Walter Laquer: So Much for the New European Century
[Walter Laqueur, a historian and a founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary History, lives in Washington. This essay was adapted from his book The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, to be published next week by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press. Copyright © by Walter Laqueur.]
... Europe as we once knew it is bound to change, probably out of recognition, for a number of reasons, partly demographic and cultural, but also political and social. Even if Europe should unite and solve the various domestic crises facing it, its predominant place in the world and predominant role in world affairs is a thing of the past. What kind of new Europe is likely to emerge as a successor to the old Continent? That, of course, is an open question, whose answer depends on events not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world.
Given the shrinking of its population, it is possible that Europe, or considerable parts of it, will turn into a cultural theme park, a kind of Disneyland on a level of a certain sophistication for well-to-do visitors from China and India, something like Brugge, Venice, Versailles, Stratford-on-Avon, or Rothenburg ob der Tauber on a larger scale. Some such parks already exist; when the coal mines in the Ruhr were closed down, the Warner Brothers Movie World was opened in Dortmund. This will be a Europe of tourist guides, gondoliers, and translators: "Ladies and gentlemen, you are visiting the scenes of a highly developed civilization that once led the world. It gave us Shakespeare, Beethoven, the welfare state, and many other fine things... ." There will be excursions for every taste; even now there are trips in Berlin to the slums and the areas considered dangerous ("Kreuzberg, the most colorful district: two hours").
That scenario may appear somewhat fanciful at the moment, but given current trends it is a possibility that cannot be dismissed out of hand. Tourism has been of paramount importance in Switzerland for a long time; it is now of great (and growing) importance in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and some other countries. Tourism's average growth rate across Europe is 4 percent annually. In several European countries, it is becoming the most important single factor in the economy and the main earner of foreign exchange. By now the Chinese are the biggest-spending visitors in Paris.
It is equally possible that, having solved, one way or another, its internal social and economic problems to be able to compete again in world markets, and having gotten its political act together at least to some degree, Europe will find a place in the new world order likely to emerge, more modest than in the past but still respectable. That is the best-case scenario, but it is also possible that the general decline and deterioration may continue and even become more pronounced. Those scenarios, and perhaps some others in between, seem possible at the current time.
What appears impossible is that the 21st century will be the European century, as some observers, mainly in the United States, claimed even a few years ago. As they saw it, a united Europe not only had caught up with the American economy but was likely to soon overtake it. The countries of Europe were living in peace with one another and their neighbors. They had established a way of life, a model, more civilized and humane than any other. True, Europe was not exactly a political-military superpower, but through its "transformative power" as an example, it was changing the world. In brief, the rest of the world was becoming more and more like Europe, moving toward an order that was more just and humane than any in the annals of mankind.
But Europe did not move closer together, and it did not catch up and overtake America. On the contrary, it found it more and more difficult to compete with China and India. The character of power in world politics did not radically change, and the predictions of yesterday seemed more and more detached from the facts of the real world. And the question inevitably arose how such hallucinations could have arisen in the first place....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
... Europe as we once knew it is bound to change, probably out of recognition, for a number of reasons, partly demographic and cultural, but also political and social. Even if Europe should unite and solve the various domestic crises facing it, its predominant place in the world and predominant role in world affairs is a thing of the past. What kind of new Europe is likely to emerge as a successor to the old Continent? That, of course, is an open question, whose answer depends on events not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world.
Given the shrinking of its population, it is possible that Europe, or considerable parts of it, will turn into a cultural theme park, a kind of Disneyland on a level of a certain sophistication for well-to-do visitors from China and India, something like Brugge, Venice, Versailles, Stratford-on-Avon, or Rothenburg ob der Tauber on a larger scale. Some such parks already exist; when the coal mines in the Ruhr were closed down, the Warner Brothers Movie World was opened in Dortmund. This will be a Europe of tourist guides, gondoliers, and translators: "Ladies and gentlemen, you are visiting the scenes of a highly developed civilization that once led the world. It gave us Shakespeare, Beethoven, the welfare state, and many other fine things... ." There will be excursions for every taste; even now there are trips in Berlin to the slums and the areas considered dangerous ("Kreuzberg, the most colorful district: two hours").
That scenario may appear somewhat fanciful at the moment, but given current trends it is a possibility that cannot be dismissed out of hand. Tourism has been of paramount importance in Switzerland for a long time; it is now of great (and growing) importance in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and some other countries. Tourism's average growth rate across Europe is 4 percent annually. In several European countries, it is becoming the most important single factor in the economy and the main earner of foreign exchange. By now the Chinese are the biggest-spending visitors in Paris.
It is equally possible that, having solved, one way or another, its internal social and economic problems to be able to compete again in world markets, and having gotten its political act together at least to some degree, Europe will find a place in the new world order likely to emerge, more modest than in the past but still respectable. That is the best-case scenario, but it is also possible that the general decline and deterioration may continue and even become more pronounced. Those scenarios, and perhaps some others in between, seem possible at the current time.
What appears impossible is that the 21st century will be the European century, as some observers, mainly in the United States, claimed even a few years ago. As they saw it, a united Europe not only had caught up with the American economy but was likely to soon overtake it. The countries of Europe were living in peace with one another and their neighbors. They had established a way of life, a model, more civilized and humane than any other. True, Europe was not exactly a political-military superpower, but through its "transformative power" as an example, it was changing the world. In brief, the rest of the world was becoming more and more like Europe, moving toward an order that was more just and humane than any in the annals of mankind.
But Europe did not move closer together, and it did not catch up and overtake America. On the contrary, it found it more and more difficult to compete with China and India. The character of power in world politics did not radically change, and the predictions of yesterday seemed more and more detached from the facts of the real world. And the question inevitably arose how such hallucinations could have arisen in the first place....