Maj. Gen. Atanu Pattanaik

The widespread street violence in London and other cities and towns across the United Kingdom (UK) since the beginning of August riots, following a fatal knife attack killing three young girls in Southport led to the burning of police patrol cars, arson, looting and torching of shops, and violent face-offs with police as well as rival anti-riot protest groups. Generally associated with third world countries, these riots open a new chapter in the decline of what once was the largest colonial empire in human history. If this was confined to the UK alone, it could have been explained away. Arson and sabotage of railway communications on all train routes leading to Paris just as it was decked up to inaugurate the 2024 Olympics, stranding hundreds of thousands of commuters including athletes taking part in the Olympics, takes the debate to a different plane.

Europe enjoyed rapid economic growth post the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century and stayed the epicentre of prosperity till the emergence of the United States (US) towards the end of World War I as the most dominant economic powerhouse. The two world wars caused massive devastation in Europe. It was the American Marshall Plan that helped Europe not only rebuild but also turbocharge its economy to regain primacy in the overarching umbrella of the European Union (EU). That golden run of six to seven decades came to an end with the global economic meltdown in 2008. Since then, there have been constant headwinds that have chipped away at the economic heft and cultural vibrancy of Europe.

The long running differences between members of EU over a range of issues including gay rights, abortion, climate action impacting its farmers, illegal migration, support for Ukraine as well as disputes over the role of the EU bureaucracy are out in the open. Italy is at the frontline of the migration crisis as thousands from North Africa take dangerous boat rides across the Mediterranean to wash up on its shores every day. Members like Hungary and Slovakia are taking extreme positions within Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) such as opposition to despatch troops on ground to support Ukraine’s failing war efforts. There are deep fissures developing within the EU as well as in Nato as Europe faces headwinds, one after another on multiple fronts, especially since decoupling from cheap, clean and reliable Russian energy in February 2022.

The Rise of Europe

The industrial revolution propelled Europe to emerge as a significant and consequential economic and military power. Until then, China and India, as two of the most expansive, settled and old civilisations, contributed up to 70 per cent of the global economy. For thousands of years, economic progress was largely linear and linked to population growth. Without machines or technological innovations, one person could only produce so much with their time and resources. At the turn of twentieth century, Europe including Czarist Russia which associated itself more closely to Europe than Asia, contributed to almost half of the global economic output.

Taken together with the American enterprise which emerged in tandem with Europe, they produced over 70 per cent of the global GDP by the time World War II ended. Much of the European continent was left devastated, its cities in ruins, its population exhausted and bewildered, and its economy in shambles. Gradually gone were the milch cows, the vast colonial empires that contributed to the coffers of countries such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and Spain, as much through plunder and loot as from upfront trade and commerce.

After the devastation caused by World War II, Europe could bounce back, initially with the generosity of the US through the Marshall Plan