Europe needs leaders strong enough to dismantle the crumbling EU and build something better

The post-1945 geopolitical settlement is now crumbling

By Bruce Anderson


Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi and Jean Monnet, founders of the European Union
Post-1945 Europe needed Nato and a common market to increase security and promote trade interests, so the tragedy of the two World Wars could never happen again. But, argues Bruce Anderson for CapX, the EU's expansion East and the development of a single currency which grouped together Germany and Greece were lunacy. Now Europe needs leaders strong enough to dismantle the crumbling EU and build something better.

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• The post-1945 geopolitical settlement is now crumbling
• The EU needs statesmen up to the challenge of dragging it into the 21stC
• Europe needed the EU in the 1950s. It doesn't now.

“Stare into the abyss for long enough” wrote Nietzsche, “and it will stare back at you.” In 1945, Europe seemed caught in the abyss’s basilisk gaze. Tens of millions were dead; millions more were refugees. Cities were shattered; with them, economies. Many of the inhabitants of countries which had recently been rich and powerful were cold, hungry and frightened.

That was not the worst aspect of Europe’s predicament. In 1914, the continent had never been more powerful. Its banks and bourses dominated the world economy. It controlled Africa and much of Asia. Even China, once a mighty power, was virtually a ward of European courts. Although the Americas were largely independent, their states could be regarded as European daughter-houses. It seemed that Europe was in a position to shape the rest of the world in its own image, to its own advantage.

Then came the great European civil war. In its aftermath, Ezra Pound described Europe as “an old bitch gone in the teeth… a botched civilisation.” A harsh verdict: by 1945, it seemed incontrovertible. On the edge of the abyss, Europe was still just about alive, but what future role had the former world continent, except to provide the playing-field for a third and final conflict, in which the doom of Europe would rapidly be followed by the destruction. After exemplifying the human condition at its finest, Europe was for the dark.

Back then, that would not have been a pessimistic assessment, merely a realistic one. Yet it was confounded, by a paradoxical fusion of man’s basic strengths and his highest attributes. Large mammals are used to fighting for their lives. Circumscribed by death, human life is inherently tragic. For millennia, men have sought to palliate tragedy by relationships with deities, in religions which transcend death. At best, the success is partial. Faiths and convictions ebb and flow. But juxtaposed between glory and gloom, life goes on. Large mammals are tough and sinewy creatures.

They can also be inspired by idealism, and not only in religious matters. 1945 was the worst of times, but some of the best of men sought a path away from the abyss. Their motto was “never again”. They wanted to create institutions to safeguard man against himself. Though Europe would never again rule the world, its values would survive. They also wanted to create institutions to ensure physical survival. Hence the two horns of the paradox: military realism and political-economic idealism. Nato would ensure that Europe could not be over-run. Nascent transnational economic institutions would provide the basis for a return to prosperity.

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