EU

Fire of Liberty

Victor Davis Hanson wrote an awesome Op/Ed in the February 22, 2005 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Hanson points out that the future relationship between the EU and the United States will continue to atrophy as long as the EU fails to accept reality. As long as the EU looks the other way and work with regimes like China or Iran for money rather than taking principle stands on behalf of freedom and democracy they will become the laughing-stock of the World. When the EU refuses to accept the fact that the use of hard power generates more beneficial results in certain areas than the alternative soft power they provide the World an image of a feckless power. Hanson seems to sum up the relationship between the US and the EU in the following paragraph:

The United States should ignore all this ankle-biting, praise the EU to the skies, but not take very seriously their views on the world until we learn exactly what is going on inside Europe during these years of its uncertainty. America is watching enormous historical forces being unleashed on the continent from its own depopulation, new anti-Semitism, and rising Islamicism to Turkish demands for EU membership and further expansion of the Union into the backwaters of Eastern Europe that will bring it to the uncertain doorstep of Russia. Whether its politics and economy will evolve to embrace more personal freedom, its popular culture will integrate its minorities, and its military will step up to protect Western values and visions is unclear. But what is certain is that the United States cannot remain a true ally of a militarily weak but shrill Europe should its politics grow even more resentful and neutralist, always nursing old wounds and new conspiracies, amoral in its inability to act, quite ready to preach to those who do.

Hanson always lays it out in a clear and concise manner. By the way, check out his piece in National Review Online, its a good read too. Last but not least is Mark Steyn, who's Chicago Sun-Times column, notes the decline of Europe via the EU Constitution.