Will Europe choose the Swiss model for post-Afghanistan defense?
We Europeans have to decide between the Swiss model (never war, an army of citizens only for the defense of borders) and a European army with all the trimmings and flakes, with missiles and nuclear weapons in tow. But I don't believe in the second option. Here because. The Cameo by Ruggeri
The collapse following the defeat in Kabul had at least one positive aspect. The European elite, in power for thirty years thanks to CEO capitalism, should have opened their eyes and understood that our model is not exportable, primarily in Islamic countries, all dominated by Sharia law. The much criticized / exalted Gino Strada had perfectly understood: you are accepted if you limit yourself to exporting, for free, medical-pharmaceutical skills, certainly not "democracy". Let alone your lifestyle. In the Afghanistan of the Taliban for a Westerner the only passport allowed to circulate everywhere is in fact the plasticized Emergency badge.
We spent twenty years in Afghanistan in the name of Barack Obama's nation building (it was a colossal lie, as his snack partner Joe Biden has now explained), the Americans have spent over $ 1,000 billion, I don't know how much NATO and individuals European countries, many deaths were recorded. We have equipped them with an army of 300,000 men, trained for years, yet as soon as it came to fighting the Taliban, they melted, using the sale of (our) weapons as a safe conduct. The film "Everyone at home" in Afghani sauce!
The explanation is known: we sided not with the Afghan people, but with the privileged bourgeois classes, deeply corrupt, who live by harassing the poor and these, at the time of the choice, preferred the Taliban (although they are exalted by the sharia, they say , “At least they are honest”) who have always opposed the foreign invaders, first British and Russian, and now American-European. (Word of Asad Ahmed Durrani, former head of the Pakistani Secret Service, leading expert in the Afghan-Taliban world).
There are 38 million Afghans and, with the exception of a few hundred thousand Westernized, they do not recognize themselves in our model. For example, the northern Tajiks will fight against the Taliban for the freedom of their tribes (they will soon find a compromise, they are still Muslims) certainly not for the Western lifestyle, with all its extremisms in terms of human rights. Personally, it escapes me that the human right is to destroy the statue of Christopher Columbus or the myths of classical music or the Divine Comedy, it seems to me pure cultural uselessness in the living room.
So we are reduced to negotiating with the Taliban the escape of our soldiers and their Afghan attendants. We see a handful of ultra-technological American soldiers barricaded in an airport setting up nurseries and checking in. Humanly very beautiful, but do we realize the political-moral abyss into which we have fallen?
On the other hand, in a world where everyone has always been at war with everyone, we have nobly refused war, we have put this high principle in the Constitution, we pride ourselves on seventy-year peace. It is a pity that we pretend not to know that wars have been, there are, and have been, it is the Americans who fight them, and die, on our behalf. And our arrogance has reached the point of not even wanting to pay NATO out-of-pocket expenses. The pseudo-statesman Angela Merkel has invested this money to strengthen "her" auto industry and build a private gas pipeline with "her" friend Vladimir Putin. After Kabul, the American people (65%) said enough: armed to the teeth, yes, but to defend our borders. European dodders make do. Let's take note.
The next American moves will be taken on the basis of their isolationist DNA, they will disengage from their old role as gendarme of the West. They will abandon Taiwan first and then Israel. Thus the literary prophecy of Michel Houellebecq will come true. We have already entered the digital gloom of the Sino-Californian model.
I think the time has come for us Europeans to decide: to choose between the Swiss model (never war, an army of citizens only for the defense of the borders) or to have a European army with flakes and counter-flakes, with missiles and atomic bombs in tow, with conscripts ready to die wearing the legendary boots on the ground. I write it out of professional duty, but I don't believe in the second horn of the dilemma. We are butlers, destined in a couple of generations to become a people of servants.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/leuropa-scegliera-il-modello-svizzera-per-la-difesa-post-afghanistan/ on Sun, 29 Aug 2021 05:38:08 +0000.