Like W S
Gilbert's cowardly policemen in The Pirates of
Penzance, Europe's prospective peacekeepers
have decided that "a policeman's lot is not a
happy one". Europe's serious exercise in
peacekeeping led to the massacre of Bosnian
Muslims at Srebrenica, when Dutch soldiers turned
over Muslims in their charge to Serb death squads.
France offers no more than 200 engineers
to join the peacekeeping force that the United
Nations Security Council has mandated as a buffer
on the Israeli-Lebanese border. The last time
French peacekeepers ventured into Lebanon, a
Hezbollah suicide bomber killed 58 paratroopers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has appealed to
Italy to lead the 15,000-strong UN force. The last
time an Italian army confronted a well-armed and
determined force in the region,
at the Ethiopian battle of Adwa in 1896, the
Italians suffered 70% casualties.
Otto von
Bismarck pronounced the Balkans unworthy of the
bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier, and
Europe's governments seem unwilling to sacrifice a
single soldier to maintain the peace in southern
Lebanon. This raises the question: What is
Europe's interest in the Middle East? The answer
appears to be: To disappear and be forgotten with
the least possible fuss.
A
people without progeny will not accept a single
military casualty. If this generation is the last,
there will be no children for whom to sacrifice.
Today's Europeans value their distractions and
amusements more than they do prospective children.
Germany's 2005 birth rate of only 8.5 per 1,000
inhabitants indicates that
Europe is following the low variant
of UN population estimates. These guarantee the
virtual disappearance of the Europeans by the end
of the present century.
Only 300 million Europeans, nearly
half of them geriatric, will remain at the end of
the present century against more than 700 million
(including all of Eastern Europe) today. Europeans
younger than 60 years of age now number about 560
million; that number will fall by only 150 million
by the year 2100. This number excludes immigrants,
overwhelmingly from the Middle East and Africa,
who show no signs of assimilating as Europeans.
The number of Americans will exceed the
number of Europeans, Russia included, by around
the year 2080, although the aggregate numbers mask
the true extent of the catastrophe, for nearly
half of Europe's survivors will have reached
retirement age. A fifth of Europeans are past 60
now; by 2050 more than a third will be above 60;
and by the end of the century nearly half. The
United States' elderly will number about 30%, so
that the number of Americans younger than 60, at
280 million, will be close to double the number of
young and working-age Europeans.
It
might be objected that Europe's demographic
catastrophe lies a generation hence, and that it
need not determine European policy today. Just the
opposite is true: it is Europe's present attitudes
that
dictate the demographic catastrophe. Europe began
to die in the 1990s when deaths outnumbered
births.
It seems unlikely that French
diplomats deceived the world by promising French
leadership and boots on the ground to enforce the
latest UN ceasefire resolution. It simply is
difficult to find volunteers to bell the cat.
From this we should conclude that the
so-called "international community" is an empty
construct. The Europeans, Russia included, are the
walking dead. Europe wants a quiet transition to
the cemetery, while Russia plays spoiler
indifferent to future consequences; whatever those
consequences might be, very few Russians will be
alive to see them. The United States is the only
superpower not because no other Western country
will have sufficient people to act like a
superpower a century hence; the United States will
have more people a century hence precisely because
Americans think and feel like citizens of a
superpower.
All that matters is the coming
confrontation between the United States and Iran.
Iran's own demographic future resembles that of
Europe more than it does the United States. By
mid-century, Iran's aged will compose nearly a
third of its population, and its population
pyramid will invert. Social and economic
catastrophe threatens Iran, persuading its present
leaders to establish a regional empire while they
still have the opportunity.
The
Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire came into effect
because Washington threatened Tehran with
something extremely unpleasant if it continued to
enrich uranium. Iran is not sure how far the
United States will go, or how it should respond,
and wants to buy time. That is why it kenneled its
dogs in southern Lebanon, at least for the moment.
Israel shrank before the number of casualties
required to neutralize Hezbollah, and was happy to
let the United States have a heart-to-heart
conversation with the dogs' master. The rest of
the matter, notably France's buffo part, is light
farce.
What happens next is entirely up to
Iran. I have predicted that Iran will remain
intransigent, for it cannot abandon its last
chance for a new Persian Empire. The Persians have
been an annoyance since the Battle of Marathon,
and it will not displease me to see them fail
again. If Iran refuses to change course, nothing
short of force of arms will keep it from building
nuclear weapons, something the US is reluctant to
employ. That would bury what is left of America's
nation-building exercise in Iraq, and possibly
throw the world economy into recession through
much higher oil prices. The two protagonists are
circling each other, while their proxy warriors -
Hezbollah and Israel - lick their wounds and
watch.
In the end, I believe the US will
attack Iran's nuclear facilities. But the outcome
is in Iranian hands. Even Nineveh repented and was
saved after hearing Jonah's prophecy that it would
be destroyed otherwise; who can tell if
Washington's threats are as potent as the
execution?
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Europe is following the low variant
of UN population estimates. These guarantee the
virtual disappearance of the Europeans by the end
of the present century. 
that
dictate the demographic catastrophe. Europe began
to die in the 1990s when deaths outnumbered
births. 
