Europe, for the first time in hundreds of years, has become a strategic backwater. Europe is history.

Why? Europe is peaceful compared to the rest of the world.

The other foreign capitals speak for themselves as hubs of war, conflict or escalating nuclear tensions.

Cohen writes of Obama:

Since taking office, President Obama has reached out to the Muslim world as a whole, to China, to Turkey and to Iran, but has devoted scant serious diplomatic energy to Europe. In many ways, he is the first post-Atlanticist president, drawn by temperament, upbringing and circumstance to focus elsewhere.

"Europe is the object of benign U.S. neglect," said Camille Grand, a prominent Paris-based defense analyst. "Obama has not established or re-established a strategic relationship with any single European country or with Europe as a whole."

He adds, who can blame the Americans? Europe won't fight America's wars or waste more money on defense. NATO? What a joke.

I can understand the U.S. attitude: Europe is at peace and reluctant to spend on defense. Some 2,000 Dutch troops are quitting Afghanistan at a critical juncture. NATO, in search of a relevant doctrine, has become an aging experts' dilemma. France and Britain are smallish countries even if they account for 43 percent of E.U. defense spending. There are jihadis to fight and a broken American economy to fix.

But ignoring Europe is bad, because Europeans are cheap dates and used to being pushed around directed by the U.S.

With its huge debt, America needs affordable influence; Western allies are the way to find it.

If Obama and America continues to ignore Europe, Europeans may find someone else, or worse, their own way.

Coolness can be reciprocated, the benign turn malign.

Heh.