A fascinating transcription of a talk by Niall Ferguson. In the talk, Niall describes all the good things about the EU – economically it’s on a par with the USA (maybe even slightly ahead); demographically it will be bigger from May 1st, when 10 new countries join; culturally, the EU is at least an equal; politically, the EU can challenge the US; diplomatically, the EU keeps us from a unipolar world.
Niall then comes back to his supposition about the European empire at the beginning – “it’s “impire,” with an “i”. It’s about what happens when a political entity, instead of expanding outwards towards its periphery, exporting power, implodes–when the energies come from outside into that entity” – and he states: “… in reality the European Union is an entity on the brink of decline and perhaps ultimately even of dissolution“.
Niall makes a reasonable argument, and raises some interesting points. I don’t think he’s right – but I think I need to do some background reading before explaining why.
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