The most incredibly frustrating thing is listening to conservatives I normally agree with go off the rails over the Ukraine War. I don’t mean that they disagree with my position – that’s fine. I try not to listen to people I never disagree with because I’m probably not really listening. But opposing support for Ukraine because you want NATO members to meet their obligations and run their own business is just so so so D-U-M-B. The Ukraine crisis is literally getting you what you want – and you want to sabotage that?
I get it – the evil globalists support Ukraine so it must be a bad idea for the good populists. And of course, you can only oppose poor, aggrieved Russia if you think Putin is evil incarnate. Seriously, we laugh at leftists when they reason this poorly and here we are, being every bit as lazy.
Evidently no one noticed a few important clues. First off, Europe responded so fast it made Russia dizzy. There is no clear Western leadership. And the big one – Europe is the most united its been in living memory, that’s the past hundred or so years.
If you aren’t up on your Foreign Policy 101, don’t feel bad, most people aren’t. In a nutshell, European nations are like siblings that fight over everything and who are trying not to make enough noise to wake their parents. Europe had its belly full of war with WWII. It also was dang near leveled. As a result, they will do everything stupid this side of military action to each other. The EU is more a fight over who gets the good bedroom than a budding confederacy.
Europeans love a good meeting. You get to politely call each other names, pretend to get stuff done and eat doughnuts. Whenever there’s a crisis in Europe – or a good excuse to pretend something is a crisis – Europe responds with meetings. LOTS and LOTS of meetings. European political reports are great reading for insomniacs.
What Europe does not do is take forceful, military action no matter how indirect without a few years worth of meetings. Now, I’m making it sound worse than it is – but not by a lot. Europe is not known for its rapid response to military issues – they let the Americans do that.
Until February 24, 2022. Then Europe responded with incredible unity and rapidity. Unprecedented, even including WWII. They did it fast. They did it without American prompting. And they are sticking with it.
This is not typical of Europe – so why the change?
Simple, the people of Europe see what Americans don’t – they see the invasion as an existential threat to Europe itself. Not globalism, that was dying anyway and most people don’t care about it. Not their political parties, elites, et cetera – that would just prompt more meetings. They see Russia as a true, dangerous threat.
It doesn’t matter if they are right or not – it only matters that they feel threatened. Invasion on European soil is a dagger into their collective soul. European leaders had no choice but respond as they did – their people would not tolerate less.
So Europe is stepping up to the plate, exactly what America has been wanting for a decade now. European military spending is increasing which takes some of the burden off the US. Europe is working together despite real differences – not without hiccups because life doesn’t come in size perfect, but showing tremendous unity nonetheless.
This is what we wanted them to do. Pulling our own support now would be yanking the rug out from under them. Oh, the European unity would survive but relations with the US would sour. That’s just bad policy. We want Europe to be our sidekick – but they have to know we have their backs before that can happen.
It’s not fast – good policy never is. But it is happening. Let’s not ruin the very thing we were after – a European partnership that doesn’t lean so very heavily on the US – now that it’s so close at hand.
