The Europeans are upset that America screwed them with the unilaterally created debacle in Afghanistan despite joining America there through NATO's collective defense mechanism. But Europe will not build an independent military capacity to be able to act without America. Because that isn't "Europe's" objective.
Europeans are unhappy with how America treated them during the Afghanistan debacle. But be careful of the definitions section. The Eurocrats like to obscure the difference between geographic Europe that is in NATO and political Europe that they want to be a multi-ethnic empire.
So what will "Europe" do about their experience?
“It’s nice to talk of European strategic autonomy, but to do what?” Mr. Korteweg asked. “What problem do we want to solve without the Americans? On what problem do we not want them to lead? Or is European autonomy a way of protecting ourselves from the big, bad outside world, from migration flows and Chinese economic coercion?”
Benjamin Haddad, a Frenchman who directs the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council, sees the debate reinforcing a call by President Emmanuel Macron of France for a more autonomous European defense capacity in cooperation with NATO.
The EU bureaucrats course decided to hold a meeting on this issue. And they are arguing that Biden's failure in Afghanistan is damning for NATO. So the EU should have a bigger military capability even though their existing small capability hasn't been used. With no apparent willingness to deploy it.
Of course Macron wants a European Union defense capacity. He thinks France can lead the EU while Germany provides the financial muscle.
But Macron and his fellow "European autonomy" comrades don't care about actually having an autonomous European defense capacity.
"Europe"--that is, the European Union--just wants the authority to build such a capacity. That kind of strong European political authority will weaken NATO and cripple American influence while strengthening the authority of the EU to erase the prefix of their proto-imperial project.
If Europeans cared about defense, they wouldn't be red tape speed bumps for American forces trying to cross European borders to stop the Russians:
A marquee cooperation project between the European Union and the Pentagon aimed at cutting red tape during cross-border deployments of military gear in Europe has yet to get off the ground, as negotiations continue about the ground rules for non-EU participants.
I've noted this effort. More than three years ago. Great progress! Defending Europe is clearly an EU priority!
The EU could promote European defense just by getting out of the way. Literally.
But defense isn't the goal of political Europe, clearly. The goal is authority. Such a political Europe is a threat to America (and to Europeans, for that matter).
The Afghanistan debacle is just the EU's latest excuse for why it should have power. Don't let them.
