Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

In terms of political culture the differences are undeniable. But to take the loudly proclaimed transatlantic alienation of the early 2000s at face value as a description of economic or geopolitical reality would be self-deceiving in a double sense.60 The idea that “social Europe” had deviated in any essential way from the logic of turbocharged “financial capitalism” as exemplified by America was an illusion. In fact, Europe’s financial capitalism was even more spectacularly overgrown and it owed a large part of its growth to its deep entanglement in the American boom. Furthermore, whatever the differences over Iraq, Europe’s pose of geopolitical innocence is a historically recent phenomenon. Though it balked at Iraq, France remains a hardened postcolonial war fighter. Nor does Europe only do “small wars.” As recently as the 1980s the European members of NATO had been active participants in winning the cold war and making the victory stick. Given the dramatic escalation of tension with the Soviet Union, the stakes could hardly have been higher. Particularly notable was the Federal Republic’s commitment to hard power. At its peak, the Bundeswehr had a standing strength of 500,000, with a mobilization strength of 1.3 million. The deployment of nuclear-armed cruise and Pershing missiles to Europe in 1983 was a transatlantic effort that bonded a generation of Atlanticists in the face of concerted opposition from the Left in both Europe and the United States.61 The high priests...