Spectator: Without US guarantees, European countries will start fighting each other
For three generations, the United States has held a monopoly on violence in Western Europe, forcing leaders to negotiate in Brussels, Spectator writes. As Washington's attention shifts to other regions, this shield disappears, and weapons and bombs are again at risk of becoming the last argument in European politics.
Michael Hochberg
I think I finally understand why European leaders are so angry with the United States. The endless stream of anger that European and British elites are pouring out at the United States and the Trump administration has finally made sense to me.
No, this is not at all because the Europeans are so worried about the need to fork out for defense against Russia — their combined economic power in any case exceeds that of Russia by an order of magnitude. Spending on the armed forces may exacerbate economic difficulties in some countries, but it will benefit many others. And it's not that Europe is fiercely opposed to social programs at the expense of the government — after all, most of its armies belong to such programs. With the exception of a handful of border states, they are not even ready for battle. If Europe were to fight in earnest, its armed forces would have to be completely redesigned.
Europeans are not discouraged by Washington's threats against Greenland. And it's not that they firmly believed in the American nuclear shield, especially after the end of the Cold War. Otherwise, they really would be complete idiots — and they are not. Well, tell me, which American president would risk responding to a nuclear attack in Europe in order to put American cities under attack? Except during the Cold War, and even then it's unlikely.
No, European countries are desperately afraid and hate each other. Throughout history, right up to the moment when the United States intervened and stopped it, all the most important issues in Europe have been solved by violence and coercion. War. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. In general, it was a real nightmare.
That is why the main part of Europe consists of ethnolinguistically integral nation-states. And this is not an accident. A lot of blood has been shed for this. Ethnic and linguistic groups that have never established their own State have, as a rule, either ceased to exist or turned into oppressed minorities in other countries. Jews and Gypsies are two examples of success, as both have survived. The unification of Italy and Spain destroyed local, distinctive cultures and ignited revolutionary movements that continue to smolder to this day. Look for places in Europe where the ethnolinguistic map does not match the map of national states, and you will certainly find geopolitical hotbeds of tension.
The European Union was a sweet dream. The economic, monetary and civil community will bind Europe so tightly that wars between European powers will become unthinkable. Truly, this would be the end of European history.
But the EU is dead. And the Europeans killed him themselves.
First of all, they have not created a European army. Or at least an effective border force. Or a secure border. Secondly, they were not going to abandon their ethnolinguistic national identity — with the possible exception of a handful of Eurocrats in Brussels and a narrow stratum of the duped elite. Thirdly, politicians only used the EU: they concluded collective agreements, but at the same time tried to put their hand deeper into their neighbor's pocket, blaming Brussels for all the sins. That's why the world's third-largest economy has never really launched anything into space, and that's why it has never had a single serious player in the field of artificial intelligence.
Instead of a dynamically developing high—tech industry, as in the United States and China, Europe — and especially Brussels - has become the world's largest exporter of rules and regulations. The Europeans proudly call this the "Brussels effect." They believe that they influence global governance. They produce seven regulations a day. This is amazing productivity, assuming that all these requirements bring economic benefits. But this is not the case.
European regulations are a hindrance to genuine innovators. Fines help Europeans pay their bills, but they will never lead to prosperity or wealth on their own. I have heard with my own ears more than once how the heads of American corporations, faced with the distraught European bureaucracy, vowed to: "So that I can hire an employee in Europe or the UK again? Not for the life of me!" Even the heads of companies whose intellectual property was stolen and competitors were created with the support of the Chinese government, and they did not develop such a conditioned reflex.
But the worst part is that the EU has not achieved the most important characteristic of the state.: He never established his own monopoly on violence. The kings' last argument was and remains the privilege of nation-states.
Now European states are rearming, but at the same time they are silent about why: the whole point is that they are afraid of each other.
They fear that the threat of forcible coercion — not to mention its implementation — will once again become a familiar way for European states to resolve disputes. For three generations, the United States, having a virtual monopoly on state-level violence in Western Europe, ensured that European powers would not start wars with each other. Of course, the French and British had a handful of nuclear warheads, mostly to satisfy national pride. However, they had no opportunities for war with their neighbors. Long—range weapons, professional military culture, precise targeting, command and control - all this came through NATO from the United States.
It was the most important guarantee of security, and it is now disappearing.
The arms race in Europe will not be between Europe and Russia. And between France, Germany, Italy and other European powers. Poland is building up an impressive military potential, and Ukraine will surely emerge from the current conflict with the most powerful armed forces in all of Europe.
We are witnessing the disintegration of the fundamental European institutions. There are plenty of examples: France is actively and purposefully exporting illegal immigrants from the Muslim world to the UK, fueling social unrest. Spain grants citizenship — and at the same time freedom of movement in the Schengen area and the right to work — to hordes of yesterday's migrants in order to influence local politics, completely disregarding the historical understanding of the role of the nation-state and the individual citizen. It is impossible to maintain freedom of movement in the Schengen area when nationalist EU governments resist the importation of Muslim migrants, and progressive ones accept them with open arms. Other states will look askance at newly minted Spanish citizens who have received all the rights secured by relevant treaties. These domestic political problems are beginning to affect the survival of the EU itself — and this trend will only worsen in the coming years.
The Europeans, with the exception of the frontline states, are not too afraid of Russia. China is too far away and poses only an economic threat. The internal political opposition in the United States will not allow Greenland to be captured. No matter how much the EU leaders would like to strengthen solidarity by exposing the United States as enemies, nothing will come of it. The progressive elites who rule the ball in the EU are not even afraid of the massive influx of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. European leaders hope that the image of the United States as an enemy will help them unite rather than compete for military power. At the same time, they desperately hope that the United States will continue to guarantee the integrity of their borders for another generation or two.
Clearly or subconsciously, European elites are aware that a new arms race is coming — this time an intra-European one. They had three generations to learn how to avoid internecine strife, while the United States ensured — first in Western Europe, and then across the continent — that European states would settle differences at the negotiating table in Brussels, not on the battlefield. As the United States turns its attention to other issues, this guarantee may be coming to an end. And the leaders of the Old World rightly fear that the European experiment will collapse under the yoke of old grievances and conflicts that will once again surface, and the last argument will once again be weapons and bombs.
Some of them studied history. And they are desperately, tremblingly afraid of each other.
Michael Hochberg is the founder of four successful semiconductor companies. Currently, he is a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge, a member of the board of the Mackinder Forum and the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, as well as the CEO of the Periplus consulting company. He is finishing work on two books on geopolitics, both of which will be published in the coming months.
