America and the Value of the Trans-Atlantic Community

In these times of great uncertainty, we need to strengthen the strategic relationship with the United States, not weaken it.

The cruel deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta at the hands of two police officers are undeniably inexcusable. Such a disastrous abuse of police responsibilities is particularly painful to those of us who look on the United States’ constitutional experience as the most significant example of a great open society, characterized by an unprecedented ability to attract others. America is, par excellence, the land of choice and destination for people from literally all corners of the earth, where the very real opportunities to be valued and acknowledged as an individual, as well as to rise socially and professionally, even to the highest positions, are unique. It is a pluralist America, summarily diverse, where hundreds of different cultures voluntarily share the same social contract. For that very reason, it is a free nation. And, for many, truly a political miracle. In that measure, the two serious episodes of abuse of power referenced earlier should not be seen as negligible setbacks to the state of democracy and the North American social contract.

Is it, though, intellectually just or even acceptable to give this situation so much emphasis that in the media storm generated, it effectively drowns out what is happening in dictatorial regimes? Can we really afford to accept the selective or expediently convenient way we ignore situations such as the worrying suppression of citizens’ rights in Hong Kong by the Chinese government, the horrendous dismemberment of a Saudi journalist by agents from his country in the Istanbul Consulate, the atrocities being perpetrated by Islamic terrorists in northern Mozambique, or China’s obfuscation about the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, which has already caused close to half a million deaths and led to chaos in the international economic system?

Let’s be clear: the large demonstrations of repudiation and generalized protests in the United States that followed the unfortunate deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks represent the clearest proof of the western values of free speech and assembly, which include a right to dissent, coupled with the express right of protection for dissidents guaranteed by law, in contrast to what happens in totalitarian regimes of all types. The ultimate test of the vitality of any democracy is the legitimization of an opposition – it either exists or it doesn’t! This is an objective criterion, commonly used in political science, which allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff and distinguish democratic regimes from autocracies. The problems in pluralistic regimes, as serious as they may be, are resolved with more democracy. For that reason, the United States and its foundational constitutionalism will – just as it has done in other critical historical moments – come up with the necessary means to enact domestic reforms. Just as with other living systems, democracy, too, must evolve in order to survive. It is the essence of the democratic nexus. In the case of America, that qualitative evolution is engraved in 27 constitutional amendments. Allow me a personal observation. Having worked and engaged in political studies research in North American universities over the course of three decades, I hold a deep conviction that the great democracy founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton will not fail in this challenge to reinvent itself.

It is clear that there is some circumstantial hypocrisy, if not outright cowardice, when people conflate unforgivable errors by police officers in two cities, which must be vehemently denounced – and which often go hand in hand with institutional inertia – with the deliberate misrepresentation of the values of the trans-Atlantic community, a space fundamentally defined by principles of political democracy and the rule of law. The distortion of these common values was sadly extended in the hasty attack on the legacy of one of the brightest and most notable Portuguese thinkers, Father Antonio Vieira, one of the first defenders of human rights and of minorities, and condemned by the Inquisition. He defended Indians and Jews, and denounced in clear terms the irreparable harms of slavery on the human condition. He was also a notable patriot, sent by King João IV on complex diplomatic missions to Holland and France to argue in support of Portuguese independence. We shouldn’t need reminding what irrationally profane acts touched with totalitarianism have led to in the past.

We cannot, then, at this very difficult juncture, not take the time to reiterate our gratitude for the truly heroic sacrifice by tens of thousands of young Americans, coming to the rescue of Europeans throughout the last 100 years, be it against German expansionism, the defeat of Nazism and consequent liberation of western Europe, or in containing Soviet totalitarianism. It is worth noting that our principal allies on the other side of the Atlantic still make up 70% of NATO’s defense efforts, a security and collective defense system that continues to be fundamental to European interests and critical to the integrity of Portugal and the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira. It is also important to reference, in a different context, the structural reach of the prestigious Fulbright cultural and scientific exchange program which, over the course of more than 60 years, has benefited close to 2,000 Portuguese researchers, as well as more than 800 Americans, with an exceptional impact on Portuguese universities, something to which I can personally attest.

I am convinced that, in these times of great uncertainty, we need to strengthen the strategic relationship with the United States, not weaken it. Additionally, this comes at a time when various international publications regularly refer to the possibility of Beijing acquiring a role in the management of the Lisbon and Sines ports, something which, in my view, is completely unacceptable and alien to the interests and strategic priorities of our country. In these perplexing contexts and instances of global misalignment, it is clearly fundamental, then, to tend to the essentials.