FESAnalyse

The End of Atlanticism: America and Europe beyond the U.S. Election

Michael Lind

October 2004

• The claim that the U.S. and Europe are diverging in their values and social structure is a myth. Several factors – the exaggerated power of the American South in national politics, great numbers of poor immigrants, and the role of employers in administering the American wel fare state – make the U.S. appear to be more conservative, unequal and ungenerous than it is in fact. In reality the U.S. is becoming more like Western Europe in its growing secularism, liberalism, and high proportion of the aged to the young.

• The longterm convergence between the U.S. and Europe in social values and social structure will not produce a transatlantic consensus in foreign policy. In the absence of the Soviet threat, the geopolitical interests of Europe and the U.S. are different in the Middle East and Asia.

• In addition to defining U.S. interests differently, will continue to disagree with some Europeans about questions of world order. The U.S. tradition has been one of uni lateralism in the Western Hemisphere, Asia and the Middle East. And Americans traditionally have assumed that liberal democracy can best flourish in a world of sovereign nationstates, rather than in a world with supranational structures like the European Union.

• Recognition of the geopolitical differences between the U.S. and Europe will lead to the ero sion of the idea of a transatlantic “West.” The decline of the older Atlanticist establishment, the rise of a monolingual foreign policy elite, and the disappearance of the European ethnic in the U.S. are reinforcing the diminishing interest of Americans in continental Europe. Britain and Israel will continue to be the foreign countries that Americans know best.

Herausgeber und Redaktion: Hans Mathieu, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Internationale Politikanalyse, 10785 Berlin, Tel.: 030-26935-838, Fax: 26935-860, e-mail: [email protected] 2 FESAnalyse: USA

The author Michael Lind is the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., USA.

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The Myth of Social Divergence

In recent years both American and European factored out. The South is still, to some degree, writers have claimed that the differences in so- a Third World plantation economy within the ciety and values between the U.S. and Europe are borders of a First World state. Southerners, white deep and growing. Similar claims are made by and black, are poorer, less educated and more Americans hostile to Europe and Europeans hos- violent on average than most other Americans. tile to America. Most of these assertions are not The gun culture, which many mistakenly as- supported by the evidence. sociate with America as a whole, is part of To begin with, it is a mistake to create a Southern and Western culture, not of the culture mythical “European” average and then to con- of other parts of the United States. The South trast it with the United States. If individual has the same distorting effect on American na- countries are ranged along a spectrum of politi- tional statistics that former East Germany has cal values, from statist Sweden to libertarian on nation-wide indices in the Federal Republic America, Britain and the Netherlands are closer of Germany. to the American side than to the Swedish side. In addition to making the U.S. as a whole American statistics in areas ranging from seem poorer and more violent than it really is, violence to poverty and inequality are distorted the South makes the U.S. seem more conservative by three factors: failure to count employer-pro- than it really is. The Republican Party is based vided benefits as part of the American welfare primarily in the South and secondarily in the state, the inclusion of recent Latin American im- Western states allied with the South. The arti- migrants and the American South. ficial exaggeration of the political power of the The U.S. would look more like Europe if em- Western states is the basis for the Republican ployer-provided benefits were counted as part of Party’s control of all three branches of the U.S. the American welfare state. Many social pro- government at present. grams like health insurance and pensions which As the 2000 election reminded the world, the are provided by the government in Europe are American president is selected by the electoral provided by tax-favored employer programs in college, not elected by a popular vote. The elec- the U.S. This system of social welfare leaves out toral college dilutes the political influence many part-time workers and the unemployed. of the mostly-liberal populous states of the But when the spending of the “hidden welfare coasts and exaggerates the influence of thinly- state” of employer-based programs is added to populated, conservative Western states. The direct government welfare-state spending on small populations of the same conservative entitlements for the elderly, the overall size of Western states are over-represented in the U.S. the American welfare state is similar to those of Senate, which awards two Senators to each state, Western Europe. The claim that the American no matter its size. , with half a million welfare system is uniquely small and ungenerous, people, has as many Senators as , with compared to those of Europe, is simply not true. more than thirty million. Slightly more than ten The U.S. would also look more European if percent of the American people elect half the U.S. post-1965 immigrants were factored out. Many Senate. Only Brazil has a more malapportioned of these immigrants have been poor people with upper house. little education from Mexico and other Latin The power of conservative Republicans is also American countries. While they have improved exaggerated in the U.S. House of Representa- their condition by moving to the U.S., their pres- tives. The U.S. constitution permits each state to ence increases inequality and lowers the national draw the districts of its representatives in Wash- averages of the U.S. in the areas of education, ington, D.C. The party that controls a state health and property ownership. government tends to “gerrymander” districts or Finally, the U.S. would resemble a Western Euro- draw them in order to favor its own candidates. pean country more if the American South were The great number of Republican state legis-

4 FESAnalyse: USA latures and governors has permitted the Republi- sial in Europe as well) and the inclusion of gays can party to rig the U.S. House in its favor. in the military, but more and more Republican While America’s peculiar constitution has per- politicians support basic gay rights. And con- mitted conservatives in the South and West to servatives have not destroyed a single federal dominate Washington in recent years, long-term program created by liberals between the 1930s social trends favor centrists and liberals. The and the 1960s. Even Aid for Families with De- most rapidly growing part of the population is pendent Children (AFDC), the anti-poverty pro- the Latino immigrant community. While Lati- gram that conservatives claim to have abolished, nos, like black Americans, tend to be socially still exists under another name. conservative, they tend to vote for Democrats Conservatism has failed in the realm of cul- because they benefit from the pro-worker poli- ture as well as that of politics. Where issues of cies associated with the left wing of the Democ- sex and reproduction are concerned, Americans ratic party. are steadily becoming more “European” in out- The growth of the Latino population transfor- look – even in the conservative heartland. As the med California from a Republican into a major- sociologist Alan Wolfe has pointed out, even ity-Democratic state. The white conservative coa- evangelical Protestants are growing more liberal lition lost out to a coalition of Latinos, blacks and over time. Gay marriage is still controversial, but white urban liberals. The same thing is likely to acceptance of gay rights is growing. The contro- happen in and in the next genera- versy over stem-cell research is likely to acce- tion. If this does occur, then the Democrats will lerate the defeat of the religious right’s crusade control the most populous states, all of which against human biotechnology. soon will have nonwhite majorities: California, In the realm of the media, the U.S. is becom- Texas, Florida and . The result could ing more European as well. For most of Ame- be Democratic control of the electoral college rican history, what was banned in Boston could and thus the White House for many years. Be- be found in Paris. Europe continues to break cause the populous nonwhite states will dom- down barriers in censorship – not necessarily for inate the House of Representatives, too, the con- the better, as the European invention of reality servatives may be confined to the Senate, where TV proves. But the American media tend to fol- mostly-white Western states will continue to be low in a few years. Thanks to cable television over-represented. and, soon, Internet programming, the efforts of In order to avoid becoming a minority party, American conservatives to censor what Ameri- Republicans nation-wide are likely to adopt more cans can read and view and listen to will be liberal positions on social issues and economic thwarted. issues. This has been the strategy of successful While the U.S. remains far more religious Republican governors like Pataki in New York than Europe, the long-term trend is toward Eu- and Schwarzenegger in California. Even George ropean-style secularism. The number of purely W. Bush, an extreme Southern conservative, has secular Americans has grown dramatically be- greatly expanded the prescription-drug entitle- tween the middle of the twentieth century and ment for the elderly and is backing away from the present. The growth has come at the expense his administration’s opposition to stem-cell re- of the liberal denominations of , search. Catholicism, and . As a result, hard-line The idea that the U.S. is far more conserva- traditionalists make up a growing sector of the tive than Europe is also refuted by the fact that shrinking religious population in the U.S. This on every major issue the Right has lost to the creates a misleading image of a religious reviv- Left since the 1960s. Conservatives opposed the al in the U.S., where religious belief is in long- civil rights revolution in the 1960s; now they em- term decline. brace its ideal of a post-racist society. Conserva- Is there a demographic difference between the tives have failed to amend the U.S. constitution U.S. and Europe? According to the UN, without to outlaw abortion. Conservatives may succeed immigration the population of Europe will in thwarting gay marriage (which is controver- shrink by 124 million between now and 2050.

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That is greater than the combined populations of Mexican fertility. And it seems likely that an present-day France and Italy. In Europe, there aging Europe will accept far more young immi- will be 2.1 old people per child by 2025 and 2.6 grants in the future. by 2051. Along with Japan, some European na- The idea that the U.S. in the future will be a tions will be the oldest in the world. young, dynamic “demographic superpower” while The contrast with the U.S. seems striking, at Europe is a decrepit retirement home is as much first glance. The U.S. has a fertility rate hovering an exaggeration as Robert Kagan’s contrast of the around the 2.1 child per family replacement militaristic American “Mars” with the pacifist level. This is substantially higher than the Euro- European “Venus.” In its demographic profile pean rate, which is well below replacement the U.S. will resemble Europe and East Asia, and ranges from 1.2 at the low end (Italy and even if on average the U.S. is somewhat younger. Spain) and 1.8 at the upper end (France and Ire- Europe and North America will face similar chal- land). lenges in dealing with a larger number of the But the “demographic exceptionalism” of the elderly and a smaller population of young peo- United States is something of a myth as well. ple. Most of the higher fertility rate in the U.S. is While aging will “Europeanize” America, due to the native black and immigrant Latin immigration to Europe will “Americanize” Eu- American populations. The fertility rate of “An- rope. A source of emigrants in the past, Europe, glos” – non-Hispanic – is 1.84, graying and with low fertility, is now the desti- which is comparable to that of France and Ire- nation of growing inward migration. As a result, land. Europeans must deal with challenges of assimila- As a result chiefly of high immigrant fertility, tion and ethnic politics with which Americans the U.S. population is expected to grow from 283 have long been familiar. million in 2000 to 397 million in 2050, while the Even as the U.S. is moving toward European- German population, absent greater immigration, style social liberalism and secularism, Europe is may shrink from 82 million to 70.8 million becoming ever more American in the realms of (France, by contrast, is expected to grow from the economy and constitutional politics. Since 59.2 million to 61.8 million). the 1980s, under the influence of neoliberalism, But the assumption of both continued high European governments of both left and right U.S. fertility and low migration to Europe may have been moving away from statist social de- be unrealistic. While Mexican and other Latin mocracy toward more market-based economies American immigrants have large families, their with less generous entitlements. assimilated children and grand-children are American constitutional theories are conquer- likely to adapt to the small-family norm which ing Europe as well as American economics. Par- white English-speaking Americans share with liamentary democracy rather than American- Europeans and East Asians. Even now, with mo- style separation of powers remains the European re than one million legal immigrants a year, the norm. But the American constitutional devices of U.S. is on the verge of falling below the replace- judicial review, bills of rights, and federalism ment fertility rate of 2.1 percent. Immigration have been adopted by many European countries from Mexico itself will decline because of falling that used to dismiss them, such as Britain.

Geopolitics: Diverging Interests

The long-term trans-Atlantic convergence in so- During the Cold War, the United States pur- cial structure and values does not translate into sued a policy of “dual containment” which foreign policy harmony. Even as their societies sought to counter Soviet intimidation of Western are becoming more alike, the geopolitical in- Europe and East Asia while preventing the re- terests of the U.S. and Europe are diverging. emergence of West Germany and Japan as re-

6 FESAnalyse: USA latively independent, nuclear-armed great powers the security of Israel, which has an importance like America’s other allies Britain and France. in American domestic politics far out of propor- West Germany and Japan were semi-sovereign tion to any strategic value it might possess. states, under the military protection of the U.S. While most Middle Eastern states supported West Germany, however, became integrated in the Gulf War, most opposed the Iraq War, which the EU and NATO. No similar institutions in triggered a national insurgency against the Amer- East Asia existed to permit Japan to become a ican occupiers and their hand-picked rulers. In “good citizen” of its region. The People’s Re- the long run, it is unlikely that the Americans public of China went from being a satellite of the will succeed where the British failed to establish Soviet Union to an enemy both of the Soviet a legitimate hegemony in this turbulent region. Union and the U.S. in the 1960s and finally, in the In the near term, however, the U.S. is likely late Cold War, became a de facto ally of the U.S. to be dragged deeper and deeper into the Mid- against the USSR. dle East, under presidents of both parties. If John With the end of the Cold War, America’s Kerry is elected, his announced plan to share the geopolitical priorities changed dramatically. burden with more allies will fail. Afraid of being During the 1990s, Russia was still considered a accused of being “soft on terrorism” by the right, threat. But by the early 2000s, the combination of President Kerry would probably continue to high mortality and low fertility along with eco- commit the U.S. to a war of indefinite duration nomic stagnation and military decay had given on behalf of a weak, U.S.-backed client regime. Russia the role once assigned to the dis- Under Kerry or Bush, this is likely to lead to con- integrating Ottoman empire – the “sick man of frontations with Iran and Syria and to further Europe.” inflame antagonism to the U.S. in the region. Meanwhile, the two presidents Bush sought America’s embroilment in the Middle East is to establish U.S. military hegemony over the accelerating the disintegration of NATO and Middle East. This marked a break with tradi- America’s Cold War alliance system in East tional American foreign policy. Until the 1960s, Asia. In the name of a “coalition of the willing,” the area was a British sphere of influence. Then the Bush administration played a divide-and- from the 1970s until the end of the Cold War it rule policy toward its NATO allies, rewarding was divided between Soviet and American client those which behaved like American satellites states. But even in the 1970s the rise of militant (Britain, Poland, Spain) and punishing France, Islam, in both Sunni and Iranian Shia form, was Germany and other countries which correctly replacing the Cold War rivalry in the region. The claimed that Saddam Hussein was not a threat Iranian revolution brought to power a theocracy either to the region or the world. The Bush ad- that was hostile both to communism and liber- ministration has announced that it will shift tens alism. So was Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, of thousands of U.S. troops from Germany and which saw the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Europe South Korea either to the Middle East or to U.S. as “Crusaders” to be driven out of the Muslim bases. At the same time, the U.S. has been gain- world. ing basing rights in former Soviet Central Asian The decline of Soviet power permitted the states. Russia is now viewed as an ally in the U.S. to intervene with little cost in the region. “war on terror” rather than as a potential threat. The Gulf War of 1991 created a foothold for America’s Cold War “empire” resembled a American power which was expanded in the Iraq dumb-bell, with the thickest concentrations of War. The pretexts for the Iraq War – weapons of troops and pre-positioned equipment in West mass destruction, the false claim that Saddam Germany and Japan. America’s emerging Middle Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda – disguised the Eastern “empire” resembles a bull’s-eye. The true reasons. Much of the American foreign pol- Persian Gulf is the center of a circle that includes icy elite, of both parties, viewed American mili- most of the oil reserves in the Middle East and tary hegemony in the Persian Gulf as a way of Central Asia. Soldiers and materiel will be pre- keeping Middle Eastern oil supplies out of the positioned on bases in Iraq (so it is hoped) as hands of hostile governments and increasing well as on bases in Central Asia, the Balkans and

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Eastern Europe and perhaps in time Russia. In Sovereignty versus Multilateralism this emerging American strategy, Europe is of secondary importance to the Middle East – and The divergence of interests between the U.S. and Eastern Europe and Russia, because of their Europe in the Middle East and Asia will continue proximity to the Middle East, are more impor- to be accompanied by disputes over the norms tant than Western Europe. of world order. Here there are deep philosophi- Europe and the U.S. share a common focus on cal differences which will continue, no matter the zone of Muslim societies from North Africa which political party controls Washington. to Pakistan. Both sides of the Atlantic share a From the time that it broke away from the common interest in thwarting al-Qaeda and simi- British empire, the U.S. has jealously guarded its lar jihadist movements. But in many ways the national sovereignty. Americans see the nation- interests of the U.S. and Europe in the Middle state as the locus of democracy not only for East diverge. themselves but also for others. Americans en- Unlike Europe, Russia, China and India, the couraged the dissolution of the Habsburg, Ro- U.S. neither borders the Muslim world nor con- manov, Ottoman and British empires and the tains a substantial Muslim population in its formation of new nation-states. The American own borders. This means that the American ideal was a world of independent nation-states leadership is less constrained by Muslim opin- which would cooperate without sacrificing their ion, both within and outside of U.S. borders, sovereignty. than are European governments. The relative in- Many, though not all, Europeans can be de- difference of American leaders to Arab and Mus- scribed as “post-nationalist.” The success of the lim opinion is the necessary condition for Wash- EU has encouraged them to think that the nation- ington's attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict state can be transcended in the world as a whole, – determined chiefly by the U.S. Israel lobby and as it has been transcended, to a degree, in its Christian Zionist supporters – and the Bush Europe. Today Europeans are the strongest de- administration's effort to turn Iraq, the world's fenders of multilateral institutions like the Uni- second largest oil-producing country, into an ted Nations. American client state. Democrats are more sympathetic to multilat- The rise of Asia will also affect the U.S. and eralism than Republicans in the U.S. Never- Europe differently. Asia’s economic growth has theless, even a Democratic president would en- the potential to reshape the geopolitical land- gage in a degree of unilateralism. While George scape. In 1750, China and India together were W. Bush has made unilateralism the center of his responsible for more than 50 percent of global foreign policy, it is an exaggeration to say that manufacturing. Their share fell to 5 percent by the U.S. before Bush was routinely multilater- World War I. The share of world manufacturing alist. In fact the U.S. acted unilaterally through- accounted for by Europe and North America rose out the Cold War outside of Europe, in Asia, the from 18 percent in 1750 to 82 percent in 1913 be- Middle East, and the Western hemi-sphere. The fore declining to slightly more than 50 percent by U.S. did not seek European permission to inter- the 1980s. vene in these areas in the past and it is not likely As the dominant power in East Asia, the U.S. to do so in the future. For that matter, Britain and worries about the military implications of the France, in their spheres of influence, have often rise of China. This is not a concern for Europe, intervened unilaterally in the last half century. for which China is a source of economic oppor- The Gulf War, in which the U.S. collaborated tunity. In the event of a Sino-American military with the UN, its NATO allies and most of the rivalry, the U.S. is unlikely to find much support Middle Eastern states, was an exception. Saddam from its former Cold War allies in Europe. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait violated the basic norm of the sovereign state system – the pro- hibition against conquest and annexation. All states had an interest in having this norm en- forced. In addition, the threat to the industrial

8 FESAnalyse: USA world’s oil supplies provided an additional in- abolished in 1973, will not be reinstated in the centive for diplomatic unity. The unity produced U.S., and military service has little appeal to most by such a coincidence of factors is rare, as the Americans. The U.S. remains a deeply civilian widespread opposition to the U.S. invasion of society. In dealing with these military manpower Iraq demonstrates. Unfortunately, the Iraq War challenges, the U.S. will be in the same position is more likely to be typical of future U.S. inter- as other aging, civilian, industrial democracies ventions than the Gulf War. Even the Kosovo like those of Western Europe and Japan. War, supported by most of America’s NATO allies, was opposed by Russia and China and therefore was not authorized by the Security Eclipse of the Atlanticists Council. The rising great powers of the twenty-first These kinds of disagreements over both goals century like Asia and India are likely to prefer and methods between the U.S. and Europe are America’s vision of world order to Europe’s. bringing about the end of the Western alliance Like the U.S., they are jealous of their sover- in its familiar form. The idea of the West or the eignty. And unlike the nations of Western Atlantic Community was devised to rationalize Europe, they have no experience of regional in- the NATO alliance of the U.S. and Western stitutions. Indeed, their neighbors tend to be Europe against the Soviet bloc during the Cold their worst enemies. Supporting this contention War. Samuel Huntington’s definition of the West is the fact that the international criminal court as including the U.S. and Canada and Protes- was opposed not only by the U.S. but also by the tant and Catholic - but not Orthodox - Europe non- or quasi-European powers: Russia, China reflects this idea. Never plausible, this concep- and India. tion of the West is now obsolete. The contemporary European ideal of multi- From the eighteenth century until World lateralism, then, will find few supporters out- War I, Americans either thought of themselves side of Europe in the twenty-first century. The as uniquely modern inhabitants of “the New real debate, in the U.S. and other extra-European World” or as an offshoot, along with Britain, of great powers, will be between a more modest the Germanic Protestant community. Between liberal internationalism and a quasi-imperial World War I and the early years of the Cold War, unilateralism. Both liberal internationalism and the American elite dropped the idea of a Ger- unilateralism will share the assumption that the manic Protestant group of nations and fostered nation-state will and should remain the primary the myth of a secular liberal West founded on the unit in world affairs. Enlightenment ideals of the American and French As for the use of military force, this is not so revolutions. The US-Britain-Germany trinity was much a disagreement between the U.S. and Eu- replaced by a US-British-French trinity. Inter- rope as it is one within Europe. For historical estingly, the Catholic heritage of Europe was reasons the British and French tend to have a minimized in both the Germanic Protestant the- much greater willingness to employ force in in- ory and the liberal Western theory. Americans in ternational affairs than the or Scan- both the Reformation and Enlightenment tradi- dinavians. tions have usually feared and distrusted the The aging of the population of the U.S., by . putting a premium on the labor of young people, In the United States, the idea of the liberal is likely to make it even more difficult for the West was spread to the college-educated elite by U.S. military to obtain recruits. Manpower courses in “Western Civilization” which traced a shortages, already manifested as a result of the direct line from ancient Greece and Rome to the small wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, will force the American and French Revolutions and the mo- U.S. to rely to a greater degree on proxies and on dern West. Aspects of European history which technology. Already neoconservative proponents did not fit the Athens-to-Brussels paradigm, like of an aggressive, expansive American foreign Hellenistic and Roman imperialism and medie- policy are suggesting a new draft. But the draft, val Christendom, were treated as embarrassing

FESAnalyse: USA 9 deviations from the supposed rational, secular, education as a monopoly of the upper class. And liberal Western norm. The contributions of Ger- a new foreign policy elite of professors found many and Russia, the major geopolitical antag- jobs in government. These individuals are known onists of the U.S. in the twentieth century, were as “in-and-outers.” In between jobs as presi- minimized. The Danish historian David Gress dential political appointees, they often teach in has described this approach as “Plato to NATO.” universities or work in think tanks. Among America’s NATO partners, however, Many of these foreign policy intellectuals the idea of a trans-Atlantic Western community were European immigrants, like Kissinger and had to compete with the idea of “Europe.” The Brzezinski, or came from middle-class or work- myth of “Europe,” like that of “the West,” identi- ing-class Jewish, Catholic, Southern or Western fied Europe in terms of Enlightenment liberal backgrounds, like many of the liberal and left- and democratic values. But the project of a Euro- ist leaders who later became “neoconserva- pean community, founded by Catholics like tives.” Over time, the role of meritocratic aca- Adenauer, Schumann and de Gasperi, incor- demics in the foreign policy elites of both par- porated concepts of Catholic social thought, like ties has grown, while that of patrician invest- the principle of subsidiarity and policies protect- ment bankers and corporate lawyers from the ing small proprietors. As many have pointed out, old Establishment has declined. the core of the European Union corresponds At the same time, the permanent expansion of more or less to the Carolingian West of the days the U.S. military following World War II made of Charlemagne. room for a number of military intellectuals who Far more Europeans identify with “Europe” are themselves soldiers, CIA officers or other ca- than with the “West” or “Atlantic Community.” reer public servants. While the American state is NATO, as an institution, is no rival for the EU, weak and fragmented in domestic politics, the when it comes to the affections and identities of U.S. has a very powerful, traditional European- Europeans. The absence of any trans-Atlantic in- style state in the form of the career foreign pol- stitutions except for a military alliance of declin- icy services. The military in particular has grown ing value has doomed the concept of the Atlantic in influence at the expense of the State Depart- Community. The number of Atlanticists on both ment. In general, American military officers, sen- sides of the Atlantic is dwindling. ior diplomats and career intelligence officers are Ironically, one reason for the decline in Amer- among the most sophisticated, intelligent and ican Atlanticism is the democratization of Amer- experienced individuals in the U.S. government. ican society itself. From the end of the U.S. Civil While the officer corps is still disproportionately War and Reconstruction in 1876 until the New Southern and the diplomatic service dispro- Deal, American politics was dominated by the portionately Northeastern, the foreign policy ca- Northeast and Midwest. Southerners and West- reer services, like the universities, are far more erners became more important in domestic poli- inclusive and meritocratic than the old North- tics beginning with the election of the Democrat eastern establishment. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. But American for- The contemporary U.S., then, has three dif- eign policy and international commerce contin- ferent foreign policy establishments: the North- ued to be dominated by an “Establishment” of eastern patricians, the academics, and the career affluent northeastern Anglo-American Protes- public servants. In the administration of the first tants educated at the Ivy League and with close Bush, the old Northeastern patrician establish- ties to Wall Street. The Northeastern establish- ment, symbolized by George Herbert Walker ment was based on exclusion – of Jews, Catho- Bush, the son of a Connecticut Senator, and his lics, nonwhites, and white Americans from the partner James Baker, a rich Texan educated at South and West. The establishment tried to co- Princeton had a final moment of glory. But Clin- opt some members of various other groups, but ton’s foreign policy team was drawn largely its efforts were too little and came too late. from academics and think-tank scholars, as was Following World War II, the expansion of the that of George W. Bush. For example, before be- university system ended the role of a college coming Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul

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Wolfowitz had been the dean of the Johns Hop- Strauss (whose thought has influenced American kins School of Advanced International Studies. neoconservatives). The disintegrating Northeastern establishment But intellectual life in the U.S. has been con- did little to restrain neoconservative intellectuals ducted almost entirely in English since World in the government like Wolfowitz and Richard War II. While a few continental thinkers like Perle and their allies Vice-President Dick Cheney Habermas have trans-Atlantic reputations, the and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In- only flow of ideas across the Atlantic from stead, the most effective opposition came from Europe to America in recent generations was that career military and intelligence officers and of French structuralism and deconstructionism in diplomats. An unprecedented number of retired the 1980s. The nineteenth-century pattern is be- military officers, intelligence agents and diplo- ing reversed: increasingly, Europe is the audi- mats went public with their criticism of George ence for intellectual fashions that originate in W. Bush’s foreign policy in 2004. This indicates the United States, like neoliberalism in eco- not only the depth of the divide between the nomics and multiculturalism. neoconservative branch of the academic appointee At the elite level, then, the decline of the elite but also the growing sense of self-con- Northeastern establishment has meant the de- sciousness and civic duty of the career foreign cline in number of elite policymakers with a policy elite, particularly the military. deep personal acquaintance with France, Ger- The eclipse of the Northeastern establishment many and the rest of continental Europe. A by the rising academic elite and the military and similar trend is apparent at the mass level. other career elites has meant diminishing The United States experienced two massive knowledge about or interest in Europe at the waves of emigration from continental Europe. elite level. Even before the U.S. became involved The “Old Immigrants” were chiefly Germans, in European power politics in World War I, the from the 1840s until the late nineteenth century; patricians of the Northeast vacationed in Europe the other major group was the Irish. From the and often sent their children on “grand tours” of late nineteenth century until the 1920s, when the continent, after the manner of the English. Congressional legislation radically restricted Many learned French, the language of inter- immigration, a second wave of “New Immi- national “society” as well as of diplomacy, and grants” came from Southern and Eastern Eu- the more scholarly – including Presidents Theo- rope – Italians, Greeks, Slavs and Ashkenazic dore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – read and Jews. All of these groups formed flourishing eth- spoke German. By contrast, the growing number nic diasporas in the United States which of American academics and military officers in strengthened the ties between the New World the U.S. foreign policy elite generally come from and the Old. modest backgrounds; some never had the means The German in the U.S. was the larg- to travel abroad before adulthood. est, accounting for much of the ancestry of to- Even for academics, the incentives for learn- day’s white American population. As Germany ing French, German or other European languages industrialized in the late nineteenth century, have shrunk. Between 1870 and 1914, Germany fewer and fewer Germans emigrated to the U.S. led the world in academic research. Many The German diaspora culture, with its own American academics studied at German uni- newspapers and clubs, was already in long-term versities, and many others learned to read Ger- decline as a result of the assimilation of German- man, the language of scholarship. The American Americans even before anti-German hysteria university system, modeled on the German uni- during World War I dealt it a death-blow. By the versity system, replaced the older Anglo-Amer- 1970s, the New Immigrants like Italian-Amer- ican liberal arts college. A second wave of in- icans were disappearing through assimilation fluence from German-speaking Europe came and intermarriage into the white American po- with the wave of émigré intellectuals in the pulation. Today a majority of white Americans 1930s, whose ranks included Albert Einstein, outside of the South (which remains the most Thomas Mann, Hans Morgenthau and Leo homogeneous Anglo-American region) have an-

FESAnalyse: USA 11 cestors from two or more European nations, in- As a basis for American grand strategy, the cluding Britain. Thanks to the American “melt- Anglosphere concept has few supporters, even ing-pot” the European diaspora subcultures among American neoconservatives. If the U.S. have died out. Little Italy in New York is now a objects to sharing decision-making with France Chinese immigrant neighborhood. and Germany, it certainly is not going to give a Most Americans of European ancestry have veto over its actions to Britain, Canada, Australia become so “Americanized” that they do not ob- and New Zealand. Those countries are free to ject to being labeled as “Anglos” as opposed to follow the U.S. in ventures like the Iraq War, but “Latinos,” even though most American “Anglos” as clients of the U.S., not as equals. (English-speaking whites) are not primarily of In the realm of culture, however, the Anglo- British descent. The loss of their ancestral lan- sphere is likely to become more important, for guages means that third- and fourth-generation the reason mentioned above: the declining pro- German, French, Italian and Czech-Americans ficiency of Americans in French, German and feel far more at home in the countries of the Eng- other European languages. The Anglosphere lish-speaking world. countries form a single linguistic community the Will the growth of Latino and Asian- way that the Spanish-speaking countries and Americans as a result of immigration alter this? Arabic-speaking countries do. Their citizens can Probably not. Asian-Americans come from a read each other’s newspapers and watch each variety of countries and assimilate rapidly. A other’s television shows without translation. As a Chinese-American who speaks no Chinese will result, the decline of continental Europe in be more at home in Britain than in China. So will America’s consciousness will not be accom- a Mexican-American whose native language is panied by a decline in American knowledge of English and knows little or no Spanish. The size Britain. On the contrary, the British are likely to of the Mexican-American diaspora has caused have more influence in Washington, as fewer concern among some about a permanent Span- and fewer Americans have close contact with the ish-speaking minority in the Southwest. But cultures of continental European nations. The Mexico’s fertility is dropping rapidly, and growing importance of Asia, particularly of large-scale immigration from Mexico is likely China and India, in American strategic and eco- to fall as a result in the next generation or two. nomic calculations will reinforce this trend, be- And English usage and intermarriage rates are cause English is the lingua franca of Asia. comparable to those of previous generations of While there will be no institutionalized Anglo- European immigrants among second- and third- sphere, an informal Anglosphere will exist and generation Latinos. As for black Americans, grow more important as fewer and fewer Amer- most have spoken since the icans, of all races, speak French, German or other eighteenth century. They are heirs to aspects of continental European languages. The Atlantic the older Anglo-American culture. Community of NATO is likely to decompose This phenomenon reinforces the argument of into an informal Anglosphere based on the U.S. a small group of anti-European British con- and an enlarged, loose Europe centered on a servatives and Americans who argue that NATO more assertive and independent Germany. While should be replaced by the “Anglosphere,” an al- English will be the global lingua franca, German liance of English-speaking nations sharing values is likely to join French as a lingua franca of the like a preference for small government that al- new European system. legedly distinguish them from continental demo- For linguistic reasons, Britain will continue to cracies like Germany and France. The idea of a be the “second country” for most Americans, in- union of English-speaking nations goes back to cluding most nonwhite Americans whose pri- the rapprochement between the U.S. and the mary language is English. However, for ethnic British empire around 1900. Many continental and religious reasons, among some American Europeans like de Gaulle have feared world do- groups Israel will compete with Britain for this mination by the “Anglo-Saxons.” role.

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Although they make up only two percent of a born-again Texas Protestant whose political the U.S. population, Jewish-Americans make up base consists of pro-Likud born-again Protestants a substantial portion of the American political, like him, and whose neoconservative appointees social and economic elite. Jewish-American opin- include many Jewish-Americans with close per- ion about Israel includes all schools of thought, sonal or political ties to Israel’s Likud Party. In from some religious Jews who think that the the long run, however, the political influence of state of Israel is blasphemous because it was not both constituencies is likely to decline. At the established by God to secular Jews who are indif- elite level, the “new Jews” – talented immigrants ferent to Israel. Nevertheless, two generalizations from East Asia and South Asia and their descen- hold. The first is that since the 1967 War Jewish- dants – are growing in importance. At the mass Americans have increasingly defined support level, Southern Protestant fundamentalists are for Israel as part of Jewish identity. The second shrinking as a percentage of the U.S. population. is that even among Jewish-Americans with lib- Whether or not there remains a Republican po- eral views in domestic policy, support for hard- litical majority, their influence will decline with line Israeli governments like Ariel Sharon’s has time. been increasing, even before the second Intifada. But the long run could be a generation or The tilt toward the Israeli Right within the more. In the short term, presidents of both par- U.S. Jewish community is the result in part of ties will tend to uncritically support Israel’s ac- demographic factors. As secular and liberal Jews tions, no matter what they are. The difference vanish into the national majority through inter- between the U.S., with its uncritical, one-sided marriage, conservative and Orthodox Jews op- approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Europe posed to intermarriage will make up an ever- will continue to be sources of friction between increasing proportion of the Jewish-American the U.S. and Europe. community. The same trend is occurring in Is- Over time the U.S. will increasingly resem- rael, where the secular leftists are being eclipsed ble Western Europe in its social values and its by religious conservatives. age profile. However, the policies of the U.S. While Jewish-American support for Israel is and Europe toward the Middle East and Asia important at the elite level, at the voter level, will increasingly diverge. In addition, the U.S., the most important constituency for the Israeli like the other great powers outside of Europe, Right consists of Protestant fundamentalists in will reject ambitious versions of multilateral- the American South and elsewhere. “Christian ism favored by many Europeans, although lib- Zionism” was originally a British tradition that eral Democrats will favor international coop- influenced the founding of Israel by the British eration more than conservative Republicans. empire. As Britain has become more secular, The declining knowledge of Europe, apart from however, Christian Zionism has died out there. Britain, among America’s elite and its population But it has taken root in the American South. will reinforce these trends. Many Southern Protestants interpret current The Cold War alliance of the U.S. and Europe events in terms of the Book of Revelation and was a product of temporary conditions which no believe that Israel is to be the site of the Battle of longer exist. The U.S. and Europe need not be Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus. rivals in world politics. But except on a few is- The influence of both constituencies has sues of mutual concern they are unlikely to be peaked in the presidency of George W. Bush – partners in the twenty-first century.