To go to much effort to
construct an economy on the scale of an empire only to refer instead to the economies
within such a union, whether the E.U. or U.S. is to pay excessive homage to
an ideology that can be termed Euroskeptic and anti-federalist, respectively. To
refer to economies in one union and the economy in the other is
just one means by which an ideology can distort a person’s reasoning and
perception without the person being conscious of the underlying logical
inconsistency. Such an inconsistency is incurred not only in “having it both
ways” in the E.U. being a common market even as the states are referred to as economies
even though many share a currency and thus a central bank, but also in
referring to the federal system as if it were a mere “bloc,” or “network.” In all of these cases of ideological
word-games, the E.U. itself is minimized and thus implicitly marginalized from
within. With Russia invading Ukraine and Israel eviscerating the Muslim
residents of Gaza, self-marginalization for ideological purposes is indeed
costly. Even referring to the federal official who is in charge of foreign
policy as a “high representative” is implicitly denigrating and thus counter-productive
to the E.U. being able to stand up to Putin and even Netanyahu in 2025.
The full essay is at "Negotiating from Weakness."
