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Headline: Germany, France and how not to do deterrence
Sub-headline: The EU’s two leading powers are causing confusion and anger among allies as Ukraine’s future hangs by a thread
https://www.ft.com/content/54b1d958-e111-4f8a-9983-f9f79d997ec6
The Reader confronts JD Vance ‘often vitriolic Trumpist’ whose ‘criticism is essentially correct.’ Trump is the Political Monster created by The New Democrats, The Republican and the Neo-Conservatives: Constanze Stelzenmüller is part of that Neo-Conservative cadre!
Two weeks ago, Republican US senator JD Vance told an audience at the Munich Security Conference that “the time has come for Europe to stand on its own feet”. In a follow-up article for this newspaper, he singled out Germany as “the most important economy in Europe, but it relies on imported energy and borrowed military strength”.
The senator is a combative, often vitriolic Trumpist, and one of the fiercest opponents of a US aid package that includes $60bn for Ukraine, which is currently held up in Congress. Not a few Republicans find him an easy man to dislike. But recent events in Europe suggest that his criticism is essentially correct.
The next paragraph expresses ? and scolds via ‘disarray and fecklessness’
Yes, the Europeans managed to approve a €50bn aid package for Ukraine last month, and as Germany’s leaders never tire of pointing out, they are Kyiv’s second biggest supporters after the US. Major European states have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine. But at a time of multiplying security challenges, the overwhelming message from Europe has been one of disarray and fecklessness. That is particularly true of Berlin.
Here is a source that might cause Stelzenmüller more distress ?
April 20 2021
Illusions of Autonomy: Why Europe Cannot Provide for Its Security If the United States Pulls Back
Hugo Meijer,
Stephen G. Brooks
Author and Article Information
International Security (2021) 45 (4): 7–43.
The Abstract give The Reader valuable information:
…
Europe’s security landscape has changed dramatically in the past decade amid Russia’s resurgence, mounting doubts about the long-term reliability of the U.S. security commitment, and Europe’s growing aspiration for strategic autonomy. This changed security landscape raises an important counterfactual question: Could Europeans develop an autonomous defense capacity if the United States withdrew completely from Europe? The answer to this question has major implications for a range of policy issues and for the ongoing U.S. grand strategy debate in light of the prominent argument by U.S. “restraint” scholars that Europe can easily defend itself. Addressing this question requires an examination of the historical evolution as well as the current and likely future state of European interests and defense capacity. It shows that any European effort to achieve strategic autonomy would be fundamentally hampered by two mutually reinforcing constraints: “strategic cacophony,” namely profound, continent-wide divergences across all domains of national defense policies—most notably, threat perceptions; and severe military capacity shortfalls that would be very costly and time-consuming to close. As a result, Europeans are highly unlikely to develop an autonomous defense capacity anytime soon, even if the United States were to fully withdraw from the continent.
…
Stelzenmüller experiences gloom:
Imagine if they all had signed a detailed pledge to defend Ukraine and Europe, and then stood on the stage together to say: “Russia: your aggression will not stand. We will do whatever it takes to stop you. America: We still need your help (and thank you!), but we hear you, and are racing to become much more self-sufficient.”
But that didn’t happen. Germany’s key partners, French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, didn’t even come. And things have been going swiftly downhill since then.
The essay builds upon the mendacity of the actors in her melodrama, to this end point:
This is the brutal truth: the two key actors in continental Europe are bungling the strategic response to Europe’s greatest security threat in a generation, while Ukraine’s future is hanging by a thread.
France, its president’s acrobatics notwithstanding, at least has a powerful deterrent in its nuclear weapons. Germany’s government — despite its immense financial commitments and frenetic efforts to produce more weapons — appears to think that clinging to the US is a grand plan. Where it ought to have a Europe strategy, or a Russia strategy, there is a conceptual void. And the only thing it is deterring is itself.
To put is bluntly Constanze Stelzenmüller is a de-facto member of The American National Security State, as she directs the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution.
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