The United States Of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy

Rating:
Summary: Sneering Liberal Elitist Educates The "Cowboy" Americans!!!!
Review:
Reid's authored an above-average book which is nonetheless conflicted in merit. On one side, Reid's book is valuably and generously informative for anyone wanting a juxtaposition to explore differences and pros and cons between America and Europe. On the other, more miserable side, Reid's book is noticeably prejudiced against America in his presentation, and while his shoddy thesis is understandable, Reid's lax and strained attempt to force his partisanship to override all else is insulting to the intelligence of the reader!!!! Still, the appreciable quality in USoE is Reid's particularity to include balance in most examples he dissects, reliably volunteering pros AND cons for both pro-American and pro-Europe arguments, something many liberal authors need to learn from. One HAS to be distrustfully scrutinizing when reading Reid's alleged claims as he craftily switches between impurely outright fabrications (Europe invented Viagra) to insidious half-truths (Europe gives more to charity)!!!!

Reid's untrustworthy, elitist-internationalist theory is Old Europe with its bloated welfare state, double-digit unemployment and unsatisfactory military spending will overtake America although all of Europe's movements for unity are based on the American model, whether it's Europe's "constitutional convention" to allocate power between big/small states or their money supply controller, the ECB. Reid impertinently poses that the Euro's self-destructive rise would "contest" American dollar supremacy as the world's reserve currency. Here's where Reid's snakiness enters as he suspectedly covers-up a side of damning implication for the Euro. As the Euro increases wildly, this crushingly hurts Europe's already ineffectively bloated, double-digit unemployment as Europe's inferior economy is based, unlike America's, primarily on EXPORTS since it fails to internally develop enough innovation. This explains why American multinationals have seen soaring profits and Europe's governments may well buy the greenback to avoid economic devastation. Foreign governments are also less likely to double-cross investment in American bonds because of their reliability: with Europe's crushing, swelling unemployment, job-creation impotence, and GDP-growth dilemma, the ECB will at one, stubborn point finally have to relent and lower interest rates if they're to elude riots; America, conversely, is more conducive to raising its rates to slow its on-fire, economic growth!!!! Lastly, Reid fishily, conveniently omits the lower dollar's advantageous effect on America's trade deficit.

Reid also chicanes, using half-truths when presenting European companies' "successful penetration" of American markets. He insidiously ostracizes his choice-examples to relatively mortifyingly small-player, European companies like Fiat or likewise small-player "brands" they "took over" like Snapple in embellishing European "takeover" of America. Because it'd reveal his faulty thesis, real American symbols of business/corporate power--world's largest employer, Wal-Mart, world's largest pharmaceutical, Pfizer--are surreptitiously neutralized. Although based on faultily insignificant examples, Reid's "wave" of European companies "taking over" some American ones is inherently two-sided and doesn't verify favorability for Europe. Realistically, gains are for Americans because the Europeans are longingly salivating for such wealthy, highest-GDP-per-capita markets to sell their flimsy goods to!!!! Resulting jobs and investment in America turn the "takeover" by Europeans into at least a mutually beneficial endeavor. Ruefully, Reid is yearningly hard-pressed to scour Europe's whole continent to find even a few companies who outclass their American competitors; this results in the most laughable "highlights" Reid embellishes, together with undependable stretches. In Nokia's case, Reid derisively boasts of their market-share leadership of rival Motorola but neglectfully hides that over more than the past year, Motorola's been devouring market share from Nokia; that, and Nokia's earnings having been in tailspin for over a year, supplemented by Nokia's loss of "market-share leadership" when considering other areas its products serve reveal his duplicity. Similarly, Airbus--the cheatingly subsidized, government-welfare experiment--isn't publicly traded and less wealthier than Boeing.

Reid blasphemes when he prefers socialized medicine over America's system, as even he admits the veto Euro-governments possess over their patients, tyrannizing their choice if treatments are "expensive" because they'd crush Europe's high-tax-supported-system, no matter how beneficial said treatments are. Blatantly, this deadbeat welfare system's what's behind Europe's feeble recession, challenged job growth and lower income because of restrictive firing laws and worker subsidization patsy Europeans willingly pay into. Reid delves into nightmarish detail about some European countries' felonious entitlement laws where new parents are SUBSIDIZED to LEAVE WORK to raise their kids, implicating why Europe's productivity is high, but its jobless rate is through the roof!!!!

Reid actually admits the mortifying plainness in European sovereignty: Europeans are submissively dependent on American protection as America pays 85% of NATO's bills and whose defense budget percentage of GDP is 4% to a European <2%. Coward, circumventing Europe's people AREN'T willing to DIE for it so their naïve misteaching has taken them into a shadier means to untrustworthily "defend" themselves: soft power, mendacious ploy to affect situations by foreign "aid" or international body votes. Reid exploits this crookedly, as he damns Americans the most ungenerous folks on Earth, according to misconceived partialness regarding ODA relative to GDP. As the Tsunami debacle divulged, Americans' charitable aid outclasses all incontestably when counting private-sector and humanitarian aid!!!!

Europe's most distressing assessment figures in Europe's unconventional, roguish "Generation E," club-hopping degenerates who contribute to Europe's dilapidating remembrance of tradition and history. A dilemma also confronting Americans domestically thanks to liberals, many Europeans are virulently irreligious with churches foreclosing and indigenous, Christian history supplanted by marauding Muslim over-immigration!!!! Inevitably, this worsens into amorality as marriages are less revered, and this overall relativity towards principles discloses why Europe's struggling to curb the influx of fundamentalist Islam and with resolve in the war on terror!!!!

The EU's a disorganized ridicule of bureaucracy, so much so that liberals WILL feel at home with their bloated government seizing control of every aspect of citizens' lives. The EU routinely neutralizes sovereign EU-states' domestic laws in favor of theirs; misuses the Courts of "Human Rights"/"Justice" to overturn states' laws; is so disordered it needs translations into twenty different languages; and the European Commission routinely embezzles the EU's budget. The EU's also unsuccessful because it can't even organize intelligence sharing or efficient prosecution of terror "suspects" due to jurisdictional turf wars between member-states.


Rating:
Summary: Interesting hypothesis. Dubious evidence.
Review: Americans have been asleep at the wheel, says Reid. While Americans and, in particular their leaders have been asleep, a new super power has arisen, and has matched or surpassed America's power and influence in every significant area except military might.

According to Reid, Europeans are different from Americans, and their worldview is being increasingly imposed on the world and in particular on America for better and for worse, and the failure of America's leaders to acknowledge the situation, results repeatedly in America loosing arguments and friends on the world stage.

Reid has clearly spent a lot of time in Europe, and talked both to a lot of prominent Europeans and many of the people in the street. He's also done his research, and presents a compelling argument, based upon Europe's history, as to why the EU has been so successful, and why it is likely to continue to be successful.

That said I am a European living in America, so this book certainly grabbed by attention. And while my emotional reaction was frequently "Oh America, we're so going to kick your ass", from an intellectual perspective I didn't recognize the continent that Reid was describing. As a cheerleader for Europe Reid does a fabulous job, but time and again, his determination to prove his central claim, results in him twisting the evidence to make Europe seem more than it is. This leaves me deeply suspicious of all the information and arguments in the book, and undermines my belief in the conclusions that Reid draws.

For instance the Generation E that Franks describes, young mobile educated Europeans, who have grown up in one European country been educated or are working in another country do exist but I've met a lot more Europeans living and working here in America, than I ever met non-Brit's living or working in England.

Reid states that Europe has the world's fastest trains. This is True, but he omits to mention that the TGV, while capable of traveling at 175mph, actually winds its way through England at 55mph because the railway track it travels on is so badly out of date. As Reid then explains, it then crosses the Channel Tunnel to France, one of the great engineering achievements of our time. Unfortunately, the Channel Tunnel was one of the great financial disasters of our time. Reid forgets to mention this little piece of trivia.

Reid describes in glowing praise the success of Airbus, and the process of constructing the worlds largest ever passenger plane, but Reid totally omits any discussion of the worlds fastest ever passenger plane. Concorde represents another lofty European goal and another great European financial disaster.

When it comes to describing the challenges that face Europe, Reid almost omits any discussion. He claims that immigration is the obvious and inevitable solution to the demographic crisis facing Europe, but omits to discuss just how much resistance there is to this from the average European. If logic were the only criteria required to solve a problem, then on the evidence presented in the United States of Europe, America would surely have a Government funded health care system by now. Back in the real world Americans don't and wouldn't support a "socialized health system", and Europeans will not sanction mass immigration. This leaves the question of how Europe will continue to fund it's expensive welfare state for future generations. And as the welfare system is, we are told, one of the main differences between Europe and America, how different will the future Europe be from the current America?

Reid tells us another significant difference between Europeans and Americans is that Americans are optimists who embrace science, while Europeans are "melancholy" and "more comfortable with the knowledge that engenders disgust." At the center of this particular argument is that Europeans are antagonistic to genetically modified crops (GMOs), and Americans aren't. Reid's supporting evidence is that he talked to some politicians. My understanding of this issue, based upon some actual academic studies, is that Americans are not aware of either the prevalence or the risks of GMOs, and that when they are given the same information, they are just as concerned as Europeans.

In conclusion, the book has some glaring weaknesses that undermine, but don't invalidate the book's message. I enjoyed reading the book, but recommend that if you choose to read this book, you do so with some heavy skepticism.

Rating:
Summary: Great info, but far from the whole story...
Review: I'm an admirer of Reid, his reporting, and his earlier fine book
on Asian realities. And The United States of Europe contains a vast amount of up-to-date, carefully assembled, and well-presented on the new Europe. Thoughtful Americans aiming for
a valuable picture of the American role in the world will find
plenty to admire...and worry about. This is a particularly good
source of information on the complex relationships between the EU and its member states, and on EU institutions and how they work.

But Reid, in my opinion, has presented a largely one-sided
and at times near-utopian view of European trends. The growing role of the EU itself is much more difficult and controversial in Europe than Reid tells us. Major issues such as coordination of foreign and trade policy are not discussed in adequate depth.
There's almost no serious discussion of the high levels of unemployment and what to do about it.

Perhaps most important, Reid barely mentions, and discusses not
at all, the forbidding demographic challenges faced by most
European states---and the attendant difficulties which stem from the fact that most of Europe's net population growth, when growth is occurring at all, is due to large scale immigration of folks with vastly different cultural backgrounds. It is far from clear, a generation or two out, how Europe can maintain the
momentum it needs unless there is a new and unanticipated supply of brand-new Europeans to pay all the bills for the costly
social programs Reid and most Europeans so much admire.

Europeans themselves are having heated debates about a wide range of tough issues which Reid himself barely mentions. One can still make the case that the European Union's success has already changed realities for all us non-Europeans. But his case would be more compelling if he gave due weight to the
other side of the picture. So read this book, learn a lot about how Europe has changed greatly, and draw some sobering lessons about ways in which Europe is doing well and the U.S. can do better. But don't let it keep you awake at night.




Rating:
Summary: A perspective on T.R. Reid's " The United States of Europe"
Review: In his most recent and seminal work, " The United States of Europe" T.R. Reid delivers a novel juxtaposition of two major trading blocs and their transformation in global influence. The epoch that Reid describes commences in its historical roots post WWII and progresses into a prose not entirely unlike Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Reid's framework for the interpretation of Europe's unification takes a distinctly historical tone and culminates into several climatic events leaving the reader with nothing less than a smart grin.

Being a citizen of both Canada (the mouse that ponders the elephant) and also a citizen of the European Union. I took special note of this work as I felt Reid had aptly described a psychological view held by Europeans that so many Americans fail to appreciate. Today the United States wages a war in Iraq seemingly unaware; it has driven a political wedge at home and a spiraling deficit approaching 400 billion in cost to its citizens with no foreseeable end. Conversely, Reid seeks to advance through the experience of war and aversion to it a distinctly European notion; one of consensus. This divergent view between American and European culture serves as a backdrop for several other social, political and economic comparisons.


Rating:
Summary: The waking giant, the sleeping superpower
Review: T. R. Reid writes to alert America to a geopolitical revolution: the unification of Europe-a tectonic change that will change the world forever and that Americans have failed either to notice or fully ascertain. Waking America to the waking giant across the Atlantic is what this book is about.

As a history of Europe's unification this book is invaluable-it explains neatly and succinctly the move to integrate the continent, how and why it came about. It also captures the emerging economic power of the EU, and encapsulates the feeling of constructing Europe as an alternative to America; in doing so, Mr. Reid illustrates the political and social connections which bind the continent together and which separate it from America (Europe's welfare state, its aversion to large militaries and war, etc.) The book even contains a concise guide to the European Union, its member states and its institutional structures (this will surely excite even Europeans who are usually dumbfounded by Brussels and its complexities).

For those who either don't know enough about the EU or think it is okay to not know enough about the EU, Mr. Reid offers a sober history and counterargument. All the same, there are reasons to be a bit skeptical about the overall narrative. For one, Mr. Reid is overly enthusiastic about the emergence of a pan-European consciousness. Generation E might all watch Eurovision and the Champions' League, and might travel cheaply with Euro-rail, but Europe still lacks a demos-a political consciousness and dialogue that is so vital to a collective political entity.

Historically, Mr. Reid tries to reconcile two competing narratives. For one, he depends for his story on an exciting and inviting public-a public grew weary of war and tired of antagonisms. Whether that exists today or existed in the 1950s is questionable, though the post-war generation probably did feel a growing urgency of putting the past behind them. But this trend is countered by the fact that the EU progressed all too slowly-that the first steps were hesitant and often imposed on a skeptical or reluctant public. The standard narrative of the EU is that of technocrats, bureaucrats and politicians leading a skeptical public-that is echoed in arguments against referenda that depend on a "if the past treaties were subjected to referenda, then there would be no EU" syllogism. This version of the EU, of "decaffeinated politics" as the Daily Telegraph columnist Noel Malcolm put it, puts leaders at a disconnected plain from voters-and this story rings much truer of life in the EU than Mr. Reid's does.

If Generation E is one of the book's shortcomings, then its economic analysis is another. Moot expressions such as a "stronger euro" are meaningless in the economist's ears. Although there is something to be said about the usage of the dollar as a reserve currency, the overall treatment of the topic is too short to be meaningful. And although Mr. Reid catalogues scores of European corporations succeeding in America, there is a similar story to be said about American companies abroad.

In all, Mr. Reid's contribution will be to alert the American public about a grand change taking place in Europe. But in some areas, particularly on the public's connection to Brussels, on Europe's passion for technocratic and grand solutions to grand problems, and about its insistence on unity as the most potent goal, readers should do well to discount Mr. Reid's enthusiasm a bit, to get a more accurate picture of where Europe stands and where it might be headed.