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Victor Davis Hanson est connu. C’est un historien américaniste “musclé”, de la droite belliciste, proche des néo-conservateurs, un amateur de Thucydide et des guerres du Péloponnèse, un conseiller extérieur de GW qu’il a rencontré à plusieurs reprises pour lui donner des avis sur ses entreprises militaires. Certaines de ses interventions peuvent être intéressantes, comme celle à laquelle nous nous référions le 5 avril 2004. Dans d’autres cas, son enthousiasme belliciste et pro-Bush l’emmène aux marches du ridicule, comme lorsqu’il se demande si GW n’est pas un nouveau Lincoln et si l’Irak de l’été 2003 n’est pas au bord d’une étourdissante victoire, comme la victoire nordiste de la prise d’Atlanta par Sherman le 2 septembre 1864 après un mois d’août 1864 de défaitisme et de spéculation. D’une façon générale, Hanson est un partisan forcené et convaincu de la vertu et du triomphe de l’Amérique et de l’américanisme. Il en perd toutes les vertus de l’historien, y compris celle de la conviction bien fondée, tant ses plaidoiries pro domo sonnent faux et parfois ridicules. En voici une…
Aujourd’hui, Hanson a l’humeur sombre. Il est bien obligé d’admettre que le triomphe américain n’est plus ce qu’il était. Il évoque même un “global shift of power”, qui a tout de même l’avantage de donner à l’effacement américain une explication qui soit plus l’apparition d’une force concurrente brutale et traîtresse contre la vertueuse Amérique qu’une faiblesse américaine. Tout de même, — comme dans les westerns, d’ailleurs comme tout à Hollywood, c’est le “gentil” qui gagne, la cavalerie qui intervient, l’Amérique qui revient. En d’autres termes: la Chine s’apprête à contester la place de première puissance de l’Amérique, pratiquement à n’être pas loin d’y réussir, et alors « [t]he world will soon better appreciate the United States ».
En d’autres termes (bis repetitat), il est temps de s’interroger sur ce phénomène qu’une puissance de la trempe des Etats-Unis, qui se targue d’une culture éblouissante, qui est unanimement estimée comme l’indépassable modèle par les élites américanisées des pays non-US, essentiellement les européens si cultivés, puisse présenter comme l’un de ses principaux historiens, senior fellow à Hoover Institution et Stanford University, un Hanson qui propose de tels commentaires. Ou bien, dit encore différemment : s’agit-il de la même planète? S’agit-il de la même psychologie?
C’est à propos de ce texte de commentaire « The Global Shift », du 10 juin 2005 sur NationalReview Online, que nous reprenons ci-dessous pour une lecture détaillée, que nous proposons notre commentaire. L’entrée en matière montre la maestria bien connue de Hanson pour donner une synthèse claire et percutante des grands mouvements historiques, dans ce cas celui des « [r]adical global power shifts » d’un empire à un autre, ou d’une force dominante à une autre. (On s’étonnera simplement qu’il inclut, dans la “révolution industrielle”, la France comme “État européen nordique”, éventuellement caractérisée par une “population protestante importante”, — ce qui est le cas pour ce dernier point mais n’a certainement pas l’implication philosophique et politique que Hanson veut lui donner : « The northern European states of England, France, and Germany, products of the Enlightenment, with sizable Protestant populations, outpaced both the old classical powers of the Mediterranean and the Spanish empire. »)
Aujourd’hui, dit Hanson, nous semblons assister à un phénomène similaire de basculement de la puissance à l’échelle globale, mais à une extraordinaire rapidité. L’apparition dans les rangs des puissances capitalistes de l’Inde et de la Chine est “le fait du jour”. (Hanson avertit pourtant : ces deux puissances, qui passent directement du XVIIIème au XXIème siècles, comme on vous le dit, vont être progressivement affectées des “contradictions” d’une transition brutale vers le capitalisme, dont l’Amérique a été elle-même affectée et “au travers” desquels elle est passée. Cette phrase est confondante puisqu’elle exonère désormais l’Amérique de GW de tous ces maux dont elle aurait triomphé : « we have also already passed through all the contradictions of a breakneck capitalist transition — the dislocation of rural people, industrial pollution, unionization, suburban blues, ubiquitous graft, and petty bribery — that will increasingly plague both India and China as they leave the 18th century and enter the 21st. ») Pour en venir au principal, c’est-à-dire justifier la vertu de la politique américaine, l’Inde est mise de côté puisque, effectivement, l’Amérique l’a récemment autorisée à devenir son allié : « We mostly welcome the new India — nuclear, law-abiding, and English-speaking — onto the world stage. It deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council and a close alliance with the United States. »
Reste donc la Chine, qui est une horrible menace, et en plus une menace qui se moque de l’Amérique et de ses efforts de paix : « China could rein in Kim Jong Il tomorrow. But it derives psychological satisfaction from watching Pyongyang’s nuclear roguery stymie Japan and the United States. » La Chine qui ricane devant la paralysie américaine et japonaise face à l’horrible Corée du Nord, menaçant elle-même les deux oiseaux de paradis (USA et Japon) égarés...
La peinture de la situation devient alors complètement surréaliste. On peut parler, chez l’historien, d’une étrange affection, dont le fondement est de grossir démesurément la menace chinoise, d’aggraver jusqu’à la caricature le comportement chinois, de façon à justifier
... Une appréciation semblable, pour qui connaît la perception qu’on a des comportements (imprévisible pour les US, mesuré et prudent pour les Chinois), et qui connaît les comportements respectifs des Chinois et des Américains vis-à-vis de l’UE et de l’ONU, est tellement incroyable et tellement l’exact contraire de la réalité qu’elle touche au comique involontaire: « So far they have been given a pass on three grounds: the old Third World romance accorded to Mao’s Marxist legacy; the Chinese role as a counterweight to the envied power of the United States; and the silent admission that the Chinese, unlike the Americans, are a little crazy and thus unpredictable in their response to moral lecturing. Americans apologize and scurry about when an EU or U.N. official remonstrates; in contrast, a Chinese functionary is apt to talk about sending off a missile or two if they don’t shut up. »
Les appréciations sur la puissance militaire chinoise sont de la même eau: fabrication virtualiste de bout en bout. Les appréciations sur la moralité des uns et des autres évolue également dans la bulle commune de la “faith-based communauty”. Il n’empêche qu’il nous conduit au happy end inévitable. Nous calomnions l’Amérique parce que nous réclamons trop de l’Amérique: « This hysteria that the world’s hyper-power must be perfect or is it is no good is in dire contrast to the treatment given to China. » Étrange: il nous est reproché de réclamer une quasi-perfection de l’Amérique que celle-ci ne peut nous donner alors que Hanson nous a jusqu’alors enseigné cette vertu comme évidente, et alors que, dans sa chute, il nous décrit une Amérique nécessairement quasi-parfaite, dans l’adversité aujourd’hui comme elle l’était dans la puissance triomphante hier.
En effet, passée l’ère honteuse du « Pavlovian anti-Americanism », la réalité s’imposera à nous de nouveau, dans toute sa splendeur lumineuse: « China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
» Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or naïve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end. »
Voilà, le tour est joué. Lisez donc le texte de Hanson pour confirmation ; et dites-vous bien ceci : pour conduire à son terme un tel raisonnement sans que la plume vous tombe des mains, par simple réflexe de dignité, il faut que ce croyant de la religion américaniste soit bien mis sens dessus dessous à propos de la puissance de l’Amérique qu’il célébrait avec ivresse il y a peu encore. Ce texte extra-terrestre de l’historien Hanson, par ailleurs historien cultivé et d’une véhémence mesurée lorsque le sujet s’éloigne de sa chère Amérique, est une illustration convaincante du désarroi qui prévaut aujourd’hui à Washington, et qui ne se résout de façon virtualiste, le temps d’un texte de cet acabit, que par l’empilement et le renchérissement des illusions, des clichés et des lieux communs hyperboliques et hollywoodiens.
By Victor Davis Hanson, NationalReview Online, June 10, 2005
Radical global power shifts have been common throughout history. For almost a millennium (800-100 BC) the Greek East, with its proximity to wealthy Asia and African markets and a dynamic Hellenism, was the nexus of Western civilization — before giving way to Rome and the western Mediterranean.
Yet by A.D. 300 the Greek-speaking half of the empire, more distant from northern European tribal attacks, proved the more resolute. It would endure for over 1,000 years while the fragmented West fell into chaos.
And then yet again the pendulum shifted back. The Renaissance was the product of Florence, Venice, and Rome as the Byzantine East was worn out by its elemental struggles with Islam and straitjacketed by an increasingly rigid Orthodoxy and top-heavy imperial regime.
But by 1600 the galley states of the Western Mediterranean were to lose their restored primacy for good, as to the north the ocean-going galleons of the Atlantic port nations — England, France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain — usurped commerce and monopolized the new trans-oceanic trade routes to Asia and the New World.
By the time of the industrial revolution, another radical shift had occurred in influence and power. The northern European states of England, France, and Germany, products of the Enlightenment, with sizable Protestant populations, outpaced both the old classical powers of the Mediterranean and the Spanish empire. And in early 20th century, the United States, benefiting from the Anglo tradition of transparency and the rule of law — combined with a unique constitution, exploding population, and vast resources — displaced the old European colonial empires and stood down the supposed new future of Soviet totalitarianism.
Globalization and technology, of course, can speed up these shifts and accomplish in a few years what used to transpire over centuries. We are told that a third of the planet, the two billion in China and India, is now moving at a breakneck pace with market reforms to remake the world. The old idea of a “population bomb” of too many people and too few resources has been turned upside down: The key is not how many people reside in a country but rather what those people do. A billion under a Marxist regime leads to terrible human waste and starvation; a billion in a market economy is actually advantageous — as seemingly endlessly active minds and arms flood the world with cheap consumer goods and rebuild a decaying infrastructure from the ground up.
Europe — high unemployment, layers of bureaucracy slow growth, unsustainable entitlements, ethnic and religious tensions, shrinking populations, unresponsive central governments — is often juxtaposed with Asia, as if its sun is setting just as the East’s is once again rising.
So far the European Union’s decision not to spend on defense; its inherited infrastructure and protocols; and its commitment to the rule of law keep the continent seemingly prosperous. It has some breathing space to decide whether it will reemerge as a rising power or be relegated to a curious museum for cash-laden tourists from Asia and America.
Somewhere between these poles is the United States. Pessimists point out that we increasingly don’t create the cars we drive, the phones we used, or mirabile dictu, soon the food we eat. High budget deficits, trade imbalances, enormous national debt, and growing military expenditures will supposedly take their toll at last, as pampered Americans consume what by the new global rules they don’t quite earn.
Optimists counter with their own set of statistics and point out that immigration and religion have ensured a steady if not rising population. Unemployment, interest rates, and inflation are low, and alone in the world America has an amazing resiliency and flexibility to fashion citizens and a single culture out of diverse races and religions. It also, of course, enjoys a unique constitution and laws that provide freedom without license.
We seem to enjoy the best of both worlds, symbolized by our two coasts that look on both east and west. Our European traditions ensure the rule of law and the vibrancy of Western civilization. Yet decades ago, unlike the EU, we understood the Asian challenge and kept our markets open and our economy free, often requiring great dislocation and painful adjustment. The result is that for all our bickering, we continue to remain competitive and flexible in a way Europe does not.
If we have avoided the state socialism of Europe that stymies growth, we have also already passed through all the contradictions of a breakneck capitalist transition — the dislocation of rural people, industrial pollution, unionization, suburban blues, ubiquitous graft, and petty bribery — that will increasingly plague both India and China as they leave the 18th century and enter the 21st.
But the real question is how both China and India, nuclear and arming, will translate their newfound economic clout and cash into a geopolitical role. If internal politics and protocols are any barometer of foreign policy, it should be an interesting show. We mostly welcome the new India — nuclear, law-abiding, and English-speaking — onto the world stage. It deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council and a close alliance with the United States.
China, however, is a very different story — a soon-to-be grasping Soviet Union-like superpower without any pretense of Marxist egalitarianism. Despite massive cash reserves and ongoing trade surpluses, it violates almost every international commercial protocol from copyright law to patents. It won’t discuss Tibet, and it uses staged domestic unrest to send warnings to Taiwan and Japan that their regional options will increasingly be limited by Beijing.
China could rein in Kim Jong Il tomorrow. But it derives psychological satisfaction from watching Pyongyang’s nuclear roguery stymie Japan and the United States. China’s foreign policy in the Middle East, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia is governed by realpolitik of the 19th-century American stripe, without much concern for the type of government or the very means necessary to supply its insatiable hunger for resources. The government that killed 50 million of its own has not really been repudiated and its present successor follows the same old practice of jailing dissidents and stamping out freedom. When and how its hyper-capitalist economy will mandate the end of a Communist directorate is not known.
The world has been recently flooded with media accounts that U.S. soldiers may have dropped or at least gotten wet a few Korans. Abu Ghraib, we are told, is like the Soviet gulag — the death camp of millions. Americans are routinely pilloried abroad because they liberated Iraq, poured billions into the reconstruction, and jumpstarted democracy there — but were unable to do so without force and the loss of civilian life.
This hysteria that the world’s hyper-power must be perfect or is it is no good is in dire contrast to the treatment given to China. Yet Pavlovian anti-Americanism may soon begin to die down as the Chinese increasingly flex their muscles on the global stage and the world learns better their methods of operation.
So far they have been given a pass on three grounds: the old Third World romance accorded to Mao’s Marxist legacy; the Chinese role as a counterweight to the envied power of the United States; and the silent admission that the Chinese, unlike the Americans, are a little crazy and thus unpredictable in their response to moral lecturing. Americans apologize and scurry about when an EU or U.N. official remonstrates; in contrast, a Chinese functionary is apt to talk about sending off a missile or two if they don’t shut up.
The Patriot Act to a European is proof of American illiberality in a way that China’s swallowing Tibet or jailing and executing dissidents is not. America’s support for Saudi Arabia is proof of our hypocrisy in not severing ties with an undemocratic government, while few care that a country with leaders who traverse the globe in Mao suits cuts any deal possible with fascists and autocrats for oil, iron ore, and food.
Yes, we are witnessing one of the great transfers of power and influence that have traditionally changed civilization itself, as money, influence, and military power are gradually inching away from Europe. And this time the shake-up is not regional but global. While scholars and economists concentrate on its economic and political dimensions, few have noticed how a new China and an increasingly vulnerable Europe will markedly change the image of the United States.
As nations come to know the Chinese, and as a ripe Europe increasingly cannot or will not defend itself, the old maligned United States will begin to look pretty good again. More important, America will not be the world’s easily caricatured sole power, but more likely the sole democratic superpower that factors in morality in addition to national interest in its treatment of others.
China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or naïve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end.
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
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