AMERICA HAVING CRUSHED THE -ISMS:

Today's European Union is 27 states in search of a story: The silent empire has expanded again. There is so much to celebrate - but why do we see so little celebration? (Timothy Garton Ash, January 4, 2007, The Guardian)

On New Year's Day, the silent empire expanded again. Its new colonies celebrated their incorporation as a liberation - which, for most individual Romanians and Bulgarians, it will be. Twenty years ago, they were the impoverished subjects of dictatorships. (Remember Nicolae Ceausescu and his Securitate secret police?) Now they are citizens of the largest, most integrated community of liberal democracies in the world. For all the corruption, unemployment and other discontents of their current, very imperfect democracies, that is progress. Meanwhile, countries around the empire's edge queue up crying: "Take us in, please!" Of what other empire in history has that been true? For the silent empire is also a voluntary empire, a commonwealth of consent.

As it grows to 27 countries, the European Union is the most successful example of peaceful regime change in our time. More than half its member states were dictatorships well within living memory. Their advance towards liberal democracy has gone hand in hand with their advance towards membership of what is now the European Union. In every corner of the continent most people are better off and more free than they were half a century ago.

The story is, of course, the victory of the Anglo-American empire of ideas, so don't expect Euros to celebrate.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2007 9:06 AM