Our Biggest Project for the 21st Century

The U.S. and Europe are negotiating a free trade agreement that would both create jobs and slow the fall of the West. There is no project more important at this time.

Europeans do not feel particularly sympathetic toward the United States at the moment. Resentment over the National Security Agency (NSA)’s spying is too fresh in their minds. And that is not the only thing hindering relationships between the two sides.

The candy bomber is still dutifully commemorated, and Kennedy’s famous four words are well remembered, but these speeches are all tied to the lexicon of the Cold War and contain no new ideas.

Only the past is concrete; when ones looks to the future, his thoughts are lost in a fog of uncertainty. If he is asked to offer a guess as to what the future may hold, he moans about unjust demands with the indignation of a person whose shoe has just landed in a pile of dog poop.

General Adversity

Hardheadedness and a lack of ideas and affection characterize American-European relations. In light of this adversity, it is tempting to regard the current negotiations between the European Union and the United States regarding the free trade agreement as brittle and unworthy of attention. They are not and should not ever be.

The goal of an Atlantic free trade zone constitutes the West’s biggest project for the 21st Century. It will not just create thousands of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic; it will strengthen the West and its exports to a degree that even optimists in an earlier, multipolar world no longer thought possible.

Let’s not fool ourselves. The 21st century is threatened to be ruled by China because an overweight, heavily-indebted America and a languishing Europe that’s nearly as far in the red find themselves in decline.

Western Atrophy

The financial and housing crises have resulted in a loss of competition, a growing inclination towards protective tariffs and the degeneration of the very institutions that facilitated the rise of the West.

The latter must be rectified by the individual states — by strengthening civil society and reforming constitutional democracy. However, it is only together that competition and free trade can be rebuilt. Half of the world economy is still controlled by Europe and the United States. The free trade zone will fortify this position and slow Western atrophy. The fall of the West can still be averted. We just have to want it.