Europe’s Dream Becomes Its Nightmare

[Geee]

National Review:

 

Almost a decade ago, Europeans and many progressive Americans were lamenting how the United States was going to miss out on the 21st-century paradigm symbolized by the robust European Union. Neanderthal Americans were importing ever more oil while waging a costly “war on terror” and fighting two foreign conflicts, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our budget deficit in 2003 hit $374 billion.

The EU avoided foreign conflicts and embraced soft power. Its declining military budgets and centralized transnational government ensured that it could address global warming and fund ever-expanding entitlements. Even the poorer Mediterranean nations reached new heights of prosperity. The Greek economy soared. Spain’s real-estate market was to become the hottest in the world. Italy seemed to resemble Germany more than Portugal.

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President George W. Bush was not just hated in Europe, but caricatured as the symbol of backward free-market capitalism, rank American consumerism, and U.S. imperialism abroad. Only with the election of the progressive Barack Obama would Europe finally find a like-minded, sophisticated American president.

Yet European Union prosperity has now proved a phantom — one conjured up by accounting gimmickry, borrowed German money, and corrupt EU apparatchiks. Neither the EU at large nor most individual European nations can sustain their present rate of redistributionist entitlements. To end cash transfers across borders spells the breakup of the union. To embrace austerity at home ensures near anarchy in the streets of individual nations.