With European friends like these…
Tom Rogan
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The U.S. military has deployed thousands of personnel and 100 aircraft for NATO’s ongoing Air Defender 23 exercise. That exercise simulates the defense of Germany against the invasion of a capable adversary. That the U.S. is deploying so much capability here underlines its commitment to NATO, generally, and its German ally, in particular.
Regrettably, that commitment does not go both ways.
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Because as the U.S. military flies hard (and expensively) above German territory, the German government below is simultaneously throwing out the red carpet for America’s preeminent global adversary. Berlin knows that the United States may soon go to war with China to defend Taiwan. It knows that in doing so, the U.S. will likely lose thousands of its citizens. It knows this, but it doesn’t care.
Don’t take my word for it. Take the lavish German army honor guard that received Chinese Premier Li Qiang as he met Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday. The absurd irony of Americans defending German skies as German soldiers literally salute China is a stark one.
The two leaders then sat down for talks. Predictably, there was no Scholz pressure on Li to adopt a more conciliatory stance in international affairs. Instead, Scholz rather pathetically asked Li to do a little bit more to pressure Russia to end the war in Ukraine. Underlining his deep regard for Scholz’s interests, Li didn’t even mention Ukraine in his remarks. Scholz called for greater cooperation on climate change and, of course, greater market access for German corporations. Scholz’s coalition partner and foreign minister Annalena Baerbock might have some nuance in her approach toward China, but Scholz’s China policy begins and ends with trade, trade, trade.
Who can blame him? It’s easy to think only of money when the U.S. military is defending your skies free of charge and free of expectation.
It would be unfair to single out Scholz’s less-than-exacting allied credentials, however. After all, Li’s next stop is France. There, he’ll meet with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron has sent a grand total of one aircraft to Air Defender 23. Yes, the U.S. has sent 100 aircraft to train in defense of European airspace, and France has sent one. This might help explain why the Chinese are so enamored by Macron’s “strategic autonomy” doctrine for Europe. Indeed, Beijing apparatchiks now ape the term as if it were their own creation. They know its promise rests not in Macron’s false notion of European Union foreign policy and military independence from, and concurrently retained alliance with, the U.S., but rather in its promise of the EU’s separation from the U.S. alliance structure.
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That promise was best underlined when Macron used his April state visit to China essentially to state that Chinese threats to Taiwan were none of the EU’s business. Beijing knows full well that the now-underway trans-Atlantic separation would go a long way to serving Xi Jinping’s ultimate objective of replacing the U.S.-led democratic international order with a Beijing-led feudal mercantile international order.
Democratically elected leaders, Scholz and Macron are rightly entitled to whatever foreign policies they deem in the best interest of their peoples. The U.S. must respect that. What the U.S. should not do, however, is provide such generous support to allies that have no interest in reciprocity, especially when those allies are cooperating so closely with a government that is expecting and readying soon to kill Americans in the cause of tyranny.