Trying to keep the day-to-day politics to a minimum—not least because generalisations like "Europeans hate freedom" are about as true and useful as "all Americans are uneducated hillbillies"—there were nonetheless some comments made by
@LimaCharles and
@Chazman which I feel warrant discussing against the backdrop of this thread's premise.
Yeah, Americans and Europeans differ culturally. But they always have. I'm not entirely sure why that observation has made it into this thread, as if Europe and America were a formerly loving couple that's drifted apart just now.
I put it to you the current state of affairs between the continents, which you seem to see as a recent development, is hardly different now from what it was at the time of other geopolitical caesuras. There've always been differences. In 2003, Americans poured French wine down the gutter because most Europeans thought the Iraq War was a bad idea. Or think of Vietnam, a conflict which in many countries ruined America's positive image for good. Think also of 1956, when America humiliatingly thwarted an attempt by Britain and France to seize the Suez Canal.
What I do find peculiar is the notion that America's role in the Old World's security architecture was somehow guided by altruism or naivety. You do yourselves an injustice if you presume you've elected 13 consecutive presidents too stupid to realise what was and wasn't beneficial to America's own interests.
Let's not forget that before the Second World War, America had been oscillating between neutrality, isolationism, and even rivalry with Europe (particularly with the United Kingdom). NATO was not the product of a change of heart. America constructed it in order to ensure two things:
Stopping the expansion of Communism, as most American leaders at the time (most notably Dean Acheson) were convinced a successful red takeover in Western Europe would inevitably trigger a Communist revolution in the States; and to guarantee any war which America would have to fight against the Soviet Union would not be fought on American soil.
In that sense, NATO has been highly beneficial to America Some would say that it still is: Without bases in Europe as stepping stones, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could not have been fought.
You speak of differences, but it seems to me you've only brushed the surface.
It is very true that Europeans often don't understand America (sometimes wilfully). But the same is true vice versa. America has yet to understand the paradigm shift in European defence policies after 1990 stemmed from a fundamental difference in perception. The Europeans didn't seek to be given a piggy-back ride; they thought there was no ride.
Unlike America, Europeans never perceived Iran, China, or North Korea as military threats. From a European perspective, little was stopping America to likewise reduce its military-spending. (A gross misconception, but that's not what I'm addressing here.)
Or to put it more abstractly: For a perceived lack of enemies, the Europeans saw NATO as purely reactive. America saw NATO as proactive. It's the fault of both sides that this conflict has never been resolved. Blaming both sides equally is a hill I'm willing to die on. I mean, is there really a fundamental difference in the disregard for each other's interests if you compare how European leaders perceive China and how Trump perceives Russia?
Further up, @LC wrote this:
This comment is particularly interesting to me because it's so emblematic of that misunderstanding. On the one hand, your reasoning presumes to be purely utilitaristic and on the other, you make a moral argument.
I mean: Why did 'we' even have to intervene? What was Yugoslavia to 'us'? And why would 'we' even have to consider Yugoslavia as a backyard of 'ours'? I'm putting the personal pronouns in inverted commas here to alert your attention to a misconception which I think is at the heart of America's contribution to the state of our mutual affairs.
Who is that: 'you'? Granted, there's a European Union as an umbrella to a majority of the European countries by virtue of their shared economic interests. But it has virtually no say on defence policies, and its existence does not mean the geopolitical interests of even a majority of the European countries are actually aligned.
Why would e.g. Norway or Portugal care about Yugoslavia?
If you want to understand Europe, imagine an alternative history version of the United States where each state to differ from one another in language, culture, political system, even religion. That's the reality you're dealing with if you speak of "Europe" by matter of convention or convenience.
NATO intervened in Bosnia after Clinton's "we were shot at by snipers on the runway" publicity stunt. We were slow to react because most of us didn't want to react. That's because most European countries, except maybe France with its former colonies, had long since lost their taste for the interventionism which had been a cornerstone of US foreign affairs right up to Trump.
Yugoslavia was a US-driven show of force more than anything else, aiming to justify NATO's continued existence after the fall of the Soviet Union. I suggest to you there are few lessons to be learned from that war.
The way I see it, you're overestimating the impact of progressive ideologies when it comes to this thread's title:
the future of European defence strategy. Change is underway. European defence spending has increased by 31% from 2015 to 2025 (compared to America's 19% over that same period). In most European countries, progressive parties do not oppose this trend. Quite the contrary, in some they're key actors when it comes to leading the push for rearmament.
I'd also propose that generalised comments on a people's alleged mentality do not really shed light on anything here, particularly in combination with political opinions. For example, the "socialist" Scandinavians all poll as highly or higher than Americans when surveyed as to whether they'd fight for their country.
Moreover, one can easily find surveys suggesting that Ozzie bloke you quoted overestimates the average American's willingness to stand and fight in the event of a major war. Think tank Echelon Insights (which seems to be Republican-aligned if their client list means anything) did a survey in late 2023 showing that
But the article also quotes a former Navy captain as saying:
And there lies the rub.
In my humble opinion, all those reflections on mentality are relatively meaningless because they hinge on a perceived external threat and the exact nature of a hypothetical war. Just a little anecdote to lighten the mood: Afghanistan consistently scored above 70% in the periodical Gallup surveys on a nation's willingness to fight. We all know how that ended, they ran without a fight.
From my experience in the reserves of a European army and my continued interest in the matter, I'd say our biggest problem isn't ideological in nature. It's much more mundane: institutional ossification. You can't turn an oil tanker on a dime.
armyrecognition.com
www.defensenews.com
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