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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
French and Belgian citizens (among others) fought in Syria and returned to Europe needing no disguise . . . waltzed right back in on their passports. Some went on to slaughter innocents in Paris . . . anyone care to guess if that will happen again in Europe?
And our military is now fighting other European citizens in Syria and Iraq. Because, you know, why shouldn’t American kids fight and die in order to secure the right of Belgians to have a little jihadi excursion to Syria now and again?
In other cases, Syrian fighters came in disguised as refugees. The issue—as you rightly surmise—is European elites don’t have any evident intent on securing their borders. Quite the opposite . . . they just admitted hundreds of thousands of fighting-age males from Muslim countries . . . you may have heard how well that worked out for German women around New Year’s Eve. Since Europe is having such evident success with assimilation now, of course you’d want hundreds of thousands more, right?
Meanwhile, some U.S. politicians are trying to convince voters we need to introduce ground troops into Syria and Iraq.
I can’t be the only one that sees this for the madness that it is.
Now Claire can tell us it’s all lies.
Being fairly old, I remember way back circa 2000 when the EU was set to be a peer competitor of the United States, economic military and rival, with the power and oh so much willingness to tell the US to sod off.
Now, after demonstrating a great deal of fumbling incompetence and poor judgement, the EU is collapsing both from the top down and bottom up.
Shrug. Too bad, eh?
As far as I’m concerned the banlieues of Paris aren’t worth the bones of a single American marine, to paraphrase Bismarck. And if the idiot rulers of Europe still want American military aid they can pay for it, through the nose and out somewhere else, with trade concessions, cash, and more.
Otherwise, they can sod off.
If europeans are getting worried, good! Perhaps they cant stop assuming that there is an inexhaustable supply of individually wrapped disposable middle americans to play toy soldiers with.
Summing up: The American people aren’t interested enough in globalism.
We must cancel elections.
Yeah, again, the challenge was to find more recent information that refutes the reports—widely cited—which supersede what you have linked for us here. According to those reports, two of the Paris attackers came into Europe as Syrian refugees via Greece just weeks before the atrocity. BTW – that latter detail would indicate they were known of and expected by the other attackers. One doesn’t just show up to a well-planned terrorist attack saying, “Hi guys, need a hand killing anyone?” “Sure do, guy-I’ve-never-met, how’d you like to join us in Paris in a couple of weeks? Here’s the plan . . . “
Of course there is.
It’s this:
I’m sorry if someone’s already pointed this out, but it wasn’t “standing armies,” it was “a standing army.” Ours, that we paid for while the Europeans pursued their democratic socialism.
You’re right. Look up Heinlein’s definition of “bad luck.”
Still waiting . . . hear only crickets chirping.
While you are at it, explaining that whole Putinist propaganda thing I’m sure would be interesting too.
I couldn’t quite believe that.
If the US’ current allies took on full responsibility for their own defence – so no treaties, no military aid, no standing army – would that result in more than a rebalancing of military expenditure? Meaning, right now the US pays the most so it dominates the West’s agenda and policy. Might that also change?
I’ve read several articles lately about this, starting with Peggy Noonan’s about the “protected” and the “unprotected.” This is just another part of it. The “protected” don’t have to live with the results of their decisions; that lot falls to the “unprotected.” The protected have their gated communities; the unprotected get mown down in Parisian bistros.
Is that bad? Are our interests aligned?
Although for most of my adult life my views on foreign policy were more aligned with the so-called “neoconservatives,” in recent years I’ve been leaning more and more toward unilateralism. America owes the world nothing.
It’s a little surprising that after all these years there’s still someone who can conflate 9-11 with Iraq. Not even “W” thought Iraq was in any meaningful way connected to 9-11.
As for dictators who have “bombed and invaded,” violated UNSC Resolutions, denied inspectors access . . . let me just be clear—you’re talking about Putin, right? Kim Jong Un? Ayatollah Khamenei? Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Libya? I’ll need to see your scorecard to keep up.
Again, it’s a simple question: is Iraq (or Afghanistan, for that matter) circa 2016 worth the blood and treasure expended since 2003? Have you got a resounding Yes! on that? If so, why?
Certainly hope so! But of course, this is a ludicrous straw man . . . there’s zero danger of “no treaties, no military aid, no standing army.”
BTW – there’s untold billion$ in our DoD budget that have as much connection to national security as you and I do to our caveman ancestors. So the raw numbers are more than a little bogus.
I would say that mostly they are – though there may be some differences wrt how Europe and the US want to deal with things like (for eg) Syria, given their relative experience of the consequences.
In that case, if their foreign policies were completely independent, I could see the US’ position re removing Assad (because his and his father’s policy really have fueled ISIS, so it’s a good argument) coming up against a European need to stop the flow of migrants ASAP (which means cooperating with Russia to get Assad back in control of the country pronto, regardless of the consequences for civilians).
Also – look at the difference in approach to Iran and the Iran deal. Sanctions weren’t Europe’s idea, and they didn’t like them one bit – they couldn’t wait for them to be over.
I get that, but a reduction means a reduction in influence, right?
Yes, probably true. But the funds are being spent to achieve what is perceived to be a US interest – aren’t they?
One might ask: “how many of our civilians domestically have to die before we commit to securing our border and stopping terrorists, criminal gangs, violent illegal immigrants and opposing regimes like Mexico’s that are sympathetic to and facilitate people that want to steal from or kill us?
I think what your position is, or what you will ultimately get to if pressed is: I don’t pay the price for open borders or for fighting America’s wars, so what the hell do I care what happens to some middle class kid stupid enough to enlist?
You cannot possibly be this naive.
Let me rephrase that: I pray that you cannot possibly be this naive.
You beat me to it. And when the US protests… usually under Republican presidents… the answer is usually some variant of “Sorry, we can’t afford it this year. Please send carriers. Oh, and have you seen our new cultural enrichment center for Arab immigrants? It’s got WiFi! Pretty neat, huh?”
Pretty much.
The fact that the Belgian Army has a union speaks volumes, none of it good.
HVTs
Let’s say I am Pollyanna. What non-security focused DoD expenditure are you talking about?
I think Bucky gave you a reasonable response but you so not see it because of a false premise. That premise seems to be that if the US fails at any future date to pursue policies and take actions that preserve the benefits achieved, those benefits were never achieved ab initio.
I think both ways of viewing it are useful and must be part of our foreign policy toolbox. Of course tyrants won’t be subdued by the UN’s shining example, but there’s great importance to diplomacy and treaties among cooperative nations and to setting and upholding the traditions we call international law (maritime law, the Geneva conventions, etc.) Both soft and hard power are essential instruments of foreign policy, and we need to be good at both.
It’s still unclear how exactly he came back, but he boasted a lot about being able to enter and exit Europe at will, given that he was wanted by every intelligence agency in Europe. My guess is that he had a stolen EU or forged Syrian passport. (ISIS is believed to have access to a Syrian passport printing press.) He couldn’t easily have travelled back into the EU on his own name, since he was wanted by the authorities, but if he was travelling on a stolen EU passport and the photo resembled his, he would easily have been able to convince any border security official that he was a Belgian national; I presume he spoke native, unaccented French. It would be trivially easy to cross the border from Syria, then catch a flight from Turkey to Brussels without incurring close scrutiny. If he had a forged Syrian passport, it would likewise have been very easy for him to enter through an overwhelmed Greek processing system and then continue to travel completely unnoticed through Europe. Native-perfect French is just as good as a passport for making someone seem as if he belongs here.
Interesting mental gymnastics . . . let me unpack your floor routine: If something appeared successful at a given point in time it makes no difference if it quickly went to $@#&. We gaze upon its brief shining moment of success and declare victory in perpetuity.
Unfortunately, in matters of love and death that’s just nonsense talk. I mean, I suppose you can say “Hitler got his army all the way to Stalingrad! What a success!” Or, “Napoleon’s army sacked Moscow! Victory!” Unfortunately for the French and the Germans, both of those books have additional chapters. If you read the whole story, you might feel compelled to discount the exuberance of initial conclusions.
In my experience, the only social institution which rewards your moment-in-time reasoning is a federal bureaucracy.
I think you did, yes. And I apologize; I shouldn’t have assumed you’ve been reading everything I write here. I think if you search my posts, especially under the terms “Putin,” “Putinist propaganda,” “Putinist parties,” “refugees,” “refugee crisis,” “Paris,” NATO “terrorism” “Syria,” Ukraine, France, Baltics, and “Turkey,” French military, you’ll see many posts explaining why I think this makes no sense; why I think Putin’s been terrifyingly successful at convincing people it makes sense; and why.
If it takes that many pages to make your argument, let’s try this approach instead—just four questions:
— How many military-age Muslim men (age 17-39) are now residing in Europe, having fled Syria or its nearby environs in the past 24 months?
— What is the impact of that influx on European security, both internal and external?
— How many total refugees and economic migrants—men, women, children—now reside in Europe, having fled Syria or its nearby environs in the past 24 months?
— What is the impact of that influx on European economic security, government budgets, and availability of public services, including public education?