Stardate 20020824.1715

(Captain's log): I wrote a few days ago discussing arguments being made in many quarters to the effect that a side effect of current American foreign policy is to alienate the Europeans. Brent Scowcroft, for instance, argued that this was fatal and that we couldn't win this war without them. In response I argued that I hadn't actually seen any legitimate explanation of just why we actually needed enthusiastic support, or indeed any support at all, from anyone in order to fight this war in the short term.

In reaction to that, both online and via email, several people have made essentially the same argument: that what we choose to do now will be remembered by the Europeans, that it will affect our relationship with them in the negative, and that in the long run we'll come to regret it when we discover we need them, sometime in the future, for one reason or another, because they'll then take the opportunity to screw us in retaliation, or variations on that theme. Jay Mazumdar was one such, online. I responded to him that I felt that in the long run most international relations was based on utilitarian motives and enlightened self interest, and that when it really mattered, the Europeans wouldn't do such things because it would hurt them as badly as it hurt us.

Having said that, I'd like to examine this entire argument on a deeper level. When you take the paint job off it and examine its structure, it turns out to be the "root causes" argument again. We have free will, they don't. We think, they react. We make decisions, they are a preprogrammed bag of responses to our decisions. We bear ethical responsibility for what we decide to do; and we also bear ethical responsibility for what they do because it is wholly determined by what we decide to do.

Thus if anything bad happens it is our fault and the onus is entirely on us to change to correct it.

I didn't buy that argument when it was applied to Islamic Fundamentalists flying jets into our buildings, and I don't buy it now with respect to our relationship with the Europeans.

What's notably missing from every version of this argument when I've seen it is any mention of the fact that we as Americans also will remember and react to what they do, and that their behavior will also affect that long term relationship. (The reason, of course, is that the "root cause" of their behavior towards us is something previous that we did. So it's still all our fault.)

But if this argument makes any sense at all, it only makes sense if it's applied symmetrically. A relationship is a two way street, and accommodation and compromise has to be made by both sides. But somehow no one ever seems to ask Europe to make any for us.

If one party uses the existence of the relationship as a way of manipulating the other, then it's an abusive one. When a spouse says "If you loved me, you'd do this" then that marriage is in deep trouble. If a friend uses a similar argument, then he's not a friend I want to have.

Why isn't anyone lecturing the French about how their continual denunciations of us will make Americans angry and could potentially cool our relationship with them? Or the Germans, or anyone else on the Continent? The only nation in Europe who actually seems to understand this is the UK, and Tony Blair has been taking political heat for doing things which are unpopular at home in order to keep the UK's relationship with us strong. The rest of them have been totally ignoring the value of their long term relationship with us, and sacrificing it for short term political gain internally or for other equally sordid reasons.

If they don't value our long term relationship, why should we? Why are we being asked to behave in a way that they themselves do not?

I would contend that a large part of the reason that we in the US now have a "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" attitude towards Europe is because of nearly a year of virtually unbroken condemnations of us for almost everything we do or consider doing, and attempts to blame us for nearly everything, and attempts to prevent us from accomplishing anything.

So why, exactly, is it that this argument isn't being applied equally? It's because what we do matters. We're powerful; and the decisions we make will affect others. No-one is lecturing the French about this because the French are weak and what they say and do doesn't actually matter. No one is lecturing the French about this because no one actually gives a shit what they think. We're on the receiving end of this because it is hoped that it might influence us.

In other words, it's just one more in a long series of attempts to convince the SuperPower to sacrifice its own self interest for the benefit of others. By the cynical asymmetric application of the argument, those making it show either that they don't fully understand what they're saying, or that they don't really believe it. The bottom line of this argument is that the US should act in certain ways because the Europeans want it, irrespective of what we want.

They need to convince us that the damage being done is both intolerable and wholly our fault because they're trying to use it to manipulate us. If we agree that the damage is intolerable then we'll agree that it has to be fixed, and if we agree that it's entirely our fault then we'll be willing to make all the concessions required.

The only way that an asymmetric application of this argument would make sense, in