The poet Natália Correia, after a visit to the United States, wrote a book, the title of which is, in itself, a response and a challenge: I Discovered I Was European.
Faced with the international situation, which today presents itself to us in a way that just a few years ago we would have considered fanciful, we discover that we are Europeans and we are alone. But it’s difficult to reduce ourselves to being just Europeans. The entire experience of Europe can only be understood in the exchanges and struggles that its nations waged among themselves, as well as in the exchange and wars of domination between Europeans and other civilizations, which were easy for them to classify as barbaric, even if they were the ancient and wise Indian and Chinese civilizations.
Europe was, from the outset, established as an outward-facing entity, through proselytism and domination. America then emerged as an emanation of Europe and when the United States of America gained economic and strategic superiority over the Europeans, the name “West” was created for the part of the world that intended to prevail over the communist world and the emerging nations of what at the time was called the Third World. Europe and the United States (along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand) integrated, in apparent harmony, this Western world, which offered a place in its hosts to States coming from other civilizations, but sharing the same system of values, such as Japan and South Korea.
Today we are witnessing the end of this harmonious and cooperative West, as it was even in unfair situations that were alien to assumed values, such as the Colonial Wars and military dictatorships imposed from outside. We Europeans finally discovered that we are in a world that is “homeless, among ruins” (in Raúl Brandão’s terms), between the violent rejection by an isolationist United States, which we did not know, but which was always there, the emergence and growing weight in the world of those we treat as “barbarians”, in the innocence of our Eurocentrism, and our own disunity and perplexity, lacking a minimum of unity, not only in our strategy, but above all in our our principles and values.
The communist world no longer exists, ideology is no longer the bone of contention in international relations, as Russia and China are now large capitalist nations, in competition with us. Autocracy today represents the greatest challenge to our societies, tired of the illusions of globalization and disbelieving in political democracy, thus becoming ripe for falling into the trap of xenophobic nationalism and arbitrary authoritarianism.
If our American cousins became disinterested in us, if our confrontation with Russia became more radical, to the point that we could no longer count on it for a common Europe, it would perhaps be through an intensification of relations with nations, formerly called “Third World” and which today like to call themselves the “Global South”, that we, Europe, could open windows for a renewed implantation in the world.
To this end, we should renounce exclusivist proselytism and feelings of false superiority in relation to these cultures, without ever ceasing to demand from the members and partners of our Europe the greatest rigor in respecting democratic principles and values, in the face of internal authoritarian pressures, supported by Russians and Americans.
Return to third worldism? No, not at all. Today, democratic and social Europe fights for its survival. That’s all.
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