Welcome to the new cold war

[OneBlueSky]

It's Chirac vs. Cheney, SUVs vs. minicars, and pommes frites vs. freedom fries in the new transatlantic culture war. But here's what you don't know: In the global conflict for moral and economic supremacy, Europe is winning . . . a discussion of Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream and T.R. Reid's The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy . . .

Welcome to the new cold war
by Andrew O'Hehir
salon.com
November 15, 2004

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/11/15/europe/index.html
(need to watch an ad for a day pass if not a member . . .)

A specter is haunting America, and it ain't the specter of communism (however much George W. Bush and company might like to describe it that way). Barely a decade after the definitive collapse of the Soviet bloc, the United States finds itself in a new cold war, one being fought simultaneously on economic, political and cultural fronts, and one it is by no means certain to win. The unipolar world of uncontested American hegemony that we were told to expect into the indefinite future has come to an end; it lasted just about long enough for us to scratch our heads and wonder what was happening next.

Yes, "Old Europe," to borrow Donald Rumsfeld's famous quip, is back, and it's looking pretty spry for its age. As Americans are finally beginning to notice, Europeans (or most of them, anyway) have reconstituted themselves into an enormous transnational superstate of 25 nations, 455 million people and an $11 trillion economy. This is, of course, the European Union, and its aims have become much broader and deeper than the stuff you've probably heard about, like allowing citizens to drive from Seville to Sicily without a passport, or to use the same anonymous-looking currency to buy a pint of Guinness in Cork and a glass of ouzo in Crete.

American heavyweights like Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger, by the way, publicly predicted that the euro, now the common currency of 12 European countries (with many more to follow), would never work. This week the euro is trading at an all-time high of about $1.30 against an ever weaker Bush-economy dollar. Other confident-sounding things that you hear Americans say about the EU -- that it's plagued by a sclerotic bureaucracy, that it squelches entrepreneurship and initiative with overregulation, that its cradle-to-grave welfare states are dragging down its economy -- should be viewed with similar skepticism.

(snip)

Once you grasp that this transatlantic cold war is not only happening but rapidly intensifying -- as Jeremy Rifkin and T.R. Reid, the authors of two almost simultaneous books on the European conundrum, agree -- you see the major news events of the last year or two in a different light. Both the Iraq war and this year's presidential election, for instance, start to look like key symbolic episodes in the U.S.-Europe conflict.

- much more . . .

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/11/15/europe/index.html

[Old and In the Way]

1. While we are being bankrupted and feeding the MIC to the tune of

$400BB/year, Europeans and Asian's are investing in their people's future. What future does Bushworld have in store for us? Fighting never ending wars against more and more countries while our wealthiest 2% are busy investing in foreign capital growth economies. Meanwhile 50% of the US population keeps lapping up the "we're #1" media programming, clueless to the real future that's in store for us all.

[hfojvt]

2. I love the EU

So I am not sure why this needs to be a war.
The EU is democratic and mixed-capitalist just like us.
And if Kerry and the other Democrats had won, I would say that they are educated and tolerant, just like us. The problem comes when we need to compete for resources like oil, fruits and minerals. They are a society which is co-operating, whereas we are competing against each other as much as against other nations.
If there is to be a cold war between the EU and "Jesusland" (for lack of a better term) I am certainly on the side of the EU.

[tritsofme]

3. EU has some big problems ahead itself

Like the fact that they are facing a retirement crisis that eclipses our social security problems like no other.

The very low birthrates and aversion to immigration that is seen throughout Western Europe is also very troubling to their future.

Not to mention their abysmal growth rates the past few years coupled with rising unemployment that makes our economy come out smelling like roses.

I still think that the ECB having free reign over the monetary policy of the entire eurozone was a huge mistake and it will have a very negative impact on the European economy in the years to come.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Really interesting -- thanks for posting!

[MadHound]

5. And waiting in the wings is the 800 pound gorilla, China

Given aprox. twenty, twenty five years, and China will open up the second front in this war. With over 1 billion people, they will become the largest consumer economy in the world, both in terms of population and money. Couple this with brutally low worker wages, and the amount of US debt that they hold, China is going to be in a position to seriously undermine the US economy.

Unless matters start being stirred in a more favorable direction, dropping our twin defecits, strengthening our economy, end our energy dependence on oil with all the ramifications that brings, the US will drop from a first world country to a second world country that is quickly sliding to third world status. . This crippling debt that Bushco is saddling us with will drag us down for the next two generations, and spending all of our money on weapons and defense will bankrupt us like it did the USSR.

This all can be changed, but is going to take leadership, intelligence and common sense, things that are in short supply in the Bush administration.