© AFP 2016/ CHRISTOF STACHE
Mike Scrafton, The Strategist/RCD: Can the Europeans Defend Europe?
A renewed sense of urgency over European defence has come only after a cumulative series of strategic shocks. The European powers have long resisted supranational defence institutions, instead depending heavily on NATO and the US. Prior to 1989, Western European and US strategic interests converged as the trans-Atlantic powers faced a hostile Soviet Union. After the Cold War, the Europeans failed to assume responsibility for the peace and security of their own continent. Can they now?
Europe’s buoyant post–Cold War mood was shattered by the brutal Bosnian War (1992–1995), Russia’s employment of force in Georgia (1991–1993), and then war in Kosovo (1998–1999). Those shocks catalysed an intense turn-of-the-century debate over Europe’s capacity to manage its own security affairs. Impotence over Kosovo, in particular, highlighted the problem, though little actual progress occurred as a result.
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WNU editor: Europe is more than capable of defending itself. The problem in the past few years is that Europe has been lacking the will to do so. The world is changing .... and Europe better get its "act together".
5 comments:
Are the Germans interested in defending themselves or slipping on banana peals?
"German Children’s Program Showed Relationship Between Teen, Adult Migrant
Almost a how-to "
WNU,
"Europe is more than capable of defending itself" I don't know. At the top they have no concept of unified leadership and the lower ranks have no large scale combat experience for over 50 years. Their economies also have not had either the experience or planning for conflict in multiple generations.
James maybe but
A. Europe has nukes
B. It's 500 million people
C. It's rather a wealthy place
D. They've got some nice high tech going
E. They've got Germans
Unfortunately the Germans today are not what they used to be.
Many Germans in WW2 fought for survival among other things.
They also fought for the people on either side of them. Units were composed of people recruited from the same city. So regardless of what the leadership was fighting for, they were fighting for each other.
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