IF THERE HAD BEEN AN EU...:

The European Idea lies dead, killed by the credit crunch: The crisis in the eurozone marks the end of the dream of the continent as a superpower (Rafael Behrf, 5/23/10, The Observer)

History offers only two models for the integration of different countries, with competing national interests and rival strategic ambitions, into a single, unified economic and political system. There is conquest and there is the European Union.

Some of the EU's more hysterical critics don't see much difference between the two. But in reality, there is something superb in the agreement by European nations to set aside centuries of slaughter, and create a single marketplace whose rules are decided by collaboration and compromise. It is the only miracle ever performed by committee.

That, in essence, is the European Idea. It is not a destination but a trajectory – from atavistic nationalism to co-operative internationalism. The assumption has been that "ever-closer union", as mandated by the 1957 Treaty of Rome, must be desirable because the alternative would be a relapse into ever-wider disunion, a path forbidden by atrocious history. So the crisis currently afflicting the euro is not just financial, it is existential. Never before has one of the EU's grand projects looked so close to going into reverse.

...it would have been able to impose cuts on the state of Greece from above. There is not one because the nationalism from below was always stronger than the transnationalism of the elites. But what truly doomed the EU was simple demographics.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2010 7:51 AM