Something unique about Europe
John Quiggan feels Europe’s current focus on the welfare of its people is unique.
Almost every state of any significance in history has aspired to dominate its known world. In the last century, Britain, Germany, Russia and even France[1] aspired to this role, and right now Russia and China are keen to try. Religiosity, militarism, inequality, and governments that do little for their subjects are the norm rather than the exception. Long hours of hard work have been the lot of humankind at least since the arrival of agriculture.
The real exception to all of this is Europe[2]. The largest economic aggregate in world history, it has enough military power to repel any invader, but is deeply uninterested in using this power to any more glorious end. It grows by a process of reluctant accretion, controlled by ever more onerous admission requirements. In all of history, it would be hard to find anything comparable in terms of pacifism, godlessness, equality, leisure for the masses or public provision of services.[3]
Then the EU itself. There aren’t many historical parallels and those that I can think of (the US under the Articles of Configuration and the Commonwealth of Independent States, for example) were rapidly abandoned. It’s ungainly, unloved and bureaucratic, and yet it has persisted for 50+ years (nearly 60 if you count the ESC). The Great Powers of the 19th are now, with marginal exceptions, parts of this post-sovereign collective.
It’s for these reasons that American views of Europe resemble de Tocqueville in reverse. Something so unprecedented, and against the laws of nature, they think, cannot possibly survive, let alone prosper. And yet it does.