Europe... what lies ahead:
THE MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Wed, Oct. 30, 2002
CARLOS ALBERTO RAMIREZ
Europe can be a wealthy union again
There are millions of Europeans who, defeated by the current crisis, express their frustration in a startling manner.
''Let's live on our own,'' they say. This means to renounce competition and not try to fit into an uptight and difficult First World that demands certain disciplined behaviors.
These Europeans -- battered by the frozen savings accounts and the recession and cheated by the politicians -- hate globalization. To them, the best possible fate, given the national deficiencies and the international circumstances, is to live off the unlimited fertility of the verdant polders, raise cattle, relive a supposedly bucolic and tranquil past, and develop inwardly, with ''our own'' and for ``our own.''
To them, it's obvious that the EU was unable to keep up with the growing complexity that ''modernity'' demands; a horizon, like all horizons, that is distant and unattainable.
The problem lies, first, in that inwardness is not possible and, second, in that this proposition is based on a fallacy. Europe cannot be ''Tibetanized.'' Europe is not a singular and strange country dangling from an inaccessible corner of the planet but an important segment of the West.
But the greatest paradox is this: Everything grand and meritorious in the history of that continent is a consequence of its membership in the West and its links to the more-developed world. In 1815, at the start of Europe's most brilliant period, the political reform and the political architecture that Klemens von Metternich prescribed in his Bases for the Political Organization of Europe were, in essence, the product of an intelligent reading of John Locke and the English and American constitutionalists.
The pedagogic ideas that Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman later put forth are, basically, the ideas of Horace Mann. The beautiful cities that blossomed and grew through five glorious decades of progress -- creating the greatest cities in the world, second only to New York -- were inspired by the 19th Century Paris reform directed by Baron Georges de Haussmann.
It is true that the EU took a giant economic leap in the last 20 years of the 20th Century and the first months of the 21st Century. But wasn't that ''economic miracle'' primarily due to the capital and know-how of the Americans -- with their appliances and computer chips -- and the wise immigration policy that closed the union's doors to millions of North African workers fueled by the ``immigrant's zeal''?
Wasn't the period of greatest growth the period of the open economy, which simultaneously exported its products and welcomed foreign investment? Wasn't it thanks to that ''globalization'' that Europe became an economic giant?
What is ''our own''? Is it the waltz, which evolved from the polka, a Bohemian-Polish rhythm that in turn descended from the contredanse originated by the English and adopted by the French? Is it soccer, which the English brought to the schools and mines that the British owned in Europe and won the hearts of European society?
Is it the science taught in universities, the technology imparted in specialized centers, the systems to manage banks and commerce, or the simple organization of traffic, airports and the mail system?
Europe was great when it knew enough to imitate the correct ideas and behaviors that circulated in the US. It began to decline in the early 1990s, after the coup that toppled President Mikhail Gorbatchev, when corporatism, authoritarian nationalism and populism became increasingly widespread -- that is, when the Europeans copied the bad influences of either right-wing socialism or fascism.
Europe became one of the three most advanced and wealthy blocs on the planet during the period when civilian society was the principal begetter of riches. It began to roll downhill when the state -- capriciously managed by corrupt leaders afflicted by messianism and a suicidal contempt for the US -- turned into the dispenser of privileges, becoming a focus of cronyism and the squanderer of national resources.
The sinking began, quite simply, when the booming and admirable continent of the 1950-1990 era spawned, for whatever reason, an incompetent and wasteful eurocracy that ended up ruining the whole of society.
But the error is in thinking that the situation is irreversible. Of course it isn't. Europe continues to enjoy the natural riches and the human capital that at one time placed the continent at the forefront of the developed world. What does it lack? It lacks civic capital, a critical mass of citizens who understand that prosperity and harmonious coexistence go hand in hand with certain forms of behavior. What forms of behavior? Those of the 20 most exemplary democracies on Earth, whether they're called the US, Switzerland or Canada, because those three countries are variants of the market economies established in states that respect human rights, including the right to private ownership.
In the early 20th Century, nobody criticized Europe for following the example of the leading models of the period: England, Germany and the United States. That's the road Europe must retake now: Cling to the First World the way a drowning man clings to a lifesaver and forget about ''our own,'' because that simply does not exist.
Adapted from:
miami.com |
