Here is a guy that's a post-doctoral fellow, giving advice
to the Europeans in an essay that rambles on and on to end up saying nothing of
substance.
He is Elmar Hellendoorn who wrote: “A Call for Realism in
Europe,” an article that also came under the subtitle: “If Europe
wants to secure its fate, then it will have to balance European idealism with a
renewed realism.” The article was published on May 27, 2018 in the National
Interest.
Writing a piece like this, you don't have to start by
saying: Here is my definition of “realism.” Here is my definition of
“idealism.” Here is how I see the Europeans define realism and idealism. Here
is where they are wrong because here is how the real world looks to me. And
here is the part that the Europeans do not seem to understand in my estimation.
No, you don't have to do that, but all of these concepts
must come out with the development of your argument, no matter which way you
choose to tackle the discussion. Unfortunately, however, Elmar Hellendoorn
didn't do that. What he did is hint that the idealism of the Europeans emanates
from a belief that human nature is fundamentally good despite the fact that
there was a Hitler and a Stalin in their past, which should have alerted them
to the realism they choose to ignore. And the writer expects the reader to
interpret and to understand everything he stuffed in his essay, through that
point of view.
Also, given that Hellendoorn makes it clear any threat to
Europe will come from China and/or Russia; perhaps even the instability of the
Middle East, he does not explain what form the threats might take that could
endanger the fate of Europe, no less. And he does not explain why European
idealism will fail to stop or mitigate such threat whereas a renewed realism
would.
Reading the article you cannot help but conclude that the
writer has amassed a number of vague ideas about the history of the planet
since the middle of the Twentieth Century, and patched them together to make
his work sound like a theory that says something substantial … which it does
not. He then went on to offer the concoction as a gift to the Europeans, hoping
this will give it the importance it does not have. So we must ask the question:
What is Hellendoorn missing? And why is it that his entire generation of
analysts seems incapable of putting together a piece that makes sense?
To answer that question, we need to know how those of us who
lived through the Cold War view the current situation, and contrast it against what
the younger generation sees. The prevailing point of view at the time was that
the Soviet Union was about to collapse, and
when this happens, the evil Communists will lash at the world and doom all of
us. But when the Soviet Empire collapsed, and the Russians turned out to be no
evil ogres bent on hurting humanity, we had a period of detente that was truly
a pleasant interlude filled with hope. But things gradually deteriorated
between East and West, and yet those of us who tasted the pleasantness of the
interlude, refuse to believe that the Russians suddenly turned into the evil
ogres we used to think they were but proved not to be. We remain optimistic.
As to the younger generation which studies the history of
the Cold War by reading papers that were written at the time, and compare the
impressions they accumulate against what they see happening today, they miss
the pleasant interlude that told our generation the Russians are not ogres bent
on doing evil. In fact, those of the younger generation don't even know there
was such an interlude. Instead, they see a continuum of pessimism stretching
from the Cold War era to the present, and they respond the way that the hawks
of yesteryear used to.
The worry is that the effect of this kind of thinking is proving
to be similar to the influence of Winston Churchill whose unflattering
pronouncements about the Soviet Union encouraged America to arm itself and start the
Cold War. Slowly but surely, America
is being sucked into a warlike vortex, causing it to restart of the Cold War.
In turn, this is forcing China
and Russia
to do likewise, and before you know it we'll live through an era of arms race
that may not end as well as the previous.