Habermas wrote this book in 2013 and it was just translated into
English. Jeremy Waldron wrote a review in the 10-22-2015 issue of the
NYROB. Habermas has some legitimate concerns about the Technocrats who
legislate for the individual nations without being part of the
democratic process. The European Central Bank and the European Court of
Justice for example both finesse democratic procedures.
Waldron interestingly refers to Carl Schmitt who argued that "you cannot
forge a political entity without an enemy to give sharpness to its
boundaries. Habermas rightly rejects this as dangerous nonsense. Yet I
wonder whether he isn't occasionally tempted by something of this kind.
Sometimes he suggests that European identity might be sharpened by a
sort of tepid anti-Americanism. In an essay cosigned by Jacques
Derrida, Habermas cited 'February 15, 2003,' the day on which tens of
thousands of people in London, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, and
Paris protested the invasion of Iraq in some of the largest
demonstrations seen since the end of World War II, as the harbinger of
'the birth of a European public.'
"This seems to me rather thin. For one thing the demonstrations were
echoed in New York and Los Angeles -- and in London [sic] also (which
Habermas associates with the US in this enmity). For another thing, he
exaggerates the extent of anti-American sentiment: Is it really true
that 'the overwhelming majority of Western Europeans responded with one
voice to the reckless war of George Bush, Jr? Anyway, the suggestion is
ephemeral. Who now remembers February 15 -- or even 15 February -- as
though it were like September 11? It is, I think, unworthy of
Habermas's cosmopolitan vision.
"In many respects, the US works as an exemplar for Habermas, not as a
point of Schmittian otherness. He takes the American experience as
encouraging evidence that people, in a country of immigrants, can hold
layered and incompletely integrated political identities. His
well-known theory of constitutional patriotism explains the growth of a
'we, the people' mentality as a nonethnic basis for American identity.
A similar kind of patriotism is crucial for what Habermas has in mind
for Europe."
*Comment:* I wonder if we as a species are equipped to see social
distinctions in foreigners. Habermas ought to be able too see them, but
according to Waldron he saw an undifferentiated American entity going to
war against Saddam Hussein and thrilled at the undifferentiated European
opposition. I wonder if that particular anti-American sentiment was
abandoned once the Western European (many of them) choice for American
President was actually elected. In terms of that particular issue, war
against Saddam Hussein and against other Islamists, Obama disappointed
by behaving much as the George Bush would have.
Jacksonians resent the anti-Americanism of Western Europe, especially
that of France. They did not want to enter that European War that
became World War II, but were convinced it was necessary to save our
friends especially in Britain and France. The fact that their
sacrifices were not appreciated baffles them. Habermas doesn’t seem to
take this American element into consideration.
Bush seems to me more Wilsonian than Obama. Like Roosevelt and
Eisenhower, Bush wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and change Iraq
into a Liberal Democracy. Iraq was like the tar baby for Obama. He
couldn’t conveniently get out of Iraq until the
anti-Hussein-anti-Islamist forces were clearly in power. Obama at heart
was more of a Jeffersonian, a side he didn’t get to show much of, to the
disappointment of Liberals in American and the EU. The Western
Europeans that thrilled to the election of Obama and were subsequently
disappointed nevertheless had their anti-Americans blunted by him. An
American majority did after all elect him and Western Europeans were
used to political leaders disappointing them.
The least flashy of Walter Russell Mead’s categories is the
Hamiltonians. They don’t inspire, they don’t advocate fighting wars,
they don’t try to convert anyone – well, they sort-of do. They want to
be able to do business with all the other nations. Francis Fukuyama’s
Hamiltonianism is well-expressed in his The End of History and the Last
Man. Liberal Democracy, primarily that of it that does business with
other nations of the world, now predominates. The American Neocons
(Wilsonians) tried to hijack Fukuyama’s ideas and advance them
militarily throughout the world. Bush probably invaded Iraq under the
Neocon influence. So Fukuyama repudiated the Neocons. He didn’t want
to go to war with anyone, at least not for that reason. We haven’t
needed to go to war with China in order to do business with them and we
shouldn’t have to go to war with anyone else to do business with them.
