politics

Is the EU a failed experiment?

Hoover Institution
New York University
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale

Bruce Thornton

Hoover Institution

April 1st, 2021
The European Union has been troubled since its formal birth in 1993. Each crisis since then, from the ethnic bloodletting in the Balkans in the Nineties, to the Great Recession in 2008-9, to the current bungling of Covid vaccine distribution–all have laid bare the flawed assumptions obvious in its foundational ideas.
Those assumptions come from the century-long project of globalism and its Kantian notion of an international order uniting diverse peoples and nations, and managed by a multinational and transnational suite of institutions, covenants, and international laws that would regulate interstate relations, especially global trade and global conflict. Such a global order could minimize interstate violence, resolve conflict through diplomatic engagement rather than war, and encourage the progress of nations towards greater prosperity, political freedom, confessional tolerance, and human rights.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemingly validated this idealism, especially for Europe. The horrors of Nazism and fascism were blamed on nationalist parochial passions and zero-sum interests. Ancient rivalries on the Continent had nearly destroyed Europe; a "Parliament of Nations," as Kant called it, managed by technocrats above petty partisan and national interests, could avoid such disasters. After all, didn't NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the U.N., and other transnational institutions bring the Cold War to an end with relatively few casualties?
So the E.U. was created to be one of the "poles" in the multipolar world that succeeded the Cold War bipolar nuclear stand off. In a few years a monetary union with a single currency promised to facilitate and coordinate trade among the member states. Now the E.U. could balance the U.S. both economically and in terms of global influence, particularly in the use of "soft power" to manage international relations.
The fatal flaw of this idealism was its false assumption that national identities and nationalism are toxic, in need of institutional guard rails to check their dangerous rivalries. By ceding some national sovereignty to the bureaus and agencies of the E.U., a more efficient and just political order could be achieved.
But it hasn't worked out that way. First, it has not been clear what the core beliefs are that could unite such diverse and various cultures, histories, folkways, national interests, and customs tightly enough to ensure efficient functioning and cohesive loyalty. Europe was created in the first place by the Greco-Roman and Christian civilization. With religion fading in much of Europe, and patriotism, the affection for one's own people, language, and culture demonized as incipient fascism, what's left to unite the peoples under the E.U. banner into a cohesive people, one willing to fight and die for their European identity?
Second, the top-down structure of the E.U. created a huge democracy-deficit. The organs of E.U. government and the technocrats in Brussels and Strasburg are not accountable to ordinary citizens. As Brexit showed, this distance between citizens and rulers creates resentment, a centrifugal force we see at this moment with the sniping and bickering among E.U. member-states over the disastrous vaccine distribution.
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