Following the end of the Cold War between the two superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, the only superpower that remained was the United States. Today five powers are trying to challenge American dominance as the only remaining superpower: the European Union, Russia, China, Japan, and India. This may cause a new conflict.
The European Union is the strongest of these powers to pose a threat in international diplomacy. Europe is a concept more than a continent. In reality it is a peninsula of Eurasia. It is made up of many nations that today want to unite and create a continental government. To do this they have created the European Union, a union of many European countries with a single currency and a single European Parliament in Brussels. Using the federalism approach, they first created the European Defense Community (1950-1954). This was an attempt to create an all-European army to defend Western Europe. The neo-functionalism approach uses smaller organizations. For example, they created European Coal and Steel in 1951 followed by the European Economic Community in 1957. The EEC was enlarged in 1973. In 1991, the Maastricht Treaty set out to create the current EU making plans for a common currency – the euro, a common foreign policy, and a common justice and internal policy. Today, Europe with its EU foreign minister tries to play a role in diplomacy in places such as the Middle East and challenge American diplomacy there.
In international governmental organizations (IGOs), the EU and US have about equal power. For example, both the EU Commission and US Justice Department have to approve mergers of multinational corporations because both powers are important players of the International Monetary Fund. This limits the sovereignty of the US and especially the individual countries that make up the EU.
Regarding hard power, the US and the entire EU as a whole are about equals. The economies are equal but the EU has a larger population and more exports. The EU only spends two thirds of what the US spends on defense but it has more men under arms and two countries within it – Great Britain and France – have nuclear arsenals. Regarding soft power, the US is the model of culture that people all over the world want to emulate but people all over the world like European culture as well. After all, American culture is a product a mixture of European cultures transplanted in the New World.
The EU poses a threat to American global power and world stability because of its agenda of creating a multinational government. Critics of this policy see it as wanting itself to be a model for creating One World government for the entire world under the United Nations with limited powers of individual nation states. At a time of the threat of Islamic terrorism worldwide that threatens to disrupt world peace, nations must retain their sovereignty to defend their national security and national interests. The EU using such institutions as the UN tries to prevent American military action to defend itself as with the war in Iraq. The EU also sides with the Arab enemies of the US and Israel in conflicts in the Middle East.
To sum up, the end of the Cold War left a void in an opposing superpower to the US. The EU, through diplomacy in places throughout the world and especially the Middle East seeks to challenge the interests of the US. This may spark a new cold war between the US and EU.
Topic: The EU and The New World Order (Read 6688 times)