A recent trip overseas that took me to the US and Europe, my first in a few years, stunned me in the magnitude of change I noticed. The world is certainly a different place to that of a few years ago, and profoundly different since September 11.
The US impressed me as a society that is hurting deeply as a result of September 11. They are hiding their hurt by profound displays of patriotism that, to an Australian, seem grossly “over the top”. Yet it was common in the past to drive through residential areas and see the Stars and Stripes flag on a few homes. Today, it is hard to drive past homes without few flags on every house - a simple yet powerful symbol and message to fellow Americans and to the world.
A visit to Ground Zero is a powerful, humbling and sobering experience. To think that the US will ever remain docile, subservient or accepting of such brutality is to misunderstand the strength and philosophy that the US represents. The message seems to me to be that anyone who challenges the existence of the US, its citizens or its sovereignty, ought to beware of the backlash. The US will fight back hard. Certainly, enemies of the US can hurt the US but they will never defeat it – it’s just too big, powerful and capable.
On the other side of the Atlantic, a different process has transpired. One only needs to look at the press, view or listen to the electronic media, or read the hate-filled graffiti to recognise that for all intents and purposes, Europe has capitulated to the Arab world - maybe not yet at the establishment level (although the media has already succumbed), but certainly at the constituency level. But there is really no great surprise in this. Europe has over the last fifty years appeased, for largely economic reasons, the Arab states that have been seen as suppliers, customers, and more recently, financiers of European business. The commercial incentive coupled with Europe’s historical tendency to anti-Semitism has made it and the Arab world comfortable bed-fellows – especially while Israel is consistently being targeted by Muslim militants. The demographic record of ethnicity in Europe shows a profound growth in almost every European country of those who classify themselves as Muslim. Projections of this growth over the next 50 imply a very different Europe to that of a few years ago.
The other profound impression of Europe has been the overwhelming disdain and sometimes hatred of the US. Rightly or wrongly, Europeans seem to resent the US its philosophy (which they are busy emulating), its power, its clarity of purpose and its global footprint. Nothing that the US does seems, in the eyes of most Europeans, appropriate. Reports in Europe of the US and US affairs blatantly focus on the negatives: those issues that accentuate on US divisiveness and any activity that questions the authority or morality of the US establishment. Denigration of the US appears to be politically correct in Europe.
Thus the dilemma: the US’s expectation to forge a sustainable alliance with Europe against Iraq is as unrealistic as it is noble. The ultimate scenario I suspect will be the US “going it alone” or not going it at all.
The former will see Iraq target Israel to elicit a response from them that will unite the Arab world against the US and dissolve any coalition against it. After all, which Arab state could support the US while it supports Israel in a war against a fellow Arab state?
The latter will only defer the inevitable, except that the inevitable will come with the loss of many additional lives.
Although this may seem farfetched at the moment, it appear to me that the world is polarizing between the US and friends of the US, largely Christian states, and Muslim and pro-Muslim states - a truly fearful thought.