Future of Europe (Arno Tausch and Paul Kennedy)

Arno Tausch (Europe) and Paul Kennedy (USA) share a considerable amount of
scepticism as regards the future global weight (or not) of Europe. Compare
the two pieces below.

Gernot Köhler, Ph.D.

*  * *

(1) Tausch writes
(see also, my post to wsn on 18jun03, "Future of Europe
(Tausch vs Derrida-Habermas)"):

"Hypothesis 14: . . . Europe, with its huge state sector, its high tariff
walls against foreign competition, and its large scale penetration by
foreign capital, its slow process of technological innovation, is destined
to become the 'Argentina' of the 21st Century. Also its small future
population base and rigid migration regime do not qualify it for a rapid
21st Century economic growth. There is a great risk that the European West
will treat the newly democratic East as a reservoir of surplus value and
exploitation."

(Arno Tausch is a Ministerial Counselor at the Department of European and
International Affairs, Vienna, Austria
and is associated with the University of Innsbruck, Austria)

REFERENCE
Tausch, Arno, "The European Union. Global Challenge or Global
Governance? 14 World Systems Hypotheses and Two Scenarios on the future of
the Union." In: Gernot Kohler and Emilio Jose Chaves (Editors)
"Globalization: Critical Perspectives" Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science
Publishers, 2003. ISBN 1-59033-346-2. See: www.amazon.com

* * *

and now a fellow Euro-sceptic from across the Atlantic --

(2) Kennedy writes:
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Europe's old laggards will never balance US power
To be an effective counterweight requires far-reaching changes

Paul Kennedy

Tuesday June 24, 2003/The Guardian [U.K.]

This year, it seems, the trendy debate among the foreign policy crowd no
longer hails from Harvard Square or midtown Manhattan. No more waiting for
America to come up with slogans such as "the clash of civilisations" and
"the end of history". With the publication of an essay by the French scholar
Jacques Derrida and the German scholar Jürgen Habermas in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, at last European intellectuals have produced their own
"hot idea". Arguing for a counterbalance to American global hegemonic
pretensions, Derrida and Habermas maintain that this can only be
accomplished through a unified European foreign policy led by the pioneering
"core" European nations. What is more, the Derrida-Habermas call for a
European identity looms even more significantly when linked to the belief
that Europe must act to curb American primacy and unilateralism. This is
hardly coffee house babble, since it articulates what many in Europe are
thinking.

My problem with the Derrida-Habermas proclamation is that their thesis is
not practical. The way to a powerful Europe is not even sketched out. It is
an aspiration, not a policy. If Europe is to become an effective
counterweight to America - or an amiable and near equal world partner - it
must make some tough decisions and institute tough practical policies.
Constitutional decisions, like creating the office of a single foreign
minister, go part of the way, but that is just the icing on the cake if
Europe itself is not made stronger.

So, here, for consideration, are a half-dozen nettles that might be grasped
to make Europe stronger, to give Europe credibility in the eyes of the world
and to contribute to the greater sense of European identity for which
Derrida and Habermas yearn.

Europe must develop greater military capacity, scrap national conscript
armies and train for integrated multiservice fighting in many parts of the
world. This requires more money. Right now, the countries that take military
reform most seriously are Britain and Poland. Many of the "old" European
countries talk about military reforms, but their small defence budgets give
the game away.

If Europe really wants improved international structures that provide peace
and prosperity, it must push for serious reform of the United Nations,
especially in the composition of the permanent veto members of the security
council, so that countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa may also
achieve that status. Perhaps Europe should confront the fact that it is
over-represented on that body. There have been proposals from time to time
for a single, rotating "European" permanent seat, an idea France always
threatens to veto.

Europe must make a massive push against protectionism, especially in
agricultural goods, and to assist poorer countries in Africa and the
Caribbean in the export of their produce. But France is the most obstinate
foe of free trade in agriculture and drags a complicit Germany along with
it. Is it any wonder that developing countries are cynical when Europe talks
about boosting world markets - when most trade experts believe that the
single biggest boost to African and Caribbean nations would be to scrap
Europe's (and America's, and Japan's) agricultural protectionism.

Europe must offer large increases in development assistance, again to help
the poorer countries of the globe, consisting not only of capital and
infrastructural investment but also technical assistance, scholarships and
the waiver of intellectual property restrictions. To be sure, European aid
is more generous than America's - the EU provides about twice as much as the
US - but more is called for. Why not declare that the EU will devote a full
1% of its annual GDP to development assistance, as a symbol of its
leadership? Right now, only the Scandinavians give respectable totals in
aid.

Europe should make a special commitment to Africa, not just because it is
the poorest of the poor, and not just because of European colonial history,
but also because of its geographical proximity and because in Africa it
could be an alternative model to US neglect or to the American concern
chiefly for military-security threats.

Finally, it is vital for Europe to get its economy going again. If its
overall growth rates should lag behind those of the US and much of Asia over
the next decade or two, then the whole idea of being a counterbalance is
off.

Europe also needs, frankly, to get its youthful population going again. The
astonishingly low fertility rates in much of Europe - in contrast to the
population increases forecast for the US over the next 50 years - will be as
important as the differences in defence spending. If population trends are a
good indicator, Europe shows more signs of shrinking than advancing on the
world stage.

Let us suppose for a moment that Europe were to succeed on all these fronts.
Should that happen, it would indeed come close to being a strong and
influential player in world affairs. Europe need not be an angry competitor
to the United States all the time - the present characters occupying the
White House and the Elysée Palace will not last for ever - but it would once
again be important enough in military, economic and political terms to be
respected and heeded by others, even American neo-conservatives. But here is
the rub: resistance to these tough reforms lies deepest in the "old" or
"core Europe" countries such as France, Belgium and Germany. They are the
ones that most fiercely cling to agricultural protectionism; have the
deepest structural and ideological objections to economic reform; and
(France is a partial exception) are spending so little of their GDP on
effective armed forces.

There is an extraordinary contradiction here: France and Germany provide the
most political rhetoric about making Europe strong and competitive in the
modern world, yet it is they who have so much yet to do to stay competitive.
Even if their governments propose tough fiscal action, those thousands of
French and Germans who marched against the US war with Iraq would be right
back on the streets, marching against the necessary agriculture, taxation
and spending reforms. And their governments will be forced to compromise.

This is the real reason why I think the appeal for a "core Europe" to emerge
and balance the United States will not work. These "old" Europe societies
are in so many ways the laggards in handling global challenges. Unless
serious structural changes are pushed through, the document that began this
debate will remain merely academic.

(c) Tribune Media Services International
* Paul Kennedy is a professor of history at Yale University. His books
include The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

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(thanks to Jim D. for calling attention to this article)