The immovable shadow

We will be questioning the declared end of the Pax Americana.

America, which once benefited from rapid, clear, and successful development, and whose power was of a nature to pull a whole series of countries in its wake, seems to be losing initiative. It is being overwhelmed by the dizzying dynamism of other regions of the world eager to rewrite the rules of the game. Once again retracting into themselves, making the planet ‘safe for democracy,’ as Woodrow Wilson affirmed over a century ago, seems to have taken a back seat on the United States’ agenda. A regrettable consequence is that old Europe, no longer accustomed to walking without support, finds its crutches taken away. Its crutches, perhaps, but not its chains, for, by gravitation, historical reality dictates that Europe is drawing closer to the United States even as they seem to flee. This flight is often justified by the notion that Americans reluctantly exercise leadership of the free world. However, this reluctantly exercised leadership becomes much more enthusiastic when moving away from the sphere of the world’s policeman. Economically, especially, U.S. goods exports to Europe reached a record level of $498 billion in 2023 (according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2016, it was only $332.7 billion, $187.4 billion in 2000). The flow of goods trade between the United States and Europe also reached a record level in 2023, amounting to $1.22 trillion. Thus, the American machine evidently has no intention of losing its breath in this domain. And it’s not just in trade that they remain comfortably implanted in Europe. President Joseph Biden’s significant investment programs, as part of the Build Back Better Plan, purported to be the largest public investment in social and infrastructure programs since the 1930s, attract European capital more towards the United States than Europe. This attraction is driven by the prospect of stable growth resulting from such investments. The temptation of a more predictable and homogeneous market compared to one suffering from a ‘variety of situations’ is nothing new. American ‘realism’ in pursuing its economic health remains intact despite the turbulent period that the established order is undergoing. (Unlike Europe, they remain faithful to a number of fundamental notions.)

Thus, faith in the perseverance of the American model remains in Europe, a faith even more manifest than that placed in its own ‘mortal Europe’ model. This American model ensures that they are always the highest bidders, granting them a considerable advantage in bilateral negotiations, as they are less dependent on international trade than the majority of other developed economies. A European model capable of facing or even emancipating itself from this seems to be a distant memory. Europe willingly attaches itself to the United States; the chains, it wears them like adornments and not against its will. It cannot do otherwise.

Even in today’s era, a time when we talk about new multipolarity and de-dollarization, and when the future, true irrationality, seems worrying for Europe, the old commonplace still persists: ‘America is the future.’ This is to the detriment of reconsidering its relationship with other regions of the world. Europe prefers to embark on a painful disengagement process instead of being a source of new initiatives towards them. America and its fabulous prosperity, its culture of investment, seem to be the more comfortable choice, being less prey to uncertainties and questioning. The dream of Americanism offers immense opportunities to those who know how to seize it to extract the most out of it. Although this view largely stems from the economic power that the United States maintains over Europe and geopolitical factors, power also plays out in other domains because the economy is not the only illustration of Europe’s current dependence on the United States.

Europe struggles to notice this; it even tended to deny it. This domain, once considered part of American material power, is that of culture.

A domain in which Europe could still feel more self-assured, its domain of great pride. For a long time, it did not seem inconvenient to contrast European high culture, accomplished culture, with the nonexistence of such a culture that could be observed in the New World. America would not be the future in this regard but rather a sort of primitivism, a distant past that would still need centuries to reach the cultural and civilizational maturity of Europe. Until then, it would be nothing but a primitive culture populated by a shapeless mass society where only money matters. This view was already present in the 19th century, a vision of a ‘society centered on the private individual and his propensity to acquire and gain, where private interest dominates the universal only in view of its own enjoyment. Surely, there is a law, a formal legal law, but it is a law without honesty, and American merchants have this bad reputation for deceiving, under the protection of the law,’ as a German philosopher criticized (The Reason in History, Hegel, p. 206).

A society of rough and complacent merchants, which ultimately had little interest in the rest of the world except for doing business or finding a good match to improve their standing. The old continent would be nothing but a showcase that they would contemplate convincing or wanting to convince themselves that there is nothing interesting in Europe.

And yet, this advocated cultural maturity quickly failed to withstand the overwhelming victory of American capital flows. After establishing themselves more in Europe following the Great War and realizing that the United States no longer sent their young girls to the Old Continent solely ‘to convince themselves that there is nothing interesting in Europe,’ it is regrettable that these capital flows would permanently overwhelm European culture. Even on the eve of the 1929 crisis, the analysis fell, ‘Americanism overwhelms us, I believe that a new beacon of civilization has been lit over there. The money circulating in the world is American, and behind this money runs the world of life and culture’ (Luigi Pirandello, ‘Interview with Corrado Alvaro,’ L’Italia letteraria, April 14, 1929).

Iconic for this material submersion leading to cultural submersion is American cinema, fortunate to be both an art and an industry, blurring the lines between culture and economy. With dollars came movies. It is through this industry that the internationalization of American cultural products first progressed and gradually implanted itself in European consciousness.

This implantation, which took the form of mass culture, upset the notion of high culture. Throughout the 20th century, tired of the claims of elitist high culture and encouraged by the increasing prosperity in most European societies in the ‘American sphere,’ ‘bottom-up Americanization’ progressed in an acknowledged manner, and with it, the process of self-Americanization of European societies made its way.

The dazzling attraction for American cultural products observable across Europe may perhaps be explained by the unique evolution of American pop culture. Made from Europe’s overflow, a nation of immigrants, the key elements of its popular culture emphasize visual and emotional expression over verbal ones while focusing on human themes and dilemmas likely to be universal. Such composition results in a finished product capable of appealing to the entire global market in its diversity. Its effect is direct, and the ideas and feelings it communicates do not need intermediaries.

Everyone knows it, this plastic Eden of triumphant Americanism, its scandalous stars and millionaires, and its celebrities whose lives are avidly followed. Because beyond finished products like films, music, social networks, etc., the implantation of American culture in Europe occurs through the creation of

a collective and generalizable imaginary of certain things, certain notions that stem from permanent contact with this culture. These are generalizable perceptions since the products and channels used to shape this imagination are ostensibly the same for everyone. This phenomenon can even go so far as to shape public opinion, stemming primarily from common references. Nowadays, there seem to be common references across European countries regarding various notions and things, ranging from cancel culture to Friends. Imaginations, perceptions, and references shape lived reality. Just as the American way of life has asserted itself in consumption, one could say that the American way of thinking is gaining ground day by day in Europe without the need for any form of American cultural imperialism. Americanism has managed to emancipate itself from the perception that it was ‘imposing’ something on Europe. Yet it is indeed the one exerting true domination over the old continent, imbuing it as a whole with ways of behaving, thinking, dreaming, and leading that is fundamentally American. It can be noted that the United States and what emanates from the Americanization of culture, values, and thought are present directly or indirectly in any debate or controversy stirring public opinion and the politics of European states, whether regarding COVID, ‘Minorities,’ Ukraine, abortion, Israel, etc. In all these debates, the United States is always treated as a point of reference, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Through its omnipresence, America thus becomes a two-headed eagle, the Janus of Europeans, with Americanism and anti-Americanism being its two faces.

The point is reached where a European student, after a long day of protests against decisions of the American Supreme Court or against its foreign policy, then relaxes with friends by watching an American series or spending time on English-speaking social networks, enjoying the same humor as their peers on the other side of the Atlantic and listening to the same music.

One can see a real love-hate relationship that has developed in the United States. The increasing appropriation of cultural expressions and enthusiasm for Americanism seems to occur simultaneously with the growth of anti-Americanism around the globe.

In Europe, one is only occasionally anti-American when one claims to be anti-Trump, anti-woke, etc. This selectivity demonstrates the deepest penetration. Because both sides are part of the same body. The common reference of Americanism, this biomechanical culture, which now seems to be politically contradictory, offers an almost escapist focal point in an old world marked by anxiety about the future and crises of values. It acts, through its omnipresence, as a field of confrontation or fraternization ‘by default.’

The ‘anti’ being the exception to the rule. It even seems that new transnational and post-transnational identities are forming or at least being modified by the absorption of American culture. Even those who claim to be rooted (who indeed grew up with American blockbusters), by reclaiming the received ideas one might have regarding their community, cannot escape this phenomenon. Far from being a spontaneous and genuine manifestation of the real country, the construction and consolidation of such or such an image or stereotype of a community, a people, or even a notion, and its propagation worldwide is now essentially an American work.

The image that Europe currently has of itself is ultimately also the result of American perceptions to which it is exposed, going so far as to reconsider its history following impulses of thought and values ​​coming from the New World.

In the field of politics, besides arguments from the American national debate that tend to cross the ocean, methods have also been implanted, within the framework of opinion management, the management of opinion through marketing and advertising. This opinion management takes on a new meaning in our era of ‘post-persuasion politics,’ where victory consists not in attracting moderate voters or swing voters, but in motivating the most ardent supporters of one’s party. This trend is closely related to a particular form of American exceptionalism, originally a national consensus forged in response to threats and plots attributed to all those who, at one time or another, were ‘foreign’ to the monolith of American society and its way of life, now scattered among different worldviews that consider each other completely incompatible. What remains is the obsession with subverting one’s own group, one’s own worldview, by an absolute and intolerable evil, a reflex that has now become generalized on both sides of the Atlantic. Each of these worldviews exercises a ‘tyranny of the majority’ to the extreme within their groups. Each group is thus completely dissociated from the other and takes charge of the direct production of an ideology by and within the group. This American exceptionalism is gaining a new province, Europe.

Opinion management in social and political contexts also involves editorial unification of different media affiliated with different groups, closing the loop between culture, thought, values, and capital. Management and communication go hand in hand. Such unification becomes apparent when dealing with the great questions of our time; the major events of recent years bear witness to this. The unification of narrative is no less real in the diversification of means to convey an ideological message; it is with extreme skill that, through seemingly very dissimilar media, various socio-cultural levels can be reached, both in America and in Europe.

Of course, in the vein of post-persuasion, there is no attempt to convince anyone who is not already in one’s camp. Jefferson rightly said, ‘The force of public opinion is irresistible when allowed to express itself freely.’ (Jefferson, 1823) However, nowadays it seems that it is not necessary for it to be the opinion of the entire public, but rather just the public of one’s group, to whom all the ingredients have been provided so that they form a homogeneous but equally irresistible opinion.

In observing all this unilateral and irresistible attachment, such a degree of self-Americanization of Europe, through the economy, culture, thought, and methods, could one not think that the ultimate society would be that of the United States, as was proudly and assuredly affirmed during the apogee of the American century and the Pax Americana? One might judge that in the future, while others also have the right to try their luck, whether their efforts will succeed in seducing Europe compared to America has already taken a significant lead.

The trend for the near future seems clear. Far from drifting apart, the two shores of the Atlantic are coming closer, with the progressive Americanization of Europe continuing despite recent geopolitical upheavals. Ultimately, it is through thought that America still dominates it, at least as much as through the economy. The trend is towards homogenization between the two worlds. The limits or even counterweights to this trend have not yet manifested themselves seriously. The epochs of terrible homogeneity, however, are symptomatic of an era’s end. Following the lack of variety of situations they face, minds become weary, forced to do nothing but repeat and stereotype. This would be the dire consequence of an ‘End of History.’ These homogenized, weary minds would first become stupid and useless when the situation changes or when established homogeneity is disturbed, unable to face new facts with open and active minds, ready to subject them to questioning. Current events show us that history is in motion, new situations are emerging, and the homogenized culture and way of thinking of the American empire in its absolute certainty, and of which Europe is the primary consumer, will have to face it. Whether its logic will continue to be that everything that happens is good simply because it happens remains to be seen.

Adrian Kutschera