A few additional excerpts from the book The United States of Europe:
"...European Union, a new kind of state in which the member nations have handed over much of their sovereignty to a transcontinental government in a community that is becoming legally, commercially, and culturally borderless. The EU, with a population of nearly half a billion people stretching from Ireland to Estonia, has a president, a parliament, a constitution, a cabinet, a central bank, a bill of rights, a unified patent office, and a court system with the power to overrule the highest courts of every member nation. It has a 60,000-member army (or 'European Rapid Reaction Force', to be precise) that is independent of NATO or any other outside control). It has its own space agency with 200 satellites in orbit and a project under way to send a European to Mars before Americans get there." (Page 2)
"Because the united Europe is the world's largest trade market, it is the 'Eurocrats' in Brussels , more and more, who make the business regulations that govern global industry." (Page 5)
"But one ESA [European Space Agency] satellite project has been designed specifically to challenge American space supremacy -- and has drawn an angry reaction from the Americans. That is 'Galileo,' a belt of thirty navigational and positioning satellites that will offer an improved version of the American GPS -- or Global Positioning System -- that is used all over the world." (Page 141)
Other key areas include comparisons of the American and European systems of medical care, welfare, justice (including death penalty), privacy, unemployment, immigration, pensions, vacations, military, drug tolerance, environment, food control, privacy, mass transit, finance, and culture.
My impression after finishing the book is that America and Europe have a sort of parent-child relationship with neither agreeing on who is which. Europe would be nowhere nearly as well off as it is today without the American military umbrella and American aid and trade after the two world wars, and many Europeans still acknowedge this.
This book can only be another interim status look at The United States of Europe work in progress. Formidable obstacles to the United States of Europe include the high cost of its welfare states, the aging core populations coupled with intense immigration pressure from have-not nations, a language morass that includes all official documents being prepared in TWENTY different languages (compared to "only" six for the United Nations), and member nations ostensibly yielding to European Union institutions but only to the point they don't seriously differ from vital national beliefs.
Benefits already include the strong common currency (euro), more efficient and equitable economic markets, greatly improved travel and access, stronger trade and environmental controls, stronger human rights, and tougher privacy rules.
In focusing on Europe and America, the book does not talk much about the rest of the world. As some of you pointed out, calling this a bi-polar world misses a lot of major influences including China, Russia, Japan, India, Australia, the Middle East, South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
If you're interested enough to be reading this thread, you really ought to at least skim T.R. Reid's book The United States of Europe. Free at your local library -- check it out.
