YOU DON'T SPAY YOUR BITCH AND THEN DEMAND A LITTER (via Robert Schwartz):

Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons (Karl Zinsmeister, American Enterprise)

For evidence that obstruction of the U.S. is more important to many European elites than making progress in the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, look no farther than Afghanistan. The Afghan war was not controversial in Old Europe. It was universally agreed that the Taliban was a blight on central Asia, and that the al-Qaeda cells incubating in Afghanistan were a menace to the entire globe. Europeans accepted the urgent necessity of rooting out both entities militarily, and then rebuilding the Afghan government and civil society.

But once U.S. forces had done the dirty work of eliminating Afghanistan’s fanatical ruling cliques, did our European allies live up to their promises to help update that nation’s infrastructure, train its police, build up its courts, revive its social sector and economy? Scandalously, no.

As we’ve been pointing out for two years (see TAE’s January/February 2004 issue, SCAN), the Europeans immediately fell way behind on their financial pledges. Their troop commitments were not met. The German promise to train the Afghan police became a joke. European offers to reconstruct the justice system went nowhere. In all of these areas, America had to step into the breach to help suffering Afghans, and stave off disorder and a re-emergence of terror cells.

Truth be told, continental Europeans have been making themselves scarce during times of crisis for more than two generations. Their current claim is that lack of a U.N. mandate is what has prevented Europe from standing shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. But the Old World’s failure to make any proportionate contribution to the war on terror is actually part of a long historical pattern. Consider their response the last time a large U.N.-commanded force went to war—in Korea.

After North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, the U.N. responded militarily. Of the 340,000 troops sent under U.N. control, how many of these do you suppose were European? About 5 percent. In the crunch, only Britain provided meaningful help, sending 14,198 soldiers at the Korean War’s peak. The next biggest European contribution? Greece, with 1,263. Francefollowed, providing all of 1,119 troops.

The U.S., meanwhile, provided more than 300,000 fighters. Do the math and you’ll see something interesting: The Korean War alliance included 16 nations, and America supplied 88 percent of the military manpower. The Iraq War coalition included 32 nations, and 85 percent of the G.I.s were Americans. (Poland, Holland, and the Ukraine each contributed more soldiers to the Iraq War coalition than the French did to the Korean War.) See a pattern?

Having for years refused to fund their militaries, and lacking sufficient numbers of young men with patriotic martial spirit, the continental European nations could not project much righteous military power today even if they did have the will. You will often hear gassy rhetoric at European conclaves about how, as Spanish prime minister Zapatero recently put it, “Europe must believe that it can be in 20 years the most important world power.” But the stark reality is that only 3 to 5 percent of the 2.5 million personnel under arms in Europe today can be deployed, even for a short time. Due to its military weakness and diplomatic vacillation, “Europe is nearly irrelevant to the great issues of the future” in today’s conflict zones, notes my colleague Tom Donnelly in a new book.

Even without effective military forces, Europeans could exert much more productive influence on world events if they applied their other substantial resources. Writer Thomas Friedman suggested earlier this year that, “If the European Union said to the Iranians: ‘You will shut down your nuclear-weapons program and put all your reactors and related facilities under international inspection, or you will face a total economic boycott from Europe’ É. that is the kind of explicit threat that would get Tehran’s attention. But, alas, Europeans would rather live with a nuclear Iran—that Europe can make all kinds of money off of— than risk losing Iran’s business to prevent it from going nuclear.”

German businessman Mathias Doepfner (see page 45) says that at least since the time of Hitler, European elites have lacked the courage to stand up to dictators. Apart from the British, Euros have consistently left this job to the U.S. Today perhaps more than ever, they assume that the U.S. will always be there to deter crazy Iranians, and dangerous al-Qaedans, and unstable North Koreans. So why shoulder the expense and danger of acts of solidarity with the Americans?

It hardly seems fair to blame them for becoming the national security equivalent of welfare queens, after all, we have won all their wars for them over the past century. How would they not become dependent on us?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 14, 2005 2:13 PM