The European Union

Our Lindblad cruise on the Danube included some outstanding lectures by one of Lindblad’s resident historians, David Barnes, who incidentally is a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Historical Society (all the Lindblad staff we have met thus far are truly outstanding!). In one of his lectures he attempted to give us – all of us Americans – a European historian’s perspective on the EU. To begin with, he pointed out that recent polls show that less than a quarter of Americans are even aware that there is such a thing as the European Union, and even fewer have any idea what it is trying to accomplish.

Those Americans that are at least dimly aware of the EU tend to think of it as simply a large trading block, assembled to compete with America and therefore perhaps something of a threat to our economy. That, he argues, misses the point entirely.

To understand the political vision behind the EU, he argues, one must understand how thoroughly devastated all of Europe was by the two horrendous world wars of the 20^th century. The vision of the original founders of the EU was to knit all of Europe together so tightly – socially, economically, and politically – that there could never again be such wars among its member states. The vision is not unlike the vision the founders of the United States had, to bind the separate state into a single nation, while yet keeping the individuality of the member states. A byproduct of that effort may indeed include creation of economic and political power, but in the long run it is very much in our interests as well as Europe’s to avoid any further world wars on the European continent.

There are some in America, especially among the conservative right, who see the rise of the EU as a threat to our nation. That is probably a very short-sighted view, since a new world war on the European continent would be a much larger threat to us than any economic competition the EU might give us.