THANKS, GENERAL MARSHALL:

Europe heads for Japanese irrelevance (Philip Stephens, September 9 2010, Financial Times)

If Europe feels small it is because the EU’s leading members are much diminished. When national leaders are confident, they are ready to promote the Union. When, as now, they are in trouble they look for scapegoats – Brussels is one of them.

France, of course, will never surrender its global pretensions. Only the other day, Nicolas Sarkozy was explaining how his country’s presidency of the G20 nations would be the stage on which to unfurl next year a radical re-ordering of the global economic order. In reality, the audience for France’s grandiose initiatives has been shrinking fast.

Britain’s coalition government seems intent on bowing out without so much as a whimper. David Cameron is not much interested in abroad. Diplomats have been turned into sales representatives. The prime minister is planning swingeing cuts in the country’s military capabilities. When British leaders fall back on the Commonwealth as a measure of influence, you know they are in retreat.

Germany has tried on the clothes of a great power once before. That searing experience still leaves its mark. Economic strength is one thing, but Angela Merkel’s government wants the quiet life. Power projection and geopolitical strutting are best left to others.

In a striking analysis of foreign and security policy during the opening decade of the century, Asle Toje, a scholar at Norway’s Nobel Institute, concludes that Europe has been showing all the characteristics of a small power – or rather of a series of small powers as the limited influence of the Union co-exists with the constrained power of France, Britain and Germany.

Some will be content with this. For all its troubles, Europe has a social and political model to be envied in much of the rest of the world. Sclerosis is relative: per capita incomes are still 10 times the level seen in China. And the Union can be diligently effective in doing small foreign policy things, notably in its own neighbourhood.