The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged. The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them. Our task is to ensure that, with them, we do not limit this agenda to security. If our security lies in our values and our values are about justice and fairness as well as freedom from fear, then the agenda must be more than security and the alliance include more than America.
Prime Minister Blair is wise to remind our fellow allies in Australia that we must stand together and fight. The European path of supine indecision interrupted only by meaningless spasms of tough talk would be easy to follow. Indeed, many here as well as in Britain, Australia, and Europe vigorously advocate such a course and pretend it is real security against threats to our society and freedom.
And it would be tempting to just say screw all those ingrates and good luck to them. But the world is too small to safely consign any large portion to the category of "doesn't matter." And there are people even in Europe who would stand with us to fight, so we cannot abandon them falsely assuming their more realistic views can never prevail in Europe.
The Europeans in power may not like to hear the harsh truth about the need to defend what we've spend centuries building, but they need to hear it. And I have hope they will in time heed what we say. Or at least enough of them to matter.
Friends don't let friends conduct foreign policy European.
