The emptiness of Steyn’s critique of Europe; and a thoughtful response to him on the demographics issue

In another of his faux-tough articles, entitled, “Standing small against Iran won’t work,” Mark Steyn makes fun of the Europeans for avoiding a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program, and of America for allowing the feckless Euros to take the lead on the issue with their pathetic diplomacy. But then Steyn looks at the difficulties of military action against Iran, and, guess what, he decides that he doesn’t support war against Iran either. Instead, opts for Ledeenism, that is, encouraging Iranian pro-democracy protesters in the hope that this will somehow make the regime fall and somehow lead to the end of Iran’s nuclear program.

So, the Iran regime is moving rapidly toward a nuclear capability, Steyn mocks the poltroonery of using negotiations in the face of such a threat, and, standing tall against such pusillanimity, he proposes the Pollyannish hope of democratization—as though, even if Iran became democratic, that would remove the threat of Iranian nukes.

I’m not criticizing Steyn for concluding that the military option is not practicable; that’s a complex issue, and even the experts don’t seem to be sure that an attack on Iran can succeed. What is insufferable is his deriding of the Europeans for lacking any realistic response to a threat to which he has no realistic response himself.

On another subject, here’s a conservative writer who takes Steyn’s apocalyptic message about demographics seriously while rejecting his thoughtless and self-indulgent defeatism. Matthew Stubbs writing at Real Clear Politics points out that birthrates in many Muslim countries are also below replacement level and says that even under the worst scenario, over the next 50 years Muslims will not become more than 20 percent of the European population, though he doesn’t make clear his basis for saying this. The main threat he sees is not the deterministic numbers that Steyn focuses on but increased terror and violence, leading to a European-wide civil war between Europeans and Muslims which the Muslims would lose. To avoid such a war, the Europeans can take a few simple steps:

limit Muslim immigration, export radicals who preach violence, and cut off the Saudi petrodollars financing extremism. These actions alone won’t solve the Continent’s fertility-based worker shortage problem (although this might), but should at least prevent Islamists from taking advantage.

Why didn’t it occur to Steyn to make these obvious suggestions? My view is that he didn’t make them because he doesn’t want Eruope to survive. It’s too much fun to stand on the side predicting Europe’s imminent and irreversible doom.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 22, 2006 05:15 PM | Send