Building (Another) Bridge to the19th Century

The Problem with western-Europe’s faux Wagnerian notion of itself in diplomacy is that a) it doesn’t work, and b) it does a hell of a job of selling the EU member states who actually NEED security up the river.

A study recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations already speaks of the new architeture of European security that will be determined within the framework of a trilateral dialogue between the EU, Russia and Turkey. NATO does not enter into the equation. But the EU does not really mean Europe’s 27 member states. Merkel made promises about European policy to Medvedev without consulting her European partners, and there is no denying the symbolic importance of the Russian President’s refusal to accept an invitation to the Lisbon summit addressed to him by the General Secretary of NATO, before finally agreeing to turn up on the behest of Sarkozy and Merkel.

Writes România liberă international affairs editor Cristian Câmpeanu. It describes very nicely what the leaders of the European anthill imagine is power and brinksmanship.

Decades of buffoonish mewling by the decrepid and aging quarters of western Europe about how they “deserve” power, and if they didn’t, well, then we need a multipolar world to triangulate some power, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum. Guess what: this is what you get for your obsession with signing anything that will look good on tonight’s news, making summitry have about as much depth as the goings-on of a gossip magazine, and the like.

Romanians should get used to the idea of living in a Europe where NATO will no be longer able to guarantee their security. The Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis has left us with only one option: the United States.

Hello and welcome to the 19th century! From now on — now being the first day of the "historic" NATO summit in Lisbon — we will be living in a new historic reality and a new geopolitical era. The summit is "historic," but not for the reasons cited by NATO officials and political leaders.

Then there will be the question of “who killed NATO”. Here’s a hint: it’s whoever took a entity structured as a military deterrent and tried to turn it into just another talking shop for continental political grandstanding.

The wars in the Balkans highlighted Europe’s military weakness, and the war in Afghanistan created a rift between the US and its European allies. Their inability to make a significant contribution to victory over the Taliban or to the stabilisation of the country, and the fact that some members of the alliance seemed to be incapable of joining in the fight while others were forced to take most of the casualties, resulted in the gradual crumbling of the alliance.

To those for whom pointless never-ending summitry IS the point, I have a suggestion: move yourselves and your families to an EU member state that’s forever in play over things like energy shut-offs, manipulation of border states, and possibly even threats of force.

Then tell me just how it is that Europe’s next feeble, irritating lecture about “world peace” being some vintage that only they have the wits to know about, is anything other than selling out their brothers for their own vanity?