3 Versions of Europe Are Collapsing at the Same Time – Foreign Policy

Europe has repeatedly failed ... those failures have been the building blocks of Europe’s success. But ... Today’s noise isn’t simply another invitation for Europe to fail upward again. It’s the sound of Europe threatening to fall apart entirely...

Postwar Europe is failing today because, for the younger generations, World War II is ancient history... for most refugees and migrants ... World War II is not their war... Europeans continue to take peace for granted... a Europe that is unable to defend itself.

Europe as a post-1968 project... human rights and ... minority rights... in question today... dramatic demographic and social changes... Threatened majorities ... fear ... becoming the losers of globalization... the 2015 immigration crisis... the end of post-1968 Europe and the failure of ... post-1989 Europe... Europe’s 9/11... forced Europeans to question some of the critical assumptions of their previous attitudes toward globalization... revealed... two very different Europes ...

Central and Eastern Europe ... is extremely ethnically homogeneous... struggles to deal with depopulation... aging population, low birth rates, and ... out-migration ... demographic panic... expressed politically through hysteria against the refugees, who are nowhere to be seen...

the heart of Central European illiberalism... a rejection of ... the Imitation Imperative...For two decades after 1989 ... They wished their countries to become like the West.... feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, dependency, lost identity, and involuntary insincerity. Imitators ... never own their successes ... only their failures...

Europe should invest in its military capabilities... in the same way European liberal democracies ... deradicalizing the far-left and integrating some of its legitimate demands ... do the same with the far-right...strongly criticize the authoritarian turn in the East without insisting that imitating the West is the only meaning of democracy or naively imagining that a commitment to democracy can be bought with cohesion funds from Brussels.