Once again Eric Margolis has produced an interesting commentary. This time it concerns the latest news out of the United Kingdom concerning the substantial cuts to the defense budget. They are significant enough that even the United States has raised a protest under the guise of NATO responsibilities and obligations.
Margolis exposes something of the well-known but oft ignored back story to this. That is, well-known in Europe but unreported and unexplored in the American media.
As children of the Cold War era we were all instructed regarding the nature of the Eastern Block, and the Soviet 'satellites' but NATO was always presented as an alliance of equals, merely led by the United States. We didn't have 'satellites' and we didn't have an empire. Starting with Reagan, referring to the Soviet 'Empire' became vogue, but to this day, the American public largely refuses to acknowledge our own. I still hear many people expressing frustration expressed more or less, "Why do we (the U.S.) have to always be the world's policeman? Can't these other countries take care of their own problems?" This shows a lack of understanding. The United States is not the world's policeman. The United States has a global empire. The language of 'Superpower' seems to pass over many people's heads. Perhaps a better term would be Super-empire. The United States employs treaties, alliances, economic arrangements and many other mechanisms not to govern, not to micromanage, but to influence, manipulate, and set the agenda. In fact, NATO was but one of several means by which the United States governed its post war satellites in Europe.
This was one of the most profound changes in the aftermath of World War II. Europe and in particular Western Europe had been the dominant force in world affairs since the era of exploration. For over 400 years, Europe had been on a course of advancement and power reaching its zenith on the eve of 1914. By the conclusion of this second Thirty Years War (1914-45)…Europe was broken and under the domination of two new and external powers. The Soviet Union, a Eurasian Empire dominated by Russia was only nominally European, and the United States, a trans-oceanic power. Some historians have spoken (perhaps with some irony) of the colonialization of Europe, divided between the two hegemonic super-powers.
It doesn't mean everything was harmonious. Tito's Yugoslavia 'deviated', later followed by East Germany after Stalin's death, Hungary in '56, and Czechoslovakia in '68. For the United States, France proved the greatest irritation leading to their eventual departure from NATO. Occasionally governments will come into power, but the United States does all it can to change the equation, or in the case of Turkey, empowers the military and up until recently worried little about who was actually running the show in Ankara.
Europe was thankful for the American intervention during the war, and many European leaders saw the writing on the wall and realized that the United States was in the ascendancy. And during the immediate post war period there was a real threat. It was an uncertain and dangerous time. The Russians gained nuclear weapons by 1949, but did not develop the means to deploy them globally until much later. Nevertheless, in terms of conventional forces, they had the largest army (combined men and armament) in the world and sat poised on the edge of Western Europe. All the Western Nations were dependent on American support, West Germany most of all. The deterrent the Americans possessed was not a conventional land army, but the threat of ICBM's. The Soviets also developed these systems but they were inferior to American models until the late 1960's.
Western Europe had no choice, but to depend on American nuclear weapons. The American strategy in World War II was centered around air power and bombing rather than land forces, and this non-land based strategy continued into the Cold War, with the Nuclear Deterrent. The situation calmed in the 1960's after the Cuban crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Though there was still plenty of intrigue, some of the immediate threat and uneasy tension was removed. Europe was finally recovering from the war and slowly began its path back to autonomy. Since then there has been this tension…on the one hand they are grateful to the United States, on the other hand…somewhat resentful. Instead of liberation, they were converted into fiefs.
As an aside, it's one of the strange ironies of history, that as tense as the Cold War was and steeped with scheming and espionage, the period from 1945 until 1992 was the longest period of peace Europe had seen since perhaps Roman times.
The European nations were under the domination of two global powers…a titanic shift.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the United Kingdom. Beginning with Churchill, the United Kingdom has grown ever closer to the United States, as has been most apparent during the Thatcher-Reagan era, and the Major/Blair-Clinton and Bush years. With David Cameron at the helm, the situation is not likely to change.
To most in the United States, particularly in conservative and Christian circles, there is little awareness of this history. Angry and baffled by French opposition to the Bush regime, conservatives turned to childish name-calling and silly publicity stunts centered around naming our food. If they had bothered to examine the Franco-American relationship as well as some of the politics of Eurasia, they might have gained a better understanding regarding what was happening.
Our media in the United States is often thought of as 'liberal' by those in the often overlapping conservative and Christian communities. If the media was really out to make the United States look bad, and damage prestige, public morale and support….they've missed their chance a thousand times over. This story concerning Anglo-American relations is not talked about, and if it is, it receives a superficial treatment. The American media is not liberal or conservative, but establishment. It protects the corporate interests that own it and these corporate interests are highly invested in the established political order. With the Right, and particularly the Christian Right politicizing news coverage, the stories themselves have taken on a partisan tone and it has become nigh on impossible to find sober or accurate news coverage that even attempts at objectivity. Of course much of Christian thought at present has derided even attempting such.
We as Christians ought to be concerned and rather than the most uninformed and gullible segment of the population, we ought to be the most aware. Our legacy of reading the truth through patriotic lenses, and for many Americans, Sacralist lenses has brought us to a point of willful and deliberate ignorance, rendering much of the public unable to discern the truth. A prideful provincialism dominates American Evangelicalism leaving me to conclude the majority of the American church is under judgment for its idolatry and large scale apostasy that manifests itself on multiple fronts.
May God open the eyes of his remnant in the United States and perhaps our children and grandchildren will live as Christians who happen to be Americans, rather than Americans who call themselves Christian.
The Bible-believing community in Europe is very small, but from what I've seen reasonably vibrant. There is much influence from the American Christian community which I think has proved unfortunate. I weep thinking of the American missionaries I visited in Austria teaching the people puppet shows and other such nonsense, reflecting not Biblical Christianity but American entertainment and consumerism. It's often said America is twenty years behind Europe when it comes to many social trends. While Evangelicals lament the fall of the Imperium and the correlating demise of the Sacralism which supported it, I actually look with some hope to the future…when we will be more like Europe. We, meaning the Church, and like Europe in the sense that we will have a small but vibrant remnant which can start the long multi-generational process of reform and renewal.
That is, if Christ doesn't return in the meantime which would be far better.
So for now, I include the Margolis article to share the information and to continue to contribute to the overall picture I've tried to paint regarding what has happened to the American Christian mind and how the world is viewed. Many in Europe might shrug their shoulders at an article like this, or many of the things I've brought up in these posts, but for Christians in the United States, these are shocking and very provocative revelations. To many of them, the things I've written in these posts, particularly the Why and How series are quite treasonous and therefore in Sacralist categories…heretical.
That's what happens when Sacralism is embraced. The truth becomes treason. It is not so in Christ's Kingdom…the very realm of Truth.
Here's the article:
THE ROYAL NAVY’S MOST DESPERATE BATTLE
PARIS October 17, 2010
I grew up immersed in the glorious adventures of Britain’s Royal Navy. My heart and soul thrilled to the daring exploits of Sir Francis Drake, the renowned admirals Anson and Howe, and the great Sir Horatio Nelson whose name will live forever in glory.
What red-blooded boy would not have been stirred by Sir Richard Grenville on the “Revenge” in 1591 taking on the entire Spanish fleet of 53 galleons off Flores in the Azores? Lying dying on the deck, Grenville, in Lord Tennyson’s words, ordered his chief gunner, “sink me the ship, master gunner, sink’er, split her in twain. Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!” I still cannot recite these lines without a lump in my throat.
Britain’s mighty Royal Navy ruled the waves until World War II, the British Empire controlled 25% of the globe. There are few greater epochs in history than the stirring saga the Royal Navy and its crews with “hearts of oak.”
Who can forget the Royal Navy’s life-and-death hunt for the mighty German “Bismarck,” and loss of the famed battle cruiser “Hood,” or the heartbreaking sinking of “Repulse” and “Prince of Wales” off Singapore by Japanese bombers?
Britain had 900 warships in 1945. There was not an ocean, sea, estuary or navigable river that was immune to the Royal Navy’s power. Britain’s “Senior Service” was the ultimate strategic weapon of world domination. Britannia ruled the waves, and from there the world’s coasts and commerce.
Today, that weapon is the United States Air Force.
This week, the Royal Navy faces the most perilous engagement in its splendid history, and one from which it may not emerge victorious. What Spanish and French cannon balls, and German 15in shells failed to accomplish, the pens of London’s bean counters may achieve – scuppering the Royal Navy and sending its finest vessels to the breaker’s yards.
The Navy’s budget is reportedly to be cut by at least 10%, perhaps far more. Britain’s new Conservative-Liberal-Dem coalition of David Cameron and Nick Clegg vow to slash the monstrous deficit it inherited from the former Blair-Brown Labour government that left Britain drowning in red ink.
Cameron has spoken of 20-25% cuts across the board. In spite of earlier denials, military spending will be a choice target. New aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines may be cancelled or sharply reduced.
Cameron’s full draconian budget out next week will be sure to produce howls of protests from Land’s End to John o’Groats.
Britain, whose debt-inflated economy may actually be smaller than Italy’s (because a third of Italy’s GDP is unreported), has a navy worthy of a world power, second only in strength and power projection capability to the United States Navy.
The Royal Navy deploys nuclear-powered submarines armed with US-supplied Trident nuclear-tipped missiles, and has ordered two 65,000-ton aircraft carriers to carry the new, US F-35 STOL vertical takeoff fighter. Add nuclear-powered attack subs, modern frigates, attack transports an extensive logistical support fleet and 7,500 crack Royal Marines.
Smashing! But what’s it all for? Britons face sharp cuts their health and welfare benefits. Imperial naval grandeur has become unaffordable.
Britain, like the rest of Europe, has no real external enemies, and certainly none that threaten it with nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, the Royal Navy’s primary mission was to plug the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, the only passage for the Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet to break out into the North Atlantic and attack British-US convoys. Today, that threat is gone.
Interestingly, this writer has been told by senior British military sources that their nuclear weapons cannot be fired without the US-turned series of electronic locks. In other words, the UK sea-based nuclear arsenal is under ultimate US control. Britain’s Trident nuclear subs may not be replaced in part or full when their service life ends in 2020.
The only real mission for today’s powerful Royal Navy is to support the US Navy in its foreign offensive operations. Many Britons want no part of being foot soldiers to America’s nuclear knights, to quote the famous words of the late German defense minister Franz Josef Strauss.
Thanks to Tony Blair’s smarmy pandering to the Americans, a majority if Britons want no more of being “Washington’s poodle,” as Blair was derided. This feeling is common in the rest of NATO, which does not want to spend billions on military transports and long-range logistical forces to support America’s wars in the Muslim world or even against China.
PM Cameron has been battling over defense cuts with die-hard right-wingers in his cabinet. Defense Secretary Dr. Liam Fox, Britain’s leading neoconservative, has bitterly opposed Cameron’s defense cuts. The prime minister just humiliated Fox this week in a stinging public rebuke.
That other and bigger half of the famed US-UK “Special Relationship,” the United States undiplomatically has just treated Briton like a misbehaving banana republic as State Secretary Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates openly rebuked and scolded London for its proposed defense cuts.
Two points to be made here: First, Britain’s spending cuts are not coming from “defense” – since no one is threatening the British Isles. As the former head of MI5 Internal Security recently testified, the only threat to Britain was so-called terrorist attacks, entirely the result of its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The only nations building real blue-water navies these days are China and India.
So with no external threat, the only use for Britain’s fleet is offensively, as an auxiliary to the US Navy. That’s why Clinton and Gates were so miffed. Britain’s fleet, RAF, and soldiers are the key component of America’s imperial forces in the Third World. Take away the tough Brits, and the US is left with Italians, Estonians, Poles and some other armies. The US Navy budget is bigger than France’s total military budget.
PM Cameron deserves high praise for admitting that Britain was a balloon of debt with pretensions way beyond its economic or military power. Britons need decent hospitals and un-crashing trains far more than jolly little wars in remote places.
Second, Cameron’s goring of Britain’s most sacred cow leaves Washington odd man out with a monstrously bloated imperial military establishment that this bankrupt nation can no longer afford. The Pentagon’s annual budget is nearly $1 trillion – half the world’s total military spending.
Worse, this trillion dollars is not raised by taxes, as it should be, but borrowed from China and Japan.
The world’s greatest naval power is also the world’s biggest debtor, floating on an ocean of debt.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2010