The New Totalitarian Temptation: Global Governance and the Crisis of Democracy in Europe

273 Pages·2016·1.29 MB·English

by  Todd Huizinga

THE NEW TOTALITARIAN TEMPTATION
TODD HUIZINGA
THE NEW TOTALITARIAN TEMPTATION
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ENCOUNTER BOOKS
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CONTENTS
Introduction: Understanding the EU(cid:17)vii
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Chapter 1 Something Completely Different(cid:17)3
Chapter 2 Postmodern: The EU as an Unanswered Question(cid:17)12
Chapter 3 The Utopian Dream of World Peace(cid:17)19
(cid:525)(cid:510)(cid:527)t(cid:3)t(cid:532)o(cid:98)(cid:363)(cid:3)(cid:518)nten(cid:513)e(cid:513)(cid:3)(cid:510)n(cid:513)(cid:3)(cid:530)n(cid:518)nten(cid:513)e(cid:513)(cid:3)(cid:512)onse(cid:526)(cid:530)en(cid:512)es
Chapter 4 Out of the Ashes(cid:17)29
Chapter 5 The Transformation of Europe(cid:17)35
Chapter 6 The Cloak of Constructive Ambiguity(cid:17)44
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Chapter 7 Getting It Right the Second Time(cid:17)51
Chapter 8 Écrasez l’Infâme: Religion and the EU Constitution(cid:17)58
Chapter 9 The Eurozone Crisis and the Politics behind the Money(cid:17)66
(cid:525)(cid:510)(cid:527)t(cid:3)(cid:515)o(cid:530)(cid:527)(cid:98)(cid:363)(cid:3)t(cid:527)(cid:510)ns(cid:515)o(cid:527)(cid:522)(cid:518)n(cid:516)(cid:3)(cid:517)(cid:530)(cid:522)(cid:510)n(cid:3)(cid:527)(cid:518)(cid:516)(cid:517)ts
Chapter 10 Absolute Autonomy: The Global Ethic of Women’s Rights(cid:17)77
Chapter 11 The Deconstruction of Human Nature: LGBT Rights(cid:17)91
Chapter 12 Antidiscrimination and Religious Freedom in a Post-Christian Europe(cid:17)98
CONTENTS
Introduction: Understanding the EU(cid:17)vii (cid:525)(cid:510)(cid:527)t(cid:3)(cid:515)(cid:518)(cid:531)e(cid:98)(cid:363)(cid:3)o(cid:530)(cid:527)(cid:3)(cid:511)est(cid:3)(cid:515)(cid:527)(cid:518)en(cid:513)s(cid:3)(cid:510)n(cid:513)(cid:3)o(cid:530)(cid:527)(cid:3)(cid:532)o(cid:527)st(cid:3)(cid:510)nt(cid:510)(cid:516)on(cid:518)sts
Chapter 13 Global Governance and National Sovereignty(cid:17)119
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Chapter 14 Global Judicial Despotism and the International Criminal Court(cid:17)126
Chapter 1 Something Completely Different(cid:17)3 Chapter 15 Binding the Leviathan in Its War on Terror(cid:17)136
Chapter 2 Postmodern: The EU as an Unanswered Question(cid:17)12 Chapter 16 Post-Christian Europe and Religion in America(cid:17)146
Chapter 3 The Utopian Dream of World Peace(cid:17)19
(cid:525)(cid:510)(cid:527)t(cid:3)s(cid:518)(cid:533)(cid:98)(cid:363)(cid:3)so(cid:515)t(cid:3)(cid:530)to(cid:525)(cid:518)(cid:510)(cid:3)(cid:510)t(cid:3)(cid:510)(cid:3)(cid:512)(cid:527)oss(cid:527)o(cid:510)(cid:513)s
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Chapter 17 The Price of the Euro: Unprecedented Integration or EU Breakup?(cid:17)157
Chapter 4 Out of the Ashes(cid:17)29 Chapter 18 Demographics and Islam: The Challenges for Europe’s Future(cid:17)173
Chapter 5 The Transformation of Europe(cid:17)35 Chapter 19 The Crisis of Democracy in Europe(cid:17)187
Chapter 6 The Cloak of Constructive Ambiguity(cid:17)44
Epilogue: Will America Follow the EU into the Soft Utopia?(cid:17)197
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Chapter 7 Getting It Right the Second Time(cid:17)51 Acknowledgments 211
Chapter 8 Écrasez l’Infâme: Religion and the EU Constitution(cid:17)58 Notes(cid:17)213
Chapter 9 The Eurozone Crisis and the Politics behind the Money(cid:17)66 Index 241
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Chapter 10 Absolute Autonomy: The Global Ethic of Women’s Rights(cid:17)77
Chapter 11 The Deconstruction of Human Nature: LGBT Rights(cid:17)91
Chapter 12 Antidiscrimination and Religious Freedom in a Post-Christian Europe(cid:17)98
For Vici, Philip, Nicholas and Sarah
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INTRODUCTION:
UNDERSTANDING THE EU
This is a book about the European Union, an organization that is
exceedingly opaque, dauntingly complex and full of mutually
opposing currents and interests. It is not surprising that the EU is
poorly understood. But a grasp of the EU is necessary in order to
understand international affairs, the global economy and the world’s
most important alliance – the transatlantic alliance between North
America and Europe. This book is not an “EU for Dummies;” nor
is it a handbook that would explain the bureaucratic machinery of
the EU institutions, or the technicalities of the EU treaties. Rather,
it is a sketch of the EU’s essence: what kind of organization the EU
is, how it is understood by those who are committed to the Euro-
pean idea, what its reason for being is.
Current events have made it more crucial than ever to under-
stand what makes the EU tick. What are the ideological roots of
the eurozone crisis? Why do so many EU leaders seem willing to
risk exposing their people to more jihadist terror and to invite a
potentially unmanageable de-Westernization of Europe by open-
ing the floodgates to immigrants from a burning Middle East? And
finally, what does all of this imply for the United States and Europe,
the transatlantic alliance, and the world at large?
In dealing with these questions, this book is meant to sound
(cid:531)(cid:518)(cid:518)(cid:518) an alarm. It is written out of great admiration for Europe, in the
hope that Europe’s postwar democracies and the Western idea of
self-government rooted in truth will not be lost to a new ideol-
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e ogy – the soft-utopian ideology of global governance that has
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e The European Union, rising from the ruins of two devastating
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world wars, embodies a longing for a world of peace, prosperity
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(cid:29) and stability. It is more than just a free-trade area, a customs union
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or an international organization through which the member states
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(cid:512) pursue their national interests. It is meant to be the harbinger of a
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(cid:513) new era, in which a cosmopolitan and harmonious Europe pro-
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vides the model for a worldwide system of supranational gover-
t
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(cid:518) nance. In this new world order, power is to be wielded not primarily
by national governments on behalf of national electorates, but by
an ever-thickening web of international organizations administer-
ing a growing body of international law and regulation, purport-
edly in the interests of a global citizenry.
The EU is, in effect, a “soft utopia,” engendered in the birth-
place of the “hard utopias,” the antihuman ideologies that led to
immense misery, death and ruin in the twentieth century. Unlike
the hard utopias of communism and fascism, the EU has no politi-
cal prisons or secret police. Despite its own deficiency of demo-
cratic legitimacy, it has helped foster the worldwide spread of
democracy, free markets and the rule of law since its inception.
Like communism and fascism, however, it is in essence a utopia – a
political construct that seeks humankind’s ultimate purpose in a
better-than-possible world created by politics. It puts politics
before people, as it seeks to remake human beings in the service of
its political project rather than to adapt the project to human
beings as they are.
But the EU does not seek to realize its dream by force; it is too
comfortable and too relativistic for that. The European idea itself
remains amorphous, and its underlying ideology vague. There is
nothing jagged or sharp-edged about the EU.
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Despite the soft edges and vagueness, it is not impossible to delin-
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eate the EU and describe the essence of its soft utopia. The first
t
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thing to understand is that the EU cannot be defined in familiar o
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categories, in the way that one could define the United States as a (cid:530)
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nation-state with a constitutional liberal democracy, for example, t
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or the United Nations as a global international organization func- n
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tioning as a forum for cooperation among its member states. The (cid:3)(cid:530)
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EU is sui generis. It is far more powerful than a traditional interna- (cid:513)
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tional organization, and its members are far more politically and (cid:527)
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economically integrated, but neither is it a European superstate. It (cid:510)
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is like nothing that has come before it, and, more than sixty years (cid:513)
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after the establishment of its first predecessor, the European Coal
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and Steel Community, the EU is still evolving, still in the process of t
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becoming. And no one really has a particular end state in mind. e
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In fact, the EU has been in the process of becoming for so long (cid:530)
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that many believe the very essence of the EU is process – constant
motion and change. Many commentators have said that the EU is
“postmodern,” not only in the sense that it heralds a new, peaceful
world beyond the modern world of nation-states and balance-of-
power politics, but also in the way it exemplifies process rather
than outcome, diversity rather than singularity, dialogue and open-
endedness rather than conclusion, becoming rather than being. If
nothing else, the EU is a fascinating and quintessentially Euro-
pean mind game.
But when all the vagaries, blurred distinctions and fuzzy
edges are stripped away, the EU is essentially the following: a con-
stantly evolving union of twenty-eight Western and Central Euro-
pean nation-states in which the governing and intellectual elites,
in the interest of realizing an unprecedented degree of peace, sta-
bility and prosperity, are pooling, and thus relinquishing, signifi-
cant elements of the member states’ national sovereignty, and
doing so over the heads of their national electorates. The EU
aspires to function as a model of global governance on a continen-
tal scale. Thereby, the most ambitious among the EU elites and
acolytes aim to lead the way into a new world order in which wars
will be unthinkable, or at least very rare.
Preventing war has been the noble obsession of the EU and its