The notion that Europe - old sclerotic Europe - might dominate this century will seem to most people to be willfully perverse. All the facts seem to point in the opposite direction. The large Continental nations, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, are wrestling with slow growth and unemployment rates either close to 10 per cent or higher. The "Lisbon agenda", which set 2010 as the target date for Europe to catch up with US technological achievement, is having to be revised. Looking further ahead, the European Commission itself has warned that the EU's share of global output is like to fall from 20 per cent to about 10 per cent over the next half-century.
Yet Mark Leonard argues the reverse, and deserves to be listened to. He was the founder of the influential think-tank, The Foreign Policy Centre, and has now joined the Centre for European Reform. More controversially, aged 23, he wrote the pamphlet that launched the phrase "Cool Britannia". His thesis is that Europe will run the world this century because the European ideal of a peaceful group of nations, linked by a union, is a more attractive model than the American model of lonely power.
He starts by arguing that EU is a successful political model because it embraces rather than destroys national identities. European countries retain the trappings of power - their parliaments - but in practice the important decisions have been taken in Brussels, where two-thirds of British economic and social legislation are made. But British people think power is still in Westminster.
He also argues that the European economies are more successful that they at first sight appear. Europe has, for example, comparable productivity to the US, but Europeans take their reward in greater leisure. Further, the higher growth of the US is largely a result of faster population growth. Perhaps most persuasively, he points out that the European club is one that other countries very much want to join.
But real power? There will inevitably be a rebalancing of economic power away from both the US and Europe, with China and India in particular becoming more important. There will also be a further rise in regional groupings, such as the African Union. Europe's aim should be to create a "Union of Unions", a process into which the US would inevitably find itself sucked. "We will see the emergence of a New European Century'," he writes, "Not because Europe will run the world as an empire, but because the European way of doing things will have become the world's."
It is a seductive thesis, but is it realistic? There seem to me three main weaknesses. One is demography. Europe, with Japan, is the "oldest" part of the world. In Germany, Italy and Spain there are only 1.3 babies born to each mother, while France and the UK are below replacement rate. By contrast, the US population is expanding fast, giving the economy a vibrancy Europe lacks. The US is ageing too, but not as fast as the EU.
Second, the EU compares reasonably with the US on a number of counts only because of the performance of its most Eurosceptic member, the UK. Were it not for the UK, the recent growth gap between the EU and US would be much greater. In military terms, were it not for the UK, the EU military capacity is minimal. Third, Leonard ignores the dynamics of human capital and in particular the migration of many young continental professionals to the UK and US. If the most energetic young continentals want to make their careers elsewhere, this bodes ill for European influence in the future.
But Europe should not be written off, as so many Americans do. Part of the impetus for this book came from discussions a British Council conference in Prague, organised by the author. The most recent in this series of conferences had as its theme "Can Europe sharpen its blunt competitive edge?" If it can, then some elements of his dream could indeed come true.
Hamish McRae is The Independent's chief economics commentator