Ruling out Britain and who als could contribute to safeguard the Frankish ambitions of independent Euro-forces: Turkey (once in the EU club)!

And yes, even as a Spaniard I reckon that the present situation is not the best, and that the changes that are maybe about to be may be in our benefit, and a lot, if not most Spaniards think in this way.

DSW

DSW

It’s sort of like the Franco-German axis insisting that, as France and Germany have the largest combined economies, their bankers should be head of the central bank, and their nations should receive majority representation in the European Union.

“Most Americans I know wish Europe was more of an equal partner.”

The US could start by placing its troops under European command every now and then, instead of insisting that C&C of all joint NATO operations be under its exclusive control. European nations ponying up more money and troops to be placed exclusively under US command is not progress towards an “equal partnership” in any sense of the word.

This is at sharp odds with the image carefully fed to the US public, of course, about ungrateful Europeans unwilling to defend themselves.

The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Most Americans I know wish Europe was more of an equal partner. Europeans having larger militaries has nothing whatsoever to do with Europe creating its own faction in NATO. You could fund armies that contribute more to NATO, but you don’t. Your belief that having a better-funded military necessarily means factionalizing NATO is specious.

As for the deal with Iran, most Americans I know scoffed. There’s no enforcement mechanism. This will be about as succesful as the deal with Hiter was. The deal with North Korea was.

As to efforts to curb Iran, while I applaud European efforts on this, I think that European media has overplayed the significance of the agreement. The treaty is still remarkably loose, and fails to incorporate the cornerstone of successful US-USSR nuclear treaties: trust, but verify.

Until Iran grants complete, surprise-inspection access to its nuclear facilities, all of Europe’s efforts have been in vain.

Let us not forget that the overriding concern is not US action against Iran, but Israeli action: specifically, an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In fact, the European diplomatic effort failed in this respect: instead of basking in the glare of European media, the Euro diplomats should have followed up with an overture to Israel - and convinced them that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are not a threat.

An opportunity was missed to bring Israel into the process, and to bring Europe and Israel closer together, thus increasing Europe’s influence in the Middle East. Yet, curiously - or not so curiously, if we take European anti-Semitism into account - no effort was made in this direction.

Thus, given the lack of effort Europe has shown for Israeli relations, the one entity that can bring their foreign policy initiative tumbling down… is still left with wide room for manoeuver.

(a) It eventually came out that the $67B wasn’t actually needed just yet.
(b) the $20B is well below the estimate the U.N. made of what was needed. And no one realistically expected the rest of the world to be able to fully fund the difference.

To spell out what this implies about the priorities:
(a) The effort to crush the Iraqis will be fully funded, no questions asked because we Must Support Our Troops…
(b) The effort to rebuild Iraq is only for show. As political cover. (”it’s not our fault the reconstruction is underfunded, those greedy Europeans didn’t contribute enough”, even though Iraq is the U.S.’s responsibility, not Europe’s)

I must say I am puzzled by Doug’s puzzlement.