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Western European Dilemmas: Man, State, and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Pierre Hassner
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Abstract

The European community holds a range of contradictory, changing, and evolving views of the United States and the Soviet Union. Hassner notes that the United States is seen both as an individualistic agent with a guilty conscience that intervenes irresponsibly and hypocritically, and as a model for resistance to oppression. The Soviet Union is also viewed antithetically, both condemned for totalitarianism and praised as more humanistic than the United States. Hassner sees these oppositions as reflecting the profound differences between the superpowers and indicating the challenge the United States and the Soviet Union face in establishing a common ethics.

Type
Special Section: Superpower Ethics
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 1 , March 1987 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1987

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References

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4 See Harries, Owen, “European Sophistication vs. American Naïveté,” Commentary 76:6 (December 6, 1983) 46–51Google Scholar.

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14 Poll taken by Sofres for Le Figaro Magazine (July 9, 1983)Google Scholar.

15 Poll taken by IFOP (Institut Francais ďOpinion Publique) in 1952; taken from “Evolution in Attitudes Towards the USA since the Second World War in Four European Countries: France, Britain, Germany, Italy,” unpublished paper, 1973Google Scholar.

16 See Rupnik, Jacques and Humbertjean, Muriel, “Image(s) des Etats-Unis dans ľopinion publique,” in L'Amérique dans les têtes, Lacorne, Denis, Rupnik, Jacques and Toinet, Marie-France, eds. (Paris: Hachette, 1986) 101–24Google Scholar.

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19 According to a poll published in Paris-MatchGoogle Scholar.

20 See “L'image de l'Union soviétique vue par les Français,” Chronique Alain Duhamel (Sofres, June 1986) 3Google Scholar.

21 See Hassner, Pierre, “Western European Perceptions of the Soviet Union,” Daedalus 108:1 (Winter 1979) 113–51Google Scholar See also Lacorne, Denis et al., eds., L'Amérique dans nos têtes, op. cit.Google Scholar

22 See Hassner, Pierre, “Nationalisme et relations internationales,” Revue Française de Science Politique 15:3 (Fall 1986) 499–529CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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