Project for a New European Century

Just when the EU constitutional treaty is looking like sinking it may be worth reading this review -a kind of "what have the EU ever done for us?". It actually kind of makes me proud to be European, which is an odd sensation. The point is the bottom up co-operative genius of the thing. The article explores this and in it we are told: "The real reason that societies do not collapse into chaos is that their citizens do not want them to. Order is not produced through hierarchy, but because a majority of people have a stake in preserving order. That is why people internalize the rules and police themselves. The key to order, therefore, is co-opting people — or countries for that matter — to uphold the rules themselves, rather than coercing them into submission."
I guess that's what we keep finding ourselves trying to say to the USA ... I'm clearly more EUropean than I'd given myself credit for!

And if you doubt that this is significant ... "Most dramatically, the Chinese are embracing multilateral institutions on a global level — and they are looking at how the European experience can be tapped to build an East Asian Community in their neighborhood."

'New European century' should not be heard as if a point-for-point answer and counter to a 'New American Century', rather "I believe the 21st century will come to be seen as the "new European century." Not because the EU will run the world, but because the European way of doing things will become the world's."
The Project for a New European Century by Mark Leonard - The Globalist > > Global Politics: