Europe may have contributed
immensely to philosophy but logic seems to have been in short supply at times,
as Europe ties itself in ideological knots in service of nationalism itself, as
if that ideology had not given rise to two world wars in the twentieth century.
I am not referring to the incendiary, irrational fear of the word, federalism,
being applied to the European Union, but, rather, to the role of nationalist
ideology in distorting the application of comparative institutional politics by
journalists.
Take, for example, the
following paragraph from Euronews: “Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
hosted three-way transatlantic talks in Rome on Sunday, which European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted as a possible ‘new
beginning in international relations between the two blocs.”[1]
Scant reasoning is needed to conclude that the two blocs being referred to are
the E.U. and U.S., and that the Italian prime minister represents the third
party, Italy.
The logic begins to fray,
however, because the E.U. state of Italy is not separate from the E.U., so the
talks were not actually three-way. To treat a state in a union of states as equivalent
to that or any other like union is to commit a category mistake. Politically,
the other E.U. states might get jealous were the E.U. state of Italy to be reckoned
both as a state of the E.U. and as a third party in the talks, as if an umpire
between the two “blocs.”
Typically, European
journalists refer to only the E.U. as a “bloc” in order to differentiate that
union from the other empire-scale union across the proverbial pond. To refer to
both unions as blocs defeats that purpose. In actuality, neither union is a bloc
because neither union is temporary nor oriented around one issue, or pillar. Furthermore,
the federal, yes, federal governmental institutions of both unions are more
than merely a playground for intergovernmental relations among state governments.
In other words, both the E.U. and the U.S. have the sort of federal system
wherein governmental sovereignty is split between the federal and state
systems. In Federal Government, Ken Wheare uses “systems” instead of levels
to make the point that where sovereignty is divided up, one locus is not “above”
the other. In fact, the system of state governments can act as a check on
over-reaches at the federal level, and vice versa.
Therefore, the E.U.-U.S. talks
were actually bilateral between two empire-scale federal unions comprised of
federal and state governmental institutions. The same powers need not be
federalized in both unions for the latter to evince what Wheare calls modern
federalism to distinguish it from confederalism, wherein the states hold all
governmental sovereignty. Nor need there be a balance of power between that of
the “feds” and the states, although I contend that balance is important
in both loci being able to serve as a check on the other. Neither the E.U. nor
the U.S. has, at least as of 2025, achieved balance, and it may not be an
altogether stable property of federalism. This does not relegate either union
to being a “bloc,” and the E.U. ambassador to the U.S. agreed with me on this
point when we met on May 1, 2025, when we met at Yale, whose European Studies
Council takes the E.U. as being more substantial than does the counterpart at
Harvard. The E.U. is neither mainly intergovernmental relations nor an
alliance.
So in Rome on May 18, 2025, Meloni was simply playing host to the Vice President of the U.S. and the President of the E.U., both unions (not blocs) having distinct roles in foreign policy. The governor of Italy was not present to negotiate on behalf of the E.U. on tariffs pertaining to the U.S.; in regard to them, von der Leyen and Vance had their work cut out for them in dealing with both tariff and non-tariff barriers to E.U.-U.S. trade.
If the E.U. were a bloc, then the U.S. would be one too, but actually both claims would be counter-productive at a time when strength at the respective federal levels was needed. This is not to imply that any two empire-scale modern-federal unions are or even should be identical for them the be classifiable in the same political genus: modern federalism as distinct as a political “species” from confederalism, and also from instances of modern federalism at the “kingdom” (i.e., member-state) rather than empire-level. The inter-state heterogeneity in an empire-scale polity is a leap, or step, rather than degree, more than that which exists within a state, and this difference gives modern federalism at the empire-scale distinct properties, and in fact federalism itself is geared to such heterogeneity. This is not to say that regional differences do not exist at the state, or “kingdom” level, and a federal system can be useful there as well. Hence, California, for example, could benefit by adopting a federal system for itself. New York and Illinois could benefit too, as could the former E.U. state of Britain, which, like Switzerland, is (early modern) kingdom-level too. Hence UK-US or EU-UK is misleading in a way that E.U.-U.S. is not, even if nationalism goes down hard.
