Just two months after the self-congratulatory comments on the United States’ ineptitude in dealing with the hurricane Katrina (“something like that could never happen here”), banlieus were burning all across France, the flames of thousands of torched cars and properties illuminating segregation, deprivation, and neglect no less deplorable than the reality of New Orleans’ underclass exposed by Katrina’s breached levees. (The torchings of about 100 cars a day have continued ever since.) As for the EU’s morally superior risk-sensitive policies (as opposed to what Europeans see as unsophisticated, brutal, and blundering U.S. ways), they allowed EU member states to watch the slaughter of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of millions of refugees in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Only the U.S. interventions, on behalf of Muslim Bosniaks and Kosovars, prevented more deaths (Cushman and Mestrovic 1996; Wayne 1997).
As for the grand visions of professional politicians, they have been rejected in a referendum even by France, the European Union’s pivotal founding nation. Many managers as well as ordinary citizens would characterize the EU’s modus operandi as bureaucratic paralysis instead of caring social democracy. Additionally, and sadly, the continent’s ever-present anti-Semitism is undeniably resurgent (requiring the repeated assurances of political leaders that it is not); it surfaced in some stunningly direct comments during the Israeli-Hizbullah war of August 2006. Finally, a multitude of national problems with European integration will not go away.
The presence of a supranational entity like the EU has the effect of weakening ancient national entities. Spain has its Euskadi (Basque) and Catalunyan (and Galician) aspirations. Combined challenges from devolution (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), European integration, multiculturalism in general, and large Muslim populations add up to a trend that may see the end of Britain (Kim 2005).
Germany, France, and Italy, the continent’s three largest nations whose unity is not threatened by serious separatist movements (episodic Corsican violence or Lega Nord are not going to dismember France or Italy), have their own deep-seated challenges.
The German and French economies underperformed during the last two decades of the twentieth century. In the German case there was the partial excuse (or terrible miscalculation) of the economic cost of absorbing the former East Germany (DDR) (Bentele and Rosner 1997; Zimmer 1997; Larres 2001; Bollmann 2002). The French situation is a textbook illustration of failures arising from an overreaching dirigisme, economic planning and control by the state. Neither country offers a model for a dynamic reinvention of Europe during the coming two generations.
As for Italy, the EU’s third-largest economy, I can do no better than to quote an acute observer of his patria (Severgnini 2005, 77–78): “Life in Italy is so pleasant it becomes narcotic. . . . Italy, it would seem, suffers from a ‘squirrel syndrome’: everybody fi nds a comfortable hole, and hunkers down. The problem is that there are so many holes in the national tree that it may topple unless something is done soon.” But this comfort cannot last. Italy’s economy suffers due to the combined impact of rapid aging (rivaled only by Japan), precipitous destruction of traditional smalland mid-scale artisanal manufacturing by Chinese imports, and growing numbers of immigrants. The deep economic and cultural breach between the Nord and Centro on one hand, and Mezzogiorno on the other, has not diminished. Decades of massive (and largely wasteful) investment have not lowered chronic unemployment. And the Mafioso culture of violence and corruption still operates (Gambetta 1992; Cottino 1998 and 1999; P. Schneider and J. Schneider 2003).
