Friday, December 10, 2004
The Ents of EuropeStrange rumblings on the continent.
By Victor Davis Hanson
One of the many wondrous peoples that poured forth from the rich imagination of the late J. R. R. Tolkien were the Ents. These tree-like creatures, agonizingly slow and covered with mossy bark, nursed themselves on tales of past glory while their numbers dwindled in their isolation. Unable to reproduce themselves or to fathom the evil outside their peaceful forest — and careful to keep to themselves and avoid reacting to provocation of the tree-cutters and forest burners — they assumed they would be given a pass from the upheavals of Middle Earth.But with the sudden arrival of two volatile hobbits, the nearby evils of timber-cutting, industrial devilry, and mass murder became too much for the Ents to stomach. They finally "wake up" (literally). Then they go on the offensive — and are amazed at the power they still wield in destroying Saruman's empire.
For Tolkien, who wrote in a post-imperial Britain bled white from stopping Prussian militarism and Hitler's Nazism, only to then witness the rise of the more numerous, wealthier, and crasser Americans, such specters were haunting. Indeed, there are variants of the Ent theme throughout Tolkien's novels, from the dormant Riders of Rohan — whose king was exorcised from his dotage and rallied the realm's dwindling cavalry to recover lost glory and save the West — to the hobbits themselves.
The latter, protected by slurred "Rangers," live blissfully unaware that radical changes in the world have brought evil incarnate to their very doorstep. Then to their amazement they discover that of all people, a hobbit rises to the occasion, and really does stand up well when confronted with apparently far more powerful and evil adversaries. The entire novel is full of such folk — the oath-breaking Dead who come alive to honor their once-broken pact, or the now-fallen and impotent High Elves who nevertheless do their part in the inevitable war to come.
Tolkien always denied an allegorical motif or any allusions to the contemporary dangers of appeasement or the leveling effects of modernism. And scholars bicker over whether he was lamenting the end of the old England, old Europe, or the old West — in the face of the American democratic colossus, the Soviet Union's tentacles, or the un-chivalrous age of the bomb. But the notion of decline, past glory, and 11th-hour reawakening are nevertheless everywhere in the English philologist's Lord of the Rings. Was he on to something?
More specifically, does the Ents analogy work for present-day Europe? Before you laugh at the silly comparison, remember that the Western military tradition is European. Today the continent is unarmed and weak, but deep within its collective mind and spirit still reside the ability to field technologically sophisticated and highly disciplined forces — if it were ever to really feel threatened. One murder began to arouse the Dutch; what would 3,000 dead and a toppled Eiffel Tower do to the French? Or how would the Italians take to a plane stuck into the dome of St. Peter? We are nursed now on the spectacle of Iranian mullahs, with their bought weapons and foreign-produced oil wealth, humiliating a convoy of European delegates begging and cajoling them not to make bombs — or at least to point what bombs they make at Israel and not at Berlin or Paris. But it was not always the case, and may not always be.
The Netherlands was a litmus test for Europe. Unlike Spain or Greece, which had historical grievances against Islam, the Dutch were the avatars of the new liberal Europe, without historical baggage. They were eager to unshackle Europe from the Church, from its class and gender constraints, and from any whiff of its racist or colonialist past. True, for a variety of reasons, Amsterdam may be a case study of how wrong Rousseau was about natural man, but for a Muslim immigrant the country was about as hospitable a foreign host as one can imagine. Thus, it was far safer for radical Islamic fascists to damn the West openly from a mosque in Rotterdam than for a moderate Christian to quietly worship in a church in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Algeria. And yet we learn not just that the Netherlands has fostered a radical sect of Muslims who will kill and bomb, but, far more importantly, that they will do so after years of residency among, and indeed in utter contempt of, their Western hosts.
Things are no less humiliating — or dangerous — in France. Thousands of unassimilated Muslims mock French society. Yet their fury shapes its foreign policy to the degree that Jacques Chirac sent a government plane to sweep up a dying Arafat. But then what do we expect from a country that enriched Hamas, let Mrs. Arafat spend her husband's embezzled millions under its nose, gave Khomeini the sanctuary needed to destroy Iran, sold a nuclear reactor to Saddam, is at the heart of the Oil-for-Food scandal, and revs up the Muslim world against the United States?
Only now are Europeans discovering the disturbing nature of radical Islamic extremism, which thrives not on real grievance but on perceived hurts — and the appeasement of its purported oppressors. How odd that tens of millions of Muslims flocked to Europe for its material consumption, superior standard of living, and freedom and tolerance — and then chose not merely to remain in enclaves but to romanticize all the old pathologies that they had fled from in the first place. It is almost as if the killers in Amsterdam said, "I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please let me stay here to destroy what I want."
Turkey's proposed entry into the EU has become some weird sort of Swiftian satire on the crazy relationship between Europe and Islam. Ponder the contradictions of it all. Privately most Europeans realize that opening its borders without restraint to Turkey's millions will alter the nature of the EU, both by welcoming in a radically different citizenry, largely outside the borders of Europe, whose population will make it the largest and poorest country in the Union — and the most antithetical to Western liberalism. Yet Europe is also trapped in its own utopian race/class/gender rhetoric. It cannot openly question the wisdom of making the "other" coequal to itself, since one does not by any abstract standard judge, much less censure, customs, religions, or values.
So it stews and simmers. Not to be outdone, some in Turkey dare the Europeans, almost in contempt, to reject their bid. Thus rather than evolving Attaturk's modernist reforms to match the values of Europe, the country is instead driven into the midst of an Islamic reactionary revival in which its rural east far more resembles Iraq or Iran than Brussels. So the world wonders whether Europe is sticking a toe into the Islamic Middle East or the latter its entire leg into Europe.
Everyone gets in on the charade. The savvy Greeks discovered that they didn't want to be tarred with the usual anti-Ottoman obstructionism and so are keeping very quiet about their historic worries (legitimate after a near 400-year occupation) as a front-line state. And why not, when EU money pouring into Turkey might jumpstart the Eastern Mediterranean economy and lead to joint Greek-Turkish deals? With the future role of NATO and the 6th Fleet undetermined, is it not better to have the Turkish military inside the tent than for poor Greece to have a neighbor's ships and planes routinely violating Hellenic air and sea sovereignty — while it waits for the Danish air force or the French army to provide a little deterrence in the Aegean or Cyprus?
Of course, we are amused by the spectacle. Privately, most Americans grasp that with a Germany and France reeling from unassimilated Muslim populations, a rising Islamic-inspired and globally embarrassing anti-Semitism, and economic stagnation, it is foolhardy to create 70 million Turkish Europeans by fiat. Welcoming in Turkey will make the EU so diverse, large, and unwieldy as to make it — to paraphrase Voltaire — neither European nor a Union. Surely Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia will wish to get in on the largess. Were they not, after all, also part of the historical Roman mare nostrum, and did they not also enjoy long ties with France and Italy?
So, to our discredit I suppose, we are enjoying schadenfreud after our recent transatlantic acrimonies: Europe preached a postmodern gospel of multiculturalism and the end of oppressive Western values, and now it is time to put its money (and security) where its mouth is — or suffer the usual hypocrisy that all limousine liberals face. The United States has its own recent grievances with the Turks — its eleventh-hour refusal to allow American troops to come down from the north explains why the now red-hot Sunni Triangle never saw much war during the three-week fighting. Recently a minister of a country that gave rise to the notion of 20th-century genocide slurred the United States for resembling Hitler, who in fact was an erstwhile Turkish near ally. Still, our realists muse, how convenient that Europe may carry the water in bringing Turkey inside the Western orbit and prevent it from joining the radical Islamic fringe. Knowing it is in our interest (and not necessarily in the Europeans') and will cost them lots and us nothing, we "on principle" remonstrate for the need to show Western empathy to Turkish aspirations.
But gut-check time is coming for Europe, with its own rising unassimilated immigrant populations, rogue mosques entirely bent on destroying the West, declining birth rate and rising entitlements, the Turkish question, and a foreign policy whose appeasement of Arab regimes won it only a brief lull and plenty of humiliation. The radical Muslim world of the madrassas hates the United States because it is liberal and powerful; but it utterly despises Europe because it is even more liberal and far weaker, earning the continent not fear, but contempt.
The real question is whether there is any Demosthenes left in Europe, who will soberly but firmly demand assimilation and integration of all immigrants, an end to mosque radicalism, even-handedness in the Middle East, no more subsidies to terrorists like Hamas, a toughness rather than opportunist profiteering with the likes of Assad and the Iranian theocracy — and make it clear that states that aid and abet terrorists in Europe due so to their great peril.
So will the old Ents awaken, or will they slumber on, muttering nonsense to themselves, lost in past grandeur and utterly clueless about the dangers on their borders?
Stay tuned — it is one of the most fascinating sagas of our time.
By Victor Davis Hanson
One of the many wondrous peoples that poured forth from the rich imagination of the late J. R. R. Tolkien were the Ents. These tree-like creatures, agonizingly slow and covered with mossy bark, nursed themselves on tales of past glory while their numbers dwindled in their isolation. Unable to reproduce themselves or to fathom the evil outside their peaceful forest — and careful to keep to themselves and avoid reacting to provocation of the tree-cutters and forest burners — they assumed they would be given a pass from the upheavals of Middle Earth.But with the sudden arrival of two volatile hobbits, the nearby evils of timber-cutting, industrial devilry, and mass murder became too much for the Ents to stomach. They finally "wake up" (literally). Then they go on the offensive — and are amazed at the power they still wield in destroying Saruman's empire.
For Tolkien, who wrote in a post-imperial Britain bled white from stopping Prussian militarism and Hitler's Nazism, only to then witness the rise of the more numerous, wealthier, and crasser Americans, such specters were haunting. Indeed, there are variants of the Ent theme throughout Tolkien's novels, from the dormant Riders of Rohan — whose king was exorcised from his dotage and rallied the realm's dwindling cavalry to recover lost glory and save the West — to the hobbits themselves.
The latter, protected by slurred "Rangers," live blissfully unaware that radical changes in the world have brought evil incarnate to their very doorstep. Then to their amazement they discover that of all people, a hobbit rises to the occasion, and really does stand up well when confronted with apparently far more powerful and evil adversaries. The entire novel is full of such folk — the oath-breaking Dead who come alive to honor their once-broken pact, or the now-fallen and impotent High Elves who nevertheless do their part in the inevitable war to come.
Tolkien always denied an allegorical motif or any allusions to the contemporary dangers of appeasement or the leveling effects of modernism. And scholars bicker over whether he was lamenting the end of the old England, old Europe, or the old West — in the face of the American democratic colossus, the Soviet Union's tentacles, or the un-chivalrous age of the bomb. But the notion of decline, past glory, and 11th-hour reawakening are nevertheless everywhere in the English philologist's Lord of the Rings. Was he on to something?
More specifically, does the Ents analogy work for present-day Europe? Before you laugh at the silly comparison, remember that the Western military tradition is European. Today the continent is unarmed and weak, but deep within its collective mind and spirit still reside the ability to field technologically sophisticated and highly disciplined forces — if it were ever to really feel threatened. One murder began to arouse the Dutch; what would 3,000 dead and a toppled Eiffel Tower do to the French? Or how would the Italians take to a plane stuck into the dome of St. Peter? We are nursed now on the spectacle of Iranian mullahs, with their bought weapons and foreign-produced oil wealth, humiliating a convoy of European delegates begging and cajoling them not to make bombs — or at least to point what bombs they make at Israel and not at Berlin or Paris. But it was not always the case, and may not always be.
The Netherlands was a litmus test for Europe. Unlike Spain or Greece, which had historical grievances against Islam, the Dutch were the avatars of the new liberal Europe, without historical baggage. They were eager to unshackle Europe from the Church, from its class and gender constraints, and from any whiff of its racist or colonialist past. True, for a variety of reasons, Amsterdam may be a case study of how wrong Rousseau was about natural man, but for a Muslim immigrant the country was about as hospitable a foreign host as one can imagine. Thus, it was far safer for radical Islamic fascists to damn the West openly from a mosque in Rotterdam than for a moderate Christian to quietly worship in a church in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Algeria. And yet we learn not just that the Netherlands has fostered a radical sect of Muslims who will kill and bomb, but, far more importantly, that they will do so after years of residency among, and indeed in utter contempt of, their Western hosts.
Things are no less humiliating — or dangerous — in France. Thousands of unassimilated Muslims mock French society. Yet their fury shapes its foreign policy to the degree that Jacques Chirac sent a government plane to sweep up a dying Arafat. But then what do we expect from a country that enriched Hamas, let Mrs. Arafat spend her husband's embezzled millions under its nose, gave Khomeini the sanctuary needed to destroy Iran, sold a nuclear reactor to Saddam, is at the heart of the Oil-for-Food scandal, and revs up the Muslim world against the United States?
Only now are Europeans discovering the disturbing nature of radical Islamic extremism, which thrives not on real grievance but on perceived hurts — and the appeasement of its purported oppressors. How odd that tens of millions of Muslims flocked to Europe for its material consumption, superior standard of living, and freedom and tolerance — and then chose not merely to remain in enclaves but to romanticize all the old pathologies that they had fled from in the first place. It is almost as if the killers in Amsterdam said, "I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please let me stay here to destroy what I want."
Turkey's proposed entry into the EU has become some weird sort of Swiftian satire on the crazy relationship between Europe and Islam. Ponder the contradictions of it all. Privately most Europeans realize that opening its borders without restraint to Turkey's millions will alter the nature of the EU, both by welcoming in a radically different citizenry, largely outside the borders of Europe, whose population will make it the largest and poorest country in the Union — and the most antithetical to Western liberalism. Yet Europe is also trapped in its own utopian race/class/gender rhetoric. It cannot openly question the wisdom of making the "other" coequal to itself, since one does not by any abstract standard judge, much less censure, customs, religions, or values.
So it stews and simmers. Not to be outdone, some in Turkey dare the Europeans, almost in contempt, to reject their bid. Thus rather than evolving Attaturk's modernist reforms to match the values of Europe, the country is instead driven into the midst of an Islamic reactionary revival in which its rural east far more resembles Iraq or Iran than Brussels. So the world wonders whether Europe is sticking a toe into the Islamic Middle East or the latter its entire leg into Europe.
Everyone gets in on the charade. The savvy Greeks discovered that they didn't want to be tarred with the usual anti-Ottoman obstructionism and so are keeping very quiet about their historic worries (legitimate after a near 400-year occupation) as a front-line state. And why not, when EU money pouring into Turkey might jumpstart the Eastern Mediterranean economy and lead to joint Greek-Turkish deals? With the future role of NATO and the 6th Fleet undetermined, is it not better to have the Turkish military inside the tent than for poor Greece to have a neighbor's ships and planes routinely violating Hellenic air and sea sovereignty — while it waits for the Danish air force or the French army to provide a little deterrence in the Aegean or Cyprus?
Of course, we are amused by the spectacle. Privately, most Americans grasp that with a Germany and France reeling from unassimilated Muslim populations, a rising Islamic-inspired and globally embarrassing anti-Semitism, and economic stagnation, it is foolhardy to create 70 million Turkish Europeans by fiat. Welcoming in Turkey will make the EU so diverse, large, and unwieldy as to make it — to paraphrase Voltaire — neither European nor a Union. Surely Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia will wish to get in on the largess. Were they not, after all, also part of the historical Roman mare nostrum, and did they not also enjoy long ties with France and Italy?
So, to our discredit I suppose, we are enjoying schadenfreud after our recent transatlantic acrimonies: Europe preached a postmodern gospel of multiculturalism and the end of oppressive Western values, and now it is time to put its money (and security) where its mouth is — or suffer the usual hypocrisy that all limousine liberals face. The United States has its own recent grievances with the Turks — its eleventh-hour refusal to allow American troops to come down from the north explains why the now red-hot Sunni Triangle never saw much war during the three-week fighting. Recently a minister of a country that gave rise to the notion of 20th-century genocide slurred the United States for resembling Hitler, who in fact was an erstwhile Turkish near ally. Still, our realists muse, how convenient that Europe may carry the water in bringing Turkey inside the Western orbit and prevent it from joining the radical Islamic fringe. Knowing it is in our interest (and not necessarily in the Europeans') and will cost them lots and us nothing, we "on principle" remonstrate for the need to show Western empathy to Turkish aspirations.
But gut-check time is coming for Europe, with its own rising unassimilated immigrant populations, rogue mosques entirely bent on destroying the West, declining birth rate and rising entitlements, the Turkish question, and a foreign policy whose appeasement of Arab regimes won it only a brief lull and plenty of humiliation. The radical Muslim world of the madrassas hates the United States because it is liberal and powerful; but it utterly despises Europe because it is even more liberal and far weaker, earning the continent not fear, but contempt.
The real question is whether there is any Demosthenes left in Europe, who will soberly but firmly demand assimilation and integration of all immigrants, an end to mosque radicalism, even-handedness in the Middle East, no more subsidies to terrorists like Hamas, a toughness rather than opportunist profiteering with the likes of Assad and the Iranian theocracy — and make it clear that states that aid and abet terrorists in Europe due so to their great peril.
So will the old Ents awaken, or will they slumber on, muttering nonsense to themselves, lost in past grandeur and utterly clueless about the dangers on their borders?
Stay tuned — it is one of the most fascinating sagas of our time.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Color Us Orange
Ukrainians fight for liberty.
What can one say about the Orange Revolution, so successful in its initial aim of forcing another presidential vote in Ukraine, except — "hurrah"?
This is an awe-inspiring victory of nonviolent action. There have been a dozen days of protests, with hundreds of thousands of protesters and not one violent incident. Amazing. Credit goes to the cheated opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who has, for instance, insisted on a policy of sobriety at the rallies (NBA, take note), and to the demonstrators themselves, who have behaved in a way explicitly designed to forge a better politics in Ukraine. As Vaclav Havel, among others, has observed, the nature of the revolution says much about what will be the nature of the resulting government. In that regard, the conduct of Yushchenko' supporters bodes well for the future. They have wedded Ukrainian patriotism to a democratic politics, putting to rest the old smear (a favorite of the KGB) that any gathering of Ukrainians nationalists is a proto-fascist rally. They have a chance to create a country that has an entirely valid claim to join the institutions of the West.
If forcing a new vote, scheduled for December 26, is a victory in a major battle, the broader war still goes on. Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma wants immunity for his crimes and those of his cronies, who made privatization a synonym for high-level looting. The electoral commission that certified the fraud has yet to be dismissed and the elections laws that facilitated the fraud still need reform. Kuchma wants to pressure Yushchenko into accepting a reduction in the powers of the presidency he is almost certainly going to win. Yushchenko and his supporters should continue the fight on these important points.
For the U.S., there has been a nice alignment of foreign-policy idealism and realism in this crisis. Spreading freedom is a good in its own right, and in this case, accorded with the cold geopolitical imperative of keeping Ukraine and Russia separate, thus securing Europe from Russian ambitions. Without Ukraine (and other former imperial appendages) Russia is a country of roughly 140 million, a major power, but hardly a colossus.
“There have been a dozen days
of protests, with hundreds of thousands
of protesters and not one violent
incident. Amazing.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin obviously badly mishandled the crisis, creating a self-inflicted defeat for his creeping authoritarianism. He thought he could still treat Ukraine as a colony (meddling there as he has in Moldova, Georgia, and Belarus), and sided with history's losers in recent weeks. The ham-fisted way Putin and the Kremlin put in play the idea of Ukrainian separatism only created more sympathy for Yushchenko among Ukraine's security services, which have no interest in participating in the break-up of their country. Meanwhile, Putin's eagerness to rubberstamp the Ukrainian election served to highlight the bogusness of his own "53 percent" — yes, those are sneer quotes — margin in 2000.
All of this is an alarm bell about Putin's intentions. But there is a limit to our direct influence over Russia. If both the Clinton and Bush administrations have tilted too far toward the Kremlin, it is also the case that Russia's true democrats have so far shown few marketable political skills (although one hopes the last few weeks will provide them an invigorating jolt). The administration should be firm with Putin, but not aggressive. Its conduct during the Ukraine crisis is a kind of model. It was absolutely clear about its principles and its policy, but was careful not to deliberately humiliate Putin. Yuschenko's prudence is worth noting here. He has gone out of his way to say that he wants good relations with the West and with Russia.
A note on the EU: It was a great help to the U.S. in this crisis, thanks influence of the former captive nations Lithuania and Poland, but it would be a mistake to read too much into that (as Robert Kagan did in Sunday's Washington Post). This does not mean the dawning of a new era of U.S.-EU cooperation, based on entirely coterminous interests and values. During the Cold War, after all, the U.S. occasionally had common interests in specific crises even with the Soviet Union. The influence of the EU over the last few weeks is a signal of its growing power, and it is still dominated by a Franco-German axis that wants its new continent-wide creation to counterbalance American power. The haze of good feeling over the Orange Revolution shouldn't obscure that important geopolitical fact.
But make no mistake, good feeling should rule the day. We say to the democratic demonstrators of Ukraine: We are proud of what you have wrought, and in recent weeks, everyone around the world who truly prizes liberty has been Orange.
Ukrainians fight for liberty.
What can one say about the Orange Revolution, so successful in its initial aim of forcing another presidential vote in Ukraine, except — "hurrah"?
This is an awe-inspiring victory of nonviolent action. There have been a dozen days of protests, with hundreds of thousands of protesters and not one violent incident. Amazing. Credit goes to the cheated opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who has, for instance, insisted on a policy of sobriety at the rallies (NBA, take note), and to the demonstrators themselves, who have behaved in a way explicitly designed to forge a better politics in Ukraine. As Vaclav Havel, among others, has observed, the nature of the revolution says much about what will be the nature of the resulting government. In that regard, the conduct of Yushchenko' supporters bodes well for the future. They have wedded Ukrainian patriotism to a democratic politics, putting to rest the old smear (a favorite of the KGB) that any gathering of Ukrainians nationalists is a proto-fascist rally. They have a chance to create a country that has an entirely valid claim to join the institutions of the West.
If forcing a new vote, scheduled for December 26, is a victory in a major battle, the broader war still goes on. Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma wants immunity for his crimes and those of his cronies, who made privatization a synonym for high-level looting. The electoral commission that certified the fraud has yet to be dismissed and the elections laws that facilitated the fraud still need reform. Kuchma wants to pressure Yushchenko into accepting a reduction in the powers of the presidency he is almost certainly going to win. Yushchenko and his supporters should continue the fight on these important points.
For the U.S., there has been a nice alignment of foreign-policy idealism and realism in this crisis. Spreading freedom is a good in its own right, and in this case, accorded with the cold geopolitical imperative of keeping Ukraine and Russia separate, thus securing Europe from Russian ambitions. Without Ukraine (and other former imperial appendages) Russia is a country of roughly 140 million, a major power, but hardly a colossus.
“There have been a dozen days
of protests, with hundreds of thousands
of protesters and not one violent
incident. Amazing.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin obviously badly mishandled the crisis, creating a self-inflicted defeat for his creeping authoritarianism. He thought he could still treat Ukraine as a colony (meddling there as he has in Moldova, Georgia, and Belarus), and sided with history's losers in recent weeks. The ham-fisted way Putin and the Kremlin put in play the idea of Ukrainian separatism only created more sympathy for Yushchenko among Ukraine's security services, which have no interest in participating in the break-up of their country. Meanwhile, Putin's eagerness to rubberstamp the Ukrainian election served to highlight the bogusness of his own "53 percent" — yes, those are sneer quotes — margin in 2000.
All of this is an alarm bell about Putin's intentions. But there is a limit to our direct influence over Russia. If both the Clinton and Bush administrations have tilted too far toward the Kremlin, it is also the case that Russia's true democrats have so far shown few marketable political skills (although one hopes the last few weeks will provide them an invigorating jolt). The administration should be firm with Putin, but not aggressive. Its conduct during the Ukraine crisis is a kind of model. It was absolutely clear about its principles and its policy, but was careful not to deliberately humiliate Putin. Yuschenko's prudence is worth noting here. He has gone out of his way to say that he wants good relations with the West and with Russia.
A note on the EU: It was a great help to the U.S. in this crisis, thanks influence of the former captive nations Lithuania and Poland, but it would be a mistake to read too much into that (as Robert Kagan did in Sunday's Washington Post). This does not mean the dawning of a new era of U.S.-EU cooperation, based on entirely coterminous interests and values. During the Cold War, after all, the U.S. occasionally had common interests in specific crises even with the Soviet Union. The influence of the EU over the last few weeks is a signal of its growing power, and it is still dominated by a Franco-German axis that wants its new continent-wide creation to counterbalance American power. The haze of good feeling over the Orange Revolution shouldn't obscure that important geopolitical fact.
But make no mistake, good feeling should rule the day. We say to the democratic demonstrators of Ukraine: We are proud of what you have wrought, and in recent weeks, everyone around the world who truly prizes liberty has been Orange.
Embraceable E.U.
By Robert Kagan
In the unfolding drama of Ukraine, the Bush administration and the European Union have committed a flagrant act of transatlantic cooperation. If Ukrainians eventually vote in a free and fair election and thereby thwart the reemergence of an authoritarian Russian empire along the borders of democratic Europe, it will be one of those rare hinges of history where looming disaster was turned into glittering opportunity. And it would not have happened without the joint efforts of the United States and the European Union using -- dare one say it? -- "soft power" to compel Vladimir Putin and his would-be quislings to retreat from their botched coup d'etat.
Maybe this is the real future for transatlantic cooperation. In recent years thinkers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic have earnestly tried to restore the old Cold War strategic partnership, albeit aimed at a different set of enemies. We have squeezed European troops into Afghanistan, where they are growing weary, and tried to squeeze them into Iraq, where they do not want to go. "Out of area or out of business" was the Clinton administration's mantra for NATO in the 1990s. But consider the possibility that this old formula won't work for the new "postmodern" entity Europe has become. Except in matters of trade, Europe is not a global player in the traditional geopolitical sense of projecting power and influence far beyond its borders. Few Europeans even aspire to such a role. This means Americans should bury once and for all absurd worries about the rise of a hostile E.U. superpower -- Europe will be neither hostile nor a superpower in the traditional sense. It also means Americans should stop looking to Europe to shoulder much of the global strategic burden beyond its environs.
But the crisis in Ukraine shows what an enormous and vital role Europe can play, and is playing, in shaping the politics and economies of nations and peoples along its ever-expanding border. This is no small matter. On the contrary, it is a task of monumental strategic importance for the United States as well as for Europeans. By accident of history and geography, the European paradise is surrounded on three sides by an unruly tangle of potentially catastrophic problems, from North Africa to Turkey and the Balkans to the increasingly contested borders of the former Soviet Union. This is an arc of crisis if ever there was one, and especially now with Putin's play for a restoration of the old Russian empire. In confronting these dangers, Europe brings a unique kind of power, not coercive military power but the power of attraction. The European Union has become a gigantic political and economic magnet whose greatest strength is the attractive pull it exerts on its neighbors. Europe's foreign policy today is enlargement; its most potent foreign policy tool is what the E.U.'s Robert Cooper calls "the lure of membership."
Cooper describes the E.U. as a liberal, democratic, voluntary empire expanding continuously outward as others seek to join it. This expanding Europe absorbs problems and conflicts rather than directly confronting them in the American style. The lure of membership, he notes, has helped stabilize the Balkans and influenced the political course of Turkey. The Turkish people's desire to join the European Union has led them to modify Turkey's legal code and expand rights to conform to European standards. The expansive and attractive force of the European Union has also played its part in the Ukraine crisis. Had Europe not expanded to include Poland and other Eastern European countries, it would have neither the interest nor the influence in Ukraine's domestic affairs that it does.
Cooper, unlike many Europeans, acknowledges the vital role of U.S. power in providing the strategic environment within which Europe's soft expansionism can proceed. Employing America's "military muscle" to "clear the way for a political solution involving a kind of imperial penumbra around the European Union," he suggests, may be the way to deal with "the area of the greatest threat in the Middle East." In the Balkans, Europe's magnetic attraction would have been feeble had Slobodan Milosevic not been defeated militarily. And undoubtedly American power provides a useful backdrop in the current diplomatic confrontation over Ukraine.
Cooper is not alone in his expansive European vision. Among leading European policymakers, Germany's Joschka Fischer seems the most dedicated to using enlargement and the E.U.'s attractive power for strategic purposes. Before Sept. 11, 2001, Fischer was suspicious of bringing Turkey into the European Union and inheriting such nightmarish neighbors as Iraq and Syria. But now he regards Turkey's membership as a strategic necessity. "To modernize an Islamic country based on the shared values of Europe would be almost a D-Day for Europe in the war against terror," he argues, because it "would provide real proof that Islam and modernity, Islam and the rule of law . . . [and] this great cultural tradition and human rights are after all compatible." This "would be the greatest positive challenge for these totalitarian and terrorist ideas."
Americans could hardly disagree. Unfortunately, Cooper's and Fischer's vision of an expanding E.U. empire is not shared across Europe. It finds most support in Tony Blair's Britain, as well as in Poland and other Eastern European countries, and among the current German leadership (though not among the German population). It has least support in France, where even the recent inclusion of Poland and other nations to the east is regarded as something of a disaster for French foreign policy and where the admission of Turkey is considered anathema. Modern, secular, forward-looking France still insists that Europe must remain, in the words of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a Christian civilization. In this and other respects, France is part of what one might call "red-state Europe," a pre-modern bastion on a postmodern continent.
Americans are generally skeptical of or indifferent to the European Union. They shouldn't be. The United States has an important interest in the direction the E.U. takes in coming years. It may actually matter, for instance, whether Britain votes to support the E.U. constitution, as Blair wants. A Britain with real influence inside the E.U. is more likely to steer it in the liberal imperial direction that the E.U.'s Cooper, a former Blair adviser, proposes. That could prove a far more important strategic boon to the United States than a few thousand European troops in Iraq.
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
By Robert Kagan
In the unfolding drama of Ukraine, the Bush administration and the European Union have committed a flagrant act of transatlantic cooperation. If Ukrainians eventually vote in a free and fair election and thereby thwart the reemergence of an authoritarian Russian empire along the borders of democratic Europe, it will be one of those rare hinges of history where looming disaster was turned into glittering opportunity. And it would not have happened without the joint efforts of the United States and the European Union using -- dare one say it? -- "soft power" to compel Vladimir Putin and his would-be quislings to retreat from their botched coup d'etat.
Maybe this is the real future for transatlantic cooperation. In recent years thinkers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic have earnestly tried to restore the old Cold War strategic partnership, albeit aimed at a different set of enemies. We have squeezed European troops into Afghanistan, where they are growing weary, and tried to squeeze them into Iraq, where they do not want to go. "Out of area or out of business" was the Clinton administration's mantra for NATO in the 1990s. But consider the possibility that this old formula won't work for the new "postmodern" entity Europe has become. Except in matters of trade, Europe is not a global player in the traditional geopolitical sense of projecting power and influence far beyond its borders. Few Europeans even aspire to such a role. This means Americans should bury once and for all absurd worries about the rise of a hostile E.U. superpower -- Europe will be neither hostile nor a superpower in the traditional sense. It also means Americans should stop looking to Europe to shoulder much of the global strategic burden beyond its environs.
But the crisis in Ukraine shows what an enormous and vital role Europe can play, and is playing, in shaping the politics and economies of nations and peoples along its ever-expanding border. This is no small matter. On the contrary, it is a task of monumental strategic importance for the United States as well as for Europeans. By accident of history and geography, the European paradise is surrounded on three sides by an unruly tangle of potentially catastrophic problems, from North Africa to Turkey and the Balkans to the increasingly contested borders of the former Soviet Union. This is an arc of crisis if ever there was one, and especially now with Putin's play for a restoration of the old Russian empire. In confronting these dangers, Europe brings a unique kind of power, not coercive military power but the power of attraction. The European Union has become a gigantic political and economic magnet whose greatest strength is the attractive pull it exerts on its neighbors. Europe's foreign policy today is enlargement; its most potent foreign policy tool is what the E.U.'s Robert Cooper calls "the lure of membership."
Cooper describes the E.U. as a liberal, democratic, voluntary empire expanding continuously outward as others seek to join it. This expanding Europe absorbs problems and conflicts rather than directly confronting them in the American style. The lure of membership, he notes, has helped stabilize the Balkans and influenced the political course of Turkey. The Turkish people's desire to join the European Union has led them to modify Turkey's legal code and expand rights to conform to European standards. The expansive and attractive force of the European Union has also played its part in the Ukraine crisis. Had Europe not expanded to include Poland and other Eastern European countries, it would have neither the interest nor the influence in Ukraine's domestic affairs that it does.
Cooper, unlike many Europeans, acknowledges the vital role of U.S. power in providing the strategic environment within which Europe's soft expansionism can proceed. Employing America's "military muscle" to "clear the way for a political solution involving a kind of imperial penumbra around the European Union," he suggests, may be the way to deal with "the area of the greatest threat in the Middle East." In the Balkans, Europe's magnetic attraction would have been feeble had Slobodan Milosevic not been defeated militarily. And undoubtedly American power provides a useful backdrop in the current diplomatic confrontation over Ukraine.
Cooper is not alone in his expansive European vision. Among leading European policymakers, Germany's Joschka Fischer seems the most dedicated to using enlargement and the E.U.'s attractive power for strategic purposes. Before Sept. 11, 2001, Fischer was suspicious of bringing Turkey into the European Union and inheriting such nightmarish neighbors as Iraq and Syria. But now he regards Turkey's membership as a strategic necessity. "To modernize an Islamic country based on the shared values of Europe would be almost a D-Day for Europe in the war against terror," he argues, because it "would provide real proof that Islam and modernity, Islam and the rule of law . . . [and] this great cultural tradition and human rights are after all compatible." This "would be the greatest positive challenge for these totalitarian and terrorist ideas."
Americans could hardly disagree. Unfortunately, Cooper's and Fischer's vision of an expanding E.U. empire is not shared across Europe. It finds most support in Tony Blair's Britain, as well as in Poland and other Eastern European countries, and among the current German leadership (though not among the German population). It has least support in France, where even the recent inclusion of Poland and other nations to the east is regarded as something of a disaster for French foreign policy and where the admission of Turkey is considered anathema. Modern, secular, forward-looking France still insists that Europe must remain, in the words of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a Christian civilization. In this and other respects, France is part of what one might call "red-state Europe," a pre-modern bastion on a postmodern continent.
Americans are generally skeptical of or indifferent to the European Union. They shouldn't be. The United States has an important interest in the direction the E.U. takes in coming years. It may actually matter, for instance, whether Britain votes to support the E.U. constitution, as Blair wants. A Britain with real influence inside the E.U. is more likely to steer it in the liberal imperial direction that the E.U.'s Cooper, a former Blair adviser, proposes. That could prove a far more important strategic boon to the United States than a few thousand European troops in Iraq.
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
Images of Fighting in Fallujah Compel at Different Levels
By Thomas E. Ricks
Two photo-rich summaries of the battle of Fallujah -- one produced by the U.S. military in Iraq, the other by an anonymous American blogger -- highlight how the terrain in such counterinsurgency fights can be as much psychological as physical.
Both presentations have gained increasing Internet audiences recently and attempt to convey, among other things, the suffering imposed on Iraqi civilians in Fallujah.
That is where similarities end, however. The military's presentation depicts the fight for Fallujah as a liberation of a city from the insurgents. The Web log posts far more graphic wire service and other photos, and tends to point the finger of blame for civilian suffering at the military.
Judging by the reaction of several soldiers and military experts, a comparison of the two presentations shows, among other things, how the might of the U.S. military can be matched by a single blogger working part time.
Public affairs officers at the top U.S military headquarters in Baghdad produced the 59-page Microsoft PowerPoint presentation titled, "Telling the Fallujah Story to the World." It is the first such effort distributed by the headquarters, said one of its creators, Army Maj. Scott R. Bleichwehl.
It comes as the U.S. military is trying to step up "strategic communications" in Iraq, after being heavily criticized, internally and by outside experts, for failing to get its message to the Iraqi people and the world in general.
The military briefing, an electronic slide show that has rocketed around the Internet over the last week, can be read at Soldiers for the Truth (www.sftt.org) and other Web sites, frequently with comments such as, "Why is the DOD not getting this information to the media?" Another version of the briefing was released Friday by the Pentagon and is reachable at www.dod.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20041203-1721.html.
Charles Krohn, a former Army public affairs official who worked with the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, said he suspects the presentation is directed at American audiences. He said the United States has failed to get out its message in Iraq, and has not even appeared to want to do so. "How we can invade a country and eject its government without letting the people who live there know what we were doing and why is a mystery to me," he said.
The U.S. military briefing focuses on violations of the law of war by the insurgents. It states that of 100 mosques in Fallujah, 60 were used to hide weapons or as defensive positions. A map shows nine locations of bomb-making factories and comments that roadside bombs are "the insurgents' principal instrument of attack on innocent civilians." It also shows a van whose side panels have been "removed and filled with PE-4," a kind of plastic explosive.
Another slide shows a photograph of bloody handprints on a wall, and blood on walls, presumably evidence of torture or murder. There also is other evidence of hostage-taking presented.
"The anti-Iraqi forces took hostage the city of Fallujah and projected terrorism across all of Iraq," it states.
The presentation ends with photos of local Iraqis "securely and calmly" receiving food supplies from Iraqi security forces.
"Overall, we've gotten positive feedback on the packaging, because it contains a lot of information and provides visuals," Bleichwehl said. An Arabic version of the presentation has been released, he said.
A competing vision of the Fallujah operation is presented by the blog titled "Iraq in Pictures" (www.fallujahinpictures.com), which Krohn says is far more similar to what Iraqis, and the Arab world, see on their satellite news channels.
The site has become one of the hotter blogs on the Internet, receiving thousands of visits a day.
In the version of the Web site that was up last week, the first image on the site showed a malnourished Iraqi baby, wide-eyed and screaming in pain, under the sarcastic headline, "another grateful Iraqi civilian."
Many of the photographs are far more graphic than are usually carried in newspapers, showing headless bodies, bloodied troops, wounded women, and bandaged babies missing limbs. One added recently shows a U.S. soldier with part of his face blown away by a bomb.
The blog also amounts to a critique of the U.S. news media. Another section of the site, under the headline, "Also not in today's news," shows a photograph of a Marine propped against a concrete wall, grimacing as he is treated for a shrapnel wound in his upper right leg.
The blogger, who in an e-mail responding to a query identified himself as "Hugh Upton," but when questioned said that was a pseudonym, explained on his Web site that one of its purposes is to show the ugliness of what he believes is really going on in Iraq. "The world sees these images and we do not," he states. "That scares the hell out of me, as it should you."
He insists that he is sympathetic to U.S. troops. "I am angry with our citizens, not our military," he writes. "If this war is unjust they are among the victims of it."
In an interview, the blogger said he started the site after the presidential election, working on it in his spare time, because he believes "there is an emotional truth to the war, and it's not being shown" in the U.S. media. Since starting it, he said, the site has had more than 800,000 hits. He also has received more than 2,000 e-mail messages, about 10 percent of them hate mail, he said.
He declined to disclose his real name or many personal details. He said he is a 26-year-old writer in New York who works for an Internet company. He originally is from the District, he said.
After being interviewed, he added more information to his Web site, insisting: "This is not an antiwar site. You can visit this site and appreciate what it's doing and still support the war. . . . We need the whole story." He added that those wanting to see "the other side" of the story should "Go to Fox News, CNN, USA Today, WSJ, the Washington Post, or any of the other outlets that has these pictures and doesn't show them."
Retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who has advised the Pentagon on how to better fight in Iraq, said he thinks the military PowerPoint presentation does "a good job of trying to get the real story out."
But several other military experts said they found the blog more compelling.
"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. "IO is about influence, and this piece tries to influence people by depicting the human cost of war."
An Army soldier who fought in the Sunni Triangle last year and maintains a blog himself agreed. "The winner has to be the blog," he said. "There's something all too visceral about seeing the pictures of the dead and wounded, on both sides, which overwhelms static displays of weaponry" in the military presentation.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraqi affairs who has a blog called "Informed Comment" (www.juancole.com), came to a similar but broader conclusion: "What the two presentations show us is that the U.S. military is full of brave and skilled warriors who can defeat their foes, but is still no good at counterinsurgency operations, and is wretched at winning hearts and minds."
Staff writer Mark Stencel contributed to this report.
By Thomas E. Ricks
Two photo-rich summaries of the battle of Fallujah -- one produced by the U.S. military in Iraq, the other by an anonymous American blogger -- highlight how the terrain in such counterinsurgency fights can be as much psychological as physical.
Both presentations have gained increasing Internet audiences recently and attempt to convey, among other things, the suffering imposed on Iraqi civilians in Fallujah.
That is where similarities end, however. The military's presentation depicts the fight for Fallujah as a liberation of a city from the insurgents. The Web log posts far more graphic wire service and other photos, and tends to point the finger of blame for civilian suffering at the military.
Judging by the reaction of several soldiers and military experts, a comparison of the two presentations shows, among other things, how the might of the U.S. military can be matched by a single blogger working part time.
Public affairs officers at the top U.S military headquarters in Baghdad produced the 59-page Microsoft PowerPoint presentation titled, "Telling the Fallujah Story to the World." It is the first such effort distributed by the headquarters, said one of its creators, Army Maj. Scott R. Bleichwehl.
It comes as the U.S. military is trying to step up "strategic communications" in Iraq, after being heavily criticized, internally and by outside experts, for failing to get its message to the Iraqi people and the world in general.
The military briefing, an electronic slide show that has rocketed around the Internet over the last week, can be read at Soldiers for the Truth (www.sftt.org) and other Web sites, frequently with comments such as, "Why is the DOD not getting this information to the media?" Another version of the briefing was released Friday by the Pentagon and is reachable at www.dod.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20041203-1721.html.
Charles Krohn, a former Army public affairs official who worked with the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, said he suspects the presentation is directed at American audiences. He said the United States has failed to get out its message in Iraq, and has not even appeared to want to do so. "How we can invade a country and eject its government without letting the people who live there know what we were doing and why is a mystery to me," he said.
The U.S. military briefing focuses on violations of the law of war by the insurgents. It states that of 100 mosques in Fallujah, 60 were used to hide weapons or as defensive positions. A map shows nine locations of bomb-making factories and comments that roadside bombs are "the insurgents' principal instrument of attack on innocent civilians." It also shows a van whose side panels have been "removed and filled with PE-4," a kind of plastic explosive.
Another slide shows a photograph of bloody handprints on a wall, and blood on walls, presumably evidence of torture or murder. There also is other evidence of hostage-taking presented.
"The anti-Iraqi forces took hostage the city of Fallujah and projected terrorism across all of Iraq," it states.
The presentation ends with photos of local Iraqis "securely and calmly" receiving food supplies from Iraqi security forces.
"Overall, we've gotten positive feedback on the packaging, because it contains a lot of information and provides visuals," Bleichwehl said. An Arabic version of the presentation has been released, he said.
A competing vision of the Fallujah operation is presented by the blog titled "Iraq in Pictures" (www.fallujahinpictures.com), which Krohn says is far more similar to what Iraqis, and the Arab world, see on their satellite news channels.
The site has become one of the hotter blogs on the Internet, receiving thousands of visits a day.
In the version of the Web site that was up last week, the first image on the site showed a malnourished Iraqi baby, wide-eyed and screaming in pain, under the sarcastic headline, "another grateful Iraqi civilian."
Many of the photographs are far more graphic than are usually carried in newspapers, showing headless bodies, bloodied troops, wounded women, and bandaged babies missing limbs. One added recently shows a U.S. soldier with part of his face blown away by a bomb.
The blog also amounts to a critique of the U.S. news media. Another section of the site, under the headline, "Also not in today's news," shows a photograph of a Marine propped against a concrete wall, grimacing as he is treated for a shrapnel wound in his upper right leg.
The blogger, who in an e-mail responding to a query identified himself as "Hugh Upton," but when questioned said that was a pseudonym, explained on his Web site that one of its purposes is to show the ugliness of what he believes is really going on in Iraq. "The world sees these images and we do not," he states. "That scares the hell out of me, as it should you."
He insists that he is sympathetic to U.S. troops. "I am angry with our citizens, not our military," he writes. "If this war is unjust they are among the victims of it."
In an interview, the blogger said he started the site after the presidential election, working on it in his spare time, because he believes "there is an emotional truth to the war, and it's not being shown" in the U.S. media. Since starting it, he said, the site has had more than 800,000 hits. He also has received more than 2,000 e-mail messages, about 10 percent of them hate mail, he said.
He declined to disclose his real name or many personal details. He said he is a 26-year-old writer in New York who works for an Internet company. He originally is from the District, he said.
After being interviewed, he added more information to his Web site, insisting: "This is not an antiwar site. You can visit this site and appreciate what it's doing and still support the war. . . . We need the whole story." He added that those wanting to see "the other side" of the story should "Go to Fox News, CNN, USA Today, WSJ, the Washington Post, or any of the other outlets that has these pictures and doesn't show them."
Retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who has advised the Pentagon on how to better fight in Iraq, said he thinks the military PowerPoint presentation does "a good job of trying to get the real story out."
But several other military experts said they found the blog more compelling.
"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. "IO is about influence, and this piece tries to influence people by depicting the human cost of war."
An Army soldier who fought in the Sunni Triangle last year and maintains a blog himself agreed. "The winner has to be the blog," he said. "There's something all too visceral about seeing the pictures of the dead and wounded, on both sides, which overwhelms static displays of weaponry" in the military presentation.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraqi affairs who has a blog called "Informed Comment" (www.juancole.com), came to a similar but broader conclusion: "What the two presentations show us is that the U.S. military is full of brave and skilled warriors who can defeat their foes, but is still no good at counterinsurgency operations, and is wretched at winning hearts and minds."
Staff writer Mark Stencel contributed to this report.
Why Only in Ukraine?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 3, 2004; Page A27
There has been general back-patting in the West about renewed European-American comity during the Ukrainian crisis. Both the United States and Europe have been doing exactly the right thing: rejecting a fraudulent election run by a corrupt oligarchy and insisting on a new vote. This gives us an opportunity to ostentatiously come together with Europe. Considering our recent disagreements, that is a good thing. But before we get carried away with this era of good feeling, let us note the reason for this sudden unity.
This is about Russia first, democracy only second. This Ukrainian episode is a brief, almost nostalgic throwback to the Cold War. Russia is trying to hang on to the last remnants of its empire. The West wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe's march to the east.
You almost have to feel sorry for the Russians. (I stress almost.) In the course of one generation, they have lost one of the greatest empires in
history: first their Third World dependencies, stretching at one point from Nicaragua to Angola to Indochina; then their East European outer empire, now swallowed by NATO and the European Union; and then their inner empire of Soviet republics.
The Muslim "-stans" are slowly drifting out of reach. The Baltic republics are already in NATO. The Transcaucasian region is unstable and bloody. All Russia has left are the Slavic republics. Belarus is effectively a Russian colony. But the great prize is Ukraine, for reasons of strategy (Crimea), history (Kiev is considered by Russians to be the cradle of Slavic
civilization) and identity (the eastern part is Russian Orthodox and Russian-speaking).
Vladimir Putin, who would not know a free election if he saw one, was not about to let an election get in the way of retaining sway over Ukraine. The problem is that his bluff was called, and he does not have the power to do to Ukraine what his Soviet predecessors did to Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.
Hence the clash of civilizations over Ukraine and, to some extent, within
Ukraine: the authoritarian East vs. the democratic West.
But this struggle is less about democracy than about geopolitics. Europe makes clear once again that it is a full-throated supporter of democracy -- in its neighborhood. Just as it is a forthright opponent of ethnic cleansing in its neighborhood (Yugoslavia) even as it lifts not a finger elsewhere (Rwanda, southern Sudan, now Darfur).
That is why this comity between the United States and Europe is only temporary. The Europeans essentially believe, to paraphrase Stalin, in democracy on one continent. As for democracy elsewhere, they really could not care less.
They pretend, however, that this opposition to America's odd belief in spreading democracy universally is based not on indifference but on superior wisdom -- the world-weary sagacity of a more ancient and experienced civilization that knows that one cannot bring liberty to barbarians.
Meaning, Arabs. And Muslims. And Iraqis.
Hence the Bush-Blair doctrine of bringing some modicum of democracy to the Middle East by establishing one country as a beachhead is ridiculed as naive and messianic. And not just by Europeans but by their "realist" allies here in the United States.
Thus Zbigniew Brzezinski, a fierce opponent of the Bush administration's democracy project in Iraq, writes passionately about the importance of democracy in Ukraine and how, by example, it might have a domino effect, spreading democracy to neighboring Russia. Yet when George Bush and Tony Blair make a similar argument about the salutary effect of establishing a democracy in the Middle East -- and we might indeed have the first truly free election in the Middle East within two months if we persevere -- "realist" critics dismiss it as terminally naive.
If you had said 20 years ago that Ukraine would today be on the threshold of joining a democratic Europe, you, too, would have been called a hopeless utopian. Yes, Iraq has no democratic tradition and deep ethnic divisions.
But Ukrainian democracy is all of 13 years old, much of it dominated by a corrupt, authoritarian regime with close ties to an even more corrupt and authoritarian Russia. And with a civilizational split right down the middle, Ukraine has profound, and potentially catastrophic, divisions.
So let us all join hands in praise of the young people braving the cold in the streets of Kiev. But then tell me why there is such silence about the Iraqis, young and old, braving bullets and bombs, organizing electorate lists and negotiating coalitions even as we speak. Where is it written: Only in Ukraine?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 3, 2004; Page A27
There has been general back-patting in the West about renewed European-American comity during the Ukrainian crisis. Both the United States and Europe have been doing exactly the right thing: rejecting a fraudulent election run by a corrupt oligarchy and insisting on a new vote. This gives us an opportunity to ostentatiously come together with Europe. Considering our recent disagreements, that is a good thing. But before we get carried away with this era of good feeling, let us note the reason for this sudden unity.
This is about Russia first, democracy only second. This Ukrainian episode is a brief, almost nostalgic throwback to the Cold War. Russia is trying to hang on to the last remnants of its empire. The West wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe's march to the east.
You almost have to feel sorry for the Russians. (I stress almost.) In the course of one generation, they have lost one of the greatest empires in
history: first their Third World dependencies, stretching at one point from Nicaragua to Angola to Indochina; then their East European outer empire, now swallowed by NATO and the European Union; and then their inner empire of Soviet republics.
The Muslim "-stans" are slowly drifting out of reach. The Baltic republics are already in NATO. The Transcaucasian region is unstable and bloody. All Russia has left are the Slavic republics. Belarus is effectively a Russian colony. But the great prize is Ukraine, for reasons of strategy (Crimea), history (Kiev is considered by Russians to be the cradle of Slavic
civilization) and identity (the eastern part is Russian Orthodox and Russian-speaking).
Vladimir Putin, who would not know a free election if he saw one, was not about to let an election get in the way of retaining sway over Ukraine. The problem is that his bluff was called, and he does not have the power to do to Ukraine what his Soviet predecessors did to Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.
Hence the clash of civilizations over Ukraine and, to some extent, within
Ukraine: the authoritarian East vs. the democratic West.
But this struggle is less about democracy than about geopolitics. Europe makes clear once again that it is a full-throated supporter of democracy -- in its neighborhood. Just as it is a forthright opponent of ethnic cleansing in its neighborhood (Yugoslavia) even as it lifts not a finger elsewhere (Rwanda, southern Sudan, now Darfur).
That is why this comity between the United States and Europe is only temporary. The Europeans essentially believe, to paraphrase Stalin, in democracy on one continent. As for democracy elsewhere, they really could not care less.
They pretend, however, that this opposition to America's odd belief in spreading democracy universally is based not on indifference but on superior wisdom -- the world-weary sagacity of a more ancient and experienced civilization that knows that one cannot bring liberty to barbarians.
Meaning, Arabs. And Muslims. And Iraqis.
Hence the Bush-Blair doctrine of bringing some modicum of democracy to the Middle East by establishing one country as a beachhead is ridiculed as naive and messianic. And not just by Europeans but by their "realist" allies here in the United States.
Thus Zbigniew Brzezinski, a fierce opponent of the Bush administration's democracy project in Iraq, writes passionately about the importance of democracy in Ukraine and how, by example, it might have a domino effect, spreading democracy to neighboring Russia. Yet when George Bush and Tony Blair make a similar argument about the salutary effect of establishing a democracy in the Middle East -- and we might indeed have the first truly free election in the Middle East within two months if we persevere -- "realist" critics dismiss it as terminally naive.
If you had said 20 years ago that Ukraine would today be on the threshold of joining a democratic Europe, you, too, would have been called a hopeless utopian. Yes, Iraq has no democratic tradition and deep ethnic divisions.
But Ukrainian democracy is all of 13 years old, much of it dominated by a corrupt, authoritarian regime with close ties to an even more corrupt and authoritarian Russia. And with a civilizational split right down the middle, Ukraine has profound, and potentially catastrophic, divisions.
So let us all join hands in praise of the young people braving the cold in the streets of Kiev. But then tell me why there is such silence about the Iraqis, young and old, braving bullets and bombs, organizing electorate lists and negotiating coalitions even as we speak. Where is it written: Only in Ukraine?
