David P. Calleo (1934–2023)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/922824.html

Calleo's book, published in 2001, is strongly recommended for academics and wannabe academics - especially, I think, in Europe; his dispassionate analysis of how the EU got to where it was then, and what the options for its future development really are, are a welcome relief from the euphoria or despondency about it which I tend to be exposed to here. He provides massive amounts of citations for further reading, including extensive reference to himself (the book is an answer to his own 1964 Europe's Future, in which he claims to have forecast how it would all develop, and it wouldn't surprise me if that were true). In particular, I found myself very enlightened by his economic analysis, of how the dollar as a world currency has functioned as a system of indirect taxation by the US on everyone else, and how the single currency was in part a response to that. Calleo rather despairs of US attitudes to the rest of the world, and since 2001 his despair has rather increased (for the 2003 paperback edition he adds a post-9/11 postscript, but he is even more eloquent on the subject in person).… (meer)