Good stuff. One aspect that occurs to me to be potentially significant is the apparently growing political sea change that is now occurring in many of the major Western polities, and how that will affect their coherence and capacity to act while the chaos of confrontation and transformation is undergone. The CRINKS are far better geared up to deal ruthlessly with internal dissent and fragmentation, as we have seen of late.
This is interesting but we really do have to sift through an awful lot of emotional hysteria as some cherished liberal and centrist dreams bite the dust. The bottom line is that Europe has (fragmented) economic power (as the US defence policy acknowledges) but has little significant hard power or at least what is there is concentrated in specific countries - the UK (declining and outside the Union), France (declining but still significant because of nuclear capacity) and Poland (in military terms).
The logic of the situation is precisely what the Pentagon has drawn attention to - the transformation of soft and economic power to hard power but this has two difficult political requirements: the first is that some sort of unified executive command centre is required yet Europe is politically fragmented and it could take years to cohere and may not cohere effectively if the Russian 'threat' recedes (which is looking quite possible); the second is a diversion of state resources from infrastructure, ideals (e.g. green stuff) and social cohesion towards militarisation which is going to be a tough sell to voters if the fear factor cannot be maintained.
Militarisation can, of course, take place with economic growth and economic growth might be driven to some degree by a 'potlach' military-industrial economy but the danger is that militarisation simply means weakly co-ordinated polyglot diversity-driven national competition for the goodies that economic militarism is designed to provide. This (to be resolved) in turn requires a de facto European super state with qualified majority voting on foreign and defence policy (in which tiddlers like Estonia hold disproportionate power) run by an executive power not dissimilar to that of the existing Great Powers.
The populist resistance to this is likely to be significant leading to increased 'liberal' authoritarianism and so more countervailing resistance in which other Great Powers will dabble. Most of the hysteria has been coming from Centrists, Atlanticists, Nordics and Baltics who do not actually decide the matter without persuading less hysterical member countries and I am not sure they are currently doing a very good job of that. These forces also seem to be economically naive - the justified frustration of Prodi about the lack of commitment to improved pan-European productivity is an example of a 'split in the ruling order'.
Of course, state formation of this type usually involves an eventual war within the polity being constructed. The critical role of the American Civil War in creating US federalism is an example but there are many others. Perhaps an attempted secession within the EU triggers an ordering conflict, perhaps armed rebellions and 'pseudo-terrorism' (aka national liberations) allows the European Federalists to engage in the necessary repression. Perhaps this will be a case where luck and economic prosperity allows a slow progress of integration amongst a ruling political caste that probably does not give much of feck what most people think most of the time and has the skill to manipulate narratives sufficiently. Who knows?
Whatever the process, it is likely to be slow, troubled and take years and perhaps decades. It may simply collapse on other fundamentals - the lack of a material threat, the continued role of Washington in neutering Brussels by still giving strategic cover on the cheap, productivity weaknesses, populist resistance. Certainly those who want a federal European Superpower are going to have to get a better quality of leadership at the top. The current bunch have proved worse than useless in their reaction to events and in failing to predict and scenario plan current trajectories.
Personally, the idea of a bunch of centrist hysterics moving this forward fills me with gloom but history flows as history must. History also shows us that emotional idealistic nutters whether in the fourth century or the twentieth and probably in the twenty-first tend to have a dangerous momentum all of their own. The rest of us just have to sit there open-mouthed as their energy creates new miseries for the bulk of the population in a sort of grim hive-cleansing.
Good stuff. One aspect that occurs to me to be potentially significant is the apparently growing political sea change that is now occurring in many of the major Western polities, and how that will affect their coherence and capacity to act while the chaos of confrontation and transformation is undergone. The CRINKS are far better geared up to deal ruthlessly with internal dissent and fragmentation, as we have seen of late.
This is interesting but we really do have to sift through an awful lot of emotional hysteria as some cherished liberal and centrist dreams bite the dust. The bottom line is that Europe has (fragmented) economic power (as the US defence policy acknowledges) but has little significant hard power or at least what is there is concentrated in specific countries - the UK (declining and outside the Union), France (declining but still significant because of nuclear capacity) and Poland (in military terms).
The logic of the situation is precisely what the Pentagon has drawn attention to - the transformation of soft and economic power to hard power but this has two difficult political requirements: the first is that some sort of unified executive command centre is required yet Europe is politically fragmented and it could take years to cohere and may not cohere effectively if the Russian 'threat' recedes (which is looking quite possible); the second is a diversion of state resources from infrastructure, ideals (e.g. green stuff) and social cohesion towards militarisation which is going to be a tough sell to voters if the fear factor cannot be maintained.
Militarisation can, of course, take place with economic growth and economic growth might be driven to some degree by a 'potlach' military-industrial economy but the danger is that militarisation simply means weakly co-ordinated polyglot diversity-driven national competition for the goodies that economic militarism is designed to provide. This (to be resolved) in turn requires a de facto European super state with qualified majority voting on foreign and defence policy (in which tiddlers like Estonia hold disproportionate power) run by an executive power not dissimilar to that of the existing Great Powers.
The populist resistance to this is likely to be significant leading to increased 'liberal' authoritarianism and so more countervailing resistance in which other Great Powers will dabble. Most of the hysteria has been coming from Centrists, Atlanticists, Nordics and Baltics who do not actually decide the matter without persuading less hysterical member countries and I am not sure they are currently doing a very good job of that. These forces also seem to be economically naive - the justified frustration of Prodi about the lack of commitment to improved pan-European productivity is an example of a 'split in the ruling order'.
Of course, state formation of this type usually involves an eventual war within the polity being constructed. The critical role of the American Civil War in creating US federalism is an example but there are many others. Perhaps an attempted secession within the EU triggers an ordering conflict, perhaps armed rebellions and 'pseudo-terrorism' (aka national liberations) allows the European Federalists to engage in the necessary repression. Perhaps this will be a case where luck and economic prosperity allows a slow progress of integration amongst a ruling political caste that probably does not give much of feck what most people think most of the time and has the skill to manipulate narratives sufficiently. Who knows?
Whatever the process, it is likely to be slow, troubled and take years and perhaps decades. It may simply collapse on other fundamentals - the lack of a material threat, the continued role of Washington in neutering Brussels by still giving strategic cover on the cheap, productivity weaknesses, populist resistance. Certainly those who want a federal European Superpower are going to have to get a better quality of leadership at the top. The current bunch have proved worse than useless in their reaction to events and in failing to predict and scenario plan current trajectories.
Personally, the idea of a bunch of centrist hysterics moving this forward fills me with gloom but history flows as history must. History also shows us that emotional idealistic nutters whether in the fourth century or the twentieth and probably in the twenty-first tend to have a dangerous momentum all of their own. The rest of us just have to sit there open-mouthed as their energy creates new miseries for the bulk of the population in a sort of grim hive-cleansing.