As Europe fades away, USA will be alone
(of course this was written by Pat Buchanan...)
U.S. foreign policy is "absolutist and simplistic." America has gone into "unilateralist overdrive," thunders Chris Patten of the European Union, a Briton and a friend.
Patten echoes the British, French and German foreign ministers, the last of whom, Joschka Fischer, rails that "a world with 6 billion people will not be led into a peaceful future by the mightiest power alone."
Shocked by the "axis of evil" speech, enraged over the green light President Bush flashed Ariel Sharon to crush the Palestinian intifada, terrified that a U.S. war on Iraq could detonate the entire Middle East, Europe has begun to challenge the United States openly — condemning U.S. treatment of the Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ignoring U.S. sanctions on Iraq and Iran and calling for a Palestinian state.
Has Europe just come down with a case of the "vapors," as Secretary of State Colin Powell suggests?
No, there is more, much more, to this clash than the usual outbreak of bed-wetting whenever the Yanks go for their gunships. Europe wants out of America's imperial wars, because Europe, cockpit of history for five centuries, is finished. Europe is dying. Kiss the Mother Continent goodbye — and along with it the salad days of the American-European alliance.
In researching my new book, I could not find a single European nation, save Muslim Albania, with a birth rate to enable it to survive in its present form through mid-century. The United Nations projects Europe will lose 124 million people by 2050, equivalent to the entire population of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
In 1950, peoples of European stock were nearly 30% of the world's population and in the midst of the greatest baby boom in their history. By 2050, they will be down to just over 10%. One in three Europeans will be over 60, and one in 10 over 80. Some European nations already report more burials than births. Not since the Black Plague has Europe seen a population collapse like this.
Meanwhile, the Third World will add between 3 billion and 4 billion people by 2050 — the equivalent of 30 to 40 new Mexicos.
As the nations of Europe age, they have three choices if they wish to maintain their generous pension and health-care systems for the elderly:
Raise retirement ages and slash health and pension benefits.
Double or triple taxes on their shrinking number of workers.
Import hundreds of millions from the Third World.
Just to maintain the current 4.8-to-1 ratio of working-age population (ages 15-64) to seniors (65 and above), Europe must import 1.4 billion people by 2050.
Where will they come from? North Africa, the Middle East and the ex-colonies of the old empires. And the consequences for a continent that has never experienced mass immigration are at hand. Last summer, race riots erupted in the British Midland towns of Bradford, Burnley, Oldham and Leeds. In Paris, Algerian toughs stormed a soccer field during a game with France, chanting Osama bin Laden's name as terrified Parisians locked themselves in skyboxes. Moroccan youth are returning to the Spanish towns from which their Moorish ancestors were expelled in 1492. Islam has begun to reconquer Europe.
If you would see the future, look to Italy. When Rome recently advanced a law to expel 300,000 illegal aliens, an amendment was added to allow nannies and caretakers for the elderly to stay. The United Nations estimates that Italy will need 235,000 immigrants every year just to maintain its population stability. By 2050, Italy's median age will be 54, some 13 years older than the nation with the oldest median age today, Japan. Meanwhile, Italy fends off regular boatloads of Muslim aliens.
With 12 million to 15 million Muslims in Europe, Islam has surpassed Judaism as Europe's second religion — and is its most vibrant, for as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are filling up. There are more than 2,000 mosques in Germany and 5 million Muslims in France. In the first year of the 21st century — an Islamic Century? — an estimated half-million illegal immigrants entered Europe.
Europe's Muslims now act as a powerful disincentive to Europe's involvement in any war against Islamic nations, just as the Irish served as an impediment to any rapprochement between Britain and America from the 1850s to the eve of World War I.
In the 1860s, the Fenian Brotherhood tried to incite war between the USA and Great Britain with repeated raids into Canada. In 1888, a letter praising President Grover Cleveland, written by the British ambassador in Washington, cost the envoy his post and helped to cost Cleveland the presidency. In 1896, Republicans advanced William McKinley's election prospects by issuing a pamphlet titled, How McKinley is Hated in England.
Europe — wholly dependent on Arab and Gulf oil, fearful of terrorism from the al-Qaeda cells being unearthed across the continent, aware that Muslim resistance and possibly riots will erupt if it joins a U.S. war on Arab or Islamic nations, its own population aging and vanishing — can never again be relied on to help fight U.S. wars in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf or Central Asia.
The birth rate of America's native born is also below replacement levels, but an estimated 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants yearly, and their children, keep the U.S. numbers steadily rising.
We are on our own. If America intends war against Bush's "axis of evil," do not expect French, British or German troops marching up to Baghdad beside us, or standing with us as we confront Tehran. The halcyon days of the Great Alliance are over. Any U.S. war in the arc of crisis from the Middle East to Central Asia will be fought without NATO.
Europe is done. Her crusades are history, her empires gone, her glory and greatness behind her. Europe wants to enjoy her golden years in peace and quiet consumption, as she slowly passes away.
Best we leave her alone with her memories and her scrapbooks. Ave atque vale, Europa. Hail and farewell, Europe.
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