Don't follow Europe's lead.

The internationalists within the Bush administration continue their plan to follow the lead of the European Union and entangle all nations of the Western Hemisphere into a similar regional government. Understanding the trap into which 27 nations in Europe have already fallen can help to prevent what is planned here.

In 2002, speaking on behalf of the leaders of NAFTA's three nations, Mexico's President Vicente Fox stated as a goal the establishment in the entire Western Hemisphere of "an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union." With President Bush and Canada's Prime Minister Martin, Fox helped to initiate the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in 2005. Yet when asked about the SPP, spokesmen for each man insisted that it was merely a measure to improve trade relations.

In their 2003 expose of the process that has overcome independence for Europe's nations, The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union, British authors Christopher Booker and Richard North laid bare the early strategy urged by Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak. Known as Europe's "Mr. Socialist," Spaak told his fellow plotters that they should "disguise" their ultimate political purpose and "conceal it behind a pretense that it was concerned only with economic cooperation based on dismantling trade barriers."

The Spaak plan succeeded. Beginning in 1951, the drive to control Europe via a single government progressed from the six-nation Coal and Steel Community, to the Common Market, to the European Economic Community, and, finally, to the current European Union. All the while, the people of the once-sovereign nations were told that benefiting trade was the goal. Many are now awakening to the fact that promises of increased trade amounted to poisoned bait on a barbed hook. Mike Nattrass, Deputy Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, stated in 2004: "The EU was sold to the British people as 'a trading agreement' and has turned into a 'Political Union' which is changing our basic laws and traditions." He is far from alone in arriving at such a conclusion.

As the EU's screws began to tighten, leaders of the 25 nations hammered out a constitution that states quite bluntly: "This Constitution ... shall have primacy over the law of Member States." The document even contains numerous passages expressing subservience to the United Nations. Sent back to each of the countries for ratification, many national legislatures quickly approved it, but voters in the Netherlands and France--given a chance to express their opinion--emphatically turned their thumbs down.

No sooner had Spain ratified the new constitution than her foreign minster, Miguel Angel Moratinos, exulted, "We are witnessing the last remnants of national politics. The concept of traditional citizenship has been bypassed in the 21st Century." Moratinos then teamed up with Luxembourg's Jean Asselborn to schedule a "Friends of the EU Constitution" conference to be held in Madrid in late January 2007. Of the 18 countries that have ratified the document, only their two did so via referenda. Not surprisingly, these two EU Constitution cheerleaders have pointedly excluded France and the Netherlands from their list of invitees.

Recently enlarged to 27 nations, the European Union accepted Romania and Bulgaria only after the two nations had formally ratified the constitution. Beyond France and the Netherlands, only Denmark, Ireland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Portugal, and the United Kingdom (England) continue to resist ratification. Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus is on record likening the document to "crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe ... only one state will remain." With a sprawling headquarters in Brussels, the EU has legislative, executive, and judicial branches, a central bank, and a common currency, the euro. It has a military arm, the beginning of a police force, a flag, motto, passport, auto license plates, even an annual EU Day. Its power has already forced revision or abolition of numerous national laws.

In England, where the euro has not yet replaced the pound, resistance to further EU immersion continues to be built by the non-partisan Democracy Movement. Its efforts received a boost when Prime Minster Tony Blair went to Brussels in December and almost doubled Britain's EU payments to six billion pounds per year ($11.5 billion) even while the EU's own Court of Auditors has just refused, for the 12th year in a row, to certify the EU's accounts as legal and reliable.

All of these facts add up to solid reasons why plans to entangle the United States--which has already been harmed by inclusion in NAFTA--in a Security and Prosperity Partnership/North American Union with Canada and Mexico should be blocked.