November 9, 2004

• Europe: The World’s Newest Emerging Slum?

  
  

  The tales of a continent smothered by 19^th Century socialism

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

  Photo Courtesy Deutsche Welle

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Recently the leaders of China declared the 21^st century though to become many things, would not be America’s century. One of China’s top foreign policy strategists, Qian Qichen also stated the US was “incapable of realizing the goal.” He obviously doesn’t know much about Americans, and it is more likely that the goals and aspirations of the Chinese Communist Party for the next century will be the ones which fail, and fail due to the rigors of its subjects yearning to be free.

  
  

   

  
  

  But if one were merely to calculate who the greatest losers of the century among all of the chief economic competitor nations might be simply based upon current performance one might find that to the surprise of many Europeans 20 years ago, it’s their own continent which is clearly sinking into disrepair. A slide which could in a century or so leave its member nations on the verge of almost another Dark Ages in human enterprise and freedom of thought, unless a corrective course is taken, much as was done in 1980 when America threw off its malaise and tossed out the failed policies of ideas followed by such as Democrat Jimmy Carter, learning thereafter that the best way to deal with stagnation is by facing it head-on.

  
  

   

  
  

  Europe can’t grow its way out of second-world political and economic status because its largest economies”, Nicole Gelinas of the New York Post today writes, “ —Germany and France — won’t deregulate labor markets and won’t open up tightly controlled economies to new industries and new immigrants. And nothing will change until European citizens allow their politicians to ease this suffocating government vise-grip on the economy — and to reform the continent’s cradle-to-grave welfare state.

  
  

   

  
  

  The Europeans glumly admit that they are now wedged between a powerhouse America and an emerging Asia. Modest efforts to grow out of the economic squeeze have foundered, due to “misunderstanding, reluctance and even opposition,” European Commission President Romano Prodi told the International Herald-Tribune last week.

  
  

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   As a headliner in today’s Deutsche Welle points out,

  
  

             

  
  

  When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, great things were predicted for the city that had been scarred by the barrier for nearly three decades. But 15 years later, Berlin is still far from meeting the rosy business forecasts.

  
  

   

  
  

  As we learned before the Walls of Communism came down, both enterprise and the freedom of the human spirit are always linked and no permanent prosperity ever grows out of oppressive totalitariates or bureaucracies. Something China will soon learn but that Europe seems to have already sadly forgotten.

  
  

   

  
  

  In Germany’s case, things changed quickly after the Wall in Berlin came down, but Bonn’s forecasts largely appear today based on the false assumption the newly integrated East Germans (Ossies) would also assimilate and unlearn the destructive philosophies and habits imposed upon them from Kindergarten in the DDR.

  
  

  Though those Ossies yearned to be free from the oppressive regime they knew to be wrong, they did not fully understand, nor were they taught exactly why, it would seem and because of such being creatures of habit their Social Net and work-performance expectations helped to recast the mold of the newly reunified Germany’s politics.

  
  

   

  
  

  Not soon thereafter was the Christian Democratic Union of Pro-West Helmut Kohl reduced to opposition party status, replaced by the newly invigorated Social Democrat Party of Gerhardt Schroeder, followed by a radical realignment of German power not seen for decades both internally as well as on the global front.

  
  

   

  
  

  Suddenly years later, Germany finds itself in a stagnant economy (with a GDP growth rate of 0.2% in 2002), a looming collapse of its pension system, a government laden with corrupt foreign and domestic entanglements and a loss of the moral clarity that so impassioned West Germans against terrorism and tyranny throughout the Cold War era, as exemplified by their sentiment towards not only the Berlin Wall and the regime which placed it there, but against the very idea of an ideology that could take a human life simply because it yearned to determine its own future or simply because that life belonged to a particular ethnic or religious group.

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

  And so today some Germans – a full one fifth of those surveyed now think it wasn’t such a good idea after all tearing down that wall. Jaded by the policies of a government 20 years ago overrun with emotion, too quick to pretend normalcy had descended after the Wall fell and soon vanquished from power due to that error. But many in Germany today are now waking up to the fact that a return to that love of Freedom and unshackled enterprise and ideas which brought the Wall down and rebuilt Germany into a global power before that, were things much too quickly tossed aside for the sake of “einheit ohne klarheit” – or the notion of collective agreement over moral rightness. The self-same mentality which has caused the Germans – who should know better – to follow the French government’s lead on many if not all things foreign and domestic. Something even some in France are beginning to lean against.

  
  

   

  
  

  Gelinas continues,

  
  

   

  
  

  “The American neoconservatives have their imitators in Europe,” the head of France‘s Socialist Party warned last Thursday. And the voices of those “imitators” won’t be silenced. “It is time to understand that France‘s business can’t be measured by the number of Airbuses sold to China,” opposition party head Alain Madelin said.

  
  

   

  
  

  Madelin — and others like him — may gain more listeners as stubborn France now flails desperately for a way to somehow put Bush in his place. But even as Europeans accept the global political reality of the next four years — “C’est Bush” — most continue to delay this inevitable economic reality.

  
  

   

  
  

  And according to the Deutsche Welle report on Berlin 15 years today after reunification,

  
  

   

  
  

  While several areas of Berlin today literally sparkle with vigor and possibility, such as the glass and chrome towers of Potsdamer Platz or the splashy facades of boutiques on Friedrichstraße, under the surface lurks a serious case of economic malaise. The boutiques on Friedrichstraße are usually empty, the landlords of Potsdamer Platz’s skyscrapers cannot find tenants.

  
  

   

  
  

  Few in Berlin can afford to shop in the high-end stores. Figures from September show 17.4 percent of Berliners are unemployed and more than 171,000 receive some kind of welfare check. 

  
  

   

  
  

  And the national picture, as well as that of most of the EU appears just as, or even more bleak.

  
  

   

  
  

  But the irony for the governments in Europe at present is the simple fact that the very many which they so very much wanted to lose and whom they considered ignorant and disattached from the times, U.S. President Bush, is actually leading the pack globally with domestic reforms that will prevent what appears to be in Europe’s not-too-distant future.

  
  

   

  
  

  Gelinas:

  
  

   

  
  

  So Bush’s second-term mandate for Europe is: Change economically, or admit your political irrelevance.

  
  

   

  
  

  And in Europe the voice in the wilderness grows stronger:

  
  

   

  
  

  “We cannot permit ourselves any more excuses, illusions or escape . . . the Europeans must not make anti-Americanism their ideology,” Le Monde editorialized. The French now know they must reconcile their growing cognitive dissonance with external action.

  
  

   

  
  

  At least some, a growing number, admit there is a problem. Meanwhile the French leadership and the SDP party-controlled government in Germany still choose instead to shoot the messenger for now. However one can always hope the best for the people.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Blogbat related:

  
  

   

  
  

  Die Deutschen – 12. October 2004

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

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  • 2:22 am
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