The article SSR #10: Europe, The Black Continent forms a basis of discussion for the Europa forum. Just to get things going. Please visit the above link for the full article.

This is the first of fifteen Sublime Strategic Reports (SSRs) covering global trends, regions, and geopolitics, a list of which you can see on the sidebar to the right on the main forum page. I start off by looking at Europe, defined as the region under the influence of Western Christianity and/or the European Union (not Russia or Turkey, which will be covered in a later Eurasia Report).

[Warning: it's quite pessimistic, unconventional, and even "doomerish", and probably too obsessed with the realist interpretation of international relations. <img src="http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/forum/my-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_wink.gif" title=":wink:" class="bb_smilies" /> ]

--------------------

The Big Questions

1. Demographic problems: aging, low fertility and Eurabia?
2. The unsustainability of the modern welfare state?
3. Cultural decline & reaction against liberal rationalism?
4. The return of Great Power politics? (e.g. Mearsheimer 1990), & the decline of the EU and growing centrality of Franco-German relations, - or will the EU survive, and if so in what form?
5. National trends: a secure, "flourishing" France; a troubled but powerful Germany; Poland beset on two fronts; marginalized Britain, Spain & Italy, all in decline; Sweden as preeminent Baltic power; on the outskirts, both Russia and Turkey increase their power - realistic?
6. The retreat into authoritarianism and militarism? Europe as a Black Continent?

[A possible future European alliance / categorization system. Black - the expansionist Germans, Turks and Russians. Dark gray - France and its allies, Poland and Sweden. Gray - the relatively weak "balancing powers": Britain will lean more towards France, Italy more towards Germany, but none want to see a European hegemon. Light gray - too weak to really matter].

...
Conclusions

As a result of the epochal shifts in the global balance of power brought on by peak oil and the waning of Pax Americana, within the next decade the geopolitical structure of Europe will experience a profound transformation. The post-historical EU project will die when history returns to Europe. As Britain weakens and splinters into its constituent parts, and as the Mediterranean powers retreat under the weight of their manifold demographic, fiscal, and economic problems, the old struggle between France, Germany and Russia for European hegemony will resume.

This will entail a complex balance of power system. A powerful France will seek to encircle an ailing but still formidable Germany by allying itself with Visegrad and Sweden, while maximizing its own power by asserting itself in its Mediterranean backyard. Germany will make a wary alliance with Russia, and try to break free of its encirclement by threatening Poland, undermining France, and hedging with a Turkish alliance. Meanwhile, Russia and Turkey may come into intense geopolitical competition over the fate of the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia; however, should Turkey focus its expansion into the Middle East, their relations will likely be quiescent. (But this issue is for the Eurasia SSR). As the world energy and climate crisis worsens with every passing decade, Europe will return to its future – the Black Continent.