A provocative study of the critical problems that are crippling Europe and causing an increasing anti-Americanism looks at the return of the ethnic hatred, class divisions, and war that previously wreaked havoc on Europe, as well as the rise of such new issues as declining birthrates, growing Islamic fundamentalism, and an unsustainable economic model. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years), with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe. This provocative work examines “flashpoints,” unique geopolitical hot spots where tensions have erupted throughout history, and where conflict is due to emerge again. “There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8 Ball.” —The New York Times Magazine With remarkable accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. In Flashpoints, Friedman focuses on Europe—the world’s cultural and power nexus for the past five hundred years . . . until now. Analyzing the most unstable, unexpected, and fascinating borderlands of Europe and Russia—and the fault lines that have existed for centuries and have been ground zero for multiple catastrophic wars—Friedman highlights, in an unprecedentedly personal way, the flashpoints that are smoldering once again. The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize built-in geopolitical tensions that historically have torn it apart. As Friedman demonstrates, with a mix of rich history and cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints narrates a living history of Europe and explains, with great clarity, its most volatile regions: the turbulent and ever-shifting land dividing the West from Russia (a vast area that currently includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania); the ancient borderland between France and Germany; and the Mediterranean, which gave rise to Judaism and Christianity and became a center of Islamic life. Through Friedman’s seamless narrative of townspeople and rivers and villages, a clear picture of regions and countries and history begins to emerge. Flashpoints is an engrossing analysis of modern-day Europe, its remarkable past, and the simmering fault lines that have awakened and will be pivotal in the near future. This is George Friedman’s most timely and, ultimately, riveting book.
The inside story of the European Fund for Strategic Investments from 2015 to 2020 told through interviews with the Managing Director, Deputy Managing Director, members of the Investment Committee and final beneficiaries across Europe. The architects of this €500 billion-plus programme, the head of the EU bank and the president of the European Commission, describe the genesis of this financial pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe. Then the people who ran one of the biggest economic stimulus programmes in history detail how they did it—and what the lessons are for policymakers responding to new crises, including the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The European Fund for Strategic Investments has been one of the good news stories to emerge in a decade of economic uncertainty. It has gone well beyond its highly ambitious target of €500 billion in mobilised investments. The Juncker Plan has made a strong contribution to the 14 million jobs created in the EU between 2015 and 2020. It has become a success in co-financing projects that otherwise might not have been carried through. It has also charted the path towards new ways of financing. This is not only the case in relatively conventional areas, such as infrastructure, but also in sectors like research and innovation or the contribution to climate change mitigation. This is exactly what makes EFSI so ground-breaking: responding to the needs of the market through continuous financial innovation. The principle of the European Fund for Strategic Investments is here to stay. It has paved the way for its successor, the InvestEU programme, which is to be deployed under the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework. This publication details why the programme was such a success.
A quiet revolution has been occurring in post-World War II Europe. A world power has emerged across the Atlantic that is recrafting the rules for how a modern society should provide economic security, environmental sustainability, and global stability. In Europe's Promise, Steven Hill explains Europe's bold new vision. For a decade Hill traveled widely to understand this uniquely European way of life. He shatters myths and shows how Europe's leadership manifests in five major areas: economic strength, with Europe now the world's wealthiest trading bloc, nearly as large as the U.S. and China combined; the best health care and other workfare supports for families and individuals; widespread use of renewable energy technologies and conservation; the world's most advanced democracies; and regional networks of trade, foreign aid, and investment that link one-third of the world to the European Union. Europe's Promise masterfully conveys how Europe has taken the lead in this make-or-break century challenged by a worldwide economic crisis and global warming.
'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial Times From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium. How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? In this illuminating book, Geert Mak - one of Europe's best-loved commentators - charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. He moves through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, and on to the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit. Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks- what role does Europe now play, and how might we face our fresh challenges together? 'A powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian 'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler' Independent
It is now commonplace to hear people say the EU is embroiled in an existential crisis. Indeed, Brexit may mean the process of EU disintegration has already begun. However, while much political and journalistic attention is centred on describing the EU's woes, far less attention is being paid to what the consequences of such a disintegration might be. From the terrorist and migration crises facing the Continent to the new threat from Russia, and from the euro's unending fragility to the rise of a new, Eurosceptic politics, Ian Kearns tells the story of the biggest crisis to hit Europe since the end of the Second World War. It makes clear just what is at stake. With the EU in a far more fragile state than many realise, Collapse sets out the specific scenarios that could lead to the breakdown of the European Union. It charts the catastrophic economic, political and geopolitical developments likely to follow should such a collapse occur. And it offers bold solutions to challenge those in positions of authority to build a new, reformed union one capable of riding out the storm and of positioning Europe for success in the remainder of the twenty-first century. Drawing on the author's extensive network of senior political, diplomatic, military and business leaders from across the Continent, Collapse tells the story of Europe's super-crisis from within. Both an urgent warning and a passionate call to action, it seeks to defend not just the EU but the seven decades of peace and progress the union represents.
The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years... The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
In Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Mark Blyth, a renowned scholar of political economy, provides a powerful and trenchant account of the shift toward austerity policies by governments throughout the world since 2009. The issue is at the crux about how to emerge from the Great Recession, and will drive the debate for the foreseeable future.
The startling economic and political answers behind Europe's historical dominance Between 1492 and 1914, Europeans conquered 84 percent of the globe. But why did Europe establish global dominance, when for centuries the Chinese, Japanese, Ottomans, and South Asians were far more advanced? In Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, Philip Hoffman demonstrates that conventional explanations—such as geography, epidemic disease, and the Industrial Revolution—fail to provide answers. Arguing instead for the pivotal role of economic and political history, Hoffman shows that if certain variables had been different, Europe would have been eclipsed, and another power could have become master of the world. Hoffman sheds light on the two millennia of economic, political, and historical changes that set European states on a distinctive path of development, military rivalry, and war. This resulted in astonishingly rapid growth in Europe's military sector, and produced an insurmountable lead in gunpowder technology. The consequences determined which states established colonial empires or ran the slave trade, and even which economies were the first to industrialize. Debunking traditional arguments, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? reveals the startling reasons behind Europe's historic global supremacy.
