The Gospel of the Good European

[In his new book, Chris] Patten recites the gospel of the Good European: "Under American tutelage, we in Europe turned our back on the bellicose, nationalist politics of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and through our new modes of cooperation . . . are bent on coping with the problems of the 21st"

writes a sceptical Josef Joffe in his book review of Cousins and Strangers.

Naturally, Patten also upholds Europe's social contract, which favors egalitarianism over full employment. Yes, "the U.S. economy has grown more rapidly than Europe's," he concedes, "but that is largely the result of America's 1 percent annual population growth." So why won't Old Europe put its 20 million unemployed to work? Patten also opines that America's faster productivity growth can be explained by "the Wal-Mart or Home Depot factor — large shopping sheds on out-of-town green-field sites." That spin on Europe's 10-year slump doesn't wash, either. Those "shopping sheds" blanket Europe, too, where they are called Carrefour (food) or Media Markt (electronics) or even, yes, Wal-Mart and Costco.

When it comes to Islam and terror, Patten for once loses his cool. So you Yanks want to remake the Middle East by force? "Damn it," he sputters, "this is our neighborhood," and therefore we know better, he all but shouts. Above all, you must ditch Samuel Huntington and his "clash of civilizations." For the Arabs are just like us: they "top the world in believing that democracy is the best form of government." And they care most about "personal security, fulfillment and satisfaction." So whence Arab rage?

You guessed it: from the war in Iraq and "the betrayal and denial of Palestinian rights." This is a curiously foreshortened list. Does the Iraq war explain the unfathomable cruelty of Saddam Hussein before 2003 or even 1991? Does it explain the despotism and the deadly quarrels between sects, ideologies and regimes that preceded Israel's occupation in 1967? Does it explain the annihilation of the Syrian city of Hama by Hafez al-Assad's army in 1982? Or the economic backwardness that leaves so many young Arab men without a job and a future? Patten doesn't lay the blame for Islamist terrorism directly on the West. Ever so subtly, he indicts by posing questions: "Why does the West's notion of spreading freedom, capitalism and democracy look to some others like licentiousness, greed and a new colonialism?"