Le Figaro, France

And if Europe Finds its Strength in America?

Translated by Bethany Kibler

February 23, 2008

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)

We are, without a doubt, facing one of those major historical turning points that, from time to time, rear up with obvious signs that politicians nevertheless don’t always know how to take.  A historian looking back from the future will perhaps say that, after 2004, the United States had attained the peak of its socio-political expansion and that the newly re-elected George Bush ought at that point to have adopted, little by little, the program of his rival, John Kerry.  But a more precise observer would be able to point out that the soviet-style putsch that unfolded doubly in Washington – a first time, in 2007, with the elimination of Donald Rumsfeld from the Department of Defense, and a second time, in 2007, with the stamp given by the American intelligence community to the Iranian nuclear program – definitively made clear the American need for a global scale, strategic withdrawal toward a more isolationist policy.

Concurrent with this American evolution (which is greatly accelerating the 2008 electoral campaign), two very different shifts, one in Beijing and one in Moscow, are taking place: China, finally hit by rapid inflation which itself was engendered by the five years of hyper-economic growth, is preparing to adjust fire.  The role of exports will diminish and, even though its currency can do nothing but appreciate, the internal market will continue at the same time to affirm itself as a fundamental factor in the nation’s prosperity.  No doubt this evolution will be accompanied by a certain “asian-ization” more nationalist than will be reflected in Chinese international policy.  In Moscow, we see an inverse process: the Chinese economic slow-down stands in contrast to a Russian economic acceleration; against the relative withdrawal in the Middle Kingdom, Russia’s new openness to foreign capital and technology is developing.  This all the more positive, for this time, unlike the Elstine period, the Russian state is becoming strong enough to dictate its own terms.

A post-election America which moves towards a more isolationist stance will of course still maintain abundant strategic interest in Pacific security and the development of Latin America.  One can be certain that if Obama wins in November, America will once and for all abandon the Mediterranean and a good part of the Middle East to their respective fates.  Of course, the security of Saudi Arabia and free movement within the Persian Gulf will remain inextricably linked to the American agenda.  But all the rest, including the security of Israel, could be, little by little, abandoned in favor of a new post-British version of the “benevolent negligence,” favored by Queen Victoria and her then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Palmerston.  Even if the election of McCain might partly check this tendency, one can nevertheless conjecture that he, being most left-leaning of all Republican candidates since Eisenhower in 1952, will all the same reshape the magnitude and scope of military deployments, precisely because he has a military background and knows the bitter taste of battle, and furthermore because having served in Vietnam and having had a father who commanded the Pacific, McCain will undoubtedly grant China and Japan the importance that they, in effect, deserve.

Europe, at this juncture, is thus notably threatened by a series of possible collapses in the southern Mediterranean which could give way to the rising Islamist and xenophobic surge.  However there is another entity also being threatened – Russia, whose borders are but tenuously defended against the demographic pressure from Asia, to the east, and eventually, from the terrorist and Islamist pressure from the south.   Moscow and Brussels need to deal with these converging threats, and need to do so using equally convergent methods:  reinforce and integrate the large Turkish democracy, do everything possible to accelerate the rise to power of Iranian reformers, monitor and punish, if necessary, the Saudi-Pakistani Islamist axis, guard equally the Maghreb, Palestine and its immediate neighbors from the powerful upsurge of Egyptian Islamism.   Add to this list the necessity of freeing Occidental Europe from its excessive dependence on fossil fuels from its southern periphery, and one has all of the parameters for a Russo-European alliance, the only strategic plan capable of reversing the world order in favor of the West.

Alas, if my heart leads me, more than ever, to vote McCain, (I am not an American), my reason pushes me inexorably towards Obama, who cannot help but to accelerate the strategic withdrawal of the United States.  28 years after the end of the cold war, the US realizes that it is subject neither to the same threats, nor to the same destabilizations as the old democracies of the West and the very young, post-communist Russia.  For this sole reason, there is a lot to hope for in the American election, if it indeed allows, at last, for an otherwise impotent Europe to find the key to its renaissance.  Just as it was for the French Third Republic as it faced the German threat, so too will this renaissance only occur by way of a strategic alliance with the Post-Soviet Eurasia, topped off by an enduring understanding with Turkey.