December 16, 2010
THE EU IS BARELY A THREAT TO EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNTY ANY MORE...:
A New Paul Revere: a review of The New Road to Serfdom by Daniel Hannan (John Fonte , 12/20/10, National Review)
[F]or this reviewer Hannan’s most trenchant advice appears in the chapter entitled “America in the World.” Hannan, who has spent eleven years in the European Union (EU) capitals of Brussels and Strasbourg, minces no words in analyzing the EU, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the distortions of the new international law, and the challenge that the global-governance project and supra-nationalism present to democratic self-government everywhere.Eschewing foreign-policy-speak, Hannan tells us that “the structures of the EU are intrinsically anti-democratic” and that “faced with a choice between democracy and supra-nationalism, the EU will always choose supra-nationalism.” The ICC “entrenches autocrats and weakens democrats”: “Never mind representative democracy, never mind natural justice. All that matters to the transnational elites [who run the ICC] is power.” Hannan rightly decries the transformation of international law that began in the 1990s: It is morphing into transnational law, and moving, slowly but steadily, from a being a system based on relations between nation-states to being a vehicle for global judicial activism that promotes an “anti-conservative,” politicized version of “human rights.”
Hannan notes that the Euro-integrationists have a very different worldview than the majority of Americans, who believe in democratic self-government. The Euro elites believe in global governance and supra-nationalism, and seek to promote their political model worldwide. Like the Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony, Hannan recognizes that this view (and not simply crude anti-Semitism) is one of the major reasons for the EU’s consistent hostility to Israel’s attempts to defend itself. Israel’s acting as an independent, democratic state — deciding for itself when to use force in the defense of its democracy, rather than subordinating its decision-making to supra-national “rules” — is an affront to the core political principles of the EU.
Hannan argues that America does not have to “prove its internationalist credentials” by submitting to global authority. Nor does it have to choose between “Europeanization and isolation.” Instead, he suggests, the nations, businesses, common-law legal systems, accounting practices, and defense establishments of the Anglosphere (think India) offer an attractive (and clearly internationalist) alternative for trade, commerce, and alliances. Americans should remain true to their Jeffersonian principles of decentralization and pluralism, Hannan tells us; we should reject the global-governance agenda of political and economic “harmonization” and “integration” through “rules and bureaucracies,” and embrace voluntary arrangements among free peoples.
In my view, Hannan is right on the particulars. So what lessons can we draw for American conservatives? As noted, his concerns on the dangers of the Europeanization of domestic policy are already shared here in America. His arguments for America to stand firm on the “hard” issues of foreign policy such as Iran and other explicitly defense-related matters have also found support here. It is in the “soft area” of foreign affairs — America’s relationships with the U.N., EU, and ICC, and, most important, its stance towards democratic sovereignty, global governance, and supra-national authority — where Hannan’s warnings are now most needed.
...let alone to ours. Transnationalism is a failed dream.
