T. R. Reid
The United States of Europe:
The New Superpower and the End of
American Supremacy.
The Penguin Press, 320 pages, $9.95
On May 1st 2004, ten countries with a combined population of 74 million became members of the European Union, bringing the total number of member states to twenty-five and the E.U. population to 454 million. This means that the E.U. now has a population half as big again as that of the United States and a gross domestic product almost as great as that of its Atlantic relation.
However, quite what kind of political entity has been created is a matter of dispute and, in important respects, the future of this flawed but vastly ambitious project remains uncertain. According to Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, the E.U. is “a superpower but not a superstate”—although it is not at all obvious how Europe can be the first of these things without also acquiring the trappings of the second.
According to T. R. Reid, the E.U. is “a new species of united states: a largely borderless federal union that is not exactly a single country, but is much more than just another international trading bloc.” President Chirac insists that the E.U. is a federation of states; British ministers routinely take to the broadcasting stations to deny this whenever he does so. Out of deference to British sensibilities the proposal to rename the E.U. the “United States of Europe” was dropped from the text of the proposed European Constitution.
It is, however, certainly true that the trend of European politics has been in the direction of “ever closer union,” a goal which was unambiguously stated in the founding Treaty of Rome in 1957. In recent decades, among political leaders of the first rank, only Margaret Thatcher has taken de Gaulle’s vision of a Europe des patries seriously. On leaving office, her greatest regret was that she failed utterly to breathe new life into that concept and consequently failed to halt the erosion of British sovereignty as the process of European political integration gathered pace.
There is also no doubt that many of the architects of the European project intended from the very beginning to create a rival to the United States and that anti-Americanism played a major part in their motivation. Even so, few in Europe would suggest that their goal has yet been fully realized, while a significant and growing number plainly do not share that aim at all. Indeed, one of the more remarkable aspects of Reid’s book is that it claims more on behalf of the European political project—even in its subtitle—than the most ardent supporters of the E.U. Among the latter, much contemporary debate now recognizes that the E.U. can never rival the U.S. in terms of economic, military, or political power. Reid’s conclusion—that Americans must wake up to “the reality that the planet has a second superpower whose global influence will continue to grow as the world moves towards a bi-polar world”—is consequently difficult to take seriously.
Indeed, one of the biggest problems for a reviewer is to account for Reid’s views when the factual basis for them seems so questionable. Inevitably, one concludes that he is convinced that Europe now constitutes a superpower rival to the U.S. because he believes that this would place welcome limits on U.S. power, that he likes and approves of the E.U. because he dislikes and disapproves of contemporary America. If his book fails to persuade, it is not just that it is unscholarly—it is almost entirely unsourced and there is no index—but because it is devoid of intellectual rigor and partial in its selection of facts.
Rather in the manner of a character in a Henry James novel, he is fascinated and impressed by much of what he is told on his European travels, but unlike James’s characters he does not achieve that level of moral and intellectual enlightenment necessary to see behind the appearance of things. Indeed, he is so enthusiastic about the “geopolitical earthquake” which he believes is shaping European and world politics that he does not seem to have noticed the concerns of millions of ordinary Europeans. These include the continent’s dismal levels of economic growth, its high levels of unemployment and dysfunctional labor market, its rapidly falling share of world trade, its striking lack of democratic accountability, its inability to equip itself with modern armed forces, and its failure to halt the flow of E.U. funds that disappear through corruption and waste.
Even where Reid acknowledges the existence of major problems—for example, the endless torrent of absurd and costly regulations that emerge from the E.U. Commission and the severe demographic problems arising from a plunging birth-rate in almost all parts of the E.U.—he fails to convey the extent of the problem or to grasp its significance.
Although Reid is a former head of the Washington Post’s London bureau, he has little understanding of the causes behind the rising tide of euroskepticism in Britain and in other European countries. He seems unaware of the widening and potentially explosive gulf in attitudes between Europe’s opinion-forming elites (almost entirely in favor of the E.U.) and ordinary citizens (increasingly suspicious or hostile to the idea of further E.U. integration). British ambivalence towards the “European project” is simply dismissed as “schizophrenia.” Is growing euroskepticism in Poland, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, and the Czech Republic also to be explained in terms of mental disorder?
Some of Reid’s claims would be too much even for the E.U.’s PR department, so implausible are they. His reason for counting the euro as a “sky-rocketing success” is that its introduction occurred without technical hitch and that during its relatively brief but eventful life it has risen against the dollar. He does not mention that before it started its climb it lost a third of its value or that it has proved the most unstable of all the world’s major currencies, or that, even now, some economists believe that it is unlikely to survive. Despite his extensive European travels he does not seem to have noticed that because of the public’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for the euro (which was widely blamed for the price rises that followed its introduction), shops and business still quote in old currencies as well as new.
Prior to its launch, critics of the single currency argued that in the absence of a common language and a flexible labor market it would be impossible for the European Central Bank to set a single interest rate that suited all. The critics have been proved right; without exception growth rates in the non-eurozone economies have been higher than those within the eurozone and unemployment rates lower (In 2003, the eurozone growth rate was 0.4 compared to 2.1 percent in the U.K., 3 percent in the U.S., 9 percent in China.) Remarkably, there is no mention of the E.U.’s Growth and Stability Pact which was supposed to impose constraints on public spending within the eurozone, but which has been repeatedly violated by France and Germany, its two biggest members. The fact that the huge fines handed out to these countries have not been paid and that there is no consensus about what, if anything, should replace the Pact, does not augur well for the currency’s long-term viability.
Still more unsatisfactory is the author’s attempts to demonstrate the existence of an emerging European consciousness, although these are not without unintended humor. The reality is that despite the best efforts of Europe’s political elites and the E.U. Commission, European Man stubbornly refuses to be born. The E.U.’s own polling data demonstrates that a sense of European identity remains weak or nonexistent: more than half of Austrians, Britons, Greeks, Swedes, and Finns, and an almost equal number of Irish, Dutch, and Portuguese report that they feel no sense of European identity. In the absence of such sentiment there can be no European people, no European public space or demos, and no viable system of self-government.
Reid seems to believe that the so-called “E-Generation” will embrace European nationhood with the ardor that its elders lack. The polling data does not bear this out; in some countries, most notably Britain (where half the population favors withdrawal from the E.U.) the eighteen- to-twenty-four-year-olds are among the most hostile to the E.U. Given the very high levels high of youth unemployment in the eurozone perhaps this is not altogether surprising.
One does not quite know what to make of his claims to have witnessed the emergence of a distinctive European popular culture. In support of this claim, Reid cites the commercial success of the Eurovision song contest. This he rightly acknowledges is little more than “a tawdry pageant,” but one which, apparently, he believes helps provide cultural cement. Yet, as he also acknowledges those taking part include Israel, Turkey, and Russia as well as non-E.U. Europeans. Indeed, the success of the competition has surely much more to do with globalization and the emergence of a universal pop culture (whose origins are to be found in the U.S.) than with the E.U.; it would survive if the supranational institutions of the E.U. imploded.
Still more bizarrely, Reid attributes a remarkable role to the game of football in the building of a sense of European nationhood. He quotes a French TV salesman that he met: “Football brings millions and millions of us together—football is Europe, don’t you see. If I meet somebody from England or Norway or Spain, I just say, ‘David Beckham,’ and we immediately have something we share.” It seems almost churlish to point out that the name of David Beckham (a British footballer) produces exactly the same sort of response in Japan, China, Taiwan, and Singapore; that Norwegians have repeatedly rejected E.U. membership; and that millions of euros have to be spent on complex policing and intelligence operations to prevent rival sets of fans from attacking one another whenever European national teams compete.
There are more serious matters for U.S. observers of the European scene to ponder. For nearly half a century, America gave unconditional support to the political and economic development of the European Union. It did so in the belief that it would lead to the creation of a viable democratic market-based Atlantic partner with whom a burden of international responsibilities might be shared. Whatever the ultimate fate of the European political project, the reality is quite different. A better book would have explained why.
Gerald Frost is editor of the fortnightly London publication Eurofacts.
