Well, of course not. It’s just that–if you’re a European–there are times when it seems like that, and last week was one of those times. Not only was Ashby acquitted; Walter LaGrand, a German citizen convicted of a 1982 murder, was executed in Arizona, and Washington announced that it intended to slap steep tariffs on a range of European imports in retaliation for tardiness in resolving a dispute over the import of bananas into the European Union. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer claimed that the United States broke international law in ignoring an appeal from the International Court of Justice for a stay of LaGrand’s execution, while Sir Leon Brittan, the EU’s trade commissioner, told the BBC that the trade dispute arose “purely for American domestic political reasons.” (Few bananas are grown in the United States, but U.S. firms that ship them from Central America have long been exasperated by European rules favoring imports from the old French and British colonies of the Caribbean.) The press and TV on both sides of the Atlantic reached for the easy cliche and hailed the first shots in a trade war. In Germany, the liberal newspaper Die Zeit saw, if anything, a bigger danger. “The foundation of common values of the transatlantic community,” it editorialized, “is showing cracks.”
It’s the easiest thing in the world to parse the three cases and conclude that the Europeans are overreacting. To many dispassionate observers, Ashby’s acquittal was no surprise; as the gondola was not marked on the maps he used for his flight, it is hard to argue that he should bear the blame for a tragic accident. The EU has been dragging its feet on reform of its banana regime for years; there’s no good reason that American fruit companies should pay a price for European colonial guilt. LaGrand (and his brother, who was executed on Feb. 24) had been properly tried and convicted. Germany does not have a death penalty, and German Justice Minister Herta Dubler-Gmelin called the executions “barbaric.” But the Arizona courts do not practice kangaroo justice.
Yet plainly, something bigger than three awkward cases is afoot. In the current edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, no fewer than three major articles criticize Washington for the arrogance with which it conducts itself in international affairs. In a must-read piece, Harvard’s Samuel P. Huntington demolishes the common American claim that the United States is–and is seen to be–no more than a benevolent hegemon. The truth of the matter, argues Huntington, is that as Washington throws its weight around, bombing here, sanctioning there, certifying and decertifying “acceptable” standards on human rights and the war against drugs, it is viewed as a “rogue superpower.”
Perceived American arrogance plays particularly badly in Europe, for understandable reasons. The countries of the EU are just about as prosperous as the United States (with prosperity far more equally distributed), just as democratic, just as committed to those timeless values of liberty and justice that some Americans seem to think jumped fully formed from the brow of Thomas Jefferson. Over four decades, Europeans have built the EU into the world’s greatest example of peaceful international co-operation, a single economy with (effectively) a single currency. Of course they had American help in World War II and after it; every sentient European knows that. But if Washington asks that payment for past largesse be made in the currency of present deference, its bill will go unpaid.
What’s needed to move beyond the present bad temper? A strategy with three elements:
The North Atlantic is now bracketed by rich democracies that form blocs of roughly equal economic strength. They have the resources–physical and moral–to lead the world, as a partnership, in the next century. All it takes is a dash of patience, a spoonful of humility and an ounce or two of leadership. Let’s find them.
