Europe in Perspective
Signing ceremony for the Treaty of Rome, 1957
Nicholas Kulish’s article on European unity under strain at time of economic crisis is interesting reading, but the headline “Goal of Unified Europe Falters Amid Downturn” seems overblown. Any time you read about the E.U. project running into trouble, it’s always worth asking “compared to what?” It’s not as if there are tons of examples of broad multi-national unions proceeding with smooth sailing, or even that many examples of enduring multi-lateral free trade zones.
Someone sitting around in the late 1940s speculating that Europe was just doomed to endless rounds of self-destructive warfare that would inexorably grind away at the greatest accumulation of wealth on the planet wouldn’t have been making a crazy conjecture. And as recently as the early 1990s, it was common to hear that European political institutions—which were a good deal looser then than they are today—were likely to unravel absent the background of the Cold War. Indeed, in 1990 John Mearsheimer’s “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War” argued that the future of the continent would “probably not be as violent as the first 45 years of this century, but would probably be substantially more prone to violence than the past 45 years.”
Obviously, things went better than that! And nowadays though it’s not clear that there’s any feasible way for European integration to proceed much further in the short-term, it’s very hard to imagine it substantially rolling backward either.
8 Responses to “Europe in Perspective”
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August 24th, 2009 at 8:40 am
And since the universal rule about EU politics is that “the pundits are wrong”.. we will probably invade and annex marroco in three years, just because noone saw *that* coming. >.) Joking. I hope.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:53 am
the future of the continent would “probably not be as violent as the first 45 years of this century, but would probably be substantially more prone to violence than the past 45 years.”
Well, that did turn out to be kind of true. 1945-1990 saw no major wars in Europe – the closest being the Soviet invasion of Hungary. 1990 to date, on the other hand, has seen the various Yugoslavian wars and the invasion of Georgia.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:00 am
It’s worth noting that Mearsheimer’s judgment you cite above–and indeed the entire article you reference–was based on the premise that U.S. troops would be leaving the continent after having accomplished their Cold War mission. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. It seems this bears heavily on our ability to judge his conclusions.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:07 am
The title of this article is not surprising: “The EU is doomed” or “the euro is doomed” is one of the most common predictions in the press, or in academic circles. Probably because the people paying the most attention to Europe in the US are exiled British pundits and “experts”, rabidly anti-european.
But this article is hilarious in a different way: here the EU has failed and is doomed, because greedy real estate developers and incompetent bankers are not getting bailed out by European taxpayers.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Yeah, as a now-expat Briton, I fully agree that this ‘collapsing Europe’ trope is exceedingly tired. This kind of argument over greater or lesser centralisation of a political entity happens all over the place, all the time. It doesn’t spell doom, in my book – it’s a sign of maturity, no?
Anyway, what sparked me to comment was memory of Mearsheimer’s proposed solution to this inevitable post-CW collapse – nuclear proliferation throughout Europe! Good times.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
The funny thing is that most nations are actually synchronizing more and faster than ever before. The European Parliament is the most underrated institution in the world. They make laws that national parliaments are copying verbatim into law. At this rate, national sovereignty will be as much an artifact of a long past era as state sovereignty is in the US. God willing, that will lead to Europeans actually voting for their MEPs in greater numbers than Americans do in an off year school board election.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Almost anything written by English language publication cant be taken serious considering any EU related subject. Their source is usually the Uk press which is on an anti eu rage beyond any ratiohality since at least 30 years and its getting worse all the time. You might think liberals (in the usual sense of the word ) would love the EU, but British liberals twisted their minds until they hate the EU. Conservatives of course hate it anyway. So whats left pro EU is parts labour. Not exactly a strong force in publishing. In the end, this financial crisis will cause jet another push towards more EU unity. In esence the EU is a half done system, where problems of partial integration can only be solved by further integration or a step backwards. The direction so far was always more integartion, the same will be the solution this time, once London is done with the usual denial.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Oh, i see where the anti eu angle of this article is comeing from. Thats the US specific version that wants the EU to solely serve US geopolitical military games against Russia, but be to weak to do anything on their own. So they push for very fast integration of very poor countries up to the border of Russia, without any care about further integration of the existing EU members. All i can say to those people is make Mexico part of the US or shut up…