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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (73322)	2/12/2003 8:31:21 AM
From: William B. Kohn	Respond to of 281500

What I find interesting is how little attention is actually being paid to the larger European issue. Since the end of WWII, western europe has made a conscious decision to fund social programs over defense programs. This deliberate choice was made, precisely because they believed, and rightly so, that they could count on defense spending by the USA. But, by doing so, they made an implicit deal, and that deal was to abdicate their role in determining how 'power politics' would be played in an ever more complex global landscape. To claim that Europe did not realize what they were doing was to do a disservice to the people who gave birth to the idea Power Politics. Today, Europe needs to determine how it wants to play the game anew. If the 'Old Europeans' are suddenly willing to put between 5 - 7 % of their combined GDP's into military spending, increase their armed forces by a factor of 30 to 50 they can expect to play a real role in future global power situations, but if they continue to excersize their mouth without putting their asses on the line, they will continue to find themselves on the fringes of game, snipping at a USA whom they made the 'world's only superpower.' We didn't win that title, they gave it too us! Time for them to wake up and realize that if they are dissatisfied with the way we handle things, they themselves own a great deal of the blame! bill@that'showiseeit.com