The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent [Paperback]

The middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century were rather rough for the good old Europe. The economic doldrums coupled with a spate of civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and a lot of social uncertainty created a very dire image that was reflected in several books and publications that were published around that time. Many of these books (such as "While Europe Slept," "Menace in Europe," "America Alone," and of course this one - "The Last Days of Europe") had a very stark and foreboding view of the current situation. These books were in part a reaction to an almost pathological refusal by the European intellectual and political elites to even acknowledge that there is a problem, to say nothing about its nature or the possible solutions. At the time of their publication, these books polarized American (and needless to say European) public opinions. However, as I write this review about five years later, heads of states of Germany, France and the United Kingdom had publicly denounced "multiculturalism" as practiced in their societies, and have all called for a greater integration of immigrants. This is a welcome development and a vindication of the views and arguments that had just a few years earlier been dismissed as belonging to the fringe extremist groups. Unfortunately, many of the trends that had been criticized in the above books (most notably the steep demographical decline of most European countries) have been going on for way too long, and there is not even the remotest theoretical possibility that they could be reversed in the foreseeable future.

The misconception that the critical views of the future of Europe come only from the extremists should have been immediately put to rest once one comes across works by Walter Laqueur. A Holocaust survivor and an eminent historian with decades of impeccable academic credentials, Laqueur embodies what a thoughtful and informative social critic ought to be like. He is methodical in presenting his evidence, and one never gets a sense that he gloats over the misdirected policies that he describes and criticizes. Indeed, he comes across as someone who is deeply rooted in all the great achievements of the European civilization, and writes about Europe's decline with a genuine concern and regret.

Laqueur concentrates most of his analysis on three distinct countries: United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Even though it has become fashionable to lump all "Old Europe" countries together, and even European elites are striving to present themselves as speaking form a unified position, the fact remains that the facts on the ground are sometimes drastically different when one takes a closer look at each big European country individually. The profile of immigrants, and especially Muslim immigrants, varies widely as one moves from one country to another. In the UK majority of the Muslim immigrants are from the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), in France they are predominantly north-African Arabs, while in Germany they are Turks and Kurds. There are a lot of internal tensions between different immigrant groups, and very often their loyalties are foremost with their ethnic group and not with their religious affiliation. Furthermore, the exact level of religiosity, and the extent that it influences immigrant attitude, is highly debatable. This is especially true of the younger immigrants who had been born and raised in their adoptive countries. Laqueur on occasion draws on the examples from Spain, Italy, Russia and a few other countries, but the "big three" dominate his analysis.

One thing that I wish this book spent more time on is the impact of the European social state on all of the other deleterious trends. Laqueur touches upon this topic a few times, and even offers a few ideas that have been circulated around in recent years, but he doesn't strongly endorse any one of them nor does he delve deeper into this topic. This is unfortunate, because a strong case could be made that, if not being the root-cause of many of the problems that are mentioned in this book, then at the very least the various social and economic incentives that have been at work in Europe since the end of the Second World War have at the very least significantly contributed to them. It would be interesting to read a comprehensive critique of the present-day ills that are plaguing Europe which is based on the analysis of the European social state.

Overall, this is an incredibly insightful and informative book on some of the major social problems that are affecting Europe. Despite the grim title, I am still somewhat optimistic that Europe will be able to pull itself from the brink of a precipice. However, decisive actions need to be taken, and taken soon. Hopefully a book like this one can be instrumental in mobilizing hearts and minds for such painful but necessary actions.

This book is one of a growing canon of literature concerning how Europe is doomed due to a mixture of a bloated and unsustainable welfare state, demographic collapse, difficulty in assimilating Muslim immigrants and EU corruption. This book is slightly different from other similar titles, such as "America Alone" by Mark Steyn and "While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer, although there is over lap between all three.

"Last Days of Europe" is a lot more detailed than the other two, and whilst it heaps scorn on the European welfare state, it's critique is much more detailed and refined than the other two. Similarly, it hesitates to describe street crime by Muslims as being motivated by radical Islamist contempt for their victims, and instead views it simply as street crime divorced from any political or religious agenda. Throughout the author seems to dismiss the notion of a future sharia Europe, although he predicts Muslims would become more politically assertive with possible controlling shares in left wing social democrat parties.

The book also looks at the European Union in more detail than the other two books, and the author's disappointment with the way it functions and treats it's people very apparent. He scoffs at the notion it is a super power in making, and argues that the EU will spend the next few decades struggling to survive, never mind strutting the global stage as a light unto the nations. The author's analysis of Russia in the C21st is the best I have read on the subject so far, and most other authors tend to ignore Russia and instead focus on Western Europe.

The book does have one or two weakness. There is one fairly big factual error (he says Greece joined the EU in 2000, when it had been a member for some time before that) and the author seems to confuse the statistical concepts of birth rate and percentage of births. The author also writes in a gloomy, resigned tone that Europe is on its way down, and offers no solutions at all concerning how to deal with it. Given his knowledge, some opinions on how to deal with this "Apocalypse Europe" would have been very interesting.

All in all, a very strong offering that will be best read and enjoyed alongside "While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer and "America Alone" by Mark Steyn, and the reader will find the contrast between the three books on the same topic very enlightening. Highly recommended.

The author's main thesis is that certain optimistic predictions about Europe's successful future are unrealistic because they fail to account for some serious mounting problems. These problems can be summarised as the low native birth-rate, excessive Muslim immigration to Europe, increasing opposition to European unity and the increasingly unaffordable welfare state in a Europe with ageing populations.

The author demonstrates his Jewish perspective by seeing only Muslim immigration as a threat to Europe's future. Although he correctly identifies most conflict as being of an ethnic rather than theological nature, he has next to nothing to say about immigration from the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, indeed, he has a positive view of Latin American immigration even though immigration from all of these non-Muslim sources is leading to exactly the same kind of social welfare abuse, unemployment, street violence and ghetto formation as immigration to Europe from the Muslim world.

The author makes many assumptions he expects us to take on trust. He seems to see increasing European integration under the corrupt, globalist and anti-democratic European Union as a strength for Europe, therefore growing opposition to the European Union as a weakness. Yet all those amongst the native people of Europe fighting their civilisational decline oppose the European Union. The author supposes that the native people of Europe, will continue to appease the aggressive, antagonistic newcomers, yet even at the time of writing, clear signs of growing anger amongst the native people of Europe were becoming obvious. This makes the author's predicted outcome of a slow decline and gradual consensual synthesis of the native and foreign questionable. Is Yugoslavia's break-up a more instructive model? The author doesn't consider the possibility. He also assumes that population ageing makes the necessity of immigration unquestionable. How improving technology will effect the economics of caring for an ageing population isn't considered, neither how gradual population decline could lower the cost of living for example by making accommodation cheaper.

Yet another serious failing of the book is that although it contains a bibliography, it contains no references. This makes the few facts and statistics offered unverifiable and therefore worthless.

Overall, I was disappointed. It's a light, easy read but there's plenty of common sense but very little analysis, very little substantiation of arguments, very little in the way of hard information. There's nothing that's not said better by Pat Buchanan, Sam Huntington and a host of writers specialising in Muslim immigration to Europe. Most of all, the book is hopelessly defeatist.