Europeans and Terrorism

In the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Ernesto Galli Della Loggia has this to say about the European attitude toward terrorism:

We shall continue to cling to phrases that mean nothing because in reality we do not know what to say. It is now alien to European political cultures – to our cultures – that there might be conflicts not entirely controllable and resolvable by the traditional resources of politics, the first of which is the large or small-scale distribution of advantages and benefits.

We believe that everything always turns out well in the end if we give, grant, and share out. We can no longer conceive of conflict except in terms of traditional social disputes, which may be ruthless but which do not aim to destroy the context of rules and values, as wars and revolutions do. Evidently, we can no longer imagine wars or revolutions. We do not know what they are. The outcome of the Second World War, compounded by the fall of Communism, has had the effect of edging Europe out of the front line, the place where people do not strike, debate, or go to the polls, but instead voice the desperations and deliriums of the masses, the designs of empires, and the immeasurable hopes of faith. That is the place where the great reversals of fortune are decided, and from which, it seems, we will long continue to avert our gaze.

All of this — and more — has been said before, by Robert Kagan, in Of Paradise and Power.

[Cross-posted at American Future]

Posted by Marc Schulman at September 16, 2005 11:13 AM