German Europe

Greece, Portugal, Spain even Italy, are facing a debt crisis allegedly created by the impersonal forces of international capitalism led by imprudently lending, greedy giant banks. This unforeseen crisis is further analyzed by German sociology professor Ulrich Beck in DEUTSCHES EUROPA, translated into English by Rodney Livingstone for this Polity Press edition as GERMAN EUROPE. *** Professor Beck argues that Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe as currently organized (European Union plus non-members) has to become either more German or more democratic -- with rich EU members uncharacteristically taking empathetic pity on poorer EU members -- or more European, less European, be transformed from within or implode. The debt crisis and the single currency (EURO) crisis are each awesomely powerful and downright nasty in their combined impact on onetime great powers, now poorer EU members and EURO users: Greece, the fountainhead of Europe's culture, Italy which contributed both Roman Empire and Renaissance, Imperial Spain and Portugal. Beck describes the market-driven international financial forces at work either to destroy Europe, save Europe, possibly to improve Europe and ideally to make Europe work for the first time ever not just for European nation-states and national economies, but primarily for individual European men and women. *** More and more the young people of Europe think and act as if they had two names. Their family name is "European." Their personal name is "French" or "Danish" or "Croatian." It is unthinkable that Europe will revert to a system of fully independent nation-states with national borders manned once again by immigration and customs officials and with each nation having its own currency. But neither is Europe's future clear. Needed is a new paradigm of a Europe of conscious, accepted "risk," where old methods for managing crises do not work. At the moment Europe is "Merkiavellian": where the thoughts and policies that matter are those of cautious, indecisive, fiscally solid, Protestantly austere German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Europe's first theoretician of crisis management, Niccolo Machiavelli. Their ideas, to some, assure that the road to bliss must lead through hell. *** The book GERMAN EUROPE is small, restricted in its scope, not notably original but informative and stimulating. It should enliven all book clubs that look from time to time at Europe and debate whither it may be going. -OOO-