20 June 2008

The US and Italy in today’s world, June 20, 2008

(Antonio Martino)

Demography

A well-known alliteration claims that in democracy demography is destiny. According to demographers a nation is moribund when the fertility rate is 1.5 or less. If that’s the case, 30 European nations are moribund. In a list of 226 countries Italy ranks 212 th with a fertility rate of 1.28. Furthermore, according to a paper circulated at the time of a UN sponsored conference on ageing in April 2002 in Madrid, Italy has the dubious privilege of having the highest percentage of people over sixty on total population, almost one Italian in four is over sixty, and the lowest participation of people over sixty in the labor force, 14% vs. 23% in the US and 45% in Japan. We are not only the western country whose population is shrinking most rapidly, we are also the oldest and the one that most considers people over sixty as being old and excluded from active participation in economic activity.

Defense

The US spend almost 4% of gdp on defense, Nato Europe slightly more than 2%, non-Nato Europe 2.8%, Italy less than 1% (0.89%). As the then secretary general of NATO, Lord Robertson, told me: “your output is admirable, your input is deplorable”. Our armed forces are in the front line in NATO and European missions, and they are contributing splendidly to our common endeavors in today’s highly dangerous world. However, it is doubtful that they’ll be able to continue doing so for a long time unless the amount of resources destined to defense is substantially increased.

Defense is not one of the many tasks of a State, defense is the State. We can have, and we have had for millennia a State without welfare, but there cannot be a State without defense. States exist basically for protecting their citizens from the violence of citizens of other sovereign countries. If they are unable to do so, their existence is not justified. Yet, political opportunism finds it convenient to cut defense spending in order to increase other, and less justified, expenditures. This is so because cuts in defense result in a cost that falls on the entire community, not on a small and organized interest group, that is not understood as such by most people and that will materialize in the future, when the need for adequate defense capabilities arises. All of Europe has been free riding on the shoulders of the American taxpayer: the substantial difference between defense spending in Nato-Europe and non-Nato Europe is revealing. Non-Nato European countries spend much more than countries belonging to the alliance because these assume that it will be up to the alliance, i.e. to the US, to take care of their defense in case of an emergency.

Not only Europe is free-riding on the US in defense, it is also totally reluctant to face its responsibilities in today’s dangerous world. As someone put it: “are Europeans willing to fight for anything, besides a welfare check?” The key word is dialogue, Europeans seem to believe that they can talk themselves out of any problem no matter how serious. Not only they expect the US to bear the burden of their defense and fight for them, they are also very vocal in criticizing American “unilateralism” and they do anything they can to obstruct American foreign initiatives which, almost invariably, benefit Europe more than the US.

Missions

The demographic trends mentioned before should be complemented by a few other figures. In 1500 Europe’s total population amounted to 40 millions, by 1900 it had increased to 400 millions. This ten-fold increase took four centuries. By contrast, in 1900 there were 140 million Muslims in the world, today they number 1.4 billions: they’ve done in a single century what took Europe 400 years to achieve. In 2020 there will be 1 billion males aged 15-29, of these 65 million will be European and 300 million Muslim. Most of these young fighting-age Muslims will be in poor countries where economic opportunities will be scarce. In the past the result of this demographic asymmetry would have been conquest. In today’s world, conquest is harder to achieve because of the advanced technology of war. Therefore, it is conceivable that the West will have to face conquest’s younger brother, terror, on a large scale. (Gunnar Heinsohn, Babies Win Wars , The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2006, p. 12)

The attack of global terror on Western civilization and modernity has already started, as we should all know well. What are Europeans doing to confront that threat? Besides blaming the US for toppling one of the most brutal and corrupt dictator “unilaterally” and refusing to share the common burden equitably in Afghanistan, not very much. Italy should resume the position it held from 2001 to 2006, restore the UN mission in Iraq to help train the Iraqis both in the reconstruction of the country and in the formation of adequate military and police forces. This will require sending more instructors in Baghdad and a contingent in Nassirya where the UN mission was supposed to take place before the Prodi government cancelled it to appease the extreme left.

In Afghanistan, all caveats should be removed as NATO has being asking for a long time, our military should be free to go where they are needed the most and to fight when necessary. They can do it at least as well as the military of all other countries. And, should NATO ask for more troops, we should meet the responsibility of being a member of the alliance. A country that does not meet its international obligations is not a great country.

As for Lebanon, in frankness I really do not understand why we are there. We are not disarming Hetzbollah as the UN has repeatedly deliberated, we are not stopping the influx of arms from Syria, yet another UN directive, and, as for supporting the democratic government of Lebanon, we have watched powerlessly the systematic murder of politicians opposed to the Syrian faction. Almost 2,500 Italian soldiers are in Lebanon exposed to the danger of finding themselves in between a resumed war between Israel and Hetzbollah, powerless targets of a war they cannot prevent. I believe that Unifil should be reconsidered and, in agreement with the UN and all countries concerned, terminated. Those Italian soldiers are needed elsewhere: Afghanistan and Iraq to begin with.

Iran

We have inherited two fundamental lessons from the 20 th century. First, the threats of a lunatic must not be ignored. Lunatic leaders often tend to mean what they say. The threats of Hitler were deadly serious. Why shouldn’t we believe Ahmadinejad when he says that “the end of days will come when the last Jew is killed”? Or that he plans to erase the Zionist entity from the map? We should be taking his words seriously, it’s not idle talk.

The second lesson is, if possible, even more important: it’s better to be prepared ahead than to have to remedy our lack of resources when the need arises. Had the English followed the advice of Churchill and rearm on time, WWII would probably have had less disastrous consequences.

How are Europeans dealing with the threat posed by Iran? Again, they seem to be convinced that talk alone will take care of the problem. In the face of an Iran which is in the process of acquiring nuclear capabilities and that has imported long range missiles from North Korea, instead of acknowledging that those missiles can reach not only Jerusalem but also Rome or Paris, Europeans try to prevent the installation of an anti-missile system the US would supply. They are courting disaster.

The future

There is no doubt in my mind that the future of Western civilization depends now more than ever on the transatlantic bond. Only a firm alliance between Europe and the US can make us look at the future without panic. Europe needs the US now more than in the past and I like to believe what most Americans think, namely that America needs Europe. This second aspect of our relationship is much less obvious than the first one and I am aware that there many Americans that are not convinced that the US needs Europe. After all, it can be argued that Europe is demographically moribund, militarily much less relevant than it was the case in the past and economically far less dynamic than it has been. If you add that European leaders tend to be rather testy in dealing with the US and reluctant to assume their share of responsibility in the field of international security, what is surprising is not that some Americans are impatient with Europe but that they are not more numerous and vocal.

I would recommend to my American friends to be tolerant of the behavior of European leaders and remember that - yes Europeans are what they are - but they are the only Europeans we’ve got!

We should never forget that we are not friends because we are allies, we are allies because we are friends. We share the same values and together, not separately, we make up the West. Italy has always been the most reliable ally of the US in continental Europe since the end of WWII (I’d rather not mention the 20 months between May 2006 and March 2008). We’ve had many governments made by all possible combinations of political parties but the relationship with the US has been a constant of our foreign policy and we’ll never forget the thousands of young Americans who have lost their life to give us back our freedom. That’s why I am confident that the friendship and cooperation between our two countries will continue to be as strong in the 21 st century as it has been in the 20 th.