The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall has a commentary piece today arguing that Europe needs to form a common supra-national front in order to gain some leverage against the US and help curb a “unipolar” world order. I imagine that right now his position is not all that different from other UK and continental commentators across the political spectrum. What’s remarkable about it is how inevitable the call toward Europe as world power seems and how it’s not likely to happen soon. Two major issues stand in the way. First, Europe would have to be willing to devote a substantial proportion of its economic output to military buildup. The tradeoff between welfare-state priorities and military-state prioirites might be difficult enough, but at a time of sclerotic unemployment (in Germany and France at least) and the tensions emerging over the course of economic liberalization, particular in the labor markets, even nationalistic bristling at US power might not be enough to allow popular support for military spending. Second, of course, Europe would have to speak with one voice for it to be meaningful. This means some supra-national consitutional framework, along the lines of that which has been envisioned by political leaders and Eurocrats, but which still seems a distant goal, especially given the rapid and amazing progress Europe has already made in unification and a common currency.
Not all is bad news for Tisdall’s dream of a multipolar world, however. For the US is in the converse situation as Europe: every problem it is facing will push it toward more non-zero-sum cooperation with other countries, yet politically, this cooperation doesn’t seem to have much prospects in the short term. I’m not merely referencing the liberal reminder that we’ll need Europe to help build Iraq. Rather, on almost every front - arms control, anti-terrorism, pollution, trade liberalization - we’re going to have to build and strengthen supra-national governance and cede some of our sovereign power in the process. For both us and Europe, the question will be when some crisis point will be reached to spur us into action.
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