Kishore Mahbubani
Two statements by European leaders put side by side capture the essence of the European dilemma today. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously said in 2012, “If Europe today accounts for just over 7 percent of the world’s population, produces around 25 percent of global GDP, and has to finance 50 percent of global social spending, then it’s obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life.” More recently, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, “Right now, 500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans for protection from 140 million Russians who have been unable to overcome 50 million Ukrainians for three years.”
When European leaders “bravely” decided to stand up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they also promised their people, more implicitly than explicitly: “Please don’t worry. You won’t have to make personal sacrifices. If necessary, we will borrow from future generations. We won’t cut your benefits. We won’t raise your taxes.” Just as importantly, the Europeans felt courageous because they assumed that under no circumstances would the United States ever abandon Europe. It was an assumption that showed how naive Europe’s leaders had become. They had forgotten a cardinal rule of geopolitics: Never plan against best-case scenarios; always plan against worst-case scenarios. To be fair, the person who highlighted this geopolitical naivete to me was Henry Kissinger, in a one-on-one conversation I had with him in October 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment