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PARTISAN REVIEW
The European elites have also found the means of externalizing their
feelings. The European Union originated in an ideal, namely that the
way to avoid war between France and Germany was to bind them
together through mutual interests. From little acorns great oaks do
grow. Fifty years of development have enlarged the underlying ideal into
something unrecognizable, not by design but by accident as occasion
arose. There was no equivalent of the founding fathers in Philadelphia,
weighing up a constitution with the general good borne in mind with
scrupulous detail. Instead, ad hoc arrangements one step at a time have
produced a centralized capital in Brussels, where there are no clear dis–
tinctions between the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary, no
democratic checks and balances, but only a formidable machinery-a
command bureaucracy of which the Soviet Union would have been
proud-for passing orders and decrees which are binding and without
appeal, to regulate aspects of daily life down to the most trivial, of
which hitherto government has taken no notice. Unaccountable and
unstoppable, the machinery cranks its way forward like a Frankenstein
monster. Over eighty thousand orders and decrees have already trussed
up the continent, affecting public and private relations in an unprece–
dented manner.
This arising empire has already pushed aside fifteen historic states,
draining them of their independence and identity, redefining their con–
cepts of liberty and citizenship.
It
is due to enlarge its number, and its
scope. All sorts of ideas for an overall constitution, for federation and
further centralized powers, are under discussion. Trying to establish an
identity of its own, the Brussels command bureaucracy devotes ingenu–
ity to promoting a concept of European culture, which in plain fact
turns out to be an artificiality limited to football matches and the Euro–
vision song contests.
To the experienced Henry Kissinger this evolution of Europe is "one
of the most revolutionary events of our time." The EU already has a
police force with extraterritorial powers, and within perhaps two years
it will have a military force of its own. Advocates of the EU enthusias–
tically anticipate the coming projection of European power. The even–
tual counterbalance of the two continents, as they foresee, will allow
Europe to put an end to American
hyper-puissance,
unipolarity, and
unilateralism. The extent to which continental Europe a lready opposes
American interests is clear, for instance, resisting any wider war against
terror, seeking to appease Iraq and Iran and North Korea, condemning
the proposal for a missile shield, and proposing an international court,
