Since Kagan wrote that, Americans soldiers, sailors, pilots and computer gamers operating unmanned drones have been kept very busy. The U.S. invaded Iraq and fought on in Afghanistan, and even though U.S. President Barack Obama has tried to wind down former President George W. Bush’s legacy wars, American military presence around the globe has hardly diminished on his watch.
Nevertheless, Obama’s critics bemoan his namby-pamby response to the conflict in Syria, the rise of ISIS and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine – not to mention his obvious reluctance to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites and chase the ayatollahs out of Tehran. Any – if not all – of these military responses may be seen if a Republican candidate enters the White House in January 2017.
Being from Mars may be exotic, but Americans actually hail from Europe – and, having migrated to the New World from the Old, they remain very much true to their roots – that is to say, warlike and expansionist. By the time America’s “fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,” in 1776, the Europeans had already conquered much of the known world and, a century later, divvied up the rest, completely settling newly discovered continents and spreading their political institutions, language and culture to every non-European nation.
The Founding Fathers were well aware of their newly established nation’s love of military conflict. They specifically put a number of safeguards into the Constitution, presumably making it difficult for a sitting President to plunge the United States into war. In particular, they made the declaration of war a prerogative of the Congress, which also held the purse-strings for financing military conflicts. Nevertheless, the Americans pushed their country’s boundaries outward. They also fought each other in a bloody civil war, then the Spanish, then the rebels in the Philippines and finally they got themselves involved in the two massive European conflicts of the 20th century. Since the end of World War II, America’s wars have been too numerous to be listed in a mere op-ed.
But for all their pugnacity, Americans have been merely playing catch-up to the Europeans. Throughout the centuries, the Europeans kept fighting each other, invading each other’s countries and redrawing the continent’s boundaries. When they first appeared in Asia in large numbers, the locals couldn’t believe how bloodthirsty and warlike the white race really was.
And if you think that Europeans have been reborn as so many lambs and are eager to turn the other cheek, you may be in for a nasty surprise. Europe remains by far the wealthiest continent, and its countries still have the highest standard of living in the world. The European quality of life is unmatched anywhere. In a highly competitive world, such standards of living and quality of life don’t accrue to weaklings. You’ve have to know how to defend them – which the Europeans clearly do.
A similar mistake is often made about Japan – but only in the West, never in the East. The fact that the Japanese have been reluctant to expand their military has not erased the memories of their conquests in the minds of Japan’s neighbors. Even the Chinese remain wary of Japan, and their worries are becoming self-fulfilling prophesy as nationalism revives in the Land of the Rising Sun in response to the two countries’ territorial dispute.
The European Union grew out of an attempt to put an end to the history of internecine warfare. Instead of endlessly going to war, post-World War II European leaders decided to try a different approach. They agreed to become interdependent, to surrender a portion of their sovereignty and to replace rivalry with cooperation. In this they relied on Europe’s other tradition – that of human rights, tolerance and altruism –which was supposed to be a safeguard against war.
It has worked remarkably well for seventy years. So well, in fact, that many people around the world have come to believe that Europe has become a pushover. American right-wingers think so and, much more dangerously, Russian President Vladimir Putin does, too.
However, the current lull in the history of bloody wars may be temporary. Europe lived through a full century without a major war between the defeat of Napoleon and the start of World War I. By then urban parts of Western Europe had become almost as peaceful, comfortable and civilized as they are today: the French were reading Proust, the Austrians were admiring Gustav Klimt paintings and the Russians were exporting to Paris Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. And yet the continent went to war in a few short weeks –lustfully so, on a wave of patriotism that hardly waned despite hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded in the first months of industrial-scale slaughter.
Historians estimate that World War I killed 10 million people – a figure that at the time must have boggled the mind even more than it does today. And yet, two decades later the combatants were at it once more.
Herein lies the answer to the question whether the Europeans are too soft to fight. If you want a more recent example, all you need to see is today’s Ukraine. In a few months, with hardly any weapons and little preparation, under very adverse conditions, peaceful and pacifist Ukraine has managed to build a first-rate fighting force which is developing a taste for war as it gets better at it.
Putin has opened the Pandora box from one end, unleashing the winds of war.
Germany’s Angela Merkel, with the connivance of other Western European leaders and their nearsighted electorate, have opened the same box from another end, allowing a public whipping of a fellow-EU member and condemning Greeks to decades of poverty just as the victors of Versailles have once done to her own nation.
A war needs a villain, and Putin has made Russia into one. Russia’s refusal to allow an international tribunal to investigate last year’s downing of the Malaysian airliner over Donbas is an admission of Russia’s responsibility and, at the same time, a confirmation of its pariah status.
A major conflict in Europe may be years away and it may not be too late to pull away from it. But the foundation for it is being laid even as we speak. There is no telling where the winds of war will end up, and who will reap the storm. What we should be in doubt of is that, given an opportunity, the Europeans will fight again – just as they have done throughout their history – and will again die in huge numbers.
Alexei Bayer is a New York-based economist and writer. His new detective novel, “Latchkey Murders”, set in Moscow in the early 1960s, came out in English in early July.
