhibited, overriding the views of many of his
closest advisors. The Russian elite might well have moved
willingly to forge this kind of close relationship with
Western Europe, but now European eastern policy, in
comparison with America's single-mindedness, seems to be
in disarray. Worried to death how to honour its promise
to bring the eastern European members into the fold, the
EU has seemingly stopped thinking of how to deal with
Russia. Gorbachev's dream of a "common European house"
seems remoter than ever.
Today, America clearly calls the shots. America makes
the big decisions on who needs a good kick and when. If
China is not yet intimidated by this then it will soon
will be- perhaps some crisis over Taiwan will be hyped up
so that America has an excuse to put Beijing in its
place. Meanwhile Europe appears in danger of muddling
along. Its common currency, functioning and effective, is
doing wonders for the market place, but the political and
cultural muscle that should grow out of it remains flabby
for lack of political backbone. But if Europe does become
merely a "used up" civilisation it is a turn of events
that the world will live to profoundly regret.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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