‘The US can’t go it alone.’ Yes, it can

Just before the start of the Second Gulf War in 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair approached me as a Conservative member of the House of Lords and asked for my and my colleagues’ support in improving the deployment of British forces to Iraq to, amongst other things, assure that weapons of mass destruction were not developed in that country. Because the Conservatives had a majority in Their Lordships’ House, we had the ability to delay matters inconveniently, and the Prime Minister did have a legitimate need for our cooperation. I was happy to agree; I assumed we would simply get rid of Saddam Hussein and assure his replacement with someone less provocative towards the West. It was impossible to foresee that the American governor of Iraq would dismiss into unemployment all of the armed and constabulary forces in the country while permitting them to retain their firearms and munitions, a formula for a bloodbath and political chaos.

What struck me most vividly about the opponents of that war was not that they foresaw any of what actually happened, but that they objected that “The United States can’t go it alone.” Of course they could, and along with the British, they did, but the take-away from those far-off days was the tenacity of the opinion that the United States had to be constrained by a collegial web of its so-called allies to guide it. This was the most vivid appearance I have witnessed of this unctuous notion that the Western Alliance had to be like a great mastiff that would do the work and takes the risks while the sage Europeans, veterans and connoisseurs of international affairs for centuries, would hold the leash and give the orders.

We are now seeing where this self-serving dilution of the necessary nature of the Western alliance ends. Most of the European governments were grumpy over Greenland, to which the so-called allies grossly overreacted (and it was a pleasure to see the belligerent leftist Danish Prime Minister get a rap on her knuckles last week on the snap election that she called). Except for most of those with recent memories of the joys of Soviet occupation responded to President Trump’s request for a token show of solidarity with the contribution of some vessels that would accompany the US Navy in clearing the Strait of Hormuz with fatuities to the effect that it was not their war, and they had not been consulted.

The United States does not in fact require any other country’s assistance, but it facilitated President Trump’s task in demonstrating to his countrymen that the principal European conception of the Western alliance is that it will retain a veto over what the United States does but will only occasionally actually assist the Americans. The US president  rightly invited them “to get their own oil.” The relevance of this is not that Europe does get a lot of oil from the Persian Gulf — it gets more than twice as much and much more natural gas from the United States. But the Persian Gulf and Venezuela could easily replace Russia as a supplier of oil and gas to Western Europe. This would relieve Europe of the nonsense and hypocrisy of beseeching America for aid in defeating Russia in Ukraine while financing the war through oil and gas purchases from Russia.

The most depressing aspect of the collapse of European will and political integrity has been in the failure of some of their leading responsible media outlets. Of course, we expect the traditional spigots of anti-American Billingsgate such as the Guardian with Sidney Blumenthal’s recent triumphant announcement the United States had been militarily defeated in Iran, (having suffered eight combat fatalities while blasting that hideous regime halfway back to the Stone Age with minimum civilian casualties). But more shocking  was the over-worthy Economist announcing that the war was a quagmire and stalemate and a terrible setback for the Trump administration. A moron who was never laid eyes even on a toy soldier can see that Iran is on the ropes and the United States and Israel can go on pummelling it into prehistoric insensibility at minimal personnel costs to themselves indefinitely. This is not a stalemate.

Much more upsetting, since the Economist has essentially been a globalist dishcloth for the last ten years, is the Spectator, where Freddy Gray, who has moments of lucidity commenting on American affairs, declared in a cover story that Trump had failed. Freddy has failed and this cover was like the Chicago Tribune’s famous headline on the day after the 1948 US election: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” In the same edition, the magazine in its general editorial stated that the last hope for applying the necessary restraint of European savoir faire and worldliness on the lunatics in Washington was the commanding influence on Trump of King Charles. When the Economist and the Spectator are po-facedly publishing unutterable rubbish, it makes a formidable prima facie case that in the midst of their seventh consecutive failed government, a record of unbroken bipartisan incompetence without precedent in the more than two centuries of the office of prime minister starting with Walpole, the British elites are leading the distressed population in a race to the bottom. Britain and everything sensible in Britain and all of Britain’s tradition of intelligent government vital to the development of Western civilization is in freefall.

The United States has no need of Europe as it only wishes it not to be in the hands of seriously hostile rivals, and Russia cannot even overcome Ukraine. But the West needs Europe at least as active and constant participants in the life of this planet. To that end we must with no hint of overconfidence, place our hopes in Reform (UK), the Alternative for Germany, the RN (France), and the Brothers of Italy, led, of course, by a woman. How did the Europe of Adenauer, de Gaulle, and Thatcher descend so quickly into this pitiful condition? Spineless leftist governments dependent upon extremist Muslim voters.