Doug Bandow: So Much for the European Project
[Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).]
Europe was supposed to have arrived. With the final approval of the Lisbon Treaty last year, the European Union sported a new, consolidated government. Europe's political elite believed it had answered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's derisive question: what is the phone number for Europe?
But continental politics remains chaotic and European nations are tottering economically. The European Union's future is now at risk. The question no longer is whether the EU can match the United States, but whether it can survive.
Even as Europe came to dominate the globe the continent remained fragmented into warring states and peoples. After World War II European integration was seen as the best means of solving "the German problem." The beginning was the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, eventually evolving into the European Union. Still, the "European Project" remained incomplete.
Europe's collective GDP and population exceed those of America. Despite its economic heft, however, the continent long has been a geopolitical nullity. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, complained: "On many of the world's big security problems, the EU is close to irrelevant."...
Read entire article at American Spectator
Europe was supposed to have arrived. With the final approval of the Lisbon Treaty last year, the European Union sported a new, consolidated government. Europe's political elite believed it had answered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's derisive question: what is the phone number for Europe?
But continental politics remains chaotic and European nations are tottering economically. The European Union's future is now at risk. The question no longer is whether the EU can match the United States, but whether it can survive.
Even as Europe came to dominate the globe the continent remained fragmented into warring states and peoples. After World War II European integration was seen as the best means of solving "the German problem." The beginning was the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, eventually evolving into the European Union. Still, the "European Project" remained incomplete.
Europe's collective GDP and population exceed those of America. Despite its economic heft, however, the continent long has been a geopolitical nullity. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, complained: "On many of the world's big security problems, the EU is close to irrelevant."...