Peaceful, Fragile Europe

The world we've known is gone.

When my father was in his late teens, chafing that he was too young to have enlisted like his older brothers did, Nazi Germany was run to ground, and Imperial Japan was shown there were things far worse than swarms of Boeing B-29s setting urban firestorms.

He mustered out in 1950, rather than accepting a trip to Korea. I never thought to ask, but his cousin Glenn died when USS Shark torpedoed the Arisun Maru. The others who’d been to the Pacific did not see combat, SeaBees and Merchant Marines, but they’d … they knew from those who had. Delivering supplies to Tarawa meant evacuating wounded from Tarawa, that sort of thing.

Western Europe has had eighty years of prosperity and mostly peace, albeit tense at times. Eastern Europe has had thirty years of playing catch up, but they were better than the Warsaw Pact years. All of that slipped away in the last three years, because Europe’s leaders, even the old ones, only know of World War II from their parents. They should have curled up their collective fist and smashed Putin’s regime to smithereens as soon as the invasion of Ukraine started. After Estonia (2007), South Ossetia (2008), and the Donbas (2014), “Nobody could have predicted” doesn’t cut it.

Russia has spun up a full wartime economy, North Korea is contributing, and China is eyeing Taiwan. And now the U.S. is aligning with Russia … having just enough 155mm for a three day weekend exercise is not going to cut it.