I am European, which means I’ve lived most of my life under the soft glow of American largesse. Not just through the Marshall Plan that rebuilt what we managed to burn to ashes, but through decades of the United States silently underwriting the global order. While America patrolled the world, Europe spent its money building elaborate welfare states—sometimes wisely, often indulgently—and convinced itself that history had finally retired, settled down, and taken up gardening.
And that illusion is the real narcotic. We’ve grown accustomed to the idea that the good times are permanent, that safety is the default setting of civilization rather than a fragile condition maintained by those willing to bleed for it. My mother will soon turn 82. She technically “lived through” the war, but she remembers none of it; she was too young to retain the terror. And those who do remember are nearly gone. The last living bridges to the raw lessons of catastrophe are fading away, and with them the visceral understanding of how quickly everything can fall apart. The memory has not just softened—it has evaporated.
History is merciless. The tree of freedom does not thrive on speeches, hashtags, or moral posturing. It survives on sacrifice. It survives on the willingness of real people to suffer, to bleed, to destroy and endure destruction in the service of something larger than their comfort. That truth is ugly, brutal, and deeply human. We can continue pretending that humans are naturally good, that evil is a strange glitch in an otherwise benevolent system, and that peace is simply what happens when everyone behaves nicely. Or we can accept the harsher reality: evil exists, it organizes, it plans, and it must be confronted on its own terms.The new American security doctrine puts America first. Good. Why shouldn’t it? The age of Europe being permanently babysat is ending, and frankly, it’s long overdue. Europe now has to pick up the wreckage of its neglected security structure, face the world as it actually is rather than as we wish it to be, and take responsibility for its own survival. It is long past time to grow up.
https://tilakdoshi.substack.com/p/americas-new-security-doctrine-and