US MIDTERMS, FRENCH PRIMARY: CAUSE AND EFFECT ON EU ANTI- AMERICANISM

IRENE FINEL-HONIGMAN

INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF EUROPE

SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

On January 14 2007, Nicholas Sarkozy won the nomination of the center right UMP party as presidential candidate for 2007. Immediately his Socialist rivals who nominated Segolene Royal on November 16th were quoted in the Financial Times: “he is an American neo-conservative with a French passport”.

This attack on Sarkozy mirrored the attacks on. John Kerry in 2004 derided as being French and even called on Fox TV “Jean Francois Kerry”. However attacking Kerry on his French attributes was humorous, while attacking Sarkozy as an ersatz American as far more serious undertones and ramifications.

Right before the 2004 election a poll across the EU gave John Kerry a landslide victory. But Europeans don’t vote in American elections, Bush won and the headlines across Europe trumpeted: “Are all Americans idiots?”

If anti-Americanism is solely linked to a hatred of Bush and Bush policies, specifically in relation to Iraq will, the change in the US balance of power, the admission of failure in Iraq and a lame duck presidency change not only the tone but the substance of the debate?

There is a clear distinction between soft anti-French or anti-EU sentiment among the US electorate versus hard anti-Americanism across the European Union. In this article I will examine anti-Americanism, its corollaries: anti-Semitism and anti-globalization within the context of EU, specifically France and Germany and American legislative and presidential politics.

Bernard-Henri Levy in “American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville” ( 2005), a charming, pompous yet often brilliant and generous analysis of America defines anti-Americanism: “this sinister and ancient French, and European passion that is known as anti-Americanism is in the process of sweeping through European public opinion as never before […] remagnetizing chauvinism, hegemonism, and the thirst for purity, ethnocentrism, racism, anti-Semitism, and of course fundamentalism”.

Has the surge of virulent anti-Americanism since 2003 been solely issue based or is it a far deeper manifestation, which is reinforced by political and generational shifts. Post 9/11 anti-Americanism has mutated from the narrow focus of the left equating globalization with American cultural and economic hegemony toward the tirades of the right equating American foreign policy with military aggression and “imperialistic” hegemony.

Across Europe the role for the United States within the core countries as well as the new member countries of the EU is rapidly changing. In 2004, three out of five Europeans thought American leadership in the world to be undesirable.

Europe began to take pride in itself as the generations shifted from pre to post communism. Going to America became a round trip instead of one way, but in the process did anti-Americanism become a way to define European identity?

The anti-globalization movement in the 1990s brought to the surface potent contrasts between American and. European economic models and values, but more profoundly revealed a moving away from American model and American dream in taste, life style, and design image. Tony Judt in Post War, a History of Europe since 1945 (2005) analyses how across Europe for the first time since 1989 “it was no longer commonplace to hold up American institutions or practices as a source of inspiration or an object to be emulated” creating in its wake: “fundamental cultural antagonism”. Exacerbated by the Iraqi war and the conflict in the Middle East in former Eastern Europe, anti-Americanism too easily translated to anti-Semitism.

Sadly in 2006, when most needed, two major voices for a reasoned discourse have died: Jean-Francois Revel and Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber. Journalists, scholars and analysts of the post war period, they had faced the challenges of America and had been willing to explain the American position to their counterparts. Le defi american in 1967 and l‘Obsession anu-americaine: son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences in 2002 bracket the historical debate.

As of January 2007 with the entry of Romania and Bulgaria the European Union comprises 27 countries. Without clear guideposts after the rejection of the EU constitution, led by France and the Netherlands, the European Union is in a period of transition. By the end of 2007 there will be new leaders in France and the UK. Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden have new or recently elected weak coalitions. Among the post 2004 enlargement countries Poland is veering toward the hard right politically and Hungary risks an economic crisis. Germany, nearly seventeen years after reunification is still paying the price and facing outbursts of neo-Nazi resurgence in former East Germany (Financial Times, January 9, 2006 “On the March, how Germany’s extreme right is making gains in the blighted East”).

As Fritz Stern said in a conference on US-German relations at Columbia University on December 14, 2006, Europe outside of Germany is ruled by: “a mélange of pygmies”, adding “where is Delors when you need him?”

Germany which assumes the next six month presidency of the EU, despite a fragile coalition, under its first woman Chancellor Angela Merkel, is in an economic resurgence, positioning itself as new key partner for a revived transatlantic relationship, replacing France as key interlocutor for the US and establishing a new balance of power within Europe. Merkel‘s challenge will be to balance her national/EU interests between an overly strong Russia and a weakened, ineffective American presidency.

In France, although the Socialist party after nearly five years in a coma has returned to life with an invigorated platform and candidate in Segolene Royal and the center right has chosen Nicholas Sarkozy, the question remains whether these new and younger candidates can push France forward. John Thornhill in the Financial Times wrote January 6, 2007: “rarely has a people been so prosperous, productive and protected from life’s risks; yet seldom has a nation shown such insecurity and fear of the future”.

Having lost its sense of purpose within Europe, in the throes of a severe identity crisis vacillating between bitterness and nostalgia, can France take back its place in the trans- Atlantic relationship and set a new agenda? France in 2007, the US in 2008 has to reexamine their global position, how they are perceived and their own crisis of self perception.

On one hand like the United States Europe, specifically the core members: the Euro zone countries, the UK, Denmark, Sweden are stable wealthy democracies with solid growth prospects despite an economic slowdown since 2003, but unlike the US these nations are plagued by endemic unemployment, serious fears concerning minority populations, an alarming resurgence of extreme nationalist factions and above all weak leadership.

In turn, what does Europe represent for America? In 1998 Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State quipped: “to understand Europe, you have to be a genius or French”. Do clichéd references of old Europe and new Europe or the Venus versus Mars dichotomy set out by Robert Kagan still apply?

Is the US interested or ready to acknowledge the European Union?

In 2005 when Bush went to Brussels, the press and media tried to explain the EU of 25 and the role of Brussels to the public at large. This was rather ironic as the EU has been in effect since 1992! But the rejection of the EU constitution in May-June 2005 was ignored or viewed as another case of some complicated European scheme gone wrong. Overall the deeper implications of a lack of cohesive foreign and defense policies, sense of stasis and disillusionment was totally ignored by the American press.

Since 1992, as long as the UK remained either outright hostile, in the Thatcher mode or skeptical as in the Major, Blair years, Washington has modeled its attitude on the UK.

In the summer of 2005, CNN, the BBC and the American print media proved by its lack of or minimal coverage that large segments of Americans do not know and large segments of Europeans do not care about the European Union.

Europe fundamentally remained for the US, France as political spokesperson, Germany as economic motor, a reality which worked quite well throughout the l980s and 1990s. Used to acquiescent allied governments despite popular demonstrations, French and German responses to the Iraqi war came as a shock. The French position in 2003 was seen as an aberration and betrayal. Although by 2005 official relations had greatly improved and commercial economic relation remains unscathed the European street remains hostile and detached the American heartland skeptical or oblivious.

The European press was both relieved and elated at the results of the US midterm elections. Zapatero in Spain saw it as a condemnation of American strategy (reminiscent of his own victory over Asner in March 2004). In Italy, Massimo d’Alena interpreted it as proof of the failure of unilateralism and preventive wars. The UK responses have been more muted on the effect on the US-UK relationship and Blair’s legacy.

The French left exalted but Sarkozy refrained from comment, and Le Pen referred to it as a statement against American aggression.

The midterms unexpected sweep by Democratic candidates may have incited initial euphoria abroad, but in reality changes will be far more incremental and complex both in foreign and domestic policy, as 2008 already looms over all decisions. The relationship between Congress and the White House is rarely analyzed in the European press, the complexity of losing moderate Republicans (Chafee in Rhode Island, Leach in Iowa) combined with more aggressive “macho” Democrats including social conservatives like Webb in Virginia will be a difficult combination). Landslide for the Democrats has been interpreted as a large majority, rather than a razor thin edge. The fact that the president continues to wield power on military decisions is difficult to comprehend.

The mechanisms of parliamentary democracies with a broad spectrum of political parties do not translate well into the workings of a two party system in which political parties do not want totally independent leaders, but rather the balance between accountability to the public and accountability first to party leadership (Sidney Zion, “McGovern and the Bosses” The Antioch. Review, spring 1972). The inner workings of the US government remain largely as incomprehensible to Europeans as the interplay of national and supranational governments of the European Union for American lawmakers and the public.

Yet as reported by Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institute, this French election will be the most American in style with constant print and electronic media exposure, consultants and the need to affect centrist positions.

This French presidential vote in April 2007 will be one of the most important in the post war period. The primary which finally set up a race rather than an endless court battle between the Elysee and Matignon needs to articulate actual goals rather than comfort or confrontational rhetoric, to define the role of France in Europe and in turn the role of the EU versus the US.

The Socialist candidate Segolene Royal is a unique French combination of socialist Catholicism (in the tradition of Delors) and traditional military colonial background; ideally she could bridge the gap from left to right. One of Mitterrand’s disciples, she came on board as part of the Attali team in 1981. Called in Le Figaro”la moderne antimoderne”, by formulating the debate as between the old ‘elephants‘ and the new, she seemed to present a new perspective. In reality like John McCain’s fudging to the center on social policies, her views are                                                     On integration of minorities, the role of the state in social, and economic spheres (despite softening toward the 35 hour week), greater citizen participation she plays on the “moderne dans le discours, antimoderne sur le fond” (modern in discourse, anti-modern in substance) appeal. Her values and goals of order, respect, family (as mother of four), employment are vague enough for the entire political spectrum, but her greatest challenges in this balancing act are going to be foreign and security policy where she has already had several mishaps on Iran, the Israeli-Lebanon situation, and worse, even on Quebec.

Nicholas Sarkozy is now in a bind to define himself: the problem here is not the hard line law and order position which resonated well after the riots of November 2005 and the weeks of demonstrations and government shut down in April 2006, but can and will he maintain or have to recast his pro US stance highlighted by his visit to New York on September 11, 2006 when he had the courage to say that America can offer models to emulate and his calibrated pro Israel position.

American capitalism remains feared and misconstrued both in center right and center left French governments. A 2006 Globescan poll on attitudes toward the free market economy showed 71% approval in the US, 66% in the UK, 65% in Germany but only 36% in France. Sarkozy’s timid rapprochement by acknowledging the virtues of the American model in his speeches in 2005 and 2006 were very badly received in France.

Will France be prepared to choose between a woman and a foreigner? Can Sarkozy of Hungarian, (on his mother’s side, converted Jewish descent) overcome profound prejudices against foreigners, can Royal overcome profound stereotypes against women (described by the hard right in Le Figaro as: “Barbie au pays des Soviets”).

There clearly are comparisons between Merkel, Royal and Hillary Clinton: the problem is can their positives in the US and France overrides fundamental negatives and concerns more than prejudices. Can the Thatcher symbol dominate in a time of global rather than economic crisis?

Chirac is now a bad joke, but like Bush still in power, paranoid and defensive. It is ironic that Chirac the most pro American, pro business French prime minister, in 1986-1987, once in power spawned the most anti-American economic rhetoric in a generation. Whereas the socialist capitalism of Mitterrand allowed emulation and successful adaptation of the American model.

In his first term Chime promised strong balanced leadership positioning France in Europe and as global partner. He has now been reduced to arrogant rhetoric without moral validation, more and more paranoid and isolated in the Elysee, his version of “Gaullism lite” fading away.

Neither would ever want to admit it, but the comparisons between Bush and Chirac at the end of their terms is striking. Chirac has less global power but is equally troubling as he goes off on tirades often at odds with his own policies or government stance. Berlusconi was at least as amusing as offensive in his grotesque outbursts; Chirac is merely abrasive and erratic.

The greatest fear among the political elites and the media is a repetition of the “April 21, 2002 syndrome” in which Jospin was eliminated in the second round by the extreme right Front National led by Le Pen. France voted in Chirac by default with 82% of the vote.  

In 2007 each party has to court the extreme right as polls in November 2006, show nearly 18% of people surveyed, would choose Le Pen yet both major candidates have to maintain a balanced position on security, law and order and minority issues in order not to alienate the core.

In the throes of an identity crisis, that occurs every 15-20 years, in 2007 the situation has been exacerbated by xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, inability to assimilate and lack of courage to admit the failure of assimilation in the immigrant African and Arab minority communities.

As Europe struggles to define a European identity, it has been both facile and fashionable to find common ground against the United States, rather than within and for specific elements of European communa1ity.

The impact of 9/11 is still unresolved in Europe. The response to the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London have shown the rifts and fears as well as the inability to find one voice in a non specific battle against an ill defined, yet virulent and omnipresent enemy. The Middle East conflict and the ensuing debate on Iraq arid the rift within Europe toward the Bush administration “coalition” become easy targets for what Revel called in 2002 “a psychopathological anti-Americanism which transforms the United States into a scapegoat charged with all the sins of the world”.

The EU wants and needs to assert, itself, to prove its own defense credentials, to move beyond the 1945-1989 scenario but it is not self sufficient in any high risk scenario: Iran, North Korea, the Middle East. Although, European peacekeeping coalitions are vital in Kosovo, Afghanistan, EU defense poi icy is a work in progress along both national and supranational lines. The role of NATO remains dominant but as described in. the Economist, November 25 2006, special report on NATO, a chart on defense spending underscoring the differences between American and combined European military power and capability is entitled: “America and the 25 dwarfs”.

As in previous periods of crisis since the end of the 19^th century, when threatened with loss of national pride, symbols and recognition, nationalism and chauvinism beckon., followed close behind by what can be called “ psychopathological” anti-Semitism.

The European position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deteriorated into concentric circles of recrimination. Pro Palestinian positions are seen as instigators of anti-Semitic incidents, yet anti Muslim rhetoric is not pro Israel. The media and politicians try to establish clear lines between anti-Semitism and “anti-Zionism” or anti-Israel positions, but the arguments are flawed and never clearly enunciated.

France since WWII has the largest Jewish population in Europe, a well established, well respected population with Prime Ministers (Mendes-France), finance ministers (Strauss- Kahn) advisors and public intellectuals (Attali, Levy, Finklekraut).

However since 2004 the number and tenor of anti-Semitic incidents have dramatically increased as documented by the EU Commissioner for Human Rights:

In France a 79% increase since July, 2006 over 133 documented incidents in the UK during Lebanon war, these incidents occurring largely against Sephardic Jews in the poorest sections.

One of the worst incidents, since the tragic torture and death of Ilan Halemi, the Jewish youth murdered in the Paris suburbs in 2005, was violence following a Paris Tel Aviv soccer match in November 2006. A Jewish fan was cornered, a black plainclothes officer rushed to shield him, the insults became “death to the Jew”, “dirty Negro”, and the officer shot into the crowd and killed one fan, a Boulogne right wing supporter. In the last six months hooliganism at soccer stadiums in France, Germany, Spain, and Greece have degenerated, into political, racial and ethnic violence (‘Paris soccer ultras at center of furor over fan’s death”, New York Times, November 12, 2006).

In 1998 the World Cup in France was seen as the symbol of successful integration, cross cultural pride and proof of France’s successful assimilation of its immigrant population. In 2006 Le Pen accused the team of having too many foreigners.

Across Europe there is no solidarity, no political party or faction which can respond to the common interests of the disenfranchised and unemployed but separate hatreds inciting in response nationalist extremism. Unemployment hovers around 8.5 to 10% across the EU but in suburbs and ghettos of major cities reaches 30-40%.

As Maryse Conde pointed out in a conference on “Memory and its Discontents” at Columbia University, the tragedy is that persecuted minorities are at odds with one another. The riots of November 2005 were not solely Muslim, nor solely West African; they were a series of spontaneous attacks, spawned by despair, separate hatreds, isolation and need for retaliation, much more similar to Watts or Harlem in, the 1970s than to fundamentalism riots against the Danish cartoons,

After WWII the sole way to create Europe was to sublimate history, to transform the political dialectic into the economic realm. Creating cross border norms for civil society required not only peace but rules of behavior in which any form of ethnic, religious or racial bias was outlawed and silenced. Sixty years later, there is a new generation in which these values have been instilled theoretically but for whom they have no personal context. There is a demarginalization of extremism across Europe as xenophobia, and racism have reentered the mainstream since the mid 1990s in Austria, (Haider), Holland, and (Pim Fortyun), in Sweden, France, and the National Democratic Party in Germany. Revisionist history whether in the forms of Holocaust denial, reevaluation of German victims of Allied bombings in. the writings of Sebald and Friedrich or post 9/11 conspiracy theories accusing Jews and Americans, the unacceptable has become a subject of debate or relativist reinterpretation. For the new EU member states from former Eastern Europe there is a delicate balance between the need to reexamine history through newly accessible files of the Soviet Union, in East Germany, Poland, and the necessity to portray history accurately and fairly.

History has returned with a vengeance, no longer in the guise of Third Reich anti- Semitism (still horrifically alive and flourishing in Muslim media and literature). The symbols and rhetoric of the Nazi era are strictly forbidden, so under the banner of addressing local concerns the anti-platform of the extreme right conflates anti- Americanism, anti-EU, anti-integration., anti-enlargement, anti-euro folding in anti- Muslim along with atavistic anti -Semitism.

For the first time since WWII the World Cup in Germany in 2006 allowed open manifestations of German patriotism without incident. The great irony of history is that in 2007 Germany has the best record for identifying and immediately controlling the symptoms as its laws are the most rigid, its traumas the sharpest, its fears and recriminations the greatest as seen in the response to Gunter Grass’ late admission of war time activities. During its EU presidency Germany plans to present legislation that would make denial of the Holocaust a punishable offense by prison sentence in all 27 EU member countries.

Post 9/11 in the German mainstream, anti Americanism was seen as liberation from decades of required gratitude and mea culpa, grudging admiration, and dependency. Shroder in his response to the Iraqi war cynically played on these sentiments. But Germany as Merkel understood after Shroder’s grandstanding, needs and benefits from a rational and well coordinated relationship with the US. Where France sees America as a threat to its prestige and historical destiny, Germany sees any form of American aggression (Vietnam, Iraq) as reminder and betrayal of the ideals America was supposed to represent and demanded of post WWII Germany: demilitarization, self control and emasculation.

Under the banner of meritocracy and republicanism France prided itself on its ability to assimilate but in reality assimilation in France, the Netherlands, Sweden or Denmark meant accepting the cultural specificity of the host nation, speaking its language, observing its rules and customs, folding in foreign cultures within cultural norms which were open and flexible, but fundamentally secular, focused on the rights of the individual under the protection of a benevolent, yet paternalistic state.

These principles, beliefs and success stories are now being put to the test by the weight of demographics (low birth rate, aging populations), market forces, endemic unemployment among second generation young males, outdated educational systems including anachronistic curricula and limited career training, weak labor markets and despite the promises of Masstricht and the success of the EU, restricted labor mobility.

Across Europe stock market are surging but the reality is that top multinationals often make nearly four fifths of profits abroad. There is a growing discrepancy between multinationals wealth and productivity and the impact on local populations. As in the US the rich get richer but the fiscal and corporate structure does not necessarily benefit the working or middle class.

In 2003, a New York times article: “Iraq aside, French view the US with a mixture of attraction and repulsion” stressed the paradox that America attracts 40,000 young French managers to Silicon Valley yet the cultural and political antipathies are deepening. French and American CEOS were instrumental in toning down the hysterical rhetoric in 2003/2004 with “freedom fries”, and, “freedom toast”, when even Thomas Friedman in the New York Times wrote about “Our war with France”. Fueled in France by works like Emmanuel Todds “L‘Illusion economique” which gloatingly predicted the economic decline of America and Jean Guisnel ”Les pires amis du monde”, counter voices of Revel, Cohen-Tangi, Baverez, Levy defining strengths and weaknesses were lost in the media brouhaha and less often translated.

Hubert Vedrine in France in the age of globalization (2000) defined the ideal as “Europe gets stronger without France getting weaker.” His expression of America as a “hyperpuissance” was criticized as an attack whereas it was a warning of the hegemonic potential of America and the need for France to adjust

Anti-Americanism has a long and multilayered history across Western Europe. Following the Franco-Prussian war the French right in the works of Barres, Bourget, Drumont, Maurras, Anatole France cultivated anti foreign bias: anti-German, anti-Jews, and anti - capital and anti-American. The evils of American and British style capitalism, seen as detrimental to the good of French traditions led directly to anti-Semitism in the literary and semantic political landscape from Drumont’s La France juive through the Dreyfus affair.

Maurras in Dictionnaire Politique et Critique (1932), a compilation of articles from l’Action Francaise has numerous articles on America, its economic power, religious and ethnic diversity and profit obsessed system of values. Combining admiration and contempt, he describes: “presidential elections take place by the power of checks, [..] the leading plutocracy of the United States needs to impose its will on the world…  Whether industrial, commercial, financial, the American issue has become a political issue for the last twenty five years” (Action Francaise, avril 1910)

After WWI, European intellectuals were fascinated and horrified by America’s money and profit driven culture. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 (Anatole France received it in 1921) Norway’s Knut Hamsun preferred Nazism’s “pure” culture to American capitalism. Giono, Celine, Hesse, like Kafka who in Amerika created images of American capitalism, its dehumanized cities, monstrous skyscrapers, assembly lines, mass migration of workers contrasted with huge, impersonal wealth.

In the 1950s and 1960s America was seen through the prism of McCarthyism, moral deterioration and decline described by Sartre and Beauvoir. There was a caricatural dichotomy between good and bad America in which only its marginalized cultural manifestations were admired, from jazz to renegade films, literature ( Miles Davis, James Baldwin, James Dean). Europeans sought out the victim, the little guy or the mythic symbol for its own version of America (Jerry Lewis to Clint Eastwood to Woody Allen).

In 1967 Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber dared to confront these sociocultural barriers in Le defi americain. It was a reality check on the impact of American industry, investment and technological superiority in Europe. He called for limiting the role of the state (nearly 90% of the French economy in the 1960s was in state hands), allowing increases in R&D, accepting market forces not as an abomination but a means of progress and individual choice, creation of business, management education and technological progress.

In 1970, when Revel wrote Ni Marx, ni Jesus the left still influenced by the works of Steinbeck, Dos Passos and American cinema of the 1930s equated America with cowboy capitalism. For the right anti-Americanism stood for the destruction of national traditions and culture. The French, Spanish and Italian anti-globalization arguments in the late 1980s and 1990s were derivative of the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the 1960s post Stalinist communist parties.

At the height of Vietnam War when Raymond Aron published: Republique imperiale, les Etats- Unis dans le monde 1945-1972 there were huge demonstrations across Europe against “American imperialism”. Aron in his calm dignified prose reminded his readers that for decades Europe feared American isolationism far more than American intervention. De Gaulle never forgave Roosevelt his isolationist stance in the 1930s and refusal to enter WWII till Hitler in the week after Pearl Harbor declared war on the United States. Aron understood that America always vacillates between isolationism and globalization, but that fundamentally America is not imperialistic:

“Paleoimperialism of European states combined the glory of the empire with the profits of exploitation; Neoimperialism of the United States, if it exists has no need to substitute its administrators for local leaders, it rejects this costly responsibility”.

The anti-globalization movement in attacking the principles of the multilateral institutions, the UN, World Bank, IMF, OECD, even NATO tended to forget or ignore that these institutions were created in 1945-1949 in order to protect the world under American auspices and political will. As Fritz Stern wrote in The Five Germanys I Have Known (2006), post war occupation of Germany benefited Germany and Europe. “The Marshall Plan was a huge success., [when] our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty desperation and chaos, the fundamental principles are sound and positive”.

Historically the best cooperation and genuine friendship have occurred when Europeans faced the need to reform, and adapted to earlier forms of globalization: post Civil War America and 1880-1910 Europe. The Reagan and Bush I years with close Mitterrand Kohl, Thatcher, Gorbachev links and overarching goals: dismantling the Soviet Union, strong trade, strong dollar, DM and French franc, increased investments. Even in the best of times, America was seen as a cultural anomaly or danger to European values: Tony Judt writes: “In 1983 Jack Lang, French culture minister warned that the widely watched television series Dallas represented a serious threat to French and European identity”.

By 1988-1992 the United States feared that the EU would become “Fortress Europe”. After the demise of the USSR the Transatlantic Declaration in 1990, the Baker proposals set out a political framework for cooperation on trade, scientific, cultural, environmental exchanges, security cooperation in the areas of anti terrorism, drug trafficking, and proliferation of chemical and biological warfare.

In 1993 Europe greeted Clinton, a new young American president enthusiastically as the heir to JFK, comfortable with US military, economic and cultural power. A popular book that year in France was Alfred Valladao’s Le XXIe siecle sera americain. In turn Robert Reich in Work of Nations and Clinton in his original economic speeches on welfare, minimum wages, workers compensation, lack of insurance, issues of downsizing and outsourcing, saw viable models in Swedish French., private- public sector partnerships.

But throughout the 1990 as economic and technological advances shifted from Europe and Japan back to the United States, globalization had both, its ardent advocates and critics. Alain Minc’s Mondialization heureuse in 1997, like Servan-Schreiber in 1967 called for a French version of American multinationals, increase in high tech, reforms and modernization along with EU integration and enlargement. On the other side, Benjamin Barber in Dijihad versus Mcworld: mondialization et integrisme contre la democracie (1996) Vivianne Forrestier in Horror Economique and Une etrange dictature (1999), saw in America the worst excesses, violations of human rights, exploitation of the working class, violence and danger to Europe’s fundamental civic values.

Anti-globalization, incited anti-Americanism in the manifestations at the G7 meetings in Genoa, Seattle. By 2000, books like Noel Mamere, Olivier Warin: Non merci Oncle Sam called for a total rejection of all things American, attacking a hodge podge of political, cultural, moral and economic failings from the death penalty to Kyoto, lack of health care to treatment of Native Americans.

Under the symbol of MacDonald’s invading French culinary tradition, Jose Bove, led the odd partnering of extreme right and left for Le Pen in the 2002 election, its platform of anti-globalization translating into anti-Americanism, anti-EU, anti-euro, anti-immigrant. In 2005 the anti-Turkey argument was added, inciting this constituency to vote No to the EU constitution.

For a short period, following the immediate response to 9/11, there was international solidarity with America but by 2003 the situation had again deteriorated and fragmented. The issue was not merely political or philosophical disagreement with specific policies but a far deeper sense of disillusionment, As Christopher Patten, former European Commissioner for External Affairs wrote in Not Quite the Diplomat (2005)

“20^th century America measured its greatness not in military might but in exemplification of liberal democracy, human rights, individual freedom, and material progress. Atlantic rows have long history: anti-Vietnam in 1960s, France and NATO decoupling, Helmut Schmidt’s decision to allow American missiles on German soil, Reagan at the Bundestag met with huge demonstrations.”

Kissinger noted in “Does America need a Foreign Policy” (2001) written just a few months before 9/11 that the challenge was how “to transform power into consensus so that the international order is based on agreement rather than reluctant acquiescence”. This axiom, Bush time and again refused to recognize as he gave Europe the impression that he was perfectly content to go it alone.

On the cusp of presidential campaigns in the United States and France, the issue is when and if Europe, now of 27 nations will be able to formulate an identity not in opposition to America, but equal and independent of America. In the last decade and especially since 2003, the platitude “wins the hearts and minds” of US cultural diplomacy has failed miserably across the globe. The United States has to redefine and reexamine the political and economic strategies which were successful toward Germany and Japan at the end of WWII... Foreign policy has to incorporate long term historical and cultural strategies rather than mere imposition or benign neglect. In turn France needs to move beyond the anachronistic goals of prestige, power, glory of its language and culture as sole criteria for Europe at large. Its “mission civilisatrice” has little resonance for young elites who get their MBA in the States and then leave for investment banks in London, New York and high tech jobs in California. For the rural and urban poor, migrant and disenfranchised communities across Europe, both indigenous and foreign, the anti message: anti America, anti-EU, anti- euro, anti- immigrant, anti -Semitic, anti- Islamic has short but dangerously intense appeal. In reality this platform offers little beyond nostalgia of a romanticized and largely imaginary past.

The United States in the next two years will have to formulate a new foreign policy and to rein in economic excesses. Both parties and especially the Democrats will have to create a discourse beyond the rhetoric of blame and negativity. Across Europe and the United States politicians will have to articulate what they are for, rather than a litany of what they are against.

The enemies are real, the dangers and threats imminent and need to be addressed. Anti- Americanism in Europe like neglect and disdain of Europe in the US is a luxury, a. charming party game but at the end the US and Europe have to combat the same dangers. They have to prove that their common heritage, their ideological rather than theological basis for government and the principles of civil society, their belief in fundamental freedoms, not as theory but as daily practice must be maintained and respected.

Anti-Americanism for the Muslim world is anti-Israel, anti-Semitism and anti-modernism: the horrific images across Muslim media equating the symbols of Nazism with Jewish stars, burning American and Israeli flags and killing effigies of Bush, Sharon, Danish leaders or as in Holland actual persons associated as enemies of Islam make it clear that Europe cannot afford to become part of this imagery or rhetoric.

On a lighter note, but reminiscent of other periods of conflict, in the great American musical “Oklahoma”, one of the songs by Rogers and Hammerstein (which often carried political undertones) is “The farmer and the cowboy should be friends”. They may have different histories, agendas and cultures hut once Oklahoma becomes a state they will have to work together for common security, progress and profit.

At the end for Europe and the United States the goal has to be the same. There is no other choice.