HEIDELBERG, Germany: You don’t need to look through the poet’s
glass — and darkly — to see the age-old strife returning to
Europe. After the G-20 summit in Cannes, all that is evident is
economic wreckage. As someone else wrote recently, the “sick man of
Europe” is Europe.
And for those of us conservatives who have used too freely
the analogy of today’s European approach to Islamic terrorism to
Europe of 1938, it’s quite apparent that we’ve had it wrong, in
part. Before the new Europe progresses to 1938 again, it has to
pass through at least 26 years of economic strife.
It’s not 1938 again in Europe: it’s April 1912. And the
nations crowded together in the Eurozone are more like the huddled
steerage passengers who set sail on the Titanic than the
members of an economic union. And, unlike the Titanic’s
passengers, the survivors of the euro’s demise will owe their fate
to economic Darwinism.
Germany is not sick, at least yet, but Prime Minister
Angela Merkel will not be able to save it from sovereign debt
contagion forever. In the past few days, I’ve seen a bit of Germany
and talked to many Germans. Not enough to know them or their
nation, but enough at least to see part of their economy’s
strength.
In Munich, the sparkling BMW factory and museum overshadow
the Olympic Park apartments where, in 1972, Black September
terrorists attacked members of the Israeli Olympic team, killing
two immediately and nine more when German forces mounted a botched
rescue days later at the airport.
Munich is now all-BMW. The factory — a UAW nightmare —
is about 85% automated. About 700 robots do everything from
spot-welding to painting in a computerized ballet of hydraulic
power. On Munich’s streets, there’s a jeweler selling wristwatches
for €20,000 and up on every corner but
few — if any — sales are made to passersby. You can’t even
observe much in the beer halls of Munich. There is a rougher edge
among the patrons than you see in the sidewalk cafes and better
restaurants, but probably no more so than some Europeans might find
in a country-western bar in the States.
The only news here that counts is the dour news from
Cannes. In that news, and the continuing euro-drama, is the age-old
strife. But not what movie-makers might wish for.
At Cannes, France’s Sarkozy, and Germany’s Merkel
apparently browbeat Greece’s PM, George Papandreou, sufficiently
that he’s given up on holding a plebiscite on the bailout agreed a
week ago at the EU summit. But neither France nor Germany was crazy
enough to guarantee the EU bailout fund or sweet talk the IMF into
guaranteeing Greek solvency. By the summit’s end, a tranche of the
bailout for Greece agreed on before the summit was being held up to
see how long Papandreou’s government would stand and whether the
bailout “agreement” for Greece — which Papandreou’s call for a
plebiscite upended briefly — will survive.
Whether it does matters not at all. The 50% “haircut” of
Greek debt — whereby bondholders would see their investments’
value cut by that percentage — is voluntary. Which means no one in
their right mind will take it without negotiating a better deal
than the Greek government can afford. (Greece can’t afford it even
with the 50% reduction, but it’s very impolite to write
that.)
Without the EU bailout fund or the IMF, Greece has only
one hope and it’s not the continuation of Papandreou’s term. Both
Greece and Italy can only be “saved” — for a year or two, not
permanently — by the European Central Bank. If it were allowed to
simply print more euros to inflate the currency and allow temporary
relief to Greece and Italy, their economies could limp along for a
few more months, even years. The loss would be absorbed by the more
prosperous European economies, Germany and France.
But the endgame is in sight. As Britain’s Maggie Thatcher
and her allies said decades ago, nations which do not share a
government cannot share a currency without sacrificing those who
are financially responsible to those who are not. When the euro
collapses, what will Europe look like?
Like the sinking of the Titanic, the unfolding
tragedy will start slowly and accelerate to a climax. The Eurozone
will have to shrink, ejecting Greece first and probably Italy,
Spain, Portugal, and others in an increasingly rapid succession.
When it breaks up entirely, it’s likely that the German economy
will be the least damaged.
There will be an era of social unrest in Europe that may
continue for decades. Poverty is ugly, and when there is no route
to escape it people turn against their governments, then against
their fellow citizens, and last against those other nations within
reach. Governments will fall, people will riot, and the only
winners will be nations such as Russia that will seek hegemony over
them.
Please note that here I do not include the Germans who —
at this point at least — seem wise enough to not desire economic
hegemony over western Europe. Unstated is the fact that when the
Eurozone collapses there will be little or nothing worth conquering
in Europe. No nation can afford to be the ruler of hundreds of
millions of peons looking to the state for sustenance. The Germans
may be also be wise enough to realize that they cannot defend
themselves from Russia and seek domination of Europe at the same
time.
The face of Europe is barely visible beneath two millennia
of scars. The Roman Empire and its fall, Charles Martel’s stand at
Tours against Islam, the Ottomans, Russia, Napoleon, British
imperialism, two World Wars and the Soviet Union have all come and
gone. What will come in the post-euro world?
History teaches us only that Europe’s map will be redrawn
— again — as a result of the euro’s collapse. The most important
question, then, is who will be the cartographer?
Here the crystal ball goes dark. It is obvious that
whatever nation could wield a large enough economic sword could be
Europe’s master, but the price of such a sword is too high. It is
just as obvious, and just as wrong, to say that a potential
conqueror from the east would find Europe an easy target. But
America — on cultural grounds if nothing else — would likely bar
that conquest if we were still able.
There is no prescription to cure Europe’s woes. Even if
there were, the Eurozone nations are incapable of following
it.
If only the Greeks — or at least Greek women - made a
study of their own culture. Aristophanes had a prescription for
what ails Greece and the rest of the Eurozone, though it’s probably
too late for even that medicine to work. The Lysistrata remedy
might have worked a decade or two ago. Now there is nothing that
can prevent economic Darwinism from working its evolution on
Europe.
