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ation from a major war as they did twice in the last century. The French and the Germans
still don't agree on many things. But now they've become too financially interdependent
to take up arms over their differences. Minimizing the possibility of an intra-European war
is
the
triumph of the EU.
When boots do hit the ground in a war, Europeans believe it's because they have failed
to prevent it. They prefer endless diplomacy to once-in-a-while war. Europe's reluct-
ance to go to war frustrates some Americans. I believe their relative pacifism is because
Europeans know the reality of war, while most Americans do not. Of course, if you have a
loved one who has fought or died in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam, you know what a war
is. But as a society, the US can't remember actually hosting a war. Europeans have told
me that they believe the US is more willing to use its military muscle because in the age
of modern warfare, no American city has ever been wiped from existence like Coventry,
Dresden, Rotterdam, or Warsaw. It's easier to feel detached when a war is something you
watch on the nightly news, rather than something that killed your grandfather or destroyed
your hometown.
Europe knows what a war is. It ripped itself to shreds twice within my grandparents'
lifetime. Consider France in World War I. France (with one-quarter as many people as we
have) lost as many people as the US lost in the entire Iraq War—over 4,400 people—in
one day…many times. They lost as many people as we lost in Vietnam (60,000) in one
month. And then it happened again and again until, by the end of World War I, an estim-
ated half of all the men in France between the ages of 15 and 30 were casualties. When
some Americans, aggravated by France's unwillingness to take up arms, call the French
“surrender monkeys,” I believe it shows their ignorance of history.
