William Pfaff
The belief widely held is that enlarged federalism is the appropriate response to the economic crisis provoked by the
Large parts of the populations of
How would a strengthened European federation improve this situation? Advocates of federation can argue that if the individual states of the EU were under federal authority, they would not have been allowed to get into their present plight. But most of the damage was done by innocent submission of credulous policymakers to the conventional wisdom of the international marketplace, the self-interested advice and investment promotions of the international investment banks, and discredited academic theories of deregulated and autonomous "perfect" markets. If the
The writer
Would federal authority have an answer to the authoritarian trends in the present internal politics of
The degree of integration and political agreement the major powers of
To my foreigner's eyes, the future of
There would be a common foreign policy exercising probably the world's most powerful armory of the instruments of "soft" power. The major European states, the former "great powers," could individually or cooperatively, according to their choice, play an armed role in the external world, as they do now, with such support and endorsement as their fellow EU members may wish to provide. In circumstances now unforeseeable, the Union as a whole might wish to adopt common defensive and deterrent measures.
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