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The Strategic Weaknesses of European Union

Recently I have been questioned about the development and weaknesses of the European Union. Before talking about the strategic weaknesses of the European Union, we have to comprehend other matter. When we consider any state, union or block of states, we have to always keep in mind those three key factors of the economy evolution that I talked about in my previous discussion. The most important thing to comprehend is that the development line is influenced by the ideological leader, by his idea and personal vision of the development line.

The leading person is placed in the center of any governance system. Each leading person has own interests, personal qualities, own vision of how things must be developed and own understanding of the effectiveness and efficiency of the governance system. Regarding that, there is no matter how we call the governance system – democracy or socialism. The principles of both can be organically used by the leading person to synthesize his personal vision of the effective state and its development.

Someone claims that democracy allows people to prosper and get rich, because it is based on the principles of different freedoms and wills of masses. We have to comprehend that no one will be allowed to get rich, if it does not match to the interests of the leading person. And any governance system must give rise to exactly one leading person, or it will be the anarchy with the relevant consequences.

I leave alone different political decorations such as the parliament: the strong governance system can be build only when there is the strong and monolithic vertical power line. Though some opposition is required and the ruling party must apply the appropriate tactics and strategy to leverage the power of opposition in order to strengthen its position. Otherwise, without the strong ruling party, it will be a swan, a pike and a crawfish with the relevant consequences.

So if the leading person does not want others to get rich, he or she will not allow others to get rich by building the relevant governance system and creating the relevant environment in the state. Simply speaking, people will prosper and live tiptop only if it has to do with the idea and interests of the leading person. And if it is true, then the leading person will create the relevant governance system and will use the relevant economic approaches to build the society, where 90% of individuals will live tiptop and 10% will have abilities to use own capabilities to prosper. But again, everything is up to the leading person and the presence of the strong and monolithic vertical power line.

Now remarks on freedoms. The more freedoms you grant, the more security services you need to feel safe and secure the stability of the system. The absolute freedom gives rise to the total anarchy, because there are clashes of motley interests and human’s natural origins. To make the order from the chaos, people start grouping around a leading person who was able to find the attachment points to the minds of his followers using different approaches. The more leading persons we have, the more clashes of interests we have, with the relevant consequences. Either evolutionary or revolutionary, but the final destination point is always only one leading person who starts implementing his idea of the effective state.

Back to freedoms, in the case of the absolute monarchy we have the visible and sensible limitation of freedoms and in the case of the quasi-absolute democracy we have the invisible and insensible control and surveillance. In the former case we have more visible guards and in the latter case we have more secret services and secret police. Thus if you think that you have total freedom, that means nothing but that you are under total control and daily surveillance. It does not mean that there is none of control, if you do not see and sense it. There are always limitations around you, spanned to the certain extent. I will stop at this point, without digging into the roots of necessity to put such constraints.

Now when we have discussed what really drives the state’s development line and comprehended that the leading person’s idea, interests, capabilities, strong will and intelligence are in the center of any governance system; that the prosperous society can be grown in the appropriate environment, no matter how you title it, now we are ready to proceed with the strategic weaknesses of the European Union. Honestly, from the historic point of view, I see nothing but more intelligent, advanced and economically-founded version of the Holy Roman Empire.

But let’s the history to be the history and let’s use it only to advance economically, to develop new practical ideas and not to split the nation by following the interests of foreign political leaders. If we look at the European Union from the economy standpoint, then the European Union was pretty monolithic formation at its inception point, with economically health parties and at the same development stage, with the clearly designated leading economy. If we take a look at the modern European Union, then we can clearly identify its economic inconsistency. The monolithic economic core and the leading economy are still present, but now the Union is overloaded with trailing economies at different development stages and in different economy health states. And it is the pretty heavy tail, which slows down the development of the Union as a whole.

It will be unwise to expand the tail further, until it is pepped up. It is necessary to seamlessly infuse the trailing economies into the monolithic economic core of the Union spinning around the leading economy. Otherwise, the development process will be slowed down significantly and ultimately the Union will break up itself from the inside. Thus now the strategic task of the Union is to ginger up the laggards, if it wants to preserve its strength, to secure further development and prevent it from falling apart. Going too far is too dangerous.

Another strategic weakness lies in what I was talking about above – the interests. Unless the political leader is a dummy-doll, he or she will have own idea and interests and first of all will be interested in standing up for own interests, both political and economic ones. As I stressed in my previous discussion there is no way to match interests of each and every, in the motley interstate environment in particular. The clashes of interests in such the environment are not so rare events. And the only way to resolve them is to find the attachment points. Since there are a lot of states in the Union, thus a lot of motley interests, such task can be as hard to complete, as to find the set of reliable attachment points in the heterogeneous network.

So the two most critical issues and strategic weaknesses of the European Union lay in its current economic dissimilarity – too heavy tail that slows down the core and the Union’s economy as a whole, and the clash of interests – the more nodes there are in the network, the harder it is to find the relevant and mutually beneficial attachment points of interests. Thus the two strategic tasks for the European Union for the following decade or two, if it wants to sustain it strong position, these are (1) to ginger up the laggards and do not expand further and (2) to negotiate and accommodate the coherent economy development strategy which will be based on the mutually beneficial development of each economy in the Union. If the Union wants to preserve the Economic Holy Roman Empire, then it must straighten things out and stop growing for a while; otherwise it will inherit the destiny of its predecessor, but the economic outcomes will be catastrophic.

If the former task is pretty easy to attain, then the latter task is the head-aching one. The best way to approach it is to start from the clarification of external economic interests and foreign policy of each party in the Union. It is important to make a remark, that there is no need to penetrate into the internal affairs. Moreover, such activities can alienate parties from the seamless economic integration process. The task of the Union’s guiding authority is to facilitate the process of seamless economic and political integration of the states by mitigating discordances in the external economic interests and foreign policy of each party in the Union (thankless job anyway!).

For the states, the peace and prosperity is attained as always – by ceding some freedoms and interests. To put in other way, the main task of the guiding authority is (1) to sustain the development of the entire economy by stimulating the development of lagging states and (2) to mitigate economic discordances by applying the relevant regulatory measures and incentives. One who barks must be able to bite; otherwise, it will be a useless decoration.