The children’s adage, “Sticks
and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” ignores the fact
that words can cause psychological pain, which in turn can trigger physical
fights that break bones. My point is that words do matter—whether applied to
people or social, political, and economic entities. An appellation can promote
or disparage, and even frame a political debate. When deciding what to call
something involves a category mistake, the violation of logic is typically to
passively insist on a particular ideological view such that it will gain
currency in a society or at a global level without people being aware of the
ploy (i.e., that they are being manipulated). An ideology never sits still in a
human mind; the innate tendency is expansionary. As in the belief in Hinduism
that attachment to both good and bad karma must be stopped before a person can
be liberated (moksa) from the cycle of reincarnation (samsara),
both good and bad ideologies held by a person involve the urge to proselytize,
even by stealth. The E.U. itself has been especially subject to this
phenomenon, and the harm to the union itself is seldom if ever discussed. Words
are definitely used as subterranean weapons in open view in the context of ideological
warfare.
On March 21, 2025, the E.U.’s
Commission—the federal executive branch—“confirmed it would phase out the term
‘Rearm Europe” to describe its multi-billion initiative to rearm Europe after
backlash from the leaders of [the E.U. state governments] of Italy and Spain”
on account of the name being “excessively charged and risks alienating
citizens.”[1]
That the federal executive branch of the U.S. would hardly heed such an
objection from two large member-states is just one indication of the shift
toward consolidation in that federal union since it was thirty-two years-old.
It should not be inferred that either the U.S. in 1821 or the E.U. in 2025
could be characterized as a “bloc,” which refers to “a temporary combination of
parties in a legislative assembly” or “a combination of persons, groups, or
nations forming a unit with a common interest or purpose.”[2]
Neither the E.U. nor the U.S. is a combination, as both have federal
legislative, executive, and judicial governmental institutions, and neither
union is for a common interest or purpose, as federal legislation in
both unions involve more than one policy area. The EEC and the Articles of
Confederation could qualify as economic and military blocs, as both were
single-purpose and sovereignty was retained by the countries.
And yet, the media company,
Euronews, which is oriented to the E.U.-level rather than being focused on the
state level and the intergovernmental relations there, incessantly refers to
the E.U. as a bloc. For instance, in reporting the new name of “the plan to
ramp up defence capabilities and production across the bloc will be
known as ‘Readiness 2030,’” Euronews uses the word bloc even in
referring to a program that the Commission rather than a state was spearheading.[3]
I contend that the word-choice enervates the E.U. itself.
When David Cameron was the
prime minister of the E.U. state of United Kingdom, he referred to the E.U. as
one of the networks that Britain happened to be in. When the people of that
state voted to secede from the union, taking back the governmental sovereignty
that had been delegated to the federal level in the E.U.’s basic law was a significant
reason. So based on one of the rationales for seceding from the union,
Cameron’s use of “network” to name the E.U. is erroneous. In fact, he was
making a category mistake because a federal union wherein governmental
sovereignty is divided is not a network of sovereign states.
Nor does the fact that federal
law in the E.U. includes directives to be implemented by state governments, and
the Commission’s proposal to relax the debt-limit on the states is oriented to the
states being able to spend up to €650 billion mean that the E.U. is thereby
a bloc. Initially the U.S. heavily relied on state armies, and even after about
250 years, the states have armies even though the federal president could call
on them for temporary use. Moreover, residual sovereignty still applies both in
the U.S. and the European Union. Regardless of how much power is on the state
and federal levels, dual sovereignty itself distinguishes modern federalism
from confederalism.[4]
To be sure, the relative amounts
of governmental sovereignty held respectively at the state level and at federal
level in a federal system wherein sovereignty has been divided according to the
federation’s basic (i.e., fundamental) framework do matter. In the case of the
E.U. in 2025, and of the U.S. before the twentieth century, dissolution is a
risk that goes with the state governments having a lot more authority and power
than does the union itself at its federal level. This risk became very real in
1861 in the U.S., when some of the member-states tried to exit the union. When
Britain seceded from the E.U. to take back the sovereignty being exercised at
the federal level, the risk that other states might follow was essentially the
risk of dissolution. Given this risk facing the E.U. as it watched Russian
military aggression in Eastern Europe just beyond the E.U.’s eastern border,
coordinated military effort by the E.U. could not afford the enervating
connotations that go with referring to the modern federal system as just a
bloc. It is no accident that Euro-skeptic political ideologues want a weakened E.U,
and this is precisely the point of intentionally mislabeling the E.U. as a
bloc.
Such erroneous naming can be used as anti-federalist, and anti-E.U. fodder by Euro-skeptic state officials desiring to take back more sovereignty from Brussels even though the E.U. was even by 2025 too “bottom-heavy.” Because the E.U. Parliament has elected representatives of E.U. citizens rather than officials from the state governments, the alleged democracy deficit has not represented as much risk of dissolution as has the erroneous notion that the E.U. is a mere network or bloc, from which state governments can easily leave as if the E.U. were NATO or a trade agreement. Euronews implies as much in the using the following parallelism in referring to Russia’s “necessary capabilities to launch an attack against an EU or NATO member state.”[5] A federal system wherein governmental sovereignty is split between the state-level and the federal level is qualitatively different than a military alliance. Treating the E.U. as if it were an international organization like the UN or a military alliance like NATO, ignoring the fact that the E.U. law and ECJ decisions are binding on the state governments and that the E.U. has three federal branches—executive, legislative, and judicial which together do constitute a government—keeps the E.U. from being able politically to redress the “bottom-heavy” imbalance of sovereignty, so the deliberate mislabeling by association increases the risk of dissolution. For it is easier for an E.U. state government to leave the UN or NATO than to secede from a federal union wherein governmental sovereignty is split up between two governmental systems—federal and state—or, it is easy to accuse the Commission of not being succeed at its competencies when the mislabeling keeps the executive branch from getting the authority needed and to accuse the European Council and Council of the E.U. of paralysis because the states won’t replace the principle of unanimity with qualified majority voting on important matters because the E.U. is just a bloc.
The false parallelism between the E.U. on the one hand and NATO and the UN on the other, as if the E.U. were an international alliance or organization (of sovereign countries), plus labeling the E.U. as an informal bloc oriented to only one policy-domain makes it more difficult for the governmental institutions at the federal level to justify getting enough authority to be able to competently exercise the competencies that they have, and this includes reducing the application of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., for those two federal institutions, made up of state officials, hold the Commission and the Parliament back as those state officials exploit both personal (i.e., their power) and institutional (i.e., state power) conflicts of interest at the expense of the benefits that could otherwise be had from achieving adequacy in the collective efforts of the union. With Russia invading Ukraine, tying one hand behind one’s back is not the best strategy for the E.U. as it seeks not only to help Ukraine, but also protect the union itself from any future aggression from the east. It may be hard to see how a name can be a subtle but heady head-wind for the E.U., but the union has indeed been incurring the costs, even the opportunity costs of the foregone benefits of collective action.
2. The Merriam-Webster dictionary.
3. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025, italics added.
4. Kenneth Wheare, Federal Government.
5. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Rebrands ‘Rearm Europe’ Plan after Backlash from Leaders of Italy and Spain,” Euronews.com, March 21, 2025.
