After Saying Yes To Turkey, The Eu

The Whole Project Of European Union Is One In Deep Trouble.

I'm A Historian By Training And By Conviction. And So The Thing That Has Throughout Informed My Thinking About International Relations Is History. I Think, For Example, The Reason That I Was Perhaps Able To See Sooner Than Some Others That The Soviet Empire In Eastern Europe Was Decaying--if Not Disintegrating--was That I Came To It Through History And Through Germany, Rather Than Through Sovietology And Through Moscow. And Therefore The Starting Point Was That No Empire In History Has Lasted Forever, And This One Won't Either.

I Have A Dreadful Feeling In My Bones That Future Historians May Write Of The May 2014 Elections: "this Was The Wake-up Call From Which Europe Failed To Wake Up."

Except For Its Worst Inner-city Slums, America Is Not The Primitive Capitalist Jungle Of European Imagination, Where Human Beings Slink Away Like Wounded Animals To Die In Bloodstained Holes.

What Is The Elephant In All Our Rooms? It Is The Global Triumph Of Capitalism. Democracy Is Fiercely Disputed. Freedom Is Under Threat Even In Old-established Democracies Such As Britain. Western Supremacy Is On The Skids. But Everyone Does Capitalism. Americans And Europeans Do It. Indians Do It. Russian Oligarchs And Saudi Princes Do It. Even Chinese Communists Do It... Karl Marx Would Be Turning In His Grave. Or Perhaps Not, Since Some Of His Writings Eerily Foreshadowed Our Era Of Globalised Capitalism. His Prescription Failed But His Description Was Prescient.