Victor Davis Hanson: Right now, Europeans have the best of both worlds

Even some of Europe's elites who are so critical of America will often grudgingly acknowledge America's value, argues Victor Davis Hanson in The American.

"Europeans understand that there are advantages to the present relationship between a militarily powerful America and its hypercritical but mostly unarmed European dependent."

"Right now, Europeans have the best of both worlds—an easily caricatured but very cooperative United States. Indeed, Europeans have found relatively little fault in Bush’s second term, during which time conservative governments have taken office in France, Germany, and Italy. The United States has been sending massive AIDS relief to Africa, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Europe on Darfur, pursuing peaceful diplomacy with Iran and North Korea, and offering gracious thanks for European participation in Afghanistan. And who else in the West, other than the United States, is Vladimir Putin worried about?"

"For all their grievances against Bush, Europeans realize that most of the world’s problems either antedated or transcend the current U.S. president and will be here long after he’s gone. Gas prices skyrocketed largely because both importing and exporting governments have not invested enough in petroleum maintenance and new exploration, and because of the voracious appetites of new consumer classes in China and India. Rogue regimes like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have enough oil wealth that they need not care about the consequences of irritating the West. Bush did not cause global warming, soaring food prices, Islamic terrorism, or the rise of China. And blaming him for the “fiasco” in Iraq is also problematic: the violence there has declined enormously, and Iraqi democracy continues to move forward."

"A few Europeans even acknowledge that, contrary to popular belief, the Iraq war has not “created” jihadists who migrated to Europe. In fact, it has done just the opposite: radical Islamists more often traveled to Iraq—many of them from Europe—where they were killed in large numbers. Iraq, in other words, may well help explain the weakening of al-Qaeda and its increasing inability to replicate the London and Madrid bombings."

Comments

[Janus]

VDH for president!