Dysfunctional Family Business

Krauthammer asks the one remaining relevant question about France:

The question for France is whether it wants to throw away the entire reputation of the Security Council on this one, and lose whatever influence it retains on lesser issues. France must know that on an issue of supreme national security, the United States will not be deterred (any more than would France on an issue of comparable importance to France). On lesser issues, such as, say, the Arab-Israeli dispute, France can still carry weight by acting through the Security Council. Do the French want to gamble away their vestiges of global influence?

What Krauthammer forgets is, since even before the end of the Cold War, the continental nations of Western Europe have forgotten how to act in their own interests.

Some might claim otherwise, but look at the record. Does France act independently of the US? Sure. But often to the detriment of their own interests. France acts out like a spoiled teenager getting his knuckles tattooed because he knows Dad will be upset. Germany, looking for something, anything to do in the post-Cold War world, increasingly follows France