Pat Buchanan, yes, Pat Buchanan, had a sensible, persuasive essay on Friday (“The Sun Sets on the West”) on the demise of European responsibility, and with it the decline of NATO (e.g., “Sixty years after World War II, 15 years after the Cold War, Europe’s defense should become Europe’s responsibility.”)

I wrote something to the same effect once, in Commentary. His similar point is that not only is the U.S. shouldering the collective defense burden of the West, but, by doing so, is only empowering (I think the psychologists called it the enabler syndrome) the European tendencies for unfunded entitlements, along with its other unaddressed time-bombs-from unassimilated minorities and an aging, declining population, to cozing up to odious dictators. And the ennervation of NATO comes at a time when the EU3 talks with Iran failed, when anti-American hysteria is whipped up weekly by the German media, when Europeans decry American methods to apprehend terrorists they privately approve of, when the EU is Iran’s biggest trading partner (Austria purportedly selling sniping rifles that end up in Iraq), and when Paris or Berlin may soon be in range of Iranian nuclear missiles.

What baffles me, though, is why Buchanan would ever write such a thing when his own American Conservative magazine has long accused anyone — as Buchanan did Friday — of questioning European resolve and Western European solidarity, as being neocon conspirators and Israeli apologists (cf. ).