Today, many European nations mark Armistice Day, commemorating November 11, 1918, the day the carnage of World War I ended. Almost a century later, it is clear that this date was not only the day on which bloodshed and destruction in Europe ceased—at least for the time being. This was also the day on which the great European exhaustion began.
Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, in his new book World Order, calls World War I the “war from which Europe never recovered,” a “tale of abdication, even suicide.”
In Kissinger’s view, World War II was only a continuation of that collective suicide. The second conflict used up whatever resources had not already been depleted a generation before. “By the end of World War II, Europe’s world-ordering material and psychological capacity had all but vanished. . . . It became obvious that no European country was able any longer to shape its own future by itself.”
How does this situation play out in the twenty-first century? The answer is discouraging. For many, the European Union is a big, ill-conceived project that takes away precious sovereignty in exchange for dubious benefits and meddlesome intrusions from abroad.
In reality, however, the EU is the last rearing up of a continent that is still exhausted but no longer harbors any suicidal tendencies. It is also the last best hope for Europeans if they want to regain some degree of autonomy over the way they run their affairs. In the greater scheme of things, Europeans today matter only because they form a fairly well-organized cluster of nations with a degree of cooperation that is unprecedented in world history.
But the great European survival project called the European Union is not immune to the illness of 1918. Exhaustion is everywhere. In many ways, the EU’s current lackluster performance is a continuation of 1918-type exhaustion by other means.
The #EU is Europeans' last best hope to regain autonomy over their affairs.Tweet This
In Europe today, political resources have been used up, and treaty change looks impossible. Europeans embrace economic reform only reluctantly. They do not tackle immigration and integration issues properly. They silently accept energy dependence on unreliable, even adversarial, external players. And there is no detectable willingness to build more democracy into the system.
In foreign policy, bouts of ambition are rare. The shared foreign policy of the EU, to the extent that it exists, lies in shambles, especially in Europe’s neighborhood. Europeans have reduced, and further reduced, their military assets to the point where these resources are barely usable yet cost immense amounts of money. And in the latest manifestation of applied exhaustion, some EU members are even turning their back on Western liberalism, flirting openly with authoritarian rule à la Putin.
No longer being suicidal won’t suffice for Europeans willing to survive the twenty-first century. Something better and bigger must come, and it needs to come soon. But if the dire state of the economy, bad demographics, increased instability in the neighborhood, and a surge in populist parties are not enough to put a spark in the Europeans, what will be?
Some say the best way to overcome the exhaustion of a nonsuicidal entity is to create more pain as an incentive, so that decisive action will follow. This thinking reflects how low expectations have already become. But to act on such a plan is a ludicrous, unguided, and uncontrollable experiment.
Another answer could be inspiring and forceful leadership that pushes through what’s necessary—against popular will if needed. But this resource is in limited supply in Europe, to say the least.
Europe has reached a point where it is not so much the continent’s enormous problems that are of serious concern. The really worrisome phenomenon is how little energy these problems release, how little political self-healing can be seen in a partly dysfunctional system.
When Europeans mark #ArmisticeDay, they should also think of their own political situation in 2014.Tweet This
When Europeans remember the end of World War I today, they should also think of their own political situation in 2014. Suicide does not necessarily come only as the result of a concentrated four-year slaughter fest. It can also come as the result of years of carelessness, political underinvestment, and petty bickering.
The lessons of war still apply: Europe will be united, or it won’t be. Let’s remember that when we lay our wreaths and salute the fallen. They knew so well what real exhaustion was like.
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