The Make Believe Superpower

Someone wants to be taken seriously for the sake of everyone pretending to take them seriously.

Soren Kern:

European leaders have congratulated Obama on his election victory by sending him a six-page letter in which they benevolently “offer” the United States a “partnership of equals” in order to address global problems in the post-Bush era.

That’s right: Europeans are calling on Obama to “accept” Europe as America’s equal on the global stage. The idea behind this new man-to-man relationship with Washington was hatched by (surprise, surprise) France, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the reason for establishing an equal transatlantic partnership is that “the world has changed.” Europe has suddenly realized that the United States “is not the only one concerned by the world’s problems. The European Union has become more resolute…. We don’t want to play a secondary role any more,” says Kouchner.

The claim is implausible. They will, as the German withdrawal of committment to the fight in the Taliban in Afghanistan does in the face of the prior insistence that the US "not go it alone."

I'm sorry, but given the unreliability of our "European betters", there is no way anyonme on earth will not have to "go it alone" when the Europeans are involved in the partnership, specifically because they do nothing. Even since unsuccessful dismantling the Former Yugoslavia, an effort that has taken far longer than what now is at the phase of a successful peace-keeping operation in Iraq, this has been patently obvious.

What’s behind Europe’s latest round of “let’s play superpower make-believe?” European leaders are testing Obama’s mettle, plain and simple; they want to see if he will bend more easily to the European will than did his predecessor. European leaders never wracked up the courage to ask President Bush directly for a partnership of equals because they knew he would have laughed them out of town.

Bush understood that Europeans were unable and unwilling to match their words with deeds. Faced early on in his presidency with the solemn responsibility to protect Americans from terrorism, Bush effectively told European leaders to “Put Up or Shut Up.” Most Europeans decided to take their ball and go home. They then rode out the rest of the Bush Administration by salving their wounded pride with anti-Americanism.

The analogy couldn't be any better. The goal is as it always is, to exert the maximum leverage and highest profile at least or no cost, but also for very little reason other than to avoid some sort of Euro-humiliation. Increasingly, there seems to be no point to their outward actions other than for their own commercial interest, and little evidence that the EU's purported interest in riding the human rights/social justice parade to no effect and at no cost. The latest word on the 6 helicopters for

Darfur that the Europeans have not been able to come up with since 2004? They're hoping for some charity from the Russians who are providing 4 to indulge their moral vanity that they have any effect other that a parisitic one on humanity.