The golden age of the democratic nation-state, unencumbered by the EU — which the Euroskeptics claim they want to revive — is an ahistorical myth. Europe’s history is complicated and often violent. The democratization of European states started only in the second half of the 19th century. Unlike today, Europe lacked a formal system of political cooperation, which helps explain the bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War and, more importantly, World War I. The democratic nation-state also wasn’t resilient to the rise of totalitarian ideologies and nationalism, which plunged the world into the biggest killing spree in human history. It was only after World War II that democracy in Europe’s nation-states started to flourish. But it also happens that this period birthed pan-European political institutions, from the European Coal and Steel Community, created in 1951, to the smorgasbord governing the EU today.

The period of European integration has been an unprecedented period of peace on the continent. American leadership in the Western world and the existence of NATO were the essential preconditions for this state of affairs. However that may be, the historical uniqueness of this situation should make everyone wary of any dramatic overhauls of Europe’s political architecture. Conservatives oppose radical change because they appreciate that attempts to improve political institutions, which emerge from a slow process of evolution, can easily backfire. They should thus view the idea of dismantling the EU as an exercise in radical social engineering and worry about its unintended consequences.