After the Fall

If the Euro collapses might this open the door to a renewed European politics? This is admittedly an unlikely outcome, but not an impossible one. It was clear from the disquiet at the Lisbon treaty that the dominant strategy for European integration does not enjoy popular support and, if anything, was giving credence to nationalists who argued that democratic safeguards were only secure within nations states. The obvious flaw in their argument is that European nations have had their room for international manoeuvre widened by the union, but there is no denying the democratic deficit. Their solution, dilution of the union, would only make the national communities more vulnerable to forces outside their control. So it would seem we are doubly doomed. European citizenship and the European public sphere have not emerged to manage the relationship between the integrated market and the institutions of the union, but the historic nation states are unable to master a globalized world. The people of Ireland already suspected that some kind of instrumental rationality drove the institutions of the union and in the last fortnight they have experienced it.

If the solution to the problems of European citizenship is not the nation, or any kind of pseudo-nationalist pan-European identity, the only move left is internationalist and cosmopolitan. However the US is suffering the a crisis of confidence in universalist politics. Is there some creative politics where a rational international order gets hammered out in a relationship between the Europeans and the Chinese. Do I need to become a lefty pacificist?