For years, skeptics warned of multiple threats to the European project. The strains of the single currency, they said, would rip it apart. Excessive regulation was another concern, along with lack of democratic accountability. Some felt Europe’s different peoples were just too different.
The reality, of course, has turned out to be much less complex. As real estate brokers say, it’s all about location. Europe is, quite simply, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the consequences may rip it apart. If the escalating migration crisis of the last year has shown anything, it is that geography really, really matters. The Middle East — or more accurately, a handful of countries within it — is on fire. Many people who live there quite reasonably want to leave. And mainland Europe is the closest, richest and safest place for them to go. Some countries have the advantage of distance. Getting there is hard. America and Australia sit behind vast oceans that allow them to pick and choose who can legally cross their borders. Potential migrants can be made to wait 40 years if necessary, while their paperwork is processed.
Mainland Europe, though, is stuck. It cannot find a moral reason to stop people arriving because one does not exist. “Keeping Europe’s riches for Europe” is an understandable sentiment, but not particularly inspiring. Nor is it going to be easy or even possible to erect enough fences to stop migrants.
Largely as a result, it’s a toxic time to be a leader. For now, German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains the linchpin of the continent. Her position, though, now looks far more assailable; some analysts believe she could fall within the year. Today, in almost every country, political elites look much less capable of handling worsening problems — even if French elections showed far-right extremists making significantly fewer gains than many had feared.
Merkel’s decision last year to promise asylum to any Syrians who could reach Germany now looks like an error that might be encouraging some of the flood. By the same token, then, the more potential migrants believe Europe will shut its doors, the more sense it makes to for them to move now. As more migrants arrive, it’s hardly surprising that some Europeans are asking what right they have to the welfare systems they did nothing to build. It’s a dangerous argument, though. Those arriving from Middle East conflict zones might equally complain that western foreign policy helped create the wars they flee — although arguably, the mainland European countries bearing the brunt of the crisis are less to blame.
Stabilizing the Middle East, of course, would reduce the pressure on Europe. What is most striking about the current crisis, however, is that the conflict-affected countries providing the bulk of the migrants — Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular — are precisely those where Washington and its allies have exerted the greatest effort in recent years trying to create stability.
Europe is still, it’s worth remembering, one of the world’s best places to live when it comes to life expectancy, rights and access to benefits. That stability, however, is not guaranteed. The 1930s remind us of just how unpleasant the continent can become when populism and xenophobia run rampant. And even without that, the resurgence of Cold War-style strains with Russia mean state-on-state war in Eastern Europe is once again not entirely unthinkable.
One thing is for sure, though — history isn’t quite done with Europe yet. And the years to come may well be as tough as anything in recent memory.

SOURCE:   http://www.arabnews.com/columns/news/870666