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The Diplomatic European Superpower
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| Yoepus |
read here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/view.html?pg=4
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Barbarians at the Gate
Europe wants to be the other superpower. There are just four problems.
By Bruce Sterling
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In April, while the US was loudly conquering Iraq, the world's weirdest empire quietly swallowed 10 countries. In the ancient shadow of the Acropolis, the European Union expanded from 15 nations to 25, opening its gates to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the island of Malta, and the schizoid mess that is Cyprus. Someday, "Europe" might extend all the way to Japan.
What's the EU's secret for transcending nationalism? Infrastructure. April's 4,900-page Treaty of Accession is all about railroads, smokestacks, trademarks, livestock, fertilizer, cosmetics, glassware, footwear - everything it will take to level the playing field across a consumer population of 450 million people. Life is bound to improve for the new members, from Polish newspaper editors who once feared for their lives to black-lunged Czechoslovakian miners. Celebration is in order, and mankind should rejoice.
EMEK
No silver lining comes without a cloud, though, and Europe faces severe challenges. First and foremost, it lacks a real government. Managing Europe by remote control through 15 national authorities was unwieldy, but 25 looks downright impossible. The nascent empire needs to establish some federal-style centralization, if only to have a place to pick up the phone. The aptly named Convention on the Future of Europe, a 105-member committee chaired by the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, is poised to create - really - a president and a politburo of some kind, a vice president, a foreign secretary, and a constitution. This will be no picnic, especially with the French at the wheel. They'll have to hammer out a bill of rights amid power struggles over vetoes and representation. If it were anybody but Europeans, they'd die before it was over from the sheer boredom of all that negotiating.
Second, European countries that haven't yet been absorbed are in steep decline. The outlines of the Schengen open-border confederation constitute a 21st-century Berlin Wall, separating the New Europe from what now can be justly called Deepest, Darkest Europe. The outcasts are deprived of investment capital. Their crumbling highways and ill-kept infrastructure make it hard to compete with their neighbors' glossy standards, so they attract offshore maquiladora-style plants and sex tourism. Their best and brightest become brain-drained guest workers. As time passes, keeping up with the Joneses requires an ever greater leap, and "transition" looks less like an interregnum and more like a ghetto. This is the stick to Europe's carrot, and it's a nasty one. As for the union itself, thriving beside iron-fisted, hidebound Communist regimes was hard enough, but prospering next to massive organized crime - that won't be pretty.
Third, Europe is lightly armed. Although Europeans in general scorn the American cowboy tradition of blowing the living daylights out of bandits, the EU's fringe hosts its share of vigilante bloodletting - thanks to church-burning Balkan bandits, tin-pot dictators in Belarus, Albanian heroin gangsters, and cold-eyed al Qaeda theology students. It's one thing to talk softly and carry a big stick, but it's another to talk endlessly and have no stick at all. Europe's air forces are too trifling to fly soldiers and arsenals to war zones. You can count its aircraft carriers on two hands with fingers left over. Under those circumstances, having a military courts humiliation without adding security. The people of Poland, repeatedly sacked and trampled, laugh in their sleeves at French "security guarantees," so of course they're going to suck up to the empire that has functional hardware. Whether weary Americans arrange Dayton Peace Accords or smart-bomb Serbian dictators, they only highlight Europe's weakness in what should be its own sphere of influence.
Finally, today's children are the citizens of the future, and Europe has very few of them. While Asia's population spills out of its own borders to colonize the West, Europe's is aging and shrinking. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free, who once turned the American continents into emergent states, are more comfortable now. Meanwhile, people from less comfortable regions are arriving in droves. Modern France attracts Algerians, Moroccans, Senegalese, and Tunisians. Turks and Kurds go to Germany. Italy is a magnet for Albanians. Decades hence, the people of "Europe" will have a rather expansive genetic profile.
But as long as the infrastructure is there, does it really matter who inhabits it? Becoming a mix-and-match composite of the planet's ethnicities never slowed down the US. Whatever "Europe" is - union, superstate, confederacy, club, bloc, or community - it's a brand-new form of political organization whose best days are likely ahead of it. And it doesn't have to stay put on any particular continent, either. A 21st-century Europe without any Europeans in it - that's such an attractive prospect that even Republicans might join up.
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What are your opinions on this, Europe as a Diplomatic superpower?
I redug this article after getting enraged by the views European share towards Israel as a world threat. |
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| Arbiter |
| I suspect the EU will collapse in the face of resurgent nationalism within the 21st century. So, in short, I don't think they have what it takes to become a legitimate "superpower." |
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| ahlamalek |
| the only surperpower i see being formed is a German-French alliance. They're integrating their armed forces. China is a waking dragon. |
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| Yoepus |
I agree with Arbiter, I don't really see the EU taking a strong federated role ever, nationalisim is just way to strong in EU. The only way to do this is unite against a common enemy, and the zeal against this enemy would have to be very strong.
Assuming however they will attain Federation I believe its an interesting approach, diplomacy instead of arms.. ultimately it will fail however. What many diplomats tend to forget is that Diplomacy is the art of saying what weapons you have and how you won't have to use them.
If you have no weapons no one will listen to a word. |
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| occrider |
I sincerely doubt you would ever see anything like a confederacy of united states with a federalist central government like hte US happening in the EU. There is simply too much division and differences between countries for anything like that to happen. Simply look at some of the wording of the original constitution that was drafted months ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3039883.stm
And look at the plethora of disagreements, stalling, and opposition to versions of the constitution since that time period:
http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin...n&scope=newsifs
At the most, I see a NATO like organization with economic ties rather than a one governing body/one country sense of a super power. If the EU were to ever become a true indivisible super power, I simply don't see that happening in our lifetimes. |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
the only surperpower i see being formed is a German-French alliance. They're integrating their armed forces. China is a waking dragon. |
I agree with that one. Even if EU as a whole is currently a bunch of quarreling small countries, France and Germany are already behaving almost like one nation. Let's not forget that Germany recently authorized Chirac to vote for their interests in the EU council because Schröder was occupied with some local matters. Now, I'm pretty sure that UK will not accept such a tight union, but some other countries might. Maybe we'll soon have a union inside a union. So even if not all countries accept a tight EU, France and Germany with a few sidekicks alone could constitute something like a new superpower.
Now, about the article, I'd say it's pretty realistic. Personally, I hope EU will make it as a new superpower, because a competition between equal superpowers leads to great scientific progress and inovations. Also, a constant threat makes people less childish and more aware of the world around them, something many americans desperately need. |
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| Blik |
I think that eventually Europe will become a 2nd United States, but it will be very slowly. It might take 200 years.
There are voices in the European Parliament that we should make English as a 2nd language in all of Europe, so that everyone will also get an English education. I hope that this will happen eventually, wouldn't be that much of a problem for the Netherlands, we get Dutch, German, French and English at school... |
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| Heinz |
the germans and the french together?? that will be the day i want to die...no one wants a frenchman serves alongside a german. i certainly do not. we have been enemies throughout history, why end it now!!!
-NATIONALIST HEINZ OF GERMANY- |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
Woohoo! We finally got an authentic german nazi here! Can't wait for the nazi-jew fight to break out, I'm tired already of the jewish-arab ones.
On a side note, you've also been allies with France at certain times, so read your history books better. |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| I don't see what is wrong with EU becoming a supercountry. European nations are too small and to weak to be of any relevance as the global powers if they act unilaterally. Their union is imperative in order to give them strength to back up their interests. Not to mention that big scientific projects such as space exploration and advanced military technologies are too much for each of those countries alone. Only with a tight union will european countries be able to measure up to the other superpowers and to have their say in world politics. Aside from such a union, the only other option is a conglomerate of quarreling states that will crumble and fall as soon as any real threat shows up. Not to insult your national pride, but Finland alone can do nothing of relevance in the world, aside from maybe impacting a cell phone market. Finland as a part of the EU has the power to participate in dictating the future of the world. |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
I don't see what is wrong with EU becoming a supercountry. European nations are too small and to weak to be of any relevance as the global powers if they act unilaterally. Their union is imperative in order to give them strength to back up their interests. Not to mention that big scientific projects such as space exploration and advanced military technologies are too much for each of those countries alone. Only with a tight union will european countries be able to measure up to the other superpowers and to have their say in world politics. Aside from such a union, the only other option is a conglomerate of quarreling states that will crumble and fall as soon as any real threat shows up. Not to insult your national pride, but Finland alone can do nothing of relevance in the world, aside from maybe impacting a cell phone market. Finland as a part of the EU has the power to participate in dictating the future of the world. |
Word man! :D
europe will not make it without EU. And i agree, it is not perfect but still far better than nothing. I'm looking forward to a strong European state... |
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| Heinz |
| quote: | Woohoo! We finally got an authentic german nazi here! Can't wait for the nazi-jew fight to break out, I'm tired already of the jewish-arab ones.
On a side note, you've also been allies with France at certain times, so read your history books better. |
Im talking about the last 300 years! Napolean against Prussia. The Prussian-Franco War, where Germans took over the Saarland. WW1, WWII. and from then on, both nations have just set aside they problems and just have moved on peaceful next to each other. that is fine, but no union between them! the french and the germans!? NO! It cant happen!
-GERMAN NATIONALIST HEINZ- |
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