João Carlos Graça
Are peace, freedom and democracy therefore mutually conducive or conflictual objectives?
The reasons why European countries hate Russia on principle, while they also on principle love the USA, do not cease to amaze and, at the same time, intrigue me. Somewhere, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon argued, referring to the dynasty of so-called "wise emperors", the Antonines, that they were the best that could reasonably be aspired to in political terms, given the inherent weaknesses of the human condition. Consequently, as to the profound reality of the political regime, it would be desirable that there should be a monarchy in a broad sense, or the dominion of a single person, hopefully a wise one; but accompanied by a pro forma respect for republican institutions, particularly the Senate, a respect that, even though essentially hypocritical, had to be assumed politically important.
If in the Europe of Gibbon's time (eighteenth century) things were, according to him, somehow better, from the point of view of the defense of the liberties of the subjects, this was supposedly due, according to that same author, mostly to the existence there of a multiplicity of politically organized societies: the subjects of a sovereign could always, if things got too bad for him, escape to spaces controlled by other sovereigns who, in that specific case, could be kinder. It was, in fact, expectable that they would tend to be kinder. This competition, at least latent, between the various sovereigns would be the real reason for the greater freedom of the Moderns compared to the Ancients, for whom the alternative to the quasi-ecumenical Empire would inevitably be barbarism. The political monopoly of the former thus killed freedom, while the not always visible hand of the competition between the various political centers of the European multipolar system (as we would say today) would allow a variety of free peoples to be maintained. Analogous to what had once happened in Rome, it should be added that in despotic countries the power of princes was unlimited. But this was supposed to be one defining characteristic of the polities of Asia, in opposition to which Europeans were learning to think collectively about themselves; and in contrast to which Gibbon articulated this self-perception as a European, and particularly as a British.
A few decades after Gibbon, however, the Founding Fathers of the United States expressed opinions substantially different from these. For them, the US would be safe from the mishaps and misfortunes of "old Europe" mostly because of the splendid geographical isolation they enjoyed, which would allegedly protect them from the danger of war, which in Europe constituted the fundamental and omnipresent political truth and, moreover, also the psycho-sociological cement capable of keeping each Prince united to his subjects. But not in the US. There, on the contrary, peace would reign, supposedly by virtue of the general political union. That is why it would be important, even crucial, to maintain this Union as a warrant of peace, and in turn a prerequisite for the preservation of freedoms. Therefore, in the US conflicts could actually occur with the British to the north, with the "savage" redskins more or less everywhere in the western border, and with Mexico to the southwest (in addition to the latent social conflict implied by the existence of a huge number of slaves), but this could and should basically be ruled out. On the contrary, the existence of a large politically united territorial and demographic mass, for which war was supposedly unknown, is the underlined aspect.
And precisely this, the peace ensuing from the Union itself, would be the most precious political asset of the USA, resulting, on the other hand, in the very expansion and consolidation of the freedoms of the subjects. The very relationship between peace and freedom was thus inverted: before, according to Gibbon's interpretation, the (despotic) regimes that favored the first term, necessarily inhibited the second; and those who enhanced freedom could do so precisely while (because of their own political multipolarity) they also threatened peace. Pax Romana, but without freedom, on the one hand; freedom of modern Europeans, but without peace, on the other. That is, of course, until the occurrence of the real political "miracle" that the USA supposedly configured.
A few decades later, Alexis de Tocqueville would also gloss over this theme, seeing in the continental dimension of the US an important reason for the peculiar American combination of peace with democracy and freedom, first of all because of the absence of the necessity for a warrior nobility. The replacement of the passion for war by the inclination to business would be allowed by this environment, inducing in turn the maintenance of the global framework of peace, freedom and democracy. Peaceful business, therefore, instead of war; and the gradual expansion to the West, aiming at the promotion of each one from the condition of wage earner to independent producer or entrepreneur of himself, which would avoid the class conflicts, the infamous "social wars" that European history was saturated with, and which in Europe made democracy, for the same Tocqueville, invariably the enemy of freedom, and ultimately undesirable. In the USA (or "in America"), however, all this would have led to a competition of all with all and a vigilance of all vis-à-vis all that, although potentially producing a universal moral mediocrity (Tocqueville had, in this respect, abandoned any possible sociological age of innocence), was in any case preferable to the European panorama. The overall result tended to be the continued westward displacement and, more broadly, in political terms, "exit" rather than "voice", as Albert Hirschman and various others would later underline: in short, "America, love it or leave it".
Are peace, freedom and democracy therefore mutually conducive or conflictual objectives ? Cumulative or alternative, i.e. in a tradeoff relationship ? In old Europe, the "narrative" points predominantly to exclusive disjunction; in the US, however, compatibility is the fundamental suggestion of this line of comments. All this story is, of course, soaked in a huge load of mythology. The extermination of native populations, the enslavement of blacks, the large-scale expropriation of Mexico, the aggression and generalized threats to more-or-less close neighbors, the repeated interference in their businesses - all of that is displaced to the periphery of the "narrative", or even completely ignored. If, according to the Europeans themselves, democracy was opposed to peace in the old continent, these goals became, however, mysteriously compatible with each other, and both with freedom, in this case, in the happy exception that would be the USA. But how would this be possible ? The reasons given obviously vary greatly depending on the European author in question. Moreover, fundamentally this reading framework, which thinks of the US as a fortunate exception, can operate this way from the outset because it also sees in them a large island. An island of continental size, indeed, but still an island; with which it prolongs and amplifies England's previous isolationist obsessions. The latter could supposedly be better than the continental European countries, be apart from and above them, precisely because it was separate from (although not too far away) from them; free from their quarrels but also free to continue to intervene in their quarrels, exploiting them for her own benefit, of course.
The US has added to this scheme an obvious geographic enlargement: a much larger island, and much farther away. They kept, still from the point of view of continental Europeans, such a great advantage that it allowed the continued and even expanded metonymy: "England" as a substitute for "British Isles" ? Perhaps, but a rumour of Scottish, Irish or Welsh malaise never completely disappears in this case. Now, however, on a much larger scale and with a much clearer conscience, "America" instead of "USA", even long before the said "America" finally bought Alaska from the Russian Empire.
Physical geography and mythical geography
Europeans, it should be added and specified, somehow have always tended to see in "America" whatever they wanted to see. Friedrich Engels, for example, cogitated about primitive communism and the origins of family systems, referring in an obviously fascinated way to the Iroquois who, however, had the little big problem of being "Native Americans", of course. But Karl Marx himself, in his correspondence with Joseph Weydemeyer and in the famous articles in the New York Daily Tribune, also suggested that the democracy of the colonists (even before the abolition of slavery, and much more so after it, of course) allowed us to foresee a near future in which the political system, through its democratization, would move towards the dissolution of the state machine itself into an egalitarian civil society
Of a very different inclination from these reflections (which inevitably recall the expression "opium of the intellectuals") were, however, Friedrich Nietzsche's arguably much more realistic ideas, regarding the fact that the USA could become not the fatherland, but the daughterland (Tochterland) of Europeans. At a certain stage of his intellectual trajectory, confessedly annoyed by the small tribal nationalisms of Europe (and after the disappointment with his native Germany had led him, at various times, to think of himself as imaginarily French, Polish, etc.), thus assuming himself as a "true European" above the mêlée of internal conflicts, petty politics and even of the European Kleinstaaterei itself, the author of Human, All Too Human turned to the US as depositories of his most visionary, broadest and most far-reaching political hopes. The "European Union" that the philosopher aimed at could therefore only be achieved from outside Europe itself, that is, in the USA, or based on them.
This whole history of transpositions, displacements and mythical geographies is obviously much longer than what I am referring to here, and I repeat that I am very far from thinking that I have found an explanation for it, but it seems to me unquestionably important for this evolution that the USA has been a huge recipient of European immigration, and of European immigration of quite variegated origins. On the one hand, the links to the countries of origin could thus be partially maintained: hence the identities of "Italian Americans", "Irish Americans", "Luso-Americans" and the like. But this always coexisted with the unquestionable supremacy of the later term, "American" belonging compared to the one denoting origin, with Italian Americans fighting, if necessary, against Italy, German Americans against Germany, etc. In this regard, everyone remembers, for example, the character of Al Pacino in The Godfather, making a point of asserting himself precisely through his participation in the US war effort.
This explanation via migratory flows is, however, obviously insufficient, since it does not apply to many other countries that were also originated by European colonization and that became massive recipients of migration from Europe as well. Brazil, for example, is perhaps destined to remain forever as a mere "land of the future", to use Stefan Zweig's famous expression. And I am not even referring other cases, such as Venezuela, undoubtedly one of the biggest destinations for Portuguese emigration over time
Russia has never been, as far as I know, a net recipient of European immigration in a significant amount, but it has always remained a potential space to be cleared and colonized - in an openly colonial way, whether in the variety of "settlement colonialism" or as "exploitation colonialism", or in a mix of the two. In Eastern Europe, European elites generally intended to replace the native Russian ruling groups, eradicate them and impose themselves in their place. The modalities for this allowed for significant variations. Mark Mazower, in Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, argues that the Second German Reich opted in the First World War mainly for a colonialism of exploitation and an indirect monitoring, which would include the promotion of various possible "folkloric" nationalisms of this immense region, to be accepted by Germany as producers (at the expense of Russia) of polities formally independent, although subservient to the German Empire. In the Second World War, on the contrary, the Third Reich, under the influence of the cogitations of Max Weber, among others, would have turned to the attempt of a settlement colonialism that was much more ruthless - although Mazower cannot resist suggesting post facto, as historians typically do, or maybe inspired by more recent events, that Germany would perhaps have been more fortunate if it had maintained the orientation that prevailed in the First World War.
In North America all of this was, from the beginning, totally (and obviously) out of the question for European political elites. In the USA, in sharp contrast to Russia, Europeans had always to accept the genuine political expression of the settlers; and they flirted with the new entity, as a "lesser evil" alternative to the (also European) rivals of each one: this was the case, for example, with monarchical France and Spain, which agreed to support the republican colonists against the United Kingdom - the French maintaining quand même some moral (and aesthetic) ascendancy over the new republic, the Spanish on the contrary, quickly suffering from the arrival of the ungrateful newcomers to the "concert of nations". But let us keep in mind that Russia itself has always wanted to flatter the US as well, seeing in them a less bad alternative to the British (thus somehow in a coincidence of positions with France and Spain), selling them Alaska at bargain prices as a way of creating for itself a sort of "Arctic Afghanistan", or a buffer state vis-à-vis the British, equating Alexander II with Lincoln and officially celebrating both as great liberators of servile/slave labor, etc.
The priceless child
Placed, by this set of European conducts, in such a supra partes position, the USA could meanwhile become the target of flattery from even the British, since Rudyard Kipling's famous appeal to take on the "white man's burden" themselves, to the need, enunciated by Hastings Ismay, to keep "the Americans in and the Russians out", until Niall Ferguson's most recent invitation, formulated in Colossus, for the US to fully assume themselves as the truly universal empire, thereby guaranteeing the pursuit of a civilizing mission that would pacify and politically unify the world by obtaining a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence, a monopoly as an alternative to which there would remain, for the whole of humankind, only chaos and misery.
Consequently, the geographically distant USA came to be considered by most Europeans as an imaginary child, the Atlantic apparently uniting on the symbolic level what it separates in physical terms, while oppositely Russia, in an uninterrupted geographical continuum and "inevitably" neighbor of the former (but with no amor fati involved), tended on the contrary to be perceived as symbolically non-European, coexistence with her being therefore less necessarily peaceful, being more available to openly predatory conduct and receiving in return a systematic treatment of contempt and hostility.
Relations between countries, like relations between people, could sometimes be said to be neuroticized in such a way that, if someone is fond of another, that other person considers ipso facto the first one to be worthy of spite and derision. That is, to be frank, what mostly seems to me to be happening in the cascade of contempt that is notorious in the US-Europe-Russia relationships. The more Europeans adore the United States, publicly humiliating themselves repeatedly and almost with a perverse voluptuousness because of this unrequited love, the more parents sacrifice themselves for the sake of their imaginary spoiled daughter, who is herself a victim of drug addiction problems, the more the daughter despises and disregards them. But that, paradoxically, leads Europeans to an increased investment (primarily emotional, but then also implying a catastrophic economic investment, in a strict sense) in the imaginary "child", in the spoiled daughterland that are the USA. In the present context of very decreasing birth rates, this inclination is most likely amplified. This is what seems to be the case with the "priceless child" that, from the point of view of Europeans, are obviously the USA (see Viviana Zelizer, here).
I believe that we can also speak in this case, quite properly, of a " virus of the mind" (see here:), which consistently leads Europe to disregard her interests, acting instead in favor of an entity that she considers in some way as a "part of herself", but which in return does not correspond, or that corresponds, on the contrary, moving even further away. Symbolically upstream from the US, it should be added, one can perhaps place Israel, which the US treats patently as a "Benjamin", a late son who is the target of the enraptured and stultified devotion of the whole family, to whom everything is allowed and from whom nothing is requested. Israel is (certainly much more than Australia) the notorious and noteworthy exception, in a general scenario where the US are, on the contrary, quite prone to despise the rest of the world, as enunciated with humor in Randy Newman's justly famous song .
Things are, in social interaction, particularly in the history of relations between the various countries, obviously much more complex than what I have written. Nevertheless, I hope it is not foolish to take these words into consideration. Facing the dizzying changes that have taken place recently, the time maybe not too far off when, for example, Mads Mikkelsen's performance in Kristian Levring's The Salvation, is considered outrageous, and politically incorrect for alleged "anti-Americanism". At least in that case, what I have mentioned above will plausibly be deemed to be an analytical scheme worth meditation.