Europe’s problem has never been Moscow, it has always been Washington

Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world. Charles de Gaulle

The idea of uniting Europe, or of forging a united Europe, has tantalized philosophers, emperors, dictators, revolutionaries, and figures on both left and right of the European political spectrum for centuries. With so many different nation states occupying the same continent, each with their own unique culture, language, history and story, Europe has been at the centre of historical events since the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries triggered the continent’s emergence from the Dark Ages, which ensued following the collapse of the western Roman Empire around 500 CE.

The first serious proponent of a European continent bound by common laws and a uniform economic system was Napoleon Bonaparte, whose attempt to spread the ideas and values of the French Revolution at the end of bayonets was finally crushed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Napoleon with his Grande Armee was committed to sweeping the detritus of European feudalism — autocracy…