Ep 207. Is Europe's 80-Year Order Finally Collapsing?

Why has it? Well, I think because in the period, uh, of American Europe, nine- that 80-year period, roughly '45 through to 2025, when I think it, the wheels really start coming off, Europe does pretty well.

I mean, it, it, it, uh, grows at a impressive rate.

The German economy, which is really the, the driver of, of the European economy, does fabulously well, and particularly its car industry.

And of course, they've got United States providing the security, right? So they don't need to worry too much about external threats.

So that's very different from the Articles of Confederation-era America, where the British and the French are playing Virginia off against Massachusetts and impounding American sailors in the, off the coast of, uh, of Delaware.

It's a very, very different type of situation.

And-

And the Bay of Tripoli is, is taking sailors ransom.

No, no, I get that, but-

Yeah, yeah

... am I right in saying, though, that there are certain structural pressures here, which is a fascinating way of looking at how states work, whether it's the Delian League prior to the Peloponnesian Wars or not.

It's great to have an alliance.

It's great to have independent polities.

But at some point, you need to have interoperability of your ships and work together and have a common foreign policy, or you can be conquered, right? Is it, there, there is something to this.

Yes.

As, as geopolitical pressures rise, the old system doesn't work.

And I think, so to answer your question, there weren't the geopolitical pressures that there've been since, uh, Russia, China, and the United States started acting much more aggressively.

And once they do, once the era of geopolitics comes back, Europe's in trouble, and that's the disorder we're in, to quote you.

And now they've got a huge wake-up call on defense.

I don't think you can ignore just how complacent the Europeans were.

The Europeans were extraordinarily happy with what they had and were very resistant to people criticizing their system, and the EU put, tends to put money into people who talk the talk about how good things are.

You know, if you hang out with the EUI people or the commission people, everything's going fabulously well.

People who are critical get sort of pushed a- pushed aside.

They don't like to hear this.

I think once you've got 80 years of complacency, you can't afford to put a lot of money into defense, right? So there's no, there's no huge lobby in, in, in domestic lobby in European countries insisting that they spend more on defense.