Charles Hill, “Islamism Implacable”:

Put simply, the European Union made itself the epitome of the Modern Age by relentless secularization. Islamism, emerging from the post–World War I collapse of the Ottoman empire and caliphate, made itself the vanguard of jihadist religion’s rise to become the implacable adversary of modernity. If Europe is where the siege is to take place, the drawbridge already is up: Islamism abhors the state; the EU has emasculated it.

Islamism recognizes only one border: between itself and regions yet to become Muslim; Europe has opened its borders to the point of abolishing the concept altogether.

Islamism regards democracy as un-Islamic because it enacts laws other than sharia; the European Union from its inception has acted assiduously to prevent people from governing themselves democratically.

Islamists, like Machiavelli, know that armed prophets are victorious and unarmed prophets are destroyed; the European Union has deliberately diminished its capacities to defend itself or to back its diplomacy with strength.

And while Islamists declare religion to be the answer, the EU has seen religion as the problem. As Pierre Manent has pointed out, had Europeans maintained their identity as sovereign states with a Christian heritage, the assimilation of Muslims could have been possible on the basis of comity,  whereas now it lacks an answer to “assimilation to what?”

Americans need to understand that the Modern Age with its pluralistic structures, societies, and beliefs is under assault and that the enemies of modernity are uniate, unwilling to accept others on an equal basis. In this context America’s involvement in the Middle East must take the side of pluralistic states and parties compatible with the international system.

Only Europeans can rectify the flaws in the European Union’s design to enable Europe to act on the world stage as a bordered state incorporating its historic nation-states in confederation. And only Europeans can attend to the needs of the European soul.

But however the relationship between Britain and Europe comes out, the United States must regard its relations with both as “special.” Transatlantic unity has been the keystone of the defense and extension of freedom in war-time for a hundred years and must remain so.

It is not the European Union but NATO that has been the key to transatlantic solidarity. Strengthening NATO as a military alliance with political consequences in support of a reformed European Union must be at the core of American policy. NATO’s role “out of area” will be vital along with continued efforts to integrate like-minded partners to the extent possible: Russia, Israel, the gulf Arab states. The Modern Age itself is at stake.