Artículo de Ethan Bronner en "The International Herald Tribune" del 1-2-03

PARIS When you fly into the Basel airport, you have a choice between two exits. One leads to Switzerland and Germany, the other to France. Little effort is devoted to indicating which is which. You can wander accidentally into the wrong country. Considering that the Rhine nearby flowed for centuries with the blood of conflict, the airport's casual borders are a reminder of what contemporary Europe has become - a near-haven of harmonious coexistence. .That's easy to forget but vital to remember, because it goes to the heart of what is gnawing at the European-American relationship these days. Eight European leaders may have backed President George W. Bush's approach to Iraq in an op-ed article published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal and several European papers, but most Europeans tend to think Americans have too harsh a view of the world, relying on force in international relations where diplomacy and commerce would do. Americans often consider the Europeans craven appeasers who prefer to buy off an enemy rather than confront him. As war with Saddam Hussein looms, this divide is affecting nearly every trans-Atlantic interaction. .Oddly, it represents a reversal of roles. Not many generations ago, Americans came to Europe for a firsthand look at power and its trappings - how to dress and how to eat when you are in charge of civilization. The Americans were the wide-eyed ones, the Europeans the hard-bitten sophisticates. Those images remain. Most recently, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was an American theorist who said that we were witnessing the end of history through the triumph of a singular viewpoint. Europeans scoffed at his naïveté. Yet if you want to find a place where history actually seems to have come to an end, where there are no longer armed conflicts aimed at redrawing maps and redistributing wealth, it is in the well-groomed, cosmopolitan and militarily weak Europe of the 21st century. .The change has been so quick that it gets overlooked. When Germany and France, at a celebration of their 40-year friendship pact this month, jointly raised their voices in opposition to early military action in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld angrily dismissed them as "old Europe." He got it precisely backward. Aversion to war is what defines not the old Europe but the new one, where disagreements are settled by multilingual summit talks over dinners of snails and duck, and high-speed trains zip you from Paris to Brussels without the need ever to show a passport or exchange currency. The big dispute in Europe is over how much to subsidize farmers. .Of course, Europeans live in a paradise of modern convenience and cultural tradition at least in part because they have handed over responsibility for military engagement to the Americans. Europeans want to maintain the role they have long enjoyed - leading the world debate. But without the power to back up your perspective, such leadership can prove elusive. .This produces a second paradox. The Europeans are persuaded that their newfound coexistence is a model for the world and that the more Hobbesian American approach represents a dangerous alternative. In other words, the disagreement over Iraq is not only over specific policy choices but underlying worldviews. The Europeans, and especially the French, in whose nation the phrase mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission) originated, have long seen it as their role to teach others how to live. Yet now the Americans talk about invading Iraq in order to spread democracy in the Middle East. This has nurtured the conflict between Europe and the Americans in a way that gives fresh meaning to the phrase "clash of civilizations." .At a recent conference in Brussels of Americans and Europeans, the new Europe was much in evidence. The participants were not discussing what European governments should do about Iraq. They were debating what the United States should do. It was clear that Europe could do very little without increasing its military power. While that was something many advocated, others remarked that if it did so, Europe might betray what it had become. .An Italian member of the European Parliament, for example, spoke of the phrase "Never again." Americans use it to mean preventing another Nazi Holocaust - no appeasement, no looking the other way at genocide. Europeans, he said, also meant no more war. "The European public does not accept peace and war as two routes to the same goal," he said. "Peace is itself a value. Just like life. That is why we oppose the death penalty." .One unstated concern Europeans clearly have about an American-led war in Iraq is that it could render Europe and its civilizational model irrelevant. That may sound purely self-interested, but in truth the European model is more relevant than ever. Through common economic interests, education and relentless talk, the Europeans have forged a new world for themselves. .Other regions should be so lucky. There is no escaping the fact that Europe needs to spend more on arms if it wants a serious foreign role. But its ideas deserve a close hearing, as for example in the war on terror. Americans, after all, have become good at fighting terrorists but not at fighting terrorism. As one German political scientist put it: "You think we are naive for resisting the use of force. We think you are naive for failing to understand how to dry up the sources of terror." .Americans and Europeans may have switched places in recent decades as their power relation has shifted, but in this debate it's an open question as to which are the realists.