Why Do We Treat Europe So?

In looking at articles regarding Secretary Rice's visit to Europe this week and regarding our growing frustration with other countries' detrimental behavior to American interests, I ask myself, "Why do we treat Europe so? Why so well? Why so tolerant?"

The first analogy that popped into my head is the parent with a wayward child. Obviously, I thought of the US as the parent. It can't be husband and wife because no spouse would put up with such disregard for the interests of the other spouse without seeking divorce. But Europe is not a petulant child. It is far older . . . .

And then I understood a better analogy. The US is the successful college graduate with the wayward father. The father is forever having affairs with the sexy vision of the day. The father had some success in his younger years -- maybe athletics -- and has been coasting ever since. This seems a rather apt analogy. Western Europe (that is Rumsfield's Old Europe) has a special place in many Americans' hearts because Western Europe is where our families came from in just the past century or so.

We feel connected -- frustrated, but connected. We can't envision never claiming that parent, but when the wayward parent is self-destructive once again, the US shakes its head and reaches out to bail out the parent once again. We reach out in a way that we would never do for even a sibling, like Australia for instance. Luckily, Australia is more like the sibling with whom we can commiserate. Bush says to Howard, "Can you believe Dad?" Howard says, "No! You remember when he . . . . Ah, those were the days."

Our other siblings are only half-brothers and -sisters. Mexico looks more to Spain than we do. Canada looks to Europe but with a greater interest in France. These siblings don't share our understanding of Dad's wayward behavior.

Europe is forgiven so much ridiculousness because it is the Old Country. Look at our stories that we retell, whether it be personal stories about Great, Great Grandpa coming through Ellis Island in 1893 or it be fictional stories that we all share of Vito Corlione doing the same as a child and growing up on the streets of New York. The story of the Chinese coming through Angel Island, California of the same era gets little play. The Chinese don't get much historic room for error. The Indians and Pakistanis get more attention because they are like a foster sibling that was never really happy in the shared parent's home; they weren't there by birth or adoption but some governmental construct. Yet the Indians and Pakistanis are more acceptable to us than the Chinese or the Middle Eastern Muslim.

What does this analogy allow us to do? It has some predictive ability with strict limits. I have a new neighbor who is an immigrant from Egypt. He came here for many reasons, but he likes the opportunity and the religious freedom to be a Christian. He grew up Christian and a minority. Now he is in the US and feels freedom. He can be a Christian in a predominantly Christian country.

With this analogy, might we predict that it is not Arabic or Arab culture that is likely to maintain conflict with us. It is the lack of any connection. Not in religion, culture, language, government. Yet the elections in Iraq start to build the first connection: government. We have a slight connection of English as a Second Language in Iraq, but not among the Iraqi "street." The bigger roadblocks are religion and culture. Yet with government becoming more akin to us, there becomes more room for understanding and better means of forgiving differences, like we forgive perceived slights by European countries everyday. We understand the Europeans and share a history with them. In Iraq, we are beginning to see that we have something to share.

Democratic-republican government creates this opportunity to share. Share ideas. Share procedural practices. Share institutional habits, like elections and limited terms of office. Iraq is yet a newly introduced cousin who we don't fully understand, but we are beginning to feel the natural kinship.

Will we ever be as forgiving of Iraqi variations from our expectations? I doubt it will be as forgiving as we are of Europe. Some bonds of stress and strain may be developing as happens to strangers placed in a combat unit then placed on the battlefield. These bonds are very personal and very strong, but they are hard to appreciate outside the unit. We may not be as forgiving but we will have strong American voices speaking up for their Iraqi brothers-in-arms.

This will make the Iraqi relationship special in a wholly different way than we have with Europe. Even though many Americans have fallen in Europe in the 20th century, we have few non-Anglophone, battle-hardened, European brothers-in-arms. Mostly this is due to German and Soviet occupations making cooperating on the battlefield a limited opportunity.

Europe we treat well despite the personal slights. Iraq we will likely treat well because of being brothers-in-arms but never like Europe.

Any predictions for future developments with Pakistan, India, and Australia versus China? Based on the above comments, I would guess the Pakistani, Indian, and Australian relationships with the US could be good in the years to come, particularly if Pakistan can ever put together a reasonably law-abiding parliamentary system.

China? Heh. Where's the common history, government, culture, language, or religion?

Free trade will help build relationships between persons and companies and will increase English as a Second Language in China, but the easiest way to stablize the relationship is to create some commonality of the above characteristics. As ridiculous as it sounds, a change in the Chinese is government is easiest to accomplish. I doubt it will happen soon or peacefully. The Chinese Communists have learned from the errors of the Soviet Five Year Plans to decentralize economics so they are less likely to see a change of government because of economic failures.

We are turning into a four part world: the US-led democracies (North America, EU, South America, South Africa, pockets of Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, and South Korea), the Sino-Russian block, the confused Middle East (be a republic or a caliphate?), and the schizophrenic (sub-Saharan Africa, Cuba, Venezula, Indonesia).

The Democracies will rely on their independent mind-sets not to be led by the US, but their common interests in defining peace as the lack of both actual and threatened war will make this less like herding cats and more like a town meeting. Conflicting ideas arise and are debated, but the silent majority wield the real power in their push toward less conflict.

The confused Middle East is unpredictable about where it will go as a whole, but history suggests that seeded republics tend to dominate a region's long-term goals once tried. History also suggests that the higher the concentration of republics, the more successful each will be. We have reached that concentration in the Middle East, but look at where some form of elections have been held in that region in the last several years with some form of success: Israel (obviously), Iraq, Palestine, Morocco, Nigeria (biggest problem of the bunch), Afghanistan, Ukraine, Caucasian Georgia. Look who is discussing the matter in some form (Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, another Emirate that I can't recall).

The schizophrenic will never disappear. But we can hope that they don't forever remain rooted in the same states, like Cuba has. Can the death of a leader like Castro or Chavez lead to rapid changes like in Palestine? These will likely remain the most sensitive areas for old strong-man politics. These least stable and predictable.

The last and most dangerous is the Sino-Russian block. It is not homogenous by any measure. It shares no culture, language, or religion. The structure of their governments have been similar in the past. This has some residual affinities of the brother-in-arms mentality.

Why do we treat Europe so well? Common history, government, culture, shared languages or shared language histories, shared religious descent. We can predict their behavior the best with the least risk of error in an unpredictable world. We have a vested interest in keeping that stability. Why would we not treat them well? It is a great, inviting example of how friends and allies are treated in the Democracies. That affects India, Pakistan, Iraq, etc. in how they wanted to be treated in the future.