The European Union: A Post-Modern Superpower
During the cold war, we lived in a bipolar international system dominated by two
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The one quality they had in
common, and by which their power was mainly measured, was a large military that each
was able and willing (if necessary) to commit on a global scale. Then came the end of the
cold war and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States was left without peer
or competitor, and it was widely acclaimed as the world’s last remaining superpower.
There may have been many middle-range aspirants for membership of the superpower
club (notably China and India) and a small cluster of heretics might even have dared
suggest that the European Union too could one day be a superpower, but the United
States alone had the necessary combination of qualities to merit the title: superior
firepower, a large and productive economy, a telling mixture of political and cultural
influence, and an ability and willingness to pursue a wide range of policy goals on a
global scale, with results that were both observable and measurable.
But that was the 1990s. A decade later, the cold war is fading into the mists of
history and the historical link between political influence and military power rings
increasingly hollow. In the new international system, with its post-modern emphasis on
markets, trade, and technology, violence as a tool of statecraft has lost much of its utility,
and may even be counterproductive: it not only sends a troubling message to potential
adversaries, but large militaries create more problems for their owners than they solve,
not least because they divert resources away from more productive and useful pursuits. In
1the era of mass and instant communication, and of economic and cultural globalization,
soft power has achieved a new significance:...
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