The Future of Europe.

europe is a continent that stands on the brink of a crisis it's one that's been forming for years and the fate of which will determine the fate of world history europe a continent which ruled the world for 500 years will face a heart-wrenching period of soul-searching pain and turmoil why do i think this will happen and what will the results be this is a video to talk about the next 30 or so years in europe [Music] europe is dealing with a wide variety of issues many of which stem from the turmoil of the world wars the memory of world war ii burned itself into the minds of the peoples of europe and shapes the decisions they've made going forward the horrors of the world war still fascinate people and nowhere can you learn more about this with magellan tv magellan tv is as documentary streaming service made by filmmakers the best selection of historical documentaries and movies out there they have content covering everything from the ancient world to current events and from true crime to astronomy magellan is compatible with just about any device and has 4k with no additional cost it's a great platform for an affordable price magellan has great services covering the course of world war ii but i recently watched an excellent series called history's verdict each episode covers the lives of a major figure in the second world war including de gaulle hirohito and churchill seeing what these men endured and how they each impacted the fate of the world is a truly inspiring and frightening experience at the same time it's an excellent series that i highly recommend regardless of what your interests are magellan tv is something for you be it science history philosophy or something else but juggling tv is a platform for you and right now they're offering a 30-day free trial to anyone who uses the link in the description so check out magellan tv today europeans get very angry when an american says this but europe has a lot of problems right now in the long term i think far in excess of the us in my opinion educated europeans like to pretend they're the most civilized and intelligent people in the world but in their self-congratulation ignore the underlying problems that are putting their civilization under extreme stress i'd like to start this video with a brutally honest look at modern europe look that will horrify many but to be frank if europeans don't hear this from me they'll see it themselves in the next few years i just want to say i'm being harsh to europe not because i hate it but because i love it i'm like a friend who's trying to counsel another friend so they don't do something horrifically dumb there were four main points that i think often get ignored about modern europe and need to be brought to attention the first of which is that europe has been an objective decon in the world stage since the second world war in colonies this is just brutally obvious where most of the world used to be a european colony and isn't anymore but economically europe has declined from 38 of the world's economy to 24 today this might seem obvious and natural to some europeans who view this as the natural extension of the rise of places like asia but that's really not the case the united states for example has remained a stable quarter of the world's economy since the 1960s the us has been on the cutting edge of culture and technology pioneering the latest revolutions with hollywood and american music listened to everywhere which is just not the case for europe that's sort of strange given europe is filled with intelligent well-educated and creative people i mean just look at how europe totally dominated global culture for the 500 years before the world wars europeans often like to congratulate themselves in enlightened labor and business regulations and these often are nice for the workers involved but they realistically constrain the economy much of southern europe has doubled unemployment which is largely concentrated among the young forming businesses in europe is significantly more difficult than other parts of the world due to regulation another example of europe's declining importance in the world is birth rate in which almost all european countries have a declining birth rate and have had one for decades this is worse in eastern europe in which many countries are projected to lose a third of their populations by the middle of the century countries like germany and italy are some of the very oldest in the whole world i know many european countries are already what amounts to overpopulated but over the last couple decades their excess population could have been settled in their african colonies oceania or moved to the americas the european countries now were importing labor from other continents to make up for their lack of young people but if they had a stable or growing birth rate this wouldn't be a problem at all thus solving many of the social problems that mass immigration brings again when we compare europe to the us we see that the us is one of the most stable populations in the world going forward and is the youngest of almost any developed nation the us's population has doubled since world war ii you can't really look at a metric in which europe has been able to maintain its pre-existing world war ii predominance i mean just look at the nation of origin for nobel peace prize winners which brings up the second point that europe's largely an american subsidiary now this comes in many forms the first of which is political the united states subsidizes almost all of europe's militaries most european countries have tiny military spendings whenever europe's had a political crisis in the last few decades the us was the one who resolved it normally after european authorities failed to be able to deal with it in any adequate manner look at yugoslavia where the americans passed the baton onto the europeans who became mired and not being able to decide what to do which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths before the u.s stepped in and bombed the region which put an end to the crisis the us is the one that's organized the defenses of europe against the russians after the 2008 financial crash the u.s government although this isn't common knowledge bailed out the european banking system which had gone through similar financial overreach as the us alternately look at the greece eurozone crisis which the europeans tried to manage themselves and weren't able to come to a reasonable conclusion which then resulted in the u.s arbitrating negotiations in other terms the u.s has been the deciding factor in every single crisis europe has gone through since the second world war the really depressing thing is that these weren't impositions by the americans forcing the europeans to give up their authority and needling their way into european issues the americans have generally encouraged the europeans to have as much autonomy as they wanted as long as they weren't communists it's really depressing how even on a cultural level europe has given way to america the europeans don't produce any original culture anymore let me give an example this song by swedish singer zara larsen ain't my fault in which the singer sings with an american accent in an american style song has black backup dancers coming from the popularity of african americans while trashing an old-style european mansion in the music video europe used to be the cultural beating heart of the world but now european film music literature and all else is trying to copy americans i remember being in france and hearing people talk about how much they hated america well the city i was staying in literally subsidized people saying old town road the city center youths would play rap in public and you'd see loads of burger restaurants around europe sends its elite to america lots of european founders immigrate to america as well as celebrities think of how practically every british celebrity ends up in los angeles for example europe has lost the edge it had before world war ii on almost every single level which brings us to another point that europeans are extremely uncomfortable about that their immigration policy hasn't worked immigrants in europe have had massive trouble assimilating they inhabit slums outside cities and often join terrorist groups shockingly more british muslims were fighting for isis than in the british military around 2015. from an economic standpoint it's crazy that europe is bringing in more low-skilled immigration when they're already facing large unemployment problems in their unskilled youth population the immigrants are a massive economic toll and heavily taxed the large european welfare systems all objective studies have found that immigration has remarkably negative effects on european economies again i hate to keep comparing europe to the us negatively but the us's immigrants have assimilated extremely rapidly with hispanics and asians marrying outside of their racial groups at 40 rates every generation and are normally the hardest working elements in the population while committing crimes at lower levels in the general american population how did europe get in this state modern europe should best be viewed as a reaction to the second world war when you look at the choices europe makes now it's a conscious opposite of exactly what europe was doing during the second world war in fact the world wars were so deeply traumatizing that the european psyche has had to do a full 180 degree turn for some examples pre-world war europe was very capitalist racist for lack of a better term nationalistic militaristic and competitive when you look at the europe that has been built in its ashes we see that the national identities have been weakened replaced by the trans national european union an organization created explicitly to break down national identities the european union has driven off a pan national ideological mission to prevent another world war ii and the european union really is a nouveau catholic church or a moralistic bureaucratic organization that exists to police the continent's regulations it also has very little real political power merely cultural and indirect influence europeans are especially traumatized at using force we see this in europe's very small military programs with the us largely footing their country's defense bills at the same time europeans have proved incapable of dealing with crises at their own doorsteps like yugoslavia or libya the only country i see in europe besides russia that is serious military backbone is france who still maintains a pseudo empire in west africa europeans are also traumatized to take pride in their own identities we see this with the push to take immigrants and europe immigration is consistently pulled low among the population meaning that the native europeans involved really don't want immigrants and they're also heavy economic anchors to their societies however due to the insane racism the nazis had any degree of loyalty to national identity is used as evil in modern europe however for years before turkey closed the flood of immigrants europe was being flooded with many immigrants it really had no reason for even though i don't stand with europe's far right it is strange that europe is an area where for example you were to say france is for the french or england for the english that would be viewed as racist but if the leaders of argentina or thailand said the same thing of their countries it would be common sense i could go through every single variable whether economic where europe switched away from laissez-faire capitalism with ideology where believing anything that wasn't some milkitos internationalism etc is an unacceptable view in all cases after the horrifying trauma of the world wars where you've got to keep in mind people are still alive who fought in them so they're not too far off europe basically gave up any initiative on every front whether political spiritual economic military etc many european countries have the strange idea of being a post-historic nation in that the rules of history no longer apply to them and they're somehow wiser europeans laugh at america's aggressive and militaristic foreign policy somehow thinking that war has become foolish and antiquated without providing the argument of when or how it did or acting like agnostic social democracy is somehow the most moral political system without really dating to give an argument for that either rather than it just being self-evidently more humane this provides modern europe with a certain inflexibility in dealing with new problems given that most responses that states would do to dire situations trigger what amounts to an overwrought ptsd reaction as a reminder of the world wars if european governments do anything remotely aggressive or in their own self-interest their populations when the elite will call them nazis europe is at the end point of what historians around world war ii and i'm going to make a future video about this called the managerial revolution in which corporations and governments both became dominated by managerial and bureaucratic organizations as technocracies based off people with good test scores in europe we see that the european union is just a perfect exemplification of this being a bureaucratic technocratic organization by nature and inside the individual countries in europe we see that technocrats have been able to rest power at the expense of the market religion militaries and the like thus in a lot of ways we see results to what happened in confucian china another bureaucratic technocratic state whether with moralizing in a sense of innate civilizational superiority blinding their views to the rest of the world or lagging behind militarily technologically and economically due to various bureaucratic biases unlike america where the division's mostly between the right and the left in europe it's between center and fringes europe is a more hierarchical society than america and the elite is thus more technocratic and pushes the population in directions it generally doesn't see or agree with thus in the more populist america we see the public take both big parties further to the extreme in europe we see technocratic centrist parties of both right and left-wing varieties try to hold the center against radical parties that outright reject the principles of the post-world war ii order i make europe out to sound really awful but it isn't europeans live some of the best lives of anywhere in the world i mean it depends a tremendous amount on what country or region you're in ranging from sweden to moldova but in the wealthier parts of europe life is the best of anywhere on the planet a lot of americans act like europe as some poor socialist dystopia which isn't at all true i mean of all the places in the world where i've lived as a digital nomad france was my favorite what i'm attacking is that europeans aren't doing anything to maintain their position europeans are coasting off the achievements of their ancestors who spent a thousand years building up the continent and now disrespect every institution that got them where they are whether capitalism christianity military strength the nation and like remember almost everything fails across history and thus to abandon all the institutions that resulted in your success as a recipe for suicide which honestly does seem to be the intention for part of the western and european elite people often ask me why i see the asian civilizations reviving and working through crises over the next 100 years but not europe the truth is that due to centuries of success the european elite already believes itself to be at the apex of mankind and thus sees no reason to improve and anyone who believes that is going to have a lesson be taught to them meanwhile the asian civilizations have been so humiliated by centuries of western colonialism so that they're implementing foreign methods to improve themselves at the same time due to being in the same civilization the us can siphon off european talent rather than having them fester and agitate back in europe something to make very clear is that a lot of the generalizations i'm making only apply to western europe for eastern europeans who have recently been under the heel of russian communists they're a lot better attached to reality and you don't see the same policies towards immigrants where lots of eastern european countries are rejecting unneeded immigration you don't see the same hatred of capitalism because the eastern europeans are happy not to be poor and you don't see the same self-loathing in eastern europe western europe remains the most important part of the continent international stage but eastern europe is still there and very important across the world we see the structures that were created largely after world war ii that managed the world today have trouble holding together as the world has changed oh so very much this will culminate in international crisis however the results will be different around the world let's look at the problems that will plague europe there are a couple triggers that could send europe into the crisis that awaits the first is the removal of america from the european system the us is already teetering on the brink of a massive crisis itself for its own internal reasons as explained the u.s is the guarantor and peacemaker in the european order and that's not something you should underestimate given that the story of european history is these countries killing each other and that only stopped like 80 years ago however let's imagine say if a large recession happens and america has to focus on dealing with its own riots rebellions and social problems back at home or china and india of a war the us gets involved in thus pulling the u.s towards the pacific and away from europe the us's various foreign entanglements aren't especially popular at home and the trump sentiment of ending nato and pulling american troops out of europe can very easily happen the u.s involvement in europe is so entrenched that removing it would basically be pulling the floor out of the european house the french italians and germans would start rapidly rearming so to keep themselves safe without guarantorship of international trading various european nations would start building blocks of trade and special interests inside europe so as deal to secure their supply chains the second possible problem is europe's aging crisis which is expected to hit critical mass very soon this will be very bad in some european countries with east central europe about to have some of the worst demographic collapse of anywhere in the world in countries like italy germany and russia were expecting to see their populations have over the next 50 years france britain and scandinavia have the best demographics of anywhere in the continent which positions them as influential players going forward but they too will get older it's hard to overestimate the importance of this crisis societies with harsh aging get stuck in a cycle of pain and death in which more money goes to the elderly while at the same time there's less young people to produce said money and less young people innovating and taking risks to grow the pie there's less money to form capital to grow the economy which starts to stagnate since so much of the money is being funneled into the elderly less is going into having children with young people which just makes the crisis worse in a lot of countries the situation will be that every worker will be supporting two elderly after a certain point it basically just means social collapse keep in mind that whenever the pie shrinks across history there are civil wars and crises and people use ideology as a mask to justify fighting over their group getting a slice of the dwindling pie the crisis will be added to by the collapse of the rest of the world system that will have ripple effects inside europe as i've mentioned ad nauseam before in other videos we see world crises every few centuries with the prior examples being like the french revolution or the black death there are a bunch of metrics you can use to predict these and almost all of them line up now meaning we will probably soon see a collapse in the world order affecting basically every continent the problem is that the world economy is so interconnected that problems in one area immediately ripple across the planet one example is agriculture where ukraine and russia are some of the world's biggest exporters of grain and are cut off due to war the rest of the world's economy can't catch up and so supply chain problems due to inflation are also severely hampering the us's ability to produce grain and there are other similar systemic problems in latin america thus closing off the world's biggest grain and food exporters the problem here won't directly hit europe the world wars were so dramatic that europe is now self-sufficient for food which is amazing however the rise in the price of food and especially the disruption of fertilizer that makes most of africa farmable would make food insecure and food importing countries across the middle east and africa erupt into mass wars and famines this would in turn result in mass migrations to europe which europe could only deal with by basically building an iron curtain in the mediterranean and closing off at southern and eastern borders however as we'll talk about later this would cause immense soul-searching in pain in western europe whose identity is formed around pluralism however when we magnify the effects of the international crisis it could have very large second-hand effects on europe for example conflict in the middle east could cut off europe's oil supply thus forcing the europeans to source their oil from africa maybe forcefully or europe turns to renewable or coal energy or de facto de-industrialization of europe's economy for a short period of time i mean it's not unimaginable that we could start seeing pirates in the mediterranean again descendants of the barbary corsairs raiding sicily sardinia or southern spain at the same time imagine how a conflict in the far east could affect europe with say britain or germany siding with america against china and sending troops to fight while france and southern europe refused to at this point we're really playing an infinite game where everything can affect everything else so i'm not going to wade too deep in that endless ocean finally connected to factors elsewhere is russia russia has a video in of itself that i really ought to make but due to total mismanagement on the part of the russian elite whether in defunding education decades ago having a birth rate so awful their population will have over the next 60 years and generally giving the country a hopeless shambles we are currently seeing russia's meltdown as i have explained in this video putin's invasion of ukraine should be viewed as a sign of weakness not strength it's a desperate gasp of a failing nation trying to secure its western borders however it really is very difficult to say what exact direction russia will take russia could go an insanely aggressive route under certain circumstances or fighting a hopeless war with the west which no matter what happens in the war would change history massively however whatever happens in russia will affect east central european countries just due to proximity if russia invades poland has to fight them off if russia collapses into civil war poland has to take the refugees in and if russia fractures poland now becomes the practical hegemon of eastern europe regaining the influence it had in the 16th century under the polish-lithuanian commonwealth europeans start to revert back to their previous norms of interstate competition to be clear i don't see major wars between france and germany or italy and spain say you need a lot of young people for that sort of thing in an ideology that justifies aggression of which europe has neither i could say see skirmishes between poland and slovakia or serbia invading kosovo but nothing major instead i see a europe where countries compete through trade packs closing borders and the like with passive resistance the worst i could possibly see is revolutions happening in major countries the current european leadership is so mild that the only way we could get a big war is say if a far-right party sees control of france and then militarily occupies belgium and switzerland which then causes germany to react but that's a very unlikely scenario as i've talked about in this video the germans have large supply chains and influence structures in eastern europe that they could start exerting more political influence over we've already seen the germans start to rearm due to russian threats in ukraine so expect germany to step up at a local power in this crisis however the germans aren't widely liked which brings up the second potential power of the french the french of an alliance structure among the mediterranean latin countries that parallels germany's influence in the east the french also of the most effective military of any western european country and a de facto empire in much of west africa when push comes to shove i don't see the french and germans becoming enemies since there isn't a lot of reason for them to be enemies however i don't see the remaining strong partners because there's not a lot of reason for that either there isn't a lot keeping them together except the whole deal of the germans being scared to exert influence without the french as their cover and the french wanting to use german strength but as that disintegrates we'll see them develop a part since they have differing spheres of influence strategic orientations and aren't that connected economically anyway as europe falls apart i see the french and germans remain allies but not close partners the third power block i could see emerges the polls the polls have been constructing an alliance system encompassing almost all of east central europe called the three seas initiative against russia poland which is neither the bad reputation of russia or germany has a potential for leadership whether or not the leadership of eastern europe falls to the poles or the germans is up in the air however no matter how bad things get the uk and ireland are in and will side with the us and remain in the american sphere of influence scandinavia meanwhile in many ways operates as an independent unit and would go its own direction of the rest of the european economy felt the [ __ ] also being more in the american sphere in this future trust declines inside europe as people get hungrier and youth unemployment climbs the technocratic governments in order to maintain their legitimacy and show their power behave in progressively more autocratic manners ignoring freedoms and trampling over business rights europe stews with anger a big driver of this would be the young where europe's young are already in a bad position because the economies haven't grown for them and they're competing against immigrant labor with very high youth unemployment across much of europe however with this gets worse we find young people without a lot of hope for the future start to go awol supporting radical political movements rebelling and the like the older european establishment doesn't know what to do here there's a certain kind of trauma where nothing that physically bad happens but instead the world you believed in is just immediately shown to be a lie you then just sit there numb consumed with shock that's what's happened with europe with the world wars and it'll happen again with this crisis the crisis will be understated say the european union isn't officially dissolved but everyone stops listening to it likewise europeans are forced to live much worse lives without a narrative that really explains how they lost the comfortable existences they took for granted in europe we would see the attempt to blame people for the crisis immigrants would take a lot of the blame this would be paired with widespread hatred of the technocratic governments that had lied to the population for so long i think there's going to be a tremendous amount of hatred for the european boomer generation which had allowed this entire system to develop the two would become mentally associated as importing the immigrants was the passion project of the technocratic elite in europe we would rapidly see the rise of radical parties i'm going to have trouble predicting exactly what these guys stand for though as a rule of thumb the better developed a country is the more likely it is to head towards right-wing authoritarianism and the less developed left-wing authoritarianism however we're in the 21st century and i don't fully believe the new radical ideologies of our time will be the same as the very different world of 100 years ago when we look at europe today the groups that are gaining the most from the discrediting of the technocracy are the nativist right we would probably see this trend continue with nationalist anti-immigrant parties seizing power across the european continent who would then continue the trend of breaking down the european union splitting the continent apart the irony is that the european elite tried too hard to not be nazis and instead repressed healthy and natural parts of human nature and through repressing them will create an ethnocentric right wing that they intended to prevent it's kind of like in america social justice really created the alt-right that they were supposedly created to fight since europeans can't deal with things like masculinity tribalism tradition and aggression they will come up in unhealthy forms during the crisis however since europe still has a notable left wing and socialist presence one that would be driven into overdrive by rising poverty and desperation i do see leftist gaining power in some european countries probably in the poorest south european areas where they do have a lot of influence europe will probably go through various internal problems that are hard to predict however i don't think it will be pleasant as i've said before the precedent for the variables lining up in the ways they are is stuff like the french revolution roman civil war and the like it wouldn't surprise me if at least one european country kills the rich or evicts its non-white population with all the anti-israel sentiment we can still see that anti-semitism exists very thinly beneath the surface in europe i think the chances one european country becomes aggressive and starts to bully or occupy its neighbors is decently high however the main differing factor between europe's future and other eras of history is those were brimming with useful aggression well this will be a greying europe without a lot of young people to cause trouble in a lot of ways europe will still be going through a self-enforced trauma reaction the world wars the europeans in effect got ptsd from the world wars and tried to do the opposite of what they were doing during them which in turn repressed those tendencies which will force the europeans to relive the experiences that traumatized them of the nazis in the same way that people with trauma subconsciously tried to relive their traumatic experiences as a way of solving them and since they're familiar i mean the classic example this is people dating their toxic type of let's say bad boy or [ __ ] girlfriend because it's something they're familiar with and reminds them of their parents a brilliant history book i've read is the coming caesar's by ameri during accor who i think may be the greatest historian of the 20th century it outlines how many parallels there are between the greeks and europeans and the americans and romans and how western and classical civilization in many ways follow similar paths the author makes a very cogent argument through parallels of which i have simplified a 300-page book into a text wall here however i think the argument's largely true that europe is the creative foundation of western civilization however through its own peloponnesian or diadachi wars the europeans have burned themselves out and america will quietly colonize the continent if we're going to go deep into parallels here in both the turchin and amory cycles of history the world isn't around 100 bc with those parallels america and rome have both recently become world empires and their social and political structures haven't caught up yet this comes with internal social problems in italy and america with polarization massive inequality and the rise of celebrity strong men as both america and rome are sucked into their internal crises it leaves greece and europe to their own devices america's relationship to europe and rome to greece is a pretty apt comparison giving that the greek states were self-governing when we deal with things that happened 2000 years ago we tend to whitewash and view the romans as just power-hungry empire builders but that's not true the romans were a democratic nation responsible to their electorate's emotions and were in many ways a moral people the romans had immense respect for the greeks who they viewed as the fountain of their civilization and only invaded greece to protect the city-states from the kingdom of macedonia to the north three different times the romans were dragged and protecting greece from the macedonians and a couple additional times on top of that the romans created self-governance structures in greece that didn't work so the romans made a new structure however over time the greeks like the modern europeans were shown to be torn apart by petty century-old rivalries between their various states by social divisions inside them and a real inability to see the big picture based upon a decadent arrogance sprung from the success of their ancestors with each project the romans gave less and less authority to the greeks and unified more greek states into federations that gave the real power to the romans the depressing thing is the greeks actually welcomed roman colonization after a certain point since the romans brought law and order at the expense of the greeks who were constantly killing some other faction or social class inside their cities this all culminated and it was part of a broader crisis called the mithridatic wars mithridates was the king of the culturally greek kingdom of pontus on the north coast of turkey that led a rebellion against the romans getting a lot of greek support and driving the romans out of modern turkey greece and the balkans before being crushed by the romans i think this parallel is useful since for the greek states themselves we would see a crisis like europe where the greek states didn't have the will or ability to really conquer they just killed inside their cities and states and fell in a further degradation in poverty however anti-american sentiment is real in europe and i could see an aggressive outlier mithridates rise to power the most likely suspects are russia germany or france who try to create an anti-american anti-immigrant crusade to supposedly liberate europe a nasty part of the mithridatic war was that the greek nationalists did kill tens of thousands of roman settlers and merchants in the region however due to america's predominance and how such a movement would never be able to get universal appeal in europe it would inevitably be crushed however europe has seen the same collapse in spirit as the greeks did since total wars between brother nations resulted in the same collapse of their spirit after their mithridatic wars had failed in europe it degraded itself in the manner that the post-world war ii system had explicitly tried their damnedest not to europe will have trouble believing in itself anymore on any level after america is done with its crises it will re-enter a defeated continent it will establish a new form of the european union that will have even more power after the individual european states had lost more pride no one involved will view this as colonization but it will eventually work out that way with the declines in europe's population and thus ambition its humiliations and so the us influence will naturally predominate over the continent in the same way that american pop music sells so much in europe and europeans copy it not because americans are actively trying to destroy european culture but because europeans are trying to copy americans and can't produce their own creative material europe will gradually become part of the american sphere europeans start learning english to deal with the pan-european system better and europe's best and brightest immigrant to america thus continuing the trend even at the time of augustus the greeks were technically self-governing but in the same way the romans had taken control of real power europeans would have lost much of their pride they had left over in their colonial days and when they produced mozart voltaire richard lionheart shakespeare or hitler in the same way that no greeks during the roman colonization matched up the pericles demosthenes plato or alexander a continent that lost faith in god reason emotion the nation and the race falls asleep perhaps waiting for another christ to awaken them for a new byzantium what a faultist and thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video please like comment subscribe or stay tuned for additional content or alternatively check out my pearl patreon and pillar and as always thanks so much for watching and have a wonderful day

Channel: Whatifalthist

Views: 739,093

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2021, dasdsa

Id: AkIX5yHF1dU

Length: 33min 42sec (2022 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2022