But it isn’t a mini-Iraq, and not just because they’re not killing one another. It’s more like a mini-European Union. In fact, that’s the one thing everyone can agree on.
No country is more invested in the EU experiment than Belgium, whose capital, Brussels, is also the capital of the EU. If Belgium falls to sectarianism, what does that say about prospects for making Europe into a super-Belgium?
Belgium is a “laboratory,” says Joelle Milquet, the leader of the French-speaking Humanist Democratic Center party and a defender of both a united Belgium and EU. “If 10 million people in a developed country do not manage to build a collective project,” she told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, “that would signal the bankruptcy of what one tries to build at the European and even international level.”
Why not separate when all you need to do is pay for a new flag and stationery?
I think Goldberg misses the point. The EU won't care about such happenings at the provincial level. The real power is with their bureaucracy that writes rules that override national constitutions.
Why should the Brussels bureaucrats care if they ignore Belgians or Flemish and Walloons? Hell, the more the merrier. If larger states have difficulty moving the central proto-state, how will little specks on the map have any impact at all? Only the nation-states smart enough not to subdivide will retain any influence at all. But they will likely be swamped by population numbers. And who will be smart enough to resist the lure of their own flag!
There could be a Flemish Oblast and a Walloon Oblast to join with scores of other administrative entities.
This is classic divide and conquer.
Consider this incentive to divide a feature of the European Union rather than a bug. The Brussels transnational elites will laugh all the way to their new undemocratic empire while the silly people atomize their once-influential nation-states into little ethnic theme parks.
Let the people have their postage stamps and flags, the EU overlords likely think! The power will lie in Brussels, and who will be large enough to stop them?
