About That Global Test

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

As the Massachusetts Europhile, Senator Kerry, presses his campaign for a “global test” on American foreign policy, a few things are afoot on the continent where, so many times in the past 100 years, Americans and the British have had to come to the rescue of civilization. On Friday, the heads of government of 25 European Union states assembled at Rome officially to sign the new European Constitution, commencing a two-year ratification process that will involve national legislatures and, in some cases, popular referenda. If it should fail to obtain the endorsement of any one country, the whole thing, in theory, falls, or at a minimum must be renegotiated.


For much of the post-World War II era, Americans have welcomed this process of European integration. It sounds so nice, with echoes of the forging of our own Republic. Greater European unity means no more wars, which our Doughboys and GIs have had to fight to prevent the Old World from falling under the sway of its murderous totalitarianisms. And in the post-Vietnam War era, with America for a time showing dangerous tendencies to retreat from certain global responsibilities, enhanced European cooperation seemed necessary to forestall Soviet hegemony.


Given the recent European fecklessness, however, this approach requires revision. The modern, politically correct advocates of pan-European statehood – no less than earlier proponents such as the interwar French idealist Aristide Briand or the Vichyite apologist Drieu La Rochelle – declare that the purpose of the “project” is to create an alternative political civilization to “materialistic” America and challenge the only superpower. This is manifested by the Euro pean Union’s indulgence of the Palestinian Authority and Iran and its collaboration with the Chinese Communists on the Galileo satellite as an answer to GPS.


The E.U. constitution up for ratification provides the most up-to-date ideological underpinnings for this worldview. Our Founding Fathers performed their handiwork in an epoch when ideas of personal liberty and limited government were beckoning. Its delegated powers were few, its prohibitions on government fundamental. The E.U.’s basic law, which incorporates the earlier European Charter of Fundamental Rights, may also be a child of its time and place. But that is where the similarity ends. It is a statist document, radically more wordy than the American, full of basic rights of a socialistic nature. Any ambiguities will be interpreted by a European Court of Justice on which Chief Justice Marshall would feel as out of place as if he had landed on Pluto.


The pedigree of the European constitution long predates the presidency of the George Bush Europeans love to hate, but is no less inimical for that. Secretary Rumsfeld famously looked to the “new Europe” of the once-Communist countries that had recently acceded to the democratic community to counterbalance the euro-isolationism of France and Germany. Contemporary history suggests that it will not be the restraint of France’s ambitions that will result from this constitution but the dilution of the Atlanticism of many of our natural allies in an organization where the lowest common denominator prevails. The E.U. makes Europe an increasingly hostile environment in which to do business, in every sense of the word, one more thing for Americans to bear in mind when we go to the polls tomorrow.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


The New York Sun

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