Posted on 03/06/2002 4:17:57 PM PST by vannrox
We moan about the Americans running the show but no one else wants to be the world's policeman Tuesday March 5, 2002
The Guardian
To be discussing the European role in the world on a tropical island halfway between Tokyo and Hong Kong may seem a trifle weird. For there really is no such thing as a European role in Okinawa. The meeting was part of an annual EU effort to get European and Japanese journalists to exchange ideas. To do this in Okinawa actually made perfect sense. For the main topic of discussion, mulled over in tones that ranged from melancholy exasperation to envious pique, was the US domination of the world. Lulls in the conversation, often as not, would be filled with the sudden thunder of Phantoms or F16s streaking through the sky. Almost half the main island of Okinawa is taken up by US bases. It was from here, as much as anywhere, that the Vietnam war was fought.
Okinawa is one of those tragic places where the people were sacrificed in the battles of far-away powers. A third of the civilian population died in 1945, when the allied troops landed and the imperial Japanese army decided to fight to the last man. When food ran out or Okinawans got in the way, Japanese soldiers ordered civilians to commit mass suicide; families were forced to slash one another with razors or broken bottles; bullets could not be spared.
And now the island is a living symbol of US military domination. There are some advantages attached to this dubious status. Nature is beautifully preserved in the large no-go areas. And the bases provide many precious jobs.
Still, if there was one issue that glum Luxemburgers, sad-eyed Germans, and despondent Japanese could agree upon, it was that US domination was not a good thing. We tried to cheer ourselves up with some valiant talk about "Japanese-European initiatives", about the superior wisdom of our more "mature" nations, about European dialogues with North Korea, about Japan alleviating poverty in the world, while the gung-ho Americans go to war, and so on. But all this was really nothing but a brave mask to cover our collective sense of humiliation. There is no way around it, especially in Okinawa: the Yanks are running the show. And with their planned defence budget, the gap between them and us will grow even wider.
This situation is bad for America, for it creates a combination of hubris and splendid isolation. And it is bad for us, for it has an infantilising effect on our politics. Japanese and Europeans often resemble rich and rebellious teenagers, whining about their overwheening father, while remaining utterly dependent on his protection. In the end, at the Okinawa conference, it took a plain-speaking British socialist, the estimable Glyn Ford MEP, to say what the Japanese least wanted to hear. It is time, he said, for Japan to pull its weight as a military power once again.
There are some Japanese who think so to, but they tend to be unsavoury rightwingers with a disturbing penchant for singing the old wartime songs. To mention a change in Japan's pacifist constitution, and talk about a Japanese military role, makes most Japanese gaze stonily at their feet as though someone had offered a drink to a reformed alcoholic. They have got used to the US taking care of the dirty business of war, while Japanese concentrate on business, basking in the moral glow of their constitutional pacificism. The Germans, firmly established in the EU and Nato, and governed at present by former student radicals, are less shy these days of talking about war, but even they cannot bring themselves to think of Germany becoming a driving force behind European military initiatives.
One of the main reasons, then, for American domination is not the alleged cowboy spirit of a Bush, or a Rumsfeld, but our own desire to stay out of trouble. We have wanted it that way since the second world war. We wished to be locked into arrangements which not only kept the communists out, but the Germans and Japanese down. And since Germany and Japan are the only countries with sufficient weight to take over some of America's policing duties, this has become a problem.
Or not. We could continue to enjoy our wealth and refuse to pay more money for new weapons, and talk about our superior wisdom, our lessons from the past, and how much better it is for Japan and Germany to be beacons of peace. And we could let the Yanks bail us out, as they did in Bosnia, when we have let the villains run out of control. All this is fine, but then we must stop complaining about American domination, for we clearly like the alternatives even less.
I don't like the U.S. being the worlds policeman, but the alternatives, unfortunately, are worse.
It is the military that is getting the attention at the moment for obvious reasons, but American domination isn't so much military domination as it economic and (sacre bleu!) cultural. You can always address the military side by spending a comparable amount on it - that was the Soviet approach, and it failed largely because the military spending evidenced itself more in terms of potential employment than actual use. So too here - the Afghan deployment is spectacular but tiny compared to the overall defense budget. It simply isn't all about military spending.
What is is about is the economic ability on the part of individuals and small groups to turn a small enterpreneurial effort into a financial empire, and the social mobility which constitutes part of the incentive for doing so. That is what Europe has to match if it hopes to match U.S. world power, and it may take some readjustment of social and governmental structure to do it.
I think it is, as the Founders might say: "PROVIDENCE!"
(and the world is very lucky it's us, rather than a totalitarian state.)
I nominate the Swiss.
No, the U.S. will continue to be the policeman of the world while the rest of the (so called) developed world devotes their budgets toward experiments with socialsm.
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
I have a news flash for them. The balance of power has changed. They risk becoming nothing more than American protectorates if they continue along the path they currently follow.
Euro Disney may in fact be their future rather than an imported theme park. Destination spots for the ruling country to vacation in.
Wish I'd said that. Man, that is beautiful prose. (no sarcasm)
But I must say I was surprised by the fellow who thought this was an anti-American article. It was actually a pro-American article; I'd summarize it by saying that they resent us but realize they wouldn't do any better as world leader if they had to assume the burden.
D
These Eurolefties are awfully fond of deciding what everybody else should do, but God forbid they get their hands dirty. It's the British and the French who are actually in the best position to build up their military and ease our military burdens, former imperial powers with connections all over the world, who were a lot nicer to the natives than the Japanese and the Germans--they just lack the will to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve that goal. So what do they do? They pick the Germans and the Japanese--it's always somebody else who needs to do something about some problem--never them.
Great point. And this is the heart of the problem for Europeans and others. They will have to make serious cultural changes to match the US economically. They do not want to make those changes. So the only alternative is to get the US to "disarm" economically. That is, convince us to change so that we get eurosclerosis too. Hope it isn't contagious :)
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