Der Spiegel’s interview with Henry Kissinger is full of interesting nuggets, almost all of them variations on the same theme:

The major events in European history were conducted by nation-states which developed over several hundred years. There was never a question in the mind of European populations that the state was authorized to ask for sacrifices and that the citizens had a duty to carry it out. Now the structure of the nation-state has been given up to some considerable extent in Europe. And the capacity of governments to ask for sacrifices has diminished correspondingly.

The world’s wealthiest democracies instead slide the bill across to Washington. The sheer unreality of modern “Europe” has been obscured by the willingness of America to do all the heavy lifting:

I think it is obvious that the United States cannot permanently do all the fighting for Western interests by itself… In the long run, we cannot have two categories of members in the NATO alliance: those that are willing to fight and others that are trying to be members à la carte.