Despite the public proclamations of undying friendship and amity that have been the traditional lies told whenever any alliance between two nations has been formed, the only lesson we can take from history is that these marriages of convenience rarely last. Each partner typically has only its own interests at heart, and countries have a bad habit of running straight into the arms of whomever is waving the fattest wad of cash, offering the most firepower (pointed at someone else), and asking for the least sacrifice.
So it has been for the many millennia.
It is, therefore, a bit of a surprise that so many Americans are shocked and appalled to discover that our iron-clad alliance with our pals across the pond has turned out to be composed of less than stalwart friends. We put together the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 to combat our former World War Two ally, the old Soviet Union, only a scant 4 years after that conflict ended. Our key NATO allies—France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany (which became our good friend just a couple of years after we destroyed them to stop Hitler from conquering the world)—have stuck to the script and proven notably unreliable when it comes to dealing with today’s international crisis, an Iranian regime determined to graduate from plain, old terrorism to global nuclear blackmail.
It has, of course, been the case for nearly 80 years that America has done the heavy lifting, both militarily and financially, for our feckless European frenemies, who have enjoyed the no-strings-attached protection we have offered despite their often sneering attitude toward our nation. Believing Americans to both unnecessarily bellicose and culturally backward, Western Europeans have been allowed to enjoy security without responsibility for decade upon decade, a delicious free ride that they have accepted without the least bit of gratitude. Today they are as perfectly happy as ever to let Americans do the fighting and dying on their behalf, but it is clear that our patience is running out.
The current conflict between the United States and Iran is clearly a breaking point. Given that Europe is far more dependent on a steady supply of Iranian oil than America, it is astounding—but not surprising—that our friends in NATO will not lift a finger to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz remains open to tankers flying every flag. Today’s American go-it-alone blockade of Iranian tankers will be a financial death blow to a fanatical regime that refuses to compromise on either their financial support of terrorists or their dream of building an “Islamic” nuclear
bomb that will allow them to dictate policy the world over, but it also likely spells the end of the fantasy of a NATO alliance that still exists to fight a Soviet Union that evaporated in 1991. Although Russia under Vladimir Putin is not trustworthy, there is no indication of a military threat to Europe for the simple reason Russians enjoy selling oil to our NATO allies, who happily surrendered their energy security on the altar of the global warming hoax. Why would Putin want to attack his country’s best (and stupidest) customers?
Although the legacy media in America likes to pretend that our NATO frenemies are taking a principled stand against unwarranted U.S. aggression directed at the sweet, innocent mullahs running the Iranian theocracy, the reality is that the mass migration of many tens of millions of Muslims into Europe from the war-torn Middle East, combined with drastically shrinking native birthrates throughout the continent, has demographically constricted their foreign policy options. Fearful of angering a growing constituency of anti-semites and anti-Americans who believe Allah wants both Israel and America, the so-called Great Satan, erased from the earth, European politicians often now sound like they reside in Tehran instead of London, Paris, or Berlin. This highlights the inherent fragility of our current alliances revolving around NATO membership and explains why so many military and political alliances throughout history, which are always captive to the internal politics of the individual partners, fail to endure. In the final analysis, all cooperation between nations is built on pure self-interest, and no platitudinous promises will change this immutable fact.
The question going forward is just how much our goals will align with European governments who are dealing with deep structural economic challenges, stark demographic changes, and a timid belief that endless negotiations can solve every problem. Although diplomacy is likely the only viable path for European Union (EU) countries that have allowed their military capabilities to atrophy and are captive to EU bureaucrats who are allergic bold and unequivocal actions that might offend the easily offended, economic ties will continue to glue us to the dying hulk of NATO for the foreseeable future. Although the Brussels elite views America as a land of dangerous troglodytes—and we look upon Europe with a vaguely concealed contempt for their weakness and waffling—historical trade and banking interests will help to smooth relations that might become more rocky in the near future because our political and cultural destinies are certain to continue to diverge.
It is, of course, well within the realm of possibility that our NATO allies are secretly providing all manner of unofficial—and exquisitely deniable—intelligence and logistical support to their American frenemies. Not wanting to get on the bad side of a United States that will, at least in the short term, be the world’s readiest source of oil, our allies might very well hold their noses and open back channels to share critical information because, all else aside, no one wants to pay a $2 million toll to the Iranians for each ship that passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is their current demand.
Given that American guns are now pointed in the other direction, sucking up could strike Europe and the EU as the least disagreeable option available because they can stay out of the line of fire—and still complain.