Today, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as Serbia and Macedonia, are engulfed by political intrigue and bad governance to a much greater degree than countries to the north and the west. Greece is in the midst of an economic catastrophe comparable to the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s, and Cyprus has undergone the worst banking crisis in Europe, in part related to deposits from many shady Russians. And that, in turn, is a demonstration of the weak institutions that bedevil Russia, another Orthodox country. The situation is, of course, complex. Cyprus, for instance, even though it is the closest of these countries to the Middle East, actually has had the most efficient institutions of any of them, owing to its strong British colonial heritage. And Romania, despite the awful legacy of Nicolae Ceausescu's national Stalinism, has impressively avoided catastrophe for a quarter century now and is inching forward in terms of its economy and institutions. Nevertheless, as someone who lived in Greece and traveled through the Balkans continually for many years, I can say that this region is clearly not entirely Europe, but an intermediary zone between Europe and the Near East.
The incorporation of much of this area into the European Union was not necessarily imprudent. To be sure, years from now the Balkans could well be a zone of stability and prosperity as much as anyplace in Western Europe. Again, the record of history and religion does not determine a country's fate. Vastly better and worse outcomes are possible, based on the choices made by policymakers.
But the more informed by history and geography decision makers are, the better the likelihood for wise choices. Unfortunately, that was not entirely the case in Europe. In fact, an ahistorical generation of Eurocrats in Brussels and elsewhere decided to form a geographically wide-ranging currency union, composed of countries with a vast variety of historical and developmental experiences, without also forming a political union to better manage the single currency.
By contrast, the United States could form a single currency union over an entire continent, with significant political autonomy for the individual states. This is because, while there were stark developmental and cultural differences between, say, Minnesota in the north and Mississippi in the south, everyone nevertheless spoke one language. What's more, the common historical experience of democracy and westward expansion was something that the far-flung member states of the EU never enjoyed.
The United States, moreover, has had a federal government presiding over all the 50 states, and while different religions are practiced, they are not geographically specific to the extent that they are in Europe -- Catholicism and Protestantism in the west and Orthodoxy in the southeast. Religion plus geographical specificity equals identity and historical experience. Thus, the United States, with all its current political pathologies, is workable; a united Europe isn't yet.
The Eurocrats in Brussels spent decades extoling the social welfare state as a panacea to Europe's historical ills. This was possible only because the United States took care of Europe's physical security. As the U.S. troop footprint in Europe lessens from its Cold War heights, and as the social welfare state in the Mediterranean south becomes undone, Europe may well -- in a very subtle way, to be sure -- revert to regions loosely based on historical experience, like those of Orthodoxy and the Turkish and Habsburg empires. You could have a strong eurozone in the north and weaker eurozones in the Balkans and southern Europe.
Europe is not strictly a financial story. It is a political story, and therefore a geopolitical one. Orthodox Russia, despite the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, still lies uncomfortably next door to Central and Eastern Europe, as we have seen especially in recent weeks. The Balkans are still what they always have been: on the fault line between Europe and Asia. And Iberia bears a history of modern dictatorship that still affects its politics and economics. Therefore, the cultural observations of those like Romanian philosopher Patapievici, historian Seton-Watson and Russian intellectual Berdyaev are still relevant. Patapievici, in particular, is a liberal humanist and a cosmopolitan who believes fervently in human agency and the sanctity of the individual, but who also knows that centuries-old traditions and belief systems do count for something. They simply cannot be dismissed out of hand.
