James Rogers’ website Global Power Europe is an elegant and eloquent example of the far opposite of British Euro-Scepticism – Euro-Uberzeal.

If it’s European, he wants More. Much More.

In his latest entry James urges Ireland to vote Yes to the Treaty, lest Europeans turn into minnows.

He cites IMF statistics and a neat graph to show that Europe’s relative weight in the world is diminishing:

… the individual European Union Member States—even the ‘big four’ like Germany, Britain, France and Italy—are already beginning to look small in comparison to China and the United States. In 2013, the disparity will be even larger. By 2050, according to Goldman Sachs, the gap will be truly vast: China’s annual economic yield may be comparable to that of the European Union and the United States combined.

Therefore:

If anything should convince all Europeans of the need for further and speedy integration in the areas of foreign, security and defence policy, it is the prospect that, within twenty years, the inhabitants of our continent will count for progressively little in the wider world. As the Venusberg Group points out, the European Union must become the ‘strategic hub’ and the ‘one stop shop’ for all Europeans, so that we can realise our commercial, economic, industrial and geopolitical objectives.

Is this not a rather odd idea a la Zhirinovsky? A sort of desperate attempt to circle the wagons to make it harder for swarms of yellow and brown people to get at us?

If the world is heading towards coalitions comprising massive blocs, why exactly do we have to have such close formalised relations with countries who do not speak our language and who dislike our version of Enlightenment values, simply because they happen to be physically close to us? An oddly primitive vision in today’s networked world?

Why not instead contemplate a looser ‘Anglosphere’ set of relations with eg USA/India/Australia?

Or make a global market niche for ourselves by being a high-tech creative but feisty independent setter of technical, research, educational and other liberal standards, maybe in a loose partnership with eg Japan?

The problem with the further and deeper integration which Global Power Europe and the EU establishment insist on is that this integration simply may not be efficient.

Under the notoriously calamitous rule of George W Bush, the gap between the USA’s performance and that of the EU has been astonishing:

Between 2001 to end-2006 the US economy grew by 34.5%.

In real money some $3,392 bn USD during that period:

  • $47 billion per month •(adding each month the equivalent of the economy of Libya)
  • or •$10.9 billion per week (ie adding each week the equivalent of the economy of Zambia, or slightly less than the economy of Bolivia).

There is no reason to think that the EU is going to do significantly better than the USA over (say) the next thirty years, even if the USA now has plenty of problems with global financial turbulence.

On the contrary. We have too many state-funded vested interests blocking reform. Our pensions and other much-vaunted European ‘social’ policies have to collapse under the weight of gravity:

The central banks can assemble on any Tuesday morning and announce tougher lending standards. But it is impossible to fix the financial problems that arise from Europe’s senescence …

There is nothing complicated about finance. It is based on old people lending to young people. Young people invest in homes and businesses; aging people save to acquire assets on which to retire. The new generation supports the old one, and retirement systems simply apportion rights to income between the generations. Never before in human history, though, has a new generation simply failed to appear.

Is this really the best bloc to be in?

Or do we face ruinous minnowisation in the decades to come precisely because we are stuck with Euro-Bloc-Heads?