Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  Although most Europeans would undoubtedly say that they oppose global bullies and would prefer a world with no hyperpower, it is nevertheless true that a primary goal behind the EU is to create a political entity large and strong enough to rival the United States. Because the EU's formula for amassing power is essentially one of strategic tolerance, one critical question becomes how well the EU's model of tolerance can compete with that of the United States.

  At first glance, it might seem that the EU has already outdone the United States on the tolerance front. Not only has the EU become a magnet for nations (a kind of strategic tolerance for which there is no current U.S. parallel), but it has also adopted a set of individual rights at least as tolerant as those famously set forth in the U.S. Constitution.

  But the reality is more complex. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, while the United States was draining brainpower from all over the world and vaulting to the forefront of the computer revolution, Europe could not remotely keep up. By the late 1990s, countries such as Germany and Great Britain had serious shortages of skilled information technology (IT) workers, and it looked increasingly like Europe was missing the high-tech boat. Even today, the powerhouse Western European states are still scrambling to attract highly skilled foreign professionals, engineers, and IT technicians while a stream of such international talent continues to flow into the United States. Why so, if Europe is so tolerant?

  The answer is that the EU's tolerance has been primarily directed inward, not outward—a strategy for uniting Europe, not for attracting third world immigrants into Europe or for turning the European states into multiethnic immigrant societies like the United States. When the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights speaks of “free movement of persons,” it is not guaranteeing the freedom of Africans to move to Norway. On the contrary, during the very decades when the European Union was coming into being, the general attitude toward immigration throughout most of Europe was quite hostile.

  In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Great Britain, France, and Germany at various points declared themselves “zero immigration” countries.28 From the 1970s until about 2000, the non-European populations of the European states consisted principally of migrant or “guest workers” (often from former colonies) and their families, refugees claiming asylum, and illegal aliens drawn by relatively generous welfare and social service programs. More problematically, the European nations did little to promote the cultural or political assimilation of the poor migrant communities that sprang up in and around major cities.

  Today, leading European countries such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands are still experiencing chronic shortages of skilled labor even while unemployment fuels frustration and alienation in their poor migrant communities. Despite recent immigration reforms openly aimed at attracting high-tech workers from countries such as India, Korea, or China, the EU nations continue to lose out to more popular destinations, in particular, the traditional “immigrant nations” of Australia, Canada, and the United States.29

  The German experience is telling. In order to create its own Silicon Valley, the government created in the late 1990s a new German green card specifically directed at attracting foreign IT professionals, particularly from countries such as India. Germany hoped to lure at least 20,000 highly qualified migrants a year. But unlike its American counterpart, which is a relatively sure path to naturalization, the German green card offered no possibility of citizenship. As Fareed Zakaria writes, “Germany was asking bright young professionals to leave their country, culture, and families; move thousands of miles away; learn a new language; and work in a strange land—but without any prospect of ever being part of their new home.” The program was a dismal failure, and subsequent efforts to lure high-tech workers have not yet produced major results. At the end of 2006, Germany had 22,000 unfilled engineering positions, 30 percent more than the previous year.30

  In this important respect—the competition for the world's best and brightest—the EU's strategy of making itself a magnet for nations has come up short in comparison to the U.S. strategy of making itself a magnet for individuals. Yet throughout the EU, anti-immigration sentiment seems to be rising. Why is this, especially given the EU's manifest commitment to Enlightenment values of equality, human rights, and nondiscrimination?

  It is impossible to understand the current immigration debate in Europe without talking about Islam. Muslims are the fastest-growing segment of Europe's population. Some analysts predict that in fifteen years the EU will be 20 percent Muslim. In France, Muslims may already represent 10 percent (or perhaps even more) of the population, outnumbering all non-Catholic groups put together, including Protestants and Jews. In major Dutch cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Muslims are expected to become a majority of the population within a decade. (For purposes of comparison, Muslims represent only 1-2 percent of the U.S. population.) Yet this substantial and growing minority just happens to be a population that European tolerance—despite its asserted univer-salism—may have the most difficulty tolerating.31

  For Europe, this problem goes deeper than the French ban on head scarves in public schools. Many in Eastern Europe still regard Christianity as central to Europe's heritage. In 2003, Poland's president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, attacked the “Godless tone” of the EU constitution, declaring it shameful that the constitution made no references “to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe.” At the same time, more secular Western Europeans increasingly see Islam as a potential threat to Europe's modern Enlightenment identity. The late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci railed against “Muslim invaders,” engaged in a “Reverse Crusade” to conquer and profane Europe. And in the words of a Danish member of parliament, “It is…naive to think you can integrate Muslims into the Danish society…[Islam] is not only a religion but a fascist political ideology mixed with a religious fanaticism of the Middle Ages, an insult against the human rights and all other conditions necessary for creating a developed society.” Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for the broad popular resistance to Turkey's accession to the EU is Turkey's 68 million-strong Muslim population. Thus, with Islam, European tolerance—in terms of both territorial expansion and openness to immigration—has hit a potential wall.32

  Meanwhile, within Europe, the relatively poor Muslim communities are at the center of an intensifying ethnic, religious, and racial conflict. Nearly no EU country has escaped these problems. Denmark's experience is illustrative. A largely homogeneous society and “once the epitome of Scandinavian liberalism,” Denmark in the late twentieth century confronted what was by its standards a sizable Islamic community, representing about 3 percent of the population. Hailing largely from Turkey, Morocco, Iraq, and Somalia, Denmark's Muslims are disproportionately poor and unemployed.

  In the 2001 election, the extreme right-wing Danish People's Party (DPP) captured 12 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest political party in Denmark's parliament. The DPP's “party program” declares that “Denmark is not an immigrant country and has never been so. Therefore, we will not accept a transformation to a multiethnic society. Denmark belongs to the Danes.” According to the DPP's program, “To make Denmark multiethnic would mean that reactionary cultures, hostile to evolution, would break down our so-far stable, homogeneous society.” Meanwhile, the Liberal Party, which actually won the 2001 elections, also took an anti-immigration stance, although less virulent than the DPP's. Particularly successful were pro-law-and-order campaign ads showing young Muslim immigrants convicted of rape and their head scarf-wearing relatives screaming at the press. The leader of the Liberal Party, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, focused his campaign on immigration reform, promising to protect Denmark's cradle-to-grave welfare system from exploitation by outsiders. “Denmark must not be the social security office for the rest of the world,” he declared.33

  Part of what makes Islam so difficult for the EU to tolerate is the resistance to assimilation and the violence endorsed by Isla
mic extremists. The problem of “tolerating intolerance” is one that all Western nations now face. In Europe's case, however, the problem is compounded by the “ghettoization” of its Muslim communities: the fact that from Scandinavia to Spain, despite starkly different approaches to minorities, Europe's Muslims tend overwhelmingly to live in isolated enclaves, separated physically, culturally, and psychologically from their European compatriots.

  These enclaves—typically slumlike, crime-filled, frustration-ridden housing projects on the outskirts of major cities such as Marseilles or Amsterdam—are not only poor vehicles for assimilation into the larger society. They are breeding grounds for militant Islam, as witnessed by the popularity of bin Laden posters in teenage bedrooms in French Muslim apartments and the terrorist cells recently uncovered in Madrid, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Milan, and London.34

  Europe's difficulties with its immigrant, and especially Muslim, communities do not seem to be abating. On the contrary, the headlines of violence and unrest have grown more ominous, from the 2004 Madrid train bombings; to the murder of Dutch filmmaker and critic of Islam Theo van Gogh; to the 2005 race riots in France; to the “cartoon jihad” that began in Denmark and quickly spread throughout Europe and the Middle East; to the London Tube bombings that left fifty-two dead; to the foiled 2006 plot by British Pakistani Muslims to detonate liquid explosives on multiple airliners over the Atlantic. Ironically, while Americans presumably remain the primary object of extremist Islamic hatred, the consensus is now that the United States has a done a better job than Europe integrating its Muslim communities, thereby staving off, at least so far, the problem of “homegrown” Islamic terrorism.

  The EU's “Muslim problem” profoundly shapes and complicates current European attitudes toward not only immigration but the eventual size and nature of the Union itself. While in theory the enlargement of the EU has no inherent geographical limits, there are important real-world constraints on the EU's expansion. Turkey's accession negotiations have slowed down considerably, with France and Austria insisting that Turkey's “special” circumstances require new procedures—specifically, popular referenda—before accession can be permitted. And certainly the EU has no present plans for trying to incorporate, say, India, with its immense and overwhelmingly poor, non-Christian population.

  These practical limits on the EU's expansion, together with the resistance to immigration prevalent in many EU nations, leave Europe in one respect at a significant disadvantage relative to the United States. Despite its phenomenal successes, the EU has not found a way to attract and exploit the most valuable human capital from all over the world. It remains, by comparison to the United States, less open and less appealing to the enterprising, techsavvy young talent from India, Pakistan, Russia, Israel, Taiwan, China, and elsewhere who are looking to leave their home countries and capitalize on their skills.

  On the other hand, there are signs on the horizon that the United States cannot take its advantage for granted. For example, perhaps because of 9/11 and the plethora of new European scholarships and free tuition packages, Europe today attracts almost twice as many foreign students as does the United States. Nevertheless, the United States remains by far the world's leading single-country destination for foreign students, particularly attractive to students from China, India, and elsewhere in Asia.35

  On a more personal level, I asked a Yale Law student of Indian descent, who spent the summer of 2006 in India, to conduct a series of interviews for me. The interviewees included small-business owners, students, bank employees, technology consultants, and other upwardly mobile Indians in Mumbai, Bangalore, and New Delhi. They were questioned about their perceptions of relative economic opportunity around the world. One question was whether the United States, the EU, or Canada offered better prospects for Indian immigrants. Here is a representative sampling of their responses:

  Europe is less attractive than the U.S. for Indians. Except for England, the countries are not welcoming. The culture just does not match with ours, and we cannot speak their languages.

  Europe offers fewer opportunities. People are crazy for the U.S. The U.S. has much more opportunity; it is easier to survive because of the system—it is a full-fledged democracy. The language makes it easier. And people in Europe are more racist.

  Canada is big and half of it is covered in snow…The U.S. obviously offers more opportunities. But there are a few industries in Canada that I think do well globally, like steel. Still, even for that I wouldn't want to work there. They have very little vegetarian food.

  Canada is still considered and referred to as a subnation and only in relation with the U.S. It has still to develop an identity of its own.

  Europe will offer more opportunities in time, but not yet. The EU is taking a much more proactive approach in investing and in establishing and promoting trade and commerce. But there are language barriers.

  Europe is a very very costly state. Therefore the opportunities are not often looked to by Indian people. Also India and the U.S. have better financial and cultural ties.

  [Europeans] are much more racist against Indians. And the language and the climate are a problem. London is nice, but for work people should go to the U.S.

  These responses are obviously not a scientific study, just the impressions of a tiny handful, but they do confirm what a larger body of evidence suggests. At least for now, the United States is still perceived as the place where motivated immigrants can most easily rise, where hard work is most likely to cash out. This is why America continues to draw even European brain power rather than vice versa; as of 2004, there were roughly 400,000 European science and technology graduates employed in the United States and very few comparable Americans working in Europe.36

  Of course, from the European perspective, the EU's relatively restrictive immigration policies may not be a bad thing. Like China, the European states have never claimed the goal of turning themselves into multiethnic immigrant societies. Similarly, most Europeans probably favor the slowdown of the EU's expansion. As a postimperial superpower, the EU has no interest in incorporating Russia or the countries of Asia and Africa simply for the sake of enlargement. But if one of the EU's goals is to restore a multipolar world order, these limits may prevent its attainment of that goal. For so long as the EU permits America to remain the destination for the world's most valuable human capital, Europe may be ceding to the United States the global technological and economic edge that has made America a hyperpower.

  THE UNDERDOG: INDIA

  During the 2006 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Confederation of Indian Industry chose the logo “India Everywhere.” And in Davos, India was everywhere. India's slogan leapt from buses and billboards, Indian delegates handed out free iPods with Bollywood's latest hits, and members of the Indian government known to economists as India's “Dream Team” lauded their country's prospects with potential investors. During the final social extravaganza, the chairman of the forum, Klaus Schwab, donned an Indian turban and shawl while discussing Indian investment opportunities against the backdrop of an electric-blue Taj Mahal. “No country,” Newsweek announced in its coverage of Davos, “has [so] captured the imagination of the conference and dominated the conversation as India in 2006.”

  India's success at the World Economic Forum has added to the growing talk of India as the next potential world superpower. With an annual crop of 400,000 graduates in technology and engineering, a large English-speaking professional base, and an economy booming with an average of 7 percent growth for the past four years running, India, according to many pundits, politicians, and investors, has become the power to watch in the twenty-first century.37

  India's economic star began rising in the early 1990s, when finance minister Manmohan Singh slashed government spending and devalued the rupee to prevent the country from defaulting on its international debt. In exchange, Singh, a Cambridge-educated economist, received several billion dollars from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Singh then moved aggressively to eliminate bureaucratic restrictions hampering foreign investment. These moves to liberalize India's economy led to high inflation and an increase in unemployment in the short term. However, within five years, the Indian economy had grown more than it had in the previous forty years. A decade later, Foreign Affairs declared India to be “a roaring capitalist success story.”38

  India's success in siphoning off capital and jobs from more developed countries has already begun to rankle Americans. In the 2004 U.S. presidential race, the outsourcing of business and employment to India emerged as a hot-button political issue. Since that time, India has only gotten better at attracting U.S. investment: Today, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies outsource IT work to India. Multinationals such as Intel, IBM, Dell, Motorola, Yahoo!, and AOL all have major operations in India. On average, forty international companies set up business in an Indian city every month. President Bush noted the rise of India and China as new competitors in his 2006 State of the Union address, and in March 2006 he became the fifth U.S. president to pay a state visit to India.39

  President Bush's March 2006 visit to India highlighted not only the country's economic strength but also its military power. With approximately two million people in its regular and paramilitary forces, India has one of the largest armies in the world. In 1998, India burst into the ranks of nuclear powers by conducting five nuclear tests, but was promptly slapped with economic sanctions by President Clinton. By contrast, President Bush legitimized India's nuclear program by brokering an agreement in which the United States would sell nuclear fuel and reactor components to India (in exchange for India's opening its civilian facilities to international inspections).