European Naivete - Peter Ross

European Naivete - Peter Ross Range, editor of the Democratic Leadership Council's "Blueprint", has this very interesting take on the perception gap in foreign policy between us and the Germans.

The lack of nuance in the German perception of U.S. policies is sometimes breathtaking. One of the more preposterous arguments I heard came from a top Schröder advisor during the chancellor's election night party on Sept. 22. "You don't just go roaring into a war you haven't thought about," he said, clearly unacquainted with the debate raging for months in the United States. "And besides, Baghdad is not so far away from us." Right: only about 2,000 miles and light years of involvement.

Such misperceptions are driving a wedge between the United States and its friends in Europe. Our relationships with them are fundamentally shifting, and will probably never be quite the same again. We must hope that the Germans someday grasp the fact that just as Dresden was a defining moment for them—130,000 people killed in a single night's bombing—the 9/11 attacks have become one for us. One can only hope it won't take another Dresden—or a Paris or Berlin terrorist catastrophe—to achieve that understanding.

Now, I get very upset when I hear the likes of Ann Coulter poo-poohing the notion, to say nothing of the substance, of our allies' involvement in the war so far. For better or worse, few of their militaries are designed to be able to pick up and move anywhere - they were built to fight a war, at home, against the USSR during the Cold War. It'll take a massive realignment of priorities to change that. And for all that, our allies were there in Afghanistan; the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Germans, Norwegians and Danes all contributed their special forces to the hunt through the Hindu Kush for Al Quaeda - all of them excellent troops, on a par with anyone we have.

Geitner Simmons, where I first found this piece, had this to say:

the United States is going to need allies. The current America-as-hegemon environment isn’t likely to last; even the seemingly intractable Cold War conflict eventually evaporated. In coming decades, other centers of power will arise in the world. Sure, the United States is likely to remain the dominant power, and thankfully so. But over time it would hardly be a surprise if we saw slippage in our ability to convince or coerce other governments. And we could well face problems in exercising our sovereignty to use military force, given the way some NGOs and diplomats are working to reshape international law.

The unanswered question being "what is international law, and how much attention do we, its chief enforcers, need to pay to it?

Posted by Mitch at December 3, 2002 04:45 PM