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take into consideration such important variables as history, geography, economy, and
culture?
While the future prospects for east central Europe seem boundless, its past history
has more often then not been a cycle of civil strife, war and foreign occupation
punctuated by the occasional but brief flowering of culture, governance, and relative
affluence. This is a region that sits astride unresolved and volatile national, ethnic and
religious divides that cannot be casually shunted aside. Institutional cooperation as
exemplified by the EU offers the conventional answer to this problem and one that has
been embraced by an east central Europe eager to escape from and jettison its past.
The brutalities of the Second World War and harshness of the ensuing Soviet
occupation have left scars behind on the countries of east central Europe. The EU
appeared as a “white knight” seemingly unconnected to the region’s history of discord
while offering a ready-made path to a shining future. However, France and then
Holland’s rejection in 2005 of the EU constitution have increasingly muddied the golden
path for east central Europe. Their rejections were fueled not only through a lack of
confidence by the electorate in the EU’s leadership but also by resentment over the
supposed invasion of Western Europe by “Polish plumbers;” that is, east central
European economic advances at the expense of France and Holland’s workers.6 The EU
model has been further tarnished by the out of control French race riots of November
2005 in which tens of thousands of cars were burned and resulted in an eight-week State
of Emergency being declared.7
While the east central European EU members undoubtedly remain committed to
the union there must be some disquiet. The French and Dutch rejection of the EU
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constitution was perhaps a shock to the new members. But the unforeseen French ethnic
riots, which occurred in a supposed bastion of egalitarianism in the heart of the EU,
should have sent alarm bells ringing throughout east central Europe with its numerous
historic national rivalries. Not only was the most senior member of the EU, the French
government, seemingly impotent to quell the situation but also the riots at their height
spread cross-border into Germany and Belgium.8 Some reflection by east central
Europe’s leadership and a quiet search for alternatives and fallbacks to the EU plan for
east central European would seem prudent. One solution is the neglected premise of
regional federalism9 that could be used as a complimentary solution in taming internal
discord and securing external security.
East central Europe is a region of huge economic and political potential. Rich in
natural resources, fertile land, and industry, it sits astride major waterways and seas. Its
Danube basin was once the heartland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The region’s
northern tier at one time constituted the Jagiellian Kingdom of Poland, a great power of
the 15th and 16th Centuries. In more recent times, east central Europe has been coveted by
Wilhelmine Germany as Mitteleuropa and was plundered as an economic and political
protectorate of the Third Reich. The conclusion of the Second World War brought no end
to forms of occupation, as it became a largely unwilling possession of the Soviet Union.
The current gradual reshaping of Europe under the European Union is a positive
development but it must be pointed out that long troubled east central Europe needs much
more than appendage status in the EU to insure its future.
The history of east central Europe indicates that stability in the region is often
short lived and is subject to both the imperial ambitions of neighboring states as well as
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internecine factionalism. The answer offered by the EU, European unity and identity, is
an untested proposition, indeed as will be seen, previous efforts at achieving European
political and military unity have been disappointments. Is it reasonable to assume that
Hallstein’s EU bicycle can continue to move forward, avoiding every pothole and
overcoming every bump?
Much of the literature on European integration assumes that the way forward is
the European Union as currently constructed with debates in the literature focused on the
varying degrees (scope and speed) at which it should deepen or widen or more critical
analyses on why it might fail. This dissertation seeks to contribute to a discussion of
alternative forms of integration. While in contemporary political circles this discussion
may seem remote, this dissertation is primarily concerned with conceptual development,
rather than policy prescription, although the latter shall be touched upon. This
dissertation's premise is that current examination of the EU is too narrow, either
assuming that it must be the current trajectory or failure. This thesis proposes an
alternative governance structure for east central Europe based on two related factors: First
the development of a supplementary federal structure for east central Europe premised
upon the region’s own unique past efforts at forming a union. Second, the taming of
factionalism and nationalism using the remedy set forth in James Madison’s Tenth
Federalist Paper that is the cornerstone of America’s republican form of government.
In absorbing east central Europe, both NATO and the EU have unwittingly
inherited the underlying tension that surrounds the centripetal and centrifugal force that is
national self-determination. While the concept and process of national self-determination
has been accorded the status of a “building-block” for liberal democracy, this dissertation
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will suggest that the concept’s legacy in east central Europe may be more of a stumbling
block to integration – or at the very least a variable that must be understood as posing a
challenge as much as a support for integration. It may not be the ghost of Marxism that
haunts east central Europe but instead the shadow of a single American president –
Woodrow Wilson. Breaking free of this shadow is perhaps possible but almost one
hundred years after the Versailles Treaty of 1919 the testament of Woodrow Wilson
continues to hold east central Europe in its grasp. It is far from assured if east central
Europe has yet fully matured from its post-Versailles status as the remnants of empire to
become the fully functioning partners capable of sharing sovereignty within the
complexities of the European Union.
At Versailles in 1919, Woodrow Wilson introduced the world to a particular
formulation of national self- determination and unwittingly unleashed a concept that
continues to this day to pose obstacles by turning big nations into small ones, fomenting
civil wars, and dooming first the League of Nations and now the United Nations to an
unwieldy structure that at times appears to be nothing more than a debating society of
two hundred supposedly equally sovereign members. Even Neo-Wilsonians like Robert
McNamara10, have admitted Wilsonian national self-determination begat the seeds of
violence in which well over a hundred million people perished as a direct consequence of
war.11
In dismembering the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, Wilson exacerbated
a region of instability and legitimized the concept that there should be a state for every
nationality. The spark that ignited World War I was the bullet of an ultra nationalist
Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo yet the lesson of ethnic extremism was not learned. At
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Versailles in 1919, the creation of the less than robust countries of Czechoslovakia,
Poland, and Yugoslavia, temporarily satisfied some cravings for national self-
determination. But Versailles also kept the region permanently enfeebled and deliberately
dependent on the flawed League of Nations system, which was supposed to act as a
broker between the new states and their restless German and Hungarian minorities.12 The
League of Nations proved to be an impotent arbiter, bereft of enforcement powers against
a resurgent Germany and contumacious Soviet Union.13 Therefore it was relatively easy
for Hitler to exploit ethnic disputes and irredentism to help conquer Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Indeed, Hitler skillfully utilized national self-
determination as a core concept as early as 1920: “We demand the union of all Germany
in a Greater Germany on the basis of the right of national self-determination.”14 National
self-determination was the primary pretext for the German dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia in 1939 and annexations of Austria, Memel and Danzig. In line behind
Hitler with their own claims of national self-determination were the Hungarians,
Bulgarians, Italians, Croats, and Slovaks. None of the victors of Versailles:
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania were a match for Germany and its
partners owing to their lack of military power, internal ethnic problems and disunity.
Later during the dark days of the Second World War, the dispossessed regimes of
Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and Yugoslavia with their exiled governments
eking out a precarious existence in London on British subsidies seemed to have partially
learned the lesson of Versailles. They half-heartedly attempted to federate to prepare for
the aftermath of the Second World War but failed miserably. Federation was not a new
idea to Eastern Europe, but all interwar and wartime attempts had faltered. But it was
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only after the Second World War when the Soviets had occupied the region and imposed
their own brand of harsh unity that the most innovative solutions to the problems of east
central European disharmony were floated only to be lost again during the long Cold
War.
Foreign occupation beginning in 1939 with the onset of the Second World War
and continuing through the Soviet era prevented any implementation of federalism in east
central Europe. The Russian withdrawal from the region starting in 1989 led to not just
democracy and the settlement of old grievances in peaceful ways as in Czechoslovakia’s
Velvet Divorce and its partition into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992. There also
occurred in Yugoslavia a resurgence of nationalism and ethnic violence reminiscent of
the worst excesses of the Second World War. In 1989 on the occasion of the 600th
anniversary of the battle of Kosovo,15 Yugoslav President Slobodon Milosevic tried to
harness nationalistic symbolism to keep the Serb dominated Yugoslav state from eroding:
Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are facing
battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be excluded yet.
However, regardless of what kind of battles they are, they cannot be won without
resolve, bravery, and sacrifice, without the noble qualities that were present here
in the field of Kosovo in the days past.16
Not to be outdone, Milosevic’s Croatian nemesis, Franjo Tudjman, similarly rallied the
Croats to oppose, “Great Serbian hegemonistic desires.”17 The predictable result of the
appeal to extreme nationalism was the deaths of at least 100,000 individuals in Bosnia-
Herzegovina with additional casualties elsewhere in former Yugoslavia.18
In other east central European countries the old guard clung to power and had to
be gradually dislodged by democratic means. The transition to a market economy was
particularly painful for the poorer countries. Economic and political stability not regional
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geopolitics were the primary concerns thus old plans for a federal state in east central
Europe were not of immediate interest to the leaders of these emerging states.
Fifteen years after the end of Soviet rule, the EU has firmly moved into east
central Europe. Europe is no longer divided into two blocs but is pluralistic and
interdependent. The Russian disengagement has resulted in greater involvement in east
central Europe by several European powers: England, France, and Germany each have
their own foreign policy goals regarding European integration. Russia remains an
independent actor but greatly diminished in stature. But far from ushering in a guaranteed
new era of cooperation and harmony, the case can be made that this actually presages a
return to pre-First World War Europe or as David Calleo has put it: “Back to the
Future.”19 Thus Europe may be soon more dangerous not less so and as usual east central
Europe would be caught in the cross fire.
In east central Europe today, armed conflict has been reduced to occasional
incidents in Kosovo and Macedonia while the regional economy is booming. However,
the dynamics of the past have not been completely stamped out. Nationalist tendencies,
particularly if promises of economic prosperity are not fulfilled, cannot be easily
dismissed. What if the EU bicycle cannot pedal fast enough to stay ahead of these old
tendencies?
It is the role of academicians to constantly ponder, “what if?” That is the tradition
to which this dissertation adheres. What if the current vision of European integration
falters? Is there an alternative to complete failure? What middle road could have been
taken and what can we learn from that alternative that might be helpful for understanding
the future prospects of integration. Interestingly, a focus on historical tendencies can
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enlighten us on possible positive alternatives. Old plans for federation formerly locked
away in the archives of the FBI, CIA, US State Department, and Army Counter
Intelligence are now relevant; the past can supply a map for the future. The case can be
made that regional federation offers a solution to extinguish the long-standing internal
nationality-based disputes while shoring up external security concerns.
These early Cold War blueprints for federalism filed under their various
intriguing code names, Intermarium, International of Liberty, Central Union, Prometheus
League, Green International and others still offer viable and alternative visions for east
central Europe. All previous efforts at unity in east central Europe came to naught
because of factional disagreements and the overwhelming power of Hitler’s Germany and
then the Soviet Union. However, Germany is now pacified within the EU and Russia has
temporarily retreated from most of its so-called near abroad except for Belarus and a
handful of isolated military bases in Georgia and Ukraine. These facts are not necessarily
lost on the leaders of east central Europe who might well use the respite from immediate
security worries to evaluate their own options. The current protections and benefits
provided by the EU permit a respite and the luxury to reexamine the concept of regional
federalism to insure future survival. Now is the time for east central Europe to reevaluate
federalism in terms of taming national self-determination and providing for a secure
future.
Wilson versus Madison, a European Dilemma
It is ironic that even as the United States has found itself temporarily at odds with
the continental powers of France and Germany over the intervention in Iraq20, the future
of Europe and in particular east central Europe is being shaped by the political theories of
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two long dead American presidents, Woodrow Wilson and James Madison. Wilson of
course is best remembered for his triple legacy: The Fourteen Points, the Versailles
Treaty, and the League of Nations system; all of which continue to define Europe in
terms of national self-determination, existing borders, and the immense investment in the
ongoing process, generally known by the moniker neo-liberal institutionalism. The
doctrine of institutionalism is based on the premise that cooperation through international
governmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU)
offer the best path to peace, prosperity, and security.
James Madison, on the other hand, seems an unlikely candidate to influence the
future of twenty-first century Europe. James Madison, the fourth president of the United
States, never traveled beyond the borders of the United States. Madison’s greatest
weakness was in foreign relations. The War of 1812 with Great Britain or as his critics
referred to it, “Madison’s War,” resulted in a territorial stalemate while the British
humiliated the Americans by sacking and burning the White House and forcing the
Madison government to temporarily flee Washington.
Prior to becoming president, Madison offered a monumental contribution to the
development of the United States as a stable functioning democracy. The Tenth
Federalist was originally published November 23, 1787 in the New York Packet and was
Madison’s first contribution to the well-known Federalist Papers21. Some scholars
acknowledge the Tenth Federalist “as perhaps the most significant contribution to the
theory of government ever written by an American.22” The renowned political scientist,
Robert Dahl23, praised the Tenth Federalist for its precise, almost mathematical logic,
ascribing to it the basic rationale for the American political system.24 The Tenth
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Federalist has been labeled the shining jewel of the Federalist Papers and has been
called the ur-text of American polity.25
The Tenth Federalist was completed during the declining days of the Articles of
Confederation of the United States and specifically addressed the issues of faction and
insurrection. Looking no further than Madison’s first sentence of the Tenth Federalist
can be found the bold proposition:
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none
deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control
the violence of faction.
While Madison was focused solely on the United States, this passage sounds like nothing
more than a succinct prescription for curing the ills of the past 150 years in east central
Europe. The well-documented fragmentation of Yugoslavia that began in 1990 was but
one small example of the blight of national and ethnic faction that has plagued east
central Europe. The Tenth Federalist sagely noted that disagreements about matters such
as religion are fertile grounds for inflaming mutual animosities and violence. And while
national self-determination was likely an unknown concept to Madison, the Tenth
Federalist offers a cure for all forms of division: a federal republican system in which
there is a fair allocation of representation among competing factions.
Madison in the Tenth Federalist defined faction as:
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority
or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse
of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the
permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
East central Europe owing to its complex history and diverse composition is rife with
factions of every stripe: political, ethnic, economic and religious. But faction may either
be a curse or a saving grace as the region is also particularly well suited to a federal
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republican system of government. Due to the numerous national groups, no one faction
could predominate by sheer numbers. Both Wilson and Madison espoused a democratic
form of government but as explained by Madison, no matter how well intentioned a
democracy, it will be inevitably overwhelmed by faction and eventually reduced to
violence, civil war, and ultimately oppression unless measures are taken to mitigate and
control factional urges.
Woodrow Wilson, in contrast to Madison, ignored the problem of faction and
instead concentrated on democracy based on national self-determination. The centuries
long oppression of the Poles, Czechs, Serbs and others at the hands of the German,
Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman empires was remedied at Versailles by fashioning new
states based on ethnicity. Unfortunately for the national aspirations of the new states, the
countries created were not wholly homogenous in ethnic composition and internal
factions based upon nationality abounded. Wilson though had seemingly genuine
sympathies for the non-German subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly
the Czechs that was manifest as early as 1898 in his massive study of governance systems
through the ages, The State.26 This Wilsonian identification with the plucky Czechs led
in part to the destruction of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and the creation of
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. These states in turn were dogged by further
ethnic tensions awakened by Versailles27 but not satisfied there.
Examples of this fractiousness include the assassination of the Yugoslav King
Alexander by Croat and Macedonian terrorists in 1934, Poland’s repeated problems with
its German and Western Ukrainian minorities, and Czechoslovakia’s ultimately fatal
struggle with Sudeten German, Slovak, and Ruthenian nationalists. Further destabilizing
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matters, pockets of inassimilable Hungarian and German enclaves were scattered
throughout the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wilson had banked on the League of
Nations system to control the volatile situation and for a while the League and its partner,
the Permanent Court of Justice28 in The Hague, did try to keep a lid on the boiling pot.
Ultimately, the circumstances of artificial borders, irredentism, and trapped minorities
were exploited by Nazi Germany, Italy and Hungary to destroy the states created by
Versailles.
The unintended byproduct of Wilson’s awakening of nationality- based
governance structures in east central Europe led to the deadly resurgence of German,
Hungarian, Italian and Bulgarian nationalism. It also brought about the creation of Fascist
Croatia and Slovakia, two nationalities spurned by Versailles who found an outlet for
their nationalism under Nazi tutelage. The result was nothing more or less than what
Madison had predicted, the triumph of faction and violence over democracy. Wilson’s
dependence on international organizations as the standard for controlling faction or what
was then termed “minority rights” had failed. Madison however had looked to a state
governance system itself, federalism, as the antidote to factionalism.
Unlike Wilson, Madison acknowledged in the Tenth Federalist: “the causes of
faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling
its effects.” Wilson’s emphasis on nationality as the driving force of democratic self-
determination was therefore misguided, because it tended to accentuate existing divisions
and deviated from the established success of the republican form of government in the
American experience. Not everyone was oblivious to the inherent vice of national self-
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determination. Wilson’s aide, Walter Lippman29, later called the concept “un-American”
and “an invitation to sheer anarchy.”30
Ironically, the actual American experience at its founding was not one based on
national self-determination and the country’s subsequent history has aspired to the
alternative metaphor of a “melting pot,” which implied a more inclusive or accepting,
rather than exclusive, political construct at its core. Yet Wilson’s gift to east central
Europe and the world was the notion that nationality is fundamental to self-
determination. Madison, on the other hand, confirmed that democracy and self-
determination can be had within a larger framework wherein republican representation
and inclusiveness are the centerpieces. Madison later refined this into the form of what
we now call democratic pluralism, the so-called party system of competing interests that
channels a multiplicity of social and economic concerns into major political parties.31
Wilson, on the other hand, ended up as the champion of national self-determination, a
political construct that when taken to the extreme, encouraged bloodshed and strife, as it
points to the nation (no matter how small) as the unit of governance. In short, reconciling
national self-determination with pluralism in east central Europe is a challenge that must
be met if the one hundred and fifty-year cycle of internecine conflict is to be broken.
The European Union
The European Union (EU) has characterized itself as a unique entity in
international relations, neither a new state nor an international organization, using
delegated authority with the consent of its member states.32 The EU is also considered
overwhelmingly to be the best hope for east central Europe’s juvenile democracies and
fragile economies. But is the EU a panacea for east central Europe, a white knight riding
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to rescue? Or is it hobbled to some extent by the same Wilsonian values that have held
back east central Europe? Despite spurning the title international organization, the current
EU seems to be a classic application of neo-liberal institutionalism, the theory that
institutions are the leading method of promoting intra-state cooperation. As a
consequence of its structure, the EU is dependent upon ongoing cooperation between
supposedly equal sovereign entities any of which can veto initiatives in all sectors
including defense and foreign policy.33
The eight-nation34 EU expansion into east central Europe was concluded in May
2004. In May 2004 the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, and
Hungary all joined the EU. There was little opposition to EU membership in the
candidate states. The electorates of Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech
Republic, and Poland enthusiastically voted yes to EU membership in the first few
months of 2003. Poland the most populous candidate with the strongest economy
reported a landslide of 77% in favor of joining the EU in their referendum.35 The Czech
Republic also experienced a similar surge of yes votes in favor of the EU despite the
skepticism of its president, Vaclav Klaus. The rationale in each case was that
membership would enhance long-term economic prospects.36 The expansion was
viewed as the initial pay off of a decade long program begun in the early 1990’s, the goal
of which was nothing less than unprecedented peace, stability, prosperity, and democracy
for all of Europe.37 But while the countries of east central Europe rushed to join the EU
in hopes of future economic gain, a debate raged at the EU’s highest levels.
Former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who headed the European
Convention, a 105-member group that help draft the proposed EU Constitution, “Seeing
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