The Continent that Got Lost All by Itself

Where is the West? What happened with the European Union and United States?

At the annual Davos celebration this year, there have been two notable groups absent. One was the United States, the other, the European Union. For example, on Saturday in the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman explained who, up until then, were the stars of the World Economic Forum: Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan, and Hassan Rouhani, president of Iran.

Given the tension between Japan and China — and Abe’s strange comments, comparing the situation between the two countries to the one that existed between Germany and Great Britain in 1914, that is, right before World War I exploded — Rachman also recalled the “quasi-imperial” air of Chinese president Xi Jinping during the conference.

Where is the West? What happened with the European Union and with the United States?

Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, one of the pioneer businesses in political risk analysis, gave one answer to this question: that is, how the activity of governments and the sociopolitical situation of countries in general can affect business and the private sector. Bremmer — who is also a columnist for the Financial Times and Reuters — is a Davos regular, although the comments I am going to cite took place two weeks before the WEF during a telephone conversation geared toward presenting the Eurasia Group’s previews of political risk for 2014.

Bremmer believes that, yes, Europe is not relevant at this time, in spite of its enormous economic weight, which is more a consequence of a geopolitical power change on the continent during the euro crisis. “Europe is not Japan because it has much less debt,” he explained. To this is added that “social instability has been low in Europe during the crisis.”*

The key is that “the United Kingdom and France, two countries very inclined to think in terms of geopolitics, have traditionally led the EU. Now, this has changed. Germany, a country with a ‘leaner’ strategy that is more circumscribed to the economy, leads the EU.”*

According to Bremmer, “that, in turn, does not help the United States,” seeing that it implies that the EU — a traditional ally to Washington — has lost interest in world issues and, furthermore, bilateral relations between Germany and the U.S. are very damaged because of the Snowden case. “The bilateral relationship that has suffered most from this scandal is the one with Germany.”*

So, Angela Merkel continues to not forgive that they tapped her phone — although personally, I still cannot understand why she has not stopped her counterespionage leaders instead of getting angry with Obama. However, in any case, the result is that, as much as France and the U.K. continue trying to play a role in the world, if the large continental power that is Germany does not want them to, there is not anything more to do.

That is combined with the U.S. no longer displaying its traditional foreign policy. For the president of the Eurasia Group — the private business with the most political scientists in the world — “U.S. foreign policy tends to be very stable. Even with George Bush’s government, it followed general guidelines set forth a long time ago. It was, among other things, very pro-active, but now it is changing.”*

If we combine both tendencies, we explain the loss of the presence of the West at Davos. A loss of presence does not correspond to reality, since the EU and U.S. continue carrying enormous weight in the world. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2012, the EU represented no more than 23.1 percent of the world gross domestic product and the United States, 22.5 percent. And, according to estimates from the Federation of American Scientists, the two together possess 48.4 percent of the world’s atomic bombs.

This final statistic is a bit inaccurate, given that the U.S. controls 45.3 percent of nuclear devices, while the U.K. and France, who are the atomic powers in the EU, are left with the remaining 3.1 percent. However, both countries have almost as many atomic bombs as Israel, China, Pakistan, India and North Korea combined.

The relative disappearance of the West appears self-imposed. It does not have any indication of being an orderly withdrawal at a time when emerging countries of another cultural tradition are gaining power. In the case of Europe, in particular, it is more striking because, under German influence, it seems to have been decided that the EU is not interested in the world. It is the lost continent, or, rather, the one that got lost on its own.

*Editor’s note: Accurately translated, this quote could not be verified.