Niall Ferguson argues against the idea that the European Union is an emerging "counterweight" to American power. He suggests that the European Union is actually a moribund institution--economically stagnant, culturally decadent, politically stalemated, and geopolitically impotent. More than is generally acknowledged in the United States, the historic process of European integration is drawing to a close. Incapable of simultaneously enlarging its membership and deepening its quasi-federal structures, the European Union threatens to dissolve into an inchoate "multi-speed Europe," an entity which could end up being little more than a free trade area with a supreme court attached. Europe today, Ferguson contends, is geographically and metaphorically "between Brussels and Byzantium."

Niall Ferguson is Herzog Professor of Financial History at the Stern School of Business at New York University and a senior research fellow at Jesus College at Oxford University, where he is also visiting professor of history. He holds a senior fellowship at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1897-1927 (1995); The Pity of War: Explaining World War One (1998); The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (1998); and The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (2001). His most recent book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2003), has been a bestseller in both Britain and the United States.