The United States, the European Union, Eastern Europe: Challenges and Different Responses to Modernity
The United States, the European Union, Eastern Europe: Challenges and Different Responses to Modernity

Summary/Abstract: The controversies between the United States and the European Union of the last decade signify much deeper cultural differences between these two parts of the transatlantic civilization than just their immediate political responses to particular events after 9/11 2001. Both America and the Western part of the European Union are modern political and cultural entities, but their responses to modernity and modernization have since the 17th century and 18th century been different. Inside the European Union the cultural rift is also visible between the original western European countries and the post-soviet, post-Yalta countries of Eastern Europe accepted in 2004 and 2007, which have belonged to Europe for a thousand years, but have been affected much less by modernity and modernization of the 18th century Enlightenment type. What we thus have is a tripartite division within transatlantic civilization which has many consequences as far as the immediate political choices and aims taken up by the United States, the western dominant countries of the European Union and the latter’s new part in Eastern Europe. The major difference between the United States and the western part of the European Union concerns the way both entities were built, America from bottom up, Europe and then the European Union from top down. There are also other significant differences concerning religious life, a much more pronounced ideological character of the United States, and the way the relationship between the elites and their societies are structured. The differences between the western part of the European Union and the post-Yalta countries of Eastern Europe concern mainly the mutual images what the new common European Union should be, the different strategies of modernization applied to the Eastern part, especially cultural modernization which touches on such sensitive issues as post-colonialism, cultural identity or a question of solidarity of all countries of the European Union or domination within it of the strongest ones.

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