Europe's Huddled Masses

by Roger Cohen

Feb. 5, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/opinion/europes-huddled-masses.html?comments#permid=17454798

Another column by Mr. Cohen which I agree with almost completely - contrary to most other American journalists, who write about Europe as some strange and faraway place, to be shunned as a collection of "failed socialist states", Mr. Cohen writes with on-site experience and a real first hand appreciation of the true miracle that is the EU.

The one area where I disagree with Mr. Cohen is in his implicit and explicit assumption, that the US has the power, and the intellectual understanding of the issues, to "lead" Europe out of the current crisis.

The sad reality is, that the US, since the end of the Cold War, has played a mostly destructive role in terms of peace and stability in the world. As far back as the 1950's, with the CIA's overthrow of a legitimate Iranian government at the behest of US oil interests, the US has sown the seeds of Middle East chaos, coming to a catastrophic climax of destruction with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As with the US-caused financial collapse of 2008, Europe is now left to try to pick up the pieces from chaos left by US ignorance and short-sightedness.

Europe, to survive, needs more cooperation and more coordination, not retrenchment from the Euro and Schengen. But as long as Europe sits back and waits for the US to come to the rescue (as it did during the breakup of Yougoslavia) there is little incentive for Europe to pull closer together. So in a perverse way, this crisis may be good for Europe - ok, wishful thinking, maybe.