The Invasion of the EU Body Snatchers

In addition to the piece by Randy Barnett, National Review Online also features David Frum’s excellent diary entry from London. In the most substantive part of the entry, Frum reports that friends in London are wondering why the U.S. apparently is keeping quiet about the upcoming series of referenda in which seven Eastern European countires will vote on whether to accede to the European Union. Frum does not necessarily advocate attempting to sabotage the negotiated agreement of these countries to join the EU. However, he wonders whether we shouldn’t “at least be talking to the peoples of Eastern Europe about the dangerous course the EU took in the past year — and on the reforms we hope they will be pressing for if they do vote in favor [of joining].” My view is that once these countries join the EU, they will be invited (as they were by Chirac last winter) to “keep quiet” and that, fairly quickly, they will fall into line. Indeed, the EU experience seems to have an Invasion of the Body Snatchers quality to it. Ultimately, I think, the fate of the EU will turn on whether it can deliver the economic goods, not on the reformist impulses of new Eastern European members.
Frum also comments on Colin Powell’s non-denial of the charge that the State Department concealed from the rest of the administration information that North Korea had confessed to reprocessing nuclear material. And don’t miss Frum’s opening shot at Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation.