Steven Den Beste has another interesting piece on the effects of a potential American military withdrawl from Germany – and it doesn’t bode well for the EU.
Much talk has been made about how an attack on Iraq would cause Europe to turn against us, talk which ignores the fact that the American market and American products are critical to Europe. A military pullback would be especially costly, as it would be likely to cause a rise in military spending by EU states. Because the EU has placed all their eggs in the basket of social welfare, trying to build a military force of any size and capability while maintain the welfare state is nearly impossible for the European economy.
In all honesty, if we attack Iraq, what can the Europeans really do to harm us? If they provoke a trade war, they lose. They have no means of attacking us militarily. Removing our bases in European territory would be tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot. That leaves the only weapon they can inflict upon as: petulance, and they’ve already been doing that for some time now.
Our postion as the strongest economy in the world gives us a lot of latitude to do what we want. If we truly had imperial ambitions, there is nothing that Europe could do to prevent us from dominating much of the world economically and militarily. Rather than complaining about our actions, Europe should be quite thankful that we are not like them, and do not want to do anything other than protect our people and our immediate interests.
Old-style imperialism is moot- we already control the world economically and millitarily. Nobody has the economic might to resist us, and the only nation that has the millitary might to resist us has become so co-dependent upon the economy of the US and Japan that to turn against us would be economic suicide.
American Imperialism isn’t a fiction- it’s here, it’s now, and it’s televised 24 hours a day around the globe. This revolution can be supersized, and does go well with Coca-cola. And I’ve obviously been hanging around the social justice coalition a bit too much lately.