A Grand Opportunity

The United States should recognize the unique opportunity it has right now to step in and fill the gap that is being gradually created by the incompetent leaders of the European Union. With European government officials publicly speculating about the collapse of the Euro, it seems that the 50 year old dream of the European Utopianists is about to come to an abrupt and bitter end. The United States should sieze this opportunity to reclaim its leadership as the world's maintainer of the liberal international economic order and promote increased trade to head off any moves toward economic closure that might ensue. We should announce our intentions to create a NAFTA-like agreement with Great Britain and the marketizing nations of Eastern Europe like Estonia, whose political economy is much closer to ours (or at least is on a trajectory to be closer to ours) than it is to their Western European counterparts. This sort of economic integration will have tremendous benefits for both sides, as well as further improving political relations between the countries. Western Europe will continue to decline until it realizes that Socicalism is a completely unworkable pipe dream that ignores the realities of economics and human nature. Ironically, Karl Marx was right about one thing. He said history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. The Soviet Union was the tragedy, the European Union is the farce.