Incontinent Europa

In Europe, all talk these days is of US superiority – sorry, supremacy.

Some people, most of them Viennese Freudians who practice in New York, think Europe might be suffering from a chronic castration complex brought on by decades of gutless existential neurosis.

To put it bluntly: Europe has no balls, and prefers tip-toeing around art galleries to a straight Manichean mano-e-mano fight.

If the US is a Hobbesian hawk, sweeping down on its prey, catching the world’s fieldmice in its talons and feeding them to its offspring, then Europe is a hooded Kantian kestrel that – I can’t remember the rest of the metaphor.

Nevertheless, there are those who want Europe to shed the Parisian-poodle-with-pink-bows image and start flexing its muscles. Luxembourg, for one. Europe, they say, may look like a continent of well-tailored diplomacy-obsessed culture-connoisseurs, but this belies a glorious history of warmongering.

Caesar, Nero, Napoleon, Asterix – all were European.

The plan, if that’s what it is, is to build a united Europe that rivals the domineering US both economically and militarily.

The euro will be mightier than the dollar. The mice mightier than the marines.

Or something like that, anyway.

Having won the moral victory, the incorruptible, clean-living, peace-loving statesmen of Europe (Chirac, Berlusconi, Celery Discard D’Isgusting) want to weigh-in to the heavyweight bout that is international affairs.

Rummy must be shaking in his desert boots.

I, for one, am not a fan of this new pan-European tough guy strategy. No valves in my heart will be stirred on hearing “I have a Mitterrandezvous with death” echo through Brussels’ corridors of power.

I live in Europe – well, Britain – but perhaps I’m just not European enough. Perhaps no European is European enough. Not even the French want to fight for France.

Europe has always been a suicidal continent. History shows that confronting America is suicide. I don’t like suicide. My doctor says it would be bad for my health.

Besides, I’m one of those people who can’t see why Europe should confront America. Friends of mine suggest various reasons. “We must show America that there are other solutions than military solutions,” they say. “The only way to teach them that lesson is to build a rival military power.”

Great logic, although I’ve never been a fan of European solutions.

“But what about fast food?” my friends chime. “Surely you want to stop America’s assault on our palates and waistlines?”

“Even the French can make gastronomic gaffes,” I say, unwilling to risk nuclear Armageddon for the love of foie gras.

“American culture is imperial!” my friends bark.

“I’ll take imperialism over Johnny Halliday any day,” I say.

I then alert my tormentors to the book “Who Wants an Ass-Whippin’? The Military History of the United States” by Colonel Pick Bogey Jnr. Bogey gives several reasons why rivalling America is, in his words, “a crappy idea”. I have no problem relating them to my friends.

“Remember Native Americans?” I say. “Before the advent of profitable jurisprudence, America’s plains were more Sioux than sue. Europe should heed the lesson. Stand in the way of Washington’s edicts with strange old world rituals, and, before you can say ‘How?’, you’ll be condemned to a future of mini-reservations and alcoholism – not unlike those European holiday camps.”

That gets them thinking.

“And what about the War of Independence?” I continue, rhetorically. “British forces learned the hard way that you don’t mess with America’s independent spirit and unquenchable desire to build theme parks. European colonial instincts get shattered by Washington’s troops – what more do you need to know?”

“What else have you got?” they ask.

“The Great War,” I say, though there was nothing “Great” about it. “A whole generation of young European men slaughtered for no discernable reason. If America hadn’t shown up, we’d still be in those trenches, writing poetry or impaling babies on the spikes of our Pickelhaube helmets.”

“What’s your point?” they say.

I ignore their question. “Then there’s the second world war. This is what happens when Europe gets all militaristic. In the space of a few years, the continent spews up Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin. That’s what I call an “axis of evil”. America saved the world. If you can kick Hitler’s ass, why would you be afraid of the EU?”

This is one of the weirder questions I ever asked.

“Look at Germany and Japan now!” I continue. “Do you think those crumbling wrecks are pleased they took on Uncle Sam?”

I’m starting to lose my thread.

“What about the space race? Who won that?”

“The Soviets,” my friends say, nostalgically.

“Rubbish!” I yell. “America put the first dog on the moon. America brought us the moonwalkies. America! America! America!”

“What about Vietnam?” the communists beam. “America lost that war!”

I correct them. “You think you’ve won if you’re the target of a napalm bombing campaign? I don’t want Europe to be another Vietnam! America doesn’t want Europe to be another Vietnam! No-one wants anything to be another Vietnam!”

I’m starting to rant.

“I think De Gaulle was an idiot! I don’t want to stand up to America. I want to bow at its neo-liberal altar, kneel in its hyper-power pews, marvel at its supermen. Look what it did to Saddam. America’s military spending is now fifty thousand times that of the rest of the universe put together. Luxembourg doesn’t stand a chance!”

But my friends will never listen to me. No one ever listens to me. That’s what comes of having garlic breath.