The list of threats -- besides just Baghdad -- is well known: Terrorism in imminent danger of escalating. Proliferating weapons of mass destruction. Attempted nuclear blackmail on a regional or global scale. These are genuine risks, which should bring friends together. They aren't. Something's gone wrong. It's possible that France, Russia, and Germany know something we don't know, and they're wiser and more patient than America. It's possible such wisdom is the honest, simple explanation for their opposing our urgent armed intervention in Iraq. There are, however, political and psychological factors that might also be working behind the scenes, dynamically along a multi-year timeline, and these factors deserve, nay, beg to be brought out.

Sovereign nations play rough. American foreign policy and statecraft are not the places for altruism or expectations of gratitude. The proof of this is in the trying. We helped save France's backside in two world wars. We helped Germany rebuild from ashes, and later reunite. With the Cold War won eventually, rather than punish a prostrate Russia we poured in billions in aid and investments, in the largest democracy-building experiment yet. It just so happened that Saddam invaded Kuwait right after the Soviet Union completely fell apart. Saddam was the for-sure aggressor. And riding a wave of worldwide euphoria that the USSR's Evil Empire was dead, support for liberating Kuwait was easy to get. France, Germany, and Russia didn't argue, back then. There's plenty of evidence that Saddam Hussein hasn't changed one little bit. But France, Germany, and Russia now stand against us on the subject of Iraq. What gives? Face it, folks, that post Cold War euphoria is gone. And the world since then has been anything but peaceful.

Knowledge is a form of power -- and international relations, ultimately, are often games about power. Having power, acquiring power, exercising power. In the quest for knowledge as a tool for managing alliances or fathoming policy boycotts, I want to put forth an observation that perhaps might shed some light: France, Germany, and Russia have each within living memory gone through separate-but-related terrible formative experiences that shaped their national psyches -- experiences the US of A has not been through since the War Between the States, if even then.

Can fear of war, due to suffering in former wars, cause a national neurosis, a "war denial" at the very worst time, when a new war must be fought? Can having once lived with informers and Thought Police breed in a populace survival skills of two-faced hypocrisy that linger far beyond their genuine usefulness, like a post-traumatic shock disorder? Can nations who eventually failed at maintaining global seapower understand today how critically interdependent the whole world truly is?

France, Germany, and Russia have each felt the boot of foreign occupation on some or all of their soil. Major towns and cities, from St. Lo to Berlin to Stalingrad, were turned into smoldering rubble piles by massive use of conventional arms. Body counts rose to the hundreds of thousands, then millions, then tens of millions, as soldier fought soldier while tyrants of the extreme left (Stalin) or extreme right (Hitler) turned against their own people. Today we only see the ones who lived, and their offspring. There are many "lost generations" in Europe. After such strife the living don't always fully overcome a sense of loss and vulnerability, and also of rage and guilt-driven shame.

What's it like to dwell for years with the Gestapo or KGB or Stasi (East German secret police) breathing down your back? What's it like to know how close your neck always is to a noose or a bullet? How does it feel when the only available choice is between weak-kneed collaboration, or active and life-threatening resistance? To survive, you learn to wear masks. Lying becomes an everyday habit. It can torture your mind to the point that you don't really know who you are. And you never completely get over it. The twisted world view, that chronic internalized fear, are passed to the next generation, far beyond Liberation Day. Whom can you trust? Whom can you ever believe or accept at face value? What can you even believe in anymore in this mortal life, beyond selfish short-term survival and gain?

A country surrounded by other countries, naturally, feels squeezed in. This can hurt national pride and impair a sense of security, and sometimes leads to one of two extremes: isolationism or imperialism -- that is, live in your own little sandbox, alone, or grow by grabbing the other guy's toys. A country with a seacoast, gazing out on an ocean it can't control, also must feel deep frustration. And whether "they" come by land or by sea, invasion routes onto home soil confront you from everywhere. What paranoia and anxiety this must breed on historical timescales! What realpolitik cynicism in dealings at the U.N. Security Council this broader complex of mental gyrations must cause!

The Cold War, let me suggest, is the unifying factor, a resonating prime mover that give France, Germany, and Russia cultural precursors to their thinking today. In any cataclysmic showdown, Russia faced thermonuclear annihilation by superior American troops, weapons, and command and control and intelligence. In a limited conflict along the European Central Front, Germany and France would have been battlegrounds, with untold destruction and awful bloodshed even if neither the USSR nor NATO went tactical nuclear. In the view of some in Europe, perhaps with justification, U.S. defiance to communism created such nightmarish threats. The fact that we prevailed by not buckling under to Soviet blackmail -- that America was the liberating agency of Europe -- alas with time may have led to built-up resentment and/or jealousy, not gratefulness or thanks. To admit, once the looming danger is past, that you needed outside help can be embarrassing. No country likes to lose face.

There's also a creepy parallel going on here. Does my description of Germany, France, and Russia in the bad old days sound like the society inside Iraq today? I believe it might be more than mere coincidence. Now that their post Cold War liberation euphoria is gone and forgotten, to allow their former liberators (us) to bring down Saddam's regime reminds our European acquaintances of their own past failings, weaknesses, and dependencies. I'm not saying by any means that these are the only issues involved. Just some food for thought.

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com