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
An American Epidemic of Speculation: Bubble Blowing in Silicon Valley and Washington DC
Should a College be a Museum or a Startup? Why Universities Need to Teach Failure
American Advocates of Foreign Devils: How Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden Sold Access to US Foreign Policy
Sometimes We Need a Calamity: How to Save the American Experiment
The Frankenstein Version of Neo-Liberalism: When American Business Overtook Government
America as a Contradiction Trapped Inside an even Bigger Contradiction: Princeton Historian's Explanation for Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Jeffrey Archer: How Margaret Thatcher would have disciplined a Naughty Donald Trump
Sam Altman's Rigged Imperial Gambit: Too Important to Fail & Too Well-Financed to Go Public
America's Most Wounded Generation: Returning Home after World War II
AI Hype is a Feature, not a Bug: Why We Can't Trust Big Tech With Our Agentic Future
Springtime for Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers and Hucksters are Bamboozling the Media, the Markets and the Masses
Navigating around Christopher Columbus: The Nine Lives of the Genoese Sailor Who Became History's Greatest Saint and Sinner
41 Years for a Crime He Didn't Commit: Gary Tyler's Journey from Death Row to Freedom