With Us or Against Us

by Tony Judt

  tion misjudges the demonstrable relationship between voter behavior

  and foreign policy. Whether one sees the war in the Middle East as

  right or wrong, the majority of the population views it differently

  from the peace activists. Most Germans see the war as something that

  is taking place far away from Europe. Therefore, the idea of German

  participation in a “war on terror” is not likely to win spontaneous

  approval in a country where the potential threat of terrorist groups

  has been dismissed. The situation was different 25 years ago when the

  Red Army Faction, who did not pose nearly as great a threat as

  Al Qaeda, was active. The trial of high-ranking terrorists in Frankfurt

  and Hamburg aroused a great deal less public interest than the sex and

  cocaine scandals of local figures, even though plans for a spectacular

  bomb attack on a Christmas market in Strasburg as well as for a poison

  gas attack on the Frankfurt subway were revealed.

  The electoral success of the red–green coalition and its subsequent

  drop in the opinion polls has little to do with the rejection of the war

  in Iraq. Despite what spin doctors and election losers like to claim,

  voters are not a herd of sheep that can be easily manipulated. The

  foolish talk of elites, who supposedly cause wild fluctuations in public

  opinion so that they can be celebrated as masters of strategy, is simply

  a means by which professional political consultants create their own

  legends. Right now, Tony Blair is paying a harsh price for the illusion

  that anything that leads to success is justifiable. Foreign policy can

  only compensate for domestic problems, if there is a discernable for-

  eign pressure, as there was in the era of détente. However, if the

  domestic situation is extremely serious, then foreign policy does not

  have this compensatory power. In the fall of 2002, the foreign policy

  situation was not ambiguous at all. The Bush administration had

  attempted to sell its intervention in Iraq as a continuation of the “war

  on terror.” In order to accept the foreign policy strategy against the

  “axis of evil,” a certain political worldview had to be shared—a world-

  view that even a majority of Americans did not share. For reasons of

  realpolitik, even this strategy was later disavowed in the case of North

  Korea, so that what emerged was a tangled web of interpretation-ripe

  strategies that involved power politics, harrowing scenarios about

  weapons of mass destruction, as well as political and moral justifications

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  for a transfer of power from outside. The Bush administration did not

  succeed in representing this invasion as a necessary act in the fight

  against terrorism. By putting pressure on and manipulating the pub-

  lic, together with Blair’s technique of asserting power, morality was

  employed as an instrument in the effort to gain domestic majorities.

  The loyalty of the American and British people toward the troops on

  the ground should not be mistaken as support for the war.

  Manipulation has been all too obvious and now that details are com-

  ing out about the way in which the occupation of Iraq was carelessly

  portrayed as a short-term affair, the British and American public have

  reacted with exasperation. A completely justifiable policy of regime

  change, which would aim at revolutionizing the entire Middle East,

  would require a 10–20-year presence of a substantially larger contin-

  gent of international troops than are now stationed in Iraq. Even with

  the best intentions, no American president would ever receive the

  support of a majority of Americans for an openly declared policy of

  long-term democratic intervention.

  The credibility of American policies was put at stake in 2002. A

  “deeply rooted” anti-Americanism was hardly necessary to feel less

  than enthusiastic about these policies. In Europe, ambivalence is part

  of a self-perception that is shaped according to nation. In America, by

  contrast, the logic of power suits the social and psychological compo-

  sition of the country. With this point in mind, it is easy to understand

  how criticism of American foreign policy slips into anti-Americanism.

  At first glance, the rhetoric of the “only remaining superpower” seems

  realistic. This rhetoric is a poor disguise, however, for a perspective of

  helplessness that Europe is loath to acknowledge. From this perspec-

  tive, obvious differences in power are chalked up to being an integral

  component of the inequality and injustice that rules the world. Only

  when the past short century is viewed historically is it possible to

  understand that, despite the bipolarity of the political world order in

  the second half of the century, it was, in reality, an American century.

  The entry of the United States into World War I was the beginning

  of the end of Europe’s centrality to world politics—a fact that the

  elites of old Europe accepted only begrudgingly. Even Sir Winston

  Churchill made sarcastic remarks about the ambivalent character of

  American help at a time when National Socialists were threatening Great

  Britain’s very existence. The secular formulation of translatio imperii,

  which Dan Diner describes convincingly in his book Das Jahrhundert

  verstehen, could be either referenced ironically or taken as a red flag

  waved at a bull—something that seeks to fulfill its need for size and for

  significance. That is why President de Gaulle found supporters among

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  German politicians. They saw the possibility that German national

  traditions could live on in a Europe dominated by Germany and

  France. For Germany, on the other hand, the transatlantic relationship

  is distinguished by an imperative for social change that runs through-

  out the entire twentieth century. It could be called the American

  Promise, a promise for which post-1918 Germany was entirely recep-

  tive. While this seems completely forgotten today, this promise still

  permeates everyday life. An Americanism exists, which renews itself

  periodically, and, which plainly depends on the attractiveness of

  the “American Way of Life.” The history of anti-Americanism can

  only really be understood if it is seen as an answer to a notorious

  Americanism, which has a long tradition in Germany. No less than

  Goethe himself wrote, “America, you have it better . . .” and this was

  also meant politically as a critique of European feudalism. The most

  German bildungsroman of all, Goethe’s William Meister, offered up

  the song of the emigrant, whose destination is called America—a land

  in which fantasy and empire meet. After Europe’s failed bourgeois

  revolution of 1848, America remained the land of the free. This

  stirred the imaginations of those who were left behind and who could

  not come to terms with the conditions in Germany. The America of

  their imaginations could be called a dream America. Already in the

  long nineteenth century, millions of Germans had this dream in mind

 
; as their real goal.

  This dream of American life was revived more than once during the

  “short century”. In the Weimar Republic, America was associated

  with the open-minded and the modern, with fashion, entertainment,

  and technical production. Even National Socialist ideology took into

  account German ambivalence toward American society. Despite the

  restrictive immigration policies that America introduced in the 1920s,

  Germans, especially in the lower classes, continued to believe in the

  American dream. The worldwide expansion of the entertainment

  industry also contributed considerably to America’s popularity. In the

  fantasyland that was this dream, the English actor Charlie Chaplin

  became an American hero with whom the average moviegoer could

  identify. His film, Modern Times, created an image of the modern

  world that educated European elites could only begin to adopt in

  earnest after the fall of National Socialism. With Les Temps Modernes,

  French intellectuals, likewise, sent a signal that was also heard in

  Germany, that they would now turn toward a non-European version

  of the modern world. This prepared the ground on which the inter-

  national Movement of the Sixties was built—a lifestyle revolution that

  turned its back on traditional Europe. Even international opposition

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  against the Vietnam War developed on the basis of social relationships

  that had become Americanized. In no other country of Old Europe

  did this develop in such a strong or obvious way as it did in West

  Germany, where, in contrast to France or Italy, there was no commu-

  nist party that could exist within the political public sphere. German

  protests against the Vietnam War also consciously followed the style,

  form, and content of the Civil Rights Movement in America. The

  Sozalistische Deustche Studentenbund (SDS) even got its name from

  its American counterpart, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

  The antiauthoritarian protest movement of the 1960s was social in

  motivation. In the final analysis, the protest movement could not

  come to terms with the pacifism of the post-National Socialist period

  and with the way in which pacifists adopted Germany’s disarmament

  as if it were their own idea. Solidarity with the American soldiers who

  had deserted was still a priority, however, even in the midst of the anti-

  imperialist justifications of militant anti-Vietnam War protests. Not

  until the identity politics of the 1970s, which was a reaction to the

  failed attempt to transform society, were cultural elements mobilized

  to reject the United States, the superpower of the West. To this end,

  they gathered together a hodgepodge that included not only environ-

  mentalism and pacifism but also old attitudes of superiority and a

  more recently developed historical amnesia. In the late 1960s, this was

  incorrectly described as a generation gap. By the 1980s, emphasis on

  the generation gap disappeared when a generation-spanning consensus

  formed around the need for a new collective identity. The controversy

  was over how to build it. The Historikerstreit of 1985 became the most

  significant example of the new debates over German self-understand-

  ing. In this search for a new self-understanding, Germany looked to

  America for approval. This was demonstrated in the handshake

  between President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl at the graves of SS

  soldiers in Bitburg, where the chancellor used Germany’s ambivalence

  as a means of blackmail.

  The political classes of Europe can always count on the ambivalent

  attitude of the people toward the United States. Certainly, by the time

  NATO was established, American superiority in the Western alliance

  had become so obvious that the old relationships between the people

  and national identity were no longer sustainable. Under the rubric of

  national liberation from German occupation, Gaullists and the com-

  munist parties of the European continent were the most successful in

  maintaining a feeling of national continuity. England had meanwhile

  already fled into the unique role of the special relationship. Germany,

  on the other hand, had to turn away from its past in order to join

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  either western or eastern alliances. This meant that at the end of the

  Cold War, no country in Europe was less prepared than Germany for

  the return of the national question. “Reunification” had attained the

  status of an ideology during the last 40 years of the short century.

  Although foreign commentators took the desire for unification as

  given, within Germany this was hardly the case. The dynamics of

  socialism’s collapse created the longing for a national solution to the

  German question, even if the solution was intended more as a mirac-

  ulous rescue of East Germany from the misery of “really existing

  socialism.” While the worst aspects of a divided Germany could be

  projected upon the collapsed Soviet Union, the fact that the Allies

  divided Europe in reaction to Germany’s attempted seizure of world

  power remained shrouded in memory. Gratefulness for Germany’s

  prosperity during the Cold War is still invoked in pro-American terms

  but below the political surface and the commemorations that cele-

  brate the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Air-Lift, lurks antipathy toward

  America. This antipathy is expressed in peculiar discussions about

  accusations of an allegedly collective guilt, or about the expulsion of

  Germans from previously occupied territories, or about bomb-filled

  nights. Then, the discussion is no longer about the German past, with

  its stereotypes of perpetrators and victims; it turns into debates over

  the influence of Jews on American policy. This merry-go-round of

  public debate has spun faster and faster since the Gulf War in 1992.

  The current, ill-considered characterization of allied troops in the

  Middle East as occupiers is linked in public memory with the occupa-

  tion of Germany after 1945. In Germany, it is only reluctantly that the

  Jews and former concentration camps prisoners are conceded the right

  to see May 8 as a day of liberation. In the meantime, even this day has

  been sacrificed for the sake of national continuity.

  In West Germany, the need for national continuity disappeared

  during the Cold War. Participation in the Golden Age of the American

  Way of Life, which stretched from 1949 to 1973, compensated West

  Germans through social progress for the nation’s division. The American

  promise arrived. Even the protest and youth culture can be under-

  stood as a part of this desired and accepted Americanization. This

  was not the case in the East where, in the shadow of the Red Army,

  national continuity was monopolized in the face of the unwanted

  transformation of society to state socialism. The communist parties

  sought to curry favor with the Volk, especially after the painful experi-

  ences of June 1953 in East Germany, and then of 1956 in Poland and

  Hungary. In the Soci
alist Bloc, a dream America also existed. This

  dream was not as strong in East Germany as it was in Poland—with its

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  Greater Poland that included Poles who had migrated to America. In

  the GDR, the need for compensation on a national level prevailed

  over the societal shortages because, shoved between the GDR and the

  United States, the homeland of consumer capitalism, was the Federal

  Republic with its well-stocked West Berlin acting as a capitalist show-

  case. In the East, the collapse of the economy of shortage was thus

  experienced that much more as a clash of culture. Once the crisis-

  prone reality of West Germany, which in addition to internal problems

  also had to digest a collapsed East German economy, was recognized,

  the typical socialist idealization of western society quickly collapsed.

  In this way, the long-nurtured East German need for national conti-

  nuity arrived at its anti-American destination. For many East Germans,

  the long awaited for modernization of society turned out to be an

  existential threat. Faced with this situation, claiming national mem-

  bership seemed more important than trusting in the power of society

  to change. The eastern part of Germany made it through this process

  in the years 1989 and 1990 with breathtaking speed. No one longed

  for a new Germany, but rather for “reunification”—in other words, a

  reestablishment of the past national status quo. The dream America of

  “actually existing socialism” quickly transformed itself into the nightmare

  America of globalization.

  To get a sense of the unique mixture of the old and new in German

  self-understanding, one has to grasp that united in one country are

  two different senses of reality that are products of two different social

  systems. For both parts of Germany, America remains, no matter what

  it does, a symbol of the new. Ambivalence toward the new is projected

  onto America: the more social life is experienced as prone to crisis,

  the stronger the fears over the new reality. In the summer of 2002, the

  worst flood in memory affected Germany. It was rightfully called the

  flood of the century. While the opposition candidate went on vaca-