Europe project requires a distinctly European form of nationalism
Europe must complete its common institutions. That project requires a distinctly European form of nationalism. For all its flaws, Trump’s critique points to a fundamental truth: a viable state requires a political community.
Without a collective “we,” taxation feels like extortion, laws are perceived as an imposition by outsiders, and military service becomes difficult to justify. Why contribute, comply, or sacrifice if the beneficiaries are not “us”?
As Benedict Anderson famously argued,
nation-states are socially constructed “imagined communities”: large enough that most members will never meet, yet real enough to sustain mutual obligations.
This sense of “us” is not a rhetorical flourish; it is the intangible social scaffolding that supports collective action. Any political project – liberal or illiberal, democratic or authoritarian – depends on it.
Ricardo Hausmann Project Syndicate Dec 31, 2025
Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Harvard Growth Lab.
We the People
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/preamble
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