Europe's Imagined Significance

The Europeans have little interest in such unimportant points as Constitutional limits on Federal power. They tried to include clauses in a treaty regarding chemical weapons which would have violated the Fourth Amendment, and the ICC treaty violates Article III and amendments 4, 5, 6, 8, 14 and probably also Article I and amendments 9 and 10, and likely other Constitutional provisions as well. There was a proposal for a treaty regarding the Internet which would have infringed the First Amendment. This keeps happening, and when US negotiators point out that such treaties cannot be ratified, and would be nullified by the courts even if they were ratified, the Europeans fall back on denunciations of the Americans as not being team players, not being multilateral. It seems as if they don’t really understand just how serious we are about the Constitution, or that they do understand but think it’s an atavism, something we can and should outgrow, and that the US government should demonstrate its political maturity by ignoring the Constitution.

Meanwhile, diplomacy continues to create new meanings for words and phrases. The French ambassador says that the US and France must "work together" ... Work together means that the US should forget everything that France has said and done over the last two years, forget that it is the publicly avowed policy of the French political class to try to limit American power and influence, and to once again embrace the French as friends and allies.

Work together means that the French have no real power to force us to do anything, and thus can only manipulate us if we’re naive and trusting. As long as we’re suspicious, they no longer have any ability to shaft us, and they’d like us to drop our defenses so they can shaft us again.

And sending a powerful political message of empowerment to the Iraqi people means making sure that democracy fails there so that America gets no benefit from invading, even indirectly. ...

Somehow they still think that it’s all temporary, something we’ll outgrow. All the calls for "healing", for "new cooperation", for "working together", really mean only this: "Have you come to realize just how unwise and wrong-headed you’ve been? Are you ready to start listening to us yet?"

"Healing" means America stops doing things the Europeans don’t like. "New cooperation" means that America cooperates with Europe, not the other way around. "Working together" means American surrender. ...

The majority of Americans don’t respect Europe’s opinions or take their advice seriously. ... They never really did, but for many Americans the current crisis has changed apathy regarding European opinions into active contempt. (And that’s why they’re voting with their dollars.)

Too many of Europe’s leaders still live in a retro-fantasy that Europe can somehow once again dominate the world, as it did in the golden years of the 16th through 19th centuries. So they agree to grandiose plans to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world in just ten years (3 of which have already elapsed), while their economies are going into the toilet and are holding back the rest of the world. They promise to build up militarily but contemplate cuts in defense spending. They praise themselves for their clout, ignoring how little clout they actually have. They strut and bluster and preen, offer unsolicited advice to others, get angry and resentful when their advice is ignored, and take great pleasure and satisfaction from those few cases when they’ve been able to say, "I told you so!"

And when they want to manipulate others diplomatically without having anything to trade in exchange, and the others refuse to talk to them, they whine plaintively, "Why won’t anyone negotiate with us?"

Because negotiations are a two-way process. Because no one engages in diplomacy unless they have something to gain by doing so, or something to lose by not doing so. Because all parties in negotiations are self-interested, and the Europeans have many demands but little to offer in exchange, and therefore those negotiations would be a pointless waste of time for everyone except the Europeans.

Because at the beginning of the 21st Century, Europe no longer matters as much as it once did, and there’s every reason to believe that its importance and influence will continue to decline.

- Fruitful Dialogue