Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project. But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle, and now the invasion has facilitated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier.
ATHENS – Europe has become unrecognizable. Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project pitting a splendid cosmopolitanism against nationalism – which, as French President François Mitterrand dramatically put it in 1995, “equals war.” But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Europeanist vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle. Russia’s invasion merely accelerated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, gave us a whiff of the shift from cosmopolitanism to ethno-regionalism when he described the EU as a beautiful “garden” threatened by the non-European “jungle” lurking outside its borders. More recently, French President Emmanuel Macron and Charles Michel, the European Council’s president, asked Europeans not only to prepare for war but, crucially, to rely on its arms industry for the EU’s economic growth and technological advancement. Having failed to convince Germany, and the so-called frugal nation-states, of the need for a proper fiscal union, their desperate fallback position is now to argue for a war union.
This is a pivotal moment in the EU’s checkered history. Setting aside a vociferous minority of Euroskeptics, the main difference of opinion between pro-EU political forces concerned whether Europe’s continental consolidation ought to proceed by Hamiltonian means (debt mutualization precipitating the emergence of a proper federation) or in the original intergovernmental way (gradual market integration). The governments presiding over surplus economies favored the latter, whereas the deficit economies’ representatives, understandably, leaned toward a Hamiltonian solution, which was thus placed permanently on the backburner.
ATHENS – Europe has become unrecognizable. Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project pitting a splendid cosmopolitanism against nationalism – which, as French President François Mitterrand dramatically put it in 1995, “equals war.” But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Europeanist vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle. Russia’s invasion merely accelerated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, gave us a whiff of the shift from cosmopolitanism to ethno-regionalism when he described the EU as a beautiful “garden” threatened by the non-European “jungle” lurking outside its borders. More recently, French President Emmanuel Macron and Charles Michel, the European Council’s president, asked Europeans not only to prepare for war but, crucially, to rely on its arms industry for the EU’s economic growth and technological advancement. Having failed to convince Germany, and the so-called frugal nation-states, of the need for a proper fiscal union, their desperate fallback position is now to argue for a war union.
This is a pivotal moment in the EU’s checkered history. Setting aside a vociferous minority of Euroskeptics, the main difference of opinion between pro-EU political forces concerned whether Europe’s continental consolidation ought to proceed by Hamiltonian means (debt mutualization precipitating the emergence of a proper federation) or in the original intergovernmental way (gradual market integration). The governments presiding over surplus economies favored the latter, whereas the deficit economies’ representatives, understandably, leaned toward a Hamiltonian solution, which was thus placed permanently on the backburner.