The Next Superpower?
The Rise of Europe and Its Challenge to the United States
by Rockwell A. Schnabel, with Francis X. Rocca
(Rowman & Littlefield, 199 pages, $22.95)
IS THE EUROPEAN UNION A FRENCH-LED, socialist conspiracy to
undermine U.S. power, as some of the more strident American
commentators have suggested? Many have gone so far as to say that
the United States would be best off pursuing a strategy of “divide
and conquer,” making common cause with newly liberated, former
Communist East European countries to stymie the likes of “old
Europe,” in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s famous
characterization. At about the same time Rumsfeld made the remark,
the neoconservative writer Robert Kagan offered a scholarly study
of the sometimes difficult history of the U.S.-Europe relationship,
arguing that, “on major strategic and international questions
today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.”
For more than half a century, however, the relationship between
America and its European allies has been indispensable in
guaranteeing both regional and global stability. In The Next
Superpower? The Rise of Europe and Its Challenge to the United
States, the European-born former U.S. Ambassador to the EU
Rockwell Schnabel and the Rome-based American journalist Francis X.
Rocca (with whom I worked at TAS in the late 1990s)
identify the dangers and opportunities arising from the EU’s
growing power. In this thoroughly researched yet eminently readable
effort, Schnabel and Rocca argue that America and Europe remain
essential partners in disseminating democracy, free markets, and
respect for human rights around the world. They emphasize that the
historic alliance, despite its ups and downs, remains critical to
global security and prosperity.
It is true that the Europe of today, integrated voluntarily by
democratically elected governments, has an innate aversion to the
militarism that united the continent over 1,800 years ago under the
Roman Empire — and shattered it under the 20th century’s influence
of virulent nationalism. But while America and Europe may often be
divided on the methods, they are united on the goals — the
diffusion of democratic ideals around the world and the resulting
peace and prosperity — that George W. Bush has made a hallmark of
his presidency. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the European
Community (as the organization was known at that time) helped guide
the former right-wing dictatorships of Greece, Portugal, and Spain
in their transition to democracy by setting terms for their
admission — just as the EU is doing for Turkey and formerly
Communist Eastern European countries today.
Schnabel and Rocca argue that, despite recent difficulties over
adoption of a constitution and the ongoing controversy over the
admission of Turkey, it is too late to undo the EU. Moreover, they
contend, it is not in America’s interest to stem the tide of
integration even were it possible to do so. Beyond the common
democratic values that unite us, a single, free European market is
of tremendous economic benefit on both sides of the Atlantic. A
half-century long process of integration has made the EU an
economic superpower. It has the second largest economy in the world
— a GDP of $11.65 trillion in 2004, compared with $11.75 trillion
for the United States — and the largest single market — 458
million consumers — in the world.
The authors do acknowledge, however, that the EU seeks to impose
its regulatory regime on the rest of the world, potentially
stifling the freedom American business has come to expect and
developing countries like China and India will need to reach modern
levels of prosperity. Dirigisme, as Schnabel and Rocca
point out, is a relatively new term for a long French tradition of
central planning and state intervention often seen as the competing
school of thought to free-market capitalism on the Continent. The
authors note that, significantly, the principal architects of
European integration have been French technocrats committed to this
style of governance.
Indeed, EU economic interventionism has gone to both comic and
tragic extremes. On the one hand, its agricultural subsidies (which
are twice as large as those on this side of the Atlantic) and
subsequent dumping of farm products on developing countries has on
many occasions undermined the EU’s otherwise generous aid to such
nations. The relief agency Oxfam, for example, said last April that
the EU’s sugar policy had cost Mozambique more than one-third of
what that struggling African country has received in EU development
aid.
On the comic side, Schnabel and Rocca detail one of the EU’s
many infamous product standards: a seven-page European Commission
document regulating banana quality. It stipulates that the fruit
must be at least 14 centimeters in length “along the convex face,
from the blossom end to the point where the peduncle joins the
crown,” and at least 27 millimeters thick “between the lateral
faces and the middle, [measured] perpendicularly to the
longitudinal axis.”
FRUIT HUMOR ASIDE, the EU has made much headway in spreading its
regulations and standards — and ultimately its tastes — around
the world. Through soft power, as scholars of international
politics refer to nonmilitary influence, the EU has managed to
extend the reach of its political culture — just at a time when
U.S. public diplomacy has been floundering. As Schnabel and Rocca
note, its formidable culture, generosity toward the developing
world, and appealing way of life are some of Europe’s greatest
assets in winning hearts and minds beyond its borders.
At the same time, the European Union must grow more productive
to compensate for looming demographic difficulties (the projected
EU fertility rate for 2005 was 1.48 children per woman, well below
replacement) as well as Western Europe’s addiction to social
spending. One of the strongest pressures to spark such productivity
by adopting a more free market orientation in the EU comes from new
Central and Eastern European member states. As former Estonian
President Mart Laar said in 2003, “In the new member states, even
the most left-wing governments are significantly more free-market
oriented than the most right-wing governments among the current
members.”
But even with America’s clear affinity with the free market
values of the former Eastern Bloc, the authors argue, the U.S. is
unlikely to pursue a policy of “divide and conquer” against an
economically robust EU that is beginning to take on more and more
responsibility for its own defense. As the Bush administration
makes overtures aimed at repairing the transatlantic relationship,
Schnabel and Rocca argue quite convincingly that America still has
more in common with the Old World than many of us think. As
President Bush said in Brussels earlier this year, “America
supports a strong Europe, because we need a strong partner in the
hard work of advancing freedom and peace in the world.”
America’s goal, according to the former ambassador and much of
the current U.S. foreign policy leadership, should be to help
manage the emergence of the EU as a global power in a way that it
remains committed to the Atlantic alliance and gradually more
comfortable with robust free market principles. With the dramatic
transformation of China and India into potential superpowers in
their own right, as well as the ongoing threat to the entire world
of Islamist radicalism, the Atlantic alliance is likely to remain
an indispensable relationship for some time to come.
