The National Interest.
THE IDEA of Europe, in the minds of Westerners today, is an
intellectual concept—liberal humanism with a geographical basis—that
emerged through centuries of material and intellectual advancement, as
well as a reaction to devastating military conflicts in previous
historical ages. The last such conflict was World War II, which spawned a
resolve to merge elements of sovereignty among democratic states in
order to set in motion a pacifying trend.
Alas, this grand narrative now is under assault by underlying forces
of history and geography. The economic divisions seen today in the
European Union, manifest in the Continent’s debt crisis and pressures on
the euro, have their roots, at least partially, in contradictions that
stretch far back into Europe’s past and its existential struggle to
grapple with the realities of its immutable geographical structure. It
is this legacy—somewhat deterministic and rarely acknowledged—that
Europe still must overcome and that therefore requires a detailed
description.
