Re: International Relations: "Transatlantic Chill?"

From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Jan 26 2003 - 16:11:50 MST


MMB declaimed:
<< Relevant to the recent Ir*q threads...
"...lately it seems as though a lot of otherwise sober people on
  both continents are becoming unhinged."
Umm, yeah. What he said. >>

The center does not hold, it something or others..W.B. Yeats

<<The real issue is that Europeans feel they have not been accorded the power
they
deserve in the international arena, while Americans largely feel that Europe
is freeloading off US military might. That is what makes the Euro-American
duel so nasty.>>

Its surely not the only reason, because there are different financial and
social interests at stake. Europeans and Americans have been feeling this way
since the mid 1950s. Many Europeans, including the British, were concerned
then, that we would involve them in a nuclear war between the US & the USSR.
Also, the Europeans have considered the Americans as "naive" or
unsophisticated, and inexperienced in "statecraft" and governance.

I don't think papering over our differences is useful to the citizens of the
US, and therefore believe that the US should, in the next few years, reassess
its political, military, and economic ties to Europe. Conversely, the
Europeans, if they have not already, should do the same and reformulate the
equation, for a more stable world.

In doing so, we at least can reduce the surprise factor in world politics.
Surprise factors are almost never beneficial, like Sarajevo, in 1914.



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