Why Europe Must Learn the Language of Power
I'm just back from another stimulating Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich where all the talk was about the growing technological and political gap with the United States and China. From Machiavelli and Hobbes to Napoleon and Bismarck, Europe invented the modern concept of state power. But decades of outsourcing security to NATO and the US have left the continent dangerously rusty both in the language and execution of power. According to Marta Mucznik, a senior analyst at the Brussels-based left-leaning International Crisis Group, "projecting power is the language of today's world." And unless European politicians relearn it, Mucznik warns, that growing gap between Europe and the bipolar reality of a US-China centric world will only continue to dramatically widen.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
J. Bradford DeLong: How Joe Biden's "Supply Side Progressivism" Has Actually Made 2022 A Good Economic Year For Most Americans
Allison Gilbert on From Colleen Hoover to New York's New Wage Transparency Law: The Good News For Women About 2022
David Kirkpatrick: The Year That Elon Musk Became Vladimir Putin: How We Lost All Our Moral Illusions About Big Tech in 2022
Alejandro Crawford: How to Empower Truly Rebellious Entrepreneurs to Do Good in the World
Katherine Stewart: Why American Religious Nationalism is on the Rise in 2022—and How to Confront It in 2023
Mary Annaïse Heglar: The Case for Climate Reparations: Our Environmental Crisis Isn't a "Villainless Crime"
Orville Schell on China in 2022: A Crack in Xi Jinping's Leninist Authoritarianism?
Joshua Browder: Should We Celebrate Technology Which Enables the Disruption of Local Government?
Ewan Morrison on Against Nihilism: Why Belief in Anything is Better Than Nothing
Keith Teare on a Crypto Winter and the Dawn of the AI Age: How Silicon Valley Will Remember 2022
Weili Dai: How AI and the Metaverse Will Combine to Create a More "Efficient" Future
Maurice Saatchi: Finally Revealed… Why Some of Us Go to Heaven and Why Some of Us End Up in Hell
Stephen Bezruchka: Why America Needs a "Sputnik Moment" To Reform Its Radically Inegalitarian Healthcare System