The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Can the French Lead the EU into the Future? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

The EU was established to promote unity and peace, but times have changed and priorities have shifted. So, what does the future of the European Union look like and how does France fit into the mix? Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/can-the-french-lead-the-eu-into-the-future

Hey, everybody, Peter Zine here, coming to you from France, and I figured as long as I was here, we should probably have a conversation about the future of France and the European Union and how things are going to unfold over the next decade or two. The European Union is a post-World War II construction that was designed to bring unity, peace, and democracy to Europe, and I would argue that in that it has been very successful. But the challenges of the future are not the same as the challenges of the past. And the France of now has not. not the same as the France of yesteryear, and the same holds for everybody else in Europe. Sorry, this requires a lot more eye contact with the ground than I was expecting.

So things are going to have to change. So let's talk about how we got to where we are. For most of recorded European history, there's been a state of war on the continent with the various powers of the northern European plane. Those would be France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Russia, basically duking that out for supremacy. over that space. And if one of them had ever been able to win, the amount of resources that they could brought to any problem would have been continental in size,

and they could have easily then become the world power. So it was always about those five going out at one another. Then you had powers on the fringes who controlled meaningful zones, who would always try to disrupt this process of military unity because, you know, if it was stopped, then they would be safe. That's, of course, the United Kingdom. That's Italy. That's Spain. Turkey.

In the CMMR region. And the Scandinavians. The Americans would bump in from time to time, basically align with those outer powers against whoever was trying to dominate the inner core. Oh, snail. Anywho, after a few centuries of this, we had the World Wars, which were no fun for anyone. Somebody stares. And at the end of the war, the French had the idea is what if we were to do this unity thing again, but this time instead of as a military dictatorship and conquering empire, we do it in a peaceable manner.

And so the first stage of what would become the European Union was the European coal and steel community, I believe in 1948. And the whole idea was you remove some of the economic competition, that drove the wars, especially the most recent wars. As the continent started to industrialize in the late 1800s, where they discovered that all of the resources you needed for industrialization were not all in one place. So specifically, the iron ore was on the French side of the border, and the coal was on the German side of the border.

So they formed the coal and steel community to basically share the resources so that they wouldn't have to fight over them. And over the next few years, this turned into a trick. Association that have also involved the Italian, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Luxemburgers. Luxembourgers, Luxembourg boy, look and boys, people from Luxembourg. And that was the original European community, those six countries. The second phase of it was making sure that the Germans never tried any of that crazy war shit again. And the way they did that was basically by placing a, well, there's no other word for it, it's a tax,

but basically they got German industrialists with all their efficiencies who are no longer building tanks to pay a portion of their proceeds to French agriculturalists. So the French basically built out the subsidy system that the Germans had to pay for. And everything else that has happened in the European Union since has been a modification of that original deal. So that's where we were in the 40s and the 50s.

by the time we got to the 70s, the decision was made that it was time to enlarge Europe to take this what has been a broadly successful experiment and expand it to involve more parts of Europe, working from the theory that the more of Europe that is involved, you get two things out of that. Number one, some of those secondary powers are going to be less likely to try to disrupt the process

as they have in the past. And two, uh, the more countries that are low ceilings i don't know if you guys knew this the french aren't very tall um the more countries that are involved uh the less chance you know you're going to have the disruption and also the more countries that are involved the more economic and political heft that europe has the more powerful of a player it's going to be outside of europe so you know this is france ego was involved but very pragmatically so the 70s were about bringing in new countries

especially the more advanced countries such as, say, Denmark and the United Kingdom. You get to the 80s, and they realize that this is maybe not going along swimmingly, but coming along, and the decision was made to bring in some of the poorer countries of southern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Greece specifically. And then you get to 1992, and the Cold War ends. And the Europeans realize a couple of things. Number one, the United States really is an economic superpower. Regardless of what you think about its politics or its culture, it is huge. and the only way that Europe can compete in a post-Cold War environment

was to bring itself closer together. So we got the Maasher Treaty of 92 for ever-closer Union and the creation of the monetary union, which ultimately, over the course of the next decade, would be phased in as the euro, the common currency that we now know. They also brought in several of the countries that had been neutral during the Cold War, Sweden, Finland, and Austria. And the idea was that history has turned

it's a new chapter and we need to adapt. And so we had our first inklings of conversation about a European superpower. And discussions throughout the 90s and the early 2000s were all about how do we deepen the Union. So that acts more like a federated single nation state. We can all have debates over how practical that goal was and how far they've made it. But the conversation had turned. And by the time you get to 2004 to 2008, the Europeans were bringing in other European countries

that used to be under the Soviet yoke and that's everyone from Estonia to Poland to Bulgaria and that gives us more or less the shape of the Europe that we know in its current film of course in the last decade things have gone a little wonko the Brits have left we've had a European financial crisis

and the Europeans have I don't want to say risen to the occasion that sounds a little blustery they've muddled through. They've done things, they've created institutions to deal with their issues in a way that a lot of people, myself, included, were certain that they could have done 20, 30, 40 years ago. Now they face a hot war in Europe, which is a very, very different proposition. The European Union was originally designed to promote democracy, to create greater economic integration, to prevent democratic backsliding. But now, unlike during the Cold War period, there's a hot

war going on right at the doorstep. The nature of the challenge has changed. In the past, almost decade by decade, the nature of the goal enlargement to this group or that group, for example, determined what success looked like and what the tools were for achieving that. That's not where we are now. Now it's a different fight. Now it's a different fight. all about how many helitzers can you get to the line and what's your ammo flow and can your military industrial conflict start to stand up to the old Soviet weapons depot. It's a different series of questions that Europe wasn't designed for. And if the next phase of European expansion is designed to cope with this, you're talking about bringing the countries in that are not nearly as wealthy.

Woldova, Georgia, and most importantly, Ukraine, which would be from a population point of view, the largest country that the Europeans have absorbed since Britain in 1973. It's a very different proposition. And the tools that they have had to achieve, everything that they've achieved to this point, no longer exist. Remember back to that original deal of bleeding the Russians to pay for Europe, or the French version of Europe. Over time, that evolved to pay for agricultural funds, for infrastructure funds, for economic development funds,

basically used German economic strength to pay for the unification of Europe. And the Germans went along with this, not just because they were told to, but in the aftermath of World War II, we had two generations of Germans who were basically born saying, sorry, how can I make this right? And the French always had an idea. But that's not the environment we're in now. after a century of some of the fastest globalization on record, the Germans are literally running out of people.

Their birth rate's been dropping for a century. Their birth rate has been below replacement rate for the better part of seven decades. And this next decade is the decade where the last worker generation they have ages into mass retirement. And so the Germans are going to go from the piggy bank that has paid for everything to a country that actually absorbs European funds. And when the biggest contributor to the system becomes the biggest taker, we are in a very different economic environment.

And in that environment, when we're now dealing with a hot war as opposed to trade issues, the need for the cash is going to be huge. And if you keep the current system of Europe, the European version of socialism, the European idea of bringing the poor EU members up to snuff, the cash isn't there for that. So the French are going to have to make a choice. Do they continue with the current system knowing it's going to go bankrupt, knowing that they, they are no longer going to be a taker nation, but a contributing nation, contributing more, much more than the Germans ever did in order to pay for German retirements, or do they try something new? Nothing against the European Union. I think it's been wildly successful, especially considering the relatively narrow goals they set out back in the 40s and 50s.

But it was a piece of infrastructure that was built for another age, like these goddamn stairs. Anywho, so if the future of Europe is needed to fight a war to put together a series of political agreements that allow them to preserve the gains that they've made in terms of democracy and governance and unity and lack of war among the Europeans, that's not an economic union. That's a political and a military union. And that, to be perfectly blunt, that's where France shines. France is a unitary system. Paris controls everything. It's one of the reasons why they're always quick with something, because they don't have to really deliberate like everybody else does. They usually don't have coalition governments.

They have a strong presidency. Their economy is not based on free trade. It's relatively nationalized, which makes them less efficient than, say, the Germans. But, you know, the Germans are running out of people under age 60, so it really doesn't matter anymore. And if we're moving into a world where guns are a determining factor, the French easily have the second most powerful,

military within NATO. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Turks have more troops and yeah, yeah, the Brits have more ships. But in terms of balanced strength, the French are great. And that's exactly the sort of system that the Europeans are going to need now. The question, of course, the challenge is how do you get from here to there? Because there's no way the European Union survives the end of Germany as an economic superpower. And there's no way the free trade union exists so long as the French aren't willing to go all in, and they're not. So, we're about to start a new chapter in European history, economics, politics, and defense. And it's probably going to be the French who are writing this new chapter.

They just have to decide what they want to do, and most importantly, on what sort of time frame? Because the Ukraine war is the wolf at the door right now. And to be perfectly blunt, win or lose, we're going to have a pretty good idea of how this is going to shake out in the next couple of years, and then the Europeans are going to deal with the after effects of it. for the remainder of this chapter of history. And so really, we need a clear answer from the French before the end of this decade. And by clear answer, I mean a treaty,

not just a decision in Paris. So, you know, for your French out there, chop chop.