Is Europe capable of defending itself against serious external or internal threat?
It must be doubtful, in large part because Europe doubts whether it has a right to do so. It once believed that it had a mission civilisatrice (a civilising mission); now it seems bent on a mission autodestructrice (a mission of self-destruction).
The disaster of the two world wars and the re-evaluation of colonial history have sapped Europe’s belief in its right to exist—or at any rate the belief of a large part of its political class and intelligentsia. Their doubts may be largely exhibitionist in nature, atonement for the sins of one’s ancestors has become a visible sign of virtue; but even insincere political declarations have their practical consequences. You cannot simultaneously claim that your past is nothing but a history of violent exploitation, and defend your civilisation against threat. You have to believe that there is something worth defending.
European countries have huge state apparatuses, but a bloated state is not the same thing as a strong state, any more than a swollen leg is a strong leg. The murder by two Islamist terrorists of a teacher in Arras, in northern France and of two Swedish tourists in Brussels, illustrates the defencelessness of Europe against internal threat.
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Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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