Social States: The Myth of the Atlantic Divide
Peter Baldwin | Prospect Magazine | May 2009
Everyone is familiar with the idea of a "wide
Atlantic" and the alleged fundamental differences between the US and Europe:
the Americans believe in the unbridled free market, while the Europeans only
accept it against their will and try to curtail its excesses; true social
policy exists only in Europe; lack of universal health insurance in the US
causes many to die young or spend the majority of their lives in hospitals; the
crime rate in the US in clearly higher. Nevertheless, how true are these
preconceptions really?
The schism between rich and poor is greater in the US
than it is in Europe, when simply drawn from income figures. But when one
considers the total assets of citizens, European countries also display a clear
concentration of wealth. Due to the large economic gap in the US, poverty is
relatively higher. In absolute numbers, however, another reality comes to
light. When poverty is defined as roughly half of the average income of the six
EU founding member states, in 2000 numerous EU countries had more people living
in poverty than US. And this is not only true for the Mediterranean countries,
but also for Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland,
and Sweden. Another misconception: the American social state appears
underdeveloped in comparison with those in Europe. However, this only holds
true when compared to the social systems of Germany or Sweden. Otherwise, in
this respect the US performs much better than most believe. Nevertheless, it is
important that universal health care becomes law under the new US
administration. One lasting shame of the American health care system is the
high child death rate, which is higher than any country in Europe. One must
also compare other social services, for example public retirement funds or
diverse forms of unemployment benefits, and when one also takes into account
state aid for the private sector (such as tax incentives), then the public
social services in the US seem to fall exactly in the middle of the European
spectrum.
At a closer glance many of the supposed differences
emerge as mere myth. If there is one aspect that fundamentally divides the
societies on either side of the Atlantic, it is the continuity of an ethnic
lower class in the US, which is composed almost exclusively of African Americans.
Despite the successful integration of many immigrant groups, the tragic
vestiges of slavery are still visible in the urban ghettos of US cities today.
If one takes African Americans out of the crime rate statistics, the US again
lands in the center of the European spectrum, and the death rate is lower than
that of Switzerland, Finland or Sweden. Similar number games would have a
comparable effect on child poverty. In the end, it is not differing ideologies
which separate the US and Europe, but rather the difficult and lasting legacy
of slavery and social discrimination. Whether the election of the new US
President can bring a decisive turning point in this regard is yet to be seen.
This summary was prepared by the Atlantic Community editorial team from "A Narrower Atlantic" published here by Prospect Magazine
Tue, Jun 23rd 2009, 23:05
Ira Straus
Raises another question: Why the enthusiasm, in media and academia, for myth and stereotype, not just on this question, but on many others affecting the existence and strength of the Atlantic Community?
Alongside the "narcissism of small differences" between Europe and America, which brings a denial of the existence of the West, there is also a myth of the radical economic decline of the West vis-a-vis emerging economies.
The actual facts are even easier to find to dispell this myth, than in the myth of a fundamental differnce between Europe and America. Anyone can find the relevant statistics, whether they use the IMF, IBRD, or CIA statistics. Nevertheless, the media repeat the myth endlessly nowadays, uncritically and practically never running any fact-based correctives, nor doing their own elementary fact checking.
Projections of a possible relative decline 20-30 years out are treated as achieved fact, although such projections have always proved false in the past and will almost certainly prove false this time again. Remember when the Soviets were supposed to overtake America? Remember when Japan was taking over the world? It is tautological that there will always be some countries somewhere growing very fast, much faster than the West as a whole; project that growth by linear geometrical extension, and a few decades later those countries will have gobbled up the world economy. In reality it never happens.
The downward correction of PPP estimates for the economies of China and India have gone virtually unmentioned. (You didn't notice it? Their PPP estimates were cut a third by IMF and IBRD last year. Annuling years of imagined speedy overtaking of the West.)
OECD countries have 77% of world GDP, the First World OECD countries(extended Atlantic Community) 75% of world GDP, 55% in PPP terms which deliberately exaggerate the economic strength of the non-First world. This share has actually GROWN compared to what OECD had in the 1980s, and compared to what it had in the 1960s. There is NO decline at all. What there is, is a dual advance:
1- the growth of individual Third World countries, a few of which every now and then grow and modernize so well that they are no longer Third World and can be organically integrated into the First World.
2- the growth of the extended Atlantic or First World OECD, by sober expansion of memberhip, absorbing the countries that have graduated into the ranks of industrial democracies, WITHOUT taking in the still-Third World countries (Brazil, India, China) that it is now said by the myth-makers that OECD must take in so as to remain relevant.
The 2nd growth is made possible by the institutionalization of the Atlantic Community, on a plan established by Atlanticist thinkers in the 1930s in which institutionalization in a strong form would make possible gradual evolutionary expansion of membership in the community and stabilization of the world order. This plan has worked brilliantly. The myth-makers are not just wrong, they are completely ignorant of the fundamental reality of what is going on.
The two myths -- decline of West, incompatibility of Europe and America -- are in a sense identical. The one is the global international relations version of the myth; the other, the trans-Atlantic comparative politics version of the myth.
This can be seen in the two main book on Western decline, Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (bible of the 1980s declinists who thought Japan and Europe were taking over the world against America), Mr. Khanna's Rise of the Second World (the most lauded book of the present wave). Both promote declinism based, on the surface, on misleading statistics. The dishonesty about statistics was at least exposed in major media in the 1980s, it is thus far worse today in that the statistical deceptions are almost never corrected at all. But behind the statistical dishonesty, they share a deeper sleight of hand: both deny the existence of the West-Atlantic-OECD space as a fairly cohesive community.
In their statistics, both books simply ignore the existence of the Atlantic community as an entity, such as would be counted and measured in its collective statistics alongside the statistics they use for other entities (mainly total GDP, whether in real or PPP terms). On the other hand - and it is a glaring contradiction - they both exaggerate the European community as if it were a completed federation, counting it as an entity like any nation state. They measure Europe (and Japan) against America, subtracting European (and Japanese) power from American, rather than adding them together - although they are in fact added together, on the same side, in the vast majority of situations in the real world. On this basis of sleight of hand - a sleight of category, so to speak - it's easy for them to prove, to an unthinking reader, that the West is in decline, in fact that it's a nullity in world affairs, canceling itself out.
The real question is, "Why the mass media are overwhelmingly acting like unthinking readers, giving a pass to this obvious sleight of hand, evidently failing to notice it as a fundamental absurdity in the categories used by these writers, instead swallowing their writings practically whole and welcoming them with enthusiasm?" Not, "Is the West in decline," or "Are Europe and America deeply different societies" - the answers to those questions are obviously, "No".
It is a serious situation when reality is opposite to what nearly everyone believes (today, Western decline). Western leadership is an overwhelming fact. The economic slump may threaten it subjectively, by favoring new radical ideologies, but is not changing it objectively. The most serious threat to it at this time comes from the very fact of a widespread belief that the West has radically declined economically, and so must give up its leadership roles in the world economy, by giving China more power in IMF - IBRD, and by expanding OECD and G8 recklessly. In this way, a dishonest myth of decline is giving rise to a partial reality of decline in Western institutionalized roles in the world. With a result that will actually be one more of destabilizing the world institutional order, than of reforming it in a positive sense.
One can be grateful that the undermining is likely to remain partial. The West will survive, institutionally and in its leading global role, as well as sociologically, despite the myths of its decline externally and demise internally. Still, the damage from the myths can be severe. And the victims of the damage (e.g., poor countries that may find the IMF-IBRD become less well funded after "reforms" undermine donor confidence in them; or countries left in the lurch by instability as the West tells itself it can no longer afford its stabilizing role) may find it painfully real.