The Atlantic Gets Ever Wider. Not just in a physical sense, as oceans rise and coastlines recede, but also in ideological terms. Europe and America appear to be pitted against each other as never before. On one shore, capitalist markets, untempered by proper social policies, allow unbridled competition, poverty, pollution, violence, class divides, and social anomie. On the other side, Europe nurtures a social approach, a regulated labor market, and elaborate welfare networks. Possibly it has a less dynamic economy, but it is a more solidaristic and harmonious society. “Our social model,” as the voice of British left liberalism, the Guardian, describes the European way, “feral capitalism,” in the United States. With the collapse of communism, the European approach has been promoted from being the Third Way to the Second Way. The UK fl oats ambiguously between these two shores: “Janus Britain” in the phrase of the dean of transatlanticist observers, Timothy Garton Ash. It is part of Europe, says the British Left ; an Anglo-Saxon coconspirator, answer its continental counterparts. That major differences separate the United States from Europe is scarcely a new idea. But it has become more menacingly Manichaean over the last decade. Foreign policy disagreements fuel it: Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea. So does the more general question of what role the one remaining superpower should play while it still remains unchallenged. Robert Kagan has famously suggested that, when it comes to foreign policy, Americans and Europeans call different planets home. Americans wield hard power and face the nasty choices that follow in its wake. Europeans, sheltered from most geopolitical strife, enjoy the luxury of approaching conflict in a more conciliatory way: Martian unilateralism confronts Venusian multilateralism. But the dispute goes beyond diplomatic and military strategy. It touches on the nature of these two societies. Does having the strongest battalions change the country that possesses them? After all, America is not just militarily strong. It is also—compared to Europe—harsh, dominated by the market, crime-ridden, violent, unsolidaristic, and sharp-elbowed. Competition is an official part of the national ideology and violence the way it spills over into everyday life. Or so goes the argument: a major battle of worldviews and social practices separates America from Europe.
Brunei in 2020