Mez wrote It’s no wonder that Europe is rattled: what’s more surprising is the length of its denial. Vance’s pronouncement[s] in Munich simply confirms what countless signals have been telegraphing for years. The old paradigm of Western unity is cracking. ----- 1989 and All That The dependency issues go back to the end of WW2 and the Marshal plan which marked the transition of most western European countries from “warfare states to welfare states”. With the US taking the burden of the European security architecture in the cold war. The reckoning should have come during what Chris Bickerton has called the “long 1989” with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. This should have been the moment when the Western European countries stepped up and recognised the urgency of imagining a new security architecture based on the new geo-political logic. But nothing happened. The de-militarised mindset of western European welfare states prevailed and they pocketed the peace dividend and carried on with a NATO bereft of a reason to be. We assumed the US security umbrella would be there for ever. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine killed the illusion that European states can act as a unified and coherent whole and are surprised when they are not consulted. Its unsurprising that Europe’s belated insistence that it deserves a seat at the table is being treated with at best scepticism and at worst contempt. The election of Trump has accelerated the reckoning that should have taken place in 1989. David Garcia
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