The Greatest Risk to World Security is a Confused Europe which sees USA as Stability Threat

Europe Relies Substantially on the USA for its Security

Modern prosperous Europe is the result of two key developments:

1) the economic and political policies implemented in Europe by the United States and its allies at the end of World War II
and
2) the military security which the United States has provided to Europe for the now more than 60 years since the end of that war.

But Europeans Erroneously View the USA as the Major Threat to Their Security

One now nevertheless reads - with incredulity - in the EU Observer, that an FT/Harris opinion poll shows that the United States is currently viewed by Europeans to be the greatest threat to world stability - the very same world stability which that same United States guarantees and without which the world - especially Europe - would be in a state of hopeless and violent chaos.

As Renata Goldirova writes in the EU Observer:

"According to an FT/Harris Poll published on Monday (2 July), 32 percent of Europeans – coming from Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain – labelled the US a bigger threat than any other state, with the Spaniards (46 percent) most critical."

How is it possible that Europeans view the United States in this erroneous manner?

Europe and the Balkans

World War I began in the Balkans. The current festering situation in the Balkans (Europe's Goals, America's Troops) is just one example of a situation, which - without recent intervention - would surely have escalated into a larger European war. As it turned out, only the use of force by the USA's alter ego NATO returned the region to an uneasy peace - and in this case it was Bill Clinton and not George Bush who was instrumental in exercising the role of the United States as the policeman of the world.

A Long-Term Understanding of World History is Lacking, Despite the Internet

In spite of the unprecedented amount of information available to the masses in the digital age, the reporting of current events concentrates on ephemeral and serendipity sensationalistic events of the day. A long-term understanding of the present state of the world is not always apparent among the members of Congress, among the general populace and among mainstream news sources.

The average man is swept like a leaf by news of the moment regarding problems in Iraq, Iran and in the Middle East, rather than by the long-term planning, strategy and tactics which are required for successful foreign relations. CNN and similar news media do not give us a true view of the world. Rather, they focus on selected commercially salable and often biased glimpses of that world.

Furthermore, our leading politicians are hardly experts on foreign affairs in the long term. What does someone like Hilary Clinton or the mass of her potential voters know about world history and about the forces that have forged that history? And yet, Hilary has a good chance to be elected the next President of the United States and to run American foreign affairs simply because she is a popular candidate, but not of course because she has any innate understanding of the essentials of the balance of world power.

We live in dangerous times. When Europeans do not know who their friends really are, then gains by their enemies are to be expected until the truth is found.