[lbo-talk] Old Europe begins to strikes back?

[Michael Pollak]

In Europe, the credibility crisis could conceivably be beginning.  At the
very least, Wolfowitz's Vanity Fair interview seems to be big pebble.  As
Germany's largest, most respectable (and generally conservative,
Atlanticist and understated) paper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
put it: "The charge of deception is inescapable."  And FT editorials have
been positively scathing lately.

Now on top of that, the intellectuals like they might be getting their
wind back and mounting something of an intellectual counterattack.  Today
Juergen Habermas and Derrida published a long joint article in the FAZ.
How's that for a united front of modernists and post-modernists?  And
according to "Pearl Diver," the German review of European feuilletons
(long essays that are roughly a cross between American op-eds and long
pieces in the NYRB), they are joined today by writers across Europe:
Umberto Eco in La Repubblica; Adolf Muschg in the Neuen Zuercher Zeitung
(Swiss);  Richard Rorty in the Sueddeutschen Zeitung; Fernando Savater in
El Pais; and Gianni Vattimo in La Stampa.

The basic line seems to be that American's normative authority is in
shambles; and that since it is Europe who learned the right lessons
from WWII and not the Americans, it is up to them to set us straight.

And for Habermas and Derrida at least, the first step seems to be a
greater union between Germany and France -- that they could conceivably
forge a common foreign policy, defense and economic policy and create a
new gravitational pole.  And that the present constitutional conference is
where that could be made reality.

If you read German, all the articles that are online are linked here:

http://www.perlentaucher.de/feuilletons/2003-05-31.html

Michael