The moral authority of the United States?

Reagan said good-bye to this world

Under the code-name of “operation serenade”, the former collaborators of Ronald Reagan prepared every detail of his grand funeral –if this expression can be used in these circumstances- that the world saw during last week. Now it is known that the arrangements for the emotional show that the television networks displayed all over the world began in 1989, and were promptly intensified in 1994 when it was made public that the once president suffered from Alzheimer. According to Jim Hooley, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the whole event was organized considering the idea to build a solid memory for posterity. The intention was to put in a historical ground a president who, according to his followers was someone extraordinary. To judge by the emotions that the ceremony awakened in both the world and the United States, dozens of dignitaries, presidents, ambassadors, and ministers from all over the globe that stood by the coffin, it could be said that the former collaborators of Reagan won the bet of making him part of the pantheon of the most honorable presidents of the United States. However, do the Reagan administrations deserve such a tribute?

In the opinion of Lech Walesa, the former question must be answered in a positive manner. The former president of Poland declared that the Polish people and himself owe their freedom to Reagan. “The Polish people fought for their freedom for so many years that they are very fond of those who supported them during their struggle. To find support during those times was a sample of friendship. And President Reagan was therefore a friend. His policy of helping the democratic movements in Central America and Eastern Europe in the somber days of the Cold War, meant a lot to us. We knew that he believed in several principles, such as: human rights, democracy, and the civil society. He was convinced that the citizens should not be the ones at the service of the State, but on the contrary, and that freedom is not an innate right”.

Following the line of this profile portrayed by Walesa, there have been several farewell ceremonies in the memory of Reagan. Many countries all over the world have said good-bye to a man who fought against Communism and returned the hope for freedom to millions of citizens. They say that Reagan, by the end of his administration, shared with his collaborators this paradox: by the beginning of his administration, he intended to change a country; however, he ended up changing the world. In fact, the 40th President of the United States armed himself with courage in front of the Berlin wall to ask President Gorbachov to cast it down. It is important to remember this piece of history because a couple of decades before this event were to take place, Kennedy was harshly criticized for not preventing the construction of the wall. That is how Reagan became part of history because he was the one to ask to destroy that wall and he finally got what he requested several years later thanks to his tenacity and his frontal attack against Communism.

The leadership of Reagan during the dark decade of the eighties has been acknowledged in Central America and in El Salvador by the most conservative circles. They salute the fact that he helped to neutralize the Communist menace that floated over the country. El Diario de Hoy –despite its critiques against the alleged support that Reagan gave to the interventionist scheme of the State- reviews in a very positive manner what Reagan did for the country. “Carter favored a coup d’état that by 1979 led a coalition of Communist democratic Christians and traveling partners to hold the power with a radical agenda. The theory was that, by adopting the policies promoted by an extreme left-wing, the country was going to save itself from falling into the same situation of Nicaragua; however, Carter had a different objective: to deliver the country into the hands of Communism. The victory of Reagan changed the plan: The United States began to put our army together, and Carter’s strategy was neutralized”.

However, apart from the international victories of Reagan, very little has been mentioned about the conditions in which he left the country after the end of his administration. During his inauguration’s speech, Reagan declared the following: “It is my intention to cut down and reduce the amount of influence that the federal government has, and to establish a clear difference between the power that the federal organizations have and the one of the States and the people’s. Everyone has to remember that the federal government did not create the States. It is time to examine the growth of the governments that have been doing this without the consent of the people”.

Reagan was part of a battle that intended to eliminate taxes, the objective was to promote the individual genius of each of his compatriots. After eight years in the White House, he tripled the debt of the United States, undertook a career with armament called “the war of the stars”, which, in the end, had to be dropped as a project because it was extremely expensive. In addition, after his departure, the Great Federal State remained as a leader at least with the same proportions that it had when Reagan had found it. In other words, both of the Reagan administrations did not improve in a substantial manner the social or the economic life of most Americans.

On the other hand, a discourse dedicated to the American internal market, as part of an old discussion about the responsibilities of the governmental branches, rapidly became, in the context of the death of Communism, a problem of the whole world: to reduce the size of the State and follow the logic of the market. The Neo-conservatives, with Reagan and his team leading the way, began to make some pressure on the world in order to be able to use his recipes of the “good government”. Despite the differences and the debates about the perverse effects of Neoliberalism, in matters such as the increasing levels of poverty and the economic gap between the wealthy and the poor, many people believe that Reagan played an important role in the promotion of this economic doctrine during the eighties.

Nevertheless, not everything has been said about Reagan’s administrations. His decisive support to those he called the fighters for the Freedom in Nicaragua took the lives of over 50,000 citizens of that country. This cause was so important for the president of the United States at the time and his advisors, that they decided to make fun of the Congress taking part in an international transaction that could only be compared with a strategy of the mafia: they sold guns to Iran in order to finance the Contras that fought against the Sandinista government. This government took the Reagan administration before the eyes of justice, and it was condemned by the International Court of Justice because of the destruction caused in Nicaragua. The United States never paid its sentence, and it still has a moral debt with the world because of the international actions of a man that now the media call “an exceptional president”.

Reagan was not that enthusiastic about defending the cause of the human rights when the violators were identified as government-friends by his advisors. It was during his administration that the war in El Salvador took a turn for the worst, and that the members of the army committed the most atrocious crimes against the civilians. In addition, he did not seem to be strict with the problems connected with the regime of the Apartheid in South Africa.

In summary, the media circus that surrounded Reagan’s funeral, without underestimating the pain of his family, has to be seen as a product of the imagination of his advisors. Much of what is being sold today as the main achievements of the former president is now questioned. In addition, it does not make sense to call him “the defender of freedom”. His legacy in matter of human rights in the world is still a controversial issue. Although, to tell the truth, with Bush it seems to be a fact nowadays that someone can always manipulate the public opinion with more intensity.

The European Union?

On June 13th, the citizens of the European Union voted at the elections of the European Parliament. The new aspect of this process was the incorporation of ten countries to it, and this means that the number of citizens represented by the European institutions adds up to 450 million. However, the electoral campaign of the different political parties started with a concern for a high level of abstention that the first opinion polls predicted. They were not wrong: the European citizens were not enthusiastic to participate, making it seem as if the great Europe is not as united neither political nor socially speaking.

The first results of the “Barometer of the European Elections” indicated some of the reasons that would explain the intense lack of popular interest to vote: Europeans do not know what are the leading institutions that form the European Union, and what are the main discussions that are being developed inside those organizations. Just to mention some figures: a couple of weeks before the elections, only 37% of the European population knew the specific date in which the elections would take place, and only 40% was capable to say the exact number of the new members (the countries that were added to the European Union). There is a general sensation of disinformation about what is going on in the European Union, and in the mind of many undecided people a vote “would not change anything”. Everything seems to indicate that the construction of an “European identity” has not reached the minds of the people in the same way that the economic or the political union did. It cannot be forgotten that those were mainly economic aspirations at first and that then they became political, and both of these aspects promoted an international association between the European countries.

The different parties that will represent the European people in the Parliament are the same ones that will represent them inside their national territories. This creates a deficit in the speech of the parties when it comes to discuss the problems that are purely European, and their proposals do not go beyond the mere debates that take place inside the territory of each country. The information available indicates that the main reasons that could make a person participate are the “interest for Europe” (73%), and the opinions that the candidates have about the national affairs (71%). In addition, the enormous cultural and linguistic mosaic that characterizes the profile of Europe makes it even more complex to be able to project itself as a group with common problems that must be resolved in a collective manner.

Alain Touraine, a French sociologist, wonders: “Does Europe exist?”. It is worth while to reflect about this idea, and about others that can be added to it, for instance, can we really speak about an European conscience? Inside the community we can observe that the nationalities have a relevant force when it comes to construct a united Europe; and, internationally, the European politics are frankly absent. As many say, “Europe is sleeping”.

The success of the economic union was mainly materialized with the monetary union, as well as with the Common Agricultural Policy (PAC, in Spanish). Despite the fact that Great Britain, Denmark, or Sweden refused to became part of the European community and despite the concentration of resources in the PAC, the only actual international policy that keeps absorbing over 50% of the budget, the European Union has shown that it has the capacity to compete in the world’s market. However, the political disagreements connected with strategic affairs such as security and international terrorism seem to indicate that the European Union lacks both national and internal cohesion.

The war against Iraq leaded by the United States made it evident to see that the European Union did not have the capacity to adopt a single posture, an homogenous attitude about the conflict. The French-German position was not able to impose itself before countries such as Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, which, since the beginning, favored the American policies, and this created a legitimacy crisis inside the European Union as a political project.

With the experience of a couple of world wars on their backs, the European countries were looking for the support of their continent with tolerance and pacification as the main principles to resolve the conflicts. The diplomatic proposals of the Old Continent have tried to be different from the ones of the United States. This country has insisted to have a military intervention in the ethnic, the ideological, and the civilian conflicts, and then it compromises itself with a reconstruction and a peace project.

Europe does not have intervention troops, perhaps in the future it will, but for the moment it continues to reject the use of force. Robert Kagan, an American writer and a columnist, explains that “since the Europeans have a weak army, they see the world in terms of Kant; while the United States sees the world in terms of Hobbes”. It might just be the other way around perhaps, to see the world in terms of Kant is what makes this continent weak, military speaking. It is clear that while the United States keeps launching missiles, Europe makes press releases, impotently observing that it has not been able to perform its role of both pacification and stabilization in the international context. The European Union, as an institution, has been absent from the international scenery: this was seen in the war against Iraq, in all of Latin America, and even in its own territory when the responsibility to stop the war of the Balkans went to the hands of other organizations, such as the NATO.

The United States demands from Europe a higher level of responsibility in the “fight against the evil that menaces the world”. The problem is that such responsibility is seen in a different way by both parties. As Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist, would say, Europe rests on the principle that indicates “follow the law, not the war”; while the Bush doctrine intends to apply the opposite principle: “follow the war, not the law”. Europe might be wrong because it is naïve, especially in a moment in which its weak authority in the international scene and the attacks of March 11th in Spain remind it that it is also vulnerable to the international terrorism.

It is important to see that the international policy of the European Union, despite its weak aspects, is different from the general lines of the United States’ policies. This might be relevant for Latin America, and, particularly for Central America, since the European Union is looking to establish a connection with other regions based on a consensus, and not by imposition, as it has been traditionally done by the United States in the history of Latin America, and in the specific cases of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Many of the social conflicts that these countries went through were mostly the result of a North American international policy aimed to intervene in the national policies. There is no doubt that the construction of a united Europe to strengthen a good relation with other regions of the world opens new doors.

The European Union agrees with the idea of establishing commercial connections with Latin America. In this context, it would be willing to respect not only the economic characteristics of those countries, but also the political ones. For the European Union, differently from the North American policy, the creation of a free market does not automatically bring prosperity, it is also necessary to consolidate the internal democracy.

In the particular case of Central America, the consolidation of a united Europe must be an example for the region. Despite the fact that Europe is formed by a heterogeneous population, it has tried to unify itself, and even if a lot remains to be done, it continues to follow that direction. Although the Central American countries have many things in common because they speak the same language and because of the many cultural similarities, they have not done much to make the vision of Francisco Morazan come true: to see Central America united.