Europe is facing a huge economic and military test. The big question before all of us, including in Bulgaria, is whether the 27 can produce a federal state.
This text will not be anti-Trump, although there is a reason for it. I do not like the general vague chorus, largely generated by Facebook. This is about Europe, our Europe - even if it is doubtful how we belong to the general term, which for the first time is faced with the somewhat ancient Greek tragedy of the end of free trade, for which the European Economic Community, the "father", was created a priori of today's EU.
Yes, except for one time when they agreed economically, the main powers in Europe never truly united - due to a number of political and cultural problems. But now Trump's childish game with tariffs will force them - this is no longer the time for petty disputes within the union itself.
We have already talked about the end of the "happy Europe", it is time to talk about how to eventually get out of this end and whether there will be a new beginning at all... not like the Bulgarian one.
Can Europe become a federation?
The European Union, it seems to me, is facing a huge economic and military test for the first time, and the futuristic question here is whether a federal state like the American one at the end of the 18th century or the German one after the middle of the 19th can emerge from this in the future.
Which is the initiating and unifying force? France with its eternal social problems, or perhaps Germany with the also rising far right in the face of the "Alternative for Germany"? How and is it possible for someone to convince 27 countries, including us in Bulgaria, that federal consolidation is the way forward, so that we don't look in the distance at the back of the US jerseys and especially China?
The truth is that the new old Trump administration can finally force Europe to unite at least politically, if not become a single state. The latter is not excluded, but our children will probably experience it. There is another factor in favor of overcoming European differences - this is the "Northeast" factor (according to the late Kissinger), i.e. Russian aggression and historical claim to Eastern Europe. I don't even want to think about what would happen if NATO withdrew from its Eastern European flank, but now, as they say in casinos, all bets are off, i.e. the odds for the US withdrawal, figuratively speaking, are falling. If we trust the popular British historian A.J.P. Taylor, and to some extent Anthony Beevor, Europe has easily united against a common danger, be it military - as with Napoleon III or Hitler - or economic - as now.
The Great Euro Party is Over
Post-war Europe produced the corresponding great leaders like Adenauer and De Gaulle, who were able to see through the threats that emanate from "insularity" - hence came the future economic union, "father" of today's EU itself, albeit slightly belatedly in the 1970s.
But the current problems are still current, and the leaders are slightly questionable - the euro as a relatively weaker currency compared to the dollar and the yuan, the ineffective control of the union's borders (from our pathetic fence to the victims in the seas towards Italy and Greece) and the attempt to introduce common asylum rules, which still does not work the way we want.
"Happy" Europe in recent years failed to foresee the need for self-preservation common action or at least legislation, it could not foresee Trump's second term, respectively, it overslept Russian expansionism. Currently, Europe is not able to defend itself without the US militarily, and partly economically. Because, as it turned out, this is not a union per se - in the conditions of joyful liberalism, no one in Brussels and Strasbourg, no one, foresaw that a real unification would be needed against a specific military threat from the East. I have already said about the economic one.
The big Euro party went on for a long time, at which sovereignty and federalism drank bruderschaft, but now comes the super task - to become a military power that is no longer protected by the big brother with the iron fist in his hands. And we in Bulgaria are part of this.
If it does not understand its task, Europe is doomed
Clearly, I use all the complicated words in the world, such as "interoperability" and I often talk about cultural appropriation, i.e. the way in which we exchange cultural schemes and views in Europe and which could eventually lead to true integration. But Europe, until recently, allowed itself the luxury of not spending on military purposes under the wonderful nuclear umbrella of the US. And the other luxury - to argue among ourselves about smaller problems.
OK, NATO is already 74, it is unlikely to leave us alone, of course - but if Europe itself does not understand Trump's big hint and does not start spending on defense, it seems doomed.
Just like in the early years of World War II. I'm not kidding. But the cultural problem is that Schiller's words in the European anthem, where all people become brothers, are clearly being postponed for better times...
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This comment expresses the author's personal opinion and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the DG as a whole.