Other than Britain and Poland, the rest of those European nations just refuse to get their priorities straight. "Germany and France are reluctant to contribute anything more to defeat the Taliban" the editorial says. "..a big part of the problem (with Europe) is the relative lack of military spending." it adds.
The paper points out that only France and Britain spend more than 2% of GDP on defense. Those damn Germans, the continents largest economy, only spend 1.3% of its GDP in the warfare business. The US spends twice that. And what's even more shocking is that most European countries spend more than half of their meager contribution to the American arms industry on "soldiers benefits and salaries". They're clearly not spending the money on the equipment that can transport weaponry and troops to all parts of the globe in order to defend people in Hamburg and Cologne from, say, an invasion by Argentina, Nicaragua or Botswana. How can you get anyone to Afghanistan to fight for peace if you don't buy some helicopters and cargo planes?
The editorial even goes so far as to quote mass murderer and war criminal, Henry Kissinger who admits that "European leaders are no longer able to ask their people to make major sacrifices." I wonder why that is? Might it be because Europeans are a little more familiar with the destruction that war brings?
Apart from the destruction of infrastructure, something the US pretty much avoided (And no one would wish on any population), lets look at the body count:
| Country | Military | Civilian | Total |
| Soviet Union* | 8,668,000 | 16,900,000 | 25,568,000 | |
| China | 1,324,000 | 10,000,000 | 11,324,000 | |
| Germany | 3,250,000 | 3,810,000 | 7,060,000 | |
| Poland | 850,000 | 6,000,000 | 6,850,000 | |
| Japan | 1,506,000 | 300,000 | 1,806,000 | |
| Yugoslavia | 300,000 | 1,400,000 | 1,70,000 | |
| Rumania* | 520,000 | 465,000 | 985,000 | |
| France* | 340,000 | 470,000 | 810,000 | |
| Hungary* | 750,000 | |||
| Austria | 380,000 | 145,000 | 525,000 | |
| Greece* | 520,000 | |||
| Italy | 330,000 | 80,000 | 410,000 | |
| Czechoslovakia | 400,000 | |||
| Great Britain | 326,000 | 62,000 | 388,000 | |
| USA | 295,000 | 295,000 | ||
| Holland | 14,000 | 236,000 | 250,000 | |
| Belgium | 10,000 | 75,000 | 85,000 | |
| Finland | 79,000 | 79,000 | ||
| Canada | 42,000 | 42,000 | ||
| India | 36,000 | *** | 36,000 | |
| Australia | 39,000 | 39,000 | ||
| Spain** | 12,000 | 10,000 | 22,000 | |
| Bulgaria | 19,000 | 2,000 | 21,000 | |
| New Zealand | 12,000 | 12,000 | ||
| South Africa | 9,000 | 9,000 | ||
| Norway | 5,000 | 5,000 | ||
| Denmark | 4,000 | 4,000 |
These figures do not include the wounded or three million Indians that died of famine due to the disruption of world economic activity no doubt. Source: http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/casualty.html
The culprit in all this is that Europe has built "elaborate domestic income maintenance programs" says the Journal. The shocking programs include: "government run health care, pensions and jobless benefits." And damn it, "They are expensive" says the editorial. The mouthpiece of US finance capital cannot for the life of it figure out what the their cowardly European brethren need to force them to behave right. They're an embarrassment to their class. They are joked about in the corporate board rooms and the halls of Wall Street's brokerage houses, not to mention at the love fests in Jackson Hole where they all get together to figure out how best to plunder the economy. Can't the European capitalists see that "...welfare spending has crowded out defense spending. And that, "The political imperative of health care and pensions always trumps defense spending.".
Imagine it! Health care and pensions spending "always trumps defense spending."
The Journal's readers are concerned that with all this government spending, the US is headed down what the editorial calls the same "primrose settlement path" as the Europeans. The voice of US finance capitalism is not concerned that their European brethren have a somewhat different history. That there have been working class parties in these countries that were able to force concessions from capitalism in the post second world war period. That two world wars and empire building has had an impact on the European mind. Revolutions in Germany and Spain, the great French General Strike with 10 million workers out; combine this with the loss of life, infrastructure, and a huge part of the capitalist world to Stalinism, all this has taught the European bourgeois a thing or two.
The Journal editorial conveniently links defense spending to security; military might means prosperity. The table below shows that it sure does ,for the US arms industry, and that section of the capitalist class that own it. The US is the largest arms dealer in the world and at times supplies both sides in a war like it did in the Iran/Iraq war. Sadaam Hussein, Bin Laden, Sukharno, Mobutu, the murderous Shah of Iran, Latin American dictators----these are the friends of the US arms industry.
The lack of willingness on the European's part to assist US capitalism in a re-colonization of territories many of them have been driven out of by national liberation movements enrages the Wall Street Journal. The financial collapse, seen correctly as a collapse of the US model, is the continuation of the relative decline of US imperialism's influence around the world. The rise of China has also strengthened this trend. But the US can still destroy every living thing on earth and a wounded beast is a dangerous animal.
The editorial even goes so far to attack the mouthpiece of British finance capital, the Financial Times, "Many Europeans such as those at the Financial Times, will also welcome America's relative decline." and warns the American people that to get the same sort of shocking entitlements that the Europeans get, pensions, holidays, health coverage, will mean we lose our "ability to defend ourselves at home and abroad." It's almost comical that a paper can write such rubbish after the US taxpayer has handed trillions of dollars to bankers to save their system from collapse. Talk about entitlements.
But it's nice to see our enemies squabbling among themselves.
| Supplier | Total Sales in US Dollars (billions) | Percent of total sales |
|---|---|---|
Source: Richard F. Grimmett, CRS Report for Congress; Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2001-2008  . September 4, 2009Notes: Percentages are rounded; Each country shown as follows:
If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business for further details and context. | ||
| United States |   154.882 | 41% |
| Russia | 63.823 | 17% |
| France | 31.247 | 8% |
| United Kingdom | 26.914 | 7% |
| China | 10.125 | 3% |
| Germany | 16.261 | 4% |
| Italy | 11.053 | 3% |
| Other European | 40.291 | 11% |
| Others | 22.849 | 6% |
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