Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century has a title even most Europeans would laugh at. Across Op-Ed columns, commentators pitch the terms 'American Century' against 'Rising China' with scant thought for our little proto-union in between. Europeans are poorer than Americans, and less fertile than the Chinese. Our ageing populations are programmed to crush the younger generation under an impossible tax burden. We are fractious and divided, and we are yesterday's news. As for the European Union itself, it has been called (with some level of justification in every case) undemocratic, stultifyingly bureaucratic, directionless, powerless, and – with the proposed entry of Turkey – increasingly meaningless.
Not to Mark Leonard. He tells us that the absence of democracy within the European Union itself does not diminish its essential democratic character since the overarching structure rests on the democratic foundations of each participating nation state. He reverses criticisms of Europe's colossal bureaucracy by explaining that it is precisely the legal nature of the Union that most justifies its existence. 'What is it', he asks, 'that has transformed Europe into a transmission belt for peace and democracy?' International Law – 'Europe's weapon of choice in its campaign to reshape the world.' And it is the principle of law which counters the argument of directionlessness – 'At the heart of Europe's strategy is a revolutionary theory of international relations' which transforms those countries it comes into contact with by bending them to legal norms without which they cannot do business with the biggest market in the world which is Europe. As for Europe's weakness, Leonard marshals a vast array of studies and figures to prove that Europe is not only catching up with the US economically (in many areas even outstripping it), but that its models of government within the Union, and the model of government of the Union, make it both more adaptable to change and more influential at a global level. To the charge of meaninglessness, Leonard would answer that it is Europe's inclusiveness that makes it universal.
Unfortunately, even for Europhiles, there are so many intellectual sleights of hand within the book as to make Leonard seem deliberately disingenuous, and never more so than through the postured schadenfreude he adopts towards the US. Sentences such as 'In a single year, the US is spending more on reconstructing a country with 20 million people [Iraq] than the European spent on bringing democracy to the entire former Soviet bloc in a decade' are factually correct but fantastically dishonest intellectually. Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century reads less like a manifesto than a well-spun political intervention intended, by hook or by crook, to rescue Europe from its European nay-sayers.
But while there is much to hearten the Europhile in Leonard's extremely articulate and very well-argued book, it is hard to agree with his grounding thesis – that Europe is ultimately better off for its lack of driving vision. It's an interesting idea: the twentieth century taught Europeans, rightly, to beware all forms of over-arching ideological programmes. But with a referendum in France (cradle and founder of the European dream) over whether or not to ratify the European Constitutional treaty (which has the vision and ideals of a Kafka bureaucrat) hanging in the balance, perhaps it is time to try to acknowledge that we will only learn how to stand by our principles if we know what it is that we stand for.
Turi Munthe
Head of Middle East & North Africa Programme, RUSI