Friday, February 12, 2010
New age European theorists believed the EU was an expression of a coming post-nation state reality - but the unspoken implication was that they were really talking about a post-democracy world, at least democracy as we have known it. But what if China is a truer expression of a new reality - a truer, more practical, more cunning expression of it? Doesn't the EU then become a laughable after thought, an impotent, unworkable appendage to that reality? And where would that leave America? Isolated and left to either fade in the face of the Chinese threat or to lash out against it on its own? Certainly, the EU's inability to solve Greece's insolvency problem to the satisfaction of its three main players - Britain, France and especially Germany - suggests the EU may not be viable in the long term as an economic powerhouse, and if that's the case, what is it then? It has no heft politically, culturally or militarily - if it's not an economic difference maker, what is it? A quaint idea to amuse the fantasies of irrelevant intellectuals?
