by Tony Judt
the Pew Research Center. On the whole, the central Europeans
share the goals of the post-9/11 fight against terrorism but not
U.S. unilateralism. To the proposition “the U.S. take into considera-
tion others” in the fight against terrorism, between 60 and 70 percent
of central Europeans answered negatively (a much higher figure
than among E.U. member-states). To the proposition “the world
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would be a more dangerous place if another country matched America
militarily”, old Europe (France, 64 percent; Germany, 63 percent)
answers positively while Czechs (53 percent) and Poles (46 percent)
seem less worried.30 The view that “when differences occur with
America it is because of (my country’s) different values” (considered
a key indicator for the assessment of anti-Americanism) is shared only
by a third of the French and German respondents but by 62 percent
Czechs.
In short, there is a striking difference in the response to the over-
whelming primacy of American power on the international scene
between Western and East-Central European governments and intellec-
tual elites. But there seems to be a widespread transeuropean consensus
among the peoples, thereby casting serious doubts on the depth of the
old Europe versus new Europe divide vis-à-vis the United States.
Globalization and America’s Social
and Economic Model
The second dimension of American power that the French (and a
number of other Europeans) are uncomfortable with is economic.
Globalization and the promotion of the free market have been central
to the perceptions about America, at least since the Reagan presidency.
The American liberal model with high growth rates, high degrees of
inequality combined with low rates of unemployment and low levels
of social protection is seen as a major challenge to the continental
“European social model” characterized by the welfare state, high levels
of public spending, and high rates of unemployment. This is, in
Michel Albert’s terms, the opposition between the “Anglo-Saxon
model” and the capitalisme rhénan31 shared since World War II by
West European Social Democrats as well as Christian Democrats.
After the Reagan–Thatcher challenge to it in the 1980s, came the
Clinton–Blair version under the banner of globalization and the
“Third Way” as the only plausible adaptation to its challenges.
Meanwhile, the continental welfare state model is in crisis, nowhere
more so than in Germany and France, economically the “sick men of
Europe.” Thus, in the uneven debate between (French-led) “territo-
rialists” and (American-led) “globalists,” the post-communist Eastern
Europe tended, rather predictably, to support the latter. There is a
strong correlation in Western Europe (and France in particular)
between critics of marketization/deregulation in the 1990s, not to
mention antiglobalization protesters, and the resentment of America’s
economic power and influence.
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America’s Best Friends in Europe
103
In contrast, for the Central Europeans, the American free market
model seemed doubly attractive in the post-communist transition.
After half a century of state control over economic and social life, you
do not want just to improve it but also to dismantle it. For that pur-
pose, free market liberalism promoted by the United States and the
myth of America as a society without a state seemed highly attractive.
For post-1989 East-Central Europe, America had the great advan-
tage of never having had anything to do with socialism. To be sure,
few (if any) in Warsaw or Budapest were familiar with Sombart’s thesis
explaining the “American exception” by the role of the frontier, and
the impact of constant immigration flows. What they knew was
Milton Friedman and the simple truth that, whether under Reagan or
Clinton, America stood for the free market and got results while con-
tinental Europe (France and Germany) were contemplating a decade
with almost zero growth and 10 percent unemployment. Hence the
paradox: Chicago school economic liberalism was introduced in East-
Central Europe under the banner of a trade union called Solidarity!
In the roll back of the post-socialist model, the American model
appealed to economic and political liberals—to Klaus as well as to
Havel. For the Central European free marketers in charge of the
conversion to market economy in the immediate aftermath of the col-
lapse of communism, the only debate was, as T. Garton Ash put it,
between Hayekiens and Friedmanites. Most of them had American
“gurus” to launch the “shock therapy.” For Leszek Balczerowicz in
Poland, it was Jeffrey Sachs, for Vaclav Klaus, it was Milton Friedman
(and Margaret Thatcher). This enthusiasm for the American model
subsided somehow when the political pendulum swung in Warsaw
and Prague (and when Vaclav Klaus had to resign at the end of 1997
after it was revealed that that there was more than a “free lunch”
worth of unaccountable party finances). But the main orientation
remained with other countries joining in: Estonia the champion of
free trade and post-Meciar Slovakia, inspired by George Bush’s tax
breaks, opting for a 19 percent flat tax rate for business and individu-
als (clearly out of step with continental Europe where the taxation
rates are more than double).
The second inspiration for the “roll back of the State” comes from
the human rights movement and political liberals. The dissident redis-
covery of a language of rights and of the concept of civil society also
pushed, albeit less explicitly, in the direction of the Anglo-Saxon
model. “In facing a problem of some importance you’ll find in France
the State, in England a lord, in America a voluntary association”—
Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation is not entirely out of place in the
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way post-communist Central Europeans approached their “problems
of some importance”: the State was rolled back, the gentry is no more,
and a civil society, the only hope in town, is a long-term endeavor.
To the extent that both economic and political liberals converged in
considering the State as the enemy from whom freedom had to be
conquered, they shared what Isiah Berlin called “negative freedoms”
(to enjoy new freedoms, the State has to stop doing some of the
things it used to do). Hence also the attraction of the American model
of a minimalist State. An article in a Czech daily recently summed up
the perception of the latter as follows:
In America all that is not forbidden by law is allowed. In Germany, all
that is not allowed by law is prohibited. In Russia, all is forbidden to the
extent that law permits it. In France, all is allowed even when law pro-
hibits it. In Switzerland, all that is not forbidden by law is compulsory.
What matters here is, of course, not the accuracy of
the statement
but what it reveals about a widespread perception: America associated
with individual freedom while continental Europe presents variations
of proliferating rules and regulations imposed (if not always imple-
mented) by the State. This contrast is reinforced when related to the
comparison between Western and East-Central European concerns
and attitudes toward the U.S.-led process of economic globalization.
Is the E.U. a tool of that globalization or a way to cope with it and
shelter the newcomers against the adverse effects of globalization?
The post-1989 modernization of East-Central Europe is partly an
adjustment to the process of E.U. integration and partly the transfor-
mation of economies and societies under the impact of global U.S.
patterns. According to the Hungarian economist J.M. Kovacs: “By join-
ing NATO, hosting multinational companies, introducing American-
style capital markets and welfare regimes or following global trends of
mass culture, some of the new democracies in Eastern Europe could
become in a few important fields different from the sociological
model(s) offered by Western Europe. All the more so because in the
takeover of global features the danger of producing peculiar hybrids
with communist legacies arises.”32
The suggestion that East-Central European countries in transi-
tion were heading toward and “American” rather than a continental
“European” model deserves to be qualified as soon as one moves
from rhetoric to realities, from some of the initial impulses to the
current phase. The impact of American-style capitalism (ranging from
issues of corporate governance to social responsibility) is to some
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America’s Best Friends in Europe
105
extent related to the presence of American capital. The investment
flows to East-Central Europe show, however, a formidable imbalance
in favor of the E.U. In 2001, FDI (foreign direct investment) in
Poland was 6.37 billion euros (compared to less than 37 million
from the United States); in the Czech Republic, the EU investment
was 10 times that of the United States (2429 millions compared to
249 millions). Similar differentials apply to the rest of East-Central
Europe: Hungary 1247 against 10; Slovakia 888 against 28; Slovenia
391 against 21; Latvia 220 against 1; Estonia 228 against 0; Lithuania
171 against 0.33 In short, whatever the rhetoric, the actual dynamics
of economic integration links firmly the region to Western Europe
rather than to the United States.
No less importantly, the differences in Europe on issues related to
the economic model and globalization are not confirmed by public
opinion surveys. The Pew Global Attitudes survey shows a fair amount
of convergence between old E.U. members and new ones on main
issues such as openness to the expansion of trade and rise in business
ties.34 The effect of globalization is seen positively by a similar number
of Czechs and Slovaks (around two-thirds) as of West Europeans.35
Only Poland shows greater reluctance with 38 percent positive opin-
ions. A similar pattern emerges with the widespread acceptance of free
markets combined with the need for a social safety net. Americans
alone, according to the survey, care more about personal freedom than
about government assurances of an economic safety net. Nearly six in
ten value freedom to pursue individual goals without government
interference while only a third think it is more important for a govern-
ment to make sure that no one is in need. In contrast, the majority in
all European countries believes the opposite.36
The only discrepancy between the current E.U. members and
the newcomers from the East is public opinion attitudes toward
anti-globalization protesters (often associating in their discourse U.S.
influence with the negative view of globalization). While a significant
number of West Europeans think that antiglobalization protesters are
a “good influence” (Britain, 39 percent; France, 44 percent; Germany,
33 percent), only a handful of Central Europeans share such a view
(Czechs, 18 percent; Bulgarians, 16 percent; Poles, 21 percent).37
The contrast was particularly visible during the September 2000
World Bank/IMF summit in Prague where violent antiglobalization
demonstrations were seen by the Czech population as a foreign
import of anticapitalist/anti-American rhetoric and of a culture of
violence and anti-Americanism without any echo in the domestic
population.38
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It can thus be argued that just as for attitudes toward the primacy
of American power on the international scene, the attitudes toward
American economic influence, often identified with the challenges of
globalization, reveal a discrepancy between the political and economic
elites dominant in the first decade after the collapse of the Ancien
Régime and the public at large. The latter shares the basic perceptions
and priorities of their West European counterparts, though it is less
tolerant of some of the political excesses of the antiglobalization radicals.
The “Americanization” of Culture?
The third dimension of anti-American ressentiment in France (and
parts of Western Europe) concerns the penetration of American mass
culture. Opposition to free-market globalization associated with the
United States tends to be politically on the left. Opposition to the
“Americanization” of culture tends to come from the nationalist right:
the fear that modernity and mass culture destroy traditional values and
dissolve national identities.39 It tends to focus on two main issues.
First, there is the opposition to the commercialization of culture, the
idea that culture is to be seen (above all in the United States) as an
industry just like any other, subjected primarily to the laws of supply
and demand and of free trade. The argument widely shared by French
elites is, in contrast, that art and culture cannot be treated as mere
commodities; that culture and national identities related to it are too
important to be left to the market forces, where economically weaker
national cultures run the risk of being leveled by the all-powerful
American steamroller.40
In this “cultural war,” according to Le Nouvel Observateur: “America
owes its domination of the world as much to its cultural hegemony
as to its economic power.”41 Hence French defense of a “cultural
exception” as a guarantor of diversity on one hand and of high culture
threatened by mass culture and the powerful entertainment industry
on the other.42 France made these issues one of its priorities at the
European constitutional convention and succeeded in introducing an
amendment that gives countries veto power over cultural matters.43
The cultural exception amendment means that a E.U. country could
block trade deals with countries outside Europe in the field of cultural
products, film, and music.44 Nobody was under any doubt that this
&nb
sp; concerned the United States.
What then are some of the responses to the issue of the
“Americanization of culture” in the countries that, historically, were
cultural nations before they became political ones and where, until 1990,
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America’s Best Friends in Europe
107
writers and philosophers were considered the ultimate rampart for
a spiritual resistance to totalitarianism?
The conditions prevailing in the old days was described by the
American novelist Philip Roth, after his return from a visit to Prague
in the 1980s, as follows: “In the West, everything goes nothing mat-
ters, in the East nothing goes everything matters.” Some in communist
Europe had made a virtue out of necessity: the independent, samizdat
culture was the last remnant of a noncommercial culture, with works
of art “made with the only aim to appear” (to use H. Arendt’s phrase)
outside the consumer society. Hence the suggestion (from Kundera to
Solzhenitsyn) that, paradoxically, the last refuge of high culture not
corrupted by the American/Western commercialism, was precisely
where it was threatened by “socialism that came in from the cold.”
Interestingly, a somewhat similar argument was made by the Polish
Pope and the Catholic Church in Poland concerning the possible spir-
itual revival coming from the East to the decadent materialistic West.45
The legacy of communism and dissident counter-culture is more
complex than this self-serving stereotype. The dissident “high culture”
(samizdat translations, seminars) in pre-1989 Prague had more
European than American influences (Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas,
Ricoeur), but its counter-culture looked more to late 1960s and
1970s California and New York (Frank Zapa, Lou Reed, and the
Velvet Underground46). Both had elements of a critique of dominant
commercial culture. Vaclav Havel, the symbol of the “new” Central
Europe clinging to common “atlantic” values was also a critic of
modernity, warning against a world dominated by the logic of “imper-
sonal megamachines” of which the Eastern communist version was
the most extreme and most objectionable (though not the only)
