CAN NATO DEFEND EUROPE? CAN EUROPE DEFEND EUROPE?

摘要

This is a call for a new European realism, one that is allied to newly grounded American strategic modesty. Both Americans and Europeans need to understand together that great forces of change are underway, much of it good. But like all such big change it has a big, dark side too. Therefore, if a new peace-bearing equilibrium, the mother-lode of peace, is to be found and mined, it will be by Americans and Europeans together striking a new balance between defense and diplomacy. For that to happen, Europeans need to abandon the dangerous "utopia" that covenants without reasonably relevant swords are of any use, while Americans need to finally abandon any romantic notions of isolationism and/or unilateralism as the shortest route to an American peace in what was once meant to be the American century. In March 1946, Winston Churchill said: "When American military men approach some serious situation, they are wont to write at the head of their directive the words 'overall strategic concept.' There is wisdom in this, as it leads to clarity of thought. What then is the overall strategic concept which we should inscribe today? It is nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands."