upton-on-line
20th September 2001
In this issue
Upton-on-line reports on some of the ripples the terrorist attacks
in the US have created on his side of the Atlantic.
Nous sommes tous Américains
Upton-on-line has long professed an overwhelming admiration for Le
Monde as upholding a standard of serious public discourse that is
in headlong retreat in most English speaking countries (and which New
Zealand has never really had). It was Le Monde’s apparent misfortune
to go to press on Tuesday 11th September just an hour or
two before the ghastly events in America unfolded. Which meant that
by the time of the next edition, almost 24 hours had elapsed – 24 hours
in which every news medium had been saturated with the horror and the
scale of the carnage. What was there left to say after the vocabulary
of revulsion and terror had been thoroughly worked over?
With an un-erring sense of the moment and its historical dimension,
the editor, Jean-Marie Colombani took just over 100 words on
the front page to define the moment for many people, not just in France
but across Europe and the western world:
" In this tragic moment where words seem so inadequate to
describe the shock that we feel, the first thing which comes to
mind is this: we are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, as surely
as John F Kennedy declared in 1962 that we are all Berliners. How
can we not feel, as we have in some of the most dire moments of
our history, a profound solidarity between the people of this country
and those of the United States – people to whom we are so close,
to whom we owe our liberty and therefore our solidarity; how not
to be, at one and the same time, ourselves assaulted by this news:
the new century is under way."
The reference to the Cold War and the Berlin air-lift, and before that
the liberation of Europe from fascism, was the only strand in living
memory big enough to resonate with the sheer enormity of the events
– a perfect ‘sizing’ of the issue. And carrying so much more weight
coming from a newspaper of celebrated centre-left credentials with a
consistently sceptical reading of American ambitions on the global stage.
Checking the wiring
That much at least echoed around the world press with the Kennedy reference
even finding its way into a sound bite-let on CNN. But as usual, with
Le Monde, there was, if not a sting in the tail, a laser sharp
message to political leaders to check the wiring of any plans concocted
in the aftermath to make sure they’re properly earthed. Here’s how the
balance of the 1000 word plus editorial concluded on page 18:
" Over and above their apparent murderous rage, the [suicide
attackers and their directors] nevertheless subscribe to a particular
logic. It is, obviously, a barbarous logic, a new nihilism which
is repugnant to the great majority of those who believe in Islam,
whose religion does not authorise suicide any more than does Christianity,
let alone suicide coupled with the massacre of innocent people.
But it follows, nonetheless, a political logic which, by taking
things to extremes, obliges Muslim opinion to ‘take sides’ against
those who are currently denominated as ‘The Great Satan’. In doing
this, their objective might well be to extend and intensify a crisis
without precedent in the entire Arab world.
" In the long term, this attitude is obviously suicidal because
it is a lightning rod that attracts attention without judgement.
This situation requires our leaders to rise to the gravity of the
occasion and prevent people from entering into this suicidal logic
which the purveyors of war lust for and on which they count. For
one can say this much, with dread: modern technology allows them
to go even further. Such madness, even under the pretext of despair,
will never be a force that can rebuild the world. That is why, today,
we are all Americans."
One suspects that many readers never got this far, certainly not the
CNN editors who grabbed the headline. But anyone wanting to understand
European misgivings in whatever shape they emerge could do worse than
ponder this diagnosis with its implicit message that any American response
should be wary of driving people to take sides against Western values.
Speaking for the establishment
Whatever its perceived political orientation, Le Monde is clearly
in touch with how political leaders across the spectrum in France approach
this crisis. And it is, evidently, with a good deal of trepidation.
Notwithstanding Jacque Chirac’s avowal of unflinching solidarity,
the political parties have almost (not quite) without exception expressed
a high level of caution about what France might involve itself in. Even
on the Right, there is an acute sense of the delicacy with which, from
France’s point of view, things must be handled. The former Prime Minister,
Alain Juppé, while supporting America’s legitimate right
to seek out and punish the instigators of the suicide attacks, has made
it clear that any response must avoid the appearance of a crusade by
the West against the Arab world or the Muslim world. "That would
be" he warns "an error of analysis and world politics."
The whole business has swiftly brought back to the surface a series
of tensions that pervade French attitudes to the conduct of America’s
Middle Eastern policy – attitudes that have found France at odds with
the anglophone world on the treatment of Iraq and a raft of other issues.
American hegemony is not appreciated by the French. And when it is brought
to bear (in their view, crassly) in a part of the world that has more
than a backyard feel about it, there is bound to be nervousness. And
with the links – not all of them by any means happy – that bind France
to North Africa and the Mediterranean world, that’s perfectly understandable.
France considers that it has a particularly keen and subtle understanding
of the political currents in the Arab world. Not 15 minutes from where
upton-on-line lives there is the large and prestigious Institut du Monde
Arab. There are any number of specialist commentators laying the law
down in the French media. One suspects they are echoing an even keener
debate being conducted behind the closed doors of the grand ministries
that, whatever the colour of the Government have, since as long as anyone
can remember, plotted the independent course in world affairs that France
likes to play.
Notwithstanding that
The feeling for America’s trauma is real. In a city that has had its
share of terrorist attacks, people find it only too easy to imagine
what it would be like to see a plane attack bring down the city’s icon,
the Eiffel Tower, or its monolithic single Manhattan-style mega-tower,
the Montparnasse centre. Police with visible arms and cordons have mushroomed
across the city while rubbish bins have been sealed off to discourage
street bombings. In their place, rather racy green, transparent plastic
sacks have appeared covered with exhortations to vigilance. There is
a hint that things are on edge – that the city has been here before,
and that some bad dreams could be about to recur.
And for resident Americans
The business of being American abroad (never an easy thing to disguise)
has become doubly difficult. Upton-on-line went last Sunday (as he and
his family do from time to time) to the American Cathedral in Avenue
Georges V. It was (not surprisingly) more than usually full (although
there is always a big and very social crowd). As the flagship for the
Episcopalian Church in Europe, it is (accents aside) a quintessentially
Anglican experience. There is, of course, no established church in America
(as there isn’t in New Zealand). But the patriotic vein that is tapped
on these sorts of occasions is indistinguishable from what you might
encounter at St Paul’s in London – or St Paul’s in Wellington (almost
the sole remaining outpost of an entire culture in secular anaemic New
Zealand).
Indistinguishable that is, except for the hymns. Because you will obviously
not find God Save the Queen or the likes of Parry’s incomparable
Jerusalem. And so it was that the service ended with the American
equivalent – almost the last hymn in the book, America the beautiful
with its refrain of "America! America!…" One particular
couplet caught upton-on-line’s eye:
" O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years
thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears."
With smoke still rising from the foundry pit that is the World Trade
Centre, it seemed a cruel image. The fervent optimism that seems always
to have characterised the view Americans have of themselves has been
assaulted as never before. Even Vietnam, such a disaster for the nation’s
political soul, left the tangible icons of America’s material hubris
untouched.
For America, tangible and technological achievement has always been
a huge source of reassurance. And in this, the French truly are Americans,
and not just in adversity. France has its own symbols of prowess like
the TGV, its own mini-Manhattan out at La Défense, its own (in
many ways superior) tangle of high-speed motorways and airports.
Even when the inspiration is less materialistic, both cultures give
expression to it in plastic – and often monumental form. The Dean reminded
his congregation that, notwithstanding the near lunar landscape in lower
Manhattan, one symbol remained resolute throughout – the Statue of Liberty,
unveiled within a few days of the consecration of the American Cathedral
in Paris in 1886. And whose gift to America was New York’s most famous
landmark? Why, France’s. All of which makes Le Monde’s insistence on
a shared identity (and a shared analysis of what’s at stake) all the
more persuasive.
So to what is the new century awakening?
Upton-on-line offers no profundity amidst the clamour of opinions that
(as one former colleague ruefully opined in an e-mail) "will see
everyone become instant experts on Muslim fundamentalism". But
to point up the extraordinary distance we have travelled, upton-on-line
offers readers a flashback to the last time Europe and America found
themselves in a conflict born of fanaticism and apparently limitless
evil – the outbreak of war in 1939 (also in September).
Readers will recall that while the events of the depression, political
hemorrhage and melt down in Germany and the unraveling of Woodrow Wilson’s
post-war settlement at Versailles created the conditions for the descent
into the inferno, it was the German invasion of Poland that finally
put the world on a war footing. It is worth recalling precisely how
it all came to pass. Here is the matter-of-fact account given in Ian
Kershaw’s recently published two volume biography of Hitler. It describes
a vanished world:
" At 7.15 p.m. on the evening of 29 August, Henderson [the
British Ambassador to Germany], sporting as usual a dark red carnation
in the buttonhole of his pin-striped suit, passed down the darkened
Wilhelmstrasse – Berlin was undergoing experimental blackouts –
through a silent, but not a hostile, crowd of 300-400 Berliners,
to be received at the Reich Chancellery as on the previous night
with a roll of drums and guard of honour …. Hitler was in a less
amenable mood than on the previous evening. He gave Henderson his
reply. He had again raised the price – exactly as Henlein had been
ordered to do in the Sudetenland the previous year, so that it was
impossible to meet it. Hitler now demanded the arrival of a Polish
emissary with full powers by the following day, Wednesday 30 August.
Even the pliant Henderson, protesting at the impossible time-limit
for the arrival of the Polish emissary, said it sounded like an
ultimatum. Hitler replied that his generals were pressing him for
a decision. They were unwilling to lose any more time because of
the onset of the rainy season in Poland. Henderson told Hitler that
the success of failure of any talks with Poland depended upon his
good will, or lack of it. The choice was his. But any attempt to
use force against Poland would inevitably result in conflict with
Britain. Henderson’s telegram to the British Foreign Secretary,
Lord Halifax, early the following afternoon, stated: "If Herr
Hitler is allowed to continue to have the initiative, it seems to
me that [the] result can only be either war or once again victory
for him by a display of force and encouragement thereby to pursue
the same course again next year or the year after …
On 1st September, Hitler invaded Poland, telling the Reichstag
that if Britain chose to fight "she would pay dearly". Kershaw
details the diplomatic consequences with clinical calm:
" [the] reports of such hysteria could cut no ice in London.
Nor did an official approach on the evening of 2 September, inviting
Sir Horace Wilson to Berlin for talks with Hitler and Ribbentrop.
Wilson replied straightforwardly that German troops had first to
be withdrawn from Polish territory. Otherwise Britain would fight.
This was only to repeat the message which the British Ambassador
had already passed to Ribbentrop the previous evening. No reply
to that message was received. At 9 a.m. on 3 September, Henderson
handed the British ultimatum to the interpreter Paul Schmidt, in
place of Ribbentrop, who had been unwilling to meet the British
Ambassador. Unless assurances were forthcoming by 11 a.m. that Germany
was prepared to end its military action and withdraw from Polish
soil, the ultimatum read, ‘a state of war will exist between the
two countries as from that hour’. No such assurances were forthcoming.
‘Consequently’, Chamberlain broadcast to the British people then
immediately afterwards repeated in the House of Commons, ‘this country
is at war with Germany’. The French declaration of war followed
that afternoon at 5 p.m."
[From pp 218-223 of Hitler, Volume 2, 1936-1945: Nemesis
by Ian Kershaw; Allen Lane 2000]
How things have changed. The speed of formal diplomatic exchange seems
almost quaint: ambassadorial exchanges, red carnations, ultimatums and
declarations of war have become a thing of the past. And of course,
nothing much happened (beyond Poland) for the nearly 8 months that elapsed
during the ‘Phoney War’ until the invasion of France in May 1940.
Here we have, unannounced (if not wholly unknown) combatants, a staggering
attack watched live by half the world and yet a sense of uncertainty
about how even to characterise the nature of the conflict that may lie
ahead. Even more novel is the realisation that very small numbers of
people have amassed forces of a scale and sophistication hitherto associated
only with nation states. And as the Westphalian model of conflict between
states subsides we see in its place the spectre of violence fuelled
by religious fanaticism of a type that secularised western civilisation
has little intuitive feeling for. Just about the only familiar thing
is the apparent re-birth of a Russian-American alliance (and even there
the parallel is with 1941, not 1939).
The religious bit
The American cathedral seemed an appropriate place to take the pulse
given the particular challenge that the terrorist attacks pose. For,
unlike many European countries, America (despite its secular, enlightenment
foundations) is an avowedly religious country. It is impossible to imagine
in a country like New Zealand the frequent recourse to the language
of prayer, piety and righteousness that have poured from the lips of
American leaders, news commentators and ordinary citizens in recent
days. It is this invocation of divine guidance that some European commentators
find so distasteful – as they do the clash of cultures and religions
posited by Samuel Huntington. This has until now seemed a tad
apocalyptic to European palates. But faced with apocalypse in downtown
Manhattan everyone is being forced to come quickly to grips with the
fact that a foe as determined as this – and one able to draw on a widespread
catchment of bitterness – will require equal determination to head off.
A letter from the Bishop-elect of the American churches in Europe,
proclaimed two lessons from Tuesday September 11th : first,
an end to the illusion of American invulnerability. That much seems
self-evident as the alabaster cities now lie scarred. The second, however,
will be much more contentious: that ‘if you want peace, work for justice.’
This is the instinct of many Europeans who wonder how, in the presence
of appalling material living standards, corrupt or dysfunctional governance
and a yawning visibility in the gap between developed and developing
world living standards – conveyed by the very same media that enabled
cheering middle eastern audiences to salute the suicide attackers –
it will be possible to bring the terror under control and maintain
the willing co-operation of millions of people who for the present see
the world order as being stacked heavily against them.
This will be the debate between Europeans and Americans in the months
ahead: whether or not the success of retaliatory measures – military
or otherwise – depends on a global re-engagement on tackling issues
like disease, migration and pressures for development, not forgetting
a durable settlement of the current Palestinian up-rising. For a taste
of the gloomy side of European thinking, try this unrelentingly Hobbesian
vision from Nicolas Baverez (also writing in Le Monde):
" The catastrophe which has befallen the United States constitutes
a terrible reminder of some fundamental truths:
- Human history continues to be written in letters of blood
- Violence and war, revolutions and crises remain the driving
force of history
- The defence of freedom is a matter of constant struggle which
relies on the active engagement of all democratic peoples
" … The 11th September marks, for the democracies,
the bloody return of the sort of history from which it had been
vainly hoped the 21st century would liberate us. The
United States and Europe have wasted the opportunities presented
by the end of the Cold War. Now they will have to fight to avoid
losing the post-Cold War world. That implies not only a physical
rearmament a political and moral rearmament along with a rediscovery
of the imperative for institutions and norms that defend liberty
and a return to a public life rooted in the principle of responsibility
and the engagement of the public at large."
It remains to be seen whether such grave sentiments find their mark
in political thinking.
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