Quoted in Reuters piece on Eurozone break-up scenario
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 3:04PM 
LONDON |
Suddenly, pundits, policymakers and other observers find themselves questioning one of their most fundamental assumptions -- that an increasingly united Europe would be a key player in a newly multipolar world.
"You already have one of the great pillars of globalization, the United States, entering a period of difficulty and looking inward," said Thomas Barnett, US-based chief strategist of political risk consultancy Wikistrat -- which is being asked by several private clients to urgently model scenarios. "Now one of the other pillars, Europe, looks about to implode."
That, he said, could leave the continent's powers -- who only a handful of years ago made up much of the G7 group of largest economies -- increasingly sidelined as China, India, Brazil and others rose.
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Wikistrat chief strategist Barnett says much depends on what emerges if the Euro falls. If, as many suspect, a rump euro zone around Germany remains whilst Mediterranean states go their own way, the whole geopolitical focus of the continent could shift.
The northern element, he suggests, could focus its attention more to the east, giving priority to what could either become a corporatist or confrontational relationship with Moscow. The southern states, in contrast, might integrate much more closely with North Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean -- a region perhaps dominated by a newly assertive Turkey.
The euro itself should still be salvageable, he says, but it may just be that the political will is simply not there.
"It's essentially a common-law marriage that never quite made it to the church and now seems to be moving toward a split," said Barnett. "It shouldn't be necessary, you would have hoped that it could be avoided, but we are living through an age of political immaturity."
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Reader Comments (4)
Interesting. We got rid of the Kings, Most of them anyway. We substituted Parliaments and representational forms of government. Now we find ourselves wondering why things are not going well. Is it time for a new way of governing? Or is that the wrong term? Managing? Maybe that's it. Maybe we should hire "managers."
I don't want to criticize any political party. I don't think it is appropriate in this blog. Let me just say that I watched some folks on TV the other night and I am ready to head for the hills.
Since the US tends to see the World only in terms of where its forces should be stationed, what variation of the sexy new "Air-Sea-Land battle doctrine" should be adopted to deal with an unstable Europe?
On a serious note, let's pray that Europe doesn't suffer a depression. Europe doesn't do depressions as well as the United States.
And the United States of 2011 is nowhere near the US of 1945 (Marshall plan).
I do not see the surprise about a breakup as Milton Friedman predicted it while it was being formed. So many countries and differing cultures with so little in common except a belief in Keynesian Economics doomed it from the outset. I have just been waiting for its demise for the past few years, a little later than Friedman predicted, but, never-the-less dream worlds never survive. Especially, those built upon a faustian model of debt, dependency, and default. They have been Ponzi on steroids and their unsuspecting citizens are the final victims. Any suggestion that these countries can be fiscally supported is divorced from reality. But, those in power seldom face up to reality, do they? Who would vote for them without their promise of free ice cream? The question now becomes how to contain the violent behavior that children may have when ice cream has been waved in front of them and then taken away!