It’s Probably a Lifestyle Issue

Hilarious – they have a blog which is nicely funded by a lefty grant-sucking operation, and a passel of graduate students and interns to blog for them. Behold the lefty-europe of ideas, which gets an average daily hit-count of 59 visitors. (That’s up from 37 only 6 months ago). So help out your hardworking bartenders and waitresses, people!

On the tips of their tongues today: Europe and China – Emerging Rivals or Partners? Economic competitors certainly, and sure to be rivals most of the time based on the fact that their economies are incompatible, and have wildly different notions of their “social” future. A great many Europeans long for and are trying to recreate what the Chinese seem to be trying to get rid of to eliminate poverty. Of the two spheres, the Chinese are clearly more flexible in their world views, making China the candidate most likely among the two to eventually embrace some form of Democracy.

Elsewhere they ask themselves a question that’s been answered about a decade ago: Europe - A Break with American Strategy? Of course. As we see with the Darfur expeditionary coalition since they started wringing their hands in 2004, if it requires any form of action or leadership, count ‘em out. You’ll be sure to find them taking bold action to craft a perfect press release and organizing a bold, bold symposium.

Divisions are appearing across the Atlantic between NATO allies on both the prosecution and validity of the ‘global war on terrorism’ and on related issues ranging from Russia to the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and on NATO itself. Some American commentators are calling this an ‘existential crisis’ for NATO. Professor Haseler presented a paper arguing that the time for Europe to pursue a strategy based on its own interests and assessments has arrived.

Non-European NATO has been waiting for them to “have their moment” since the mid 80’s, and this is how they plan to carry it out – by rationalizing some form of inaction that can be 1) sound smart, 2) compel action by the United States in the benefit of their security, 3) provide them with some sort of emotional blackmail for a few weeks, and 4) make protecting downtown Munich look heroic. To do this they’ll have to try to find a way to talk to the Taliban or a purposefully headless beast called al-Qaeda that are both just too simplistic to negotiate with.