Europe: prosperous but irrelevant

[bombadillo]

In the FT:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Harry Lime’s speech – delivered by Orson Welles – at the end of the The Third Man (1949) is a great cinematic moment. It also poses an interesting choice.

For roughly 500 years, Europe was the political, cultural and economic centre of the world. But bloodshed and suffering accompanied all this power – culminating in two suicidal wars in the 20th century.

Since 1945, Europe has become increasingly prosperous, peaceful and comfortable – and irrelevant. So should a united Europe attempt to reclaim its place at the centre of world affairs? Or should we settle for comfortable irrelevance?

Europe’s political leaders think they know the answer. They are forever swearing to turn a united Europe into a new superpower. But European citizens seem unconvinced: faced with Harry Lime’s choice, most ordinary Europeans would go for the cuckoo clock option.

I thought of Harry Lime at a lunch in London recently with Kishore Mahbubani, once Singapore’s senior diplomat – and now, a far from diplomatic author. The European Union, Mr Mahbubani pronounced, is an economic superpower but a diplomatic “mini-power”. The Europeans are irrelevant to the world’s great issues, obsessed by internal process, culturally arrogant, craven in the face of the US and blind to the rise of Asia.

Perhaps aware that he might be offending his European audience, Mr Mahbubani paused and said: “Don’t get me wrong, life is sweet here.”

Well, quite. Perhaps there is a connection between the sweetness of life in modern Europe – and the fact that the EU is not a superpower and probably never will be.

Being a superpower can be a burdensome and bloody business. The US deploys troops all over the world. If the Chinese attacked Taiwan, or the Iranians mined the Strait of Hormuz, the Americans would probably get sucked in.

The Europeans, by contrast, have no military presence in either east Asia or the Gulf. There is not much of a European military to deploy – which is a source of huge frustration to the US, as it argues for more burden-sharing in Afghanistan.

Many Europeans are content with this situation. They want to keep their heads down, whatever their leaders say at international summits. When Germany extended its (limited) mandate in Afghanistan last October, the polls suggested that 70 per cent of Germans were opposed.

The conventional response to this European instinct is to argue that it is short-sighted and immoral. It is short-sighted, critics say, because there are security threats to Europe’s comfortable existence – and unless the Europeans get their act together and start doing more to defend themselves, barbarians will break in and smash up the cuckoo clocks. It is immoral because it means that comfortable and wealthy Europeans are relying on the Americans to protect them. Worse, they then assume the right to criticise their protectors for their crassness and immorality.

But it is far from clear that Europe’s passivity is either illogical or immoral. Since the end of the cold war, there has been no conventional military threat to the EU. Nobody is going to invade. Because Europeans know this, there is very little popular support for higher military spending.

Of course, there are threats to the security and prosperity of the average European: terrorism, climate change, uncontrolled immigration, demographic collapse, pandemics, energy supply. But these are not the kind of things that a “European superpower” would be well placed to deal with. What exactly is the military response to global warming or Europe’s low fertility rate?

The US has launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a “war on terror”. There are thousands of European troops in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the Americans. But although the Europeans would be loath to say so in public, it is at least arguable that involvement in Afghanistan actually increases the terrorism threat to Europe, by helping to radicalise Muslims living in Europe.

Europe’s feeble response to the Balkan wars of the 1990s is also often cited as a reason for the EU to develop greater military and diplomatic muscle. But, by the standards of the past, Europe’s response to the Balkan crisis of the 1990s was a distinct improvement.

In 1914, a Balkan crisis led to a world war. In the 1990s, the EU’s efforts to stop the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia were slow and ineffectual. But there was never any question of a Balkan conflict escalating into a wider war. There are some advantages to the semi-pacifist outlook of modern Europe.

The downside is that when an international crisis breaks out, Europeans often look like irrelevant whiners. They complain about the American response – but they are powerless to alter events themselves.

Irrelevance is not particularly dignified or noble. But it could still be the logical choice for Europe. Arguably, the EU has achieved a sort of nirvana. It is too strong to be attacked; and too weak to be asked to sort out the rest of the world’s problems. As Harry Lime might have pointed out, Europe has become a giant Switzerland.

[orieleye]

The same could be said for Japan, as it too relies on US for its defence. This is not a US paper (financial times), but the US role is crucial: European and Japanese passivity are the result of US hegemony.

[Marcus Marulus]

The question is: is it prosperous at all?

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Marulus

The question is: is it prosperous at all?

Or how long will it remain prosperous? Mass import of immigrants is the economic suicide in the medium term for any country that decides to do so. Perhaps the economic downfall will cause the sobering of the eurorats?

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Monolith

Or how long will it remain prosperous?

I am speaking about the present. Is it prosperous right now?

After the boomers, meet the children dubbed 'baby losers'

How much of Europe's apparent ostentatious wealth and prosperity is based on debts? From all parts of Europe I hear the same thing: people are overdebted, their wages are stagnating, whilst the prices are soaring. Many are working more and more only to earn less and less in real purchasing power (one member of Stirpes, from Western Europe, confirmed me that in a rep point). You have more and more lumpenproleteriat, including even people with degrees who are nevertheless unable to find jobs in correspondence with their educational level.

Prosperity?

Originally Posted by Monolith

Mass import of immigrants is the economic suicide in the medium term for any country that decides to do so.

The immigrants may be just one part of the problem.

Originally Posted by Monolith

Perhaps the economic downfall will cause the sobering of the eurorats?

Eurorats should disappear from the face of earth and not "sober up". I don't mean their physical elimination, but dismanting of their beaurocratic structures.

[bombadillo]

Originally Posted by Marulus

How much of Europe's apparent ostentatious wealth and prosperity is based on debts? From all parts of Europe I hear the same thing: people are overdebted, their wages are stagnating, whilst the prices are soaring. Many are working more and more only to earn less and less in real purchasing power (one member of Stirpes, from Western Europe, confirmed me that in a rep point). You have more and more lumpenproleteriat, including even people with degrees who are nevertheless unable to find jobs in correspondence with their educational level.

This is all correct. Europe is in the middle of a deepening crisis. The crisis is "quieter" than the one in the USA, but no less real. The rise of other powers is eclipsing Europe economically. Europe is stagnating economically and politically. Europe's bureaucrats and politicians don't help the situation but I am not sure to what extent they are culpable: perhaps this is the "structural dynamic" (or "karma") of the present moment.

The "prosperity" is relative to that of most of the rest of the world (I suppose): compared to Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Europeans are better fed and housed and have more egalitarian societies. But young people cannot find work and pay stagnates while prices rise. Perhaps I am pushing it too far to say the zeitgeist is one of quiet despair and apathy.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by bombadillo

Europe is stagnating economically and politically. Europe's bureaucrats and politicians don't help the situation but I am not sure to what extent they are culpable: perhaps this is the "structural dynamic" (or "karma") of the present moment.

Many among the beaurocrats and politicians contributed in shaping of all the dynamics of the present moment. Not only those who are in charge now, but the decision-makers of the last several decades. Of course, there were some external factors as well, which they were unable to influence in any manner.

Originally Posted by bombadillo

The "prosperity" is relative to that of most of the rest of the world (I suppose): compared to Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Europeans are better fed and housed and have more egalitarian societies. But young people cannot find work and pay stagnates while prices rise.

It may be like living in a golden cage, while being well fed and protected from cold. But it is a cage nevertheless, whether it is golden or not makes little difference, the main point being that you are trapped within it.

Those young people you are referring to might find some "comfort" thinking that after all they have the privilege not to live undernourished lives somewhere in Africa or around the delta of Mekong, but it makes absolutely no difference for their everyday lives. If they cannot live like normal human beings, pay bills, found a family, get a house, get a permanent job, but are forced to lead lives of perpetual nomads ridden with debt, if they work almost only to pay their debts and contract new ones only to secure their bare subsistence, and thus ad infinitum, what relevance does any reminding have that they should be happy for living in a "prosperous" continent? If they are slaves cought in a vicious circle of having to earn always more and more only to sustain themselves in their basic existence, any savings being out of question (except in case of a small minority of the lucky ones)? Nay, even slaves of old were treated much better. Eastern post-Communist Europe does not differ much in this respect from the Western half, except in such abstract numerical values as GDP.

Originally Posted by bombadillo

Perhaps I am pushing it too far to say the zeitgeist is one of quiet despair and apathy.

Pushing too far? No way, but this is the exact description. The despair being quiet, no revolution is to be expected but slow rotting of the society.