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
Lewis H. Ziska: How Rising CO2 Is Turning Life on Earth Into a Bad Science Fiction Movie
Amit Chaudhuri on Post-Realist Fiction: Why Realism Is No Longer an Adequate Novelistic Form for Describing the World
Phyllis Vine: Why the Next Major Civil Rights Movement Is Mental Health Activism
Kate Beaton on Why Ducks, Her Coming-Of-Age Memoir, Isn't Quite As "Desolate" or "Dismal" As Some Critics Have Suggested
Matthew Stewart: Why the 9.9% Is Running Our World and How the 91.1% Need to Fight Back Against This Aristocracy
Mark LeVine on We'll Play Till We Die: The Role of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World
Sarah Kendzior: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Simultaneously Complacent and Paranoid
Kathryn and Ross Petras on Brains, Breasts, Bowels, and Bladders: A History of the World Through Body Parts
David Enrich: How Complicit Is Big Law in the Crimes and Misdemeanors of American Capitalism?
Joe Pompeo: What a Scandalous Double Murder in September 1922 Tells Us About America's Current Obsession With "Trume Crime"
Nicholas Kardaras: How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Crisis and How Reading Plato Can Help Cure it
David Ambroz on Something All Americans Should Agree On: No Homeless Children and More Foster Kids in College Than in Jail
Lisa Genova: How Writers Can Use Both Memory and Forgetting to Improve Their Work