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The Transatlantic Culture of Freedom
I
Anyone like me, born right after World War II, has witnessed an astonishing transformation in the relationship between North America and Europe. In 1945, American and allied forces in the West and Russian forces in the East occupied a continent devastated by war. As soon as the Russians made it clear that they wished to make their empire in Eastern Europe permanent, the Americans committed themselves to staying and defending the Europe that remained free. The Cold War had begun. To those born into that era the confrontation between two empires seemed eternal. My generation grew up in a world which we thought would never change. Its contours appeared as ugly and as fixed as the Berlin Wall itself. As late as 1980, no one could have dreamed that Eastern Europe would ever be free or that the Berlin Wall would come down. No one would have predicted the amazing sequence of events that then ensued: Solidarity in Poland, a Polish Pope, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, the emergence of glasnost in Russia and the sudden disintegration of a once implacable and self-confident Communist empire.
During the Cold War, the foreign policy of both the United States and Canada was dominated by containment and deterrence of the Soviet Union and the defense of Europe. The rest of the world’s problems were seen through a Eurocentric lens. Cuban penetration into Angola, for example, was deemed a threat to the US-Soviet strategic balance in the main battlefield of Europe. Vietnam mattered to the West, again, as a front in a war in Europe. Looking back, this way of thinking seems as much of a relic as the nuclear bunkers built to protect our leaders from Soviet missiles.
Since 1989, we have been plunged into a new era whose contours are still taking shape. Only some elements of the new order can be seen clearly. Today in North American capitals, European security has ceased to be a priority, since most people believe European security is assured. A host of subjects now compete with European matters for the attention of north Americans. China, India, Afghanistan, the Middle East, global warming, Darfur, Iran —any of these are more likely to occupy the minds of policy-makers and the public than European integration and stability in eastern Europe.
The people in the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are worried about one consequence of this waning attention. These new democratic states feel they have been left alone to face an authoritarian and expansionist threat taking shape in President Putin’s Russia. Under his leadership, Russia is armed with nuclear weapons; its economy is riding the rise in oil and commodity prices; and it is run by a new elite who came of age under authoritarian regimes and whose commitment to democracy is questionable. This is not to deny that President Putin’s Russia is a better place to live in than either Gorbachev or Yeltsin’s Russia. A strong majority of Russians support President Putin’s regime since he has restored Russian prestige while affording Russians new opportunities to make their fortunes, enjoy travel overseas and think what they like, provided that they keep their opinions private. Yet thoughtful Russians worry that the political and cultural freedoms they have enjoyed may be sacrificed in the name of expansionism abroad and repression at home. They point to the corrupt linkages between state functionaries and private entrepreneurs, the brutality of the war in Chechnya and the murder of opposition journalists and dissidents, either by private groups with the collusion of the state or directly by state authorities. Nobody can be sure where Russia is headed, but few are confident that it is heading in the right direction.
So the first question about the transatlantic relationship that has opened up since 1989 is whether the freedom of eastern Europe is really secure; and whether Russia will make the transition to democratic stability. If north Americans decide that Europe no longer matters to them, western Europe - the European Union - will have to confront Russia alone.
Challenges to European freedom do not come solely from Russia. Many of the eastern European democracies are struggling against their own domestic temptations. Demagogues keep urging voters to revert back to the false path of authoritarian populism. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine is not secure. Poland has an authoritarian tradition to which it may revert. Steady engagement by western Europe and by north Americans is crucial if the long transition to democracy is to be completed successfully.
After 1989, the happy illusion persisted that freedom, democracy and markets were irresistible and that their victory in Europe - and elsewhere - was assured. In 2008, such an idea seems deluded. Faith in markets, freedom and democracy depends on continued economic success, and economic progress in eastern Europe has been slow. Democratic stability in eastern Europe depends on security guarantees. The European Union and NATO have responded to the challenges of maintaining freedom through a strategy of expansion right up to the borders of Russia. Eastern European countries cannot develop as market societies and as democracies unless they have stable security guarantees from their more prosperous neighbors. States like Serbia need to know that they have an eventual home in Europe, if they are to remain as democracies.
For now, the US and Canada are committed to defending and consolidating European freedom. NATO remains in business. The Partnership for Peace with Russia and non-NATO states remains in working order. As long as Russia leaves the Baltic states alone, as long as it does not seek to extend its influence through Serbia southward into the Balkans, as long as Russia itself remains stable and democratic, European freedom and security seem secure. But this will remain true only as long as North America stays engaged.
II
The future of European freedom depends on more than security guarantees. The North Atlantic relationship is too important to be left to politicians and generals. It depends also on cultural and human ties, and these ties are less strong than they were during the Cold War. If asked what countries matter to their future most, more north Americans are likely to reply China and India, than they are to reply Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary or Romania.
North American societies used to attract most of their immigration from Europe, and so family and cultural ties were strong. Today, the leading countries sending people to Canada, for example, are China and India, not the countries of Europe. Inevitably, the close connection that North America has always enjoyed with Europe will have to compete with other ties of family and culture that now link North America to Asia.
The transatlantic relationship can be made stronger if governments invest in sustaining networks of emerging young leaders. Canada and the US would do well to invest heavily in scholarships, exchanges and training opportunities that allow Russians and eastern Europeans to work and live in north American society: in universities, technical colleges, banks, industrial and commercial companies. The traffic should be two-way: Canadians and Americans should be encouraged - with grants and government programs - to build professional networks of their own in eastern Europe and Russia.
Leaving people to make their own networks is usually the most efficient way. Give people market incentives to communicate and they will do so. Market opportunities have attracted Europeans to work and train in north American market centers. Still there is more work to be done. Agencies like the British Council, the Goethe Institut, the Alliance Francaise, are right to target their efforts at creating leadership networks across the Atlantic and across the divide that still separates eastern and western European youth. The aim here should be to create networks of common interests so that when this generation takes over the reins of power, East and West understand each other and share a common commitment to peace, freedom, markets and democracy. Current visa restrictions should be eased so that eastern Europeans can study and work in North America. Bringing down these barriers will help to build a new transatlantic relationship, not just between governments and officials, but between citizens.
It would be a great thing, for example, if Parliaments on both sides of the Atlantic took the trouble to invest in intern programs for eastern Europeans so that they get to see democracy at work, warts and all. In the early years of the democratic transition, western governments - as well as associations of lawyers and jurists - provided helpful advice to eastern European regimes setting up independent judiciaries, independent election commissions and corruption-free police forces. This work needs to continue.
Freedom is not yet assured from the Atlantic to the Urals. We have a lot of work to do, and the key work is to anchor the taste for freedom in the generation born since the end of the Cold War, the generation of eastern Europeans too young to remember what tyranny felt like, but not yet old enough to know that the defense of freedom is a citizen’s life work.
III
We will do a better job of sustaining freedom in emerging democracies, and in societies emerging from war and conflict, if we recognize that there is no single model of freedom, no single template for democracy. We do freedom harm if we think it comes in one size that fits all. American capitalism is not European capitalism. American democracy is not European democracy. If we are going to promote a common culture of freedom across the north Atlantic, and if we are going to anchor it in eastern Europe and in Russia, we had better show some respect for the political cultures in which we wish freedom to take root. Freedom always takes on the contours of the society in which it is nurtured. The imposition of imported freedoms always fails. Westerners often forget that they have no single model of freedom to export, because their various democracies have never lived according to a single model.
As a Canadian, living next door to the United States, it is the differences in our political culture that I want to defend. Canadians believe that every citizen has a right to access medical care. In this we are closer to Europe than we are to American style health care. Americans believe in a right to bear arms. Canadians believe in gun control. The Canadian constitution entrenches rights to educate your children and secure government services in either official language. The US remains officially unilingual.
This Canadian culture of rights engenders a distinct kind of Canadian freedom in which the role of government, the place of the market in allocating public services, the balance between individual rights and collective responsibilities are all substantially different from the political culture of our friends and neighbours to the south. Canadians treasure these differences. We get along with our neighbours, and they get on with us, when we acknowledge rather than suppress these differences.
The right way to foster a common commitment to freedom across the north Atlantic is for us all to be honest about our differences. As north Americans and Europeans talk through their shared culture of political liberty, they quickly discover, for example, that they do not agree about how to reconcile religious liberty with political freedom, or what place to accord expressions of religious conviction in the political sphere. Most liberal democracies practice some form of separation between church and state, but beneath this starting commonality there are startling differences.
In the United States, there are no confessional bars to public office and there is no public funding of confessional schools and yet it has become an informal condition of public office to affirm belief in a Supreme Creator. Such a condition for public office does not exist next door in Canada. Indeed, speaking about the Creator in public creates embarrassment in Canadian political culture. Whether or not this is a good thing is not the point. The point is, our public cultures are different and these differences should be celebrated and not suppressed. Similar differences exist between European countries. A Prime Minister of Great Britain has recently spoken about his religious faith, but a President of France would take care not to do so. Frequent expressions of public religiosity might not be popular in many European countries, while in the United States, public religiosity is the norm.
As we seek to promote a common culture of freedom across the Atlantic, it would be wise to explore these differences rather than pretend they do not exist. When we seek to promote freedom in emerging democracies, we should pay some respect to their differences as well. Western democratic societies promote freedom in other countries without taking the care to explain how different freedom can be in each society. Religion will play a larger role in the public square in Poland than it will in France a nation that is heir to a secular and anti-religious revolution.
How France confronts the claims of religious identity among Muslim women will not be how British democracy confronts the same challenge. In France. a tradition of Jacobin citizenship will be more resistant to the claims of religious difference in public life than in a British model of citizenship.
Salient differences have opened up in how European and north American democracies accommodate the right to affirm religious identity in public. Wearing headscarves in French state schools is banned. In the schools of Canada, wearing headscarves is a commonplace. North American societies, with long histories of immigration, may be more accommodating of religious difference than European ones.
North Americans and Europeans do face common institutional challenges - maintaining funding for our increasingly expensive public health systems, for example - but until we seek to find out what has worked in each others’ jurisdictions, we cannot learn from each other.
Globalization appears to have paradoxical results. We spend a lot of time talking and less time listening, and we know so much about each other, that we seem to have lost curiosity about each other. There is even a risk that globalization will render us more politically parochial and provincial, as we seek refuge from a complex world within our clichéd and worn out images of each other. Anything that organizations like the British Council can do to facilitate institutional exchange and learning among the young leaders who run our society would be welcome. Otherwise, our societies will be like ships passing in the night on the north Atlantic.
IV
Thus far I have encouraged a rebirth of the north Atlantic relationship on the premise that we share a common, though pluralistic culture of freedom and that the work of promoting this culture of freedom is not yet completed. Thus far I have worked on the tacit assumption that Europe and north America are allies. What happens to this relationship if we become economic and strategic rivals?
The north Atlantic relationship began in tutelage and dependency. Europe was on its back. The enemy of freedom was at the gate. Europe needed America and submitted to a relationship based on dependency and subordination. America was wise enough not to exploit this dependency. Europe never became a colony and as the economic miracle unfolded, Europe began to regain its independence, first nation by nation, and then by the 1980’s and 1990’s as a new global force in its own right, the European Union.
Now the dependency is over. Europe is an economic giant. The euro rivals the dollar as a currency of exchange in international markets. Already, European companies have commanding leads over north American companies in key areas - business services in Britain, oil and energy in Norway, telecommunications in Finland. Personal incomes in most western European countries now rival those in North America, and if the quality of public goods - hospitals, roads, schools and public transport - is factored in, most western Europeans enjoy a higher standard of living than most north Americans. Europe also rivals North America as a global center for popular culture: Milan, London and Paris are as important as New York in the fashion industry; and London, Manchester and several other European cities now rival Nashville or New York in the global music industry. The predominance of America in popular culture is now over.
European economic and cultural power is offset by strategic weakness. Europe still does not speak or act with a common political will. Young European elites support further integration but sovereignty dies hard. Elites may favor further integration but stubborn resistance remains, especially among those who feel that they pay the price of integration - workers in declining industries, farmers, small businessmen and intellectuals attached to national linguistic and cultural traditions.
It is too early to know whether the forces of continental integration will win out over the forces of region and nation. But it is a safe bet to assume that these forces will continue to battle for the European future for a generation to come. As a result, Europe is unlikely to speak with a single political voice on the world stage any time soon.
Europe also lacks a strategic military capability. Europeans are less willing to spend money on defense than the United States. Indeed since 1945, Europe has rebuilt its economic strength by passing the costs of its defense to its American ally. This bargain worked for both sides: the Americans gained strategic pre-eminence and the Europeans could afford to spend their surpluses on hospitals, roads, schools and agricultural subsidies. The Europeans have purchased economic power at the price of strategic weakness. The question is whether this situation will continue.
Many European electorates continue to resist spending more on defense. Other countries, Britain and France, spend more because their political elites believe that military might confers political power. It is not clear whether the high spenders or low spenders will win over European opinion at large.
The strategic problem with low spending is that Europe is being asked to support military operations in places like Afghanistan, Darfur and elsewhere and finds itself unable to respond, or if able to respond, only by strictly limiting what their forces can do. As a result, Europe is unable to play a role in global security that corresponds to its economic and cultural influence.
Many young European voters want Europe to play a role in solving humanitarian crises in Africa and Asia and understand that this requires military force. A Europe that is unwilling to invest in the military and unable to provide security in humanitarian crises will then face a conflict between its conscience and its capabilities.
A tempting way out of this conflict is to blame the Americans. They may have the capabilities, but they lack our conscience. This has become a common refrain. The American conscience is unpopular in Europe because of Iraq and because of the Bush Administration`s unwillingness to act on climate change. Yet the roots of this anger at the United States run deeper than the policies of George Bush. If one stands back, it‘s hard to know whether America is actually more unpopular now than it was in the Vietnam era, or before that during the Cold War, when Communist Parties in Western Europe shaped a whole generation of European intellectuals with their anti-American propaganda. America has always aroused resentment because it has capabilities that Europe lacks, and because it discharges responsibilities that Europe envies. Some of this anti-Americanism, in other words, is an exercise in bad faith. Europeans prefer the easy grievance and the easy excuse of blaming the Americans to the hard work of developing capabilities to match their own conscience.
Europe now rivals the United States as an economic and cultural power. Yet some of its elites continue to promote a culture of resentful inferiority and bad faith towards its ally. It is long past time to get over this. Instead of complaining about American power, young Europeans should set about building a Europe with the capabilities to match its conscience.
So the dialogue across the north Atlantic will be challenging but exciting. Americans will have to understand that their idea of liberty is not universal. Europe has a plethora of different cultures of liberty. These differences within Europe and between Europe and the United States should not be lamented. They should be celebrated and explored since they are both the source of the deep ties that unite the two continents as well as the source of many of our fundamental disagreements.
Americans should listen more carefully to Europeans, free of that grating sense of superiority that is now a relic of a vanished era of American hegemony. Europe for its part will have to wake up to the gap between its capabilities and its conscience. Canadians, the party in between, will side sometimes with the Americans, sometimes with the Europeans. The debate will be important, and it will take us to a very different place from the one we were in in 1945. A new situation in the translatlantic relationship is apparent: a resurgent Europe is now a giant in the world. America is less dominant and less sure of its future role. Both America and Europe are custodians of cultures of liberty which are now spreading around the world. But the future of this culture of liberty is not assured, not even in eastern Europe. The common defense of liberty remains the grand project which should unite the leaders of the future on both sides of the Atlantic. These are just some of the challenges that face the next generation of European and American leaders. They can face them as long as they understand the road they have traveled since 1945. I hope I have helped to mark out that road for the next generation.
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