XAVIER de C***
LETTER FROM AMERICA
My dear Debray,
The deed is done! I am a US citizen. You'll be pleased to hear that I passed the language and history tests with flying colours and without impugning the reputations of our ambassador's predecessors here in Washington. The vow of allegiance was sworn in the somewhat sombre surroundings of the Immigration Office; we stood before the Star-Spangled Banner, hand on heart. Knowing me as you do, however, you will understand that this was no act of petty opportunism on my part, but prelude to a vaster scheme.
Naturally, I don't expect to convince you; but who could not attempt to persuade his oldest friend of a project which, he fears, may prove the only safeguard -- however temporary -- of the civilization that has formed them both? In 212 AD the Emperor Caracalla, mindful of the barbarian hordes at his borders and the growing costs of military expenditure, took the revolutionary step of declaring every freeman of the Roman Empire -- from the banks of the Tigris to the Atlantic Ocean -- a citizen of Rome. In a trice, the faltering superpower was reinforced by millions of new taxpayers, talents and recruits. The edifice endured for another two hundred years.
Today, does not Western civilization -- in the hands of a mere 15 per cent of the world's population and, thanks to globalization, as visible to the other 85 per cent as the contents of a Hermès shop-window in the Place Saint-Denis -- demand a similarly unified power? Shared goals unite Europe and the US. We all seek to deregulate our economies, democratize our hinterlands, promote human rights. But our wealth attracts resentment and around us there surges a rising tide of the hungry and the dispossessed. Huntington's homilies on the clash of civilizations ignore the crucial fact that the world is also divided into states. The point, for any man of action, is to ensure that ideologies and institutions coincide. Would there be an Islam today, if an Umayyad and then an Abbasid imperium had not arisen within decades of Mohammed's death? If Damascus and Baghdad had not been political, as well as religious, capitals? Would we have a Christianity had there not been a Christendom, Carolingian or Byzantine, to hold back Arab incursions? A Mount Athos, without the ramparts of Constantinople? Cistercians, without a Frankish chivalry, Jesuits, without a Charles V?
Today, our civilization demands its own encompassing political institution: the United States of the West. The European response to September 11 -- ' Nous sommes tous americains!' -- and surge of unanimity, from L'Humanité to the Figaro, was heartwarming in its way. But shared sentiments without unity of command are good for nothing but after-dinner speeches. Our opinion-makers are satisfied with so little -- their indifference to the connexion between words and facts never ceases to astonish me. Less poetry, please, and more logic! Kennedy's Ich bin ein Berliner was a strategy, not a spasm of emotion. A new century lies before us. What role will Europe settle for in America's march across Asia -- staffing a first-aid post on the Afghan frontier? Patrolling the Gulf in a paddle-boat? Providing after-sales service for the Middle East? My friend, the only way to escape from protectorate status is to move up from Zone Two into Zone One. Is it just, is it democratic, that the inhabitants of the fifty states alone should vote for the American president, whose thumbs-down determines the fate not just of a couple of gladiators but of millions of lives?
The task, admittedly, would be easier if our new Augustus, relaxing on Air Force One, would scribble his reflections in French or German, as Marcus Aurelius in Greek. But the resemblance between the pioneers of the Tiber and the apprentices of the Potomac is striking: on both sides, one finds the same pragmatic refusal of abstraction, historical optimism, inaptitude for melancholy; chicanery everywhere, from the Operations Room to the marriage bed. Both offer a welcome for strangers and a respect for all gods. In both, the conquered -- Latinos, Japanese -- are granted citizens' rights.
The first step is to instruct our international-law specialists to draw up a conversion plan, transforming a region of common values into one of shared sovereignty. The position of Puerto Rico -- estado libre asociado -- may point the way for our new constitutional model. Territorial discontinuity will be no problem: think of Hawaii, let alone Martinique or Guadeloupe. The Atlantic will be to the USW as the Mediterranean to Rome -- mare nostrum. Paris and Los Angeles are equidistant from the Hudson. What use the irrational multiplication of foreign ministries, intelligence services, surveillance satellites, in pursuit of an identical set of interests? Why so many heads, for a single geo-strategic continuum?
By this stage, my dear Régis, you will have grasped the scale of what lies ahead. Here, perhaps, my long years of service to the French State may be of use in drafting an advisory brief for the advocates of both sides. How, first of all, should Europe's spokesmen -- one of those rotating chairmen, Belgian, Italian or Dutch, who replace each other every six months at the pinnacle of the EU -- put the case for the USW, if granted an audience in the Oval Office? I would suggest six basic points. . . .
<http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25302.shtml> <http://www.newleftreview.net/PDFarticles/NLR25302.pdf> *****
***** JUIN 2002, Page 31 « L'ÉDIT DE CARACALLA », de Régis Debray
Tous citoyens transatlantiques ?
Par BERNARD CASSEN
Le succès du dernier livre de Régis Debray, L'Edit de Caracalla (1), doit davantage au bouche-à-oreille qu'à l'attention des grands médias. Rien d'étonnant à cela en ce qu'il révèle le non-dit, l'inexprimé d'une posture des « élites » qu'avait déjà si bien analysée Paul Valéry lorsqu'il écrivait en 1925 : « L'Europe aspire visiblement à être gouvernée par une commission américaine. » . . .
<http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2002/06/CASSEN/16639> ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>