The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy

by T. R. Reid

Overview

“A first-rate journalist, Reid provides impressive evidence to support his hypothesis.” —The Denver Post

“A lively, thought-provoking book.” —The Seattle Times

To Americans accustomed to unilateralism abroad and social belt-tightening at home, few books could be more revelatory—or controversial—than this timely, lucid, and informative portrait of the new European Union.

Now comprising 25 nations and 450 million citizens, the EU has more people, more wealth, and more votes on every international body than the United States. It eschews military force but offers guaranteed health care and free university educations. And the new “United States of Europe” is determined to be a superpower. Tracing the EU’s emergence from the ruins of World War II and its influence everywhere from international courts to supermarket shelves, T. R. Reid explores the challenge it poses to American political and economic supremacy. The United States of Europe is essential reading.

T. R. Reid's latest book, A Fine Mess, was published by Penguin Press in 2017. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143036081
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/01/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.36(h) x 0.68(d)
Age Range:	18 - 17 Years

About the Author

T. R. Reid is a longtime correspondent for The Washington Post and former chief of its Tokyo and London bureaus. He is a commentator for National Public Radio and has been a correspondent for several PBS documentaries. His bestselling books include A Fine Mess, The Healing of America, The United States of Europe, The Chip, and Confucius Lives Next Door.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Sleeping Through the Revolution

One: The Atlantic Wars

Two: The Invention of Peace and the Pursuit of Prosperity

Three: The Almighty Undollar

Four: Welch's Waterloo

Five: L'Europe Qui Gagne; or, I Can't Believe It's Not American Butter

Six: The European Social Model

Seven: Showdown at Capability Gap

Eight: Generation E and the Ties That Bind the New Europe

Nine: Waking Up to the Revolution

Appendix 1: The States of Europe

Appendix 2: Inside the Belgeway: The Governing Structure of the European Union

Notes
Thanks
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A first-rate journalist, Reid provides impressive evidence to support his hypothesis." —The Denver Post

"A lively, thought-provoking book." —The Seattle Times

"T. R. Reid is like that great teacher you once had who makes a potentially dull and ponderous subject entertaining." —The Miami Herald

Editorial Reviews

A first-rate journalist, Reid provides impressive evidence to support his hypothesis.” —The Denver Post

“A lively, thought-provoking book.” —The Seattle Times

“T. R. Reid is like that great teacher you once had who makes a potentially dull and ponderous subject entertaining.” —The Miami Herald

From the Publisher

… it is indisputable that the ideal of European unity has assumed a kind of global resonance - one that inspires democratic reformers in Ukraine today - and done so in contradistinction to American power. The importance of Mr. Reid's book lies in its evocative framing of this shift.
— The New York Times

Roger Cohen

Reid, a former head of The Washington Post's London bureau, writes not for specialists but for a general American audience that is either uninformed about the European Union or skeptical about its importance in world affairs. He highlights the progress of economic unification, the rise of European anti-Americanism, and European opposition to the death penalty, and his book is useful for its account of the transformation from the original six-nation "little Europe" to today's continental enterprise. But his book is unbalanced by a double dose of omission: he pays insufficient attention to the demographic and economic factors that threaten to undermine the European social model he praises, and to the tension between the imperative of global competitiveness and a strong attachment to a way of life that is largely a reaction against the economic rat race. He also says too little about the problems of expansion and the difficulties that an almost 30-member EU will face in trying to define a common foreign policy capable of influencing or challenging U.S. supremacy. Further integration is likely to create a domestic backlash that goes beyond mere "Euro-skepticism"; the portrait painted by Reid, however, has no shadows.

Foreign Affairs

Winston Churchill's dream is fulfilled: a former "coal-and-steel trading arrangement" has grown from common market into globally powerful international community. By many measures, writes Washington Post Rocky Mountain bureau chief Reid (Confucius Lives Next Door, 1999, etc.), the 25 states of the European Union outstrip the United States of America: they have more people, more money, more trade, more class. They have better food and wine; they have better health care, better social welfare, better public housing, better architecture. About the only thing they don't have better is a military, which suits them just fine as long as the US picks on Arabs and Afghanis and picks up the tab of empire. Most of those nations used to like us pretty well, writes Reid, until George W. Bush came along; whereas in 1998, he writes, "78 percent of Germans had a favorable view of the United States . . . in the wake of the war in Iraq, only 38 percent had a positive feeling," a trend echoed by public-opinion surveys in France, Italy, and even England. Though Europeans like us for our pop culture, Reid writes, they despise us for our lack of worldliness, our bluster, our devotion to capital punishment (which they esteem a particular barbarism). With the rise of Eurovision and its shiny blond pop singers (or its latest phenomenon, a Russian "techno lezpop duo"), they may not even need our pop culture much longer. In any event, Reid ably demonstrates, Europeans are charting their own course and are making impressive economic progress in the bargain: his case studies of the rise of Airbus, Nokia, and other firms make must-reading for business analysts, and his account of how the euro came to be universallyaccepted overnight (and, incidentally, how the euro symbol came into being) is an altogether fine piece of reporting. Salutary arguments abound here for those tired of homegrown complainers about high taxes and states' rights. A sturdy companion to Will Hutton's Declaration of Interdependence (2003), written with an eye to an American audience. Agent: Gail Ross/Gail Ross Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews