Saturday, February 24, 2007
Mark Steyn on the meaning of "ally"
Mark Steyn's latest essay in The Australian reminds us that America is alone even when its "allies" support the mission.
For the less enthusiastically obstructive NATO members, "ally" means "wealthy country with no military capability that requires years of diplomatic wooing and black-tie banquets in order to agree to a token contribution of 23.08 troops." Incidentally, that 23.08 isn't artistic licence on my part. The 2004 NATO summit in Turkey was presented as a triumph of multilateral co-operation because the 26 members agreed to contribute between them an additional 600 troops and three helicopters to the Afghan mission. That's 23.08 troops and a ninth of a helicopter per ally. In fairness, Turkey chipped in the three helicopters single-handed, though the deal required them to return to Ankara after three months.
And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means "fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don't have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones". That's to say, Norway is "participating" in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are "not sufficiently trained to take part in combat", they've been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.
Alas, even being in the general vicinity of regions where fighting is taking place got a little too much so the Norwegians demanded a modification of their rules of non-engagement and insisted their "soldiers" be moved to parts of Afghanistan where there's no fighting whatsoever by anyone at all. Good luck finding any....
...The Americans accept (a little too easily, I'd say) the political reality that these days a military coalition will be 95 per cent US, 4 per cent Britain and 1 per cent everybody else, with the detachment of Royal Marines from Tonga ranking as a greater per capita contribution than any NATO member. But, given the relatively small numbers, they should at least be doing something when they get there.
The ugly truth is that George H.W. Bush's "new world order," in which the wealthy countries of the world would police rogue states with collective containment, was doomed to failure as soon as Europe decided that it no longer needed to defend itself. And maybe Europe doesn't. There are no obvious proximate threats to Europe, and the United States will keep the distant threats at bay at no meaningful cost to most of Europe. One wonders what Europe will do, though, when a new military threat does emerge, whether from a Russia gone bad or a resurgent Islam or a source we cannot today anticipate. What if we decide to sit that one out?
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Feb 24, 02:59:00 AM:
The ugly truth is, you cannot sit that one out. Economically, the US and Europe are linked to such a high degree that the US cannot afford NOT to intervene, out of its own economic interest. Isolationism cannot work in a globalized economy with engineering and manufacturing facilities of global companies scattered all over the western world.
apex
By , at
Sat Feb 24, 03:38:00 AM:
Well, no threats to Europe other than the millions of Muslims already there, plus the millions more they intend to allow to immigrate.
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Sat Feb 24, 04:01:00 AM:
Europe's collapse will be from within. Not much we can do about that...at least in the earlier stages.
At some point we may have to ask the French and Brits for the launch keys to their nukes though...
By Tiger, at
Sat Feb 24, 06:50:00 AM:
TigerHawk, the other 3 commenters have it right. Europe is already lost. Mark Steyn, with his terrific wit, is enjoyable to read but his comical assessment of mainland Europe is years too late.
The only hopes are England, America, and Australia; and those "3 Musketeers" are besieged by incompetence.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Feb 24, 08:34:00 AM:
Steyn, actually, has that view, most completely expressed in America Alone.
By , at
Sat Feb 24, 08:53:00 AM:
"What if we decide to sit that one out?"
It's tempting, and some of them deserve to have a foot on their throats for awhile to bring them back to reality. But, we should remember we still have friends in Europe, like Denmark and the former eastern block countries. They deserve better. The rest? Their problems are mostly internal and they will have to deal with them (or not) themselves.
The others, like France, deserve NOTHING from us.
The good news is in the coming years, the anglosphere will be getting more of Europe's brightest and the best as they flee the burning and collapsing continent of Europe. The exodus has already begun, with emigration of native Dutch and Swedes exceeding the number of (mostly Islamic) immigrants. These emigrants are scattering throughout the anglosphere.
By enuff, at
Sat Feb 24, 09:14:00 AM:
You'll find my sympathies in-line with Patrick Buchanan's: We are not Europe’s keeper: So let’s just pull the plug on NATO. To cite from an old, more obscure but very astute strategist:
"Thus in not a very distant future the natural necessity which now imposes the French and Germans the necessity of establishing a Continental alliance against the British supremacy, will impose on the British the necessity of establishing a European coalition against the supremacy of America. Then will Great Britain be compelled to seek and to find in the leadership of the united powers of Europe protection, security, and compensation against the predominance of American, and an equivalent for her lost supremacy." - Friedrich List, 1841; The National System of Political Economy
By , at
Sat Feb 24, 03:21:00 PM:
You are sadly mistaken if you think England is salvageable (sp).
While Blair has been with us on foreign affairs, he and the Labour party have so basatrdized the English way of life that the country will go the way of Europe.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Feb 24, 09:52:00 PM:
davod -
perhaps, but more slowly, giving greater time to escape. Several other European countries, notably Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, and Denmark, are also holding the line a bit better and may buy themselves more time. They may just use that time to move to NZ, however. Eastern Europe is unlikely to go Muslim, but their birthrates are so low and their emigration rates of the young and talented are so high that they will have other vulnerabilities.
France and the Benelux countries are the most worrisome for the next few decades.
By , at
Sun Feb 25, 06:23:00 PM:
There seem to be a lot of people commenting here who are quite happy to trade in the sort of lazy cliches that - if applied to the US - they would violently object to. What does the sentence "[Tomy Blair] and the Labour party have so basatrdized the English way of life that the country will go the way of Europe" even mean?
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Feb 27, 10:46:00 PM:
Adopting a politically-correct-to-the-point-of-absurdity, socialistic, and in some places bordering on police state (thousands of cameras in the public sphere? officers writing tickets because you honked at a guy who stepped in front of your car and almost got flattened? being *jailed* for being anti-social?) system should give you a good start.
Does this sound like the mother nation of capitalism, former world spanning empire, and home of some of the greatest advances in the history of humankind to you?
Because to me it sounds like a daycare.
By , at
Wed Feb 28, 04:28:00 PM:
Dawnfire, if you want to trade in lazy cliches, that's fine. Your knowledge of the United Kingdom is surely greater than mine. If you're wondering why a large proportion of the UK doesn't like you very much, take a quick look at what you've just written and get back to me.
By Hiraethin, at
Sun Mar 04, 06:44:00 PM:
The value (to the US) of having other countries contribute troops and/or equipment is primarily political. In fact, the contribution of 20 troops or 2 helicopters is probably more trouble than it's worth, given communication, coordination and logistics issues, from the standpoint of resources. However, contributing resources is making a statement of support, and contributing troops is a stronger statement. For the US, being able to point to concrete support from allied countries is more important than the quantity of their contribution.
Such contributions are an opportunity for donor countries to get their militaries some experience, too. This is evidently not important to some countries who seem to expect never again to fight a really important war, or a non-elective one. But the Brits and the Australians have rarely missed an opportunity to keep their spec ops forces sharp.
