Clifford Orwin examines the European Identity

December 9, 2011

Too big to fail, too vague to succeed; The old national allegiances stand muted, expressing themselves only in soccer stadiums. Yet, they still trump the continental one

Article by Clifford Orwin, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto; Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

8 December 2011, The Globe and Mail

Europe’s fiscal woes grind on, and so do the analyses of economic pundits. I claim no such expertise, however, so I’ll speak of a different crisis. It’s that of the very idea of Europe, increasingly the victim of its own emptiness.

The builders of the New Europe have always had a clearer notion of what they wanted to avoid than of what they were trying to achieve. In the 1950s, Hell was still a vivid memory, and Never Again the guiding principle. As it was among nations that madness had raged, the perceived remedies were supranational. The project of integration began with the European Coal and Steel Community, which continentalized the resources crucial for modern warfare, and went on from there.

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