[BRIEF NOTE] Better than ... ?

[rfmcdonald]

I've been thinking lately of Régis Debray's "Letter from America" (New Left Review 19, January-February 2003), his thesis that Europe--and, I'd argue on the strength of his analogy, Canada--could best remedy its weakness relative to the United States by joining the American federation. Yes, joining the American nation-state is almost certainly a non-starter barring serious state failure; yes, it's surely better to be Switzerland than Austria. Mightn't the American federation be made to transcend its roots?