earthmann

Brussels Sprouts - New York Times: "At the end of the day, the Chinese would rather live with a nuclear North Korea than risk a collapsed nonnuclear North Korea, and the Europeans would rather live with a nuclear Iran - that Europe can make all kinds of money off of - rather than risk losing Iran's business to prevent it from going nuclear. The Chinese and the Europeans 'each assume that in the end, the U.S. will deter both the North Koreans and the Iranians anyway, so why worry,' Mr. Mandelbaum said.
Are the Europeans and Chinese behaving cynically? Of course, these are the very countries constantly complaining about U.S. 'hegemony,' and calling for a 'multipolar world.' Yet the only thing they are really interested in being a pole for is to oppose the U.S. - not to actually do something hard themselves to stabilize the global system."