Oh?
The security of the European Union is being challenged like never before. Central tenets of the international system that Europeans helped build are eroding or even disintegrating one by one. Great power competition is increasingly shaping Europeans’ security environment, while other security threats are also on the rise, from terrorism and cyber attacks to climate change.
The EU now faces security threats from its east and south – and an uncertain ally in the West.
By now, few can doubt America's commitment to Europe given that Trump has reinforced the American military in Europe and is pushing NATO European states to spend more on defense. Trump is rescuing NATO.
So the "uncertainty" rests on America pulling out of the pointless Paris climate agreement and the awful Iran nuclear deal, plus the silly worry about American trading commitments which simply involve revising trade terms until now tilted against America.
Russia's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine haven't ruined the EU's fantasy project of a world without hard power.
Russia's support for a brutal poison gas-using mass murdering thug in Syria and their own use of gas to kill opponents in Britain haven't ruined the EU's fantasy project of a world without hard power.
China's push to expand their territory at the expense of neighbors on land and at sea hasn't ruined Europe's fantasy project of a world without hard power.
Iran's export of chaos and violence around the Middle East and into Europe itself hasn't ruined the EU's fantasy project of a world without hard power.
Jihadi terrorism inside Europe and in areas that have sent people fleeing to Europe haven't ruined the EU's fantasy project of a world without hard power.
No, America revising trade terms at negotiating tables is doing that.
Not that the EU fanboys don't recognize the threats. But they simply assume they will exist for a decade or so and then, what, go away? Embrace the EU fantasy world? (Or inconveniently be defeated by America while the EU criticizes from the sidelines?)
Are they freaking kidding me?
But the basic flaw is the amazing insistence that Europe is represented by the European Union rather than the sovereign European states in Europe, both within and outside the EU.
I hope to God that America opposes the EU now, given that it is a proto-imperial body that if allowed to become the imperial state it aims to be will stop being an ally of America and which will likely become at least somewhat hostile to America--embracing bad actors. Remember, Modern Europe is the way it is because American post-World War II influence suppressed a European tradition of autocracy--or worse (as I note in an update in this post):
It is easy to forget--and this was a useful reminder to me--that Europe with its autocracies and monarchies was not fully part of a free West (although obviously part of the Western tradition) until we rebuilt Western Europe in that template after World War II. And NATO expansion after defeating the Soviet Union was more explicit in demanding democracy and rule of law for new members.
America has friends in Europe. Political Europe unified under any autocratic power will not be our friend.
In the long run, it is pro-European to save Europeans from the European Union.
