Perception and Power

Perception and Power
Steven Menashi :: 12/22/2004

John Lewis Gaddis suggests that the Bush administration needs to shift from "flaunting U.S. power to explaining its purpose," as presidents did during the Cold War. He sees common ground between America and the rest of the West:

The terrorists of September 11 exposed vulnerabilities in the defenses of all states. Unless these are repaired, and unless those who would exploit them are killed, captured, or dissuaded, the survival of the state system itself could be at stake. Here lies common ground, for unless that multinational interest is secured, few other national interests -- convergent or divergent -- can be. Securing the state will not be possible without the option of pre-emptive military action to prevent terrorism from taking root. It is a failure of both language and vision that the United States has yet to make its case for pre-emption in these terms.

But this is a distinctly American perspective on the lesson of 9/11. As Francis Fukuyama notes, America and Europe don't perceive the same threats:

Americans tend to believe that September 11 represents only the beginning of a new age of nihilistic, mass-casualty terrorism, while Europeans tend to think of it as a single lucky shot, of a kind familiar to them through their experience with the IRA or the Baader-Meinhoff gang. In campaigning for the presidency, John Kerry said he looked forward to the day when terrorism would be a nuisance rather than a mortal threat. Many Europeans believe it is nothing more than a nuisance now -- even though, given the large Muslim populations in countries like France and Holland, they are more threatened by Islamist radicalism than are Americans.

Says Fukuyama: "One cannot simply will into existence a set of common interests on a scale sufficient to replace the once-overwhelming Soviet threat." Tod Lindberg, meanwhile, is more optimistic. To him, Europe and America represent two poles of opinion within a common Atlanticist community, one marked by agreement on fundamental principles. There's no doubt that Europe and America agree on norms governing relations with each other (for all their tensions, who can imagine war breaking out between France and America?) and even share a vision of a better world, about which both Americans and Europeans speak of universal human rights, freedom, equality, and so on. "So the difference is not over ends but over how to arrive at them." But if arriving at these ends involves determining which threats are most important, and whether preemption is necessary to address them, Europe and America might find themselves moving in different directions, even if inadvertently.