European states are divided on whether to ditch American defense ties. The European Union remains consistently anti-American.
The fraud of claiming Trump hurt trans-Atlantic defense ties is now openly exposed:
The EU may aspire to “strategic autonomy,” but Friday’s virtual summit of heads of state and government showed leaders experiencing another concept: strategic cacophony.
While the European Council leaders issued an anodyne joint statement insisting the EU would take numerous steps “to take more responsibility for its security,” their meeting reflected a chorus of disagreement. They differed over how much priority to give security and defense issues in the EU framework. They diverged over how closely to align with NATO. And they deviated over how much independence — if any — to seek from the United States, historically the bloc’s closest ally.
The arrival of U.S. President Joe Biden, and his promise to reinvigorate transatlantic relations, has only heightened concerns among some EU countries, especially those bordering Russia, about antagonizing Washington with talk of strategic independence. The U.S. has long bristled at any rhetoric that might be interpreted as sidelining NATO, or as advocating the development of capabilities the U.S. views as redundant.
President Biden is said to have saved the trans-Atlantic alliance. "America is back," Biden said. But the EU doesn't want America back, as I recently noted:
Biden tells Europeans that "America is back." And Europeans "push back." But America never left. We reinforced NATO and strengthened NATO over the last four years, in fact. The two strongest EU powers pushed back at Biden. As the article explains, what France wants is an EU military. That weakens NATO and minimizes American influence in Europe. And Germany wants to reach out to Russia and China regardless of where America wants to lead.
Trump actually strengthened the alliance. If Trump truly had wrecked trans-Atlantic alliance, the EU would have pinned a medal on Trump's lapel. So now the EU can't hide its disdain and near-hatred of America behind the convenient opposition to Trump.
I've been pointing out this divide within Europe for a long time. Some Europeans want NATO and America to lead the defense of Europe. Others want a EU military to reduce American influence.
NATO under American leadership kept Europe free from external threats to freedom and actually promoted freedom within the alliance. The EU glosses over the former achievement. We easily overlook the latter achievement:
[As] America's military power in Europe has receded post-Cold War and as European efforts to assert themselves independent of America by emphasizing the EU rather than NATO, the Europeans have drifted away from America.
And that distance is allowing Europeans to revert to their pre-World War II nature of being a mix of autocracy, monarchy, and democracy. I had to be reminded by this author that our long period of influence in Europe during the Cold War had a role in making Europe truly democratic:
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.
Strategic autonomy is all about weakening NATO and expelling America from Europe. It is not about opposing Russia. And in less guarded moments the EU apparatchiki are more expansive in their aims.
Really, who thinks any money Europeans spend on defense for an EU military won't be subtracted from NATO spending? With NATO weakened, American influence in Europe will be eroded until Americans walk away in disgust.
A European Union military replacing national European military forces may be mostly para-military or light infantry better suited for fighting civilians. And it will cripple NATO and eject America from Europe. That EU military will have one purpose only. To enforce aBrezhnevBrussels Doctrine that forbids any more exits from the paradise on the continent that the EU pretends it is building. Brexit them once, shame on Britain, exit them twice and shame on the empire.
I've long said that America has friends in Europe but that "Europe" is our foe and potential enemy. America has long opposed a single hostile power from controlling the vast economic and scientific power and military potential of Europe. America kept a kaiser, Hitler, and commissars from ruling Europe. The EU is the new threat.
In America's absence, the European Union will be no less dangerous for using ever expanding cheese regulations to bind European states together in "ever closer union." European states will become mere provinces in the empire. Opposing this result should be a major American objective.
