Wednesday, April 29, 2026

The E.U. and U.S.: Equal Partners

In 2026, even though the U.S. had 50 member-states and the E.U. had only 27 states, both unions were large enough to constitute what in historical terms, with the European early-modern rather than (the smaller) medieval kingdoms in mind, empire-scale republics. As long as elected representatives hold office at the federal level in both political unions, both unions can be said to be republics (as well as containing republics—or, as Ken Wheare wrote in Federal Government, “wheels within a larger wheel”). Were either union to have only five or so states, the empire definition would not be satisfied. Also, that definition includes the requirement of cultural heterogeneity between (as distinct from within) the states. Being on the same (empire) scale is just one of several ways in which the two unions belong to the same political type. It was in this respect rather than based on the sheer number of states that Sophie Wilmes, vice-president of the European Parliament, said that the U.S. should not regard the E.U. as a little sister (i.e., a junior partner). I contend that she was correct.

Including but going beyond economic and political dependence internationally, Wilmes insisted that the U.S. deal with the E.U. as an equal. “What is very important regarding the United States is that we are talking to each other as equal partners and not as a big brother against the little brother or the little sister.”[1] To be sure, little brothers (and I have one who is a decade younger) are perfectly capable of bossing around older brothers. Even so, concerning the context to which Wilmes was referring, the U.S. was dominate on the Iran War and trade tariffs. In fact, the Commission had acted against giant American computer-technology companies on invasion of privacy and anti-competitive grounds only to be threatened by the Trump administration with (retaliatory) tariffs.

It is arguably from the standpoint of not feeling respected that the E.U. leader was speaking out to assert the E.U. as equivalent to the U.S. and thus worthy of reciprocal respect. Put somewhat crassly, just because the American tech companies could have undue (and anti-democratic) influence in American government does not mean that the latter should not respect E.U. law that differs from U.S. law concerning the tech sector. Equal, or reciprocal respect rather than a claim as to the equivalence of the two unions as falling under the same political type is the basis of Wilmes’ public remarks.

Even so, the demand for equal respect is premised on the unspoken assumption that the E.U. and U.S. are indeed equivalent political unions, whose respective states are thus equivalent. In terms of territory and population, the states cluster. The only exception is Alaska, which is larger than even the European Union, not to mention any E.U. state.  That the political unions are both empire-level, cluster in terms of population (i.e., hundreds rather than tens of millions), GDP, and even territory is the grundlagen upon which comparative politics as an academic sub-field in political science and in practice (including in journalism!) should be based even though this foundation is rarely made explicit. Considering the widespread occurrence of political category mistakes with respect to the E.U. and U.S., scholars, government officials, and especially journalists could have done more to make the equivalence explicit in 2026 when the E.U. official made her statement. In 2025, while speaking with the E.U.’s ambassador to the U.S. at Yale, I made this plea in vain, for E.U. officials were then afraid that making the equivalence explicit would give Euroskeptics such as Viktor Orbán more ammunition with which to dismantle the Union, which was certainly not a “bloc.”