Tomorrow’s Europe: A Never Closer Union

Bowman Miller

National Intelligence University

Dr. Bowman H. (Bo) Miller teaches graduate courses in globalization and intelligence, conflict and social analysis, European issues, foreign intelligence partnerships, and issues in all-source analysis at the National Intelligence University in Washington, DC. His four decades in U.S. counterintelligence and intelligence began in 1966 as a summer intern linguist at the National Security Agency.

Before joining the NIU faculty in August 2005, he served for 27 years in the U.S. Department of State in intelligence and terrorism analysis positions.

From 1987 until his retirement in 2005, he was Director of Analysis for Europe in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at State in charge of all-source political and security analysis for the Secretary of State and other senior policymakers by a staff of 20 analysts responsible for the whole of Europe. Prior to going to the State Department, he was a U.S. Air Force officer performing special investigations and analysis while serving in Germany and in Washington.

Dr. Miller has been affiliated in one form or another with AICGS for over 20 years. He was educated at the University of Iowa, Cornell University, the German university in Tübingen, and at Georgetown University, where he received his PhD in German in 1983. His research interests, lectures, and publications center on conflict analysis, the intelligence process, European and German issues, transatlantic relations, the role of language in politics and diplomacy, and the craft of all-source analysis.

Europe is beset with multiple, intersecting challenges and crises, among them unwelcome inward migration, suffocating indebtedness in the southern tier, rising populist nationalism evident from Britain and France to Hungary and Poland, and residue from the 2008 economic/euro crisis, to name the more prominent ones. Less noticed or commented is the European Union’s need to readdress its foundational rationale and to adapt it to contemporary reality. Its original stated aim to share sovereignty and pursue supra-national integration in an effort to prevent renewed intra-European warfare is no longer relevant, and today’s electorates demand both more say and new justification behind elites’ calls for continuing integration to shore up the EU’s edifice and ensure its institutional future. Continue reading.

The article was originally published by the Journal of European Integration on April 17, 2017.  

The views expressed are those of the author(s) alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American-German Institute.