{"id":41254,"date":"2018-12-04T06:25:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T11:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41254"},"modified":"2018-12-04T06:25:08","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T11:25:08","slug":"italy-the-eu-and-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41254","title":{"rendered":"Italy, the EU, and the Fall of the Roman Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Italy,<\/p>\n

Italy, the EU, and the Fall of the Roman Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

The EU leadership is trying to contain a crisis that is emerging at increasing speed: this challenge comprises the rise of contumacious states (i.e. the UK, Poland, Hungary and Italy), or of defiant, historic \u2018cultural blocs\u2019 (i.e. Catalonia) \u2013 all of whom are explicitly disenchanted with the notion of some coerced convergence towards a uniform EU-administered \u2018order\u2019, with its austere monetary \u2018disciplines\u2019. They even dismiss the EU\u2019s claim to be, somehow, a part of a greater civilizational order of moral values.<\/p>\n

If, in the post-war era, the EU represented an attempt to escape the Anglo-American hegemony, these new defiant blocks of \u2018cultural resurgence\u2019 which seek to situate themselves as interdependent, sovereign \u2018spaces\u2019 are, in their turn, an attempt to escape another type of hegemony: that of an EU administrative \u2018uniformity\u2019.<\/p>\n

To exit this particular European order (which it originally was hoped, would differ from the Anglo-Americanimperii), the EU nevertheless was forced to lean on the latter\u2019s archetypal construct of \u2018liberty\u2019 as empire\u2019s justification (now metamorphosed into the EU\u2019s \u2018four freedoms\u2019) on which the EU strict \u2018uniformities\u2019 (the \u2018level-playing-field\u2019, regulation in all aspects of life, tax and economic harmonization) have been hung. The European \u2018project\u2019 has become seen, as it were, as something that hollows out distinct and ancient \u2018ways-of-being\u2019.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the very fact of their being attempted, at different levels, and in distinct geographical cultural regions, these assays indicate that that EU hegemony has already weakened to the point that it may not be able fully to hinder the emergence of this new wave. What is at stake precisely for the EU, is whether it can succeed to slow down, and curb in every way, the emergence of this process of cultural re-sovereigntisation, which of course, threatens to fragment the EU\u2019s vaunted \u2018solidarity\u2019, and to fragment its matrix of a perfectly regulated customs union and common trade area.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italy, the EU, and the Fall of the Roman Empire The EU leadership is trying to contain a crisis that is emerging at increasing speed: this challenge comprises the rise of contumacious states (i.e. the UK, Poland, Hungary and Italy), or of defiant, historic \u2018cultural blocs\u2019 (i.e. Catalonia) \u2013 all of whom are explicitly disenchanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[14457,279,284,1464,5923,8203],"class_list":["post-41254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-alastair-crooke","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-italy","tag-roman-empire","tag-strategic-culture-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41255,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41254\/revisions\/41255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}