EU must reject anti-Americanism

BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER

www.firmaspress.com

Shortly after the Spanish referendum on the European Constitution, President Bush landed in the Old Continent. Both events were marked by paradoxes worth exploring.

The referendum was intended to procure the approval of the Spanish people for a lengthy document that must be ratified by the 25 nations that form the European Union. The text -- more of an international treaty than a true Constitution -- had been coordinated by former French President Valery Giscard D'Estaing, with the cooperation of about 100 politicians and European parliamentarians.

The result was a kind of operations manual for the EU, with a sizable sidebar about rights and a certain social-democratic aroma very typical of the type of bureaucratized federation of nations that, little by little, is being forged in Brussels.

A Pyrrhic victory

The Spaniards went to the polls with low spirits and a high degree of ignorance (almost no one read the constitution), but more than 80 percent of those who showed up (42 percent of the registered voters) voted in favor, so the great European ''law of laws'' survived its first trial by fire.

That was important, because rejection by only one country would be enough to bring the whole effort crashing down. The triumph of the Yes vote in Spain, although a Pyrrhic victory, was a good beginning for the long process of electoral consultation and parliamentary debate that looms ahead. Naturally, the big question is: What will happen in Britain, where society has traditionally been suspicious of the political machinations in what Britons call ``the continent.''

So far, it appears there is nothing substantial to criticize. But what should horrify any sensible person is the basic reason brandished by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to support the European Constitution: To strengthen a major political entity destined to balance and confront the present power of the United States and the potential development of China.

Spain's Socialists

Zapatero's Socialists used anti-Americanism (which is very strong in Spain) to solicit votes for a united Europe. This was said on Spain's official TV channel by none other than the president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, a Socialist engineer from Catalonia, a man with moderate leanings who is, however, a victim of an archaic, sectarian and dangerous way of interpreting international relations.

The great opportunity for peace and prosperity now before the world comes precisely from the disappearance of power blocs after the Cold War and from the unstoppable expansion of the values and methods of government established in the West's cultural perimeter, a huge space that includes nations as dissimilar as Japan, Turkey, Israel, India and South Africa, along with Europe, the United States and Canada.

What's needed, therefore, is not to recreate the old tensions between adversarial fragments but to strengthen the cooperation between countries that respect human and civil rights, make decisions by democratic means and organize their economic transactions according to the market and the existence of private property. In other words, the three fundamental features that give shape and sense to what we call ``the West.''

Somehow, the essence of Bush's message when he stepped on European soil was this: The United States, unlike what Borrell thinks, does not perceive Europe as a different or adversarial force. It does not worry about its union and does not lose sleep over the existence of the euro.

Quite the opposite. The United States believes that the growing cohesion of the Old World is an excellent opportunity to conduct business without costly customs barriers and to fortify the Atlantic Alliance, a military force that is very necessary to prevent massacres and genocides such as the ones the Americans and the Europeans managed to halt in Yugoslavia with difficulty -- or, in the future, to suppress the homicidal spasms of ''mad states'' such as Iran, Syria or North Korea.

Historic moment

It may be easier to stimulate pan-Europeanism if the anti-American component is used in political campaigns, but that type of aggressive nationalism founded on an unfair rejection of others (''others'' who gave their lives by the thousands to rescue Europe from Nazism) merely shows a profound inability to understand the historic moment in which we find ourselves and the enormous possibilities of collective happiness this moment entails.

Today, the ''perpetual peace'' foretold by Kant remains possible, but to achieve it, it is necessary to renounce old mental perceptions. That's the only obstacle looming on the horizon.