Conrad Black: The West dominates. Don't believe lies to the contrary

National Post

6 hours ago

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Western Europe is naturally more complicated. For all of history from the rise of the Roman Republic to the 20th century it was the leading and most influential political and economic region in the world. It is naturally heavily burdened by its responsibility for the evils of totalitarian communism, Nazism, and fascism and the terrible hecatombs of the world wars. For notorious historic reasons, it lumbers its economy with extravagant Danegeld for the working classes and the small farmers. Much of Europe went perilously far in abdicating democratic political authority to the undemocratic commissioners of the European Union. They are all committed to the 'ever closer union' which is the founding objective of the EU, but which has not been specifically ratified by many of the adherent populations, and as the European commissioners are not elected and are not answerable to the talking shop European Parliament in Strasbourg, this is not democracy. That was the great problem in the United Kingdom, which Mark Carney failed to recognize as he tried in his in supposedly nonpolitical position of central banker to terrorize the British into voting against Brexit. Britain had voted to join a common market not a federal union. The institutions of government that had developed over 800 years of British history would be subsumed into the well-intentioned but unfledged institutions of Brussels, and its relations with the United States and its senior Commonwealth kindred countries, relationships that have made an incomparable contribution to Western civilization, would be handed over to the Davos-minded foreign placemen of Brussels.
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The European Union will have to be rethought and probably will proceed on a two-tiered basis where those countries which wish federation should certainly have it and those that wish to retain national sovereignty but in affiliation with European central government are accommodated. The whole enterprise will have to adopt a tax and benefit system more stimulative to economic growth and more respectful of the market economy. Europeans cannot ignore the implications of the fact that 20 years ago their collective GDP was almost identical to that of the United States and today the American economy is almost twice as large as that of the EU. This is despite the mediocre American leadership between the Reagan and current Trump eras, because European political leadership has been even poorer. For the only time in British history, U.K. Conservatives provided five consecutive failed prime ministers in eight years. The quality of French leadership in the Fifth Republic has declined from the great General de Gaulle in tottering downward increments to the completely incompetent François Hollande, and Emmanuel Macron has been only a very partial improvement. Four-term German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who could Have been a female Bismarck, was ultimately a failure, as was her successor. Both the new chancellor and the new opposition show signs of hope. The Italian Premier, Giorgia Meloni, is a very considerable statesman and the most capable Italian leader since Alcide de Gasperi. The Spanish premier is a socialist imbecile, and the present British government is off to a terrible start.
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But there are unmistakable signs that the old continent is recovering: the German Christian Democrats like the equivalent Italian parties, are much bolder and more ideologically robust than in the recent past. The French Rassemblement National has respectabilized itself and appears ready for victory. In the United Kingdom, either the Conservative Party will regain a reasonable quality of leadership and political judgment or it will be shunted into the wilderness like the old Liberals by the Reform Party. The most encouraging litmus test of the recovery of Europe is that Vladimir Putin had assumed that it would be wallowing in moralistic platitudes while he reabsorbed Ukraine. Not only has Ukraine repulsed him with great courage, but he succeeded in reawakening Europe from its long torpor and arming it with the resolve of self-respect and determination of olden time, and is doubling its defence budget. The westernized countries of the Far Pacific are responding commendably to the Chinese challenge, encouraged by the pivot of Trump's America towards them. This is not a civilization in decline.
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