{"id":66089,"date":"2004-09-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2004\/09\/27\/le-temps-des-revisions-dechirantes\/"},"modified":"2004-09-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-27T00:00:00","slug":"le-temps-des-revisions-dechirantes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2004\/09\/27\/le-temps-des-revisions-dechirantes\/","title":{"rendered":"Le temps des r\u00e9visions d\u00e9chirantes<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Le temps des r\u00e9visions d\u00e9chirantes<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

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\t27 septembre 2004 Aux Etats-Unis, dans le cirque g\u00e9n\u00e9ral qui sert d’ar\u00e8ne politique, on peut continuer \u00e0 dire que la guerre \u00e9tait une bonne chose et qu’il faut continuer \u00e0 la soutenir. En Europe, o\u00f9 le ridicule ne tue peut-\u00eatre plus mais blesse s\u00e9rieusement jusqu’aux handicaps les plus graves, il est devenu difficile de soutenir que ce fut une grande vertu de soutenir cette guerre. La m\u00eame chose peut \u00eatre avanc\u00e9e, aujourd’hui, au Royaume-Uni, des relations sp\u00e9ciales avec les Etats-Unis, o\u00f9 seul un allum\u00e9 comme Tony Blair peut clamer sa satisfaction d’avoir transform\u00e9 le fameux adage, Niall Ferguson dixit<\/em>, et f\u00e9rocement, le fameux adage right or wrong, my country<\/em> en right or wrong, my ally<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tNiall Ferguson, justement<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• Dans un article tonitruant<\/a>, qui fait la couverture de l’impr\u00e9visible Spectator<\/em> (impr\u00e9visible parce que cet hebdomadaire appartenant \u00e0 Conrad Black, un tycoon<\/em> pro-am\u00e9ricain notoire, proche des n\u00e9o-conservateurs, se permet de telles attaques), l’historien britannique attaque \u00e0 boulets rouges les special relationships<\/em>. Il s’agit d’une condamnation explicite d’une politique, d’une strat\u00e9gie, d’une conception du monde que suit le Royaume-Uni depuis 1941. Ferguson en fait moins un argument \u00e9motionnel qu’une \u00e9vidence de l’\u00e9volution des deux partenaires : simplement dit, les diff\u00e9rences entre les Britanniques et les Am\u00e9ricains sont trop grandes pour que ces relations se poursuivent, alors que la proximit\u00e9 entre le Royaume-Uni et l’Europe est aujourd’hui irr\u00e9sistible. D’une fa\u00e7on g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, cette prise de position confirme l’\u00e9volution de l’historien, par rapport \u00e0 ses positions avant la guerre et pendant son d\u00e9clenchement : il est pass\u00e9 d’une position n\u00e9o-imp\u00e9rialiste \u00e9pousant compl\u00e8tement la cause d’une Am\u00e9rique imp\u00e9riale \u00e9tablissant sa puissance gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 la guerre en Irak, \u00e0 une position de compromis r\u00e9aliste de rapprochement avec l’Europe. (On a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu certains aspects de l’\u00e9volution de Niall Ferguson durant ces derniers dix-huit mois, le 17 janvier 2004 dans notre rubrique Notes de lecture<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\t\u00ab Donald Rumsfeld once said that Americans don’t do’ empire, rather as Alastair Campbell once said that Downing Street didn’t do’ God. Yet Mr Bush’s tacit imperialism so much more resolute than that of his predecessor has found its staunchest support in Mr Blair’s private faith. On they march, these two Christian soldiers, each with a Bible in one hand and a bazooka in the other.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The trouble is that while a majority of Americans are receptive to what might be called a faith-based foreign policy, very few Britons are. The Americans are still a deeply Christian people. The British ceased to be some time ago. Consider the following results from a recent BBC\/ICM poll. Over half of Americans agree with the statement My God is the only true god’ compared with fewer than a third of Britons. An even higher proportion of Americans (53 per cent) regularly attend an organised religious service, compared with barely a fifth of Britons. Two thirds of Americans pray regularly; just 28 per cent of Britons do. More than 70 per cent of Americans agree with the statement I would die for my God or beliefs’; fewer than a fifth of Britons do.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb This is just part of a fundamental divergence in popular culture which increasingly makes a nonsense of the special relationship. Combining as it does religious fundamentalism, economic individualism and red-blooded patriotism, the American conservatism so vividly described by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their book The Right Nation simply has no counterpart in this country. British Tories are a beleaguered minority, vainly trying to preserve a few picturesque pastimes and landscapes from the depredations of New Labour’s corrupt and cynical party apparat.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The decline of Christianity not only helps to explain the crisis of conservatism in Britain. It also forms part of the wider process of covert Europeanisation. Many of us still fondly imagine that we have more in common with our American cousins’ than with our Continental neighbours. It may have been true once (though I find it hard to say exactly when). But it is certainly not true now. Travel to the United States and then to the other European Union states, and you will see: the typical British family looks much more like the typical German family than the typical American family. We eat Italian food. We watch Spanish soccer. We drive German cars. We work Belgian hours. And we buy second homes in France. Above all, we bow before central government as only true Europeans can.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb And perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly how very European we are becoming than our attitudes to the United States. Asked in a recent poll to choose between the two candidates for the presidency, 47 per cent of us favoured John Kerry, compared with just 16 per cent who backed George Bush at a time when Bush was more than 10 per cent ahead in the American polls. On the legitimacy of the Iraq war, too, the British public is now closer to Continental opinion than to American.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb All this suggests that Tony Blair’s devout Atlanticism may actually represent the special relationship’s last gasp. For a strategic partnership needs more to sustain it than an affinity between the principals and the self-interest of a few professional elites. It requires a congruence of national interests. It also needs some convergence of popular attitudes. By both those criteria, the Anglo-American alliance is surely living on borrowed time.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The Iraq war may not have destroyed Mr Bush and Mr Blair. But it has surely laid bare the asymmetry of the relationship between Washington and London. If the special relationship were a transatlantic flight, they would be in the cockpit. We would be the sleeping passengers. It is surely time to get our foreign policy up off the flatbed.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t• Le cas de Dominique Moisi, atlantiste fran\u00e7ais notoire, concerne sp\u00e9cifiquement la guerre d’Irak. L’article est court<\/a>, sans consid\u00e9rations inutiles, et vient bien entendu contredire tout ce que l’auteur \u00e9crivit au temps de l’avant-guerre, du d\u00e9clenchement de la guerre et de ce qui suivit imm\u00e9diatement. Il s’agit d’une reconnaissance compl\u00e8te de l’erreur qu’a constitu\u00e9 le soutien en son temps de la guerre contre l’Irak. Venant d’un commentateur longtemps fid\u00e8le \u00e0 toutes les causes transatlantiques d’inspiration am\u00e9ricaine, l’\u00e9volution est significative de l’humeur du temps.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\t\u00ab Today, when the situation on the ground can only go from bad to worse and no positive scenario can be envisaged (the maintenance or the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq being equally recipes for disaster) I regret my support for the war.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The Iraq war has rendered the fundamental challenge we are facing today – fighting international terrorism more and not less difficult. How can we efficiently fight the fundamentalists without alienating the majority of the Arab-Islamic world and without violating our core values?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The costs of the failure are already immense, and not only in Iraq and the Middle East. The escalation of anti-Americanism in the world; the encouragement for leaders such as Vladimir Putin to follow the U.S. model; the neglect of Iran’s nuclear ambitions these and other indirect consequences of the American adventure in Iraq are far more catastrophic than the worst-case scenario envisioned by the American administration after the fall of Saddam.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tDans les deux cas, il s’agit de changements de position particuli\u00e8rement remarquables, de la part de personnalit\u00e9s connues pour leurs positions marqu\u00e9es, n\u00e9o-imp\u00e9rialiste pro-am\u00e9ricain pour Ferguson, atlantiste pro-am\u00e9ricain pour Moisi. Il s’agit surtout de changements de position particuli\u00e8rement exemplaires d’un fort courant qui s’est \u00e9tabli avec l’aggravation de la situation en Irak et la mise en \u00e9vidence de la fausset\u00e9 des divers arguments pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s pour le d\u00e9clenchement de la guerre.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl faut comparer ce courant r\u00e9visionniste avec des courants pr\u00e9c\u00e9dents du m\u00eame type. Le plus significatif \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard est celui qui s’\u00e9tait \u00e9tabli durant la Guerre froide, chez les intellectuels pro-communistes du temps du stalinisme devenant peu \u00e0 peu critiques et\/ou anticommunistes \u00e0 mesure que les r\u00e9alit\u00e9s de la dictature stalinienne devenaient de plus en plus visibles et insupportables. Il y a des diff\u00e9rences essentielles avec ce courant, qui marquent l’originalit\u00e9 du mouvement r\u00e9visionniste actuel.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• D’une part la rapidit\u00e9 du processus. Autant l’affirmation de puissance des Etats-Unis en 2001-2003 avait apport\u00e9 \u00e0 cette puissance un courant important de soutien chez des intellectuels de tous horizons (comme sont Ferguson et Moisi, qui appartiennent \u00e0 des courants de pens\u00e9e diff\u00e9rents, la droite imp\u00e9rialiste chez Ferguson, le centre lib\u00e9ral pour Moisi), autant les probl\u00e8mes rencontr\u00e9s en Irak ont aussit\u00f4t d\u00e9clench\u00e9 un mouvement de r\u00e9vision d’une tr\u00e8s grande importance. Cette rapidit\u00e9 correspond effectivement \u00e0 la rapidit\u00e9 de l’\u00e9volution de la situation, avec ses principaux aspects largement exag\u00e9r\u00e9s par les m\u00e9thodes virtualistes de transformation de l’information. Comme toujours, on retrouve un effet-boomerang : autant ces m\u00e9thodes virtualistes suscitent des adh\u00e9sions tr\u00e8s fortes et tr\u00e8s rapides lorsqu’elles sont manipul\u00e9es dans le sens favorable \u00e0 l’artisan-virtualiste, autant elles conduisent \u00e0 des r\u00e9visions tr\u00e8s rapides et massives lorsque l’affirmation virtualiste est confront\u00e9e \u00e0 la r\u00e9alit\u00e9.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• D’autre part, l’identification tr\u00e8s stricte de la r\u00e9vision d’opinion \u00e0 un pays (les \u00c9tats-Unis). Ferguson n’abandonne pas les th\u00e8ses n\u00e9o-imp\u00e9rialistes, ni Moisi les th\u00e8ses lib\u00e9rales et \u00e9ventuellement atlantistes ; c’est le comportement am\u00e9ricain et son apport pour l’Europe (le Royaume-Uni dans le cas de Ferguson) qui sont d\u00e9nonc\u00e9s. Le r\u00e9visionnisme concerne beaucoup plus l’am\u00e9ricanisme et les \u00c9tats-Unis qu’une id\u00e9ologie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• Il y a un aspect pratique imm\u00e9diat, essentiellement dans le cas de Ferguson. Son opposition au comportement am\u00e9ricain, \u00e0 l’incapacit\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine d’\u00eatre un empire<\/a>, implique une proposition \u00e0 effets imm\u00e9diats d’un changement radical de politique de la part du Royaume-Uni. C’est un aspect tr\u00e8s original du courant r\u00e9visionniste actuel.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le temps des r\u00e9visions d\u00e9chirantes 27 septembre 2004 Aux Etats-Unis, dans le cirque g\u00e9n\u00e9ral qui sert d’ar\u00e8ne politique, on peut continuer \u00e0 dire que la guerre \u00e9tait une bonne chose et qu’il faut continuer \u00e0 la soutenir. En Europe, o\u00f9 le ridicule ne tue peut-\u00eatre plus mais blesse s\u00e9rieusement jusqu’aux handicaps les plus graves, il… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4354,4048,3230,4353,4355],"class_list":["post-66089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-dominique","tag-ferguson","tag-moisi","tag-niall","tag-revisionnisme"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}