Denying Identity to the Unified Europe. A Neo-Conservative View from the United States

The issue of European identity and even the mere existence of a European public sphere become quite thorny questions when we observe the point of view of non-European political players, such as foreign countries or international bodies. European identity seen from outside takes on different values and functions according to the type of opportunities it stands for or the strategies it may serve and support. Namely, the progress towards a tighter political and military integration, represented by the European Constitution, turns into a geopolitical threat through the looking glass of one of the closest and most influential political think-tanks of Bush conservative administration, The Heritage Foundation. The political and symbolic relevance of the progress towards a European Constitutional treaty, designed and drafted by the European Convention from 2001 to 2004 but rejected in France and the Netherlands in 2005, has been differently interpreted by conservative US think-thanks, but the special political and lobbying function played by HF to Republican congressmen makes its analyses more representative of the political attitude adopted by the current US administration. This article will show a) how the experts belonging to The Heritage Foundation basically frame the prospective European political integration within a traditional narrative structure dating back to Cold War times; b) how the details of the communication context shed more light on a particular genre of political communication and make more complicated the theoretical distinction between the notions of “identity” and “identification” and c) how the focus on global and local issues is exploited by the Heritage Foundation to support an argumentational logic which is strategically opposite to the one pursued by European institutions.