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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (107081)	7/22/2003 12:05:18 PM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

Why does Europe need the United States for its defense? Who is it they must be defended from? Russia? That no longer rings true. The Europeans have not relied on America for their defense for some time now. Japan, on the other hand, depends heavily on the United States. They see us as no longer willing or able to play that role -- not for lack of military strength, but because of our shifting political posture and our focus on using our military to secure direct military control over strategic resources such as oil. We are in the early stages of what is likely to be a massive arms race in Asia -- with Japan and China emerging as the leading powers. In time we will lose our role as supreme military power as a result of this arms race. It is ironic, but we are probably at this very moment in time, witnessing the zenith of American military dominance. It won't happen overnight, to be sure. It will take decades to be complete. But the zone of influence will shrink as a result of overplaying our hand in some parts of the world while not even being in the game in others. If you spend time in China, it is impossible not to be struck by the extent of the European-Chinese relationship. The Chinese can choose to be closer to Europe than to the United States. This too would change the course of human history. When we can no longer play a role in the major issues facing Asia, we will lose a substantial part of our influence and importance there. We are hastening that time by not developing a more sophisticated framework for our thinking than "who blinks first".

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (107081)	7/22/2003 9:32:04 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

the Americans see the Europeans trying to exercise a veto on the sovereign rights of American self-defense It is rather difficult to include the US action in Iraq under the "self-defense" umbrella. There was not much evidence of imminent threat. If the Europeans do seriously begin to take their policies in a rival direction, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, as it might lessen the unhealthy dependence of Europe on America for defense. Defense against what? What credible military threat does Europe face that would make them dependent on the US for their defense? Europe lacks the capacity to project power, but that's offense, not defense. There is one thing that the Europeans understand that the administration in Washington can't seem to grasp: the world, including the US, has to have a credible multilateral dispute resolution system. Not a perfect one, that's impossible, but something credible. America simply cannot maintain order in the world alone: an American presence in some areas is unnecessarily provocative, American forces are intolerably expensive to deploy, and America will not act in cases where no major national interest is at stake. If we are going to argue that the UN cannot be made to work, we have to propose something that can work, and it has to be something that is not controlled exclusively by the US. A unipolar power structure is inherently unstable, and in the long term is in nobody's interest, including ours.