High-Tech Separation

European integration has taken great strides over the past few years. But each step forward is a step away from the old U.S.-dominated Atlantic alliance which forged the closest of ties between America and Europe during the Cold War years.

Europeans now have their own government, their own parliament, their own judiciary, a federal currency, their own police force and are about to launch their own army. In less than 18 months they plan to add 10 more countries to their ranks. In addition, they are in the process of drafting a new European constitution. All this has taken less than 10 years to bring together.

But true independence from U.S. domination cannot be achieved until the EU separates its information technology from the prying eyes of U.S. surveillance. So the EU is now moving to separate its IT processes from dependence on U.S.-developed systems.

Already working on a separately developed equivalent to the U.S. Global Positioning System (gps) and having moved to transfer its computer-based operations from the American Microsoft operating system to a European-developed system, the European Union has now gone one step further. It is making plans for an EU Internet domain—the .eu suffix for Internet websites. “The [European] Commission says .eu will complement the existing constellation of so-called Top Level Domains (.int, .org, .de, etc.), giving users who operate in several European countries a distinctly European identity and relieving them of the burden of registering multiple country code domains. Brussels also claims .eu would indirectly increase consumer confidence among European Internet users, since European law, data and consumer protection rules would apply to .eu sites” (Deutsche Welle, Sept. 16; emphasis ours).

This is just another step for the EU in the direction of independence from the U.S. The gulf between the old Cold War protector of Europe and its traditional anti-communist allies in Europe is growing ever wider. Watch for further cracks in the Atlantic alliance to appear as the EU, increasingly influenced by a newly assertive wave of anti-Americanism, creates an ever-wider geopolitical gulf between its expanding federal union and its old benefactor.