Despite recent rhetoric to the contrary, we should never lose sight of what the US did for the countries of old Europe, including Ireland and the peace process, writes Mark Dooley
No one can seriously dispute the negative effect that the US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has had on the thinking of the Bush administration after of September 11th.
His appointment to one of the most powerful positions in world affairs was probably more of a sop to the conservative Reaganites, who still control the Republican Party, than an act of political wisdom. His recent comments on "old" and "new" Europe have compounded the belief that Rumsfeld is utterly devoid of diplomatic savvy.
Ill-considered and ill-timed as they may have been, they nevertheless serve to highlight something important that we in Ireland cannot afford to dismiss lightly, especially at a time when the nature of our relationship with the US is again under the spotlight.
While many in old Europe (headed by Germany and France) continue to respond to the current international crisis with heavy doses of self-serving indignation, the new NATO allies of eastern Europe are fully backing the move towards military intervention.
There are a number of reasons why eastern Europe is well-disposed towards the US and Britain over Iraq, not least because it has much to gain economically. But there is a deeper reason which has to do primarily with its history and troubled political legacy.
While old Europe continues to resent America's dominance in international affairs, new Europe is quite content to live with Pax Americana. This is so because it has first-hand experience of what life can be like when such peace does not prevail.
Ever since Vietnam, we in old Europe have tended to interpret any US military action as heavy-handed imperial aggression. There is no doubt that America lost itself a good deal of moral credibility under Johnson, Nixon and Reagan.
Reprehensible as their international tactics sometimes were, we should not, however, blind ourselves to the fact that America's so-called "interference" has had, more often than not, enormous positive consequences.
Despite the rhetoric to the contrary in recent weeks, we should never lose sight of what the US did for the countries of old Europe, including Ireland and the peace process. Like all nations, the US has much in its past that it ought to be ashamed of, but to argue that because of these past sins it is devoid of all moral authority is simply a nonsense.
The example of the new Europeans in this latest conflict has much to teach us about such geopolitical realities and how we might sensibly react to them. When governed by Soviet-backed autocrats, such people were perceived to hate America.
Many of the commentators and activists who are today lining up to denounce the latest bout of "American aggression" are the same people who used to attribute the cause of the Cold War to US imperialism.The ordinary citizens of the former Soviet bloc, it now turns out, are very grateful to America for having fought and won the Cold War.
That confrontation was, for them at least, just as important as that undertaken against Hitler and had the US not risen to the challenge, the liberation of millions in 1989 would surely not have been possible.
This is not to suggest that new Europe is uncritical of the US. It does imply, however, that it is easy for those who churn out anti-American rhetoric on a daily basis and those who forever beat the mantra of "traditional neutrality", to do so when both their freedom of speech and their neutrality are protected by America and its allies.
Just as I suspect that the large majority of ordinary people in new Europe will not forget how we once denounced US involvement in the Cold War (believing that anything - even communism - was better for them than exposure to the American way), so too the people of the Middle East may one day remind us how we once thought it would be better for them to remain subject to severely oppressive governance rather than enjoy the privileges that we in old Europe complacently take for granted.
The starving and the hungry of the Middle East don't much care, I further suspect, if the real incentive for American intervention in their region is oil, so long as their standard of living and life expectancy improves in the process.
Before supporting those who proclaim that there is no moral justification for military force even with a UN mandate, we should first take note of the astonished reactions of those in new Europe when they hear of such proclamations. We might come to realise that those whom we are supposedly defending against so-called "American aggression" might not actually desire our protection because it may signal their only hope of someday enjoying lives comparable to our own.
Where the people of the Middle East now stand, those of new Europe once stood. There is much to be learned from their example and experience.
• Dr Mark Dooley is a visiting research fellow in philosophy at University College Dublin. He is author of The Politics of Exodus and Questioning God.