Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century - Tapa dura

Those who believe Europe is weak, ineffectual and sclerotic are wrong. Europe might look frail and feeble against American military might, but that expression of power is shallow and narrow. Or so says Mark Leonard, one of Europe's brightest new policy thinkers, in a book sure to stir and provoke his American contemporaries. America's centralized, militarized supremacy, he argues, has become so overwhelming that it has defeated everything, including itself. It's capable of imposing itself anywhere -- but when its back is turned its potency wanes. Europe's reach, by contrast, is broad and deep, spreading a value system from Albania to Zambia. It draws other countries into its orbit rather than seeking to define itself against them, and as they come under the influence of its laws and customs they are changed forever. Europe, quietly, has rediscovered within its foundations a revolutionary model for the future and an alternative to American hard power. With little fanfare, Europe has pooled the resources and the sovereignty of its nations into a radical new interface - and a power that is discreetly but insistently shaping the path forward. The revolution they have unleashed, Leonard argues, will transform the world. Whether you are a neocon or a transatlantic traditionalist, a businessmen or financier, his argument is one you cannot afford to ignore.

Mark Leonard is Director of Foreign Policy at the Centre for European Reform where he works on transatlantic, Middle East, and EU-China relations. Previously he was the director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a "Transatlantic Fellow" at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C., and a researcher at Demos. A regular commentator in the world's leading newspapers and journals, he lives in London.