Europe Sleeps Through The New World Order

The G20 summit marked a new distribution of world power for the 21st century. The United States is better prepared for it than the Europeans.

The 15th of November will be remembered as historically important because the twenty most important nations in the world met on that day in Washington to try to solve the global financial crisis. Even if the meeting produced little more than a declaration of intent, it also marked a turning point in history.

In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930’s, the once dominant western industrialized nations and Russia found themselves no longer in a position to provide a workable answer to the problem. Instead, hope now lies with the new economic powers – China first and foremost – to limit or perhaps even find a way out of the crisis.

The Group of Eight (G8) nations thereby lost their relevance for good. What now looms is a new world order for the 21st century. When the crisis ends, nothing will be as it was previously. The West – the USA and Europe – will find itself in relative decline, while the rising Asian and Latin American powers will be the winners.

The United States reacted to the loss of stature most impressively by electing Barack Obama president, the first African-American president in history. In the midst of the most serious national crisis, the USA proved to itself and the rest of the world that it was eminently capable of self-renewal. This election will have three long-term consequences, all visible today:

First, the election of a black president will close the door forever on America’s tragic history of slavery and the Civil War. From here onward, the color of one’s skin, the shape of one’s eyes, and one’s gender will play no significant role in whether a person is qualified for even the highest public office. America is coming to terms with itself and accepting the fact that non-whites make up the fastest growing segment of their society.

Second, this new orientation will also lead in the near future to a new direction in American foreign policy resulting in a less obvious emphasis on U.S. – European relations.

Third, America’s inner cultural change will result in a noticeable power shift from the West to the East.

The northeastern Pacific powers – China, Japan, and South Korea – are already the USA’s largest creditors. Due to the effects of the financial crisis, their importance will continue to grow. It is in this area that the greatest opportunities for world economic growth will remain for the foreseeable future. America will, out of economic necessity, have to turn more and more to the Pacific nations and place less emphasis on trans-Atlantic ties.

All this is not great news for Europe because when the financial crisis has passed, it will simply find itself less important than before. Unfortunately, the Europeans are not only watching their political demise while standing idly by; they’re actually reinforcing the process. With Obama’s election, America set a future course toward a global, multipolar world. Europe, on the other hand, is re-nationalizing during this crisis and is heading toward the past!

The European Union constitution is dead, the Lisbon reforms are in limbo due to Ireland’s “no” vote and French-German opposition is blocking an enhanced European economic government. The reaction of European Union members to this self-blockade is clearly visible: instead of an energetic run-up to further political and economic integration efforts, European capitals are trying to fill the vacuum by acting nationally.

There’s certainly coordination between member states, some of it actually successful, but without strong European institutions such individual successes won’t last long.

There’s a great danger today that Europe will sleep through a great directional change toward a multipolar world. It had to be apparent to all Europeans by the time of the Washington summit at the latest – even to the European skeptics off the continent – that the changes have already taken place! If Europeans can’t get the 19th century out of their heads, the global caravan will nonetheless proceed into the 21st century without them.