The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy Paperback – November 1, 2005

The headlines in newspapers and on broadcast outlets these days tell us of the latest terror attack against the American invasion of Iraq, or the tsunami disaster in Asia -- all of which are important events on a day to day basis. But what the headlines don't tell us about is a virtual silent evolution that is well underway -- and which is reshaping the strategic map of the world -- much to the disadvantage of American interests.What is happening with very little public awareness on this side of the Atlantic is the evolution of the "United States of Europe." If you haven't heard of this phenonomen before, you will be hearing a lot about it in the future, because the rise of Europe as a unified state is reaching into every detail of life as we know it here in the USA.The irony is that Americans have contributed to the rise of a unified Europe - a region that now views the USA with rising resentment, even disdain. If the events continue on their current course a unified Europe will start telling America what to do, rather than letting Washington call the shots. Indeed, that is already happening.Washington isn't staring down the barrel of a gun; rather it is being confronted with something more powerful -- the world's largest, unified trading bloc that is gaining power on nearly a day by day basis. And it's not only Europe that is crowding our economic influence; China is moving in a similar direction (but that's another story)T.R. Reid spent several years overseas in Europe and Asia as a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, and draws on his European expertise to write a very readable exposition of the evolution of the "United States of Europe." Actually, most Americans are familiar with the institution as the European Community, but the reference to the "United States of Europe" in the title of Reid's book is more germane, because the European Community has evolved in the last three years into a political and economic superpower that is on a par with -- and in some cases is beginning to exceed -- the United States of America.The consolidation of Europe has been going on for a long time -- since the end of World War II, really. But it is only since the dawn of the 21st century that the Euro phenomenon has started to build up a full head of steam. Most Americans haven't noticed, but some leading American power brokers, including President George W. Bush, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and even the U.S. Congress have run into the European juggernaut with all the painful effects of running full speed into a stone wall.President Bush, of course, was rebuffed by two of the principal powers in Europe -- France and Germany (and later Spain) -- on the invasion of Iraq.And GE's Welsh's plan to acquire the Honeywell Corporation were literally vetoed by an EEC bureaucrat in Brussels who told Welch that because of their global, multi-lateral business agreements, General Electric's attempt to acquire Honeywell violated the European Community's anti-trust laws. And when Welch went to President Bush for help in pushing the merger through, the European Commission voted unanimously to ratify the bureaucrat's decision to disallow the acquisition by one American company of another American company.But perhaps the best example of the newly found power of the Europeans can be found in the U.S. congress where last year the EU won a major victory in forcing the repeal of a U.S. tax law called the "Foreign Sales Corporations and Extra-Territorial Income Exclusion Act" that gave American corporations billions of dollars in tax credits on their overseas business. The Europeans viewed the act as an unfair trade practice and in the spring of 2004 took their case to the World Trade Organization -- which ruled in favor of the Europeans. In the end the U.S. Congress had to repeal the act."It puts the hair up on the back of my neck that we have to consider this at all," said Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. "But the fact is that we have to do it. The EU and the WTO have a sort of sword to our head. We don't like it, but we have to do what the Europeans are telling us to do."Indeed, as Reid points out, anyone doing commerce in the global market place is more than familiar with the economic clout of the USE (we might as well start getting used to that acronym).American farmers raise crops in conformity with Euro specifications; U.S. manufacturers design their products to meet Euro specifications. And American financiers are learning to cope with the strength of the new currency, the Euro, which is rapidly elbowing the American dollar out of the way as it values skyrockets against the greenback.Indeed, at some point in the future, the Euro may become the favored reserve currency in financial markets around the world. And it's not inconceivable that the Euro will become the preferred currency in trading in the oil markets. If that happens, it will weaken the U.S. dollar tremendously -- with negative effects rippling through the U.S. economy.In short the Euro revolution is reshaping the geopolitical strategic framework of the world. Essentially, the USE is filling the political void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the balance of strategic power.But the Europeans are smart. They know they are no match for the military strength of the USA, so they are developing their superpower status in the marketplace. And, more and more frequently, the European community is becoming the dominant factor in the development of financial and economic markets.Yet the strategy has its pitfalls. While there's no question the European Community is a growing force in the global economy, it's not clear that the USE is generating sufficient wealth to replace the American economy in global affairs. The Euros depend on the Americans for security - and their socialistic welfare state is hugely expensive.With regard to security, the Europeans are, essentially, a midget military power. NATO remains the dominant military alliance, and is likely to remain so, despite the fact that the Euros are building their own strategic force, an army of some 60,000 troops with the unlikely name of the "The European Rapid Reaction Force" (ERRF).This ERRF is, theoretically, autonomous, but it has ill trained troops and little else. It doesn't have sophisticated strategic and tactical weapons - or a versatile Navy or Air Force to transport those troops to strategic hotspots. . At this point, the ERRF is expected to serve peace keeping functions in the more benign areas of confrontation.Theoretically, the ERRF can be built into a force with some strategic power, but that is unlikely to happen because the Euros have no intention of spending money on their own security - they rely on the Americans to do that. Currently the Europeans spend less than 2 per cent of their combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) military affairs - compared with the 4 per cent the USA spends on its military forces. In terms of military spending the Americans spend $350 billion per year on Defense matters. The Europeans only spend less than $175 billion.Moreover the Europeans have no interest on building their strategic military technological capabilities. According to Reid, the Americans spend $28,000 per solider on research and technology development; the Europeans spend about $6,000 per solider. And that spending is unlikely to increase on the part of the Europeans. After all, many of the soldiers in Europe belong to unions and the cost of paying for salaries and benefits rapidly drains European military spending.Instead the Europeans are focusing on the buildup of their technological capabilities in the industrial sector. The Airbus Industrie joint venture (Germany, France, Spain and the UK) is a direct challenge to Boeing in the commercial aviation sector -- and indeed now has backorders 25 per cent larger than Boeing.And the Europeans even have their own space agency, the European Space Agency (ESA), which has developed a large commercial satellite network, and is launching space probes to places like Mars. ESA is intent on challenging the capabilities of NASA, the American space agency.But there are also important limits to the growth of European economic power. Perhaps the most important limitation is that most of nations in the Euro Community have evolved into welfare states - a status that generates huge amounts of pride among Europeans - and, in fact, is the principal reason that the Europeans view themselves as superior to the United States.Reid quotes British social critic Will Hutton:"Europe's welfare states arise from...core European values and the European settlement. They define Europeaness. They are non-negotiable European realities."Irish political scientist James Wickham adds:"The simplest difference between the USA and Europe is that we have welfare states and they do not. Social rights cannot depend on the voluntary goodwill of others...The Welfare state, enforced by law, is a defining feature of Europe."Of course all of this social spending costs money, and the Europeans pay humungous taxes to fund their welfare states, including universal health care and paying the living costs of anyone who can't find a job.But productivity is another question. To be sure the advent of the European community, with its borderless borders and lack of tariffs within the European continent enable European manufacturers to save significant production costs. At the same time, with their 35-hour work weeks, paid child care leaves of absence and lengthy vacations, European business management is finding itself woefully short on an inexpensive, productive labor force.Consequently, there are huge numbers of immigrants moving into the European Community from less developed regions of the world, including from Muslim nations. That immigrant flow is causing some concern among residents of the European community who are beginning to resent the large numbers of foreigners who have arrived on the European continent -- and joining an already expensive welfare society.But these are issues which the Europeans will eventually deal with - or not deal with. In the meantime, there is a new sense of community that has developed among Europeans who take immense pride in the distance the Euro Community has traveled.According to Reid this has led to the development of the "Generation E," the young adult population of Europe that has grown up in a region without borders (Interestingly, English is the officially designated common language of the Euro community -- though provision is made to publish documents in every language on the continent)."The members of Generation E share a common culture that tends to span the continent," writes Reid. "In Tallinn and Seville, in Plymouth, Prague and Paris, they read the same books, wear the same clothes, watch the same TV shows - including a fairly disgusting sex-and-music variety show that is called, appropriately, EuroTrash - and drink same cocktails. They cheer for the same soccer stars and download the same pop songs to the ring tones on their mobile phones. Politically, the generations of Europeans newly arrived at adulthood - the group of young people who think of 'Europe' as their native land - tent to be the people most dedicated to the concept of `ever closer union' in Europe."Indeed the socialistic nature of the Euro community economy extends into its foreign policy. Essentially the new Europe rejects the idea that one superpower should have a dominant influence on the rest of the world.Dominque Galouzeau de Villepin, the former French Foreign Minister who led the charge against George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, summed up the view best:"We are guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience that puts cooperation ahead of domination. And that must be the future for all the world.-- Ted Marks (This review was originally published in the KentTribune.com)

If you aren't in shock after reading T.R. Reid's "The United States of Europe" then you either are a "Neo-Con" wannabe whose in total denial, or an uneducated "Tea Partier" with a racist axe to grind because the bottom line is we've been had. The fact that The Neo-Cons continue to propagate that Obama Care is going to hurt the American dynamic is utterly absurd, but then again if they weren't so vehemently against President Obama's original healthcare plan things might have turned out better.Nevertheless, what's really hurting America is the military industrial complex, which of course leads to one solution. The government needs to scale down the military and stop engaging in misadventures and policing the world.The Neo-Liberals in Washington are desperately trying to cut social spending, which supports domestic programs such as education, building infrastructures, sciences programs, and just about anything you can imagine, while maintaining tax cuts for the top one percent.It's shocking to think that the elites in America control 90 percent of the wealth, but only pay 47 percent of the taxes, leaving 53 percent of the taxes to be paid by 90 percent of the population, who by the way only control 10 percent of the wealth in this country. So, wouldn't it make prefect sense for the elites to pay 90 percent of the taxes since they control 90 percent of the wealth...think about it folks!And for some unknown reason we (the American People) can't seem to figure this out!The truth is the Neo-Conservatives are really Neo-Liberals using conservative talking points to dupe the general population into thinking they have their best interest, when truth be told they are protecting Wall Street interest, and most of the corporations that are apart of the Wall Street paradigm are European corporations, which T.R. Reid lists many of these companies in his book. So the axiom is quite simple, our jobs aren't being exported out of the country like the government and the media would like us to believe. The truth is they weren't our jobs in the first place. And I must reiterate, most of these transnational corporations are headquartered in Europe.In addition, Reid points out that in most European countries they have laws and regulations making it impossible or illegal to lay off workers, so, when a company has to scale back its workforce they can't do it in Europe. So they end up laying workers off in the U.S. leaving us to suffer job losses.According to Eliot Spitzer we recently lost 2.5 million jobs this year and 2.4 million of those jobs ended up over seas, and by the year 2016, China is going to eclipse the U.S. as the number one economic superpower, and according to T.R. Reid The European Union is likely to do the same because as a united front they have over 450 million citizens compared to our 300 million.Also, European countries are able to provide free or reduced price education and universal health care for its citizens on the backs of the American taxpayer because they don't have to invest as much revenue in the military. They know that America will fit the bill and protect them at all cost.A case in point: the fact that the U.S. pays the majority of the bills racked up by NATO and The United Nations leaves an umbra over our hyperbolic tax system, leaving the U.S. in complete control of these entities, while the American tax payer suffers.According to Reid, Americans work longer hours then the Europeans and Japanese for about the same money. Europe has become a hegemonic economy that metastasized into a superpower that may eclipse the U.S. shortly since the Euro is still trading higher than the dollar.Europeans seem to value their day care system; men and women get to take maternity leave with their newborn children without any financial worries because the government pays for it. They also value the arts, and the government pays for that as well. So, the questions is, is the European model of governance the future? Well, I think we, as Americans should start pondering about it long and hard.Not all forms of socialism are monstrosities. In this respect I think a mature look is in order and I think T.R. Reid's book is a mature yet refined glimpse into the European unknown.Other Books that should be read along this one are as follows:David Harvey "A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism"Stanley R. Sloan "NATO, The European Union, And The Atlantic Community"Yehezkel Dror "The Capacity To Govern"Jean E. Krasno "The United Nations Confronting the Challenges of a Global Society"

Its ok.