Some say that the problem is that with the end of the Cold War, American and European interests have begun to diverge. The struggle to defend the West against Soviet aggression united our peoples in common cause for more than half a century. The fall of the Soviet Empire makes the American-European bond less salient. Moreover, now that the European Union rivals the U.S. in raw economic power, it’s understandable, argue “the realists,” that competitive pressures between the two superpowers create strains in the relationship and risk fissures in the Atlantic alliance. On the other hand, more moderate voices would argue that the American and European economies are so intertwined that, despite areas of contention, we have much more to gain than to lose by continuing close ties with our friends across the Atlantic.
My own belief is that the growing divide between America and Europe is more visceral than pragmatic. It has to do with very different sensibilities about how each superpower perceives its relationship to the world and the kind of vision of the future each holds.
Taking a Life
If we really want to understand how deep the chasm in thinking is between America’s perception of how to conduct foreign policy and the European Union’s, the best place to start is with analyzing the very different way each society views the question of capital punishment. It’s here that we come face-to-face with two very different ideas about whether the state can ever be justified in taking the life of a human being. Since war is all about taking lives and sacrificing lives, the European position on capital punishment offers insight into its approach to foreign policy and security matters.
No issue more unites Europeans than the question of capital punishment. For them, opposition to the death penalty is as deeply felt as opposition to slavery was for the American abolitionists of the nineteenth century. Indeed, for a society so used to muting its passions, Europeans express a raw emotional disgust of capital punishment that is not evident anywhere else in the world. Whenever a prisoner on death row in the United States is executed, it is barely noticed in America but elicits vehement protest across Europe. Make no mistake about it: Europeans are the abolitionists of the twenty-first century, and they are determined to evangelize the world and will not rest until capital punishment is abolished across the Earth.
Americans would find it incredible that candidate countries for EU membership must abolish capital punishment as a condition for entry into the Union. It tops the list of conditions for acceptance into the fold. Try to imagine the United States making opposition to the death penalty a condition for citizenship.
Why so fervent? Europeans have experienced, firsthand, so many human deaths and so much destruction at the hands of governments over the course of the twentieth century that the thought of the state retaining formal power to execute a human being is greeted with repulsion. More than 187 million human beings were killed in the century just passed, many of them in Europe.1 The death penalty, for Europeans, is a constant reminder of the dark side of their past, a period in which states regularly ordered the deaths of millions of human beings in the battlefields and in concentration camps stretching from Auschwitz to the Gulag.
In 1983, the Council of Europe adopted Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, outlawing the death penalty, except in respect to acts committed in time of war or imminent threat of war. In 2002, the Council of Europe amended Protocol No. 6, barring the death penalty unconditionally, even including crimes committed during times of war or the imminent threat of war.2
The amended protocol has been the subject of growing controversy. Tempers flared between the U.S. and its European allies after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks when France, the U.K., Spain, and Finland indicated that they would not extradite Al Qaeda terrorist suspects to the United States if they were tried under the proposed military tribunals and made subject to the death penalty.3 White House and State Department officials were livid, as were many Americans, at the prospect that a terrorist suspect, perhaps responsible for the brazen murder of three thousand people, would be afforded the legal protection of European countries.
Even if a person commits the most heinous of crimes against his fellow human beings, including genocide, he or she enjoys, in the official words of the European Union, “an inherent and inalienable dignity.”4 The death penalty, according to the EU, is “a denial of human dignity, which is a fundamental basis of the common heritage of the European Union as a union of shared values and principles.”5 That means that if Adolf Eichmann, for example, the architect of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews and others, were to be tried today in Europe and found guilty, he would be spared the death penalty. (Eichmann was tried by an Israeli court in 1961 for crimes against humanity and found guilty and hanged in 1962.)
While many Americans oppose the death penalty and are as committed to its abolition as Europeans, the vast majority of Americans—two out of three—do not, and would likely argue that a mass murderer forfeits his or her right to be considered part of the human race.6
The Europeans see their position on the death penalty as going to the very heart of their new dream, and hope to convince the world of the righteousness of their cause. Here’s how the EU put it, in an official memorandum on the death penalty:
Long ago European countries, either in practice or in law, made a choice for humanity, abolishing the death penalty and thus fostering respect for human dignity. And this is an ultimate principle that the EU wishes to share with all countries, as it shares other common values and principles such as freedom, democracy, and the rule of law and safeguard of human rights. If it succeeds in reaching this goal, both the EU and those countries will have furthered the cause of humanity.”7
The EU memorandum goes on to say that it “invites the USA to equally embrace this cause.”8
The irony of all this is that the European Union, whose peoples have, for the most part, long ago eschewed any devout Christian affiliation, seem to be taking up where Christian doctrine left off, in regard to the inviolability of every human life.
Many Europeans might be reluctant to acknowledge their debt to Christianity, but the fact of the matter is that opposition to the death penalty is rooted in New Testament doctrine. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to the faithful, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”9
Christ goes even further, saying, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”10
Contrast the European opposition to the death penalty with American sentiment. Here, in the most avowedly devout Christian country in the world, most Americans favor the Old Testament approach to punishment. Thirty-seven percent of those who favor the death penalty say they do so based on the Old Testament adage of “an eye for an eye.”11
Despite the fact that while dying on the cross, Christ pleaded with God to forgive his executioners, “for they know not what they do,” Americans are far less forgiving. American sentiment on crime is much more retributional in nature. Surveys show that many Americans believe that people sentenced to death deserve it. Some observers of the American psyche, including psychologist Richard Nisbett at the University of Michigan and psychologist Dov Cohen of the University of Illinois, believe that Americans’ predisposition for retribution stems, at least in part, from the need to protect possessions on the frontier when property rights were less secure.12 Every American youngster grows up watching Holly-wood Westerns where cattle rustlers are hunted down by sheriffs’ posses or vigilantes and hung from the nearest tree.
Europeans, on the other hand, deeply oppose the idea of retribution. The European Union makes clear that “capital punishment should not be seen as an
appropriate way of compensating the suffering of crime victims’ families, as this view turns the justice system into a mere tool of illegitimate private vengeance.”13
At the heart of Christian doctrine is the belief in redemption—that even the worst sinner can be saved. The European Union embraces this most basic of Christian beliefs in its support of rehabilitation. The EU states that “maintaining capital punishment would not fit the philosophy of rehabilitation pursued in the criminal justice systems of all EU member states and according to which one of the penological aims of penalties is that of rehabilitating or resocializing the offender.”14
In fairness, it should be pointed out that rehabilitation continues to be the stated aim of the American penal system, and many Americans support that premise. But surveys show that many other Americans are beginning to turn away from that doctrine and are hardening their views on the role of the criminal justice system. The reversal in attitudes in just a few decades is striking, considering how basic the question of rehabilitation vs. retribution is to how a people define themselves and the moral codes by which they live. While Europe—and virtually the rest of the industrial world—has abolished capital punishment over the past three decades, America has gone in the opposite direction. Thirty-eight states now permit the death penalty, and in the past twenty-nine years, more than eight hundred people have been executed. More than 85 percent of the executions have occurred in the past decade alone.15
Americans’ support of the death penalty reflects not only our frontier tradition of swift and decisive Old Testament justice but also the American apocalyptic vision of a world divided between good and evil forces. In the end, good triumphs, but only if backed up by the righteous might of the state. While Europeans also recognize that there are bad guys in the world and that the might of the state occasionally has to be deployed to secure the general peace and welfare, they start from the premise that the imposition of state violence is a last resort and ought to be entertained only in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
It ought to be acknowledged that not all Europeans are opposed to the death penalty. A sizable number of people, in some countries, feel much like a majority of Americans do on the issue. But the political elite, opinion leaders, as well as the professional and middle class have long since tipped the scale in favor of abolition of state-sanctioned executions.
So, Americans accuse Europeans of coddling criminals or, worse, appeasing evil behavior. Europeans accuse Americans of being ruthless and uncivilized in sanctioning state executions. Behind all of the heat is the very real difference in the perspective that the two superpowers have about the kind of world they live in and the future they embrace.
Europe’s zeal to abolish the death penalty is inextricably linked to its dream of universal human rights. If the older Enlightenment dream was about establishing civilized norms of behavior, the new cosmopolitan dream is about establishing empathetic codes of conduct. Were Europeans to accept the notion that the state has a legitimate right to take the life of any human being, it would undermine the very idea of universal human rights that supersede states’ prerogatives.
The problem facing Europe, however, is that it has to live in two worlds simultaneously: the everyday world of realpolitik and the dream of a better world to come. Keeping its commitment to the future without losing sight of the very real dangers posed by the present is the demanding task. Nowhere is that challenge more taxing for the EU than when it comes to framing a foreign-policy agenda. How do Europeans square their position on not taking the life of a criminal with waging war against an enemy?
Going It Alone
The Bush Administration’s response to Europe’s “perceived pacifism” is “Get real.” In a country where a majority of the people believe in “an eye for an eye,” it’s not surprising that American foreign policy is based on different criteria for dealing with adversaries. The American approach combines old-fashioned paternalism with tough justice. Reward our friends and punish our enemies.
To really understand the roots of American foreign policy, Europeans need to appreciate America’s near obsession with autonomy. For our country, long bounded by two great oceans, freedom has meant autonomy in a hostile and unpredictable world. Not to be dependent and beholden to others but, rather, to be self-reliant has been the leitmotif of American foreign and security policy from the very early days of the young republic.
American foreign policy before the two world wars was always expansionist in the Americas and isolationist in the world. The U.S. didn’t even enter World War I until 1917, three years after the fighting commenced and just a year before cessation of conflict. Similarly, the U.S. joined with the Allies in World War II two years after the commencement of war, and then only after the Japanese surprise attack on our naval and air fleets at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Before World War II, most countries subscribed to the Hobbesian doctrine that human behavior was, by its very nature, aggressive and acquisitive, and, therefore, if left unchecked would lead to a “war of all against all.” Only by establishing a sovereign authority that could impose a single, unified will on the people would violence be abated and material progress be secured. The same behavior exists among states. Therefore, the only way to keep the peace was either for one country to gain hegemony and impose its will on the rest, in the form of an empire or federation, or, barring that possibility, for countries of relatively equal strength to join together in an alliance to maintain a balance of power that would prevent any one country from dominating the rest. The history of the past three centuries is riddled with attempts by one power to gain hegemony over others—the Spanish Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Bourbon and Napoleonic empires, the German Third Reich, and the Soviet Union all come to mind. Each of these attempts invariably led to countermoves in the form of alliances by other states to challenge the hegemony. The Peace of Westphalia settlement of 1648, which we discussed briefly in chapter 7, curtailed the power of the Hapsburg Empire, and later, the Congress of Vienna imposed a similar balance of power after Napoleon’s defeat.
The classic liberal theory of foreign relations offers an alternative, of sorts, to the Hobbesian vision. It begins with the Enlightenment idea that material self-interest is best promoted by open markets and the liberalization of trade, both at home and abroad. Liberal theorists were at odds with the Hobbesian idea that war was the natural human condition. They preferred to think that rational self-interest is the prime mover and economic efficiency the driving force of human behavior. They bound their ideas to Locke’s theory of property rights, Adam Smith’s notion of the invisible hand, and the bourgeoisie faith in representative democracy. Liberals viewed the free market as the natural order of things and believed that if it was left unencumbered and allowed to flourish, it would prevent nations from plunging into a nightmarish Hobbesian world. The British were the first to employ liberal theories to foreign policy. In the name of “free trade,” the British became a hegemonic world power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to raise the ire of others, especially Germany, which was determined not to be marginalized on the world stage.
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as great world powers. Neither was able to enforce its will on the other and become hegemonic. Both, however, realized that their fortunes lay in mobilizing as much of the world as they could under their banner. While each sought alliances in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the primary struggle for influence was fought in Europe. The Soviet Union imposed its will in Central and Eastern Europe by force of arms. The Americans, by contrast, relied on the liberal doctrine of advancing open markets and free trade and began to implement a series of initiatives to resurrect the economies of Western Europe with an eye toward building a vibrant Atlantic partnership that could hold the Soviets back and foster the economic interests of America. (We discussed the various institutional initiatives, including the Marshall Plan and the creation of the United Nations
, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, etc., in chapter 11.)
With the collapse of the Soviet Empire in the late 1980s, the U.S. government deepened its commitment to a liberal foreign policy. Both President George Bush and President Bill Clinton pushed for further liberalization of trade, hoping to create, at long last, a global capitalist marketplace, dominated by America’s economic prowess.
America’s commitment to a multilateral foreign policy, based on alliances, took an abrupt turn with the election of President George W. Bush in 2000. Conservative politicians and ultra-right-wing ideologues had been preparing the groundwork for years. Many former operatives of the Reagan Administration set about the task of crafting a shadow foreign policy in the 1990s. They established think tanks, published books and articles, set up task forces, and issued white papers, all critical of what they regarded as failed foreign and security policies. The conservatives believed that America’s interests were ill served—and even undermined—by the government’s entering into multilateral global treaties, alliances, and commitments that bound us to the will of others whose interests were not always commensurate with our own. The conservatives favored a return to the older American foreign policy based on autonomy, backed up by military might. They argued that it had served us well in protecting our vital interests in the American hemisphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and could do so again in the global theater because of our unmatched economic and military superiority.
Some critics warned out loud that if the “neoconservatives” were to regain power, America would cast its lot with a “radical” foreign policy, at odds with America’s historical role. The critics got it wrong. For most of American history, the conservative view of how America ought to conduct foreign policy was the standard. Only in the brief fifty-year span from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War did America depart from its historical legacy and enter into multilateral relationships with the rest of the world.
The European Dream Page 36
