Although Europe desperately needs a new strategic outlook, it remains obsessed with a politics of consensus, and thus is stuck with a stultifying orthodoxy propagated by official circles in Berlin and Paris. That means its future may depend on Britain, Italy, and Poland creating a new political center of gravity.
SALZBURG – There is something rotten in the state of Europe. Central to French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech at the Sorbonne in April was a warning that Europe is mortal – “it can die.” Many feel an urgent need for new thinking, new leadership, and new ideas, yet it is hard to say where these might be found. Generating new ideas and forging new principles requires open debate. But Europe remains obsessed with a politics of consensus, and thus is stuck with a stultifying orthodoxy propagated by official circles and elite opinion in Berlin and Paris.
The relationship between France and Germany has been the central axis of European history for 200 years. After the caesura of World War II – which left the old elites in both countries utterly humiliated – the Franco-German twosome went on to become the foundation for the European project. But now both are paralyzed, and democracy – which was essential to remaking postwar Europe – is floundering. French voters have just elected a hung parliament comprising the far right, the radical left, and an isolated, irrelevant center, while Germany’s unpopular coalition government remains locked in never-ending fiscal disputes. Worse, regional elections there next month are likely to produce a French-style outcome.
Europeans no longer seem to put much store in the old motors of European integration. It doesn’t help that their current leaders resemble caricatures of their respective traditions. Macron (who once likened himself to Jupiter) is Napoleonic in his love of large-scale gambles. Recall his diplomacy following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which soon collapsed in a futile attempt to appease Vladimir Putin. Then came his suggestion that NATO troops might need to be deployed to Ukraine, followed by his equally ill-judged decision to call a snap parliamentary election this summer.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been channeling his inner Immanuel Kant, insisting on the possibility of a perpetual peace. The slogan for his misjudged European election campaign was “Securing Peace.” When he gave a speech commemorating the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth, his audience eagerly expected him to mention the Taurus missiles that Ukraine has been pleading for. True to form, he did not.
Thus, two German obsessions – peace and balanced budgets – have produced a dangerous admixture that threatens to cut off German support for Ukraine at a critical moment, jeopardizing both peace and fiscal stability across Europe.
No wonder everyone wants a change in leadership. In the past, Europe had four pillars: France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, each of which once had similarly sized economies and populations. However, after German unification in 1990, the proportions changed, while Italy has been discredited by perpetual political instability, and Britain by the Conservative Party civil war that led to Brexit.
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Oddly, though, Britain and Italy now look better off than the old Berlin-Paris team. Italy has a sober, fiscally responsible, geopolitically savvy, pro-European government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Though she emerged from the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, she has abandoned most of its ideology. Similarly, Britain now has a sober, fiscally responsible, geopolitically savvy Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who replaced and then cast out Jeremy Corbyn and the anti-European, anti-Semitic impulse he represents. Both countries are benefiting from the fact that previous governments made terrible mistakes.
This is also a good moment for smaller countries. Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and – outside the European Union – Norway and Switzerland are showing themselves to be economically dynamic and politically and strategically innovative. Poland, the largest and fastest-growing of them, offers a unique template for a future Europe. Owing to its geographic position, it has made the greatest effort to increase defense expenditures; and unlike the larger European powers, it does not have an entrenched domestic defense industry whose lobbyists persistently block efforts to Europeanize the continent’s military capacity.
Ukraine, Switzerland, and Norway all could teach their European neighbors a lot about how to adapt to today’s changing world. Macron, to his credit, has experimented with creating a wider European Political Union, and leaders from 43 countries did come together this summer for a summit at Blenheim Palace (the birthplace of Winston Churchill).
Looking ahead, one can imagine European affairs being reoriented around a new triumvirate comprising Britain, Italy, and Poland. Like France and Germany, these countries also share much history. But they also share an appreciation of current global realities, as well as a culture of debate. The Polish national anthem is the marching song of a Polish general in the Napoleonic Army. London was the seat of the Polish government in exile after 1940, and Polish airmen and soldiers played a crucial role in key WWII engagements, most spectacularly the Battles of Britain and Monte Cassino.
Britain, Italy, and Poland also live firmly in the present: they are not perpetually wrangling about the transfer of powers to European institutions or monetary integration. And they have strong traditions of debate. In nineteenth-century England, the dramatists Gilbert and Sullivan mocked the way that “Every boy and every gal/That’s born into the world alive/Is either a little Liberal/Or else a little Conservative!” Italy overcame fights between clericals and anti-clericals. And Poland survived the interwar split between two military figures with alternative visions, Marshal Józef Piłsudski and General Władysław Sikorski – a long rivalry that is echoed in the tensions nowadays between the far-right leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The key attribute of a successful democracy is the old Athenian notion of parrhesia: the right, and duty, of all citizens to express themselves freely in public assemblies. The same concept is also sometimes rendered as the responsibility to speak truth to power. Hundreds of years later, it produced the flourishing of the Renaissance, with its belief that ideas and arguments should be testable as well as contestable. As the one principle that autocracies absolutely must repress, parrhesia is the key to rescuing democracy – and humanity with it.
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With less than two months to go until the US presidential election, the candidates’ opposing worldviews, objectives, and priorities – and their implications for international relations, the economy, and democracy – have come into sharper focus. While it is impossible to know exactly what a leader will do once in office, the contours of both a Donald Trump and a Kamala Harris presidency are remarkably well defined.
Since the start of the Olympic Summer Games in Paris, Emmanuel Macron has reclaimed the initiative and confronted a political situation that is in many ways unprecedented for a French president. Not only has the center held, but the country may have a return to political stability in its sights.
reflects on the French president's efforts to maintain control after a painful election season.
SALZBURG – There is something rotten in the state of Europe. Central to French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech at the Sorbonne in April was a warning that Europe is mortal – “it can die.” Many feel an urgent need for new thinking, new leadership, and new ideas, yet it is hard to say where these might be found. Generating new ideas and forging new principles requires open debate. But Europe remains obsessed with a politics of consensus, and thus is stuck with a stultifying orthodoxy propagated by official circles and elite opinion in Berlin and Paris.
The relationship between France and Germany has been the central axis of European history for 200 years. After the caesura of World War II – which left the old elites in both countries utterly humiliated – the Franco-German twosome went on to become the foundation for the European project. But now both are paralyzed, and democracy – which was essential to remaking postwar Europe – is floundering. French voters have just elected a hung parliament comprising the far right, the radical left, and an isolated, irrelevant center, while Germany’s unpopular coalition government remains locked in never-ending fiscal disputes. Worse, regional elections there next month are likely to produce a French-style outcome.
Europeans no longer seem to put much store in the old motors of European integration. It doesn’t help that their current leaders resemble caricatures of their respective traditions. Macron (who once likened himself to Jupiter) is Napoleonic in his love of large-scale gambles. Recall his diplomacy following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which soon collapsed in a futile attempt to appease Vladimir Putin. Then came his suggestion that NATO troops might need to be deployed to Ukraine, followed by his equally ill-judged decision to call a snap parliamentary election this summer.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been channeling his inner Immanuel Kant, insisting on the possibility of a perpetual peace. The slogan for his misjudged European election campaign was “Securing Peace.” When he gave a speech commemorating the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth, his audience eagerly expected him to mention the Taurus missiles that Ukraine has been pleading for. True to form, he did not.
Thus, two German obsessions – peace and balanced budgets – have produced a dangerous admixture that threatens to cut off German support for Ukraine at a critical moment, jeopardizing both peace and fiscal stability across Europe.
No wonder everyone wants a change in leadership. In the past, Europe had four pillars: France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, each of which once had similarly sized economies and populations. However, after German unification in 1990, the proportions changed, while Italy has been discredited by perpetual political instability, and Britain by the Conservative Party civil war that led to Brexit.
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Oddly, though, Britain and Italy now look better off than the old Berlin-Paris team. Italy has a sober, fiscally responsible, geopolitically savvy, pro-European government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Though she emerged from the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, she has abandoned most of its ideology. Similarly, Britain now has a sober, fiscally responsible, geopolitically savvy Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who replaced and then cast out Jeremy Corbyn and the anti-European, anti-Semitic impulse he represents. Both countries are benefiting from the fact that previous governments made terrible mistakes.
This is also a good moment for smaller countries. Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and – outside the European Union – Norway and Switzerland are showing themselves to be economically dynamic and politically and strategically innovative. Poland, the largest and fastest-growing of them, offers a unique template for a future Europe. Owing to its geographic position, it has made the greatest effort to increase defense expenditures; and unlike the larger European powers, it does not have an entrenched domestic defense industry whose lobbyists persistently block efforts to Europeanize the continent’s military capacity.
Ukraine, Switzerland, and Norway all could teach their European neighbors a lot about how to adapt to today’s changing world. Macron, to his credit, has experimented with creating a wider European Political Union, and leaders from 43 countries did come together this summer for a summit at Blenheim Palace (the birthplace of Winston Churchill).
Looking ahead, one can imagine European affairs being reoriented around a new triumvirate comprising Britain, Italy, and Poland. Like France and Germany, these countries also share much history. But they also share an appreciation of current global realities, as well as a culture of debate. The Polish national anthem is the marching song of a Polish general in the Napoleonic Army. London was the seat of the Polish government in exile after 1940, and Polish airmen and soldiers played a crucial role in key WWII engagements, most spectacularly the Battles of Britain and Monte Cassino.
Britain, Italy, and Poland also live firmly in the present: they are not perpetually wrangling about the transfer of powers to European institutions or monetary integration. And they have strong traditions of debate. In nineteenth-century England, the dramatists Gilbert and Sullivan mocked the way that “Every boy and every gal/That’s born into the world alive/Is either a little Liberal/Or else a little Conservative!” Italy overcame fights between clericals and anti-clericals. And Poland survived the interwar split between two military figures with alternative visions, Marshal Józef Piłsudski and General Władysław Sikorski – a long rivalry that is echoed in the tensions nowadays between the far-right leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The key attribute of a successful democracy is the old Athenian notion of parrhesia: the right, and duty, of all citizens to express themselves freely in public assemblies. The same concept is also sometimes rendered as the responsibility to speak truth to power. Hundreds of years later, it produced the flourishing of the Renaissance, with its belief that ideas and arguments should be testable as well as contestable. As the one principle that autocracies absolutely must repress, parrhesia is the key to rescuing democracy – and humanity with it.