Eagles, Bears & Peaceful Europeans

Olde Europe, like the rest of the world, has been focusing on megalomaniac George Bush and his dictator destroying (or oil grabbing) dreams. The US is the biggest threat to world peace, these angry lambs bleat.

Well, Russia want a piece of that, and not for the peace and democracy reasons President Bush cites as his motives. No, this is classic Russian brute-force on the move in Georgia. This is the brutish thug in a vodka stained wifebeater grabbing his woman by the hair and dragging her back in the house because she dared talk to the mailman. Russia is the hairy ape that tells his woman, "If you try to leave me I'll kill you."

The US has broken some furniture on the world scene, but compare: Ecuador just told us to leave. We're packing up our anti-drug operation and leaving. Panama and the Philippines told us to leave, and we left. Ditto for bases we had in Spain, Greece and Uzbekistan. Has Russia ever voluntarily quit any country? And what are Russia's motives for her actions?

The US ostensibly acts to protect international shipping lanes and the movement of goods for global commerce, defense of liberal democracy and human rights, and to ensure the free flow of oil. Yes, it is about oil. Try running a world economy without it. And no, these are not altruistic acts: The US benefits from an orderly world system.

Russia acts to protect her "near abroad." From what I understand, this Nietzsche-esque will to power has to do with classic Russian values, paranoia and patriotism that can really only be understood after reading a stack of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky novels. Russia is not like any other country around her. She knows it and feels most secure with a fat belt of subservient vassal states surrounding her. Stop and ponder for a moment just how grotesque that really is...

Meanwhile, Olde Europe couldn't scrape together enough men and arms for a hunting party. Remember how we had to go into Bosnia because the Euros were too busy dithering? Russia is the heavily armed bully that has his pacifist neighbors to the west cowering in fear: Ivan stomps and roars, furrowing his bushy eyebrows and the Euros shiver and piddle down their legs like inbred dogs. And it's not just the military threat. Europe depends on Ivan's good graces to keep the oil and natural gas flowing from the east.

The most obvious lessons are trite ones: To protect peace, you must be prepared for war. Depending too much on others for basic needs like energy is not a good thing.

Robert Kagan has explained it much better than I. He wrote an article in Policy Review called Power and Weakness that explores and explains the divergent philosophies of Europe and the US. Europe is where we have always wanted them to be: Prosperous, free and at peace with one another and the world. They are living happily in a Kantian peace bubble that we helped build. But outside that bubble (and now intermittently intruding upon it) it is still a good -vs- evil Hobbesian world of "continual fear and danger of violent death; and [makes] the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." God bless Europe for her successes, but she must address the violent Hobbesian world that now presses in on her Kantian bubble.

The less obvious, but more important lesson is one of unity. Unity of thought and action. Can Western Civilization reconcile its diverse world views and form a coherent strategy, an 80% solution, that at least gets us all pointed in the same direction? To quote Franklin "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Or, if you prefer, Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"

Battles of ideas are preferable to ones with weapons, but when one side has all the arms or the other side refuses to fight, the debate is over and it's the rule of the gun.

Can we artfully blend sweaty American firepower with European sophistication and diplomacy? Can we agree on what we believe and hold dear? Do we have the will to defend it?