De Volkskrant, Amsterdam: economic power is not the only criterion for defining a world power. What matters is how political systems respond to new crises. From this point of view, the European Union still has a chance, the Dutch historian Dirk-Jan appreciates van Baar. Excerpts.

Article taken from Presseurop.eu / ro, the European press review in ten languages

Year 2011 has all the features to remain in history as a catastrophic year, in addition, the U.S. and Europe is likely to collapse because of their debt. U.S. and Europe already have a reputation as problem children of the world economy, and came to receive lessons from China's state capitalists from Singapore and the diplomats of Indian economists. Therefore, it is not surprising that many observers are sensitive to the spirit of the times anticipated the end of four centuries of Western domination and see the sun begins to rise in the Far East.

U.S. President goes attitude in this respect: he wants the U.S. to first order in the national economy before getting involved in new external intervention.

While the most powerful man on the planet believes that Washington has set targets too high, he tends to agree that America suffers from "supraextindere imperial" idea expressed by the historian Paul Kennedy (who wrote the 1987 book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000 "(translated in Romanian as the" rise and fall of great powers. the economic and military conflict from 1500 to 2000 "Polirom, 2011).

Experimentation and Innovation

Paul Kennedy made this prediction shortly before the Cold War, not only not anticipated progress of democracy globally, but missed the fall of Soviet communism even that run under his eyes. We can imagine that they have become more nuanced. But no, he see a new historical division of spheres of influence, the West losing dominance almost without realizing.

Paul Kennedy is a historic economic factors prevail and giving less importance to the force of ideas and "prominent personalities". But they are not good criteria for assessing global powers decline. Kennedy attaches great importance to how the system reacts in times of crisis when faced with challenges that have not had before.

If the Soviet leaders themselves decided not to yield pressures in the 1980s, the Berlin Wall would probably have continued to exist. If Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would not be opposed since 1980 is increasing Soviet influence, the Kremlin probably would have continued the policy of force. The reason for Moscow's political reformers have given, but not Beijing's economic reformers, will remain a subject of historical speculation. This shows that the irrational elements and their determination and faith in question plays important roles in such situations.

Taking account of experiments and innovations, yet it is premature to abandon the idea of ​​the European project. With the introduction of the euro and EU enlargement to Eastern European continent has not suffered any such cross-border transformation in the last decade and it is normal for such a development including failures and have to deal with problems.

But success remains that the euro was introduced as planned and that the euro area has not collapsed despite the sovereign debt problem, a problem whose magnitude was not anticipated only a few experts .[...]