Victor Davis Hanson: Let Europe be Europe, You won’t be our friends? Fine, protect yourselves...

NRO ^ | June 18, 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

Beware of punditry now assuring us that, because we have seen the error of our ways and are now penitent, Europe is back on board. A contrite Mr. Bush — his critics imply — now seeks to smile more like Reagan and bite his lip like Clinton, and drop the old, scary "dead or alive," "Old Europe," and "smoke 'em out" lingo.

All this spin hides the real problem, which has nothing to do with Bush. The ethicists of Europe don't want to see success in Iraq, since it might be interpreted as a moral refutation of their own opposition to Saddam's removal. So let us in turn stop begging old Europe, NATO, and the EU to participate in the rebuilding or policing of the country. To join or help, in the collective European mind, would be to suggest that an emerging democracy far away was worth our own sacrifice to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. Liberating Iraq, shutting down Baathist terror, and establishing consensual rule, after all, was a dangerous — and mostly Anglo-American — idea, antithetical to all the Europeans have become.

Understandably, they do not want to be lumped in with the "missionaries of democracy" who evoke the ire of terrorists or the disdain of oil-producing grandees. They do not wish to forgive the debts run up by Saddam Hussein for their overpriced junk. And they most certainly are not willing to do any favors for Texas-twanged George W. Bush, whom they hope will be gone in less than six months. All this is not their world, which operates on self-interest gussied up with the elevated rhetoric of the utopian EU — appealing to an Al Gore's Earth-in-the-Balance mindset rather than to serious folk who worry about genocide and mass murder.

So there are reasons our alliances cannot simply be glued back together again, and they transcend neo-con zeal and Bush as el Loco cowboy. Europeans, aside from a few tiny brave countries and courageous individuals, will no more participate in the "illegal" action in Iraq than they did in the "approved" and "legal" Afghanistan intervention, where about 7,000 NATO troops now help a postbellum liberated population of 26 million. Even if we sent Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Jesse Jackson as an obsequious trio, the Euros would not act in a resolute, muscular way.

To the small degree Mr. Bush supposedly encountered a more conciliatory attitude from Europeans, it was likely because wiser heads in Germany finally saw that their animus had nearly succeeded in generating an American consensus to end the free defense of Europe — not because of a new remorseful "multilateralism" by the president. A quarter of Americans now see France as an enemy — not an ally or even a neutral — and the number is growing. Any sane person who carefully examined America's relationship to Europe over the last 60 years would have advised the Germans and French not to throw away something so advantageous to their own national interests. But they did, and now we must move on.

It was moving to commemorate the Normandy invasion on its 60th anniversary, but politely left unsaid amid the French-hosted celebrations was the real story of 1944 and 1945. We owe it to the dead, not just the living, to remember it with some integrity and honesty. Most of the Nazis' own European subjects did little to stop their mass murdering. There was no popular civilian uprising inside Germany or out. Most Germans were hostile to the onslaught of American armies in their country, preferring Hitler and the Nazis even by 1945 to so-called American liberators. When they did slur the Fuhrer it was because he brought them ruin, not the blood of millions on their hands. When they did stop fighting the Americans, it was because the thought of surrendering to the Russians was far worse.

Most Frenchmen either refused to resolutely fight the Germans or passively collaborated. The idea of a broad resistance was mostly a postwar Gallic nationalist myth. Those who spearheaded a few attacks on German occupiers were more likely led by Communists than by allied sympathizers, and thus fought in hope more of an eventual Soviet victory over the Nazis than an American one.

Meanwhile, those born after World War II in these two countries either know nothing about the American sacrifice or chalk the invasion up to the insanity of war in general. I won't even speak of a sense of gratitude, because that is an emotion almost as archaic to the contemporary European mind as patriotism. Nearly 30 percent of all Frenchmen polled last year wished Saddam to defeat the United States in Iraq.

Of course, Europe and America are both democratic and Western — and will and should remain friends and partners. That said, we should also agree that our differences had been buried in the aftermath of World War II, the subsequent Marshall Plan, and American efforts to organize the defense of the continent against Soviet aggression.

But with European war, massive American aid, and Communism no longer present realities, the Atlantic world reverted to its natural tensions. Along with the Berlin wall, our NATO-inspired alliances also had a great fall. Well before George W. Bush assumed office, America and the Europeans split over differing ideas about liberty, free markets, class, race, and religion. And these shards are not going to be simply glued back into their proper places to reconstitute the fragile trans-Atlantic whole. As Europe addresses its demographic time bomb — with ever-increasing entitlements, less and less defense spending, and ever greater schizophrenia as it vacillates between paranoid repression and dangerous laxity — its angst about the freewheeling and upbeat United States will only grow.

Vocal supporters of the old Atlantic-American alliance are only half right in their bromides for putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Yes, they are correct that we should speak more softly and listen more. But if America had once done to NATO what the French or Germans did to us last year, the pretense of an alliance would now be long over. Imagine what would have happened if Paris or Berlin had mobilized to preempt Milosevic while the United States refused — claiming with Russia in the Security Council that such unilateral, non-U.N. approved action was brinksmanship of the worst sort — and then strong-armed other NATO countries to oppose European efforts.

Let us publicly hope for the miraculous reconstitution of NATO's shattered fragments into a real alliance; and then accept its quiet and permanent dismemberment on the pavement after a job well done. Meanwhile, seek bilateral partnerships with willing European countries, continue to unilaterally withdraw troops from Germany, and then start reducing elsewhere our unnecessary military presence — perhaps first in Spain. Of course, there will be difficulties — initial higher costs in redeployment, hurt Euro feelings, and hysteria from trans-Atlantic pundits — but scaling back from Europe is long overdue.

We seek not to punish Europe by our departure, but to save it from itself. The problem is not just that our troops are doing nothing in places like Germany, or merely that they are more needed elsewhere — they do real damage by their presence in enabling an increasingly strident and opportunistic pacifism and an anti-Americanism fueled by dependency and ignited by resentment.

The continent is now the repository of Western heritage — a beautiful museum or amusement park, if you will, of caretakers and custodians. Unless that changes, we should no more expect Europeans to participate in the slogging in Iraq or Afghanistan than we should count on Disneyland guides venturing into nearby South Central to adjudicate gang violence, or Smithsonian docents to keep the piece in D.C. neighborhoods. Barring a 9/11-like event at the Parthenon or Louvre, one cannot — and should not — ask people to do what they simply cannot and will not do.

But isn't the Atlantic Alliance critical to American security? Sadly, no. Right now it de facto does not exist and we are in no greater danger due to its absence. Instead, the key is not to force Europe to be an ally, but to ensure by our absence that it is a friend — or at least a Swiss-like neutral — in the present fight against terrorists and their sponsors. Shared intelligence and mutual encouragement against terrorists do not require NATO. Perhaps Mr. Powell needs to give up on expecting Europeans to do anything real in the present war, and Mr. Rumsfeld needs to praise them far more for doing nothing.

I fear that we should expect over the next 50 years some pretty scary things coming out of Europe as its impossible postmodern utopian dreams turn undemocratic and then ugly — once its statism and entitlement economy falter; Jews leave as Arabs stream in; its shaky German-French axis unravels; its next vision of an EU mare nostrum encompassing North Africa and Turkey begins to terrify Old Europe; and its pacifism brings it real humiliation from the likes of an Iran or China. Indeed, despite Europe's noble efforts to incorporate the former Warsaw Pact, we are already seeing such tensions in the most recent EU elections.

We all like the Europeans and wish them well in their efforts to create heaven on earth. But in the end I still think we Americans are on the right side of history in Iraq — while they are on no side at all.

[Carry_Okie]

I think that he is merely suggesting that we recognize that European & US interests are diverging and we need to accept that new reality.

Those interests have always been divergent. We should be concentrating upon dealing with "Europe" on a country by country basis and forget the EU superstate (and the UN with it). The principle of accountability Hansen is citing needs to be driven downward.

In that regard the French present a unique problem. It would seem that they gain their status only by "virtue" of their craven willingness to engage in abject perfidy. By disengaging them from Europe at large, we might just focus the world upon the depth of their depravity and thus induce some substantive change for the better.

[Atlantic Friend]

Imagine what would have happened if Paris or Berlin had mobilized to preempt Milosevic while the United States refused — claiming with Russia in the Security Council that such unilateral, non-U.N. approved action was brinkmanship of the worst sort — and then strong-armed other NATO countries to oppose European efforts.

Er, sorry to interrupt, but this ALREADY happened in 1956 when France, Israel and the United Kingdom intervened militarily in Egypt where terrorist-backing President Nasser seized the international Suez Canal.

Eisenhower DID strong-arm Paris and London even as allied troops had already stormed Port-Saïd, and he also said the United States would not neither help nor defend France nor Great Britain as the Soviets threatened to attack both countries...

[aculeus]

Bump!

[Tolik]

I like your approach to deal with all the countries individually. Simple and direct and avoids generalizations that are often wrong. Plus, no friendly act on their part should be left forgotten or unrewarded.

[Carry_Okie]

Correct, it's like accountability among individuals: The more nebulous the entity, the more injustices are necessarily visited upon the innocents therein.

Note how Islam hates "depraved American culture" for which liberals are nearly totally responsible. Interesting that conservatives end up fighting to keep them safe while the beneficiaries work overtime to undermine those very efforts. It's a structural consequence of a heterogenous society. How to optimize size versus political accountability constitutes the details wherein the devil resides.

[Michael81Dus]

Pardon, but I´ve to get some things STRAIGHT!
In the first place, the permission to have sexual intercourse within military bases is for heterosexual couples. Although homosexuality is not illegal in the armed forces, it means to get placed to a task where you have not much contact to others. There will be no gay Sergeant training recruits! I don´t know any gay soldiers, but I´m sure there are a few. Those are as silent as the gays in the US military are, and this is better for them and for us.

[dennisw]

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/22/wger22.xml

[Michael81Dus]

What´s your point?

[Let's Roll]

"Thanks for beating quidnunc to it.
:O)"

Amen.

[Fraulein]

The ethicists of Europe don't want to see success in Iraq, since it might be interpreted as a moral refutation of their own opposition to Saddam's removal...Liberating Iraq, shutting down Baathist terror, and establishing consensual rule, after all, was a dangerous — and mostly Anglo-American — idea, antithetical to all the Europeans have become.

bump

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[perfect stranger]

VDH

[lainde]

bttt

[risk]

The continent is now the repository of Western heritage — a beautiful museum or amusement park, if you will, of caretakers and custodians.

I like this perspective, but I'm not so sure that the neutrality is so benign. As with the Cold War, it's a dangerous moment to be "neutral." However, VDH gets one thing wrong: German troops are in Afghanistan.

As with the crisis in the Sudan, I think we should be asking Europeans to take more responsibility for these areas while we work on the WMD proliferation problem and the spread of islamism.

If France and Germany were busier repaying their Marshall Plan aid by passing it on to other needy areas now, and helping to stabilize them, perhaps the spectre of 4GW (4th generation warfare) wouldn't be so menacing in areas like Darfur.

Plus, if they were more busy actually making a difference in the world, they might understand what we're putting on the line better.

Economic Assistance, April 3, 1948 to June 30, 1952
(in millions of dollars)

[France and Germany only shown.]

COUNTRY	Total	Grants	Loans
Total for all countries	$13,325.8	$11,820.7	$1,505.1
France	2,713.6	2,488.0	225.6
Germany, Federal Republic of	1,390.6	1,173.7	216.9b
Regional	407.0d	407.0d	--

[Atlantic Friend]

As a matter of fact both Germany and France have troops in Afghanistan, as is clearly stated on the Centcom website. Mr Hanson has not made his homework all that well, as it appears...

[risk]

As a matter of fact both Germany and France have troops in Afghanistan, as is clearly stated on the Centcom website. Mr Hanson has not made his homework all that well, as it appears...

That's surprising A.F., and I apologize (pinging my FR favorites). VDH always comes across as knowing so much history and so forth. Thanks for making it clear. We appreciate France's help in Afghanistan.

[Atlantic Friend]

Aw, shucks, just doing our job here ! lol

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[BartMan1]

But isn't the Atlantic Alliance critical to American security? Sadly, no. Right now it de facto does not exist and we are in no greater danger due to its absence. Instead, the key is not to force Europe to be an ally, but to ensure by our absence that it is a friend — or at least a Swiss-like neutral — in the present fight against terrorists and their sponsors.

Truly the heart of the matter....