MAD AS HELL - FOR MANAGEMENT TODAY

After last September's attacks on the United States, after the ritual
sympathy, a few European commentators dared ask: do they realize how
much they are hated? Well, now, the US is throwing back the question.

Forget about Osama bin Laden. Forget even about Saudi Arabia, which
unites American liberals, conservatives and Jews in dislike of the
country's feudal monarchy, indirect sponsorship of terrorism and
anti-semitism. The largest target of America's disdain is Europe.

The European intellectual and political elites have long had a monopoly
over transatlantic contempt; but the US is now matching insult for
insult. And Europeans need to turn around the question and ask
*themselves*: do we realize how much we are hated?

To be sure, the EU remains, as a bloc, the largest economic partner of
the US. Nato still exists, in form at least. European companies are the
largest direct investors in the US, and vice versa. And Europe shares
American values more than any other part of the world.

However, the US is probably more irritated by Europe than it has been
since the struggle over medium-range nuclear missiles in the 1980s.
Chris Patten, the EU's commissioner for external affairs, despairs at
the "visceral contempt" he picks up amongst journalists and politicians
in Washington DC. Among the conservative opinion-makers who set the tone
of America's public debate, Europe is an insult, not an ally. Europeans
are variously ineffectual, duplicitous, craven, lazy, hypocritical,
patronizing and, of course, anti-semitic.

Americans may have once given Europe the benefit of the doubt, but the
Europhobes have put the worst possible gloss on every recent event. The
showing of Le Pen is an opportunity to demonstrate the bankruptcy of
Europe's political establishment, as well as confirming France's
underlying anti-semitism; Sweden's GDP figures an occasion to trumpet
the superiority of American-style capitalism; a gun massacre in Germany
shows the impotence of the European nanny-state; even the proposed
barcode logo for the EU by Rem Koolhaas comes in for an ill-natured
ribbing.

You think I am just being over-sensitive? Try this sentence from a piece
by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. "What we are seeing is
pent-up anti-Semitism, the release -- with Israel as the trigger -- of a
millennium-old urge that powerfully infected and shaped European
history."

So, why is Europe in America's bad books? George Bush senior's
administration was populated by Atlanticists; Bill Clinton, out of
policy wonk curiosity, was interested in the north European model. The
current president, who had hardly travelled outside the US before he
entered politics, has no such ties.

Second, Bush junior has learned, from his father's defeat in 1992, that
Americans vote, and foreigners do not. So he has shown a consistent
tendency to favor Pennsylvania steelworkers and midwest farmers over
free trade. He would rather court Bethlehem Steel than Brussels.

Third, Europe does not get any respect. Its armed forces, for all their
symbolic value, would have just got in the way in Afghanistan. While US
productivity growth rebounds after a short recession, Europe's growth is
anaemic. And European companies such as Vivendi, which had tried to
storm the US market, no longer set much of an example of European
business prowess.

Fourth, Europe is a natural punching bag for America's ascendant
conservatives. They don't have New York or Massachusetts to beat up any
more; European countries such as Sweden are the last bastion of
wishy-washy welfare state social policy. And the American right has
never met an international organization - the EU included - that it did
not hate. 

Fifth, after September 11th, the US is not inclined to put its security
at the mercy of multilateral decisionmaking. European countries such as
the UK are appreciated as long as they go along with US plans; but US
hawks are quick to jump on any sign of dissent.

Sixth, the US press and Congress are wildly more supportive of Israel
than are their European counterparts. Most Europeans would say their
criticism of Israel -- and the rather overblown European coverage of the
supposed massacre in Jenin-grad -- springs from sympathy with the
underdog. But it is almost too easy for pro-Israel commentators to
undermine the credibility of the European stance. Take Europe's dismal
history of anti-semitism, throw in a few synagogue attacks, conveniently
forget that they have been perpetrated by Arab teenagers, and finish
with a dinner-party remark by a French diplomat. American politicians
have learned to avoid the wrath of the pro-Israel lobby; the European
elites have not figured that one out yet.

And, finally, the US is simply tired of being patronized. Patrick
Nielsen Hayden, an Anglophile editor, says: "There's a
now-long-established discourse between intelligent Americans and
intelligent Europeans in which it's a deep-rooted given that Europe is
in some meaningful sense older and wiser in the ways of the world. And I
no longer think it's true. I think it's a bad habit on both sides."

People have been predicting the divergence of the US and Europe for
decades: during the heyday of Euro-communism; during detente; during the
arms buildup of the early 1980s; once the Soviet Union, the common
enemy, fell apart; and this episode of bad temper could be just as
temporary.

But for the moment, the US is in a Howard Beale mood. That was the
character in Network, one of the movies that captured the frustration of
the 1970s, who yells: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take
this anymore!"