Does Europe matter?
Pfaff, William
OF SEVERAL MINDS WILLIAM PFAFF DOES EUROPE NATTER? Yes & no Two developments of the past few months are certain to be crucial to the evolution of international balance in the twenty-first...
...Today's short-perspective Wall Street is incapable of providing the long-term investment funds Boeing would need to develop a competitive new generation of commercial aircraft...
...Yet the EU is incapable of expressing a serious protest against what has amounted to the termination of a political process that, since Norway's courageous convocation of secret Israeli-PLO talks a decade ago, has promised eventual Palestinian autonomy...
...The willing auxiliaries will not, which is the flaw in the combination...
...policies toward the Palestinians...
...A foreign-affairs chief and a high representative were named to conduct a European foreign policy that never emerged, and which will certainly not be possible, on matters other than elementary self-defense, in a Europe expanded beyond fifteen members...
...During the same weeks that led up to the currency changeover, the European Union nations were again demonstrating the EU's inconsequence in world political and military affairs...
...Pressed, it could form a defensive coalition of sorts, and of course, there is latent military power in Europe's economic strength, in aggregate greater than that of the United States...
...The question, for which we have no answer, is how much military power will really count in the years to come.he years to come...
...The only rival the United States has is Europe, and Europe is not, and will not become, a political or military power...
...air and ground components of this combination will always be available...
...Where will this put us as the century advances...
...His efforts were politically welcome, but his hope to influence Washington was wasted effort...
...Yes & no Two developments of the past few months are certain to be crucial to the evolution of international balance in the twenty-first century...
...The importance of the euro, however, lies less in the caprices of the markets than in what the currency's initial success implies about the future and the nature of Europe's ongoing unification...
...The U.S...
...The company has gone so far as to move to Chicago, to shake off Seattle's indelible identification with commercial airplane manufacturing...
...Second was the overwhelming success of the launch of Europe's new currency, the euro...
...intervention in Afghanistan proved unwanted by Washington, all but useless in the event, and largely ignored...
...They even have substituted for them, which is likely to prove the case with the euro...
...The consensus among EU governments and European public opinion today is more hostile than it has ever been to Israeli and U.S...
...Individual European governments retain significance, but "Europe" does not exist as an actor in international political and military matters...
...The affair was entirely dominated by Washington's decisions and American military force...
...aircraft actually in service or production- the Anglo-German Eurofighter and the French Rafale-have been so underfunded, and their development so retarded, as to suggest that Europe is ready to abandon military aerospace...
...British Prime Minister Tony Blair, acting independently, did his best to inject a European influence into Washington's decisions by means of tireless promotion and travel to boost support for President George W. Bush...
...Even before September 11 it had all three, but the political class and the public were divided on whether such assets should be exploited to make the United States into an informal imperial or globally hegemonic political power, with all of the ostensible rewards, but also the griefs, which history provides to those with such ambitions...
...high-technology air attacks, directed by special forces on the ground, supporting local forces prepared to act as American auxiliaries...
...A precarious new world balance is emerging...
...Once again, "Europe" has demonstrated that it progresses through economic change, rather than political initiative...
...The two European fighter aircraft that mark an advance on the U.S...
...September 11 made the choice-or so it now seems...
...First was the spectacular military performance in Afghanistan of U.S...
...The specific quality of European development has always been that economic decisions and actions have been indispensable to the production of political consequences...
...champion of commercial aircraft, is in deep trouble because of European Airbus competition, and is trying to remake its stock-market identity as a non-aerospace company...
...Yet at the same moment, Boeing, the U.S...
...But economic Europe, trading Europe, single-market Europe, single-currency Europe, industrially cooperating Europe, protectionist and subsidizing Europe, cultural-exception Europe, social-protections Europe, health-care Europe, antitrust Europe, "antidumping" Europe- and, to a certain measure, antiglobaliza-tion and anti-American Europe-all have emerged and are doing very nicely...
...The Europeans have always had political ambitions for their union, mostly expressed in terms of federation, an imprecise term whose actual definition most European officials avoided...
...Its introduction evoked enthusiasm even from the Germans, supposed still to begrudge their loss of the deutsche mark...
...Europe's embarrassing demand for a military role in the U.S...
...Even the EU project to create a small rapid-reaction force for innocuous peacekeeping missions has stalled because governments have made no serious funding available to it...
...The United States is preoccupied with military power, political leadership, and domination of world financial markets...
...The currency markets immediately raised it against the dollar and the yen...
Vol. 129 • January 2002 • No. 2
