Grayest Cowards

Now, some people will object to my terming the coming Europe to be a tribe of gray-haired cowards, but I think with the incredible declining birth rate and so its loss of a warrior generation (15-29) will compel Europe to become an appeaser "nation," especially when confronted by nations or alliance such as the Arab world who have 10 times the population. This is a situation where Europe will looking increasing to the USA for it's security or abrogate it all together, and become an community of Neville Chamberlain.

Some facts (cribbed from other sources) to explain my position...

Europe is depopulating itself at a rate not seen since the Black Plague of the Dark Ages. Its birthrate is the lowest ever recorded during peacetime for any continent. Its fertility rate is less than three-fourths that required to sustain long-term replacement levels. For example, Italy’s total fertility rate (TFR) is 1.2, the lowest figure ever recorded for a nation. At this rate, by 2020 for every child in Italy under the age of five in Bologna there will be twenty-five people over the age of fifty—and ten of them will be over eighty. In Germany the death rate continues to surpass the birthrate, leading to comments that it is becoming “the world’s nursing home.” Astonishingly, as recently as 2005, fewer babies were born in Germany than in 1945, the last year of World War II. Europe’s demographic profile clearly portends significant problems for its member states’ ability to field military forces. To be sure, the EU could still field larger military forces, but the opportunity costs are formidable and substantially greater than those incurred by the United States.

Now, as has been said by smarter men than me, this speaks to a more fundamental issue regarding these countries’ societal values. As one demographer put it, “If they [the Europeans] are unwilling to sacrifice for something as concrete as children, how likely are they to regard something as abstract as duty to their countries?”

Nor is the problem recent in its origin. It has been decades in the making. A 2005 report issued by the European Defense Agency concluded that the European Union’s declining population would produce a serious manpower shortage within the next two decades, forcing governments to decrease the size of their militaries.

Making matters worse, Europe’s military manpower is shrinking just as populations in neighboring Islamic states have exploded. In just 100 years the world’s Muslim population has skyrocketed from 140 million to 1.4 billion. By 2020, there will be one billion “fighting-age” men (ages fifteen to twenty-nine) worldwide, yet only 65 million of them will be Europeans. At that time, the Muslim world will have 300 million such males, many with few prospects for satisfying employment. Europe’s share of the world’s fighting-age males, which was 27 percent in 1914, is now at 9 percent and falling.

So where will Europe's warriors come from? Where will its armies draw themselves from? Who will defend their freedoms and social systems?

Europeans have given no thought to this at all. Perhaps, as the Americans and our thoughtlessness on the subject of indebtedness, Europeans have given insufficient thought to the perilous question of who defends the country you've spent generations building? Not to sound trite but Rome fielded soldier after soldier in the defense of its nation and culture and it still had difficult clinging to life. America and it's "empire" maybe in a similar situation. But Europe will give up the ghost far earlier and far more painful and far more tragically than USA ever will. I fear Europe will have to appease and appease endless until there is nothing left of this once great continent.

It maybe a bit dramatic to say, but I believe it is better to die on your feet, than live on your knees. I see the future here to be a future that Neville Chamberlain would have been proud of.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad