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Jewish World Review April 26, 2005 / 17 Nisan, 5765 Europe — not Asia — forgives, forgets By Peter A. Brown
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Time, despite what your mother may have told you, does not heal all wounds.
As we near the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, the divergent European and Asian views about nationalism make that case.
Of course, it was Adolf Hitler's belief in his nation's master race and the Japanese desire to fly the Rising Sun across Asia that led to the most horrific conflict in world history.
How widely different nationalism is viewed on those continents today is crucial to how a tripolar (America, Europe and Asia) 21st century will play out.
The hatred among European nations fueled by centuries of competition for economic advantage and military superiority is long gone.
Europeans cooperate economically and see little need for a military since they don't fear their neighbors.
Nationalism is more out of favor in Europe these days than George W. Bush.
Half a globe away, in China particularly, Japan's World War II victims are not forgiving and forgetting. Cooperation remains an elusive diplomatic goal, not a reality. Economic warfare is a fact of life, and there are increasing political strains.
Nationalism's disappearance in Europe stems from a continent-wide groupthink that little is worth fighting about and peace and making money are what matters.
In Asia, political ideology, in this case communism, is taking a back seat to financial concerns. But throughout that region the notion of national competition, rather than cooperation, is the model of choice.
Moreover, China's desire to be Asia's leading military power in addition to replacing Japan as the economic top dog is a clear signal. China's designs on regional dominance almost inevitably will lead to political conflict. Hopefully, it will stop short of military confrontation.
While nationalism retreats daily in Europe, the increase in aggressive rhetoric from China about Taiwan's eventual reunification with the mainland has in recent days been drowned out by the growing populist demonstration, no doubt government-orchestrated, of anti-Japanese sentiment. The immediate cause is opposition to giving Japan a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, which builds on a deeply felt resentment for the carnage inflicted during World War II.
Yet in Europe, we have nations that suffered many millions of casualties at the hands of those with whom they are now joining in a supranational confederation that aims to turn the continent into one big, prosperous, happy family.
And the Germans, who started both 20th-century world wars, are not just welcomed with open arms by their former enemies. They are a major proponent of increasing the European Union's power at the expense of national sovereignty.
The 25-nation EU has a common currency, a bureaucracy that can tell individual nations how to function, and is adopting a constitution that will try to create a common foreign policy for the continent.
Among the young, many believe they are citizens of Europe, not France, Germany, Italy, etc. It's not yet the same sense of being American felt by Marylanders and Minnesotans, but given a generation or two more of this hand-holding, you never know.
Yet in Asia, the nominally communist Chinese and democratic Japanese remain very much at odds. The idea each would even give the other a benefit of the doubt, much less do anything to lower their guards, is laughable.
Moreover, regional economic rivalries that also include Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and India evidence a mentality of competition that is the polar opposite of the European mantra of cooperation.
There are no signs the Chinese will put aside the bloodletting they suffered at the hands of the Japanese during World War II. Hitler's Holocaust consumed an estimated 11 million civilians, (6 million Jewish, and 5 million other ethnic minorities) in addition to the carnage among combatants.
Yet the Japanese occupation of China, Korea and Mongolia was even bloodier and just as inhumane. Japan's war on China began in 1931 and lasted 14 years. Estimates of the death count range from 10 million to 30 million.
While the Japanese lacked the technological sophistication of Hitler's gassings, they made up with brutality what they lacked in ingenuity, using forced starvation and germ warfare in addition to old-fashioned massacres.
Maybe the differences stem from still-simmering resentment in Asia, or perhaps they result from what the Europeans consider their more sophisticated view of mankind.
It really doesn't matter to Americans, as long as we realize that the other two-thirds of the industrialized world are playing by different rules.
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Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
