Europe Through a Glass Darkly

"Europe Through a Glass Darkly"

Volume 123, Number 2, Spring 1994

DAEDALUS proudly announces its Spring 1994 issue, "Europe Through a Glass Darkly." More than four years after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, two years after the virtual extinction of communism in the Soviet Union, when new nations in Eastern and Central Europe are emerging from the old, when the European Community is struggling to become a European union, this issue, recognizing that 1994 is not a good year for prophecies, seeks to discover this new and changing Europe--East, Center, and West.

"Europe's Identity Crisis Revisited"--by Stanley Hoffmann, Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Chairman of the Center for European Studies, Harvard University.

"Europe's Contradictory Communicative Space"--by Philip R. Schlesinger, Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of Stirling, Scotland.

"Maastricht: Before, During, After"--by Fabio Luca Cavazza, cofounder and director of the Bologna-based Il Mulino Publishing House and Carlo Pelanda, Professor of International Futures, University of Georgia.

"Germany's National and European Interests"--by Hans-Peter Schwarz, Professor of Politics, University of Bonn, Germany.

"Europe on the Mark: Ready to Go?"--by Luigi Campiglio, Professor of Economics, Catholic University of Milan, Italy.

"The Other Velvet Revolution: Continental Liberalism and its Discontents"--by Mark Lilla, Assistant Professor of Politics and French Studies, New York University.

"Democracy in Europe"--by Nancy Bermeo, Associate Professor of Politics, Princeton University.

"Russian Backwardness and the Future of Europe"--by Jack Snyder, Professor of Political Science, Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University.

"Who is 'Balkanizing' Whom? The Misunderstandings Between the Debris of Yugoslavia and an Unprepared West"--by Steven K. Pavlowitch, Reader in Balkan History, University of Southampton, England.

Select Extracts

"In the case of Yugoslavia, two facts are most striking: First, the unwillingness of any of the Union's members to intervene militarily except as a participant in a peacekeeping or humanitarian operation--an unwillingness whose first expression had been the early reluctance to take the breakup of Yugoslavia seriously enough. Second, the range of policies was wide. In the beginning, there was a gulf between France and Britain's preference for preserving a Yugoslav state and Germany's push for early recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. Germany dragged its reluctant partners along: they joined Bonn in order to prevent a unilateral German recognition, which occured anyhow. When Bosnia became the center of the drama there was still an ample gap between Britain's attitude of prudent (some would say disdainful) nonintervention and Germany's awkward combination of anti-Serb feelings and constitutional impotence, with France playing Hamlet in the middle."--Stanley Hoffmann

"The tone of the literature on Europe's new democracies runs from triumphant to despairing. Jeanne Kirkpatrick opened a 1991 speech on postcommunism with the words 'We won!' but there is no shortage of pessimism in the social science community as a whole....Communism is believed to have left behind a 'distrustful,' nondemocratic civil society and a strong likelihood of serious performance failures. Writers on both sides of the Atlantic warn of the drift toward populism and the ugliest forms of nationalism: Leszek Kolakowski reminds the triumphant that the 'victory of democracy' is far from assured and that there are 'noncommunist forms of tyranny'; Adam Michnik writes that democracy's defense against 'xenophobic authoritarianism' is weakening; and Vaclav Havel writes that 'demagogy is everywhere'....We cannot know what these many maladies will lead to but we can learn something from putting our pessimism in historical perspective. Looking backward, we see the same degree of despair about Europe's new democracies in the years following World War II."--Nancy Bermeo

"With the end of the Cold War, the role of prime agent and engine of European integration can no longer be played by the United States. Today, following Maastricht, economic, monetary, and, above all, political interests dictate a revision of the old relationship....Relations between the United States and the EU cannot continue to be managed as if the Cold War was still a reality....The role discharged by the United States towards Europe passes, inevitably, to Germany. The Europeans have no choice but to change their political diet, reacquiring the habit of assuming responsibility, making and executing decisions, finding their voice, and making it heard."--Fabio Luca Cavazza and Carlo Pelanda

"Today, it is clear that Western Europe underwent its own 'velvet revolution' in the half-century following World War II, and that its less dramatic entry into the liberal age was the historical precondition of the more spectacular revolutions we recently witnessed in Eastern Europe. But while there is currently much debate over the collapse of state socialism, and much finger-pointing over our inability to 'predict' it, the liberalization of Western Europe in the postwar epoch has been met with an almost embarrassed silence by intellectuals and politicians alike. Not only was this a velvet revolution; it is, even today, an unclaimed revolution...."--Mark Lilla

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