AMERICA’S ROLE IN UNIFYING EUROPE.

AMERICA’S ROLE IN UNIFYING EUROPE. Tony Barber had an article in the Financial Times (April 24) about what he views as a current crisis of legitimacy in the European political system. American journalists seem to me to mention only infrequently that one of the unifying forces for the European Union has been the feeling that being European is a way of rejecting a common adversary. Barber stated this clearly: “The myth of the dumb and dangerous Other across the ocean served a transparent purpose in the elite European project of building a common supranational identity.”