THE OLD MAN OF THE WORLD

Long-time listeners to my radio show know that I spent a considerable amount of time talking about the changing dynamics of global power, especially after 9/11. Most Americans prior to that terrible September day did not spend much time thinking about foreign policy, or America's place in the world, or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or the demographic changes in Europe. One had to go to foreign policy magazines like Foreign Affairs to get any in-depth discussion of those issues. That has changed somewhat since 9/11, but even today most Americans are still uninformed and uninterested in the currents that are re-shaping the relationships between the U.S., it's allies, and it's enemies.

One of those currents is, I believe, becoming more evident to Americans as we fight the global war on terror, especially in Iraq. That is the increasing irrelevance of Europe. The title of my post refers to the name given the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "The Old Man of Europe". Europeans knew that the Ottoman Empire, which had lasted for centuries, was in it's last years (eventually the empire fell at the end of World War I). I believe that Europe now is "The Old Man of the World", a society in it's last years of decay.

The evidence that supports this view can be found first and foremost in an examination of fertility figures for all the Western European countries. Each and every one is below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple. If this trend continues we will see an economic collapse in Europe, and I believe the first signs are visible even now.

Nicole Gelinas writes about Europe in her column in this morning's NY Post. The angle she takes is the most newsworthy one...French reaction to the victory of George W. Bush. But she also points out some of the factors that are leading not just France but all of Europe down the path of irrelevance and dissolution.

The French will not accept the current global reality: That France, due to Western Europe's economic and military stagnation, cannot greet America as an equal partner on the world stage. But they are simply too proud to crawl back to America on America's terms. "We must stop talking about America as a hyperpower," Le Monde wrote. "America's power is only an echo of Europe's impotence."

But to admit that is to split Western Europe wide open domestically. As the French astutely observe, Western Europe cannot hope to expand its nominal military power to balance Bush's global "hegemony" without first expanding economically — and paring back social spending.
French President Jacques Chirac wants to expand Western Europe's military power outside of NATO — but Europe simply doesn't have the money. And one thing is as clear to Europeans as Bush's victory: Old Europe is not growing.

The European Union's four-year-old "Lisbon Agenda" to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world has failed abysmally, E.U. officials admitted Wednesday. Europe can't grow its way out of second-world political and economic status because its largest economies — Germany and France — won't deregulate labor markets and won't open up tightly controlled economies to new industries and new immigrants. And nothing will change until European citizens allow their politicians to ease this suffocating government vise-grip on the economy — and to reform the continent's cradle-to-grave welfare state.

The demographic reality I pointed out above is the main reason Europe is not growing economically. With native-born citizens not reproducing at a sufficient rate what little growth Europe is achieving is primarily because of immigrant workers, mostly Muslims. This is already leading to social upheaval and will lead to even greater levels of displacement, anger and violence. Europe is no longer a military power capable of competing with the United States (much to President Chirac's chagrin), and soon it will no longer be able to compete economically (if that isn't true already).

While I take a certain degree of pleasure in contemplating the discomfiture of the Europeans, the realist in me sees the danger in all of this. We needed Western Europe to stand as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. We need them today to stand as a bulwark against Islamist Fundamentalist expansionism. Unfortunately, the strategy used to defeat the Soviet Union (the stationing of hundreds of thousands of US troops in Europe backed with nuclear weapons) cannot be used against the Islamists, a more diffuse and ethereal enemy. Additionally, the growth of Western Europe after WWII was a great help in pressuring the Soviet Union and it's client states by showing their peoples the futility of their own system and the attractiveness of ours. If Europe continues to stagnate it will not provide that example to the peoples of the Islamic world.

All-in-all, it's a conundrum that will have to be considered by American policy-makers even as their energies are directed toward the more immediate task of defeating the Islamists on the battlefield.