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There Is Nothing New About U.S. Neutrality on the Falkands (II)

Victor Davis Hanson complains about Obama and the Falklands: More importantly, Britain has fought side by side with the U.S. — after a past century of solidarity — in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Obama insidiously is eroding that relationship by a gratuitous and uninformed effort at politically correct multiculturalism. The phony outrage over the […]

Victor Davis Hanson complains about Obama and the Falklands:

More importantly, Britain has fought side by side with the U.S. — after a past century of solidarity — in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Obama insidiously is eroding that relationship by a gratuitous and uninformed effort at politically correct multiculturalism.

The phony outrage over the recent Falklands comment is comparable to the reaction to Obama’s statement reference to “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps,” which provoked quite a lot of whining from “pro-Israel” hawks despite the fact that Obama was simply re-stating longstanding U.S. policy. In both cases, Republican hawks seem to think it is the responsibility of the U.S. government to adopt policy positions that are completely satisfactory to the most nationalist politicians and citizens in an allied or client state. Whether that position serves U.S. interests doesn’t seem to interest them. Failure to adopt such positions is then treated as a “betrayal” of the other government, which conveniently ignores that U.S. policy in both cases has been the same for decades.

U.S. neutrality on the Falklands works in favor of the status quo, which effectively endorses Britain’s sovereignty over the islands without gratuitously offending Argentina and any other Latin American governments that choose to side with Argentina (at this point this includes all of them). Cameron sought and received a pledge that the U.S. would remain neutral and would not seek to mediate the dispute. The relationship with Britain isn’t being eroded (insidiously or otherwise).

Hanson later warns about German “rearmament” (no, I’m not kidding):

Now is the time to reassure Germany that a strong American-led NATO eliminates any need for German rearmament, and that historical oddities (why is France nuclear, while a far stronger Germany is not?) are not odd at all.

In case Hanson hadn’t noticed, using its military to project power is the last thing that modern German governments want to do. President Köhler was forced to resign in 2010 after he seemed to suggest that securing German economic interests might justify the use of force overseas. Germany was the most outspoken European opponent of military intervention in Libya. Following the Fukushima meltdown, Merkel reversed her position on nuclear power, which means that Germany is not going to be interested in acquiring nuclear weapons. Its official position is more radically anti-nuclear than most other Western governments. The “German problem” as Hanson describes it here is not a real problem for the foreseeable future.

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