Security for NATO members. Balance? Not so much.
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since WW2 we have been the only country able to do it. Either its us or smaller countries start arming themsevles. Good idea?
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Yes, in effect, the USA assures the European balance of power. In so doing, assuring the security of the various states of Europe. This then reinforcing the balance.
To oversimplify European history a bit. It was basically a zero sum game among the great powers of Europe. (Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Italy and for a time Spain, Portugal, and the Austro--Hungarian Empire as well as the Ottoman Empire at the periphery.)
Each was more or less equal and each felt more or less insecure. As was said of Germany by Henry Kissinger, could be said of almost all the major states of Europe. They were too strong to not feel threatening to each other yet too weak to assure their own security absent the support of allies.
The result was a series of shifting alliances whose membership changed over time but whose purpose was to assure the security of their member states. Yet the problem was that even the members of these alliances did not necessarily trust each other and had competing interests that made their alliances largely ones of convenience and thus temporary.
Thus, while Britain wanted to assure France against Germany, it also wanted to steer clear of entangling alliances on the continent unless the balance of power was directly threatened. Thus Italy as the weakest of the great powers, tended to side with the alliance it perceived as stronger and thus better able to secure its interests.
As to France and Russia, they were able to balance each other off by playing off the various Italian and Germanic - especially the latter - states. However, when Italy and Germany unified, they became great powers in their own right and this made it harder for France and Russia to secure their interests. Thus binding them together in alliances during the world wars - until Germany was divided in 1945, at which point France and the USSR (Russia) took opposing positions toward each other again.
What stabilized this shifting kaleidoscope of alliances was the United States. A continental sized country with a large population, sophisticated armed forces a huge economy and, most of all, no particular security interests in Europe beyond assuring that Europe was not dominated by a single power.
Each European state had no particular reason - at an existential level - to fear the United States. Thus the USA could guarantee the stability of the continent because it posed no threat to the specific strategic interests of any individual state in Europe.
Even in ideological contests like the Second World War and the Cold War, the USA offered a counter-ideology that acted as a counterweight to world conquering ideologies like National Socialism, Fascism and Communism. Indeed, in the case of World War II, once the USA was drawn into the fight, it proffered a new vision of Europe that allowed each state to retain its autonomy while being held together by economic interdependence.
To be sure, the recent strains within the European Union seem to suggest the limits of that American vision to peoples of Europe with their own proud histories. The individual interests of the states of Europe were not facile and remain latent within the states of Europe. However, the American security assurances to the states of Europe assure that their interests will, if not fully satisfied, will at least not be existentially threatened - and where they are, the USA will step in to protect those interests. The USA having no interests in Europe of its own beyond a stable and prosperous continent.
So, long story short, the USA is what assures the European balance. Take the USA out and aggressive states like Russia will move, and the other great powers will either form counter-alliances or seek to cut deals with Russia at the expense of the other European powers.
Maybe, but it's not because they care about Europeans. It's a means to their own ends. I don't think the United States or Americans give a shit about any other country besides their own.
Someone on here said so. I'd not heard that one before but it's an interesting slant.
What european balance
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I don’t understand.I wouldn’t count on the US right now.
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Anal
What balance?
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