L’OTAN
Uh…
Western Standard - Shotgun Blog - Seeking more allies for the mission
Canadian and Dutch governments are asking other NATO members to step up to the plate and increase their activities in the volatile southern Afghanistan:
“Canada and the Netherlands are urging other members of the NATO alliance to send troops to southern Afghanistan to help fight Taleban militants.”
It’s shameful that NATO countries such as Germany and France are not doing enough to help us in southern Afghanistan while most casualties are from Canada, US, UK and Netherlands. It makes me wonder if old European countries such as Germany and France care to help at all.
So, uh…
Telegraph - The West needs France to rejoin Nato. By Denis MacShane (Labour MP and former Foreign Office minister, now UK delegate to the Nato parliamentary assembly)
General de Gaulle quit the military structure of Nato in 1966 though France remains a member of the political treaty organisation.
Uhh… He did?
So, uh, anyway:
In the 1960s, America was the supreme military power outside the communist bloc. Today, America is a wounded beast.
Its soldiers are surrounded by a growing Islamist enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan. America’s leaders are looked upon with dismay by pro-Americans and with open contempt by much of the political class in Europe.
While many Europeans hanker after the pleasure of soft power, the enemies of democracy have no compunction about using hard power.
Germany is the strongest defender of soft power and refuses to allow her soldiers to do any fighting in Afghanistan. Yet the arrest of German citizens trained by al-Qa’eda in Pakistan and ready to kill fellow Germans en masse shows that for jihadists, Frankfurt is as much a target as London or Madrid.
The lack of success of the occupation policies in Iraq is not appeasing Islamist armed violence. The former German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, called fundamentalist jihadi politics “the new totalitarianism”.
The democracies failed in the 1930s to arm themselves against fascism. After 1945, the lessons were learnt. Nato sent an unmistakable message to Stalinist ideology that on the armed front democracy would defend itself.
De Gaulle had the luxury of pulling France out of Nato because the alliance had already stabilised Europe. Is the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, prepared to be as bold as de Gaulle and say the time has come for France to re-enter Nato?
Huh.
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:14 am
“…if old European countries such as Germany and France care to help at all.”
No. Why would they? It´s risky and they are politicians. Why would they try to help a “wounded beast” that is “surrounded” by enemies? (I have to wonder about the language. It is not helping his case.) Guys like Howard, Bush, Aznar, they are rare.
I don´t believe they can. Germany finds it difficult to maintain 3000 soldiers and a frigate abroad in a mostly symbolic non-fighting role, on a military budget of over 22 billion. There is little sense of a threat. Just look at how Germany is softening the sanctions on Iran now. To believe in having a mission is widely ridiculed as an American thing. I am cautiously optimistic about France (now) but make no mistake: Americans are doing the jobs Continentals won´t do.
I find nothing more tedious than American politicians who do not know Europe going on about “our allies” or how Bush “lost them”. Well, I would have lost them much faster than he did.