Ian Buruma, professor of human rights at Bard College, writes in the Los Angeles Times:

West Europeans after World War II drew conclusions that were closer to Chamberlain’s thinking in 1938 than Churchill’s. After two catastrophic wars, Europeans decided to build institutions that would make military conflict redundant. Henceforth, diplomacy, compromise and shared sovereignty would be the norm, and romantic nationalism based on military prowess would be a thing of the past.[…]

In the United States, meanwhile, Munich has had a very different resonance. Here it has fed the Churchillian illusions of many a “war president,” men who dreamed of going down in history as the heroic defenders of freedom against tyranny. Munich has been invoked over and over to explain why we had to stop communism, to stop Saddam Hussein, and why we have to stop Iran and “terrorism.”

Buruma writes that European tendencies, coupled with their reliance on American power made the alliance “incoherent.” It is time for Europe, he writes, to make up its mind:

They can remain dependent on the protection of the U.S. and stop complaining, or they can develop the capacity to defend Europe, however they wish to define it, themselves. The first option may not be feasible for very much longer in the twilight days of Pax Americana. And the second will be expensive and risky. Given the many divisions inside the EU, Europeans will probably just muddle on until a serious crisis forces them to act, by which time it could well be too late.

The Georgian crisis serves to highlight the problem Buruma analyzes, as the New York Times demonstrated in its uncharacteristically aggressive editorial two days ago:

The European Union is divided between the desperately frightened and the myopically complacent. In the first group are former Soviet satellites, like Poland and the Baltic states, which have earned their fear, joined by Britain. In the second are Germany, Italy and France (Mr. Sarkozy is the exception), which have put trade and a thirst for Russian energy ahead of everything else.

If the second group believes that they are somehow immune – because of history or geography – from Moscow’s bullying, then they should take another look at their dependence on Russian energy supplies.

The New York Times‘s – not COMMENTARY’s – conclusion: More complacency will only feed Russia’s ambitions.

Wow. Will Europe take note?