GLORIANA RULES THE WAVES

Axis of Unfeasible (Robert Lane Greene, 05.06.03, New Republic)

Put together Germany and France and you have a middle-ranking military power, with 650,000 men and women under arms and a defense budget that's nothing to sneeze at. But this is still nothing to make America blink on the way to its next military adventure. So thank goodness for ... the Belgians? Journalists suppressed their mirth when French and German officials announced that Belgium would lend its commandos to the new European defense structure. One European diplomat described Belgium's forces to the BBC as "completely useless." But that's a bit ungenerous. They're almost certainly more useful than Luxembourg's. With its population of 440,000, the country stands nose-to-nose with Staten Island in world-power tables.

those who airily dismiss the threat of resurgent European militarism would do well to recall our devastating defeat at the hands of The Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 9, 2003 6:50 PM