USA 2024 Elections Thread

[grarpamp]

Can Europe Become Western Again?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

For the first time in a millennium, Europe no longer plays a critical
role in promoting Western civilization nor in world history at large.

Ostensibly it should. Some 750 million people live on the European subcontinent.

Europe still remains the most popular tourist spot on earth. Its
hallowed architecture, art, infrastructure, and natural beauty still
remind millions of visitors of the world’s once most dynamic and
grandiose civilization.

Even now, European nations, in and out of the Europe Union, still
produce a combined gross domestic product of $24 trillion, second only
to the United States.

Europe’s exports are among the world’s most coveted cars,
sophisticated technology, and valued industrial goods.

Yet since World War II, Europe has played an increasingly reduced role
in world affairs, despite its membership in the NATO alliance and the
growth of the European Union.

Why?

The twentieth-century traumas of World War I and II—in which some 70
million Europeans were killed—saw Europe commit near collective
suicide. The ensuing Cold War hinged on protecting a relatively
unarmed Europe from an aggressive nuclear Soviet empire on Europe’s
borders.

But as World War II and the Cold War faded into memory, Europe did not
snap back and assume its centuries-old role as a world leader and
beacon of Western Civilization.

Instead, a weary Europe outsourced its security to the United States.
It redefined itself as a postmodern, pacifist, socialist utopian
project—most recently predicated on redistributionist entitlements,
open borders, and radical green policies that have all inevitably
ensured European decline.

Europeans grew louder and whinier the less relevant they became.

Although Europe has large sources of untapped hydroelectrical,
nuclear, coal, and natural gas power, its green religion has all but
shut down new nuclear and fossil fuel generation and closed existing
plants. The result is that the cost of European energy is prohibitive
for both the public and industry.

Recent economic growth was essentially zero throughout the Eurozone.
The European cradle-to-grave social net, and its hyper government
regulations and restrictions on economic activity increasingly are
unsustainable.

Few European nations spend even a mere two-percent of their GDP on
defense. And the result is that both Europe at large and its NATO
members cannot defend their continent without the assistance of the
United States.

Nor can Europe project power beyond its shores to preempt dangerous
threats on its own horizon or to its allies.

Europe is also shrinking and aging. Its collective fertility rate of
1.5 is far below the rate of replacement. Most young people in
Europe—the ancient home of Christendom—express neither belief in God
nor any faith in organized religions.

In many European countries, foreign-born emigrants comprise twenty
percent of the population. Most of them have arrived poor, without
education, in mass, illegally, with little desire to fully integrate,
from inimical countries, and holding political and religious views
hostile to Europe.

The other half of the West is in little better condition.

The United States is reeling under $33 in national debt.

After embracing various bankrupt academic critical legal “theories,”
major American cities are unsafe, unhealthy, and unsightly. The
American southern border is wide open. Eight million illegal aliens
have poured in just since January 2021, many of them hostile to the
United States.

America is increasingly politically, racially, and tribally divided.
It has mysteriously determined not to fully utilize its vast natural
resources, especially gas, oil, and rare earth metals.

In this vacuum, the enemies of the West see only opportunity.

Russia invaded European Ukraine. Its ongoing aggression still
terrifies frontline NATO nations.

China threatens periodically to storm Taiwan, as it bullies it
neighbors, buzzes U.S. ships and planes, and manipulates currency,
markets, and trade.

Iran has armed to the teeth anti-Western terrorist organizations like
Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran’s “Shiite Crescent” from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to
Palestine threatens both pro-Western Arab regimes and Israel.

Iran brags that its surrogates can destroy Israel and will soon be
nuclear with a global reach to both the United States and Europe.

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, presumably on the assumption that
current generations of Westerners in Israel, the U.S., and Europe
would not react too strongly to its precivilization barbarity if it
entailed a subsequent messy war.

In sum, the world is safe only when a strong America, along side its
European partner, secure their borders, protect the world’s sea- and
air spaces, support constitutional and pro-Western nations, and deter
thuggish belligerents.

Perhaps as war clouds gather and enemies multiply, Europe will
rediscover its heritage and reawaken to its historical role.

Increasingly, a lonely U.S.—and the world at large—need the return of
a sane and powerful European co-partner, one that emerges from its
self-induced slumber, and resumes its ancient role in preserving
civilization from its multiplying enemies.