We Addicts

Our relationship with the United States is neurotic. We gaze in awe at the father-figure superpower. It’s high time Europeans grew up and started thinking of themselves as equal partners.

Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States gave new life to an idea most people had abandoned over the past eight years; the idea that America was a land of hope and a place where things were possible that others could only dream of. Until now, Europeans couldn’t imagine that a young man with a black father could ever be elected President of the United States. But of course, the American President is more than just a politician. Every four years, a new king is anointed in the U.S. and this time it was a mixed-race king.

Naturally, this occasioned a great deal of celebration in Africa and among the black immigrants to Europe, as well as among a great many white Europeans who had long since given up on the American dream. Many viewed the various American foreign policy and economic catastrophes with a sense of schadenfreude, while others viewed them with regret, even fearful sorrow. What will become of a threatened western world without the power and moral authority of the greatest democracy on earth? And would those who approved of the giant’s failures really be happier to be led by some other great power like Russia or China, for instance?

I don’t think so, and that’s the reason the western world received Barack Obama with such relief. More than relief, actually: they received him with adulation. It’s as if Obama is more than just a politician, more than an American monarch. He’s almost seen as some kind of savior.

That’s disturbing. Too many burdens have been placed on those young shoulders. And it also reveals the neurotic character of our dependence on superpower America. Those who place too much hope in America have something in common with America’s enemies: a belief in an omnipotent America. America’s enemies like to see the dark machinations of the CIA behind every political event on the face of the earth. To them, all of us are just chess pieces being shoved around a gigantic board by those sinister Grand Masters in Arlington, Virginia.

The reality, however, is much more banal. America’s policies are, in large measure, characterized by conflicting domestic politics, shaped by professional lobbyists and local politicians and carried out by stodgy bureaucrats who, for the most part, only have a vague understanding of the outside world. But Europe’s dependence on the United States is neurotic for other reasons as well. After 1945, Europeans dreamed their own dreams of a better world in which there would be no power politics, just unlimited diplomacy and common sense solutions to ridiculous conflicts. And that dream actually bore fruit on European soil: no more Western European wars, the inclusion of many nations into a European Union, and so on.

It was truly a beautiful dream, but we could only afford to believe in it as long as our European security was guaranteed by American military might. We dreamt sweet dreams of a future beneath Uncle Sam’s protective nuclear umbrella. When our dreams were disturbed by powerful conflicts on our doorstep – as in Serbia, for example – we Europeans waited until the Americans arrived to solve our problems with their overwhelming military strength.

And what’s so neurotic about this relationship? We’re like teenagers who have a love-hate relationship with their parents. This aversion was so pronounced during George W. Bush’s administration that some Europeans began considering alternative solutions that would demand greater independence of their continent. Obama’s election now threatens to revive fond recollections of the Berlin airlift and JFK – and thereby gently rock us back into peaceful slumber.

I don’t mean to imply by this that we’re in danger of abandoning our alliance with the United States. I never entertained such thoughts even during the George W. Bush era. In spite of many social and cultural differences, Europe and America are bound together by shared ideals of civilization and political philosophy.

What I consider dangerous is the idea that we can go back to the good old days, because the era of George Marshall, General Lucius Clay and Kennedy’s Camelot are over and done with forever. Even if we consider the United States as a force for good, we have to understand that America won’t ever be in a position to rid the world of threats and dangers all alone. It was easy to get rid of Slobodan Milošević with laser-guided bombs and missiles. It’s more difficult to confront a global network of loosely-allied, often independently operating terrorists. Should nuclear weapons fall into the hands of criminal regimes, third-world dictators, or revolutionary jihadists, neither European diplomacy nor the military strength of the United States will be able to guarantee our security.

Europe as well as the United States will, in the face of the current economic crisis, have to lend its weight to finding solutions as an equal partner. Barack Obama made that clear in his speech last July in Berlin. Tens of thousands cheered him like a rock star or a messiah (they can often be confused with one another). The only part of his speech that didn’t send the crowd into immediate ecstasy was the part where he called upon Europeans to give serious thought to confronting those dangers both inside and outside Europe. When he said, “The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” an anguished murmur went through his crowd of admirers.

We may certainly disagree on whether it’s smart to send more troops to Afghanistan. But Obama’s right when he says that America cannot and should not stand alone. George W. Bush tried that and it turned into a disaster. Obama’s election produced promising conditions for a more engaged Europe that preaches less and does more to help solve the global crises facing us today. Turning our backs on the United States because we’re angry and resentful at an unpopular regime would only increase the dangers we face. A good first step toward containment of those dangers would be to show up at the side of a trusted leader as an independent ally.