The United States of Europe?

In the final chapter of his book, Postwar: A history of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt makes the point that currently Europeans are more numerous and heterogeneous than they have ever been in all of history. In a world that seems to be growing smaller by the day, Europeans of different nationalities are becoming more and more different. At the same time however, Europeans are also trying to form there own common European identity. They are trying to define “the idea of Europe” and what it means to be a European. It seems simple to define what it means to be European: someone from Europe, but Europe is difficult to define geographically. At the end of the twentieth century, places like Moldova, Ukraine, and Armenia attempted to assert themselves as “European” even though they are not historically “European” and even though geographically it is a stretch, especially for Armenia, for those countries to be considered European. How can these countries claim a European identity without being historically or geographically European? Judt says that Europe “is not so much about absolute geography – where a country or people actually are – as relative geography: where they sit in relation to others. He also states that modern Europe is not being built around a common past, but upon a common future. In this way outlaying countries stuck between two continents and two identities such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Armenia can find their identity. This growth of “Europe” is seen in the expansion of the European Union which started with six central countries and has now expanded to twenty seven countries spanning 4,456,304 km2. Modern Europe is beginning to form more of an identity as one Europe rather than a collection of countries. The question is: Where is Europe going? Will more states join the European Union? Is Europe going to become a large collection of states much like the United States? Will countries remain independent or will they all fall under the same political system? If they do, what type of system will they have? Where will it be based? Who will lead it? The future of united Europe is full of questions that can only be answered with time.