A Few Things Our European

by John Hawkins | July 3, 2002 8:33 am

A Few Things Our European Friends Should Realize: I’ve read a lot of editorials about the ICC written by Europeans in the last few days and it’s quite apparent that many of them have absolutely no idea why Americans are opposing the court. At first I thought they had to be deliberately pretending to not understand our viewpoint, however I’ve come to believe that a large number of Europeans truly do not have a clue about many widely held Americans views. That’s why I decided to write a short primer to help explain a few things to our European friends….

– Many Europeans seem to think Americans would be shocked to learn that President Bush is pursuing American interests first and foremost instead of “world interests.” But in fact, that’s what Americans want our President to do.

– The Constitution is held in high esteem by the American people and is not something that can be easily amended. Any treaty, agreement, or ruling that conflicts with the US Constitution may be fairly assumed to be dead on arrival.

– When most Americans think Europe, they think WW1, WW2, Fascism, Socialism, Nazism, anti-Americanism, weak militaries, anti-semitism, and excessive bureacracy. Furthermore, most Americans view the last century as nothing but America saving Europe from itself over and over in WW1, WW2, w/ the Marshall Plan, and during the Cold War. Because of this, Americans tend to be VERY skeptical of anything proposed by European leaders (Britain is the exception to that rule).

– Americans consider their sovereignty to be sacrosanct. If something proposed by the United Nations or international law threatens our sovereignty we are not going to be interested.

– Because we’re the only nation in the world with the ability to project military force anywhere on the globe, we’re constantly called upon to do so or choose to do so ourselves. Because of this, we view things like the ICC or landmine treaty in a far different light than many European nations do. It’s easy to sign up for those sorts of treaties if you know your troops will never be used for anything except a peacekeeping mission but that’s not the situation we’re in.

I hope this little article will be of use to our European allies. If you’re from Europe and you have any questions, just post them in the comments section and I’m sure someone will answer them.

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