The bulletin at 100 by Charles Grant
We have published a bulletin every two months since the CER started up in 1998. Re-reading numbers 50-99, I am struck by how different the world was in October 2006, when the 50th bulletin appeared (including my own take on the first 50 issues). The EU had momentum: the euro was widely viewed as a success; the EU’s leaders were working to save its constitutional treaty; and Bulgaria and Romania were preparing to join, while Turkey – then a shining example of a successful Muslim democracy – was negotiating seriously to follow them. With Tony Blair as prime minister, few questioned British membership of the Union. Ukraine was an exasperating neighbour but a sovereign state. And though Russia’s creeping authoritarianism was somewhat worrying, it seemed to understand that it needed to work with the West. The Arab world was dominated by stable, autocratic regimes. The US was fighting difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with sometimes reluctant European support, but was undoubtedly the dominant global power. And China was rising. So much has changed since then, though China is still rising. Europeans have stopped believing, with Voltaire’s Pangloss, that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Hugo Brady captured the shift in bulletin 79 (August 2011): “The EU in its current form and the euro were born during a unique period between 1989 and 2008. This was a time of steady economic growth and freedom
from existential threats. Agreement on European integration was relatively easy against this benign background. It no longer is.” The West as a whole is now less confident about its ability to shape global events. Barack Obama’s insight that since the US could not run the world it should become a more modest super-power was correct. But unfortunately Obama has sometimes handled foreign policy in ways that make the US look weak. Neither the US nor the EU could prevent the failure of the ‘Arab Spring’ (Tunisia excepted), the growth of authoritarianism in Turkey, the dismemberment of Ukraine or the resurgence of militaristic nationalism in Russia. As for the EU, enlargement is off the agenda, almost nobody (outside the European Parliament) wants a major new integrating treaty and the euro is widely viewed as having been economically ruinous for several of its members. Anti-EU populism is surging in many countries and British membership of the club is now precarious. The mismanagement of the euro accounts for several of the EU’s current difficulties. As Simon Tilford wrote in bulletin 71 (April 2010): “In order for the eurozone to become stable, three things need