Link to Full Essay:

(Above:Vassily Kandisnsky, "Around the Circle")


Below are portions of the above essay, I suggest everyone read them carefully.

“What kind of world order do we want?” That
question, posed by Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka
Fischer, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq in
March, has been on the minds of many Europeans
these days. That by itself shows the differences that separate
Europeans and Americans today, for it is safe to say
the great majority of Americans have not pondered the
question of “world order” since the war.
They will have to. The great transatlantic debate over
the Iraq war was rooted in profound disagreement over
“world order.” Yes, Americans and Europeans differed on
the specific question of what to do about Iraq. They
debated whether Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat
and whether war was the right answer. A solid majority of
Americans answered yes to both questions; even larger
majorities of Europeans answered no. But these disagreements
reflected more than simple tactical and analytical
assessments of the situation in Iraq. As France’s foreign
minister, Dominique de Villepin, put it, the struggle was

not so much about Iraq as it was a conflict between “two
visions of the world.”The differences in Iraq were not
only about policy. They were also about first principles.
Opinion polls taken before, during, and after the war have
shown two peoples living on separate strategic and ideological
planets.More than 80% percent of Americans believe
war may achieve justice; less than half of Europeans
believe that a war—any war—can ever be just.Americans
and Europeans disagree about the role of international
law and international institutions, and about the nebulous
and abstract yet powerful question of international
legitimacy. These different worldviews predate the Iraq
war and the presidency of George W. Bush, although both
the war and the Bush administration’s conduct of international
affairs have deepened and perhaps hardened this
transatlantic rift into an enduring feature of the international
landscape."

"Today a darker possibility looms. A great philosophical
schism has opened within the West, and instead of mutual
indifference, mutual antagonism threatens to debilitate
both sides of the transatlantic community. Coming at a
time in history when new dangers and crises are proliferating
rapidly, this schism could have serious consequences.
For Europe and the United States to decouple
strategically has been bad enough. But what if the schism
over “world order” infects the rest of what we have known
as the liberal West? Will the West still be the West?"

"Americans will find that they cannot ignore this problem.
The struggle to define and obtain international legitimacy
in this new era may prove to be among the critical
contests of our time, in some ways as significant in
determining the future of the international system and
America’s place in it as any purely material measure of
power and influence."

"It would be tempting for Americans, therefore, to dismiss
the whole issue of legitimacy as a ruse and a fraud. During
the  presidential campaign, George W. Bush’s top foreign
policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, derided the belief,
which she attributed to the Clinton administration, “that
the support of many states—or even better, of institutions
like the United Nations—is essential to the legitimate
exercise of power.”
Americans have always cared what the rest of the
world thinks of them, or at least what the liberal world
thinks. Their reputation for insularity and indifference is
undeserved. Americans were told to care by the founding
generation—in their Declaration of Independence,Americans
declared the importance of having a “decent respect
for the opinion of mankind,” by which they meant Europe.
Ever since, Americans have been forced to care what
the liberal world thinks by their unique national ideology.
For unlike the nationalisms of Europe, American nationalism
is not rooted in blood and soil; it is a universalist
ideology that binds Americans together. Americans for
much of the past three centuries have considered themselves
the vanguard of a worldwide liberal revolution.
Their foreign policy from the beginning has not been only
about defending and promoting their material national
interests. “We fight not just for ourselves but for all
mankind,” Benjamin Franklin declared at America’s War
of Independence, and whether or not that has always been
true, most Americans have always wanted to believe it
was true. There can be no clear dividing line between the
domestic and the foreign, therefore, and no clear distinction
between what the democratic world thinks about
America and what Americans think about themselves.
Every profound foreign policy debate in America’s history,
from the time when Jefferson squared off against Hamilton,
has ultimately been a debate about the nation’s
identity and has posed for Americans the primal question:
“Who are we?” Because Americans do care, the steady
denial of international legitimacy by fellow democracies
will over time become debilitating and perhaps even
paralyzing.

And what, then, is the United States to do? Should
Americans, in the interest of transatlantic harmony, try to
alter their perceptions of global threats to match that of
their European friends? To do so would be irresponsible.
Not only American security but the security of the liberal
democratic world depends today, as it has depended for
the past half century, on American power. Kofi Annan
may convince himself that the relative peace and stability
the world has known since World War II was the product
of the UN Security Council and the UN Charter. But even
Europeans, in moments of clarity, know that is not true.
“The U.S. is the only truly global player,” Joschka Fischer
has declared, “and I must warn against underestimating
its importance for peace and stability in the world. And
beware, too, of underestimating what the U.S. means for
our own security.”

Herein lies the tragedy. To address today’s global
threats Americans will need the legitimacy that Europe
can provide. But Europeans may well fail to provide it. In
their effort to constrain the superpower, they will lose
sight of the mounting dangers in the world, dangers far
greater than those posed by the United States. In their
nervousness about unipolarity, they may forget the dangers
of a multipolarity in which nonliberal and nondemocratic
powers come to outweigh Europe in the global
competition. In their passion for international legal order,
they may lose sight of the other liberal principles that have
made postmodern Europe what it is today. Europeans
thus may succeed in debilitating the United States, but
since they have no intention of supplementing American
power with their own, the net result will be a diminution
of the total amount of power that the liberal democratic
world can bring to bear in its defense—and in defense of
liberalism itself.
Right now many Europeans are betting that the risks
from the “axis of evil,” from terrorism and tyrants, will
never be as great as the risk of an American Leviathan
unbound. Perhaps it is in the nature of a postmodern
Europe to make such a judgment. But now may be the
time for the wisest heads in Europe, including those living
in the birthplace of Pascal, to begin asking what will result
if that wager proves wrong.