The founders of the European Union deliberately sought to weaken national identities at the member-state level in favor of a “postnational” European consciousness, as an antidote to the aggressive ethno-nationalisms of the first half of the twentieth century.4 The hope of these founders was that economic interdependence would make war less likely, and that political cooperation would follow on its heels. In many ways, they were wildly successful: the idea that Germany and France, the two main antagonists of the world wars, would ever go to war with each other is vanishingly remote today.
Post WWII peace predicated on lacking membership to identity
