CONNECT: A polarisation of opinion between Europe and the US over waging war against Iraq is leading to a questioning of old alliances and could lead to a fragmentation of what has been known as the West.
In 1985, historian John Roberts wrote a best-selling book and presented a 13-part BBC television series. Both the book and the series were titled The Triumph of the West. The title is self-explanatory and the central themes questioned the nature of the dominance which western civilisation came to exercise over "virtually the entire globe", how that dominance came about and how it expressed itself in the mid-1980s. A mere 17 years later, those questions have assumed a turbo-charged piquancy.
"The West" is acknowledged to have been born and cradled in Europe. North and South America, Australia and South Africa became its overseas centres and strongholds. For Roberts, the USSR, founded on Marxist principles, was also, since Marx was a European, an offshoot of "The West". Even such "Far East" countries as Japan and South Korea, adopting Western economics, clothes and popular culture could, ironically, depending on definitions, be classed as "Western".
Still, regardless of arguments over which countries or regions constitute "The West", its central pillars have indisputably been Europe and the US. Now, however, Europe and the US appear more ideologically distant than ever. More precisely, political leaderships in both regions - with the egregious exception of Tony Blair's Britain - appear more apart than ever. It's as if "The West", a term suggestive of an homogenous whole despite its disparate elements, now requires the divisions routinely applied to "The East".
In "The West", we still hear about the "Far", "Middle" and "Near" Easts. Perhaps in these Easts, people similarly distinguish between regions of "The West" but probably not. However, the gap which has opened between Europe and the United States suggests that the US might be reasonably seen as the "Far West" or the "West West". Certainly, in terms of military power, the US is in a totally different category from Europe and, put bluntly, can, at least up to a point, do as it likes militarily in the world.
If it is desperate to attack Iraq, it will do so. European countries with empires - and indeed non-European countries with empires - behaved just as belligerently in the past. The American empire, it seems, is a simple case of history repeating.
When they have the money, technology and opportunity required to extend their influence in the world, empires usually pounce. There is nothing uniquely American about such an impulse, though all empires prepare their populations in broadly similar but locally different ways.
When Britain controlled the world's greatest empire, millions fervently believed they were simply bringing "civilisation" to "savages". Fair enough. Some imperial administrators, teachers and medical workers, for instance, did inculcate gentler standards of behaviour towards the weak, an ideal (albeit compromised) of a more objective justice and some of the benefits of science and technology. They brought other things too, of course, such as disease, genocide and new forms of exploitation.
Even many of our Irish missionaries, though the full story of their behaviour remains to be told, thoroughly believed they were bringing salvation to otherwise damned heathens.
There is, it appears, despite local and temporal differences, always a moral aspect to interference in other countries. In the past year, the bombing of Afghanistan has been linked to freeing the Afghan people, liberating women and installing decent government. Certainly, such results have accrued to some Afghanis but they are clearly not the full picture.
None the less, such "moral" outcomes are disproportionately stressed to United States citizens. As British imperial propaganda and Irish missionary propaganda were foisted upon home populations, so too is US propaganda now. The veteran BBC reporter Charles Wheeler recently produced an intriguing package for Newsnight. Attempting to measure opposition to the Bush administration's gung-ho attitudes, he spoke to a cross-section of the US public.
Among Wheeler's interviewees were three baseball star wannabes. Young men hoping to hit the big-time in professional sport, they genuinely couldn't fathom why some people in other countries resented the US. Their vision, fostered by the US media, was that their country was unquestionably a force for good - and only good - in the world. Despite their living in the most technologically advanced society ever, they seemed as naive as 1950s Irish schoolkids raised to revere, unquestioningly, our missionaries.
In fairness, the baseball star wannabes were open to hearing other views. One of them admitted that until the attacks on America neither he nor his friends took much interest in current affairs or world politics. Life was good and it revolved around baseball. Since the attacks however, the aspiring star and his friends have tried to learn more. "Some of the guys are even watching CNN now," he said earnestly. Even though you had to admire his honesty and openness, you had to despair.
When watching CNN becomes synonymous with developing a serious and critical view of world politics . . . well, what can you say? It isn't the fault of the baseball star wannabe that CNN presents itself as an objective window on the world. But really, mainstream US television is responsible for provincialising US citizens to a degree that makes many among them too ready to accept their leaders' "moral" justifications for opportunist military adventuring.
It is axiomatic in the United States that, in time of war, citizens support their president. That is simple patriotism and it binds a nation that has always been conscious that it is composed of disparate peoples. During the slaughter in Vietnam, however, when television cameras relayed regular snippets of horror into US living rooms, many citizens turned against the White House and the slaughter was eventually stopped. The carnage had cost 58,000 American lives and 2,200,000 Vietnamese ones - a ratio of almost 40 to 1.
Now, however, more than ever, the impression is that the US has been hijacked from its citizens. The gap between the Bush administration and ordinary working Americans - as indeed the gap between Blair's government and ordinary working British people, a majority of whom are against an attack on Iraq - needs to be stressed. Though it can be classed as preposterous to say so, Bush, in fact, can be reasonably viewed as more anti-American than the whingeing, pinko "lefties" caricatured by more belligerent commentators.
Certainly, the US president seems set against the very idea of seeing all sides of the argument. In the most powerful democracy in the world, that is surely anti-democratic.
Now, as he and his henchmen whip countries into line behind his latest "war", the poor of the world will consider it yet another example of the "Treachery of the West". It's ironic, or maybe it's simply because of hard-learned lessons, but Germany, Europe's economic engine, where around 80 per cent of the population is against an attack on Iraq, is now the 21st century's leading voice of pacifism.
Anyway, as Europe and the US split starkly, that "Triumph of the West" loses meaning. People of European background continue to dominate in key areas of US society but 21st century Europeans and 21st century Americans are being led further apart. The splintering may or may not be permanent but it is ominous and presages an old world fragmenting in the ironic name of globalisation.