Nov. 9 marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. There will be no lack of commemoration — but there will also be very little celebration. Today the country is once again divided along East-West lines, and growing more so. As it does, the historical narrative of what really happened in the years after 1989 is shifting as well.
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Europe is beginning to face up to the challenges posed by a rising China. From the political debates roiling European capitals over the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei’s involvement in building 5G mobile networks to the tense EU-China summit earlier this year, recent events have shown that European leaders are growing uneasy in a relationship that until recently both sides saw as immensely beneficial.
The majority of Britons are sick of Brexit. They want it enacted now, or canceled now. It might seem strange that such a monumental decision is regarded so derisively by so many. Still, when one thinks about the three years that have passed since the Brexit vote and today, it’s not so complicated. Most people want to lead happy, prosperous, and interesting lives. They do not want to hear every news report for more than three years discuss the latest intrigue from Brussels, or the latest plot to stop Brexit or see it carried through.
In terms of harshness, the Yalta and Potsdam accords of 1945 were far tougher (on the Germans) than Versailles — and far more successful in keeping the peace. The failure of Versailles remains a tragic lesson about the eternal rules of war and human nature itself — 100 years ago this summer.
The politics of the European Union, however, look increasingly pre-democratic. In this new Ancien Régime – much as in the old one – officials condemn petty theft while absolving themselves of more serious crimes. Countries that wish to join the EU are instructed to scrub their institutions of corruption before they can even be considered for accession. Without the slightest hesitation, however, the EU now promotes candidates with a clear record of kickbacks and other dirty deals, as long as they are already senior members of the political class.
It has taken nearly 30 years, but half of all eastern German regions finally have a positive migration balance with western German states. For the first time, more people are moving from West to East than the other way around. That is primarily due to the fact that fewer and fewer people are leaving the East – in part because there are hardly any people left in many regions who are both willing to migrate and able to do so. But it is also because many large cities and regions in the former East have become a draw, places like Potsdam or Leipzig, for example.
Trump’s hostile behaviour is reinvigorating efforts to turn the euro into an alternative to the world’s dominant currency. If only the Europeans could find some way to do it.
Though the biggest headlines of election night may have been of the Le Pen and Salvini victories, the story across Europe is that voters have mobilised in favour of change. A high turn-out in the European Parliament elections has resulted in a surge for smaller parties, notably greens and liberals, which has effectively countered the rise of far-right parties – preventing them from the kind of sweeping successes in the European elections that were predicted earlier this year.
Ukraine’s new president-elect, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is in many ways the ideal poster boy for the antiestablishment trend currently sweeping world politics. A media-savvy TV celebrity who has never previously held political office, he has made a virtue of his inexperience by posing as an everyman candidate untainted by the rot within the system.
Many have been lamenting the dark path that Europe and the transatlantic relationship are currently on, but there hasn’t been much discussion of where that path leads. European weakness and division, a strategic “decoupling” from the United States, the fraying of the European Union, “after Europe,” “the end of Europe”—these are the grim scenarios, but there is a comforting vagueness to them.
