John Vinocur again on why Europe still has no confidence in foreign relations. He believes that because it was the South African president that announced the EU’s initiative on HIV/AIDS, Europe lacks leadership.
Month: June 2003
Rick Bragg's Byline Brouhaha
Deb has got the story on Rick Bragg’s resignation from the NY Times. Great stuff as ever Deb!
FCC's Powell must be held to his word
Dan Gillmor vents some anger at Colin Powells son and the FCC for changing the rules on media ownership.
Monday, barring an 11th-hour change of bureaucratic heart, the Federal Communications Commission will give a gaggle of powerful corporations a gift of enormous value. The three Republican commissioners will outvote two Democrats in easing long-standing rules designed to prevent a few companies from controlling too much of the media we read, hear and view.
Thomas L. Friedman: Why the rest of the world hates America
Thomas Friedman wonders why America is hated by the rest of the world. He also calls on people to email him and help him find a stable way to manage the United States’ relationship with the world.
“Where we are now,” says Nayan Chanda, publications director at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (whose Web site yaleglobal.yale.edu is full of valuable nuggets), “is that you have this sullen anger out in the world at America. Because people realize they are not going to get a vote over American power, they cannot do anything about it, but they will be affected by it.”
Finding a stable way to manage this situation will be critical to managing America’s relations with the rest of the globe. Any ideas?
The mood in Europe: Perplexity and foreboding
Giles Merrit, director of Forum Europe and secretary-general of Friends of Europe, has another article today in the Herald Tribune. He believes Europe can salvage something from the fallout over Iraq, being able to forge a new a strong United Europe with its new Constitution. But he also see problems ahead.
In the meantime, a strange mood of perplexity and foreboding has settled on Europe. Perplexity, because the Iraq war’s aftermath is a tangle of new crises whose consequences are still unclear. Foreboding, because few doubt that Europe will sooner or later pay a high price for a war that was not of its making.
The atmosphere in Brussels is particularly troubled and unfamiliar. The EU’s policy vacuum on Iraq-related issues looks almost total. No one has advanced a realistic plan for repairing either the trans-Atlantic rift or the divisions between EU governments themselves. The wider concern is the prospect of an endemic Christian-Muslim conflict, for Europeans increasingly fear the “clash of civilizations,” even if Americans don’t.
The End of the West
I have finally found the article in the Atlantic on the prospect of an EU-US war. You can read Charles Kupchan’s piece here.
The consequences of the growing rift between the United States and Europe are only just becoming apparent. The two sharply disagree on the Middle East: the EU opposes both America’s steady support of Israel and its insistence on isolating, rather than engaging, Iraq and Iran. Trade disputes are heating up, especially over steel and agriculture. Despite America’s defection from the Kyoto Protocol, the EU moved forward with more than a hundred countries participating, leaving Washington a lonely and, from all appearances, an environmentally irresponsible bystander. Last year EU member states took the lead in voting the United States off two UN commissionspayback for America’s unilateral ways.
Europe will inevitably rise up as America’s principal competitor. Should Washington and Brussels begin to recognize the dangers of the growing gulf between them, they may be able to contain their budding rivalry. Should they fail, however, to prepare for life after Pax Americana, they will ensure that the coming clash of civilizations will be not between the West and the rest but within a West divided against itself.