Word: europeanizing
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...Peaceful Continent In a bitter irony, it is one of modern Europe's most cherished convictions - that the force of arms rarely settles political disputes for long - that inhibits it from being a more powerful player. European nations have sent thousands of young men and women to fight the Taliban, but the memory of the 20th century means European public opinion seems unwilling to commit to the war in Afghanistan for the long haul. On Feb. 20, the Dutch coalition government collapsed because of a dispute over when to end the country's deployment. The German government faces enormous domestic...
...demilitarization of Europe - where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it - has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st." Plenty of European diplomats would agree with him. After the speech one diplomat spoke of an "inertia" among Europeans when confronted with novel threats. "We have to explain to our own public opinion," he said, "the world we live in." (Read: "What is Robert Gates Really Fighting...
...whose President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been active on issues from the Georgia war of 2008 to the consequences of a nuclear Iran. But the E.U.'s largest state is absent from most such debates. For the last half of the 20th century, Germany was at the heart of the European experiment. But since the end of the Cold War, it has stepped back from the E.U., regularly taking a different path when Europe attempted a unified policy (notably during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009), and strengthening ties with Russia, to the chagrin of Britain and France. "Behind...
...notice the failure of the E.U. to find a single voice. China, for example, has become skilled at playing the E.U.'s individual members off against each other. "There is a complete absence of a strategic debate in Europe about China," says Daniel Korski, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Instead of tackling that failing - an obvious priority for this century - Europe has spent much of the past few months obsessing over how Washington views it. Obama has visited Europe six times since taking office, and made just one trip to China. But the U.S. President...
...contemplate the future, leaders of the E.U. can no longer avoid the hard question: Is a common foreign policy what its member states - and their domestic political constituencies - really want? If it isn't, then the rest of the world can adjust its expectations accordingly. If it is, then Europeans can start the real work of public diplomacy, speaking out for their asserted virtues of tolerance, compromise and liberality, not in a condescending way, but in one that explains how the world's true dark continent in the 20th century found a path to peace. And the E.U. could work...