The Fruits Of Military Welfarism

     On Monday, we learned this:

     PARIS — A French-led effort by European leaders to present a united front on Ukraine in the face of rising fear over U.S. President Donald Trump’s intentions fizzled Monday as they failed to agree on sending troops to police a possible peace deal.
     French President Emmanuel Macron had called the emergency meeting in Brussels after European leaders were left reeling by news the U.S. would start negotiations with Russia to end its war on Ukraine, but without inviting any representatives from Europe or from Ukraine.
     […]
     The core dispute was over whether to send troops to Ukraine if there is an agreement to end the war. U.S. President Donald Trump has ruled out both sending U.S. forces and allowing Ukraine to join NATO, meaning that any effort to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine again would have to be borne by Europeans.
     The U.S. sent a questionnaire to European NATO countries asking them to spell out what they would be prepared to offer to enforce a peace agreement, as well as what they would expect from the U.S.
     But there was no consensus on the issue.
     France, whose president first suggested the idea, and the U.K.’s Keir Starmer both support the idea, although Starmer said that could only happen if the United States also participated in any peacekeeping force.
     […]
     “There must be no division of security and responsibility between Europe and the United States,” [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz said.
     [Polish Prime Minister Donald] Tusk added: “Someone must also say that it is in the interest of Europe and the U.S. to cooperate as closely as possible.”

     Europe has been a welfare client of the United States since the signing of the North Atlantic Charter and the formation of NATO. The U.S. has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Europe’s luxuriant welfare states by relieving its nations of the need to mount their own defenses against aggression. Today, the economies of Europe are tottering for many reasons. The withdrawal of American forces from the Old World would probably bring about its economic collapse.

     After the conclusion of World War II and the Soviet absorption of the nations of Eastern Europe, there was a rationale of sorts for America to proclaim a defense umbrella over Western Europe. Our economy had not been seriously damaged by the war; Europe’s was a shambles. Our possession of a strategic nuclear force made it possible to confront the U.S.S.R. with an unacceptable consequence should it attempt to expand its sway further westward. But the Soviet Union is no more, the Warsaw Pact is only a memory, and America has her own troubles to deal with. Why, then, ought we to bear the burden of guaranteeing peace between Russia and Ukraine, or any portion thereof?

     It’s of little moment in this regard that Ukraine’s government is corrupt or that it’s currently ruled by a dictator under martial law. Even if it were otherwise, there would be no logic to Europe’s insistence that the U.S. take any share of the responsibility for keeping the peace between Ukraine and Russia. The days when America could act as the “world’s policeman” are over. We lack both the will and the power to fulfill that role. Ordinary Americans are tired of carrying that burden.

     On a related note: President Nixon ended the redeemability of the U.S. dollar precisely because of American forces stationed in the European member countries of NATO. Those forces were spending billions of dollars per year in Europe. European NATO members were increasingly unwilling to hold those dollars. Their demands for redemption were straining American gold reserves, in an indirect response to the inflationary policies of previous administrations. On August 15, 1971, when Nixon “closed the gold window,” the price of gold shot up at once from the statutory redemption rate of $42.22 per Troy ounce to nearly $100 per Troy ounce. The years that followed made plain the damage inflation had done to the dollar and to every other currency that the Bretton Woods agreement had linked to it.

     Scant wonder that Europe’s governments are terrified of an American change in its policy toward the defense of Europe. The rice bowls that would be threatened by a dramatic alteration of that relationship number in the tens of millions – a clear indication of a policy that, even if it was defensible at its inception, has outlived all rationality and should be ended post haste.