ABSORBING ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN ASCENDANCY
In the week that George W Bush, the most polarising US president since Lyndon B Johnson, visits Europe to attempt to patch up transatlantic relations, the debate is raging on in newspaper columns about which of the two political entities' approaches to foreign policy is the right one.
Europe, with its slight pacifistic streak and obsession with rules, inspections and international law? Or America, with its shoot-first, deal-with-major-insurgency-later tactics? According to mainstream US political thought, Europe is weak, divided, and prone to dithering and appeasement. It is shackled by a sluggish economy, high taxes, high unemployment and an aging population. It doesn't believe in "freedom''.
Consequently, it is dying a slow death and America is leading the world, influencing and shaping newly free nations, such as those in eastern Europe.
In his new book, Mark Leonard convincingly debunks this theory.
The EU influences far more people in a considerably stronger manner than any other power on earth. Look at Turkey, he points out. Last year, it jettisoned a constitutional law on adultery - supported by a majority of the population - because some EU members said they didn't fancy it much and, by the way, Turkey's EU entry negotiation talks would be coming up soon. Would Turkey really have done the same if America had said something? Then there's Poland, supposedly a key member of "new Europe'', more in the American mould than a Brussels-inspired EU one.
Rubbish, says Leonard. Poland may have been the only big country in Europe, other than Britain and Spain, to support the US's Iraq invasion. But when it comes to the model on which it is restructuring its entire society, from what appears on the dinner table to environmental legislation, it bows completely to the EU and what it dictates.
The question "Who has more influence in Poland, America or the EU?" is, therefore, a rhetorical one. It's the same for all of so-called "new Europe''.
Leonard also analyses two economic issues that Americans identify European weakness with: GDP growth and unemployment.
The conventional wisdom is that the US has high productivity and Europe doesn't. This is simply wrong, says Leonard.
He points out that GDP per person is almost identical in the US and the EU, and is exactly the same if you take Germany - which has been under the extraordinary pressure of absorbing another major country into it - out of the reckoning.
Even to get to this level of parity with Europeans, Americans have to work far longer hours (866 hours per capita in the US compared to 691 in Europe), and take far fewer holidays.
Then there's joblessness. Overall, EU unemployment is higher than American unemployment (though not if you live in Ireland, which has much lower unemployment than the US).But the EU has created more jobs since 1997 than America has. And it's not comparing like with like, as 1 per cent of the US population is actually in prison.
But for Europe to "run the 21st century'', it must have a military option. This is a genuine weakness, concedes Leonard, but not as important as some think.
American foreign policy is rooted in military superiority. It spends as much on its military budget as the rest of the world combined. But all that means is that it can win individual wars. Has Iraq really been a foreign policy success? Compare this, says Leonard, to the way European facilitators are negotiating with Iran. Not only does it shed less blood, it costs a lot less too. His thesis is that diplomacy - a European invention - will rule over the course of the next 100 years.
This book is an excellent, lucid read for anyone interested in the facts about Europe's true place in the world.