Never fear! The unelected bureaucrats of the European Union are making plans to save America from itself, by launching the EUroweenie version of the Marshall Plan—a student exchange program to instill European values (such as appeasement, antisemitism, and a predilection for totalitarianism) in American students: Saving student Ryan. (Hat tip: Steven Den Beste.)

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - The level of international awareness in American students has been collapsing in a dangerous manner throughout the last two decades.

This situation has deteriorated in the past 10 years due to the gradual decline in the US military presence in Europe which in fact played the role of a large-scale “youth exchange programme” (each year thousands of young Americans from all social origins were able to discover the ‘outer world’).

In addition, the exposure of young Americans to international topics in primary and secondary education has practically disappeared, resulting in the emergence of entire generations of US citizens totally unaware of the rest of the world.

This trend is strengthened by the parochialism of the US media.

Such trends affect American relations with all other continents; but it particularly affects transatlantic relations that used to be based upon large-scale population exchanges between the two shores of the ocean, enabling our visions of the world and of the future to be shared.

In brief, we need to ‘save student Ryan’ before he becomes lost in his North-American maze.

Having had the opportunity to analyse this trend since 1991, I have noticed year after year the damage to the younger generations of Americans who no longer have, so to speak, the intellectual tools to understand the outer world.

This tendency was reinforced during George W. Bush’s first mandate, which de facto advocated total disregard for opinions from the rest of the world, triggering strong anti-American feelings worldwide, which in turn resulted in reducing significantly the amount of foreign students in American universities. This simply results in cutting US new generations from any external influence.

Europe needs to act to increase significantly the amount of US students visiting Europe.

The European Union provides a unique academic framework which would enable US students to spend two semesters in two different European universities, companies or regions, to discover what diversity means.

The common transatlantic interest, the need to increase EU understanding for the new US generations and the urge to avoid the intellectual inward-looking trends among US youth, are all reasons for the EU to launch such an initiative.

Jean Monnet Transatlantic Grants programme

Fifty years ago, the US pioneered large-scale exchange programmes designed to open young generations’ and future elites’ minds (in particular those of post-war Europeans) and to promote the US image among these categories of age.

Today it is the Europeans’ turn to ‘return the favour’ and launch the ‘Jean Monnet Transatlantic Grants’ programme.

This grant programme should be ambitious: on the one hand because it is an emergency situation, and on the other hand because we are talking about a country with 300 million inhabitants.

Taking advantage of President Bush’s visit to Europe next month, and knowing that there won’t be much for European (and US) leaders to offer during their vibrant speeches on the importance of the Transatlantic relation, it would be sensible to announce the launching of such large-scale project by the EU.

100,000 young Americans

The programme should reach 20,000 young Americans per year for at least five years (i.e. 100,000 by the end of the decade) for a significant generational impact; this would imply a 50 million euro budget per year.