What little American comment I've seen on "Apres L'Empire", obviously much commentated upon only in Europe, Ceaser forgets to mention, is consistent in its total failure to concretely address any of the specifics of the essay. Ceasers' 'genealogical-philosophical' yammerings are a perfect example. Perhaps some literary mumbo-jumbo will make these uncomfortable questions go away:
- can the trade inbalance, economic dependency and industrial decline go on forever?
- does the US lack the military means, especially on the ground, to impose PNAC and "secure the Realm" in Eurasia?
- Will Russia 'return'?
- Is Russia still Americas' strategic nemesis and chief deterrent on the Eurasian landmass?
- Has a window of opportunity for the US to totally break up Russia now passed?
- Will Russia converge with the EU, driven together by the irrational antics of the US?
- Will Japan converge with this Eurasian bloc?
And in short: Is the US in decline?
Clearly, the fate of Russia is key to Todd's geostrategic view as it is to Brzezinski's (of whom Todd has much to say, especially about Britain, whom Todd considers as 'the canary in the mineshaft' in regards to American intentions).
Thanks for the ref - if you find any Americans who have anything germaine to say about Todd, please post!
-Brad
Recognized Todd name from reading, "Existential Marxism in Modern France, " by Mark Poster, long ago. (Available, in toto, his website.) Former PCF intellectual.
From bloglandia, http://www.broadscapeventures.com/weblog/dfme/ http://broadscapeventures.com/weblog/dfme/archives/000787.html#000787 Anti-Americanism
Writing in The Public Interest http://www.thepublicinterest.com/ , James Ceaser offers "A Geneology of anti-Americanism."
America's rise to the status of the world's premier power, while inspiring much admiration, has also provoked widespread feelings of suspicion and hostility. In a recent and widely discussed book on America, Après L'Empire, credited by many with having influenced the position of the French government on the war in Iraq, Emmanuel Todd writes: "A single threat to global instability weighs on the world today: America, which from a protector has become a predator." A similar mistrust of American motives was clearly in evidence in the European media's coverage of the war. To have followed the war on television and in the newspapers in Europe was to have witnessed a different event than that seen by most Americans. During the few days before America's attack on Baghdad, European commentators displayed a barely concealed glee - almost what the Germans call schadenfreude - at the prospect of American forces being bogged down in a long and difficult engagement. Max Gallo, in the weekly magazine Le Point, drew the typical conclusion about American arrogance and ignorance: "The Americans, carried away by the hubris of their military power, seemed to have forgotten that not everything can be handled by the force of arms ... that peoples have a history, a religion, a country."
Time will tell, of course, if Gallo was even near correct in his doubts about U.S. policy. But the haste with which he arrived at such sweeping conclusions leads one to suspect that they were based far more on a pre- existing view of America than on an analysis of the situation at hand. Indeed, they were an expression of one of the most powerful modes of thought in the world today: anti-Americanism. According to the French analyst Jean François Revel, "If you remove anti-Americanism, nothing remains of French political thought today, either on the Left or on the Right." Revel might just as well have said the same thing about German political thought or the thought of almost any Western European country, where anti-Americanism reigns as the lingua franca of the intellectual class. more... (Ceaser continues w/ much on Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche, yada, yada...) http://broadscapeventures.com/weblog/dfme/archives/000787.html#000787
-- Michael Pugliese