*There's something to the guy's analysis here; at least it's elegantly phrased. The EU was pretty effective as a loose soccer-league of national technocrat sub-managers, but when they need to be a dynamic global superpower, that's pretty tough.
"The Europe of the European idea is a future without a past, attractively innocent to a continent heavy with memories of war and genocide. It is, however, also a future without a present..."
Summer 2018 / Volume II, Number 2
Europe under Merkel IV: Balance of Impotence
by Wolfgang Streeck
Europe, as organized—or disorganized—in the European Union (EU), is a strange political beast. It consists, first, of the domestic politics of its member states that have, over time, become deeply intertwined.
Second, member states, which are still sovereign nation-states, pursue nationally defined interests through national foreign policies within intra-European international relations.
Here, third, they have a choice between relying on a variety of supranational institutions or on intergovernmental agreements among selective coalitions of the willing.
Fourth, since the start of the European Monetary Union (EMU), which includes only nineteen of the EU’s twenty-eight member states, another arena of European international relations has emerged, consisting mainly of informal, intergovernmental institutions looked at with suspicion by the supranational EU.
Fifth, all these are embedded in the geopolitical conditions and geostrategic interests of each nation, which are related in particular to the United States on the one hand and to Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East on the other.
And sixth, there is at the bottom of the European state system an ongoing battle for hegemony between its two largest member countries, France and Germany—a battle that both deny exists. Each of the two, in its own way, considers its claim to European supremacy to be only just and indeed self-evident, Germany so much so that it doesn’t even recognize its ambitions as such.1
Moreover, both would-be hegemons are aware that they can realize their national projects only by incorporating the other within them, and for this reason they present their national aspirations as “European integration” projects based on a special relationship between Germany and France.
Yet since the financial crisis of 2008, at least, this arrangement has been in disarray, and increasingly so. National political systems are transforming under the impact of international market integration (((No think-tanker ever just bluntly says "oligarchs" or "kleptocracy," maybe because they figure that their funding will get cut.)))
and the “populist” backlash against it. Economic disparities between member countries are increasing, with one country in particular, Germany, reaping the bulk of the benefits of the common currency—a condition impossible to correct under the EMU as constituted by the Maastricht Treaty. National interests with respect to the Union’s economic institutions differ widely among the distinctive varieties of capitalism assembled thereunder.
While the ensuing conflicts have for some time been papered over (((I'm pretty sure that the EU is nothing BUT 'papered conflicts;' it's papered conflicts all the way down, but it's like sixty-year-old stacked up papier mache and actually pretty solid))) by successive “rescue operations” and emergency measures, now the hour of truth seems to have arrived. (((How can you have an hour of truth in a post-truth situation? People are just gonna lie and wing it, live by denial.)))
The United Kingdom is about to leave, changing the balance of power among member countries. Pressures are growing for “reform,” but member states and supranational institutions seem to be deadlocked. The old “Community method” of putting off critical decisions appears to have reached its limits; meanwhile, risks are piling up. (((It's true that they don't make critical decisions, but how could they? It's like asking Belgium to launch its aircraft carriers.)))
This essay undertakes to sort out some of the complexities that underlie the European stalemate. (((I wonder how long a "stalemate" could last if you decided that you really, really liked living in stalemates. Maybe a millennium?))) It argues that the politics of Europe are suspended between national realities and a postnational ideology. Europe suffers from a collective denial of the gap between the two, in the name of a “European idea.” And, as it forces ever more “integration” onto diverse national societies, the gap between ideology and reality widens still further.
The Europe of the European idea is a future without a past, attractively innocent to a continent heavy with memories of war and genocide. It is, however, also a future without a present: in order to be acceptable to its diverse constituents, it can only be vaguely defined so that everyone can read into it what they please. Tensions between national diversity and supranational unity thus cannot be effectively addressed, since this would reveal both the emptiness of the ideology and the conflicts hidden underneath it. Emerging crises must be dealt with through day-to-day improvisation, leaving behind an opaque and confusing assortment of poorly articulated institutions....
