What Does Europe Want? (with Almut Rochowanski)

Podcast #1

The End of Dinner, Jules-Alexandre Grün (1913)

I’ve decided to experiment with adding video/audio here. Maybe I’ll continue doing it, and maybe I’ll never do it again–who knows!

My first guest is Almut Rochowanski, a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, an activist and NGO manager for many years before that, and a writer on European affairs. Almut recently published a piece titled “Europe’s leaders have no strategy for peace” in Jacobin, and this was what compelled me to reach out to have this conversation. In recent weeks, several pieces have been published in English-language media about Europe grappling with its position in the world in the wake of Trump’s second term, America’s relative decline, the emergence of a multipolar world, and the war in Ukraine. These reveal a Europe in the midst of an identity crisis. As such, I am giving this first stab at an interview the unbearably pompous title “What does Europe want?” (I have just googled that question and it is apparently also the title of a book co-authored by Srećko Horvat and Slavoj Žižek. What can I say? The Balkans are never far).

A few of the other recent pieces I mention in my conversation with Almut, for further reading:

Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, “The scramble for Europe is just beginning”

The Economist, “To avoid crushing change Europe must take control of its destiny”

Hans Kundnani, New Statesman, “Europe’s victim complex”