Politics & Power Quote by Richard Perle

Perle’s line reads like a polite memo, but it carries the chill of a strategic recalculation. “Acknowledge” isn’t a request for debate; it’s a demand that Washington stop reciting yesterday’s catechism about European unity as automatic good news. The phrase “no longer” does the heavy lifting, implying a before-and-after moment: the postwar era when American power and European integration marched in lockstep, and a new era when Europe’s cohesion might translate into autonomy.

The key rhetorical move is “unqualified.” Perle isn’t arguing that integration is bad. He’s arguing that the U.S. should treat it like any other geopolitical development: conditional, interest-based, subject to tradeoffs. That single word smuggles in a critique of sentimentality in foreign policy, especially the reflex that a stronger EU must mean a more stable West. It also signals suspicion that a “closely integrated Europe” could consolidate positions that blunt U.S. leverage: a common foreign policy that resists American-led interventions, a trade bloc able to set rules the U.S. has to swallow, a defense identity that competes with NATO rather than complements it.

The subtext is classic Washington realism with a Perle edge: allies can become rivals without firing a shot. In the late-1990s/early-2000s backdrop of EU enlargement, the euro, and transatlantic fights over Iraq and regulation, the quote functions as an anti-romantic corrective. It’s not Europhobia so much as a reminder that alignment is a moving target, and that power shared among friends is still power not owned.