Hands across the water: can a trade pact with Europe help America tame China?

• Author: Stangler, Dane
• Position: The Resurgence of the West: How a Transatlantic Union Can Prevent War and Restore the United States and Europe by Richard Rosecrance - Book review

The Resurgence of the West: How a Transatlantic Union Can Prevent War and Restore the United States and Europe

by Richard Rosecrance Yale University Press, 204 pp.

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Few people, upon observing economic and social events in Europe in recent years, would conclude that a logical next step is for the United States to forge an economic and political union with the Old World. Richard Rosecrance, however, believes this is not only a sensible course but also essential for America's future and the avoidance of war.

The United States, says Rosecrance, who directs the Project on U.S.-China Relations at Harvard's Belfer Center, is in decline and can do little to reverse it. According to inexorable historical logic, "the scepter of primacy" is moving to China. Instead of doing anything about this, the United States "sits numb," a "decadent" nation that, under President Barack Obama, has been "able to skate over the cracks in the pavement." Meanwhile, China is the vigorous challenger marching toward global dominance.

For Rosecrance, this state of affairs threatens to spark a "new world war," and he leans heavily on a parallel with the European alliances and power balancing of a century ago. He makes clear that China is the twenty-first-century incarnation of Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany in the belle epoque.

The only hope for a bright American future and for heading off this clash lies in a "new Western union," first with Europe and then with Japan. Rosecrance draws a quick sketch of world economic history to develop the idea that bigger economic units are generally more successful than smaller ones in sustaining growth and living standards. Thus, countries must join together in larger economic unions. Geopolitically, a union of Europe and the United States would create an "overbalance of power" vis-a-vis China and hopefully deter any aggression on their part. Unless the two halves of the West come together, Rosecrance says, "they willboth lose ground."

As far-fetched as this idea sounds, a version of it is actually moving forward. In his State of the Union address earlier this year Obama called for a "comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership" (TTIP) with the European Union, a free trade pact that he said would support "millions of good-paying American jobs." European leaders, long interested in such an agreement, readily assented. In July negotiators from the United States and the EU met in Washington for the first...