The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy

T R Reid, former London bureau chief for the Washington Post, has written a rather breezy, journalistic, yet informative account of how, since the end of World War II, the nations of Europe have been slowly, incrementally forming an "ever closer union." Without our realizing it, they have become a new superpower, what he calls the United States of Europe. The Europeans, since they beg to differ, prefer to be called the European Union. What is the European Union? The members themselves cannot agree. The French and the Germans think it is a federation of states. The British and the Swedes(neither has adopted the Euro) see it as a loose confederation of nations. In any case, it is more than an international organization and more than a trading bloc. It consists of 25 nations, 455 million people and a combined GDP of $11 trillion; it "has more people, more wealth, and more trade than the United States of America." The European Union has its own parliment, governing council, central bank, and court of justice. It has a constitution that is 265 pages long and a legal code that is over 80,000 pages. It has a national anthem (Beethoven's Ode to Joy) and it has its own feast day (May 9). It has more votes than the US in most international forums and it can influence nations with economic largesse, which it has, rather than military force, which it lacks. Remember the run up to the war with Iraq? What was the driving force behind the creation of this superpower? Lately, the European Union has emerged as a "counterweight" to the US, moderating our unilateralist tendencies. However, at their inception, they were trying to emulate the United States economically, creating a large single market with a single currency and uniform commercial codes. Gradually, they also became interdependent politically and institutionally. Reid would also argue that they are becoming interdependent culturally with his chapter on Generation E, but pop culture does not a culture make. The deepest motivation for forming the European Union was what it was designed avoid: namely, the tragedies of the first half of the 20th century. Now they have pooled their sovereignty in the pursuit of perpetual peace and a common prosperity. Reid emphasizes mainly the achievements of the EU while only passing over its failings - its failings will be trumpeted by the Americans. He rightly points out that Western European nations have lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy than the US. Despite the fact that the US spends more per capita on healthcare, it ranks 37th amoung nations in quality of healthcare service. Europeans have universal healthcare, not to mention childcare and parental leave (sometimes up to a year with 100% of salary) - to mention a few. The numbers on education are similar. The US spends more per capita on education and has better endowed universities, yet Americans continue to underperform Europeans in math, science and language. Reid copiousl

Out of the smoldering ruins of post World War II Europe arose the dream of three visionary men: former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose name resonates with every American, and two others whose names and reputations may not come so readily to mind. One was former brandy salesman Jean Monnet and the other was post-war French Prime Minister and underground fighter Robert Schuman. Together, and separately, these three men were the architects and builders of what is now the European Union. These are the names that future European children will read about in history books and that might be equated with Jefferson, Franklin and Adams. They, along with other forward thinking statesmen, created the future European Union --- the United States of Europe. The region had suffered two devastating world wars, with millions dead, wounded and homeless, and hundreds of cities and towns spread over a dozen nations laid to waste in less than 30 years. Churchill, who led Great Britain through the ravages of all-out assault from the Germans, believed that the only way to avert a future calamity was to unite the former invading countries through a common market, common currency, and united interests in peace. He spoke often of a United States of Europe. Others would come along a few years later and form that dream into reality. Sixty years later, not only has the European Union been created --- complete with a capitol, a democratically elected parliament, a flag and an army --- but the unthinkable also occurred: they created a common currency, the euro, which is beating the pants off the almighty American dollar. According to T. R. Reid, author of eight books on the economies of Japan, China and the Middle East, while America was thundering along, assuming its place at the head of the pack as the biggest, the baddest and the best, the youthful European Union has sprinted up and pulled out to pass a complacent and self-satisfied giant. America Firsters will not take kindly to at least one early chapter where health and longevity, income, marriage and commercial productivity figures are compared --- none too favorably --- with the European Union. Reality bites, as they say --- and Reid shows us a reality that any thinking economist, or any American for that matter, should chew on. Reid is an American journalist who headed the Washington Post's London Bureau where he chronicled the stunning rise of the European Union at the dawn of the 21st century. When the euro was first introduced on January 1, 2002, the very idea of a common currency among nations of such diverse religious, ethnic, cultural and language barriers, many of which had been actively engaged in slaughtering one another for two thousand years, was laughable to many world observers. Yet today, other nations are flocking to the euro for investment as they once relied on the American dollar. Meanwhile, the faithful dollar is sliding alarmingly in value against this upstart --- and American manu

Over the past decade I have, like many Americans, been aware of many of the changes that have been taking place in Europe, but unfortunately also like most Americans I have been completely unaware of the magnitude, extent and nature of the changes taken there. Reid's thesis is that the European Union, which could be the fulfillment of Winston Churchill's vision of a United States of Europe, could be poised to become a world superpower to equal or surpass the United States of America. Although Reid does not put it quite this way, if the 20th Century was the American Century, the 21st Century could well be the European Century. Under any consideration, the situation that Reid describes in the European Union that is extremely impressive. In the decades following the destruction of the Second World War, the Europeans have crafted a loosely unified state that has created the world's largest trading bloc, the world's strongest currency, one of the world's largest populations, one of the world's greatest manufacturing bases, and a model network of social structures. As an American, I have long been used to the idea that the United States takes the lead on many of the world's advances, whether economic, political, or moral, but upon reading this book I wonder if we might be lagging rather far behind what is being done in Europe. But it is Europe and not the United States that is planning a trip to visit Mars. It is Europe that is setting the world's standards for safety. It is Europe that has taken the international lead on human rights issues, and has taken the United States to task for a variety of shortcomings in the area, in particular on capital punishment. Europe has far outstripped the United States in the way it has advanced and furthered the well being of its citizens, building a cradle to grave social network system. One wonders, in reading this book, if one is glimpsing the future and realizing that it lies on the other side of the ocean. In reading the book, I kept thinking of Bush's remarks about Europe before the initiation of the invasion of Iraq, trying to strong arm them into joining the U.S. coalition by remarks about the old order of Europe, implying that the United States was on the cutting edge of things. The reverse seems to be the case, with the United States persisting in policies that are rapidly going out of date, with the United States pursuing a wide range of domestic policies that are running against the grain of what is happening in Europe. But with the magnificent health care system in Europe (universal, absolutely first rate, and extremely cheap, all while costing less than half of what the less-than-universal healthcare system of the United States costs), with the widespread protection for workers (e.g., it is illegal to downsize a company and layoffs are prohibited, and if unemployed one does not lose one's health benefits), with the vastly preferable work conditions (European workers have several weeks worth of days

Anyone who has read Confucious Lives Next Door (about Japan) knows how entertaining his books are about how little we really understand of cultures outside our borders. The economic thesis of this book is also totally true & overlooked by folks here. I would bet 9 out of 10 working Americans can't even name half of the 25 EU member countries right now. But the best thing about the book is how extremely well written and organized it is. Its 1/3 history book, 1/3 cultural discussion, 1/3 economic essay, but somehow pulls it all off very tightly. His sub-stories are engaging and funny so its a much lighter read than the publisher descriptions suggest. Having recently returned from an assignment managing a large organization in Europe, I also found his analysis of what's behind the anti-American sentiment over there to be right on the money. He describes it in ways that I could never do - they are so true! Great book - highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic or just wondering what all this EU stuff is about.

Now that George W. Bush has convincingly demonstrated his national mandate through his re-election, it might give many Americans significant pause were they to recognize the force with which the United European state is beginning to effectively countermand the current administration's strain toward military unilateralism as the seemingly singular exercisable method for extending American power and influence throughout the world. As scholar Paul Kennedy has argued forcefully elsewhere, the mighty military power we project as the primary steam-rolling vehicle of our foreign policy has both great costs and great limitations, neither of which we seem to pay much heed to, but which both have fateful consequences for the future of the republic. Therefore, it is instructive indeed to find this thoughtful, well researched, and extremely cogently-written offering in which Mr. Reid, a former London Bureau chief for the Washington Post, argues that our chance at international hegemony may, in fact, be drawing to a premature close based on our peculiar penchant for unilateralism in foreign affairs and our confusion regarding what can be settled militarily, on the one hand, for what can be settled in political terms on the other. Our current imbroglio in Iraq, of course, comes immediately to mind, yet there are countless other egregious examples of the ways in which our social, cultural and political mindset seems to predispose us to what our European counterparts often view as counterproductive and even solipsistic efforts that often cost us far more than we gain. As a result, contends the always provocative and entertaining Mr. Reid, the emerging economic and political force of the European Union may soon eclipse that of the United States and in the process make our overwhelming military prowess all but irrelevant. Yet, while we may see the European alliance more in terms of its potential as a market for our products and services, in reality the European Union is much more likely to be increasingly the more senior and more powerful of the elements in the ongoing business calculus that continues to transpire between the two super-states. In particular, we need to pay attention to the ways in which pan-international agreements like the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) significantly impinge upon and often constrain the legal and economic rights and prerogatives of individual signatory nations to successfully employ their own national laws and regulations to determine economic and business destinies. An excellent example given in the book is that experienced by General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who discovered to his dismay that the supposedly definitively greased and authorized merger acquisition of Honeywell by GE was effectively blocked by the governing antitrust policies of the European Union, since in order to trade with the EU, one must, by virtue of the provisions of GATT, conform to the international trade laws within that realm. If G