Economy, demographics, military
Is Europe in Decline?
A guest contribution by Hartmut Kaelble
08/26/2023 1:03 p.m
Economically weak, militarily dependent on the USA, demographically on the way to insignificance: the alleged decline of Europe is discussed again and again. But the debate leads to a dead end.
The Russian attack on Ukraine has made Europe’s dependence on the United States very clear. Without US military aid and with European help alone, Ukraine would not have been able to stop the Russian war machine. This is why a new discussion is emerging in the media about the decline of Europe. This discussion mainly revolves around economic, demographic and military issues.
Europe is, so the argument goes, in decline because its economic power has been falling behind the United States since the financial crisis, its demographics now comprise only a few percent of the world’s population and also because it is militarily stronger than the USA weakened since the end of the Cold War. What’s the point of this argument?
The economic power of Europe has by no means fallen behind that of the USA since the 1990s, i.e. since the end of the Cold War. If you take purchasing power parities into account and thus take out currency fluctuations between the dollar and the euro, then the story looks different: In the 1990s, the gross national product in the area of the European Union of 28 countries was slightly larger than the gross national product of the USA. In 2020, i.e. before Brexit, the economic power of the European Union was still ahead of the USA, regardless of whether you obtained information from the OECD, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The economic power of the European Union was slightly lower than that of the USA in 2022 solely because of the departure of Great Britain. If Great Britain had remained in the European Union, the lead of the European Union in terms of gross national product would have been maintained in 2022.
Economic relapse not recognizable
No one will want to deny that there is a risk of an economic backsliding of the European Union. Since the financial crisis from 2009 to 2012, economic growth in the European Union has often been lower than that of the USA, only in a few years higher. The dominance of the American digital corporations is overwhelming and is only being challenged by Chinese, not European companies. But it is too easy to forget the strengths of the European economy in the car industry, in aircraft construction, in countless technologies that are not very visible to consumers, including green technologies. The argument that the European Union has been falling behind the USA since the financial crisis is not convincing.
Was the demographic development different? In fact, the proportion of Europeans in the world’s population is known to have fallen dramatically from one in six people around 1950 to one in sixteen people around 2020. But according to the UN’s demographic projections up to the year 2050, nothing will change at one crucial point: the European Union will remain at around one half a billion people behind India and behind China in third place in the global ranking of world population. Neither the USA nor the new climbers Nigeria, Indonesia or Pakistan will displace the European Union from this third place by 2050. Of course, demographic forecasts should be treated with caution. But it is by no means certain that the European Union will fall demographically into the third league behind the USA and also behind Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan in the coming decades.
Finally, military spending: it is absolutely correct that, compared to the Cold War, the member states of the European Union, insofar as they belong to NATO, have clearly fallen behind the USA. According to the figures of the Stockholm peace research institute SIPRI, the military expenditures of the Western European NATO countries in 1990, ie at the end of the Cold War, were 55 percent, ie more than half of the military expenditures of the USA. By 2022, by the start of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, European NATO countries’ military spending had fallen to just 37 percent of US spending, even though the number of NATO countries had increased. That’s a substantial drop, even if purchasing power isn’t factored into these numbers.
What Europe lacks is close military cooperation
This relapse had to do with the fact that most Europeans had not expected a war in Europe by 2022, while the USA, as a superpower, always had to be prepared for a military conflict and therefore continuously increased its military spending. Between the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and 2022 alone, military spending in the USA rose by over a quarter in nominal terms, while in NATO Europe it was only a seventh. However, it is doubtful whether this gap will continue to increase. In many European countries, too, the Ukraine war brought about a turning point.
Little is known about the fact that, according to SIPRI figures, the European NATO countries together spent around three times as much on the military as Russia in 2022. So far, however, these expenditures have not brought any independent security from Europe to Russia, independent of the USA, because they are spread across almost 30 national armies in Europe, which jealously defend their independence in purchasing, equipment and armaments production, often also in defense planning , the larger countries even more than the smaller ones. But there is an opportunity for better military use of this fragmented military hardware and planning. Also the compulsion.
Overall, the debate about the decline of Europe leads to a dead end. The only thing that is correct is that the Russian annexations and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine began at a historical moment in which Europe’s military potential had been significantly reduced because a classic land war on the European continent was no longer expected. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that Europe is in economic and demographic decline. The European Union undoubtedly lacks all the prerequisites for a superpower on par with the US and China. But instead of talking about Europe’s decline, it would be better to discuss what global policies the European Union, as a non-superpower, can choose.
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Kaelble held a chair in social history at the Humboldt University in Berlin until 2008. He is one of the most renowned German social historians.