June 11, 2004

The View From London

George Miller's new London Calling blog compares the contributions of the Soviet army and the other allies in defeating the Nazis, and remarks that the fact that the Soviets killed 3 million German soldiers while the rest of the allies killed just 200,000, says something good about democracies:

All this statistic does is highlight the barbarity of the Red Army in comparison with the restraint, technological superiority and better planning of the Western Allies. Surely, for a democracy, as is the case in Iraq today, the central strategy of warfare is to minimize the suffering of your enemy, even as you defeat him. A democracy at war carries with it the hope that today’s enemy will become tomorrow’s democratic ally and friend – Democracies do not conquer in order to enslave, as Stalinist Russia did.

And if the European superState is to be a counterweight to the United States of America, it is not at all obvious why Britain would support such a project. I know instinctively that such thinking is a non-starter for Britain. This isn't because I am an Anglo-Saxon American and have an instinctive cultural affinity with the British people. It is because Europe as counterweight to America is not a British policy and never has been. It has very weak roots in British history, society, and its traditions of political thought. The counterweight policy is almost solely a product of French history and foreign policy. And there's nothing wrong in that. But it would be odd, to say the least, for Britain to adopt France's foreign policy.