T. R. Reid's The United States of Europe, Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream, and Mark Leonard's Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century

...Slowing birth rates are creating immense economic and social problems across the region, and unless those rates are raised or offset, Europe's future will be cloudy...

...By looking backward and inward, choosing to base its identity primarily on culture, religion, and history, continuing to ignore the challenges raised by globalization, immigration, and the need to bring a country like Turkey into the liberal democratic fold, Europe may be able to avoid troubling trade-offs for a long time...

...Driven by an overwhelming desire to prove that Europe is not the stagnant economic backwater that so many Americans (and indeed, a number of Europeans) believe it to be, however, both overshoot the mark...

...Up to now these two radically different selfconceptions have coexisted side by side, rarely conflicting with each other on a day-to-day basis...

...Alongside the shelf of books chronicling transatlantic disputes over Iraq, terrorism, the United Nations, and similar topics, another shelf is filling up with analyses of how the "European model" is not just different from the American one but superior to it...

...There is something intuitive at the core of this argument, even if it is hard to define in any rigorous way (for example, it is hard to find much commonality in the history or culture of nations as diverse as Sweden and Bulgaria...

...The deal was approved by the boards of both companies and the relevant U.S...

...SHERI BERMAN iS an associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author of The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press...

...The emerging interconnected world is rendering the adversarial nature of markets obsolete, he claims...

...In an era when the U.S...

...government has bet the bank on democracy promotion and has come to argue that political transformation is the key to national security as well as the natural fulfillment of America's "God-given" role, it is striking to recognize just how successful Europe has been at this game...

...now as then, he writes, Europe is in the vanguard...

...Another has been a sense that Europeans and Americans have distinct approaches to domestic affairs as well...

...Both books have a relentlessly upbeat tone, an explicitly evangelical goal, and a firm belief that the "end of History" has indeed arrived (although at a different station from the one Francis Fukuyama envisioned...

...He touts the growing power of the euro vis-a-vis the dollar, the ways integration has helped European businesses overcome coordination problems and benefit from economies of scale, and the impressive spread of European brands and businesses across the globe...

...But here is where the story gets truly interesting, for bringing Turkey into Europe and securing its democratic future would not only 102 DISSENT / Winter 2006 be an accomplishment of world-historical significance (and stand in stark contrast to the U.S.'s bumbling efforts to promote progressive political, social and economic change in other parts of the Muslim world), but would also force Europe to confront arguably its greatest contemporary challenge, settling once and for all questions about its own future and identity...

...What this would require, however, is confronting head-on the question of what it means to be European in the twenty-first century...

...He ran headlong into the path of [a] great historic movement .. . the unification of Europe...

...Welch failed to recognize this because he was accustomed to thinking about satisfying only American authorities and actors, and compounded his mistake by appealing to Washington to help get the deal done...

...But the French are even worse off...

...An obvious one is the need to overcome the widespread European view that globalization is something to be feared or resisted rather than embraced...

...Reid focuses much of his attention on the business sphere and the ways integration has steadily leveled the playing field between American and European firms...

...The books tend to have significant flaws of their own, however—including, oddly enough, a shared blind spot regarding Europe's true hope for long-term greatness and the obstacles it must surmount to achieve it...

...THE EUROPEAN UNION can either remain a weak confederation of states, joined together largely for economic purposes, or it can become something more...

...This approach is incredibly effective and stands in direct contrast to the more expensive and threatening American one...

...This vision is idealistic rather than materialistic, focused on the achievement of a better world rather than simply the accumulation of goods...

...While America is desperately trying to hold on to an old era, Europe is "creating something new and bold...

...This literature does a good job of pointing out the chinks in America's armor and highlighting the ways Europessimists have overdone their gloomy portrait of the continent and its future...

...IT IS CERTAINLY true that Europe's economic problems can be overstated and its accomplishments underappreciated...

...With the recent decision to accept Turkey's bid for full membership, however, Europe has reached the point where it must choose between two alternative visions of its future...

...The first would define Europe on the basis of history, culture, and religious heritage...

...WHERE REID OFFERS an informative and entertaining review of Europe's many practical accomplishments, particularly in the economic sphere, in The European Dream social theorist Jeremy Rifkin sets out to prove that Europeans are ahead of their American counterparts in the "vision thing" as well...

...More than eighty thousand laws regulating a vast array of economic, political, and social affairs—the European Union pulled off nothing less than a miracle forcing, or rather enticing, countries to undertake societal, political, and economic reforms that in some cases helped transform them from top to bottom...

...These are not the musings of a people eagerly embracing the New World Order...

...Europe is defined, in this view, by a commitment to a set of ideals rather than an amorphous and perhaps mythical shared past...

...But there is another view of modern European identity and the EU's purpose, one that builds upon the key historical accomplishment of the Union thus far...

...DISSENT / Winter 2006 103...

...Writing with the fervor of a religious convert, Rifkin sees the key to Europe's success in an ideal of life "far better suited to the next stage in the human journey" than its American counterpart...

...Two different paths are open to Europe...

...For those who believe in this second model of European identity, Turkey's candidacy should be embraced rather than opposed (at least to the extent that Turkey demonstrates that it shares the EU goals...

...Rifkin compares these economic shifts to the "great transformation" that occurred with the industrial revolution...

...Books that prattle about a "cooperative" or "trust-based" economic order are no substitute for clear thinking about the DISSENT / Winter 2006 101 reforms needed in order to allow Europe to flourish rather than flounder in an ever-morecompetitive global economy...

...IF REID AND RIFKIN are both strangely silent about some obvious problems facing Europe, they also fail to focus on perhaps Europe's most striking and distinctive accomplishments, namely democracy promotion—a topic that given their and the continent's obsessions with countering the "American model" or "American hegemony" is quite odd indeed...

...Leonard's book provides a short, concise summary of the standard Europhile arguments and shares some of the same strengths and weaknesses of the other two books...

...All three authors examined here favor the latter course, both on its own terms and as the only way Europe can counter the United States...

...A former European bureau chief for the Washington Post, Reid sees European integration as designed to create a new actor able to "stand up as a counterweight to the American brute" and penned his book to help this project along...

...In fact, it's hard to take seriously Rifkin's praise for Europe's emphasis on community and diversity, given the inability or unwillingness of most European countries to address the problems facing their own minority populations (as the riots in France have made painfully clear...

...This same drama is now playing out in Turkey, where—as in Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe—the prospect of EU membership has driven the country to undertake massive reforms...

...As Leonard notes, "Once sucked into [Europe's] sphere of influence, countries are changed forever...

...Turkey does not share these, the argument runs, and so letting it in to the Union would threaten Europe's unity and identity...

...All of this is a useful antidote to those who think that Europe's economy is anemic and unable to compete with its "more dynamic" American counterpart...

...Thus not only did Europe encourage transitions to democracy, it also helped provide incentives for the types of reform that would help create the contexts within which democracy could work...

...Much of one chapter, for example, is devoted to the story of General Electric's failed attempt to purchase the aerospace company Honeywell...

...authorities, yet it ultimately fell apart...

...Although it is true that tales of European economic doom are overwrought, there is no doubt that a general sense of pessimism pervades much of the continent...

...The most plausible way of offsetting the declines, of course, is through immigration, a controversial subject that is oddly, if tellingly, ignored in both books...

...By rewarding the continuation of liberalization in Turkey with full EU membership, Europe would literally make history, breaking decisively with the most negative features of its own past—the ethnic and religious wars and hatreds that so deformed the continent's twentieth century—and offering a stark and plausible alternative to the democracy-spreading aspirations of the United States...

...The result was predictable: with Europe now unwilling to be treated as a "weak little sister who can be pushed around by swaggering Americans," the merger was rejected and Welch's reputation tarnished...

...And when the Soviet Union collapsed, of course, the lure of Europe helped bring formerly communist countries firmly into the democratic and capitalist camp...

...The practical results have been astonishing...

...Yet in order to move forward, the European Union will have to develop a distinctive consciousness and rationale, one based on more than being the "anti-United States...

...Less than fifteen years after the fall of communism, for example, most of east and central Europe was firmly in the liberal, democratic camp or well on its way to being there—all without firing a shot...

...Because Jack Welch "came up against a force more powerful than the most powerful corporate chieftain...

...But by looking forward and outward, choosing to base its identity on universal values and goals, and confronting the need to change if it wants to remain dynamic and distinctive, Europe could expand its appeal and influence beyond its borders and give itself the sense of purpose and mission that it now seems so clearly to lack...

...Herein lies the rub, for doing so will require confronting many of the challenges that books in the Reid, Rifkin, and Leonard genre ignore...

...From this perspective, the EU constitutes a group of nations committed to the maintenance and furthering of democracy, prosperity, and peace...

...Rather than relying on the threat of exercising power to secure its interests, Europe relies on the threat of not using it—of withdrawing the hand of friendship, and the prospect of membership...

...Reid ties the corporate tales to more general cheerleading about Europe's economic performance and prospects...

...Rifkin argues that the European dream has practical benefits as well as spiritual ones: it helps support, for example, what Rifkin believes is a distinctively European model of governance, one ideally suited to contemporary economic conditions...

...only "cooperative commerce" based on "networks" can deliver the long-term relationships necessary for success in today's "speedy, complex and diverse" world...

...Indeed, looking back at the "third wave" of democratization that began spreading across the globe in the 1970s, one can see just how critical a role Europe has played in pushing it forward...

...This model offers, in other words, a path to a truly attractive European identity and alternative, one that also holds out the promise of building a sphere of influence that could truly rival the United States...

...It is grounded in what the philosopher Jurgen Habermas has called a Verfassungspatriotismus, a devotion to a certain kind of constitutional order rather than ties of blood, faith, or tradition...

...REID'S The United States of Europe is up front about its goals and motivation...

...This is Reid's overwrought way of saying that integration has given Brussels great leverage due to its regulatory 100 DISSENT / Winter 2006 power and ability to control access to a large and lucrative European market...

...The immense political, economic, and social changes required for membership, combined with immense aid, then helped ensure that these new democracies would steady themselves and develop further...

...As Leonard puts it, "The European model is the equivalent of the strategy of the Jesuits: if you change the country at the beginning, you have it for life...

...Not only is their economy more 'sclerotic' than ours, but they are constitutionally incapable of fixing it...

...Beginning with Spain, Portugal, and Greece, the promise of European Community membership encouraged those trying to move away from authoritarian rule...

...Here at least Mark Leonard's Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century takes up the gauntlet...

...A recent editorial in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, for example, tried to perk up Germans by noting, "Sure, the German economy is in the dumps, and our national mood is sour...

...Indeed, bringing Turkey into the union would confirm that the "European dream" is not limited to a few specific peoples, but rather a model with potentially universal application...

...But the continent also certainly faces important challenges, many of which are the flip side of the very accomplishments commentators such as Reid and Rifkin emphasize...

...Another challenge to Europe's economic future is demography...

...It values community over individualism, favors multicultural diversity over melting-pot assimilation, and views multilateral institutions rather than military hegemony as the path to global stability...

...For fifty years . . . Europe has been creating a 'community of democracy' and using its market size and the promise of engagement to reshape societies from the inside...

...However, Leonard differs from Reid and Rifkin in highlighting Europe's success in beating the Americans at what they like to think is their own game...

...Unlike the United States, he argues, Europe does not change countries by invading them but by threatening to ignore them...

...He also includes the requisite sections on the European welfare states, reminding his readers of the many practical benefits the continent's generous social policies continue to offer its citizens...