The Europeans have noticed:
Of course, for Europe to remain Europe, they need someone like America to provide the hard power that shields the Europeans so they can pretend that regulations and seventy-four varieties of cheese are all they need to prosper. And now America is in danger of no longer being America.
The piece is one focused on our economy, but if we become European in our economic policies, a Europeanized defense and foreign policy won't be far behind.
Europe doesn't need another European state over here. They need America.
And so do we.
UPDATE: If you doubt that the Europeans need us to protect their little hot house of long vacations and weak militaries, check out the first sentence of this so-called analysis by some European foreign policy outfit:
The end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq this month has been an anti-climax. There is no defining image for us to remember – nothing like the last helicopter out of Saigon or the last Russian tank out of Afghanistan. 50,000 American military trainers remain in Iraq.
Are you kidding me? This is a statement made by a serious foreign policy think tank?
The reason our draw down to 50K didn't look like the two examples given is that those examples were defeats (and the US helicopter thing was two years after all our combat forces were gone and we starved South Vietnam of support, thank you very much Congress for that little bonus) while our milestone in Iraq reflected victory.
I didn't even bother to read more than a couple more sentences before I wondered what the heck I was doing wasting my time taking foreign policy lessons from a pan-European neutered defense outlook.
UPDATE: Ok, to be fair to the Russians, they pulled out and left a friendly government in charge, too. And their ally only fell after the Russians dropped support for the Afghan government. But the Russians stopped support because the Soviet Union collapsed rather than as a conscious choice as our Congress did.
So to be fair to the European foreign policy outfit, if we screw up things after 2011 (and I think we'll still have troops there after that year, when all is said and done), maybe then they can put our withdrawal in with their two defeat examples. We won't be that stupid and spiteful, will we?
