Europe Is at "The End of History" ... Turkey, Alas, Is Not

Michael J. Totten, at Tech Central Station (Oct. 25, 2004):

The European Commission recently approved membership talks between the European Union and Turkey. It was a top-down decision. E.U. citizens overwhelmingly oppose the idea of Turkey joining their union. They fear Princeton historian Bernard Lewis may be right when he says that based on demographic trends Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.

But there's something else, too. Something that's left unsaid, perhaps even unformed in thought, but there like a chill up your spine when you think you feel someone's eyes on the back of your neck.

Turkey is outside the E.U.'s post-modern End-of-History paradise. Its absorption would push the border of the European Union beyond the continent of Europe itself and deep inside the unofficial "nation" of Kurdistan. Europe wouldn't begin at the former front line of the Cold War. It would begin at the active front line of the Terror War right next to two states, Syria and Iraq, that are not only mired in History but also in Baath Party totalitarianism and Islamist jihad.

Robert Kagan's groundbreaking book Of Paradise and Power brilliantly contrasts the different views of power held by Europeans and Americans. The United States and Europe, he says, have sharply diverging ideas about the role of diplomacy and the use of military force due to the stark differences in historical experience accumulated over the past century.

Europe has never had it so good. After the meat-grinding horror of World War I and the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II, the United States provided a protective security umbrella over Western Europe, under NATO auspices, permitting Europeans to build multilateralist institutions and lavish welfare states. And now, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire on the West's eastern border, Europeans feel they have entered a settled post-historic era where nations can settle differences through diplomacy and the merger of formerly separate bureaucracies. War is seen as an anachronism from Europe's monarchical, imperial, and machtpolitik past.

We Americans, on the other hand, have never felt more threatened. The attack on September 11, 2001, was the worst ever on our own soil. History is far from over for us. Neither Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union ever struck such a blow against us at home. And because we are militarily powerful we are far more willing to use force than Europeans. Kagan quotes one European critic of America's policy who says "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails." This is certainly true. Kagan's response: "When you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail."

From Europe's perspective, that's the problem with Turkey. It's a nail.

Turkey is a relatively liberal secular democracy, but it is no post-historic paradise. The government in Ankara is in a precarious balance of terror with its Kurdish minority in the East, where a civil war raged throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Last year the armed forces threatened the right-wing Islamic government with a military coup if the secular constitution isn't respected. Though the Turks have initiated serious liberal reforms and have improved their human rights record, troubles still lurk in the shadows. Troubles with the whiff of war.

The jihad in Iraq could spill out of its borders. Iraqi Kurds could declare independence from Baghdad and kick off civil wars inside any number of neighboring states (including Turkey) where the Kurds have long wished for a sovereign homeland. Israel could get drawn into yet another shooting war with Syria (which borders Turkey) over Syria's support for Hezbollah and other international terrorists.