Artículo de Thomas L. Friedman en "The International Herald Tribune" del 4-11-02

Berlin. Since World War II, America and Germany have had many disputes, but always within limits, because both sides saw a dangerous foe on the other side of the Berlin Wall and realized that they needed to fight together. There is still a dangerous foe out there - now it is religious totalitarians. .What is most shocking about the recent German election is not how the chancellor ran against America, it's how popular that theme was. Two things are feeding this. One is the new anti-Americanism, a blend of jealousy and resentment of America's overwhelming economic and military power - the "Axis of Envy," as Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, calls it. .The other is the new anti-Bushism - resentment of the often contemptuous, unilateralist, anti-green instincts of the Bush team. .Bottom line: Many Europeans today fear or detest America more than they fear Saddam Hussein. That is crazy, but it explains why Gerhard Schröder easily moved from raising legitimate questions about how to handle Iraq to taking Germany out of any war against Saddam under any conditions. It was the kind of rhetoric that leaves Americans thinking that Europeans won't use force under any conditions, and therefore are a danger to themselves and to America. .It is time for both sides to knock it off. They need each other. As Germany's thoughtful foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said to me, the goal of these religious totalitarians "is to destroy the open society everywhere and the economy that it's based on." The war against the religious totalitarians can't be fought with just armies. It must be fought with police, intelligence sharing, development aid, peace diplomacy and military operations. To win this war the open societies must each play to their strength - America's hard power, Europe's soft power. .When Germany says it is willing to provide the peacekeeping force in Kabul, that is a huge help. When Germany funds the expansion of the European Union to lift from poverty 10 new democracies of Eastern Europe, that is a huge help. But at the same time, some things are true even if a Texas cowboy believes them. I'm still not sure what the right way is to handle Iraq, but I am sure that ruling out war there, under any conditions, against a murderous UN outlaw like Saddam is wrong. .We are all New Yorkers now. Wherever you live, if you believe in the open society, if you cherish a world of freedom, you are now in World War III - a war against the new totalitarians, who strike at our businesses, discos, airports and theaters in an attempt to get us to shut ourselves in and our societies down. Either we fight this war together, or we lose it together.