Ulrich Beck: The Way out of the Euro Crisis
[Ulrich Beck is a sociologist at the University of Munich and the London School of Economics.]
THE EURO is burning. Where are the European intellectuals clamoring to offer an enthusiastic defense of the unfinished project of the European Union and its historical achievements in its hour of need? Where are the intellectuals arguing against the EU critics’ national misunderstanding? This cadre has no members.
Yet the situation is rapidly coming to a head. The member governments of the European monetary union face a decision of principle: either to cooperate and jettison the self-delusions of national politics or to accept the failure of the European experiment. Either economic integration or disintegration! A strong and stable euro requires the political will to extend the policy of peace into the economic realm and to use the mechanisms of economic policy to master the impending crises....
The most prominent historical example of successful cosmopolitan European policy is Willy Brandt’s and Egon Bahr’s “German Ostpolitik” during the Cold War. The political magic of their formula “change through rapprochement” gave the policy of détente majority appeal in conservative Germany. Among its presuppositions was the balance of terror, the “atomic stalemate” that gave rise to a “cosmopolitan community of risk” and made the wall of East-West opposition permeable to forms of “humane relief.” In the current euro crisis, the nuclear threat has been replaced by the financial crisis and the threat to humanity from climate change. The parallel solution, pointing a way out of the euro crisis, can be described this way: anyone who wants national stability and security (social, financial, and environmental) must practice European solidarity. What does that mean in concrete terms?...
Read entire article at Dissent Magazine
THE EURO is burning. Where are the European intellectuals clamoring to offer an enthusiastic defense of the unfinished project of the European Union and its historical achievements in its hour of need? Where are the intellectuals arguing against the EU critics’ national misunderstanding? This cadre has no members.
Yet the situation is rapidly coming to a head. The member governments of the European monetary union face a decision of principle: either to cooperate and jettison the self-delusions of national politics or to accept the failure of the European experiment. Either economic integration or disintegration! A strong and stable euro requires the political will to extend the policy of peace into the economic realm and to use the mechanisms of economic policy to master the impending crises....
The most prominent historical example of successful cosmopolitan European policy is Willy Brandt’s and Egon Bahr’s “German Ostpolitik” during the Cold War. The political magic of their formula “change through rapprochement” gave the policy of détente majority appeal in conservative Germany. Among its presuppositions was the balance of terror, the “atomic stalemate” that gave rise to a “cosmopolitan community of risk” and made the wall of East-West opposition permeable to forms of “humane relief.” In the current euro crisis, the nuclear threat has been replaced by the financial crisis and the threat to humanity from climate change. The parallel solution, pointing a way out of the euro crisis, can be described this way: anyone who wants national stability and security (social, financial, and environmental) must practice European solidarity. What does that mean in concrete terms?...