This terrible dialectic was played out time and again in the various wars and totalitarian movements of this past century. The net result is that in Europe, democracy and the nation parted company. Democracy took on a life of its own, belittling the base necessities of its body while basking in its intellectual glory and purity. This sublime emancipation was all the easier to achieve since the democratic idea, as a principle of justice, does not depend on any political frame of reference: It can occur in a family, a village, a city, a region, a nation, the whole world, or any new circumscription of mankind you may devise. The principle of consent does not bring with it any political form as such. The democratic principle does not contain its political effectiveness.

And so we have arrived at a singular historical fact: The nation has long been the condition of democracy, but in certain circumstances it became its enemy. To prevent the latter state of affairs, then, it is tempting to try, once and for all, to detach democracy from its condition altogether. This is precisely what the present democratic movement is trying to do: it attempts to make democracy unconditional, to free the democratic soul from the national body, and to endow democracy with the purity of angels. Perhaps, then, to take these attempts to their logical extreme, democracy could be made the master—and thus never the prisoner—of its own body. Since every limit or circumscription would be arbitrary from the point of view of the democratic principle, democracy could create for itself a body without limits, a body of indefinite extension, all to ensure that democracy could never become the slave of its own condition. You think confidently that such an indefinite body is an impossibility, until it dawns upon you that our European Union pretends to be just such a body, that behind the convenient veil of humdrum bureaucracy, “Europe” is indeed the astral body of angelic democracy. For such a development to succeed, then, we need to suppose that the human condition has been radically altered such that man as a political animal has undergone a decisive modification, or else that man is simply no longer a political animal. It is a risky wager to make when embarking on an enormous political enterprise.

There is thus a fateful contrast between the origins of Europe, to which I alluded above, and its final state. The coming-into-being of Europe was rooted in the deliberate and prudent actions of already constituted political bodies. And it could still be said that, up until the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the edification of Europe evolved as the common action of a definite, albeit growing, number of European nations. The so-called supra-national institutions were forced to content themselves with a functional, indeed ancillary, role, however bombastic their rhetoric could be on occasion. Since then, however, the enterprise has taken on a new and ominously ideological character. We had our first hint of this during the debates attending the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, when the self-appointed representatives of the European Idea would not take a popular “no” for an answer, and ensured instead that peoples would be summoned—thrice a year if need be—to vote until they gave the required “yes.” It was apparent, particularly in France, that those reluctant to travel further into the uncharted land of supra-nationality were not considered normal citizens entertaining legitimate opinions, but rather benighted persons beyond the reach of rational argument. They were aggressively ridiculed, and their anxieties went unanswered. Sometimes a condescending pundit would deign to humor the bumpkins; needless to say, however, the media, that most servile herd in human history, unanimously enlisted in the Hosts of Light.

Surely my lingering bitterness does not escape the reader. It reflects the disillusionment I felt when I realized, with a kind of finality, that otherwise intelligent, competent, and well-meaning people would not pay serious attention to the most reasonable of arguments, and that accordingly the whole enterprise would not stop, or even be slowed down just a bit, until it had ended in a colossal failure. Nobody bothered to explain why the new political body had to grow without limit, or at least until it encompassed all lands belonging to Europe on the map. I concede that we were not explicitly offered the absurd possibility of welcoming half of Russia and a speck of Turkey into our mammoth new enterprise, but that is only because nobody bothered to define the political meaning behind the geographical notion of “Europe.” We had to be content with the assumption that the more Europe expanded, the better it would be for itself and for the world. Some will say that the admittedly awkward geographical growth is a popular stalking-horse for a legitimate, indeed compelling, political argument, namely, that the ultimate aim of the European enterprise is to bring together Western Europe with its Central and Eastern counterparts. And with that I come to the most difficult part of my argument.

Out of sympathy alone, who would refuse to welcome formerly Communist-dominated countries into the European Union? Yet here we must remember that a political union is not determined merely by human affinities or historical memories. Nor, for that matter, is it excluded by economic disparities: if such a union were politically necessary, or even convenient, we should hasten to receive Eastern candidates, however high the potential cost. My objection to this unbridled expansion, however, is that there is no single, specifically political argument for its necessity. The European Union is already a giant unable to move more than one finger at a time—it is already choking on itself. Not surprisingly, it has failed every test pertaining to common policy. I have already mentioned Bosnia and Kosovo: whatever was done about these hot spots, as we know, was done by the United States. Whatever was tentatively sketched by the European Union was sketched according to the preferences of the European nation most immediately concerned. For example, Turkish entreaties were rebuffed by German misgivings, just as the Cyprus candidacy was cleared to please Greece. Of course, there could be no more childish way of antagonizing a potent neighbor, and of heightening the risks of war on those shores. What goes by the name of European policy, then, is but the vectorial result of the disconnected velleities of European nations. If you increase the number of participants, you succeed only in increasing the number of velleities and aggravating the awkwardness of the vectorial result. In any case, the result will usually approximate zero, since an insuperable palsy inevitably sets in. There is a French saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee; what would the horse designed by a trans-European committee look like?

It is not immaterial to notice that, despite their nullity and inflammatory obnoxiousness, the half-baked velleities of our congregated nations were finally reined in by the United States, which, at long last—and this was very late in the day, to be sure—put out the fire in Bosnia and in Kosovo. I do not mean to suggest that the United States is a pure white knight, and Europe a bunch of bumbling ne’er-do-wells. It is simply a fact that a multi-headed animal never goes anywhere, and the more heads on his neck, the less his sense of direction. And we must not forget that our American friends are largely acting out of old habits formed in the wake of World War II, when Europe lay devastated. It is less than probable that, whatever interests they have in the stability of Europe, they will come to our rescue when our umpteen European nations, tied together by a common currency that we insist is working, appear unable to police our nearest neighborhood. You tire of helping a self-declared giant tie his tie.

It can be argued that, under the convenient veil of an impotent multilateralism, a common European policy determined by Germany, or at least elaborated according to her wishes, is slowly taking form. Politics evolves according to a specific law of gravity, and the heaviest naturally carries the day. I, for one, estimate that it is a good thing, and only fair, that the demographic and economic might of Germany is now adequately reflected in the political counsels of a united Europe. Moreover, because of the federal nature of this country, there is much that other Europeans can learn from the German way of doing things. And surely if there is any political rationale for the extension eastwards, it lies with the instincts and interests of Germany: It is quite natural and legitimate for her—and rather generous, too—to try to bring her zone of influence, not to say her burgeoning half-empire, under a common roof. The confluence of this German national purpose with the general ideological urge towards expansion for expansion’s sake makes the process almost irresistible.

For obvious reasons, Germany has displayed a timidity in the political realm that may have done her honor, but was in any case excessive. She has now finally found her well-deserved place at the heart of Europe, and should not aim further. I do not suppose for a moment that any significant segment of German society harbors hegemonic tendencies, but the confluence to which I just referred has already resulted in the decision to add Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and additional countries into the European Union. This development will bring about one of two results: Either the complete palsy resulting from elementary political dynamics—indeed, statics—I sketched above, or the breaking up of the whole on account of the nations of the west and south, France among them, refusing to accept a new dispensation of the traditional pieces of the political-power pie. They would judge rightly that the original contract had been broken. It would not do to say that such a bolting would reflect a jingoism unworthy of serious consideration, since any such national reaction would be a direct response to a preceding national excess on the part of our German friends.