[Peace-discuss] Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: The French Lesson

[Sarah Carsey]

--- scarsey at uiuc.edu wrote:
> From: sarahlayli at yahoo.com
> To: sarahlayli at yahoo.com
> Subject: NYTimes.com Article: The French Lesson 
> Date: Sat,  1 Mar 2003 16:58:37 -0500 (EST)
> 
> This article from NYTimes.com 
> has been sent to you by sarahlayli at yahoo.com.
> 
> 
> 
> The French Lesson
> 
> February 23, 2003
> By RÉGIS DeBRAY 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> PARIS - In the year 212, Emperor Caracalla granted
> citizenship to all free men in the Roman Empire.
> Emboldened
> by that precedent, a friend of mine, a former high
> French
> official, once asked a president of the United
> States to
> treat Europeans as compatriots. It was an agreeable
> fantasy; only vassals were wanted. 
> 
> For the current trans-Atlantic crisis to be defused,
> the
> White House would do well to steer between those
> extremes
> and to treat its European allies as what they are -
> citizens of independent states, each with an
> idiosyncratic
> history and geography. That approach would spare us
> many a
> useless bout of hysteria as the Security Council
> this week
> considers Iraq. To each its own geopolitics. 
> 
> Eight out of 10 Europeans on the street agree with
> the
> French-German position, and the governments of
> Britain,
> Spain, Italy, et al., have cut themselves off from
> public
> opinion. In confronting that awkwardness, the United
> States
> has chosen France as its scapegoat. Not having any
> training
> as a satellite state, unlike the countries of
> Eastern
> Europe, France has assumed the right to judge for
> itself
> (despite a number of elites firmly in the American
> camp). 
> 
> 
> The United States, of course, is free to decide that
> a
> cadaverous satrap, kept under close surveillance,
> affects
> its national (and familial) interests. If the
> American
> administration is intent on precipitating the war
> that is
> Osama bin Laden's fondest wish, if it wants to give
> fundamentalism, which is currently ebbing, a second
> chance,
> we can say only, so much the worse for you - while
> regretting that history's most constant law, the
> perverse
> effect, is not better known to the Pentagon.
> Provoking
> chaos in the name of order, and resentment instead
> of
> gratitude, is something to which all empires are
> accustomed. And thus it is that they coast, from
> military
> victory to victory, to their final decline. 
> 
> "Old Europe," the Europe of Crusades and
> expeditionary
> forces, which long sought by sword and gun to
> subjugate
> Jerusalem, Algiers, Timbuktu and Beijing, has
> learned to
> distinguish between politics and religion. In 1965,
> one of
> its old champions, de Gaulle, loyally warned his
> American
> friends that their B-52's would not be able to do
> anything
> against Vietnamese nationalism - and that to
> devastate a
> country is not the same as winning hearts and minds.
> Europe
> no longer takes its civilization for civilization
> itself,
> no doubt because it is better acquainted with
> foreign
> cultures, notably Islam. Our suburbs, after all,
> pray to
> Allah. 
> 
> Europe has learned modesty. A civilization that
> believes
> itself capable of making do without other
> civilizations
> tends to be headed toward its doom. To be sure, in
> defending its interests a great nation may end up
> promoting
> freedom. Such was the situation with the
> concentration
> camps. It will not be the case for the $15 barrel of
> crude.
> 
> 
> 
> The stakes are spiritual. Europe defends a secular
> vision
> of the world. It does not separate matters of
> urgency from
> long-term considerations. The United States
> compensates for
> its shortsightedness, its tendency to improvise,
> with an
> altogether biblical self-assurance in its
> transcendent
> destiny. Puritan America is hostage to a sacred
> morality;
> it regards itself as the predestined repository of
> Good,
> with a mission to strike down Evil. Trusting in
> Providence,
> it pursues a politics that is at bottom theological
> and as
> old as Pope Gregory VII. 
> 
> Europe no longer possesses that euphoric arrogance.
> It is
> done mourning the Absolute and conducts its politics
> . . .
> politically. It is past the age of ultimatums,
> protectorates at the other end of the planet, and
> the white
> man's burden. Is that the age America is intent on
> entering? One can only wish it good luck. 
> 
> "Old Europe" has already paid the price. It now
> knows that
> the planet is too complex, too definitively plural
> to
> suffer insertion into a monotheistic binary logic:
> white or
> black, good or evil, friend or enemy. When, one
> wants to
> ask, will Washington agree to count to three - and
> think
> not this or that, but this and that? A sober
> weighing of
> threats, without emotional obfuscation, is far more
> attuned
> to our current world, which Balkanizes minds even as
> it
> grows more unified in its implements, than an
> impatient
> divine investiture. 
> 
> Whence this paradox: the new world of President
> Bush,
> postmodern in its technology, seems premodern in its
> values. In its principles of action, America is two
> or
> three centuries behind "old Europe." Since our
> countries
> did not enter history at the same time, the gap
> should not
> surprise us. But as to which of the two worlds, the
> secular
> or the fundamentalist, is the more archaic, it is
> surely
> not the one that Donald Rumsfeld had in mind. 
> 
> 
> Régis Debray, a former adviser to President Francois
> Mitterrand of France, is editor of Cahiers de
> Mediologie
> and the author of the forthcoming ``The God That
> Prevailed.'' This was translated from the French by
> Jeffrey
> Mehlman.
> 
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/opinion/23DEBR.html?ex=1047555917&ei=1&en=5b035c327d58fcbf
> 
> 
> 
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> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company


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