The European Century is a term, which was first used by Mark Leonard in his book Perpetual Power: Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century and is used to describe the belief that the 21st century will become a century in which the current European way of doing things will become dominant in the world. Especially the European integration process which culminated in the European Union is highlighted. This author explicitly rejects that the European Union will dominate the world by being a powerful empire. Mark Leonard is a British foreign policy thinker and the author of the book Why Europe will run the 21st Century. ... This article is about the continent. ...

The next century is depicted by Leonard as a century in which most of the world copies the current European way of doing things like obeying international law, promoting democratic values, multilateral cooperation and humanitarian interventions. The world would become a world of peace, prosperity and democracy. To a large extent this view resembles Idealism in international relations theory. International relations theory attempts to provide a conceptual model upon which international relations can be analyzed. ...

The term is used in contrast to the 20th century which is sometimes called the American Century and which is often assumed to have been dominated by power politics (which resembles Realism in international relations). ... Power politics is a state of international relations in which sovereigns protect their own interests by threatening one another with military, economic, or political aggression. ...

References

LEONARD, M., The Project for a New European Century. [URL= [1]]

See also

• The End of History and the Last Man, written by Francis Fukuyama
• American century
• Asian century
• Pacific century
• Indian century