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I think you see it easier than it really is. There is no political unity in Europe, although we, and I mean really we here in this blog, are working on it.
Military is seen by many as a sign of national sovereignty. In eastern Europe, there are still scepticalness against Germany and as they have their sovereignty only since a short time they are reluctant to give more of it away (not to speak of UK), and they see a close relationship with the US as a counterbalance to the influence of major European countries. And despite all the talk of anti-americanism many people are very grateful to the US and don't want to disagree or disappoint them.
Finally the US can always switch the partner. GHWB promised Kohl leadership in partnership. Blair, Aznar and Berlusconi allied with GWB for the war in Iraq, and they all lost their office partially for that, but then Sarkozy in France offers an easy to go relationship with GWB. There are other reasons to vote for politicians then foreign policy, so this can't have always priority.

Kosovo is a very bad example. I think today it was false to use military. It would have been cheaper and with less cost of live and less international tensions, if one would have paid the neighbour countries of Serbia 100000 Euro per person, which they allow to immigrate from Kosovo. The problem would have been solved then. Now there are still serious problems.

Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den Menschen
Volker Pispers

by Martin (weiser.mensch(at)googlemail.com) on Fri Feb 15th, 2008 at 09:49:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Except that sponsoring large-scale, government-supported (and -encouraged) displacements of people would set a precedent that I am, to put it mildly, not sure we would want to set.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Feb 16th, 2008 at 10:11:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Government-supported (and -encouraged) displacements of people is in most of even modern history pretty much a standard procedure, and Kosovo was not at all large scale.
The precedent was that first time western nations used military enforcement to stop it, but as it was European backyard this precedent will not make too much impression on African or Asian Govs, because they will not think that the west is willing all times to interfere and rightly think, that e.g. a country like Sudan is way too big to repeat the treatment of tiny Serbia and Kosovo.

Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den Menschen
Volker Pispers
by Martin (weiser.mensch(at)googlemail.com) on Sun Feb 17th, 2008 at 07:00:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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