United States of Europe
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The United States of Europe (sometimes abbreviated U.S.E. or USE) is a name given to several similar hypothetical scenarios of the unification of Europe, as a single nation and a single federation of states, similar to the United States of America, both as projected by writers of speculative fiction and science fiction, and by political scientists, politicians, geographers, historians, and futurologists.
Fiction
Carole Carlson, identified in print as C. C. Carlson, is a professional writer and ghostwriter "coauthoring" many books in print. In 1970, when scandals began to rock the Worldwide Church of God, she teamed up with Hal Lindsey to write a religious best seller called The Late, Great Planet Earth. This book, which sold millions of copies in the 1970s, was made into a movie starring Orson Welles. It followed much of the same prophetic storyline concerning the rise of a powerful state in Europe, as previously told by Herbert Armstrong.
In the fictional universe of Eric Flint's best selling alternate history 1632 series, a United States of Europe is formed out of the Confederation of Principalities of Europe, which was composed of several German political units of the 1630s.
Sci-fi has made particular use of the idea: Incompetence, a dystopian novel by Red Dwarf creator Rob Grant, is a murder mystery political thriller set in a federated Europe of the near-future, where stupidity is a constitutionally protected right. References to a European Alliance or European Hegemony have also existed in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994). In the "Spy High" series of books for young adults, written by A.J. Butcher and set around the 2060s, a united Europe exists in the form of 'Europa' and in Andrew Roberts's 1995 book The Aachen Memorandum details a United States of Europe formed from a fraudulent referendum entitled the Aachen Referendum.
Since the 2000s a number of computer strategy games set in the future have presented a unified European faction along side other established military powers such as the US and Russia. These include Euro Force, a 2006 expansion pack to Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 2142 (also released in 2006, with a 2007 expansion pack). In Battlefield 2142 a united Europe is shown as one of the two great superpowers on Earth, the other being Asia, despite being mostly frozen in a new ice age. The disaster theme continues with Tom Clancy's EndWar (2009) there a nuclear war between Iran and Saudi Arabia destroying the Middle Eastern oil supply prompts the EU to integrate further as the European Federation in 2018. The only game not to make bold claims of full integration is Shattered Union (2005); set in a future civil war in the US with the European Union is portrayed as a peacekeeping force. The video game series WipEout on the other hand makes a clear federal reference without a military element: one of the core teams that has appeared in every game is FEISAR. This acronym stands for Federal European Industrial Science And Research.
The 'United States of Europe' figures as the goal of secret cabals in various conspiracy theories, see Priory of Sion - the cabals apparently preferring to borrow their constitutional structures from the USA.
Conservative Christian apocalyptic/ end time fictional scenarios used to include the ten nation European Union of the eighties as an allegedly 'prophesied' 'future' superpower that serves as the initial power base for the Antichrist before he achieves global domination. As the European Union expanded to include subsequent members far beyond that initial plateau, however, that fictional device fell into misuse.
See also
- Euro
- Europe Book Prize
- European Constitution
- European Civil War
- European integration
- Eurocentrism
- Euroscepticism
- Federal Europe
- Guy Verhofstadt
- History of the European Union
- Multi-speed Europe
- New England Confederation
- Pan-European identity
- Potential Superpower (European Union)
- Pro-European
- World government
- United States (disambiguation)
- Unification (disambiguation)
