Global Leadership Vacuum: Europe Incapable, America Unwilling

[sysop]

US Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Germany this week in an effort to strengthen trans-Atlantic relations. Global politics have come to a standstill in recent years, with the United States unwilling to show leadership and Europe and other major powers unable to fill the vacuum.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-880945.html

[thatcher]

The US has been very upfront about a shift in their primary concerns for the past 10 yrs. We are looking East and designing a military and alliance for the Pacific. Europe is no longer under threat from the soviets. There is no reason why our efforts should be toward defending Europe. That redirection has been going on for sometime now. NATO is not what it was. There is no reason to spend money and time on it. On the other hand India, Japan, and China are emerging as a theater of operation.
There are no permanent alliances. That doctrine was announced early on in Bush 11 first term but it had been building since t
The Wall fell. It's been a bipartisan policy and surely the Europeans know about it because it has been a staple of US think tanks and newspaper articles for years. There is no reason to pick-up European defense costs anymore.

[SHBasse]

As long as the US and EU could see globe as essentially belonging to them they were motivated to shape global development.
Wars like the ones in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were started and shaped by domestic US policy. Such escapism is too expensive for the US today!
Although nobody is willing to fundamentally change course, the leaders of the old industrialized countries has grasped that the good old times have gone forever and they are trying to act accordingly.
The big question is whether we should accept a gradual decline or we shall fight back!
There exists a way out of the mess:
"A single algorithm can save the western world"
http://unifiedscience2.blogspot.com/...ern-world.html

[kunstler78]

Europeans are cowards. The USA only kept leadership due to it's gun wielding barbarism. Europeans are too cowardly to even deal with Americans, so obviously they cant be world leaders either. The real question is why do we need a global leader? It sounds really stupid to talk about Global leadership. Only cowards want a global leader.

[kunstler78]

maybe the German folk are actually a race of cowards? It would seem so. Hitler was a coward also. He screamed his bitter personal fear onto the masses. The cowardly germans followed him, always looking for geld along the way. That would be a good description of Northern Europeans in general:

"Cowards in Search of Money"

Translate it into latin and keep it as the motto of modern europe.

[stefanstackhouse]

The US simply cannot afford to continue being the world's policeman. A long-term downsizing of US overseas commitments and deployments is already underway and will be continuing for at least a decade. At the end of this will be a complete US disengagement on the Afro-Eurasian mainland, and the redeployment of downsized US forces behind a more compact maritime defense perimeter. The US will be going back to the same strategic posture it had before the first World War: hegemony over the Americas and the Pacific, neutrality and disengagement with the rest of the world. Anything more than that is not really necessary for US national security.

As for the rest of the world: get used to it. This is the way it is going to be from here on out. Europe, in particular, is going to have to make some difficult decisions about how much it really needs to defend itself, and about how much places like Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia matter to it and are worth the cost of intervention.

[venze]

Truly so, Europe is incapable to take on global leadership while the US appears unwilling.
Perhaps the leadership vacancy can be filled by Russia or China. Former superpower Russia may wish to give it a try again, but China may not be matured enough as yet or ready to assume the role at the moment.
Let the vacuum be, after all, is there really a necessity to have a world police? (vzc1943, btt1943)

[AndyIndiana]

I started reading Der Spiegel because I was curious on the European viewpoint. I am shocked at the degree to which Der Spiegel reads like an Obama campaign advertisement. Everything surrounding Obama is wonderful, everything surrounding the "Republicans" is bad. This is such shallow and immature analysis. Don't European magazines have to at least feign objectivity?

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the USA is a country in decline, and this is the reason that it is withdrawing from a leadership role. I must warn my European friends that Der Spiegel's past analyses have been incorrect. The primary reason for the decline of the USA is that it is descending into various "interest groups" that care only about their narrow interests and care nothing for their fellow citizens or the nation as a whole. Multiculturalism is proving disastrous for the USA. Their is no sense of brotherhood, no sense of common shared culture. The US is becoming Balkanized and Obama only feeds off of it. He plays one group of people against another group in order to get votes. He promises largesse for the groups that support him, he buys their votes using government money. I doubt that this is reported much in your obviously biased press.

[KhanZubair]

The article concluded, "Indeed, rather than making progress, it is much more likely that the world will shift into reverse. Europe isn't in a position to provide decisive leadership. And the US doesn't want to anymore".
Above is factual sentence. Leadership emerges on the planet to achieve some high visioned goals. Economically and technically USA and Europe already achieved the maximum. Masses of both the entities are enjoying life much better relative to the masses elsewhere in the world. Humanity as whole however is suffering in Africa and Asia. Service to man kind is the high visioned goal which still searching real global leader. Since politically and economically oriented leadership of USA and Europe has restricted its vision to the welfafe of its own people as such this vacuum has emerged. Braoden the vision and start considering the welfare of whole mankind the vacuum will disappear.

[stephenreal]

Our European allies need to solve their near intractable Euro-crisis problem.

The UK should not commit diplomatic and economic seppuku by falling on the sword of nationalism (anti-immigration fervor) with this 'roll of the dice' purely cynical, high risk referendum of 2017.

America is relying on our German(European) partners to forge a stronger security alliance (especially on cyber security) between our nations.

I've invested a lot of money (bonds/stocks) through my banker in Frankfurt and London. Money seeks security and so do I. (When Frankfurt speaks? You better believe I listen.)

As we, in America, scale back our defense budget cooperation with Europe (across the board) has become a key American national security core interest in my opinion.

A stronger Europe is a must. Do not go wobbly on me Germans.