Victor Davis Hanson: Houses of Straw. EU’s delusions about the sufficiency of "soft" power ...

NRO ^ | March 30, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

[happygrl]

http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-War-August-1985/dp/0722141858/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7234134-4538501?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175276029&sr=1-1

[Billthedrill]

One of the best things VDH has ever penned, IMHO.

I am a bit troubled by his conclusion - it isn't an assumption - at the end, of the inevitability of increasing international engagement by a relatively unsupported United States - that is, after all, what is left in the wake of the failures of collective security in NATO and the UN. Unfortunately in the absence of a better-armed EU, NATO becomes a warrior with one sword and twenty heads, and that simply is not going to get the job done. Moreover, an increasing, traditional, and perfectly understandable isolationism on the part of the U.S. electorate is a political fact.

The real difficulty is that "soft" power has placed such an effort into building the infrastructure of administration and negotiation that it has very little built to administer and no one with whom to successfully negotiate. Hence the rather blithe hope that those who do have military assets to administer ought to subordinate them to that infrastructure. This is, to say the least, an entirely unsatisfactory and highly transient state of affairs.

There is, in the form of the Democratic party, a strong influence in American politics to do as the Europeans have done, i.e. take the military shield for granted and concentrate spending on domestic programs and entitlements, justifying this on the moral grounds that military involvements are inherently unjustifiable and unnecessary. It may be that a very harsh lesson to the contrary is in the offing.

[AFPhys]

"Islamists must assume that an attack on a European icon — ... — could be pulled off with relative impunity and ipso facto shatter European confidence and influence. Each day that the Iranians renege on their promises to release the hostages, and then proceed to parade their captives, earning another “unacceptable” from embarrassed British officials, a little bit more of the prestige of the United Kingdom is chipped away."
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... as well as whatever prestige the EU and the European faction of NATO has.

I agree with you. Real War is coming... Perhaps we ought to support the Demofool's concept of ginning up a draft ... pronto.

[Eva]

Real war is coming.

I've been thinking about this all day. I am worried the the Democrats are favoring joining the European Houses of Straw. The US has the power to protect and defend, but does it have the will?

[DB]

It will. Lots of people are going to have to die first though.

You can pretend to make peace by refusing to fight - but the other side will continue with its war. And sooner or later reality knocks down all the false rationalizations/delusions and leave nothing but the fight for survival. Then it will be fought to win.

[norton]

"Quite simply, there is now no NATO, no EU, no U.N. that can or will do anything in anyone’s hour of need."

The unraveling of the post WW2 balance, the institutions set in place to maintain it, and the overly optimistic resurgence of europe itself must be utopia for someone...maybe a list of suspects would be appropriate.

[The Pack Knight]

From a 18 March Sunday Times article about Iran's threatened revenge for western "kidnapping" of Iranian army officers.

In an article in Subhi Sadek, the Revolutionary Guard’s weekly paper, Reza Faker, a writer believed to have close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned that Iran would strike back.

“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,” he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.”

Go back and read that first quoted sentence. There's no religious demagoguery there. These people want a fight, pure and simple. They smell blood, and they think they're tougher than we are. I think they're genuinely confident of victory.

I've heard it said that a "military solution" is "off the table" when it comes to Iran because we hope the Iranian population will do the job for us. Guess what? The longer these games continue, the weaker the West looks, and the stronger and bolder the mullahs and Ahmadinejad look. Nothing will make them more popular with their own people. They're standing up to the closest ally of the greatest power in human history, and they're winning. This is exactly the sort of thing that ensured Hitler's long-term control of Germany. Without the Rheinland, Anschluss, and the Munich Agreement, the Nazi regime might have died of its own inherent unpopularity. Instead, they were allowed to perform the "miracle" of making Germany a great power again. If Ahmadinejad is seen making Persia a great power once more, does anyone really believe his own people will stop him?

The choice is pay now or pay later. Our military may not be properly aligned to start the fight, but it had better get that way sooner rather than later. The longer we take to put an end to this, the bloodier it's going to be.

[justa-hairyape]

Very good points. The similarities between the early stages of Nazi Germanic expansionism and Islamic Persian expansionism is very striking. What the US Congress seems to want to do right now (remove US and British troops from Babylon) is the historic equivalent to removing British and Polish Troops from the European continent before the onset of Nazi expansionism. Basically, the Nazi's would have paid no early price to take Europe. At least historically the Polish and British put up a fight for Europe.

[jonrick46]

The idea that they kidnap someone is proof enough that the Iranian leadership is on a low order of social evolution. Now we are getting videos and statements from the hostages. The use of statements from the hostages is getting old. They are as obnoxious as Uncle Luke's stupid jokes at Thanksgiving Dinner. The world should view this behavior from Iran as shameful. They are showing that their leadership lacks the maturity required for civilized interaction with the world nations. The world needs to be told of their scandalous behavior in great detail. At the same time it is time to "dialog" with them in the only way they understand: escalating attacks on their infrastructure. If they want to act like they are in the stone age, they can live in the stone age.

[rodguy911]

If I am not already on here, don't recall, please add me. Hanson is the absolute best of the best of the best.

[rodguy911]

I sometimes wonder if there is a harsh enough lesson to wake the demrats out of their cut n' run stupor. If 911 didn't do it what will it take?Of course they see these issues differently than we do for us we rush to defend the country after a 911,they rush to make political hay out of it.

[Tolik]

Observing our many vulnerabilities, I am afraid all the time. I try not to allow it to enslave me, and not to behave scared, because it is no way to live this way. But visiting DC another day and seeing low flying planes, and when going through any tunnels, and when enduring crowds at the malls or sport events - its hard to forget that any of that can end quickly and violently.

There was a lot written about 911 as an unthinkable event. The fault in not connecting the dots (besides the real structural weakness of our intelligence services) was lack of imagination. Besides a very few "paranoids"-proved-prophets everybody else indeed shared this lack of imagination.

Now, the fact that our "friends" on the left want to conveniently forget, is that "unthinkable" is very much "thinkable". How in a world removing or weaken your defense capabilities can make you safer is beyond my understanding. Hindsight is always 20/20, or so they say. Because I don't see the Left having the 20/20 hindsight when they deny the crucial difference that was brought by 9/11: in a 9/12 world you can't have naivete of 9/10 world - the unthinkable already happened!

I understand that it is impossible to make it unthinkable again. What is the best defense is to make it so much universally and unanimously deplorable and so painful to any enabler, that it would be very much harder to pull it off. So far at least half of Americans and majority of Europeans are working hard against this "universally and unanimously deplorable" part and to speak about the pain to enablers - is almost laughable. I hope we can getaway with this naivete somehow, somehow, somehow??

[Tolik]

You were already on the list.

Hanson BTTT.