Europe’s Path and the Great Global Convergence?

A continent in decline.

By Stephen Green, March 14, 2015 | http://www.theglobalist.com/europes-path-and-the-great-global-convergence/A generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunified Federal Republic of Germany is becoming the reluctant leader of a new Europe. But it does so at a time when there is an existential question about the very identity and the whole future of Europe.

This question is one for all Europeans, but it must weigh most heavily upon that inevitable and reluctant leader.
Europe is now in long–term relative decline, both politically and economically. It is no longer the energetic, ambitious and aggressive continent it was when the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the British set out over the oceans to plunder, trade and colonize.
Europe also is no longer the continent whose technical brilliance the Chinese emperor Qianlong so notoriously spurned when Lord McCartney sought to open commercial dealings with China in 1793.
It is no longer the continent where an aggressive Germany sought to settle and Germanize vast tracts of Slav land to the east and unleashed a campaign of unbelievable brutality in pursuit of that goal.
And it is no longer the frontline of a Cold War between two superpowers with the capacity to destroy themselves and everyone else many times over.