Myths About Afghanistan
Victor Davis Hanson on whether Afghanistan is really the "graveyard of empires ..."
See this interesting article over at Fox News on the EU being a “leaderless superpower.” It is right in so far as it goes (i.e., without a leader). But the EU is so far from being a superpower that it is really surprising that anyone would have written a piece hinting at such a thing.
A few comments on the EU. First of all, quoting from the link above:
Europe’s current climate of “Christianophobia� explains why churches that once held hundreds of attendees at a time are rapidly losing adherents. Rocco Buttiglione, whom the European Parliament blocked from becoming the European commissioner for justice because he had described homosexuality as a sin, observed the following: “The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion,� adding, “It is an atheist, nihilistic religion—but it is a religion that is obligatory for all.�
First, the EU has no common world view except that of materialism. This will not long substantiate a peoples or make a state cohere. The EU has no moorings — philosophical or religious.
Again citing from the link above:
Before the EU’s expansion to 25 members, the commander of NATO called Europe a “military pygmy.� Since then, the EU’s combined military manpower has grown to almost two million armed forces personnel—more than the United States.
Yet the same commander upgraded Europe to being only a “flabby giant,� because its troops are not united into a large, single military force. There still remains a technological gap between European forces and the U.S. military, especially in transportation, intelligence and modern weapons technology.
But the EU would rather spend funds on its burgeoning welfare programs and let the U.S. protect it from external threats. Indeed, one of the key reasons for forming the EU was to find an alternative to war. Today, European politicians and academics tend to view the use of military force as a relic held over from the era of colonialism and world-spanning empires. In their secular thinking, war is judged as a waste of time and money, and is immoral.
Its armies are underfunded, ill-equiped, inexperienced and largely irrelevant. It is far from a superpower, and negotiations rather than self-defense (a product of their naturalistic and materialistic world view) is a sure path to powerlessness and dependence on others to protect and defend them.
Finally, the EU lacks more than a leader. It lacks followers too. If they have no leaders and no followers, what do they have? Mark Steyn makes the following observations:
    A couple of days before Sunday’s referendum on the European constitution, Jean-Claude Juncker, the “president� of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion:    “If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said ‘No,’ would have to ask themselves the question again,� “President� Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
    Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don’t worry, if you don’t, we’ll treat you like a particularly backward nursery school and keep asking the question until you get the answer right. Even America’s bossiest nanny-state Democrats don’t usually express their contempt for the will of the people quite so crudely.
    When he’s not playing European “president,� Mr. Juncker is the prime minister of Luxembourg, a country two-thirds the size of your rec room. Yet he bestrides the continent like a colossus. Just to make sure we all got the message, he spelled out precisely the impact that the people’s view of the European constitution would have on their rulers’ adoption of said constitution: “If it’s a ‘Yes,’ we will say ‘on we go,’ and if it’s a ‘No’ we will say ‘we continue.’ �
    I didn’t see the actual Euro-ballot, but evidently it’s “Check the Yes box if you favor ratification of the E.U. constitution. Check the No box if you favor ratification of the E.U. constitution. For Neither of the Above, check Both of the Above.�
    In every election campaign, cautious candidates play the game of lowering expectations, but even so, the Euro-elite’s distinctive variation on this ancient ritual has been remarkable:
    Originally, we were told that it would be a big setback if the Dutch, as one of the E.U.’s six founding members, were to reject the constitution.
    Then, as the Dutch polls headed south, we were told not to worry, they’re a small unimportant country, won’t make any difference. It’s the French, as one of the two pillars of Continental integration, whose view really counts.
    Then, as the French polls headed south, we were told, oh well, if it’s a narrow defeat, that won’t make any difference either. We’ll get the French to vote again and make them give the correct answer this time. The so-called driving force of the E.U. was now reduced to the status of the Irish and Danes — a faraway province of peripheral significance.
    So now we’re told that French voters’ 55–45 rejection of the constitution is nowhere near the massive overwhelming defeat that would be necessary to derail the thing. Most advanced societies are reluctant to make big constitutional changes on too small a majority — look at the level of support you need to amend the U.S. Constitution or to abolish the Australian and Canadian monarchies. But, in its own perverse wrinkle on this thesis, Europe says gravely that it won’t make big constitutional changes on too small a minority — if the French had rejected the constitution by, say, 92% to 8%, well, that might have prompted the E.U. to consider possibly perhaps at least partially rethinking clause 473 paragraph H.
    Throughout the campaign, it was pointed out that opposition to the constitution was incoherent: The British dislike it because it subordinates a thriving economy to a centralized statist regulatory tyranny; the French dislike it because it’s a plot to impose “Anglo-Saxon� capitalism on their agreeably pampered welfare utopia. As The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore pointed out, these objections are not contradictory: “Jean may want to knock off on Friday morning while Jack may want to work all Sunday: both agree that they should be able to make up their own minds about it.�
    Just so. And, as Jean-Claude Juncker’s airy pre-emptive dismissal of the election result underlines, the right of people to make up their own minds is the one option that’s not on the Euro-table.The European establishment’s occasional acknowledge of the E.U.’s “democratic deficit� hardly begins to cover their disdain for the people: As the computer types say, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. A couple of days ago, the New York Times Web site flagged a page called “Q&A: What’s At Stake In France’s EU Constitution Vote?� Naturally I clicked on it, hoping I could just copy out their great thoughts in a slightly rearranged word order and bunk off to the Bahamas for the weekend. The first question in their E.U. constitution Q&A was “What is the status of the Palestinian security services?� which hadn’t struck me as a terribly burning issue in Lyons or Marseilles. The second question was “What are the three new branches of the Palestinian security services?� And by the time I got to “What is the counterterrorism record of the Palestinian security services?� I’d figured out that this was, alas, only another New York Times screwup.
    But it did set me thinking about my post-9/11 trips to the Middle East, where, until Bush and his insane Zionist neocon democracy fetishists came along, America’s “allies� in the region had spent four decades selling themselves to Washington as a necessary antidemocratic restraint on the baser urges of their primitive peoples. Now who does that sound like? Look at all those bizarre utterances from the Euro bigwigs this last month: the Dutch Prime Minister, who said “I’ve been in Auschwitz� and the Euro constitution was necessary to “avoid such things� in the future; Sweden’s European Commissioner, who said at the Terezin concentration camp in the Czech Republic that “scrapping the supranational idea� would set the European Union on the “old road� back to the death camps. What a reassuring argument: Only the Euro elite can protect the citizenry from their worst instincts. If the U.S. Constitution begins with “We the people,� the starting point for the European Constitution is “We know better than the people.� And in the long run, in Europe as in the Middle East, that won’t work.
    Unfortunately, the institutional arrogance of the entrenched Eurocracy is all but indestructible. Even as the French were voting, the former British Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd was telling folks that this unsatisfactory referendum campaign demonstrated that what Europe needed was new leaders. Poor chap, missing the point as usual. The European Union isn’t floundering because of a lack of leaders. It’s the lack of followers.
On August 3, 2006 at 4:51 pm, Mr. Euro said:
LOL, Its so easy to see that this criticism is written by an American patriot -
“See this interesting article over at Fox News on the EU being a “leaderless superpower.â€? It is right in so far as it goes (i.e., without a leader). But the EU is so far from being a superpower that it is really surprising that anyone would have written a piece hinting at such a thing.”
——————————————————— Let me just remind you that the EU Economy, as a whole, is larger than that of the USA, the EU armed forces combined are larger then that of the US, and that European countries is not that far behind on military equitment as the US would like to think. The Eurofighter is superior to pretty much all US fighters, except perhaps the F-22, a US scandal Fighter with HUGE cost overruns, which has also led to Pentagon cutting down the numbers actually produced of this plane, and the F-22 is not even in full production yet – while the Eurofighter has been used for some time now.
With regards to transpotation the A400M is taking on Boeing easy, unless Pentagon and Boeing officials make personal deals, without competiton, as we have just seen in the latest Pentagon/Boeing scandal……
On August 3, 2006 at 5:07 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Uh huh. Just like all those Euro troops in southern Lebanon prevented Hezbollah from becoming armed, and just like those Euro-forces won the cold war, and the Bosnian conflict, and the war in Afghanistan, and …
But if you’re so sure that the Euro-forces are so powerful, then why don’t the Euro-forces replace the U.S. in the global war on terror?
Sorry. Some things are so prima facie ridiculous that they don’t warrant further discussion. The notion that the Euro-forces are actually going to engage anyone in a serious, extended conflict is one such thing. Europe — as an entity — cannot even begin to think of engaging anyone in a conflict totally outside consideration of its warring capabilities. Politically, it would never be allowed.
On January 9, 2007 at 11:19 pm, Joe Joe said:
If there is another powerful force handling a threat that is against the European Union, then why would it join in and lose its own soldiers?
On January 10, 2007 at 10:49 am, Dominique R. Poirier said:
One may hardly evocate the idea of Europe as an entity with a common defense, a common policy, etc. The E.U. is an intergovernmental union with a single market and a single currency which has been adopted by only 13 of the 27 countries that compose the E.U.
Now, the idea consisting in alleging that this frail gathering of different countries with very different cultures and views on politics and economics is to be compared to the United States, or to China, for example, is absurd, if not farfetched.
This entity we use to call the E.U. is torn between factions having sometimes very different views and ambitions. It has a hybrid intergovernmental and supranational organization. The Council of the European Union in Brussels, and the European Parliament at Strasbourg are notoriously crippled by chronic corruption and cases of dereliction of duty.
Euro meetings on sensible matters gather crowds of officials and their translators and assistants amounting sometimes to the surrounding of a hundred of people, thus explaining why everything confidential is said there is immediately reported elsewhere.
For the impersonal bureaucratic structures of the European Union cannot evoke the popular sentiment necessary for a political vocation. Europe’s original sin, of which it has not yet cleansed itself, is to have been conceived in offices, and of having prospered there. A common destiny cannot be built on such foundations, any more than it is possible to fall in love with a growth rate or milk quotas.
Some countries members of the E.U. entertain affinities with very different allies, outside the E.U.; allies that nurture strong antagonisms toward each others in some cases. For example, some European countries which happened to be former member of the Warsaw Pact or former Soviet satellites are eager to get rid of the Russian influence, while some others, less or more discreetly, are consistently running toward rapprochement with this country which, for the concern of many, is gently going back toward its old ruthless way of governing.
To the bewilderment of many, during his final weeks in office, Gerhard Schroeder, former Chancellor of Germany, signed an agreement with Russia to build the North Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea to supply Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic countries. Soon after stepping down as chancellor, Schroder didn’t join Wolkswagen, Bosch, or another iconic company representative of the country he leaded. Instead, he accepted a post as the head of the shareholders’ committee in the Russian-led consortium, controlled by Gazprom, which is building the pipeline. German opposition parties, as well as the governments of the possible transit countries, have expressed concern over this issue that pictures quite well my previous allusions. In an editorial entitled Gerhard Schroeder’s Sellout, the American newspaper Washington Post has also expressed sharp criticism, reflecting widening international ramifications of Schroder’s new post.
Other social factors question the power of the E.U. High rate of unemployment is found in many European countries and a rise of populism noticed here and there is equally a source of further concern, let alone the problem of the language that makes the E.U. resemble to the Tower of Babel. During his mandate as President of the European Commission Romano Prodi once declared, in substance, that the rich members of the European Community will have to share their wealth with the poorer members, a statement that may bewilder some since the rich European countries he was making allusion to are already suffering from concerning economic and social turmoil. The fact is that many inhabitants of poor European countries expect much from the joining of their countries to the E.U., while those of all others are seriously worried by the shrinking of their power purchase that accompanied the coming of the Euro currency in their country.
I talk now a bit about some questioning aspects of the European defense.
In France, a said-to-be leading European member and a forerunner of the European Union, some high ranking members of the French defense, such as General Gallois, General Pichot-Duclos, and General de la Maison Neuve, publicly expressed their ambition to build (eventually and once other “minor� countries will be included, it is understood) a unified Grande Europe whose remotest place would be Vladivostok, in Russia. These militaries and many others unwilling to elaborate officially about this endeavor introduce themselves as experts in strategy and geopolitics; a fact which raises further concerns since, as such, they cannot ignore, as Gamal Abdel Nasser pointed out in his time, that alliances between strong and weak countries inevitably lead to the strong country taking advantage of the situation and imposing its own agenda on the weak country(ies). Also, it constitutes a fact which deserves to be put side by side with long lasting and persisting rumors of numerous successful Russian penetrations of the intelligence and political apparatus of France and Germany, two European leaders (sorry to be that straightforward). France has an already long and well known close partnership with Russia in the fields of space and aeronautics, and this partnership backs to the Soviet era, to be precise.
At this regards, I feel obliged to make mention of a news released on October 29, 2006 by AFP, the French press agency, which was titled with conspicuous bombast “Russia, France overtake US as top arms sellers.�
I continue on defense and aeronautics in the E.U. since the subject has been raised.
France unabashedly refused to take part in the development of the Eurofighter. Instead, and though the leaders of this country have been the starkest promoters, and counted among the “founding fathers� of a common European defense, it has chosen to refuse to participate to the Eurofighter project and build its own fighter instead, named the Rafale. On the long run the cost of development of this plane proved to be totally incompatible with the resources of a country such as France. The first official estimate said that the Rafale represented an investment of 21 billions dollars for the French taxpayer, until it was leaked that the real number was in fact in the surrounding of 43 billions dollars.
The Rafale is certainly a good and competitive fighter, once fully equipped, but the trouble for the French is that a Rafale with all its electronic equipment is much more expensive than any other fighter. As a result, it took quite long until the French Ministry of Defense itself ordered a significant number of Rafale fighters, and this plane is hard to sell abroad while the F-16 is the largest and probably most significant current Western fighter program, with over 4,000 aircraft built since production started in 1976. No foreign sales of Rafale have yet been made, though the type has been rated highly in a number of evaluations.
About the Eurofighter, and according to Wikipedia which I hold for a relatively good and reliable source:
“The series production of the Eurofighter Typhoon is now underway (at last) and the aircraft has formally entered service with the Italian Air Force and with the Spanish Air Force. ‘Initial Operational Capability’ is expected to be declared by Germany and the United Kingdom in 2006. Austria has purchased 18 Typhoons, while Saudi Arabia signed a contract on 18 August 2006 for 72 to be built by BAE Systems.
The cost of the Eurofighter project has increased from original estimates. The cost of the UK’s aircraft has increased from £7 billion to £19 billion and the in-service date (2003; defined as the date of delivery of the first aircraft to the RAF) was 54 months late. Britain’s commitment to its 88 Tranche 3 aircraft has been questioned.
In late 1990 it became apparent that the German government was not happy about continuing with the project. The Luftwaffe was tasked to find alternative solutions including looking at cheaper implementations of Eurofighter. The German concerns over Eurofighter came to a head in July 1992 when they announced their decision to leave the project. However, on insistence of the German government some time earlier, all partners had signed commitments to the project and they found themselves unable to leave.
In 1995 concerns over workshare appeared. Since the formation of Eurofighter the workshare split had been agreed at the 33/33/21/13 (United Kingdom/Germany/Italy/Spain) based on the number of units being ordered by each contributing nation. However, all the nations then reduced their orders. Britain cut its orders from 250 to 232, Germany from 250 to 140, Italy from 165 to 121 and Spain from 100 to 87.�
How not to make mention of this failed attempt to create a European army, which, in fact, materialized itself under the form of a Franco German army which was daringly named Eurocorps. Until then the Eurocorps is a force which consists of up to 60,000 soldiers drawn from the armies of Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain, and its headquarters, at Strasbourg, France, is more known as a haven for socialites than as a lair of skilled soldiers and strategists.
All this illustrates quite well, I think, the seriousness that can be attached to the idea of a common European defense and to this of a “European giant.� In the case of the E.U. boasting about population and other statistics is irrelevant to the notion of political or even economic power.