Europa w cieniu imperium

• Authors: Joanna Kołodziej

Title variants

EN

EUROPE IN THE SHADE THE EMPIRE

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Once we used to say that the world is divided between rich and poor, then between north and south, after that people often used a slogan: the west and the rest. Today this west is America. There has been a huge turn in the way of thinking about our world. Many political scientists and sociologists say nowadays, that there is no west anymore, it has lost its significance. Ways of the Europe and USA had split. It is time to cease pretending that, Europeans and Americans still think about world in the same way, because now they live in two entirely different worlds. Of course, they both have same ideas and aspirations, but they perceive the world, define notions and means of international policy otherwise. That is why they often disagree and cannot really understand each other. The abyss between them is getting tremendously large. The question, which appears is: How is it possible, that Europe and America changed their attitude to international policy so radically? Yet it was Europe, where all the religious, ethnical and national wars took place, where Napoleon, Bismarck or Hitler ruled, and it was America where all the citizens denounced the XIX century imperial European policy. It appears that the strategic cultures have changed all the way around. That situation was possible, because in the 20th century it was the USA, that became a world-power even stronger than Europe. Before, America was too weak and had not enough military power to conduct forceful policy of power. Nowadays Americans reigns in world’s most important domains: technology, economy, military and culture and that makes it the only world-power. Europe unfortunately had to say goodbye to its hegemony and now it has to rely on international law because its military power is embarrassingly tiny in comparison with American.

Keywords

EN

IMPERIALISM; INTERNATIONAL POLICY

• Publisher: Księgarnia Akademicka
• Journal: Euro-Facta
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 1. From totalitarism to citizen's societes in the United Europe
• Pages: 385-389

Contributors

author

Joanna Kołodziej

• Institute For European Studies, Faculty of International and Political Studies, Jagiellonian University, ul. Jodłowa 13, 30-252 Kraków, Poland