Re: Future of Europe (Arno Tausch and Paul Kennedy)

Compare Tausch and Kennedy with the following from Wallerstein:
While the United States agonizes politically about its future world policy (and 
despite Bush's current high ratings in the polls, which are quite transitory, 
the United States is indeed agonizing over this question), Europe will continue 
painfully to construct itself - as Europe, not as a part of the "the West" or 
of the "Atlantic world." How can I say this when, at the moment, the United 
States seems far more politically unified than Europe, which seems to be in a 
state of acute and overt internal conflict?
There are really two reasons. One is economic, and one is cultural. The 
economics are rather simple to expound. On the one hand, Europe shares with the 
United States its interests in maintaining the present core-periphery split in 
the world-economy, with all the advantages that structure provides for the 
North. On the other hand, Europe is clearly an economic rival of the United 
States, and this rivalry will become more intense in the coming decades. So 
Europe has to balance its gains from a common front of the North in such arenas 
as the World Trade Organization, and its losses from a continuing economic 
advantage to the United States over it because of the role of the dollar, 
sustained as it is by U.S. military and political pressures on Europe. 
If Europe fails to break the privileged role of the dollar, it is doomed to 
second-place status. Europeans are smart enough to realize this. Will they then 
sacrifice their class interests as integral members of the "North," if they 
have a major fight with the United States? Not necessarily, because they 
believe that U.S. strategy as the North is less efficacious than the one they 
wish to pursue, and that the U.S. position on North-South questions is 
compromised by their simultaneous struggle against Europe. Europe thinks that a 
different North-South policy is not only in their own best interests but in 
that of the United States as well (even if the U.S. doesn't realize this). It 
seems likely therefore that Europe will not call off its economic struggle with 
the United States, which revolves around both international financial 
arrangements and investments in new leading products. And in order to pursue 
their economic interests, Europe will now construct an independent military 
force, against which both Blair and Powell have recently once again voiced 
their vigorous opposition, an opposition tinged with considerable concern that 
they will not be able to stop it.
(Commentary No. 112, May 1, 2003"Does the Western World Still Exist?")
The structural decline (of the US) has two essential components. One is 
economic, and one is political/cultural. The economic component is really quite 
simple. In terms of basic capabilities - available capital, human skills, 
research and development - western Europe and Japan/East Asia are at a 
competitive level with the United States. The U.S. monetary advantage - the 
dollar as a reserve currency - is receding and will probably disappear entirely 
soon. The U.S. advantage in the military sphere translates into a long-term 
disadvantage in the economic sphere, since it diverts capital and innovation 
away from productive enterprises. When the world-economy begins to revive from 
its now quite long-term stagnation, it is quite likely that both western 
European and Japanese/East Asian enterprises will do better than U.S.-based 
enterprises.
(Commentary No. 111, Apr. 15, 2003
"Shock and Awe?")
Steven Sherman