Europe, in the face of an explosive mix of crises, is resorting to further missed solutions. Take, for example, the consequence to the external safety threat following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Despite the declaration of a courageous Ukraine defending European freedom, it invests mainly in the protection of national borders alternatively than Ukrainian borders. Discrimination is expanding Ukrainians The barriers to exports of Ukrainian agricultural products and to the enlargement of the European Union are expanding among the various European nations. Although US safety guarantees are little and little reliable, Europe continues to supply US weapons, which may prove useless due to any whimsical U.S. President's fanaticism.
Reactions to interior safety threats are equally peculiar. States are lenient to utmost right-wing movements, which cannot be said of the victims of the latter: migrants and migrants, feminists and feminists, LGBT+ communities, and environmental activists and activists. Racism and nationalist rhetoric gradually penetrates into liberal by organization name, making force against minorities, despite legal protection mechanisms, gaining unnoticeably expanding acceptance. global rights, specified as the right to asylum, are suspended and the constitutional protection of human rights is ignored.
On the issue of migration, which Europe is allegedly trying to limit, the solutions with precisely the other effect prevail. It is widely known that migration is driven by wars, poorness and climate change. alternatively of doing everything to prevent conflicts in Africa and the mediate East, alternatively of doubling efforts to reduce poorness and halt climate change, Europe is erecting walls that most frequently hinder the lives of tourists and entrepreneurs, not smugglers and undocumented migrants.
Although it is known that an integrated Europe could successfully deal with American duties, Russian expansionism, migration and climate change, the European Union remains a hostage to national sovereign whims. Projects are being implemented to put an end to key EU initiatives specified as law enforcement mechanisms, migration pacts and green governance.
Reasons and Remedia
It is hard to find an explanation for Europe's self-destructive, sadomasochistic behaviour. Although there is general consensus on the causes of the current hard situation, there is inactive no thought how to deal with it effectively. The mainstream parties, which have ruled Europe for decades, have embezzled and even betrayed their liberal ideals by tolerating expanding inequalities, engaging in global disputes, ignoring the social costs of technological progress.
As a result, they lost power on an ideological, electoral and administrative level. The atmosphere of political destabilisation and ideological vacuum has become a feed for public fears and fears. These fears and fears are further enhanced by terrorism, pandemics, financial instability, climate change and wars on the outskirts of Europe. It is besides crucial that cultural concerns arise from expanding migration, the emancipation of women, demographic collapse and the uneven level of digital competence. And fear is simply a susceptible ground for political demagogues who want to change their system, especially since liberal elites show that they deficiency authoreflexion and imagination to offer any convincing alternative. And so we come up with solutions that have been applied so far.
Some self-appointed liberals started to become like populistsMark Rutte is simply a notable example, Donald Tusk and Mette Frederiksen. Others in turn proposed a technocratic solution to Europe's social, intellectual and political problems, as seen in Mario Draghi's politics, Dick Schoof's, and even Keira Starmer's.
There are besides politicians like Giuseppe Conte and Emmanuel Macron who have joined these 2 opposing attitudes by deciding on something that Christopher Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti baptized as “technopopulism”. Tusk, Frederiksen, Macron, and Starmer are inactive in power, so it is hard to find whether any of these strategies have actually worked. At best, they only slowed down the force of utmost right-wing natives and prevented the detonation of escalation problems. Unfortunately, uncertainty, fear and anger are inactive present in most European democracies, favoring far-right politicians.
However, it is not adequate to blame politicians as a whole. It should be openly acknowledged that intellectuals have besides done small to make reliable, substantive solutions. The modern counterparts of Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant did not uncover to us. Even thinkers specified as Karl Marks, Hannah Arendt and Carl Popper have ceased to be the origin of inspiration, and we deficiency a comprehensive imagination to accomplish the desired change. This fistful of intellectuals, who are inactive trying to advise politicians, throws out abstract, frequently vague concepts specified as creative destruction, dynamic performance, progressive conservatism, or a revolution of common sense.
A perfect example of a fundamentally useless intellectual remedy is simply a fresh proposal famous expert and academic, Mariana Mazzucato, which stated that "too many policy programmes are based on assumptions from past times, specified as the fact that consensus can be built gradually, that for behavioural changes (such as the transition to preventive wellness systems) there is simply a political reward that the evidence-based socio-political solutions can overcome alternative factsIt’s okay. ” The question is whether a consensus must be imposed alternatively than negotiated by the authorities, whether the gradual improvement of the social and wellness care strategy should be abandoned, or whether the creation of social and political solutions should be subject to a dictatorship of disinformation. I don't think that's the point.
A View into the Future
In preparing my column, I was inspired by the exhibition "Post/Future", organized by London's Delphian and Saatchi galleries. Europe He seems to be heading for the head-to-head of a plane crash without a compass, a map or even a clear target. Although most of the current problems are transnational, politicians are busy dismantling global institutions in the name of national pride and sovereignty. Under the conditions of rampant nationalism, all nation is hopelessly divided, and the barricades standing on 2 sides do not want or cannot scope a compromise or consensus.
Although stopping public debt, the influx of migration or climate change requires long-term, consistent action, governments like eective, fast solutions, dictated by periodic elections and whimsical polls. In the face of a massive threat from Russia, individual states are blindly supplying weapons, while they deficiency convincing military doctrine, a solid budget for defence, public oversight and well-defined strategical objectives. Despite the desperate informing signals from the planet of climate change science, countries abandon environmental regulations, covering themselves with the captivating slogan of deregulation. In consequence to the collapse of public services and the emergence in public debt, politicians are promising even greater taxation cuts. These examples can be multiplied into bunches.
Europe so far, it succeeds as specified to go through further crises without bending over their causes. However, just ask yourself any rhetorical questions to exposure the limited effect on seemingly successful actions: whether after 3 rescue packages and draconian social spending cuts Greece will always repay its debt? Will exile camps in Turkey and repatriation camps in Albania address social concerns about migration? Will the projected defence spending stay unaffected by public schools and hospitals? Will the words of encouragement at the last NATO summit guarantee Europe's security? Will the EU last without a liberal agenda protecting human rights and the regulation of law?
The current situation reminds us of the last phase of communism in Poland, as described by Tadeusz Konwicki in a satirical book A small Apocalypse“Our era is noble doubts, blessed uncertainty, holy hypersensitivity, divine deficiency of decision.” Ukrainian novels portraying this country, especially Donbas before the Russian invasion in 2022, are equally ironic. They inform that the decomposition process is by definition gradual and frequently remains invisible to the eye. While politicians are busy inventing esatz solutions, cynicism, atomization and inability to make a united front for constructive action are increasing in society.
National and global institutions deal with a full multitude of projects, give encouraging statements, while there is an uncontrolled erosion of the healthcare system, legal standards, economical competitiveness and administrative capacity. Employers pretend that wages are decent, employees pretend that they work efficiently. Soldiers get more shots of weapons, but they have no thought what kind of missions they're waiting for. Democracy inactive exists formally, but it can barely give any political legitimacy to leaders. After a period of confusion bordering on desperation, the disaster caused by a cocktail of hardened crises seems inevitable. Is there any way to avoid this scenario? Perhaps, however, it is hard to imagine, even as an optimist.
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The article is simply a joint publication of Social Europe and IPS Journal.
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Jan Zielonka is simply a prof. of political discipline and global relations at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari and the University of Oxford. He cooperates with the EMC. His latest book is named A Lost Future and How to Recover It (Warsaw: Post Factsum 2023).
