The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age by James Kirchick (Yale University Press, £18.99)
“We are on the cusp of witnessing the end of Europe as we know it,” declares James Kirchick in the introduction to his new book. Once the bastion of liberal values and a beacon of democracy and unity, Europe is now facing its greatest social and political challenges since the end of the war.
Writing with characteristic flair, this American conservative delivers his damning case from a passionate, yet measured, pro-European worldview. Across eight chapters, each one focusing on a key institution, he laments the tragedy of a continent crippled by rising populism, anti-Semitism and a lack of faith in the European Union. Through first-hand reporting, Kirchick details how this crisis in the idea of Europe is coinciding with a United States that seems indifferent to the continent’s problems.
Kirchick is especially concerned with American apathy to the uncertainty in Eastern European democracies, who fear the expansionism of an increasingly aggressive Putin-led Russia. Taking no prisoners on either the left or the right of the political spectrum, he attacks both Germany’s well-intentioned but flawed migration policy and the crude nationalism of Hungary’s border fences.
One of the book’s strengths is its championing of the EU as a gateway to peace on the continent. Yet he fails to recognise why the UK, for example, voted to leave in 2016. The EU’s increasing political integration and the diminishing of democratic accountability means it will always be under threat of unravelling. Brexit is falsely characterised as a nationalist’s dream when there were some liberal arguments for political independence from Europe.
Nonetheless, for anyone interested in the political instability and social upheaval taking place across the continent, this is a first-rate piece of work.
“We are on the cusp of witnessing the end of Europe as we know it,” declares James Kirchick in the introduction to his new book. Once the bastion of liberal values and a beacon of democracy and unity, Europe is now facing its greatest social and political challenges since the end of the war.
Writing with characteristic flair, this American conservative delivers his damning case from a passionate, yet measured, pro-European worldview. Across eight chapters, each one focusing on a key institution, he laments the tragedy of a continent crippled by rising populism, anti-Semitism and a lack of faith in the European Union. Through first-hand reporting, Kirchick details how this crisis in the idea of Europe is coinciding with a United States that seems indifferent to the continent’s problems.
Kirchick is especially concerned with American apathy to the uncertainty in Eastern European democracies, who fear the expansionism of an increasingly aggressive Putin-led Russia. Taking no prisoners on either the left or the right of the political spectrum, he attacks both Germany’s well-intentioned but flawed migration policy and the crude nationalism of Hungary’s border fences.
One of the book’s strengths is its championing of the EU as a gateway to peace on the continent. Yet he fails to recognise why the UK, for example, voted to leave in 2016. The EU’s increasing political integration and the diminishing of democratic accountability means it will always be under threat of unravelling. Brexit is falsely characterised as a nationalist’s dream when there were some liberal arguments for political independence from Europe.
Nonetheless, for anyone interested in the political instability and social upheaval taking place across the continent, this is a first-rate piece of work.
