Posted on 05/30/2002 1:35:44 PM PDT by knighthawk
It is a truism to point out that the United States has more military strength than any country in history and than all other countries in the world combined. That is why the queue to join NATO is a good deal longer than the queue to join the European Union. To Eastern Europeans, the attractions of having a military dispute considered by the American government and people as equivalent to an attack upon New York or Washington or San Francisco are obvious.
But I am afraid that those chiefly responsible for foreign policy in Europe have successfully created the impression in the United States that their principal objective is rivalry rather than alliance with America.
We need only recall the exaggerated fears of many European spokesmen about U.S. abrogation of the ABM Treaty; about U.S. military action in Afghanistan; about U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo; about the failure of the United States to bully Israel after what was credulously and mistakenly assumed to be the massacre of 500 or more people in the West Bank, and the virtual silence of European commentators and governments when Palestinian terrorists seized, desecrated, booby-trapped and defiled the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. I speak as a newspaper proprietor in the U.S. and Britain when I say that the profusion of official and journalistic commentators in Europe, including Britain, overeager to condemn the United States and appease its enemies is unhealthy to an alliance and has not gone unnoticed in America.
To Americans, and I say this uncritically and without comment, Europe has never had any discernible Middle Eastern policy except to await the American position and then take a stance more favourable to the Arabs. This may sometimes be objectively correct policy, but it hasn't contributed much to the Middle Eastern peace process.
After Sept. 11, last year, all Europeans, like all civilized people, were horrified, at a human level, at the atrocities inflicted on the United States. But it is difficult to escape the impression that some have been motivated in part by a desire to make the response to those acts of war subject to a Kosovo-style collegiality, where all the allies have a right of veto over military responses.
Obviously, the United States, as the victimized country, could not possibly agree to any such an arrangement and, in consequence, is now abused by many of its ostensible allies for "unilateralism." Where, in eight months since Sept. 11, has it acted unilaterally or impetuously? Given the provocation and America's immense military power, I know of no country that has ever acted with more conspicuous moderation and effectiveness.
Some European leaders have spuriously claimed that the United States could do nothing hostile to Iraq unless it could satisfy an onus of proof equivalent to that required in a U.S. criminal court that the Iraqi government was complicit in the outrages of Sept. 11.
The United States government has an unambiguous mandate and direction from the Congress and people of that country to find and eliminate the forces of terrorism, wherever they may be. They wish and intend to fulfill President Roosevelt's promise on the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor and many other British and American targets in 1941, that "this form of treachery will never again endanger us." Surely all civilized countries must support that cause as long as it is pursued intelligently.
On Sept. 11, President Bush made it clear that this was American policy, that no distinction would be made between terrorists and sovereign states that aided terrorists, and that other countries would have to demonstrate by their actions according to that criterion whether they were friends or enemies of America.
Many of America's allies have asserted that nothing substantive can be done against terrorists unless and until the Israeli-Palestinian problem has been alleviated, if not resolved, even though the two problems are only tenuously connected.
It has also been amply publicized in the United States that prominent spokesmen for the EU have protested that the American media have been ungenerous to Europe. I regret to say that I think much of the European media's treatment of the actions and motives of the United States has been more offensive.
The relevance of this to British defence is that American official and public opinion is concerned that Europe is seeking any excuse to take issue with the United States and is flirting with a position of neutrality between the U.S. and Iraq. These are not the attitudes of reliable allies. All respectable governments in the world recognize Iraq as one of the world's most dangerous and morally contemptible outlaw states.
If Europe's concept of alliance with America is of a great American St. Bernard dog which will take the risks and do the work, while Europe holds the leash and gives the instructions, this alliance will no longer function. Britain will then lose most of its defensive security. Europe will have discarded the most successful alliance in history and the surest safeguard every country in Western and Central Europe has ever had of its national safety. I am afraid that this has become a possibility.
If the United States concludes that this alliance is useless to it, it will replace it with bilateral arrangements with important powers such as Russia and China, with which countries America's relations are more cordial than they have been for many decades.
In that case, the fleeting gratitude of the Iraqis, Iranians and like-minded states will be a very poor substitute to Europe for the formal friendship of the United States.
There is a great opportunity for redefining NATO, and a great potential role for Britain in that process. We should define the civilization and values that we share, extend NATO to all who share those values, and support each other unreservedly when those values are attacked, as they were on Sept. 11, 2001.
Lord Black is chairman of Hollinger International Inc. and the founder of this newspaper.
In that case, the fleeting gratitude of the Iraqis, Iranians and like-minded states will be a very poor substitute to Europe for the formal friendship of the United States.
Good analysis. But I'm afraid, with the possible exception of Great Britain, the writing is on the wall for this already. And Great Britain is soon going to be forced into a hard choice between the EU and alliance with the U.S. I don't see that this forcing will come at the prompting of the U.S., but rather from the EU side.
I can understand why Europeans see Arafat as a great leader, but Bush is a stupid cowboy in their view.
Back in the Reagan days it was the same: Reagan was a bad actor and the Russians were heroes who didn't want to invade all of Europe.
I mean, how blind are the Europeans? When seeing how they never stopped Hitler, I got an answer.
Exquisite.
I think, though, that Lord Black is underrepresenting the desire of EU proponents to construct precisely the sort of military and economic parity that he mentioned. And that should give its individual member countries a bit of pause, because
Given the provocation and America's immense military power, I know of no country that has ever acted with more conspicuous moderation and effectiveness.
...because if the EU proponents succeed unconstrained, this power will be in the hands of folks who seem to try to set the world on fire every couple of generations. Or, as Tom Lehrer once reminded us satirically,
"We've got the missiles, peace to determine,
And one of the fingers on the button will be German."
And if I tell people I would like to live in the US, they look at me as if I were suicidal!
Do these conversations go on long enough for you to learn why?
I once had a student who had moved here from Sweden. He said he liked living in a country where he got to keep a decent fraction of what he earned rather than having it taken form him and given to someone else, and his friends back home just couldn't understand that.
I wonder what it is about the States that most terrifies or appalls the average European of the sort you mention.
The possibility of abject failures and wild successes above and below mere mediocrity scares many.
Gee, I wonder why people in the Netherlands and France voted en masse for parties promising more safety on the streets.
They also think Americans are superficial and dumb too. When I say how it happens that most important inventions and discoveries are made in the US, they worm their way out of it.
They never met a real American, but still they think the image that the media holds about the people in the US is fully accurate.
As a conservative and a Republican, I should be used to being portrayed in a bad light by the American press. I had not realized that I would also be denigraded as an American by the foreign press.
I wonder if the sentiments you describe are more or less pronounced among young people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.