A Letter from Paris: The Decline of Europe?
Bloch-Michel, Jean
C NGLAND," SAID A EUROPEAN STATESMAN, "offered a Europe of computers; Couve de Murville chose a Europe of sugar beets." Beyond the political considerations that led General de Gaulle to...
...Even projects that at first look like efforts in the right direction turn out to be, on closer examination, prestige projects...
...The Soviet Union, with its power and resources, will sooner or later become "post industrial...
...Such a policy might equip Europe to enter the post-industrial society and to remain a center of decision-making...
...At the speed of the Concorde, its outer walls will reach a temperature of 150 degrees centigrade...
...In any case, Europe is making no effort to catch up...
...This cannot be done without a policy of advanced social justice, and for this reason: it will require close cooperation at all stages and levels among government, management, and labor...
...Servan-Schreiber's next point is taken from Herman Kahn's projection that, by the year 2000, there will emerge a "post-industrial so ciety" confined to the U.S., Japan, Canada, and Sweden...
...First, only a politically united Europe can plan and execute enterprises that can meet the American challenge...
...Some people now are worried about England's future...
...Future decisions on these enterprises will be made in the American home office...
...It helps us to understand what has been done in America, and that what was accomplished there can also be done in Europe...
...Couve de Murville chose a Europe of sugar beets...
...Beyond the political considerations that led General de Gaulle to veto England's entry into the Common Market, there was, indeed, the choice between computers and beetroots...
...The day after the Brussels veto, M. Pierre Uri wrote in Le Monde: "As in the reign of Louis XIV and Napoleon, France may well come out diminished from this dream of grandeur...
...The question today is whether France has not embarked upon a course of irreversible decline...
...Actually, it has done nothing of the kind...
...WILL EUROPE ANSWER AMERICA'S CHALLENGE, or will it submit to annexation...
...The American supersonic transport plane, the Boeing 2707, will not be delivered until 1974...
...the French may have to pay more dearly than anyone else...
...The Concorde, as M. Servan-Schreiber presents it, is a striking case in point...
...It is also typical of the mistakes made by Europeans, even when they get together on a project...
...but if the comparison is incorrect, it may be because it is too optimistic...
...the Boeing at Mach 2.7...
...After having been the center of Western and, to some extent, world civilization, Europe will then enter a phase of cultural decline...
...MANUFACTURED JOINTLY by the British and the French, the Concorde will fly in 1968...
...American corporations buy European enterprises and integrate them into their own...
...A "number one priority" will be needed for all forms of education: modernization and democratization of elementary and secondary schooling, adult education, and continuous reeducation of technicians and management...
...An equivalent investment in operations that don't catch the attention of the general public, like metallurgical research or the manufacture of integrated circuits, might have helped to prepare Europe for a valid technological take-off...
...The money was invested in an operation that is almost certain to prove a financial loss and has been conceived entirely for prestige reasons...
...The three years' difference is presented to the general public as a sign of success, and the impression is conveyed that Europe has for once outpaced American technology...
...Beyond that, other alloys are needed, so far neither used nor even obtained...
...at the speed of the Boeing it will be 270 degrees...
...America's advantage in this case—and America, indeed, again has the advantage— lies not so much in the sizes of the respective planes or the number of passengers they can carry (136 for the Concorde, 300 for the Boeing 2707) as in speed...
...Nonetheless, this description itself is useful...
...The book does not propose an anti-American strategy...
...But it is obvious that British technological superiority and the influence of the new Common Market members would change the political balance: the dream of a Europe directed by a Big Two of France and Germany, or by France alone, would vanish into thin air...
...M. SERVAN-SCHREIBER'S BOOK contains many more such examples...
...No need for further detailed description—the reader is quite familiar with these facts...
...First, American investment in Europe is growing and no government can stop it: to ban it means merely to drive it into a neighboring country...
...but this would require a speedy overcoming of all archaic prejudices, be they national, class, or "elitist...
...After all, France recovered quite well from the "dreams of grandeur" of Louis XIV and Napoleon...
...M. Servan-Schreiber starts from two assumptions...
...Not that Western Europe can never become "post-industrial...
...Whatever the living standard—even if almost up to the American level—Europe thus will lose control over its destiny...
...Its wealth of natural resources seems only of secondary importance...
...Now, up to 150 degrees, the classical alloys of the aviation industry can be used...
...Therefore, the essential difference between the Concorde and the Boeing is this: the Concorde will be built with the standard aluminum-base alloy...
...The General chose beetroots...
...it is a very clever and lively popularization of the latest data on economic and operational research, especially those published by Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute...
...England's entry into the Common Market, followed by that of the other EFTA countries, would give Europe the aid of British technology, which is almost on the American level...
...the Boeing will be the first titanium-based plane...
...Operation Concorde," to use its publicity name, is therefore an operation lost from the start...
...And what is the source of America's power...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS In Europe these key industries—chemistry, titanium metallurgy, electronics—lag so far behind America that some people, including Herman Kahn, think that Europe will never catch up...
...Most important is the size of its domestic market—the kind of adminsitration and financial organization of its enterprises, the joint role of state and private enterprise in research, the constant and fruitful "cross-fertilization" among government, free enterprise, and universities...
...It would turn the Common Market into an economic unit of a size that would give Europe a base for creating an economy as advanced as the American...
...C NGLAND," SAID A EUROPEAN STATESMAN, "offered a Europe of computers...
...And so, while neither of the two planes has flown as yet and the Boeing will fly three years later then the Concorde, the order sheets tell a different story: 74 for the Concorde, 112 for the Boeing...
...And if American take-overs continue, decisions affecting the future of European economy will be made in America...
...Or, as M. Servan-Schreiber puts it: "The Concorde will be the last of the classical planes, the Boeing the first of a new generation of planes, conceived entirely for supersonic flight...
...For reasons of prestige, France forces Europe to prefer beetroots to computers...
...But Western Europe is in a differ ent situation...
...The problem is that it will enter this stage as a dependent of the U.S...
...It also helps us understand that this cannot be done in France, Germany, or Italy—but only in a united Europe...
...But General de Gaulle has chosen the dream of political independence at the risk of Europe's annexation to the American economy...
...The rest of the world, including the Soviet Union and Western Europe, will still remain at the "industrial" and "pre-industrial" stages...
...the first mass-produced planes will be delivered in 1971...
...Second, this investment means control...
...Within a century it will become to the world what Greece is now to Europe—a museum...
...The difference means little to the layman...
...This now is the question, and Europe will have to deal with it...
...but let us pass on to its conclusions...
...Only if Europe will finally be unified, politically and economically, will it have sufficiently large markets and investments needed for key industries that might one day catch up with those of America...
...Much has changed since Louis XIV and Napoleon...
...For if there is an American challenge, it is dangerous only to those unable to face it...
...The Concorde will fly at Mach 2.2...
...This is the warning sounded by M. JeanJacques Servan-Schreiber in his new book The American Challenge...
...But if the French believe they will not have to pay a price for the Gaullist policy of false grandeur, they are mistaken...
...but it includes the major obstacle to supersonic flight, the so-called heat wall...
Vol. 15 • March 1968 • No. 2
