The differences between America and Europe

[Provost Harrison]

Isn't a move towards peace a good thing. The populations of the European nations are averse to war and see it as a last resort and really don't want to resort to it when necessary. But then there is that side of the human persona, greed, that fuels war, the arms race, sets one population against another. The desire to have more, and the capacity of a demagogue to play on that. Americans seem to be strange on this account, they seem to revere their leaders like a monarch or a beloved dictator, which seems quite alien to Europeans. Every action should be questioned, every motive scrutinised. I think we are heading in the right direction. It is slow, but perhaps with a bit of investment and nurturing of other populations of the world they will not constantly have to resort to war for scarce resources, ones which are in oversupply in the western world.

[Ecthy]

Provost has a point. We don't WANT TO BE powerful. The author puts military weakenss like a weak point in our societies, while that is just nonsense.

And GP, instead of trolling (didn't you read Siro's remark? I bet you didn't even read the article), you might actually consider replying to my points.

[Provost Harrison]

Hey, the 'sand in ones vagina' is my expression dammit!

[TCO]

you got it from me, little weergin.

[Provost Harrison]

Perhaps it is the realisation of a society that cooperation achieves more; why waste money and resources blowing things up, it's just money down the drain, when you can use it to build and increase prosperity and output. Prosperity and output I consider to be important in giving us the resources and capabilities to extent a good standard of living to the rest of society.

[Provost Harrison]

Did I hell, I saw it at another website

[chrono353]

cooperation leads to exploitation. i see this already among eu members. tho i dont think competition is a good idea. i think what ph says is mostly true. except I think the inherit rabid desire for power in europe is still there. maybe not as large as the problem, but the whole eu revolves around this concept of obtaining more power from its members.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Did I hell, I saw it at another website

They got it from me. Don't be a splittail about it.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
We don't WANT TO BE powerful.

No one, least of all the author, has said otherwise. The article mearly attempts to analyze the reasons behind that desire and the impact it has on the US/EU relationship from a neutral point of view. Your problem is that you seem to view the word weak as a loaded word with negative conotations.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by DanS
"They're not riding your coattails on defence any longer, since there's nobody to defend against... "

You are mistaken. Europe is riding our coat-tails merely because they aren't chipping in for the creation of the Ultimate Ideal Western World (TM). To my mind, Europe is on the hook for an add'l 2% of GDP for "doing the dishes", laxer immigration laws, and friendlier trade terms to other countries

Why should they be on the hook? They don't get to decide your military policy, they shouldn't have to pay for it. I agree that they experience beneficial results from your military spending, but the effect is secondary (you're not defending their soil in any meaningful way). They are able to defend themselves, and that's all they want from their military. Everything else is just gravy...

Remember that there's again this feeling that your military is overbearing enough as is. They have no urge to help you be even more agressive by increasing your capacity even further.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Chris 62
Bernd, you should have read the article, the author said very close to what you did.

Well, I read it now, it was indeed very interesting, and I´d agree with many (not all) things the author said.

However, enough reading for today...

[Ecthy]

I'm not. I have given examples for the author's negative attitude earlier, just noone bothers thinking about it.

[DanS]

KH: They are on the hook to do the dishes, if liberal Western values are to be spread throughout the world (that's what we're all after, right?). If they don't want to put the money into direct offensive capability, there is plenty of other stuff to do besides. Everything from being peacekeepers to helping build democratic institutions to giving direct food or monetary aid.

Ecthelion: The SU was communist. They get no props from us. Even if you think...

"while it was just the will to live on and safe lives on both sides."

...this wasn't the way the U.S. looked at it. Rather, it was a "crusade". This fits nicely with his power/weakness thesis.

One of the interesting points of the article was when he wrote about Roosevelt's attitude toward Europe. As a child of the Cold War, it was the first time it has really dawned on me that the U.S. would have looked at Europe in a different light once upon a time.

Very interesting. I think I'll go read the book he referenced.

[chequita guevara]

I thought it was a rather interesting and fair article. I bit long, though, since he seemed to be repeating himself a lot. There were a lot of assertions and it seemed short on facts, but it's an interesting argument.

[Ned]

Originally posted by BeBro
Lazy German as I am, I only read Siro´s summary. Some thoughts:



While it is true that Europe´s military is not as strong as the US military, I do not think that the second part of that quote is correct.

I´d rather say this aversion has not much to do with our military, but with Europe´s "warlike" history - Europeans had the most devastating wars on their own soil, Americans had not.

Especially Germany was rather "pacifistic" after WWII, first under pressure from the Allies, who did not want a new threat from Germany again, then because we accepted und understood our role in WWII, and so the post-WWII Germany tried to make sure that it would never become a threat for its neighbours again. Our "pacifism" was mainly self interest, the end of WWII teached us something...

But after the unification the will to use military is higher than ever after WWII. Amazingly the decisions to participate with military force on the Balkan, or in Afghanistan were made by our "left" Schroeder government - their political background is classically much more "pacifist" compared to our conservatives.
You can complain that most of the German troops do "only" peacekeeping, but also this is "exercise of military power" and a drastic change from Germany´s "no troops outside NATO territory"-policy before the 1990ies...

I think the main difference to Amerika is that we see the military option as the last option, not necessarily the best one, and not isolated from political or economical efforts. "Exercise of military power" as the author says does perhaps reduce or even take away certain threats (which is of course important, therefore you´ll not find a single whining from me about US troops in Afghanistan), but it rarely solves entire conflicts.

Perhaps the will to use military is higher when you have the stronger military like the US, I can´t answer that, but sometimes a use of military force can rather create new problems, so the question if Europe should do that more is a bit pointless for me - we will do it, when it serves our interests, and when it solves more problems than it creates, but not to appear simply as military giant...

Ah. There is still hope!

Welcome aboard, ally.