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My interest in politics and international relations began to blossom during the late 1980s. This was a period marked by the concluding years of President Ronald Reagan’s second tenure. During this time, the Cold War loomed large, with the Soviet Union standing as a formidable adversary against the nations advocating for freedom.
However, not everyone in the free world was on the same page. Surprisingly, many leftist factions in the United States and Western Europe expressed open support for the communist ideology.
One issue that particularly irked these left-leaning groups was the Reagan administration’s strategy of expanding nuclear arsenals and deploying numerous U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles across Western Europe. A typical view from a left-wing perspective reads as follows:
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To deal with the unrelenting objection of these European lefties, the Reagan administration was finally forced to go a little soft on the communists:
To convince the Europeans that we were not the warmongers that European peace protesters were making us out to be, the Reagan Administration adopted a less confrontational policy toward the Soviet Union. Thus when the Russians shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007, brutally murdering hundreds of innocent passengers, President Reagan responded with empty rhetoric. When the Europeans issued subsidized credit to Moscow to finance the Siberian gas pipeline, Mr. Reagan backed off his earlier threats to impose sanctions against the Western Europeans. And it is Mr. Reagan who has given Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski (the Polish communist leader) undeserved international respectability – and desperately needed sub-sidized credit – by agreeing to Poland’s membership in the International Monetary Fund.
It is important to stress that the Russian communists and their allies were really bad news. I understand that on American campuses these days, and in New York City government, communism is portrayed as a beneficent philosophy that entitles “each according to their need” and rewards poor people – while punishes the evil billionaires. But this is merely the propaganda of the Left.
In reality, communism totally misunderstands human nature and creates a system where everyone except the party leadership is poor. The system has no real democracy, human rights, or freedoms for the people. Even worse, the Soviet Union was militaristic, and vowed to “bury” us, and followed through on their threats with violence and terror, sponsoring communist rebellions throughout the globe, including in Western Europe.
All of this was known by truly educated people. Yet, the lefties in Western Europe didn’t know it, or, even more disturbingly, knew it but pretended otherwise.
At the time I was observing all this chaos in Western Europe, I was a teenager, but rather “conservative” for a teenager. I was the type of teenager that obeyed the rules, came home at the appropriate hour, and didn’t get mouthy with my parents and other authority figures.
Reading about the seemingly endless Western European protests – which were as wild and crazy as modern leftist “protests” about ICE or Israel are today – the thought occurred to me: those Western Europeans voters, citizens of NATO members, were just a bunch of bratty and irresponsible teenagers. They relied on Daddy U.S. to protect them from the big bad, communist world, but they also delighted in rebelling against his authority. And they always tried to avoid any work that might be required of them.
Well, now we can see that some things never change.
With the current war against Iran, the Western Europeans are still stuck in arrested development. The Strait of Hormuz is a crucial waterway for international trade—especially Western European trade. (But not so much American trade.) The Islamic regime of Iran is lashing out at the ships sailing through the strait, as it always does when it is in danger. This is a violation of international law. It is also targeting ships that have nothing to do with the U.S.-Israeli action against Iran. Which is the exact same thing it did near the end of its war with Iraq in 1988, which prompted American action to safeguard international shipping. And so, here is what happened Thursday:
Trump has asked European and Gulf partners to take a more immediate role in ensuring passage through the strait — even threatening to exit the NATO alliance over their lack of help. Key allies have pushed back, arguing that deeper involvement in Iran must wait until the danger subsides. “This is not our war. We will not be drawn into the conflict,”British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Wednesday, stressing that the priority remains “diplomatic and political measures” to restore safe transit.
The Western Europeans are so opposed to this war that Italy, Spain, France, and the U.K. have even refused to let the U.S. use the NATO bases in their territories and/or allow the U.S. and Israel to fly over their territory. And the “cheese eating surrender monkeys” are taking their surrendering to another, even more ridiculous, level, as RedState’s Nick Arama reported this week (find the two stories linked above).
I strongly believe the U.S. should ally with nations that are capable and willing to cooperate with us. We really don’t need a bunch of unruly teenagers as allies, who rebel against us and won’t hold their own weight in the alliance.
What would you say, you do here, for NATO, Western Europeans?
Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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