A year and a half ago, I returned to the States after more than six years as a foreign correspondent. And like many U.S. expats who come home, I’ve been wondering why my native land seems so out of step with the other industrialized democracies at the dawn of the 21st century. The differences with Europe, in particular, have come into sharp relief since George W. Bush took office in January–from policy issues like defense and the environment to social issues like gay rights and the death penalty. Taken together, the “values gap” threatens to undermine the Atlantic alliance and, one day, America’s claim to global leadership.
Why is it surfacing now? The reasons go beyond any one American leader, to the burgeoning post-cold-war order. Bush’s penchant for unilateralism hasn’t helped. But Europeans have long been horrified by America’s embrace of gun rights, our incidence of violent crime, our infant mortality among the poor, while Americans have criticized European dependence on the welfare state–and U.S. taxpayer dollars to equip a military that supplies their security.
The changing landscape of the post-cold-war world has both made the rifts more apparent and the Europeans less likely to ignore them. When Europe faced the Soviet Union, far more pressing issues than U.S. domestic politics worried the Old World. Today, the common military threat has faded. On the continent, says Dominique Moisi of the French International Relations Institute, “there’s a sense of ‘Who do you think you are?’ " Crucially, just as the need for American protection waned, Europe’s own sense of self grew. “We have developed a European identity, a European social agenda–we are inventing a European model,” says Moisi. As a result, while European criticism of America used to center on “what America did,” he says–the Vietnam War, deploying theater missiles in Germany–“now it’s based on what America is.”
In a globalized world, all politics are global. As Karsten Voigt, coordinator for German-American relations at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, puts it, the global reach of the media, the Internet and NGOs means every domestic issue has the potential to become a source of international conflict. U.S. high-school shootings rivet millions of Europeans to their TV sets. Human-rights organizations and thousands of demonstrators bear down on U.S. embassies with each controversial execution in America. Bush’s unilateralism seems to ignore how much the world has changed since Ronald Reagan, and even Bush’s father, was president.
Last week Renate Wohlwend, vice president of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, came to America on a fact-finding mission to study U.S. support for the death penalty. Her job is to report back to the council and make a recommendation about how America’s executions, considered a human-rights abuse, should affect its observer status at the council. (Every Western European nation has abolished the death penalty and all 43 states of the Council of Europe have a legal or de facto moratorium.) Wohlwend says she will not recommend that the U.S. observer status be revoked but, she says, “We want to warn the States. We could come back and recommend withdrawing their status.”
Voigt predicts that in coming years, disagreements over values will become intractable. While nations can compromise on interests, it’s much harder to compromise on values. In other words, all this discord will eventually have political ramifications–beyond the relatively toothless Council of Europe, which has little power over foreign policy. Increasingly, Europe will find it difficult (and unpopular) to be allied with a nation whose values it doesn’t share–not to mention to be led by it.
The one hopeful note is that we Americans are an eternally questioning people. We are reassessing some policies: Illinois has instituted a moratorium on executions until it can be certain innocent people are not being put to death; the Supreme Court is reviewing the constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded, and the Vermont State Senate says it will not ratify the lower House’s ban on gay marriages. In time, we may move closer to Europe.
But we had better hurry. While new threats, from a nationalist Russia to the simmering Balkans to Third World flash points–not to mention U.S. economic might–may force the Europeans to toe our line, however they feel about our values, our moral authority is already eroding. Last week Wohlwend said, “We hope America will follow our example, [decree] a moratorium and eventually abolish the death penalty.” The United States following Europe’s lead? That’s a switch. But for Americans who prize our position as a global leader, there’s an even more ominous possibility. Even without posing an economic or military challenge, united Europe will eventually present a moral rival to American leadership. That alone would give the world something it never had during the face-off with the Soviet Union: an appealing alternative.
