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How the West Ends?
Back in the 1950s, when the institutions were still new and shaky, I’m sure many people feared the Western alliance might never take off. Perhaps in the 1970s, the era of the Red Brigades and Vietnam, many more feared that the West would not survive. But in my adult life, I cannot remember a moment as dramatic as this: Right now, we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union, and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it.
I share that feeling. “Not only is Trump uninterested in America’s alliances,” she writes,
he would be incapable of sustaining them. In practice, both military and economic unions require not the skills of a shady property magnate who “makes deals” but boring negotiations, unsatisfying compromises, and, sometimes, the sacrifice of one’s own national preferences for the greater good. In an era when foreign policy debate has in most Western countries disappeared altogether, replaced by the reality TV of political entertainment, all of these things are much harder to explain and justify to a public that isn’t remotely interested.
To which the standard answer is blah, blah, blah, patronizing coastal Ivy-educated elite, what has the West done for us lately.
She tries:
Western unity, nuclear deterrence, and standing armies gave us more than half a century of political stability. Shared economic space helped bring prosperity and freedom to Europe and North America alike. But these are things that we all take for granted, until they are gone.
But none of these arguments work, do they. No matter what, all people hear is blah, blah, blah, patronizing coastal Ivy-educated elites — what have the Romans ever given us in return? Yeah, yeah, yeah, besides half a century of political stability, prosperity and freedom …
Foreign Policy is beginning to reckon with this idea, too: Obama wasn’t an aberration; he was a faithful expression of the American desire to have nothing to do with the world:
President Barack Obama, who as a candidate spoke of the imperative to help shore up weak and failing states, has repeatedly had to promise an impatient American public that he will do his nation-building at home rather than abroad. If he drew down forces too deeply in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he did so in part because he knew the public wanted out. Drones, yes; soldiers, no. A President Hillary Clinton might face an even surlier mood than Obama has.
I don’t think foreign policy elites have fully absorbed this collective attitude.
I don’t either. But nor do I think the American electorate has fully absorbed what it’s risking.
It probably won’t happen. Trump won’t be elected. But the signal his campaign has given the world has been received already: Even Americans don’t believe in the liberal world order as we know it. I don’t think Hillary’s capable, intellectually or as a politician, of dealing with the fallout she’ll face after eight years of her own foreign policy incompetence. The American electorate has already told the world in no uncertain terms, “Go to hell.” She’ll be presiding over a near-ungovernable country.
Surely there’s got to be a way out of this?
Published in Foreign Policy, General
Goodness, you are a red herring machine today:
— Proximity to Paris atrocities — red herring.
— I supposedly “demand respect for my views” — red herring.
— I supposedly “feel contempt for people who do think facts are relevant” – red herring (insulting too, and laughably overwrought).
— Size of France’s military — red herring.
— France possesses nuclear weapons — red herring.
Then there’s this: “No one has even remotely proposed that American troops be sent to defend France since the Second World War.” Really? What exactly was NATO about if not sending U.S. troops to defend France (among others) from the Soviet Union? My, my how quickly they forget!
Now, if instead of insulting me you’d care to inform me, please specify where the below media reports (captured in Wikipedia) are overturned by more recent information:
Three suicide bombers blew themselves up near the Stade de France:
Peace, out.
There’s some truth to the portrait of Brussels as ineffective, slow-moving, bureaucratic, and above all, not endowed with the legitimacy to get things done: I mean, look at the bickering over refugee and migration policy. But Hannan’s view of this glorious period of progress during which all the European nation states advanced by competing with each other unfettered is pretty silly — that competition ended in the Somme and Passchendaele; fairly obviously, Europe needs some kind of mechanism to negotiate its differences in a less fratricidal way.
The free trade area was an entirely worthwhile and legitimate project, and while everyone bickers about trade agreements, it’s ridiculous to call them anti-democratic or a form of loss of sovereignty. Europe was indeed made much more peaceful and prosperous by the EEC. The huge mistake was the single currency, which Britain wisely rejected. To have a single currency without a unitary federal government was madness, particularly since Greece (and probably all of the PIGS) were admitted with insufficient scrutiny or attention to their books.
I think you are speaking for a lot of people here. It would be nice if there was a way to give Europe a way to get a taste of what it deserves for slacking without destabilizing whole continent.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question, and for treating it as a fair question.
I liked your response above, I believe no. 59.
Can you understand though, why many of us feel like we have whiplash vis-a-vis Europe?
From your perspective, a citizen’s best way to get a handle on it?
I think this is a fair question – as well as: Do the countries we are supposedly helping and protecting really want our help and protection? Honestly, sometimes it seems to me that they don’t.
An agreement that was made – what? – 70 years ago? Seeing as how the better part of a century has passed, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate that commitment?
As all peoples should be.
Military alliances can and should generally be formed on an ad hoc basis. We should ally with governments that share our specific interests when needed.
The formation of NATO made sense because it was devoted to a specific threat that we shared with European nations (and Turkey) for decades. The UN, on the other hand, is a generalized commitment to nothing in particular in alliance with overt enemies and antagonistic cultures mostly at the expense of American taxpayers.
The UN is useful only as a forum where world leaders can meet en masse and arrange smaller, more pointed meetings. As a governing body and security council, it is worse than worthless; it is actively harmful.
American foreign policy needs a complete overhaul. There is no fundamental logic by which we choose which atrocities and tyrannies to answer. There is poor distinction between enemies and allies, with too much emphasis on permanent treaties. There is no respect for the limited uses of power. American voters are charitable, but that charity requires restraint regarding the lives of our soldiers and campaigns with fixed, achievable goals.
All of the attackers have been identified and were EU citizens:
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader, was Belgian-born and of Moroccan descent.
Hasna Aitboulahcen, was born in the Paris suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne.
Salah Abdeslam, was born in Brussels.
Ibrahim Abdeslam was also born in Belgium.
Ismael Omar Mostefai was a Frenchman of Algerian origin.
Samy Amimour was a Frenchman.
Ahmad Dahmani was a Belgian man of Moroccan origin.
Bilal Hadfi was a French citizen who had been living in Brussels.
The Syrian passport left behind at the Stade de France has been conclusively determined to be a fake.
All were European nationals. Not one of them were Syrian refugees.
I don’t understand why it’s ridiculous to call EU regulations anti-democratic or a loss of sovereignty. My understanding is that they are extremely intrusive and are passed with little or no input from the citizens of member countries. The fact that the EEC has made Europe more peaceful and prosperous seems irrelevant to the question as to whether its regulations are anti-democratic.
Moreover, I suspect that the regulations do more to hurt prosperity than otherwise. As economist Michael Mandel explains:
Finally, the more onerous and intrusive the regulations become, the more likely they will cause reactions that threaten Europe’s peace.
I didn’t see Pierre, Francois or Brigette in that list of notables. The point would seem to be that the mistakes were made a generation or two ago
They’re in unions. The people who are supposed to defend a nation at the government’s command are in unions.
Are you suggesting that only the European Union is preventing another WW1?
Hmmm. Somehow I just can’t envision Millennials ever being characterized as “The Greatest Generation”
I’m not sure I have ever read you on this, Claire — what do you think about Brexit, or Cameron’s deal?
That is an unfair comparison. Europe in 1910 is not Europe today. You don’t have a Germany occupying French territory, you don’t have a motley of sclerotic monarchies led by oddballs, you don’t have any nation angling to pick up territory from any other nation, nor do you have massive national armies. Do you honestly believe that the EU is, today, the only thing preventing Germany from invading France and annexing the Sudetenland?
Do you consider the Baltic states part of “Western Europe”? To help me understand what you mean by “actually invading” please tell me if–using your terminology– Putin “actually invaded” Crimea?
Did any of them fight in Syria? If so, did they return to Europe using their own passports? If they fought in Syria and returned to Europe disguised as refugees, then it doesn’t really matter if they were born in Europe. The issue is not having any ability to control your own borders.
Yes.
Yes, and I think a direct invasion is unlikely, but if it’s going to happen, that’s where it will happen (as opposed to France, Spain, Britain, etc.)
Hell, yes.
Same applies to Iraq and the Middle East. Peace through strength displayed right in the heart of it all seemed like a solid strategy. Whatever we think in hindsight about going into Iraq in 2003, it was a far bigger blunder and affront to the sacrifice of our guys to pull out just when we could have started to see some fruit from that sacrifice.
On the other hand, the EU and NATO nations are not Iraq fresh off of decades of war, oppression, and millennia of backwardness. They should have been transitioning to taking care of themselves starting in the 90’s.
Not the EU per se, but economic interdependence and many formal mechanisms for shared decision-making have certainly contributed to the sense that direct conflict is now unthinkable. (So, of course, did the razing to the ground of German cities by the allies, its division in two, de-Nazification, and long-term occupation. And the Marshall Plan.)
This suggests that neither Cruz nor Rubio would fare any better than Trump. Cruz can’t even seem to make deals with his own party, and Rubio has gotten bamboozled once already.
Thank you for responding Claire. There is a lot of information out there and it’s hard to keep everything straight. It was Abdelhamid Abaaoud who was killed after the November 13th attack that I had read came back to Europe disguised as a refugee.
Right. Germany (and France, though of course its issues were rather different) had its worst demons purged by fire. Aside from a vocal minority, those issues are gone, relegated to the ash heap.
But economic interdependence is one thing, political subservience to the folks in Brussels is something else again.
I’m not sure either of those things really tells us much about foreign policy. Cruz hasn’t actually tried to make deals with his own party, I don’t think — it hasn’t suited his political needs. Rubio took on an impossible job in a situation where he had very little actual leverage, and evidently thought it was worth it — you’d have to look at his maneuvering on the Obamacare risk corridor and his record as House Speaker, too.
I’m thinking that Rubio has the most experience in something at least somewhat related to that kind of negotiation, and that he would be able to communicate what matters to Americans. Whereas if Cruz makes it to the White House it will be because of a keen strategic sense that could serve him well in foreign affairs.
I’m getting tired of this. There are some very reasonable arguments against the USA continuing to provide a blanket defense of Europe, and all you hear is blah blah blah.
Regarding Richochet, I’m starting to fall more in line with Althouse:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/search/label/civility%20%5BREDACTED%5D
If what I have read from Daniel Hannan and Nigel Farage can be believed, then EU governance has basically echoed the American dissolution from “make regular” to “regulate”. What was set up to facilitate trade between distinct members ended up dictating limits upon production and distribution.
I won’t pretend to know what was or is necessary for European nations to effectively trade with each other. But I’d be surprised if an extra layer of unaccountable bureaucracy is the answer.
Problem is your link is to a report that precedes some currently in Wikipedia. Could those reports be wrong? Sure. Can you document where credible sources refute the widely reported Syrian refugee connection of at least some of the Paris attackers?
I doubt you will, but for arguments sake let’s say you can. It doesn’t change the fact that Applebaum’s concern for insufficient American fealty to Europe’s elite-serving institutions and accompanying progressive elite ideology ignores what Europeans are doing to undermine their own security, economic wellbeing, cultural strength, and national sovereignty.
She seems to assume it’s the duty of American kids—one wonders if she would include her own—to step up and defend those elites no matter what their level of rank irresponsibility towards their own welfare and security. Admitting hundreds of thousands of military-aged Syrian males is an example of that irresponsibility.
Saudi Arabia—due to Obama’s disinterest in its security vis-a-vis Iran—has cut-off funding for terrorists in Lebanon. Imagine that! It’s starting to sort out its security with other Sunni states (cooperating with Israel in the process). Perhaps there’s a lesson here for Europe. Pace Applebaum, perhaps convincing everyone that middle class American kids will always bail you out isn’t in our own national interest, albeit good for the elite-schooled, coast-living privileged class.
I’m a natural supporter of Ted Cruz… Sadly (like almost everyone I’ve supported since the Gipper) I don’t think he’s got what it takes to win the general election. My first, second, and third choices this time around got a combined total of about 5% when they dropped out.
I’ll vote in the CA primary, so I really won’t have much of a say, but I’ll be supporting whichever candidate is running against Hillary.
I thought this was the lesson the Gipper taught us!
If you end up voting for Hillary (either directly, or by proxy via abstaining or a protest vote) and she ends up winning, it will be on you.
At the end of WW2, Americans did not want to endure another war like that. It was commonly accepted that it was in their self interest to shoulder the burdens of being the international glue that holds the West together.
Here we are, having been that glue for decades. Our country is hollowed out, we are in debt, we have sacrificed our blood and treasure and we receive little in the way of thanks and a lot in the way of derision from people who accept our protection yet economically and diplomatically work to thwart us at least half the time.
As far as our allies, if you think US politicians are boobs and idiots, the Europeans seem to be a bit short of Churchills and Thatchers lately.
America becoming focused on it’s own short term self interest is hardly shocking. Will someone make a case for the foreign policy that addresses why we need to keep the status quo because is sure looks blurry to me.