{"id":61587,"date":"2026-09-23T01:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T05:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=61587"},"modified":"2026-09-22T09:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T13:50:14","slug":"qotd-the-eu-as-a-modern-habsburg-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/qotd-the-eu-as-a-modern-habsburg-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The EU as a modern Habsburg Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Those in Britain who supported Brexit are often accused of nostalgia for a past in which the country was powerful, but I do not think this nostalgia, if it ever existed at all, was very widespread. One might well say that nostalgia, on the part of France, was and is a driving force in the European Union, since it is only by union with Germany than France can aspire to a semi-Napoleonic role in Europe.<\/p>\n

The irony is, of course, that Germany is once again by far the strongest power on the continent. Its interests are complex and no doubt contradictory: it wants the rest of Europe to continue to import its goods, but it does not want to fund, or mutualise, the debts that allow it to do so. The southern countries would like to either to mutualise the debts, or inflate them away by debasing the currency, but Germany will allow neither of these solutions to the imbalances within Europe. There would be no better way to re-awake German nationalism than follow the prescriptions of the southern nations; on the other hand, resentment of Germany will grow if they are not followed.<\/p>\n

The author acknowledges the problems within Europe in his last chapter, up till which he has treated Europe as if it were one big happy family with a population gaily marching in unison behind its leadership. The truth is quite otherwise, which is why an example must be made of Britain. But the likelihood is that the more integration there is, the greater will be the tensions, both between and within countries. There is a class within countries that benefits mightily from the present arrangements, which in my opinion explains the paradox of Catalan, Flemish, and Scottish nationalism: for all these nationalisms are firm adherents to the ideal of European Union, namely a dilution of national sovereignty even greater than that which their nations already possess. Again to put it crudely, the leadership of these movements want their place not in the sun, but at the trough. They are pied pipers to their populations.<\/p>\n

The book ends by quoting that old Mephistophelian, Fran\u00e7ois Mitterand, to the effect that “Nationalism means war”. And of course this is true if by nationalism is meant an exaggerated and militant love of one\u2019s own country and a hatred of, or disdain for, all other countries, particularly neighbouring ones. Yet at the same time, nation states \u2014 at least some of them \u2014 have been the only large-scale states able durably to protect the freedom of their populations. Moreover, if nationalism means war, it does not follow that supranationalism means peace. The European Union may be a Yugoslavia in the making, without a Tito to hold it together. As Jos\u00e9 Manuel Barroso, once President of the European Commission, former Maoist student leader and then Goldman Sachs executive (the thirst for power being the golden thread that runs through this diverse career) put it, Europe \u2014 using the word to mean the European Union, which is now more or less standard \u2014 is an empire, though of a new kind.<\/p>\n

Perhaps not so new, in fact: a kind of Habsburg Empire without the charm and aesthetic sensibility. From the right it is attacked as a socialist enterprise, from the left as a neo-liberal one: corporatist is the word for it, that happy union between regulatory bureaucracy and large corporations.<\/p>\n

Theodore Dalrymple, “European Empire, Fractured”, Law & Liberty<\/em><\/a>, 2020-11-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those in Britain who supported Brexit are often accused of nostalgia for a past in which the country was powerful, but I do not think this nostalgia, if it ever existed at all, was very widespread. One might well say that nostalgia, on the part of France, was and is a driving force in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,25,62,84,41],"tags":[337,1213,45,114,1289],"class_list":["post-61587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-economics","category-europe","category-government","category-quotations","tag-eu","tag-kakistocracy","tag-nostalgia","tag-separatism","tag-theodoredalrymple"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-g1l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61587"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104930,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61587\/revisions\/104930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}