Europe is not aging gracefully. More than half a century after it began taking the steps that eventually resulted in the European Union, it is at best a vast market without a consistent military or political personality—and one that matters less and less in world affairs.
What happened? One can cite a number of factors: the persistence of nationalist egoism; the excessive importance of the EU’s two major founders, France and Germany; Great Britain’s aloofness and readiness to follow Washington’s instructions; the imbalance created by the influx of former Soviet satellites. But more decisive than any of these reasons is that since the end of World War II, Europe has been tormented by a need to repent.
Brooding over its past crimes (slavery, imperialism, fascism, communism), Europe sees its history as a series of murders and depredations that culminated in two global conflicts. The average European, male or female, is an extremely sensitive being, always ready to feel pity for the world’s sorrows and to take responsibility for them, always asking what the North can do for the South rather than asking what the South can do for itself.
Europe has surely engendered monsters. But it has, at the same time, engendered the ideas that made it possible to slay monsters. European history is a succession of paradoxes: arbitrary feudal power gave rise to democracy; ecclesiastical oppression, to freedom of conscience; national rivalries, to the dream of a supranational community; overseas conquests, to anticolonialism; and revolutionary ideologies, to the antitotalitarian movement.
Europe no longer believes in evil but only in misunderstandings to be resolved by discussion and dialogue. She no longer has enemies but only partners. If she is nice to extremists, she thinks, they will be nice to her, and she will be able to disarm their aggressiveness and soften them up. Europe no longer likes History, for History is a nightmare, a minefield from which she escaped at great cost, first in 1945 and then again in 1989. And since History goes on without us, and everywhere emergent nations are recovering their dignity, their power, and their aggressiveness, Europe leaves it to the Americans to be in charge, while reserving the right to criticize them violently when they go astray.
Pascal Bruckner
Artikel auf City Journal
Pascal Bruckner: Europe’s Guilty Conscience / Self-hatred is paralyzing the Continent
