Pfft! Snxpthhhhh!

But can Europe become a superpower? And should Americans care?

Asks Soeren Kern.

No and yes.

The biggest barrier to European superpowerdom is that European elites refuse to bring their postmodern fantasies about the illegitimacy of military “hard power” into line with the way the rest of the world interprets reality. Indeed, after years of overselling the efficacy of diplomatic and economic “soft power” as the elixir for the world’s problems, Europeans have been losing, not gaining, international influence.

Three years of European “soft power” diplomacy have not persuaded Iran to abandon what even the most cynical Europeans say is a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. If anything, Iran has been emboldened by European equivocation. At the same time, China and Russia, expert practitioners of the game of power politics, continue to pursue aggressive trade and energy policies vis-à-vis Europe with obvious impunity. Meanwhile, most Europeans admit that their peacekeeping performance in Afghanistan and Lebanon has been downright pathetic, even embarrassing in the case of Spain.

So why do Europeans continue to assail American “hard power” as bad for the world, when their own “soft power” consistently fails to make the grade?

Actually, the US has been waiting for decades for the Euro-entities (other than the UK and Dutch largely) that have mutated into the EU cartel to actually build up some power to back up what is otherwise non-statecraft and join the non-dictatorial, not-cretinous minority on this earth in an effort to stand up for the occasional nicety like human decency for once.

I mean, it isn’t like ‘Europe’ can depend on Fiji and Bangladesh to man every peacekeeping effort out there for them.