by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Nearly ten years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to \u201cOld Europe.\u201d How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us \u201cold\u201d when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration.<\/p>\n
The more things change in Europe, the more they stay the same.<\/p>\n
The island of Britain is, and is not, a part of Europe \u2014 carefully pulling out when things heat up, terrified that it will be pulled back in when things boil over. British prime minister David Cameron knows the old script well, as he adamantly and publicly insists that Great Britain is still a part of the crumbling European Union while privately assuming that it is not.<\/p>\n
No need to mention the German \u201cproblem\u201d: Whether the year was 1870, 1914, 1939, or 2011, Europeans always have feared a united Germany, whose people, for a variety of cultural reasons, produce more wealth than the nation\u2019s size might otherwise suggest.<\/p>\n
In that regard, the more France talks of the glory of Gallic culture, the more it seeks to restrain its too-powerful next-door neighbor or, in humiliating fashion, seeks to appease Germany. No surprise that French president Nicolas Sarkozy now seems to be pursuing both tracks simultaneously.<\/p>\n
For centuries, Mediterranean Europe \u2014 the original dynamic birthplace of Western civilization \u2014 has stagnated in comparison to the north. The sunny south\u2019s doctrinaire Catholicism and Orthodoxy, greater vulnerability to nearby militant Ottomanism, and lack of Atlantic ports that looked out on the New World long ago relegated the Mediterranean nations to comparative stagnation. Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were always considered nice, warm places to vacation or retire, but not in which to work, live, and raise a family. That stereotype is as alive in 2011 as it was in 1880.<\/p>\n
The squabbling European family has always feared two great rivals \u2014 Russia and radical Islam. From 1453 through the 18th century, Europe lived in fear of the Ottomans, who twice reached the gates of Vienna. Huge European armies invaded Russia twice, and both Napoleon and Hitler destroyed their own empires in their failed attempts at preemption. Russia occupied half of Europe for almost a half-century and now tries to leverage with gas and oil what it used to with missiles and tanks. Europe is as dependent on the oil of Muslim nations as it is terrified of millions of new Islamic immigrants.<\/p>\n
Jews have always been smeared by ambivalent Europeans \u2014 discriminated against as too clannish in their creed, without ancestral land-holding lineages and aristocratic status. Jews are now beginning to feel as unwelcome in Europe as they did in the 1930s \u2014 or in 1543, when Martin Luther wrote his \u201cOn the Jews and Their Lies.\u201d Jewish academics are sometimes shunned at international conferences in Europe. Some suburbs in Paris and Rotterdam are no longer safe for Jews to walk about in. Europe is largely anti-Israel and probably always will be.<\/p>\n
After the Revolutionary War, Europeans both flocked to America and damned it as uncouth and crass, even as they looked to it for money and military help. Nothing has much changed here either, despite the utopian pronouncements of the European Union and the reset policies of the Obama administration.<\/p>\n
Most European grandees recently felt that the American cowboys got what they deserved in Iraq and during the financial panic of 2008. Then they blamed their own fiscal meltdown on imported Wall Street viruses \u2014 only to appeal for bailouts when southern European defaults threatened to destroy the European Union. In response, we habitually declare our independence and isolation. We promise never again to get involved in their squabbles and wars \u2014 only to find ourselves drawn knee-deep into them.<\/p>\n
Like clockwork every few decades, some self-described European \u201cvisionaries\u201d swear that the continent can either live in peace under utopian protocols or, more darkly, be united under one grand \u2014 and undemocratic \u2014 system, willingly or not. But for all the noble pretensions of the Congress of Vienna and the European Union \u2014 and the nightmarish spread of Napoleon\u2019s Continental System and the Third Reich \u2014 and for all the promises of European-born fascism, Communism, and socialism, the result is always the same: disunion, acrimony, and infighting.<\/p>\n
That schizophrenia is what we should expect from dozens of cultures and histories squeezed into too small a continent full of lots of bright \u2014 and quite proud \u2014 people. Every new Europe always ends up as old Europe.<\/p>\n
\u00a92012 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Reporters tried his patience in a testy press conference by implying that the Secretary of Defense\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2004"","block_context":{"text":"December 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/december-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3456,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rumsfelds-rebuttal\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":1},"title":"Rumsfeld’s Rebuttal","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal A review of\u00a0Known and Unknown: A Memoir\u00a0by Donald Rumsfeld (Sentinel, 832 pp.) The wonder is not that Donald Rumsfeld was one of the longest-serving defense secretaries in history, but that George W. Bush nominated him in 2001 in the first place. As he makes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4480,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/soft-power-hard-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":2},"title":"Soft Power, Hard Reality","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers A shorter version of this appeared in the\u00a0Wall Street Journal, Tuesday 22, 2005. Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2005"","block_context":{"text":"February 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/february-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4522,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/leave-rumsfeld-be\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":3},"title":"Leave Rumsfeld Be","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 23, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"He is not to blame for our difficulties by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0recently warned that doctors are urging interested parties of all types to get their flu shots before the \"scarce\" vaccine is thrown out. But how is such a surfeit possible when our national media\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2004"","block_context":{"text":"December 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/december-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4668,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-europe-be-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":4},"title":"Let Europe Be Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"America should give up on the shattered Atlantic Alliance. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Beware of punditry now assuring us that, because we have seen the error of our ways and are now penitent, Europe is back on board. A contrite Mr. Bush \u2014 his critics imply \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":55,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/europes-wishes-came-true\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":5},"title":"Europe’s Wishes Came True","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost a decade ago, Europeans and many progressive Americans were lamenting how the United States was going to miss out on the 21st-century paradigm symbolized by the robust European Union. Neanderthal Americans were importing ever more oil while waging a costly \"war on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The EU"","block_context":{"text":"The EU","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/the-eu\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}