The
World’s economy
in
the aftermath of the European crisis
Budiono Kusumohamidjojo, SENIOR ADVISER FOR THE CENTER FOR EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
INDONESIA
Sumber
: JAKARTA POST, 2 Januari 2012
It’s hard to ignore that Europe might have
been the most interesting continent on Earth that ruled even following the
establishment of the United States in 1776 by splinter groups of liberal
Europeans.
In the 19th century, Japanese, Chinese and Thai rulers sent their young people to Europe to study at universities and military academies.
I don’t have specific data, but I see how people in our era from all over the world, including Indonesian, love to come flocking to Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna or Amsterdam, to name some of those exotic places, for trading, science, politics, culture or even fashion.
The continental diversity of its sophisticated cultures surpasses even that of Africa. Switzerland, with a population of 7.5 million, acknowledges four official languages and don’t ever try to second one after any other of it.
The current “Italian” Prime Minister Elio di Rupo of Belgium with 11 million people has reportedly had problems to govern because he barely speaks Dutch, one of the kingdom’s three official languages. Europeans used to be proud of their respective identities and sovereignty, which eventually became the cause of two devastating world wars.
And yet they cannot escape being neighbors to each other through the centuries. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), who used to be a geography teacher, once said: “We can’t do anything about geography.” That foretells the fate of Europe also. The syndrome finally led Europeans to the formation of the European Union, with first efforts done in 1953.
The French and Germans, two bitter enemy nations in two world wars, became the core proponents of a movement toward a peaceful and prosperous Europe.
They also stood at the forefront to fight for “more Europe” when it was challenged by the dragging crisis at the Brussels summit in early December. Their biggest problem to date is they are quite willing to share money, but not sovereignty, which will remain an enigma.
Forget the British, because they don’t want to share either and merely want to be an island despite being a member of the European Union.
Enter 2012. Europe will never be the same again, and neither will the world be as well. Europe may remain exotic for other peoples of the world, however, the coming Europe will become more dependent on the rest of the planet.
It cannot be otherwise as particularly the government of the People’s Republic of China through its state banks and state enterprises will have increasingly word in the European companies they have already acquired, from Sweden’s Saab and Volvo all the way down to Greece’s Piraeus port.
That will really mean a lot, as prominent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas already warned a decade ago that politics can be democratic, but money cannot be.
So, rather than making a furor about human rights, Tibet or other things as in the past, for at least the next two or three decades ahead Europeans will have to tacitly swallow
some bitter political values which they despise. This is no illusion, because Italy, being the third industrial power in Europe, will need at least 20 years to overcome its present economic hurdles.
Despite all still open calculations, however, Europe does not need to be deemed a lost world player. Somehow, European nations may prevail over deep cultural roots based on solid Greek and Roman civilizations, both important contributors to history leading to our current modernity. By one way or another in the coming decades, Europeans will have to share their science and technological know-how with the world, as already demanded by China.
Europe will become an even more open continent indeed. When the Marshall Plan stimulated the economic development of European countries, they “imported” workforce divisions from adjacent regions, which eventually became evident in all the sociocultural problems they shoulder now.
The integration problem of immigrants notwithstanding, Europe is now already in the process of “importing” capital from rich, though not necessarily prosperous, countries. We are yet to watch what the third wave of “imports” for Europe.
Europeans may also share their social and political know-how gained from the many revolutions and wars they have had through the centuries, from which they have developed state-of-the-art social and political governance leading to five decades of welfare societies.
Like it or not, leaders of developing countries, Indonesians not excepted, would have to learn from Europeans how governments abode by their obligation to deliver a decent life to their citizens. Niccolo Machiavelli already stated in the early 16th century that states that cannot deliver to their citizens have no reason to exist.
The European crisis of the early 21st century is precarious indeed, and the European leaders are still scrambling for enduring solutions. Nevertheless, through the last decades Europe has produced the best leaders and statesmen with long-term visions in their history.
They somehow have left behind most of the problems of ideological egoism, which is still troubling the larger rest of the world community. Indonesian politicians could draw tremendous lessons from that rich experience, rather than frequently bragging about their hollow “our identity” slogan.
The coming Europe may probably not be as lavish as it used to be during the last decades, but it will not become a lame continent either.
The world should welcome a Europe that would hopefully be more prudent and responsible to itself and to the world. ●
In the 19th century, Japanese, Chinese and Thai rulers sent their young people to Europe to study at universities and military academies.
I don’t have specific data, but I see how people in our era from all over the world, including Indonesian, love to come flocking to Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna or Amsterdam, to name some of those exotic places, for trading, science, politics, culture or even fashion.
The continental diversity of its sophisticated cultures surpasses even that of Africa. Switzerland, with a population of 7.5 million, acknowledges four official languages and don’t ever try to second one after any other of it.
The current “Italian” Prime Minister Elio di Rupo of Belgium with 11 million people has reportedly had problems to govern because he barely speaks Dutch, one of the kingdom’s three official languages. Europeans used to be proud of their respective identities and sovereignty, which eventually became the cause of two devastating world wars.
And yet they cannot escape being neighbors to each other through the centuries. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), who used to be a geography teacher, once said: “We can’t do anything about geography.” That foretells the fate of Europe also. The syndrome finally led Europeans to the formation of the European Union, with first efforts done in 1953.
The French and Germans, two bitter enemy nations in two world wars, became the core proponents of a movement toward a peaceful and prosperous Europe.
They also stood at the forefront to fight for “more Europe” when it was challenged by the dragging crisis at the Brussels summit in early December. Their biggest problem to date is they are quite willing to share money, but not sovereignty, which will remain an enigma.
Forget the British, because they don’t want to share either and merely want to be an island despite being a member of the European Union.
Enter 2012. Europe will never be the same again, and neither will the world be as well. Europe may remain exotic for other peoples of the world, however, the coming Europe will become more dependent on the rest of the planet.
It cannot be otherwise as particularly the government of the People’s Republic of China through its state banks and state enterprises will have increasingly word in the European companies they have already acquired, from Sweden’s Saab and Volvo all the way down to Greece’s Piraeus port.
That will really mean a lot, as prominent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas already warned a decade ago that politics can be democratic, but money cannot be.
So, rather than making a furor about human rights, Tibet or other things as in the past, for at least the next two or three decades ahead Europeans will have to tacitly swallow
some bitter political values which they despise. This is no illusion, because Italy, being the third industrial power in Europe, will need at least 20 years to overcome its present economic hurdles.
Despite all still open calculations, however, Europe does not need to be deemed a lost world player. Somehow, European nations may prevail over deep cultural roots based on solid Greek and Roman civilizations, both important contributors to history leading to our current modernity. By one way or another in the coming decades, Europeans will have to share their science and technological know-how with the world, as already demanded by China.
Europe will become an even more open continent indeed. When the Marshall Plan stimulated the economic development of European countries, they “imported” workforce divisions from adjacent regions, which eventually became evident in all the sociocultural problems they shoulder now.
The integration problem of immigrants notwithstanding, Europe is now already in the process of “importing” capital from rich, though not necessarily prosperous, countries. We are yet to watch what the third wave of “imports” for Europe.
Europeans may also share their social and political know-how gained from the many revolutions and wars they have had through the centuries, from which they have developed state-of-the-art social and political governance leading to five decades of welfare societies.
Like it or not, leaders of developing countries, Indonesians not excepted, would have to learn from Europeans how governments abode by their obligation to deliver a decent life to their citizens. Niccolo Machiavelli already stated in the early 16th century that states that cannot deliver to their citizens have no reason to exist.
The European crisis of the early 21st century is precarious indeed, and the European leaders are still scrambling for enduring solutions. Nevertheless, through the last decades Europe has produced the best leaders and statesmen with long-term visions in their history.
They somehow have left behind most of the problems of ideological egoism, which is still troubling the larger rest of the world community. Indonesian politicians could draw tremendous lessons from that rich experience, rather than frequently bragging about their hollow “our identity” slogan.
The coming Europe may probably not be as lavish as it used to be during the last decades, but it will not become a lame continent either.
The world should welcome a Europe that would hopefully be more prudent and responsible to itself and to the world. ●
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