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.
Posted by savs at April 4, 2004 4:48 PM