According to this article in the International Herald Tribune, the recently-published “World Trade in the 21st Century” by the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales, spells out a doomsday scenario for European economic power.
From the report:
“The enlargement of the European Union won’t suffice to guarantee parity with the United States,” it says. “The EU will weigh less heavily on the process of globalization and a slow but inexorable movement onto ‘history’s exit ramp’ is foreseeable.”
Having not read the actual report, I still can see a lot of reason to agree with its conclusions. However, I don’t believe Europe’s demise is predestined. Europe can take steps to right itself.
Now, this isn’t really going to be an anti-France rant or anything like that. We all need to remember that the United States wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for France’s initial military, financial and political support. But I think France’s behavior during the run-up to the Gulf War II spelled out the position that WILL take Europe down the toilet. It’s not so much that France was against war, which is an admirable position, but the fact that France was hindering the progress that the above-mentioned report claims is one of Europe’s only hopes—the economic and political development of the Arab world and tight economic, political and technical cooperation with the Mediterranean’s “South Shore.”
I know, Iraq isn’t technically one of these nations, but let’s face it, those are ALL basket case nations and, in due time, political, economic and social reforms are going to HAVE to happen there. A reformed Iraq, with full women’s rights and a liberal-capitalist democracy, if such a thing comes to exist, will prove to be a model for the Islamic and Arab worlds. Hopefully, the vast majority of the nations can be built (yes, I AM talking about nation building) without any sort of violence involved whatsover, and in the Southern Med, that’s probably true. But many Arab nations are going to require “regime change.” For most, this will come from within. For a few, the United States is going to have to build “coalitions of the willing” and use all diplomatic and foreign policy means to tip these nations in the correct direction. It would be nice, if other nations could participate, but Gulf War II demonstrated that but a few can step up to the plate.
The United States is the only nation with the power and will to provide security for the world, and in the age of globalization, in which “disconnectedness defines danger,” security is defined as being engaged in the global economic network. In order to fully participate, nations need to be democratic and capitalist. I guess the scary part is trying to figure out what paths these nations need to take in order to get there.
2 responses so far ↓
1 scotty // May 14, 2003 at 5:15 pm
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2 Elliott // May 14, 2003 at 5:17 pm
Is it possible to build a nation that has sovereignty over itself?
The obvious example is Japan, whose form of government was dictated by the United States at the conclusion of World War Two.
Japan, though, does not serve well as an example of nation building because its government was built at the conclusion of World War Two: it was a consequence and not a goal. Japan’s previous state had destroyed iteslf fighting a total war. The United States, who won that war, entered into it with no intention of building a state in Japan. Japan’s unconditional surrender ended a war that was begun not because of concerns about the government of Japan, and, when begun, was an all-or-nothing gamble on the part of the Japanese government with its own legitimacy at stake.
To flesh out the historical context of the end of World War Two, here are some facts. While Japan was harvesting acres of pine forest to refine the pitch into gallons of aviation fuel, the US Army was spraying crude oil on the dirt roads of newly captured islands to keep dust down. This was not a roll in the hay for Uncle Sam, however: in the last twelve months of World War Two, the United States lost over ten thousand soldiers a month to death by war; in nine of those months, more than fifteen thousand died, and in three, at least twenty thousand. The population of the United States in 1949 was about 149 million. Last July, it was about 288 million: roughly a 51 percent increase. So, imagine that for the last year fifteen to thirty thousand troops a month had bit the dust, that while they bled in the Pacific, a secret government project on the industrial scale of the US automotive industry had been fabricating a super bomb, and that these efforts had produced an astonishingly one-sided victory over a completely destroyed foe. Out of trauma on this scale came Japan, a nation built.
I remain deeply cynical about premeditated plans for nation building. “Disconnectedness defines danger” you say. Show me a two-hundred-billion-dollar plan to build a nation in Columbia and I will show you a plan to legalize cocaine. Disconnectedness and availability of natural resources define an easy mark.
I cannot accept that we know what is best for other nations, and I maintain that other nations have the right to be basket cases. Furthermore, I do not believe that the set of values we profess to export with our nation building includes the actions we use to build nations. In my opinion, the danger of using reprehensible means to accomplish lofty goals is immense.
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