perfidy

From the comment thread on my recent France post, Johno said about the Anglosphere concept and the split in the west:

Buckethead, I think that may be true only insofar as it's always been true.

When the GI's went into France back in Dubya Dubya Two, there was considerable culture shock on both sides. Although the US and Western Europe have grown familiar with each other on a day-to-day basis, there are both systemic and current reasons why they won't necessarily see eye to eye. You know that as well as I do.

I wouldn't make too much of this grade-school crap. The US and France have been at odds before, and will again and again. At least we're both Constitutional Republics.

It wasn't the deck of cards exactly that prompted the anglosphere comment, but rather the trends we see in Europe that are most visible in the growth of the EU bureacracy, and in the language of the proposed EU constitution. England was always distinct from the general political climate on the continent. The United States, and to a lesser extent Canada and Australia, have focused on the very things that made England different, and are thus more different. The unparalleled success of the United States in, well, damn near everything is dragging the other English speaking nations in its wake, while the continent is pursuing its dream of a thousand year socialist Frankenreich. The two political natures of the west, once more or less evenly distributed seem to be settling into a kind of geographic division. This might actually drive further separation in the core of the west.

Others, such as Huntington, have already suggested that the West has already split twice - that Russia and Latin America are already distinct, though related civilizations. Is it that farfetched to imagine that a similar process could be dividing the west again?