How to Resist the End of Europe

I am deeply honored that my essay, “Does Europe Have a Future?,” elicited such substantial responses from four distinguished writers. All four have not only entered fair and useful comments on the essay but also contributed their own answers to the question posed in my title.

Peter Berkowitz and Wilfred McClay agree with me that the nation-state is not the source of Europe’s ills. And I agree with Berkowitz, following Alexis de Tocqueville, that European nations need to recover their tradition of freedom, just as I agree with McClay that such liberty must be limited by law, human or divine. It is refreshing to hear Americans encouraging Europeans to take pride in their patriotism and their national identities; in this respect, McClay rightly contrasts the grand traditions of European civilization, which gave birth to the United States and to so much else, with a European Union that is anything but united.

On this point, I part company with Claire Berlinski even as I’m grateful for her superb tour d’horizon and the weight she properly gives to the threat posed to Europe by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. To her, the only answer to the external threats menacing Europe is a single foreign and defense policy, which means strengthening and indeed uniting the European Union. I beg to differ: however much some European leaders may dream otherwise, the EU is not a military alliance. Nor do I recognize her description of German, French, and other EU military officers “eager” to “unleash” their forces against Europe’s enemies. That was not the case even during the cold war, much less now.