Europe's American pacifier

Abstract

ism, have lately come to view the use of force with the same distaste the Founding Fathers had reserved for alliances: as a sure pathway to moral and practical ruin. Ironically, some members of these two camps have unintentionally joined hands in a new-found resentment of Western Europe. Both believe that West European countries long ago acquired the resources to defend themselves. Both resent the West Europeans' security parasitism. And both question the mutuality of benefits the Atlantic Alliance is said to confer on the United States as well as on Western Europe. In their penchant for leaving, or loosening, this most entangling of America's alliances, conservative and liberal critics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) part ways mainly over defining the country's proper role minus Europe. Propelled by new visions of unilateral activism, critics on the Right see the Soviet threat on the increase. But even though they fear that the global balance of forces is endangered, they regard West European countries as allies in defense of Western Europe's interests only and hence as a drain on American resources better invested elsewhere in the cause of containment. Indeed, they argue, withdrawal or disengagement will have a salutary influence, reminding West European free riders of their responsibility for their own security and forcing them to assume the heavy burden the United States has for so long carried gratis.