After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
Rod Dreher rounds up the hobgoblins haunting Europe's dreams of escape from the current crisis, flagging Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's remark that "Unless the European Central Bank step in very soon and on a massive scale to shore up Italy, the game is up. We will have a spectacular smash-up."
Well, that's likely to happen anyway. The most gargantuan bailouts cannot supply the one thing lacking most of all in Europe, both in the Continent at large and within most of its constituent nation-states. I refer to political authority.
Evans-Pritchard's column, strangely entitled "The Revenge of the Sovereign Nation," makes far too much of Germany's seemingly muscular imposition of its own fiscal interests on the rest of the Eurozone. By the standard of political authority, Germany is the nation least of all capable of exacting revenge. When push comes to shove -- as it must, because no financial response to Europe's unfolding catastrophe can supply citizens with a faith in the commanding legitimacy of their regimes that they do not already have -- Europeans will simply rebel politically against a "Fourth (this time economic) German Empire."
And they'll do it in the context of their own failed states. Greece, Spain, Italy, Belgium -- shouldn't we begin to think through the proposition that their structural economic woes are the consequence of the deep crisis of political authority that has gripped them all for so long?
Why Spain? Why Belgium? These are the sorts of questions to which the EU was supposed to be the answer. But the economic and fiscal mergers ushered in by the EU, as we're all discovering at the eleventh hour, can't substitute for political unity -- not when it comes to gathering citizens into a purpose and an identity that supplies them with a durable social order.
It would be exciting if Europe's failed states and crumbling economic project gave way to a decentralized, apolitical landscape akin to Peter Thiel's vision of the possibilities of post-sovereign flourishing. But this is Europe, remember. A few cities might be able to push away from the shore of Continental history. They would find themselves seasteading in an ocean of political violence.
Hard as it is to believe, the real revenge of the sovereign nation in Europe would have to entail the rise of exactly what Britain and the US have worked so dearly to prevent -- a single dominant power on the Continent. The time is now to begin thinking, far outside the box of conventional wisdom and the preconceptions behind 'respectable' opinion, about which power that will be.
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Oct '11
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
A couple of thoughts: (a) one theory is that a bunch of the economic assets will wind up being owned by the US and Asia in the coming great European restructuring, (b) these countries are becoming extinct population wise, and (c) it's the continuation of European history - empire forms and disintegrates forms and disintegrates forever but Germany is so big and rich that the next empire scheme must be lead by them.
May '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
Recently returned from a ip to Europe that spanned nine countries, I was amazed, in the context of the EU, to hear people all across the continent still speaking in nationalistic, almost tribal, terms about their own countries. I was struck by the notion that the EU seems WTO be a perfect example writ large, of liberal idealism's perpetual clash with unyielding reality. It is why liberalism doesn't work, never works, cannot work. It is contrary to reality and natural law. The only questions regard the crash: When? How big? And what gets dragged down I with it when it happens?
May '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
James, I will bet you $50 that it isn't France.
Dec '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
The six nations forming the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 50s adhered to their traditional roles—France, the centralizing administrative state; Germany, the workhorse to be kept busy, revival of its bellicosity subdued, with the Benelux states caught in the middle. While the Lombardia region was a natural fit with its steel industry, the rump of the rest of Italy was not, but was joined to it anyway because it could not be cut off.
To ensure lasting peace, they held their countries together in codependency with hard commodities, coal and steel, much like oil caused the involuntary codependency between the West and the Middle East decades later, and now, out of cruel necessity, the financial markets underwriting the welfare state hold producing and consuming countries together today.
As their economies diversified, the Europe of Six modernized and enlarged into the trading bloc of Nine, then Ten (Greece), then Twelve, all within the realm of the twin Pillars of Hercules, Germany the workhorse and France the centralizing administrative state.
Their community could have, should have stopped there. It didn’t. Now it’s pulling itself apart by the overburdening weight of its nihilistic, aging and shrinking population.
Edited on November 2, 2011 at 7:28pmOct '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
You have attributed too much, in my opinion, to a lack of accepted political authority, and too little to the other European defects that Mark Steyn limned so well in 'America Alone' and in his columns. Secularism, a too-generous welfare state, no sense of a need to spend adequately on defense, etc.
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
You're on.
And yet...it's amazing what can happen when a regime really embodies political authority. When things begin to go really poorly in Europe, the alternatives will come into very sharp relief. Those defects are real, but they are symptoms. A serious collapse of national legitimacy, awful as it may be, has the power to change the underlying cause, by pointing the way toward the once-unthinkable alternative.
Mar '11
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
It'll be Switzerland.
You laugh. They're too peaceful! Well, it wasn't always thus. The last 400 years has just been one long rope-a-dope, fooling around with chocolate and coo-coo clocks while they watch -- and wait.
One fine morning, when chaos has descended on the rest of the continent, they will rush forth from their mountain fastness, give a mighty war-yodel, and sweep all before them.
Oct '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
James Poulos-"A serious collapse of national legitimacy, awful as it may be, has the power to change the underlying cause, by pointing the way toward the once-unthinkable alternative."
That sounds ominous, as it should.
Tom Wolfe once said that "the dark night of fascism is always descending on America, but always lands on Europe." True, but why?
I think John Judis, writing in either The Atlantic or the New York(er?) offered an explanation:"In a crisis people look to the past for solutions." While America's past had the Founding Fathers, the Boston Tea Party, and the Constitution, inspiring the Tea Party movement, Europe's past yields a history of monarchs, Kaisers, Napolean, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. I fear that Europe will soon prove true to form in embracing some variation of fascism.
May '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
James Poulos
You're on.
I do think it would be useful for you to actually list the reasons- other than a belief that power flows to arrogance(?)- that you believe France to be the enduring and rising power.
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
It would. It's a growing list. Tops? No other country can hack it, even the ones we like (Poland, etc.). Next: Europe would tolerate no other country taking that position (Germany? Never Again.) Then: France has a functional independent military and sometimes enjoys using it. Also: Britain, which might otherwise be a bizarro-world candidate for leader of Europe, is spiraling into complete uselessness, focusing its near-abroad foreign policy on tightening bilateral military cooperation with...France.
While most of Europe struggles at best to grapple with the challenge of Islamization, France understands on some root level that policy cannot escape the unpleasant tradeoffs involved. While most of Europe slips into amnesia and reflexive shame over its chauvinisms and parochialisms, with isolated pockets opting instead for reactionary belligerence, France often manages to pair national pride with public order.
But most of all, France offers Europe a new founding grounded in highly particular AND highly universal claims, the magic combo for the USA.
Apr '11
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
Fwiw, I also think that the French have the mentality to build a superpower in a way that I can't see for other Eurozone countries. They have a much less compromised patriotism than any of the other wealthy countries. Poland seems like the next candidate, and I guess I'm more bullish on the Poles than James, but while there is a lot of growth going on, they'll need a heck of a lot more before they start to compete economically and/ or militarily with the big western countries.
France under Hollande may seem less super, though.
May '10
Re: After Europe's Failed States, A New Superpower?
James Poulos
...................But most of all, France offers Europe a new founding grounded in highly particular AND highly universal claims, the magic combo for the USA. · Nov 3 at 10:20am
All perfectly valid reasons for believing that France has a good chance- perhaps the best chance on the continent- to survive the implosion of the EU and dig itself out to be a viable country again, if they get over the extended Summer holiday habit. And they at least do a better job of avoiding first dollar health "insurance" than we do.
And they enjoy some blessings similar to the US, such as a viable agricultural capability so that much food production (unlike Germany) can be done in-country.
But I still do not see any meaningful probability of its emergence as a "superpower" in any rational or meaningful definition of the term. One-eyed myopic in a cluster of blind nations, perhaps. Not superpower.