Although Libya is mostly an air and naval (blockade) operation, there are some special operations troops (almost all European) on the ground, and European nations are running that aspect of the campaign as well.
All this pleases the United States, which can now point to Libya as proof that the EU can carry out military operations in its own neighborhood. But America will also use Libya to coerce European nations to develop the support forces that the U.S. still have more of (and Europeans are still dependent on). Finally, this demonstration of European military capability makes it easier for the U.S. to withdraw its remaining forces from Europe, after nearly 70 years of being “over there.”
From another perspective, America's departure from Europe will be because the Libya War demonstrates how little Europe (and Britain, in particular, which until now has been a substantial American military ally) wants to do for their own defense, and we're tired of picking up the slack:
Since the Cold War’s end, the combined gross domestic product of NATO’s European members has grown 55 percent, yet their defense spending has declined almost 20 percent. Twenty years ago, those nations provided 33 percent of the alliance’s defense spending; today, they provide 21 percent. This is why Robert Gates, before resigning as U.S. defense secretary, warned that unless Europe’s disarmament is reversed, future U.S. leaders “may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.” Born to counter the Soviet army on the plains of Northern Europe, NATO may be expiring in North Africa.
Of course, both perspectives end with America leaving Europe. I think that is a mistake for a number of reasons. We should want to stay in Europe. And Europeans should want us to stay in Europe.
I never assume that Europe's history of violence and warfare is over. It is certainly fashionable for Americans to say we wish Europeans would remember their martial past a bit more (and I'm guilty of wondering where the warriors we fought in the past have gone now that we are allies), but I'm very aware that we don't really want that. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
So it was with some interest that I read a passage in a book on European military history (War in European History, by Michael Howard) that had a 18th century writer speculating about what a nation of true believers could do if harnessed for war. But alas, he wrote, that was unlikely:
Such a people will not arise because there is no longer in Europe any nation at once powerful and new. They are all growing alike and corrupting each other.
The man, de Guibert, died in 1791. He did not live to see the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Or World War I. Or World War II.
The European Union sometimes seems like it is trying to corrupt all its members into well-fed docility. What nation could become the powerful and new, becoming a predator nation among the low-defense spending European states that we see today? I don't know. But I know it wouldn't take much to dominate them at this point.
And if many get their way, we won't be there to keep a lid on those passions in the false belief that we can save some dollars by getting out of a Europe that we think is growing alike in the European Union and corrupting each other with social democracy that sees defense spending as unnecessary.
Yet we cannot ignore what happens in Europe. Through two world wars and a Cold War, we intervened in European affairs to keep the continent's vast resources from being turned against us.
We will have to intervene a fourth time at great cost in blood and treasure if, in our absence, Europe sees a rebirth of true believers willing to be harnessed for the glory of being powerful and new.
