An American Skeptic In Europe

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Author John Newhouse

Publisher Pantheon

Year 1997

Pages 339 pp.

Price $27.50

John Newhouse has been a respected and influential writer on American foreign policy, often on Europe, for more than three decades. His books are readable, full of interesting information about a variety of subjects, and laced with pertinent comments from politicians, bureaucrats, academics, businessmen, and journalists. Frequently they have been serialized in The New Yorker. Newhouse's interests and judgments generally reflect the current state of enlightened professional views. He is a particularly reliable presenter of opinion among senior American diplomats and professional analysts close to power, and indeed is a consultant to the State Department's European Bureau.

Europe Adrift is very much in this mold. It surveys the European scene to see how well European states are coping with Germany's unification and Russia's collapse, and how well the European Union (EU) and NATO are adapting to the new situation and whether they can successfully enlarge to the east. Anyone wanting an intelligent, well-informed, copious but readable survey of European issues can hardly expect to do better. Europe Adrift is the cream of well-informed conventional wisdom.

The book can, on the other hand, be criticized for just that reason. In its defense, it may be said that what passes for conventional wisdom among professionals is usually more right than wrong. Similarly, while the book may be faulted aesthetically for lacking focus, arguably that is Europe's fault and not New house's. He cannot delineate and analyze coherent, focused policies if European governments do not have them. Instead, as he sees it, Europe's governments, realizing the depth of the divisions that separate them, are afraid to press for real decisions, collective or domestic. Now that its nations lack a common enemy, Europe is increasingly swamped by its own problems. Such a Europe, it would seem only natural to conclude, still requires strong American leadership.

The conclusion is hardly novel. It mirrors a conviction long cherished within the American government: left to their own devices, European states are too divided, selfish, cynical, suspicious, ungenerous, and jealous of each other to harmonize their policies in any sensible and enduring way. In short, Europeans are incapable of managing their collective affairs unless skillfully led by the Americans. For a time after the Soviet collapse, even well-connected cognoscenti thought the Western Europeans, liberated from the Red threat, might forge a union that would end America's postwar hegemonic role. But by now, as Newhouse indicates, conventional wisdom has reverted to normal, with one significant difference. American self-satisfaction used to be tempered by the nagging doubt that the European countries, despite their collective political and military weakness, were better at managing their economies -- perhaps because they had fewer military burdens to carry. Today, as the United States enjoys the fruits of its peace dividend, its economy is booming and its budget deficit disappearing. Meanwhile, Europe is suffering from a bout of Eurosclerosis. That change of fortune removes the only major inducement to American modesty.

YANKEE HUBRIS

In its ambitious confidence, the present mood in Washington begins to resemble that in the early 1960s. Then, as now, American economists had begun to think growth and prosperity were assured indefinitely, and American politicians exulted in asserting their nation's power and benevolence around the world. Those who remember the later 1960s may find the parallel disturbing and begin to feel that for the United States, the Soviet collapse creates a dangerous temptation to hubris. A pessimistic and condescending view of Europe only compounds the danger. As an American, I do not feel that I should welcome a weak Europe, or accept it as fact without argument.

Newhouse, however, leans heavily toward Euroskepticism. He is too honest and adept not to report on the hopeful as well as the discouraging possibilities in Europe. But as he weighs the factors, he invariably comes down on the side of pessimism. After a while, Europe's incapacity begins to seem less the conclusion of his study than its premise.

That predisposition seems particularly obvious in his discussion of European Monetary Union, present-day Europe's one indisputably willful, bold, and grand project. Newhouse examines it in a chapter titled "A Collective Nervous Breakdown." He sees EMU as the misbegotten product of the Franco-German deal formalized in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, in which the crafty Mitterrand convinced the Germans to give up their precious deutsche mark in return for promises of significant progress toward a more federal Europe. As Newhouse describes it, the French, having secured Germany's commitment to EMU, subsequently teamed up with the British to prevent federalism. French guile, however, achieved a Pyrrhic victory. Meeting the preconditions for EMU has proved a "crushing agenda," thanks to the dislocations in Europe's economies caused by Germany's heavy borrowing to finance reunification, plus the more fundamental ailments of Eurosclerosis in the face of rising global competition. EMU will, he predicts, bring Europe to a crisis point in 1998.