It just struck me that 21
years passed between WWI and WWII. It's been 18 years - 18YEARS!
since the Berlin wall fell. Life is a travail, ain't it?
Here, in digestable snippets, is today's fascinating - and gloomy
- look at things German centric, and today's monster - Islamo fascism.
|
The Soft Underbelly of Europe
Germany presents a tempting target for the jihadists and others.
BY MARK HELPRIN
|
|
| “ |
- Whereas in 1989 we kept in Europe 325,000 troops,
5,000 tanks, 25 operating air bases, and 1,000 combat aircraft, we now
keep approximately a fifth of that. Whereas the Germans in 1989 could
field a half-million men and 5,000 tanks, they now can deploy less than
half that number.
- As the Soviet Union dissolved, much of its military
capacity followed it into oblivion. But as Western Europe dismantles
its militaries, Russia builds, encouraged as much by European pacifism
as by the Russian view of America's struggle in Iraq as a parallel to
the Soviet's fatal involvement in Afghanistan. Like Germany between the
wars, Russia is now eager and determined to reconstitute its forces,
and with its new-found oil wealth, it is doing so.
- How fortuitous for it, then, that the United States
is expending military capital without replenishment, and Europe has
spiritually resigned from its own defense ... Germany, the
strategic gate to Western Europe and by its nature and position that
which stabilizes or disrupts the continent, sleeps and dreams unaware.
- Germany must fascinate the Jihadists, too--not for
displacing America as the prime target, but as the richest target least
defended. Though it will never happen, they believe that Islam will
conquer the world, and so they try.
- Germany [is] such an attractive target. Unlike the
U.S., France, and Britain, Germany is a major country with no
independent expeditionary capability and no nuclear weapons, making it
ideal for a terrorist nuclear strike or Iranian extortion if Iran is
able to continue a very transparent nuclear policy to its logical
conclusion.
- Though it is conceivable that after the shock of
losing Washington or Chicago, the U.S.--or Britain after Birmingham,
France after Lyon--would, even without an address certain, release a
second strike, it is very unlikely that, even with an address certain,
any nuclear power would launch in behalf of another nation, NATO ally
or not, absent an explicit arrangement such as the dual-key structure
during the Cold War.
| ” |
|
