Europe’s Liberal Elites Savor Jet-Set Amenities While Driving the Continent Toward Catastrophe

As a Ph.D. in European history who has at various times lived in France, Germany, Italy, and now Switzerland, I am beginning to seriously worry about Europe’s future. The continent’s elites are putting it in an incredibly vulnerable position.Europe is a civilization in crisis. It is being undermined by a series of challenges which it can’t resolve. It is also crippled because it has built a huge bureaucratic structure at the European Union level. There are estimates that Brussels, the bureaucratic capital of the European Union, has 32,000 bureaucrats and another 80,000 people who do work in some way related to the EU.There are four challenges that the European elites find it virtually impossible to solve. This is partly because their own elite thinking has enabled and accelerated these challenges.Feature, say, the dominance of the green movement, which has led to a series of energy decisions which make energy three to four times more expensive than in America. The combination of green values and electricity prices have blocked air conditioning for most Europeans. As a result, there have been more than 35,000 deaths attributed to high temperatures this year. Even in the face of economic and human disasters, the grip of the green movement and ideology is such that Europe cannot get back to commonsense policies that would produce affordable electricity.Immigration from countries that have no interest in, and indeed hostility toward, adapting to European civilization is also creating a growing subversive movement in several countries. When combined with leftwing attitudes opposed to effective policing, the result is a horrendous decline in safety for traditional citizens. In Rotherham, England alone, an estimated 1,400 girls were exploited, largely by Pakistani gangs, over a 16 year period. The police did virtually nothing to protect the girls. At times, they threatened parents for complaining. With welfare programs encouraging large families (and no requirements for work or assimilation) the indigestible parts of many European countries will keep growing.Older European industries are finding it hard as well to compete with lower-cost Chinese and Indian products. In the German automotive industry, which once led the world, there is now a crisis of survival. In the emerging most advanced industries, including space and artificial intelligence, there is no coherent European strategy to meet the challenge. When Elon Musk’s Starship starts operating on a daily basis sometime in the next three years, it will dominate the cost and scale of delivering payloads to orbit, the Moon, and Mars. If you listen to Mr. Musk, he will create a revolutionary new point-to-point passenger system which will take passengers from New York to Beijing in 40 minutes. There is no comparable space development in Europe. Nine of the 10 largest high tech companies are American, and the 10th is Taiwanese. The European reaction to the future has been to regulate and fine American companies. There is no entrepreneurial tax and regulation revolution underway in Europe to develop competitive industries. When you look at the announced scale of investment in America compared to the minuscule investments in Europe, the future being developed is totally one-sided. With exceptions for a few individual countries, Europe is making no serious effort to restructure its system to engage the level of talent and capital it would take to compete.Finally, the threat to Europe from Russia and Iran is real. The Russian model of hybrid warfare is on display regularly. Europe is awakening from eight decades of comfortably relying on America to protect it. This is the area in which the Europeans have made the most changes. There is a clear and substantial increase in money being allocated to defense. The Germans are talking about subsidizing the French nuclear program to strengthen deterrence against a Russian attack. The willingness to share advanced defense technology with Ukraine is a major change. Nonetheless, Europe has a long way to go to be able to genuinely deter Russia without strong American commitment.These four challenges would hinder the ability of any system to modernize rapidly. In Europe, the problem has been compounded by a quality of life and a network of interlocking and mutually supporting elites who have huge emotional and financial investments in the past. Life for the European elites is still spectacular. Skiing, yachting, attending music and film festivals — the constant opportunity to go to beautiful places and do nice things — these all make life good but make confronting reality difficult.The crisis of the European elites is that they are living well in a dreamworld of the past. It will be difficult to step out of this pleasant fantasy and confront the demanding challenges of the present — and the even more demanding challenges of the future.

Europe’s Liberal Elites Savor Jet-Set Amenities While Driving the Continent Toward Catastrophe

Europe’s Liberal Elites Savor Jet-Set Amenities While Driving the Continent Toward Catastrophe

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