FES Analyse: USA That is greater than the combined populations of present-day France and Italy. In Europe, there will be 2.1 old people per child by 2025 and 2.6 by 2051. Along with Japan, some European na­tions will be the oldest in the world. The contrast with the U.S. seems striking, at first glance. The U.S. has a fertility rate hovering around the 2.1 child per family replacement level. This is substantially higher than the Euro­pean rate, which is well below replacement and ranges from 1.2 at the low end(Italy and Spain) and 1.8 at the upper end(France and Ire­land). But the“demographic exceptionalism” of the United States is something of a myth as well. Most of the higher fertility rate in the U.S. is due to the native black and immigrant Latin American populations. The fertility rate of“An­glos” – non-Hispanic white Americans – is 1.84, which is comparable to that of France and Ire­land. As a result chiefly of high immigrant fertility, the U.S. population is expected to grow from 283 million in 2000 to 397 million in 2050, while the German population, absent greater immigration, may shrink from 82 million to 70.8 million (France, by contrast, is expected to grow from 59.2 million to 61.8 million). But the assumption of both continued high U.S. fertility and low migration to Europe may be unrealistic. While Mexican and other Latin American immigrants have large families, their assimilated children and grand-children are likely to adapt to the small-family norm which white English-speaking Americans share with Europeans and East Asians. Even now, with mo­re than one million legal immigrants a year, the U.S. is on the verge of falling below the replace­ment fertility rate of 2.1 percent. Immigration from Mexico itself will decline because of falling 5 Mexican fertility. And it seems likely that an aging Europe will accept far more young immi­grants in the future. The idea that the U.S. in the future will be a young, dynamic“demographic superpower” while Europe is a decrepit retirement home is as much an exaggeration as Robert Kagan’s contrast of the militaristic American“Mars” with the pacifist European“Venus.” In its demographic profile the U.S. will resemble Europe and East Asia, even if on average the U.S. is somewhat younger. Europe and North America will face similar chal­lenges in dealing with a larger number of the elderly and a smaller population of young peo­ple. While aging will“Europeanize” America, immigration to Europe will“Americanize” Eu­rope. A source of emigrants in the past, Europe, graying and with low fertility, is now the desti­nation of growing inward migration. As a result, Europeans must deal with challenges of assimila­tion and ethnic politics with which Americans have long been familiar. Even as the U.S. is moving toward European­style social liberalism and secularism, Europe is becoming ever more American in the realms of the economy and constitutional politics. Since the 1980s, under the influence of neoliberalism, European governments of both left and right have been moving away from statist social de­mocracy toward more market-based economies with less generous entitlements. American constitutional theories are conquer­ing Europe as well as American economics. Par­liamentary democracy rather than American­style separation of powers remains the European norm. But the American constitutional devices of judicial review, bills of rights, and federalism have been adopted by many European countries that used to dismiss them, such as Britain. Geopolitics: Diverging Interests The long-term trans-Atlantic convergence in so­cial structure and values does not translate into foreign policy harmony. Even as their societies are becoming more alike, the geopolitical in­terests of the U.S. and Europe are diverging. During the Cold War, the United States pur­sued a policy of“dual containment” which sought to counter Soviet intimidation of Western Europe and East Asia while preventing the re­emergence of West Germany and Japan as re-