The End of History is over. And the European Union Disneyland philosophy of a zone of peace in Europe that abandons primitive warfare to solve disputes is obviously a fantasy. America must not falter in defending its security interests in Europe.
This thinking is short-sighted:
Many Americans, not all of them Republicans, think that their country is already staking too much in Europe, when China remains the more dangerous adversary.
In World War II, Germany was the primary threat that America focused on defeating. That didn't mean that the U.S. ignored the Japanese who had unleashed war by attacking Pearl Harbor and expanding in the western Pacific. Let's resist the admittedly secondary Russian threat while Ukraine is willing to fight and stop Russia.
The growing inability of America to fight on two fronts, first enshrined in the early "end of history days," is finally hitting us hard. The idea that we can choose to ignore Russia because China is a bigger threat could lead to a major defeat in Europe.
Certainly, Europe has the economic power to defeat Russia. Europe even has a minimal nuclear deterrent in Britain's and France's arsenals. It might even be enough to deter Russia if Russia's nuclear arsenal is no better maintained than its conventional military.
But European power is scattered in penny packets from the Arctic Sea to the Straits of Gibralter. European military power remains a potential:
As of now, even the best-armed, or least weak, European allies — Britain, France and Germany — would require months to put into the field a single battleworthy division.
The might and commitment of the US are indispensable. R.D. Hooker Jr., a former dean of the alliance’s defense college, wrote recently: “NATO must have the will to compete, and the US must lead and encourage.”
Even if Europe arms up in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, America is needed to knit together through NATO the scattered military power of Europe and make it a coherent fighting force. For all of Russia's weaknesses exposed in Ukraine, Russia at least had the capacity to concentrate military power from all across its territory to fight Ukraine.
If America retreats from Ukraine, Europe will be unable to sustain Ukraine's resistance for long, let alone help Ukraine counter-attack to win. If Europe is unable to stop Russia when it has a willing partner in Ukraine lacking the ability that only the West can provide, what will it do when Russia's victorious army returns to its Soviet borders in Central Europe?
A Europe driven to neutrality because it cannot create and mass power to match a smaller but ruthless Russia will set in motion a process that ejects America from Europe and risks a hostile power again controlling the vast economic, scientific, and demographic power of Europe. A nightmare scenario for America for over a century could become reality, whether under Russian domination or from a hostile European imperial entity evolved from the European Union.
Who knows what the EU elites would surrender to get their empire?
Europe is an objective as much as it is a potential ally. If America loses Europe while increasing its guard in Asia, America will be weakened for that fight, forced to divert forces to the Atlantic to stand alone with perhaps only Britain at our side in the Atlantic. That's a basic reality of American security.
America must return a Army corps to Europe to hold Europe (see pp. 15-20). We lost our gamble of pulling it out. America's 10-year rule must be ended.
We must, as the initially cited author recounts Churchill saying in the dark days of World War II when the smart set advised making peace in the face of aggression, keep buggering on and pray that something will turn up.
I'm not nearly the pessimist as the author is on Ukraine's ability to
eject Russia from this year's conquests. But if Ukraine can do that
with the West's help, it will be--as Wellington said of the defeat of
Napoleon at Waterloo--"the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." Western failure to help Ukraine should not be the margin of Russia's victory.
NOTE: My most recent war coverage is here.
