Noting rightly that the U.S. and the European Union had jointly helped to keep Ukraine free and democratic, Robert Kagan, in the Washington Post, went on to conclude that America should welcome further European integration.

* Noting rightly that the U.S. and the European Union had jointly helped to keep Ukraine free and democratic, Robert Kagan, in the Washington Post, went on to conclude that America should welcome further European integration. The EU's "soft power" and "lure of membership," he argues, have already stabilized central and eastern Europe. A tighter but postmodern EU--which he conceives to be a liberal imperialism that expands by Borg-like absorption--might help the U.S. to sedate and smother other regional-cum-ethnic conflicts from the Baltics to the Middle East to central Asia. Best of all, the U.S. need not fear the EU's growing power since "Europe will be neither hostile nor a superpower in the traditional sense." Well, that's good to know. But the EU is certainly behaving oddly in equipping itself with all the trappings of national identity (flags, currencies, citizens, armies) if it wishes to avoid being a new and large nation. Its postmodern (i.e., undemocratic) features enable the EU to act as a superpower in the absence of a European nation and against the wishes of actual European voters. Anti-Americanism across the continent is encouraged by EU leaders as the cement of this future European nationality. And though the EU cooperates with the U.S. where interests coincide, as in Ukraine, it is often hostile in trade and commercial policy, seeking to impose its own regulations (and costs) on American businesses worldwide. It hardly seems necessary to add that the EU was a laggard in expanding eastward and stabilizing post-Communist states (NATO and the U.S. led the way) or that it seeks to subvert American policy in Iraq and U.S. support for Israel. Kagan ends by suggesting to the Brits that they should agree to be ruled by Brussels in order to persuade the EU to be less anti-American. Generous of the Brits if they agree to this. But it casts some doubt on his general thesis of U.S.-EU harmony--and ignores the likelihood that the Brits would become more anti-American once locked into an anti-American political structure. Ah well, back to the drawing board.