I think it’s time for those of us who focus on foreign affairs to start thinking, again, about the implications of a Europe that is AWOL from its accustomed role in world affairs. Last week I promised to track and post on Europe’s reaction to the news that the US has outsourced its prisons to Central Europe. But another diplomat friend gently chided me:
Europe is too busy looking inward to care, he said, and reminded me that, while Paris burns, Spain is wrenching itself around the problem of Catalan autonomy, the Dutch are having a parliamentary wrangle over why they went to Iraq and whether they should up their ante in Afghanistan; Italy is in the throes of yet another corruption scandal as its government continues a long (by Italian standards) slow decline. Germany, remember, still doesn’t officially have a government.
Progressives have gotten into the nice but lazy habit of figuring the Europeans will help us over the humps we can’t quite get over ourselves: international pressure and money for Iraq, troops for Afghanistan, a new approach for Iran, aid money for Africa and Asia, greasing a final status deal for Kosovo, etc. etc. Then there’s the whole matter of trade policy, where the planets must align creativity and flexibility in both Europe and the U.S.
Fuhgeddaboudit.
I’m not saying Europe will disappear; but if you are a progressive thinker hatching plans that require Europe to stick its neck out, take the lead, or change its own policies dramatically, better start re-thinking.
As someone who lived in Europe for the last 27 years, I’d like to think her observation isn’t true. But I fear it is.
The most interesting phrase in that quote is “accustomed role in world affairs.” What does HH actually think this is? And accustomed, like, when? In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Before 1945?
Looked at quite brutally, Europe has made two, possibly three, signal contributions to world affairs post-1945. First, the Europeans have stopped fighting wars with each other and exporting these wars on a global scale. This is undoubtedly a Good Thing, but manna from heaven it’s not. Second, they have abandoned their colonial empires (Russia abandoning most of its in 1989-91, though showing the usual reluctance to fully let go), letting most of the peoples of the globe rule themselves, rather than appeal to London or Lisbon or wherever for governance. Third, superpower confrontation did not become nuclear conflagration in Europe.
These are all net positive for humanity, but I can’t for the life of me see an “accustomed role” for Europe in them. What does HH expect?