America’s Trans-Atlantic Election
If Europeans could vote in US elections, would they vote in greater proportions than US citizens? That, of course, is destined to remain a hypothetical question. But it is worth posing if only because an answer in the affirmative seems possible.
Quite possible, to tell by the attention Europe gave the US midterm elections this November. After the Democratic victory, Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’alema was openly ecstatic. “A cycle has ended,” he said. “The cycle of pre-emptive wars, of unilateralism, ends in great failure…A new cycle must begin and I think there is a great responsibility for Europe.” D’alema’s European counterparts were less bold, but many hold similar aspirations for the future of US foreign policy and European global responsibility.
Why are Europeans so interested in US elections? One answer is obvious. The United States, the sole superpower, mightily affects Europe and the international system for which Europe has a vision. President George W. Bush’s foreign policy offends European sensibilities, and Democrats, promising multilateralism, appear closer to Europeans.
That explains why Europeans care but not why D’alema’s Panglossian proclamation betrays desperation—as if two years of Democratic Congress will end unilateralism forever. Perhaps it is because US elections are Europe’s only realistic hope for attaining the change it seeks in US foreign relations. As Robert Kagan writes in his famous 2002 article on trans-Atlantic rift, Europeans “want to control the behemoth by appealing to its conscience.” Abundant in soft power, Europe lacks the hard power, particularly military, to compel the United States to see the world its way.
In the next few years, US presidential candidates will debate foreign policy, and it should become more clear whether the trends that disturb Europe are ephemeral products of the Bush administration or something longer lasting and more deeply rooted. I suspect the latter will be the case. If so, Europe will face a difficult choice, perhaps an impossibility. If Kagan is right that European ideology seeks transcendence of hard power in international relations, then that ideology seems bound to be self-defeating. Europe cannot acquire military power because it believes military power should be obsolete. Without military power, Europe will be too weak to define the rules of the international system. Its plight is like the pacifist’s: pacifism cannot be imposed on those who insist on fighting.
Europe could acquire military power only to gain leverage in diplomacy, not to employ in battle. That, however, seems doubly implausible, first in the acquiring, second in the limiting, because military capability tends to tempt its usage.
Otherwise the best way to reduce trans-Atlantic tension may be psychological—for Europeans to accommodate themselves to the reality that after roughly four centuries of defining the international system, they no longer run the world.
There was a time, not many years ago, when Sudan was not associated with corruption, poor governance, and rampant murder. It was said that Khartoum would become a metropolitan city, potentially establishing itself as a global tourist and business center. Those times have long passed, leaving the country in a state of horrible disarray. It is estimated that over 200,000 people have been murdered since 2003 as a result of the genocide raging within the country, not to mention the enormous regional destabilization that has ensued. Sudan’s President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has proved to be a wildly disinterested and inept leader at best, a condoner of murder and genocide at worst, allowing the atrocities to continue while refusing to allow UN peacekeepers in the country. It was not until yesterday, when the country