"Europeans Are from Venus."
Hardly. In 2002, American author Robert Kagan famously wrote, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." More recently, Robert Gates, then U.S. defense secretary, warned in 2010 of the "demilitarization" of Europe. But not only are European militaries among the world's strongest -- these assessments also overlook one of the great achievements of human civilization: A continent that gave us the most destructive conflicts in history has now basically agreed to give up war on its own turf. Besides, within Europe there are huge differences in attitudes toward the uses and abuses of hard power. Hawkish countries such as Poland and Britain are closer to the United States than they are to dovish Germany, and many continue to foresee a world where a strong military is an indispensable component of security. And unlike rising powers such as China that proclaim the principle of noninterference, Europeans are still prepared to use force to intervene abroad. Ask the people of the Malian city of Gao, which had been occupied for nearly a year by hard-line Islamists until French troops ejected them, whether they see Europeans as timid pacifists.
At the same time, Americans have changed much in the decade since Kagan said they are from Mars. As the United States draws down from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and focuses on "nation-building at home," it looks increasingly Venusian. In fact, attitudes toward military intervention are converging on both sides of the Atlantic. According to the most recent edition of Transatlantic Trends, a regular survey by the German Marshall Fund, only 49 percent of Americans think that the intervention in Libya was the right thing to do, compared with 48 percent of Europeans. Almost as many Americans (68 percent) as Europeans (75 percent) now want to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Many American critics of Europe point to the continent's low levels of military spending. But it only looks low next to the United States -- by far the world's biggest spender. In fact, Europeans collectively accounted for about 20 percent of the world's military spending in 2011, compared with 8 percent for China, 4 percent for Russia, and less than 3 percent for India, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It is true that, against the background of the crisis, many EU member states are now making dramatic cuts in military spending, including, most worryingly, France. Britain and Germany, however, have so far made only modest cuts, and Poland and Sweden are actually increasing military spending. Moreover, the crisis is accelerating much-needed pooling and sharing of capabilities, such as air policing and satellite navigation. As for those Martians in Washington, the U.S. Congress is cutting military spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years and by $43 billion this year alone -- and the supposedly warlike American people seem content with butter's triumph over guns.
JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
SUBJECTS:
