Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of Europe


The Decline and Fall of Europe



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The Decline and Fall of Europe
The European Age started with two countries surging into the world while battling each other. But it wasn’t a fight to the finish. Instead, Spain and Portugal reached an agreement in 1506, called the Treaty of Tordesillas, the most important unknown treaty in history. Brokered by Pope Julius II, the Treaty drew a line running north to south at about 1100 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Everything to the West was Spanish. Everything to the East was Portuguese. This Treaty is the reason that Brazilians speak Portuguese and the rest of South America speaks Spanish.



This Treaty had a profound effect on the future of Europe. If Spain and Portugal had fought it out until the end, Spain would have probably won the war. It was getting stronger all the time and had an excellent navy and army. Having defeated Portugal, Spain would have been the only power in the western hemisphere and in the Indian Ocean. It would have been immensely wealthy and powerful and would have had a good chance of conquering Europe and uniting it under Spanish dominion. Europe’s capital would have been in Madrid.


The Treaty of Tordesillas established the principle of compromise in European affairs. It would have a devastating effect on Europe. By imposing a truce on Portugal and Spain, it left the situation in Europe unsettled. Other powers, like France and England, had an opportunity to see their chance and increase their power while Spain and Portugal were balancing each other off. Later in the 16th century, Spain did absorb Portugal. But by then it was too late. When Spain was ready to face its new enemies, they were too strong to deal with.
Spain underestimated the prize. It didn’t realize that the domination of Europe was at stake. From the Spanish point of view, this exploration was about money. The Spanish focused on the fact that the treaty gave them a better deal in South America than it gave the Portuguese. They didn’t see the big prize. They couldn’t.. In this case, the chess master made the wrong move. He made a peace that let incredible power slip away. By not fighting the Portuguese to the finish, they let Europe slip from their fingers and with it, perhaps the world.
After finally beating Portugal, Spain went to war with England. But it was too late by then. England, seeing the danger from Spain, had built enough of Navy that when Spain tried to invade England in 1588, England defeated the Spanish Armada albeit with the help of a storm. The loss of the Armada ended all hope of Spanish domination of Europe. In part this is a lesson in missing your chance and never getting it again. But it also drives home a vital lesson in geography that is crucial for understanding European history. Spain was brave in South America but cautious in Europe. It moved carefully in dealing with the tightly packed, well armed European powers. It felt it had to. And so it missed its chance.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada drives home another geopolitical point. No matter how powerful a European power might be, it cannot secure its hold in Europe without subduing the English. So long as the English navy can sail the North Atlantic, Europe’s ability to reach its colonies—the rest of the world—can be cut off. To really defeat England’s Navy, you must defeat England. But the largest imaginable European Army cannot swim the English Channel. It has to fight its way across and that thirty miles of water was difficult to cross, especially in the face of the English Navy. Consequently, Spain couldn’t get to England and Spain couldn’t dominate Europe and guarantee access to its colonies.
Spain was unable to impose hegemony on Europe. As a result, the continental conflicts continued to tear Europe apart while, simultaneously, European power spread throughout the world. Over the centuries, other nations made the play for European hegemony, particularly France and Germany. Each managed to become the dominant land power in Europe but neither could force its way across the English Channel. Napoleon was defeated at the battle of Trafalgar. Hitler was defeated in the Battle of Britain. While they could each conquer the continent, the British would increasingly control the world’s oceans and ultimately, control access to world. And that access to the world was the difference between a prosperous Europe worth controlling and an impoverished Europe in decline. Maritime trade was essential and the bottom line was whoever controlled the North Atlantic defined Europe.
British strategy was simple. Keep the Europeans fighting each other on land, spending money on armies instead of navies. In the meantime, the British would build the most powerful navy in the world and control the North Atlantic. This strategy protected British interests for a long time and, ultimately, it undermined the European imperial system.
Because no one could defeat Britain, conqueror after conqueror failed to dominate Europe and Europe tore itself apart in endless warfare. Beginning with the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century and culminating in World War II, a series of increasingly vicious wars tore the heart out of Europe. No one could win these wars and the wars never ended. All there could be were truces. Europe was already exhausted by World War I where over ten million men—a good part of a generation—died. The European economy was shattered and European confidence broken. Europe emerged a demographic, economic and cultural shadow of itself. And then things got really bad.

The Emergence of the United States
The United States played an unexpected role in concluding the First World War. Prior to the war the U.S. had a powerful navy, but no army worth mentioning, and it didn’t figure into anyone’s calculations when the war began. Had the war not become a bloody stalemate, the United States would not have emerged on the world stage just then. But the war did become a stalemate, and the Germans were forced to make a logical but dangerous move. In other words, had European geopolitics not generated an inevitable bloodbath, the United States would never have raised a million man Army, gone to Europe and begun the process of closing the European Age and starting the American
Recall that the North Atlantic is the key to Atlantic Europe. Whoever controls it can shape and define Europe. The Royal Navy controlled the North Atlantic, allowing Britain to supply itself from its empire. Cut the supply line and Britain would starve. If Britain starved, Germany would win the war. Therefore, the Germans sent U-Boats into the North Atlantic to cut off supplies to Britain.
The problem was that it was hard to cut off British supplies without interfering with American supplies and shipping. If Germany took control of the North Atlantic, the Americans would be in a tough position. As the Germans became more aggressive, the Americans had to make a choice. Did they prefer a divided Europe with Britain controlling the North Atlantic or a united Europe under Germany and the Germans controlling the North Atlantic? It was no brainer. If Germany won the war, the global balance of power would create a long-term threat to the United States. A divided Europe, even with Britain controlling the North Atlantic was better for the United States than a single power controlling Europe and the North Atlantic. Intervening on the side of Britain and France made sense.
As the war in the Atlantic became more intense and the stalemate on the ground seemed to be shifting toward Germany, the U.S. intervened, organizing a vast army and sending hundreds of thousands of men to France. It was an extraordinary performance of organization. It was also effective. U.S. troops provided the margin that allowed the allies to reverse German advances and break the stalemate.
The United States emerged from World War I as a global power. That power was in its infancy. Geopolitically, the European game had to go another round. Psychologically, the Americans were not yet ready for a permanent place on the global stage. But two things did happen. The United States announced its presence with resounding authority. And the United States left a ticking time bomb in Europe that would guarantee America’s power after then next war. This was the beginning not of the American Age, but of the birth of the American Age.
Ultimately, World War I was about Germany and its role in Europe. Until 1870, Germany consisted of dozens of small states. With unification, Europe had a large, powerful country in its center but it was a country that was insecure geopolitically. Afraid of being attacked simultaneously from east and west, Germany had to try to win a war by preempting its enemies. That’s what happened in 1914 and it failed. The French and British wanted to send Germany back into pre-unification oblivion. If they had succeeded, France would have dominated the continent and Britain would have controlled its empire and Europe might have lasted longer than it did.
In fact, Woodrow Wilson, the American President, saved Germany by insisting it not be dismantled. He permitted France to impose a punitive peace that impoverished Germany but he wouldn’t let them destroy Germany. In a speech Wilson delivered to the Senate in 1917, he said:
The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.
Wilson’s idea for a community of power was embodied in his ideas for the final peace agreement for World War I, the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles contained the worst of all worlds for Europe. It left Germany alive and gave it every reason to want to go to war again. Because of the role the United States played in winning the war, America could insist on this settlement. And it did, preventing the French from dominating Europe, saving Germany and opening the door for further conflict and war. The more Europe fought, the weaker it became, creating a vacuum for the United States to fill.
Woodrow Wilson is portrayed in most histories as an impractical idealist, seeking justice. It is hard to know what goes on in a man’s mind, but if this were true, then this is the classic case of unintended consequences. If Wilson had been a ruthless international buccaneer, he couldn’t have played the American hand better. By insisting on the Versailles Treaty, he made certain that Europe remained divided and weak. He also made certain that the Europeans would rip themselves apart in a second war, with the same line-up of countries, except that this time the United States would be ready to take full advantage of the war and not be limited to half measures.
Another quote from the same speech is particularly interesting:
The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.
Any discussion of freedom of the sea was directed toward Great Britain, who dominated the seas. For Wilson, retaining the “community of power,” or whatever alternative phrasing he used for the balance of power, coincided with his real interest, freedom of the sea, which could only be achieved at Britain’s expense. Did Wilson understand that he was speaking against France and Britain and therefore speaking to an increase in American power? It’s not clear. What is clear is that his words could have no result other than a resumption of war.
And the war did resume in 1939, twenty one years after the last one ended. Germany again attacked first, this time conquering France in six weeks. The United States stayed out of the war, but the United States made sure that the war didn’t end. Britain stayed in the war and the United States kept it there with Lend Lease. We all remember the Lend part—where the United States provided Britain with destroyers and other material to fight the Germans—but the Lease part is usually forgotten. The Lease part was where the British turned over almost all their naval facilities in the Western Hemisphere to the United States. Between controlling those facilities and the role the U.S. Navy played in patrolling the Atlantic, the British were forced to hand the Americans the keys to the North Atlantic, which was, after all, the key to Europe. In the meantime, the Germans were totally devastated in the air over the English Channel, which once again saved Britain.
The United States also forced the Japanese into war. That is an odd thing to say, but let’s consider this. Japan imported all of its raw materials from other countries and had no natural resources of its own. The Japanese had treaties with the French and Dutch to get oil, rubber, tin and so on from French Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies. When France and Holland fell to the Germans in 1940, the Japanese asked the colonial governments to guarantee the treaties. The situation was chaotic and in order to protect their vital national interests, the Japanese moved into Indochina. The United States carried out covert operations in the East Indies to cut the flow of oil from there, and cut off the sale of oil to Japan as well. Japan had a few months’ reserves. At that point it had a choice: it could either seize the East Indies or go belly up. But if the Japanese took the East Indies, their line of supply could be cut off by whoever controlled the Philippines, which was the United States. The Japanese, therefore, had to take the Philippines. Then there was another problem. If they took the Philippines, the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor would sail west and attack the Japanese. So they had to destroy the U.S. fleet. Hence, Pearl Harbor.



Did Roosevelt know he was pushing the Japanese into war or did he hope that the pressure would make them negotiate? It’s hard to know and doesn’t really matter. The pressure left Japan no choice but to start a war that many of its leaders didn’t think it could win. It also gave the Americans a free hand to fight in the Pacific with little risk to the homeland. It also opened the door to American domination of the Pacific.


The United States did everything it could to guarantee that the Soviet Union would stay in the war by shipping to it all the materiel possible. The Soviets lost over 20 million dead in the war, bleeding the Germans nearly to death. In June, 1944, the Americans landed in France, after the Germans had been crippled by the Soviets and seized the western—and much more valuable—half of Europe in less than a year.
The United States made World War II inevitable by the conditions set at the Treaty of Versailles, then took advantage of British desperation in 1940 to make Britain give up control of the North Atlantic. The United States manipulated the Japanese into a war that it couldn’t win and used the Soviets to crush the bulk of the German Army. And then the United States took full advantage of the opportunity to become the dominant power in the world.
A reasonable estimate of World War II’s cost to the world was about 44 million military dead and approximately 11 million civilian deaths. Europe had torn itself to shreds in this war and nations were devastated. In contrast, the United States lost around 400,000 military dead and had almost no civilian casualties. At the end of the war, the American industrial plant was much stronger than before the war, the only combatant nation for which that was the case. No American cities were bombed, no U.S. territory was occupied and the United States suffered less than 1 percent of the war’s dead.
For that price, the United States emerged from World War II not only controlling the North Atlantic, but ruling all of the world’s oceans. It also occupied Western Europe, shaping the destiny of countries like France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and indeed, Great Britain itself. The United States simultaneously conquered and occupied Japan, almost as an afterthought to the European campaigns.
The Europeans lost their empire. Partly out of exhaustion, partly out of being unable to bear the cost of holding the empire and partly out of the fact that the United States simply did not want them to continue to hold it, the empire melted away over the next twenty years, with only desultory resistance by the Europeans. The geopolitical reality that could first be seen in Spain’s dilemma centuries before had played itself out to a catastrophic finish. The European Age was nearing an end.
1945 was the moment at which the United States first emerged as the decisive global power. If it had been planned by a brilliant Machiavellian, it could not have been planned better. The Americans achieved global preeminence at the cost of 400,000 dead, in a war where 55 million other perished. As with Wilson, we can ask the question; was Franklin Roosevelt this brilliantly unscrupulous or did becoming a superpower just happen in the course of his pursuing the “four freedoms” and the UN Charter? In the end, it doesn’t matter. The unintended consequences are the most important ones.
The European Age was not quite over yet and the American Age had not quite yet begun. There was one more era to be played out, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. After World War II, two great alliances were created, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which placed Europe’s power under the command of American and Russian generals. A French or Belgian or British Empire was a logical absurdity. All that was left was establishing the protocols for imperial collapse. The last moments of the European age were being played out.

The Last Era of the European Age
The United States and the Soviet Union shared more in common than either thought. Each was the creation of Europe and neither was fully European. Both countries were created in order to resist European imperialism. Both countries saw themselves as a model that other nations should emulate. They both emerged to true power out of the ashes of World War II and both claimed to be doing what they were doing in order to spread their ideology. There was much that made them different, but these things they had in common and they were important things.
We need to understand how the Soviet Union emerged as a global power because it reveals something about the dynamics of global power and U.S. grand strategy. The United States faced two major enemies in World War II. One was Japan, which was a dangerous, but regional, power. The other was Germany, which was laying claim to all of Europe and the Mediterranean. Germany had ambitions far beyond being a European power.
Fighting on two fronts, the United States could manage Japan, but it did not have the manpower to defeat Germany by itself. Neither did the British, who were barely hanging on and whose major contribution was not their army, but their geographic position. Britain was the gateway to France and the defeat of Germany. The key to the war, however, was the Soviet Union which had the manpower to defeat Germany. What it lacked was equipment and technology, which the United States had in plenty. By transferring what America had to the Soviet Union, the Soviets were able to defeat the Germans. Obviously, the Soviets emerged from World War II in a powerful position. They moved their frontier west by hundreds of miles into the center of Europe and, in addition, they had a vast, well equipped military.
The United States had, in effect, defeated Germany by empowering the Soviet Union. It defeated one dangerous enemy by creating another. From a moral point of view, it is hard to distinguish Nazi Germany from Stalinist Russia. Both were ruled by homicidal maniacs, and worse, they both had a governing ideology that argued being a homicidal maniac was just fine. The distinction wasn’t moral, it was geopolitical. If the United States had not allied with the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany would have probably won the war, controlled Europe and ultimately challenged the United States at sea, quite possibly winning there as well.
The choice was between defeating Germany and creating a stronger Soviet Union or allowing Germany to win. The decision was obvious. The United States helped make the Soviet Union a great power. It was a good move. It was ultimately an inevitable move. It is also the type of move the United States will make repeatedly in the 21st Century. Dealing with a danger today by creating a danger for tomorrow is built into American strategy, so deeply that it is almost never thought of. The automatic American response to any problem is and will be getting allies. And in building alliances, we see the U.S. shifting the burden of power but enjoying the benefits.
The U.S.-Soviet confrontation, the Cold War, was truly global because it was basically a competition over who would inherit Europe’s global empire. With Europe finished, the first global age was in its last throws. The United States and Soviet Union were now competing over the question of who would preside over the second global age? Stakes in this battle were tremendous. Settling the future of Europe, which was now divided into two spheres of influence, was critical. Each power, the United States and Soviet Union, wanted to expel the other and take over all of Europe outside the Soviet Union itself. Would Europe be stable, would there be war or would one side or another just give up?
The second question was the same issue that the Europeans had created: who would inherit Europe’s empire, now called the Third World? Lust for power was not as much the issue as fear that the success of one would threaten the other’s existence. Locked in a strangle hold, the United States and the Soviet Union struggled against each other on every continent. This was the important question, because the answer to this would define what the post-European world would look like.
The United States had an inherent advantage. The Soviet Union was vast but essentially land locked. America was almost as vast but had access to the world’s oceans. While the Soviets could not contain the Americans, the Americans could certainly contain the Soviets. That was the American strategy: to contain and thereby strangle the Soviets. From the North Cape of Norway to the Aleutian Islands, the United States created an enormous belt of allied nations, all bordering on the Soviet Union—a belt which after 1970 included Communist China itself. At every point where the Soviets had a port, they found themselves blocked by geography and the United States Navy.
Shipping goods by sea is always cheaper than by any other means. As far back as the 5th century BC, the Athenians were wealthier than the Spartans because they had a port, a maritime fleet and a navy to protect it. Maritime powers are always wealthier than non-maritime neighbors, all other things being equal. With the advent of globalization in the 15th century, this truth became as near to absolute as you can get in geopolitics. The United States has from the beginning of its history looked to the sea.
The Soviet Union had excellent farm land, massive factories, and a skilled work force. Whatever the defects of the Soviet social system, the truth about Russia was that it lacked the ability to transport goods efficiently and cheaply. Its rivers went to the wrong places, its ports could be blocked by enemies, and its railroads were never extensive enough or efficient enough.
On the other hand, the United States was a maritime power with a superb internal river system to carry goods. Rivers flowing from the farmland regions to the sea, and great ports, supplemented by railroads, were the foundation of American wealth. Even more important, following World War II, the United States was the only maritime power in the world. For the first time in human history, a single power controlled all of the oceans of the world.
U.S. control meant that the United States could not only engage in maritime trade, but it could define global maritime trade. The U.S. could make the rules or at least block anyone else’s rules. Defining the rules of maritime trade was not done overtly, by denying other nations entry to the world’s trade routes, although on occasion the United States has used this tactic, through sanctions. In general, the U.S. more subtly shaped the international trading system through its control of the sea. It was not surprising then, that in addition to its natural endowments, the United States became enormously prosperous from its sea power. And it became obvious that the Soviet Union couldn’t possibly compete.
Second, having control of the seas gave the United States a huge political advantage as well. America could not be invaded but could, as and when it chose, invade other countries. From 1945 onward, the United States could wage wars wherever it chose, without fear of having its lines of supply cut. No outside power could wage war on the continent of North America. In fact, no other nation could mount amphibious operations without American acquiescence. When the British went to war with Argentina over the Falklands in 1982, for example, it was possible only because the United States didn’t prevent it. When the British, French and Israelis invaded Egypt in 1956 against U.S. wishes, they had to withdraw.
T
hroughout the Cold War, an alliance with the United States was always more profitable than an alliance with the Soviet Union. The Soviets could offer arms, political support, technology and a host of other things. But the United States could offer access to their international trading system and the right to sell into the American economy. This dwarfed everything else in importance. Exclusion from the system meant impoverishment; inclusion in the system meant wealth. Consider, as an example, the different fates of North and South Korea, West or East Germany.

It is interesting to note that throughout the Cold War, the United States psychologically felt on the defensive. Korea, McCarthyism, Cuba, Vietnam, Sputnik, left wing terrorism in the 1970s an 1980s, harsh criticism from European allies under Reagan, all created a constant sense of gloom and uncertainty in America. Atmospherics constantly gave the United States the sense that its lead in the Cold War was slipping away. Yet underneath the hood, in the objective reality of power relations, the Russians never had a chance. This disjuncture between the American psyche and geopolitical reality is important to remember for two reasons. First, it reveals the immaturity of American power. Second, it reveals a tremendous strength. Because the United States was insecure, it generated a level of effort and energy that was overwhelming. There was nothing casual or confident in the way the Americans waged the Cold War.


That is one of the reasons the United States was surprised when it won the Cold War. From the beginning, the American defeat of the Soviet Union was inevitable. Quite apart from the different efficiencies of their respective social systems, which is not a trivial matter by any means, the United States had every advantage. Because the United States and its alliance had the Soviet Union surrounded the Soviets could not afford to challenge the Americans at sea and had instead to devote their budget to building armies and missiles. The Soviets could not, therefore, project major forces beyond their immediate region. On the economic front, the Soviets could not match American economic growth rates or induce their allies with economic benefits. The Soviet Union not only could not match the United States but it fell farther and further behind. And then it collapsed.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, 499 years after Columbus’ expedition, ended an entire Age in history. For the first time in 500 years, power no longer resided in Europe, nor was Europe the focal point of international competition. After 1991, there was only one global power in the world, the United States. North America had become the center of gravity of the international system and the dominant power in North America. The United States had become the pivot of the international system.

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