China: Germany or Italy?

In recent years as China has begun to emerge as a rising naval power in both the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, there have been many comparisons between Germany between 1898 and 1914 and China. Henry Kissinger made this comparison in his latest book, On China, but noted that unlike in Europe in the early 20th century it did not have to end in disaster. In this comparison the United States is naturally cast in the role of Great Britain--the satiated status quo power and major naval power. Presumably India can be cast as France, the lesser naval power and continental power that has been a past rival to Great Britain but is now available as an ally.

In the 19th century/early 20th century European balance-of-power system half of the powers, all located in Eastern or Central Europe, were weak states on their way down: Russia, Austro-Hungary, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Italy. The Ottoman Empire had been "the sick man of Europe" for three-quarters of a century as it lost its European colonies in the Balkans (much like Spain in North America in the 19th century) and would furnish the battleground and casus belli for the start of the First World War. It lost Greece and Serbia in the 1820s, Bulgaria in the 1870s, Bosnia in 1908, and Albania in 1912. Russia was full of national minorities and had suffered from a failed revolution in 1905 as a result of its humiliating defeat to Japan in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. Austo-Hungary suffered from the fact that both the Austrians and the Hungarians were minorities in their respective portions of the Empire and the conservative Magyar landed interests were opposed to turning the dual monarchy into a triple monarchy by sharing power with the Slavs who made up a majority of the Empire's subjects.

Europe and the Middle East Peace Process

For a number of years I have advocated that the United States enter into a partnership with the European Union for the purpose of sponsoring a non-biased peace process in the Middle East that can engage with both the Palestinians and Israel and bring pressure on both of them. The model for this dual mediation is the Anglo-Irish peace process in Northern Ireland from 1993 to 2007.

But recently an article on the Real Clear World website pointed out that Stephen Wall, a former senior British Finance Ministry official responsible for policy towards Europe and author of a book on British European policy, said that as a result of the Euro crisis in Europe with both Greece and Ireland in trouble and Spain and Portugal threatening to go bad, he expected to see the whole European economic and political project to unravel within his lifetime. He is 64. So figure some time within the next 20 years at the outside. This is partly because Europe is forever trying to run before it can crawl properly.

It has instituted a common currency without having a common monetary policy or economic policy binding on all member states. This has led to the present crisis.

Since 1979 it has been issuing policy statements on the Arab-Israeli conflict and trying to get its foot into the door of regional diplomacy. But in the early 1990s when a crisis--or more correctly, several interrelated crises--occurred in Europe's backyard in the Balkans, Brussels was asleep at the wheel. The Bosnian civil war was finally resolved by American mediation in late 1995 after Washington grew tired of Europe's empty claims of preeminence. Tens of thousands died in the killing fields of Bosnia--many under the noses of European peacekeeping troops--while Europe struggled unsuccessfully to come up with a common problem. This was because Germany supported the Croats in Bosnia and Croatia while Britain and France favored the Serbs for historical reasons dating back to World War I.

It may be another decade before the region is again ripe for a peace process. Before the Palestinians are united around a common negotiating position that would allow a solution with Israel. A decade before the Arabs in the surrounding countries have dealt with the issues arising out of the Arab Spring. That will give Europe and the United States a decade to work out a solution and implement it before Europe collapses. In Northern Ireland it took nearly fourteen years to do this, and the conflict in Northern Ireland is much simpler than that in the Middle East without hundreds of thousands of refugees, without holy sites in Belfast sacred to three of the world's major religions, and without a massive ongoing settlement effort by unionists on nationalist land. 

So maybe all the pessimists are right and the conflict is unsolvable.