Europe’s Unification Curse Returns AGAIN | Prof. Ivo Yotsov

## Introduction Europe returns, again and again, to the same dilemma: can a continent of different histories, languages and economies be stitched into a single political and economic organism without reproducing the old cycles of empire and dissolution? The exchange recorded with Prof. Ivo Yotsov reframes European integration not as a steady teleology toward liberal order but as a recurrent historical pattern — a sequence of ambitious unifications that rise, centralize, produce imbalances and eventually fragment. This article draws from that conversation to map the recurring dynamics of European projects, to diagnose the structural flaws of the euro and the center‑periphery divide, and to consider unconventional responses on the table today: real‑time planning enabled by AI, and radical proposals for democratic control. The question at stake is practical as well as existential: how does Europe escape its unification curse? ## Liberal institutionalism vs realism 00:03: 09 Six unifications from 800 to Napoleon The prevailing narrative of recent decades — liberal institutionalism — treats integration as linear progress: more institutions, more rules, more liberal markets and democracy leading to an ever more stable Europe. Prof. Yotsov and the conversation challenge that optimism. Instead of a straight line, history is a spiral of rise, consolidation and decline. The discussion traces six major attempts to bind Europe into larger political wholes, beginning with the Carolingian synthesis (the Frankish Empire) in 800. Each effort mirrored the dominant logic of its era: religious homogeneity under Charlemagne; a highly procedural, rule-centered Holy Roman Empire; Napoleon’s administrative and legal standardization; German industrial and imperial projects in the twentieth century; the multinational construct of Yugoslavia; and the postwar supranational experiment that culminated in today’s European Union. What stands out is not merely the existence of these projects but the repeating mechanism: a powerful center imposes formal or informal rules, a politically weak or divided periphery is brought into the structure, and institutional designs fail to reconcile political authority with material disparities. The Holy Roman Empire’s elaborate procedures and fragmented sovereignty look eerily like contemporary complaints about sluggish EU decision-making: extensive consultation, an emphasis on legalism, and an inability to act swiftly in crisis. Napoleon’s model brought legal uniformity and bureaucratic centralization — efficient in some respects, coercive in others — and provoked nationalist reactions and guerrilla resistance. These historical analogues force a hard question: which parts of Europe’s institutional architecture genuinely reduce conflict, and which entrench imbalances that later erupt? ## German order and the eurozone trap One of the most striking threads through the conversation is an economic pattern that recurs under different guises: a dominant industrial core extracting resources, capital and markets from a less developed periphery. The 20th‑century German model — from late imperial economic integration through the Nazi “New Order” — exemplified a center built around industrial regions (Ruhr and the German heartland) that treated other parts of Europe as sources of raw materials and captive markets. The result was structural trade imbalances and political domination that ultimately imploded in catastrophic violence. Today’s eurozone, according to the argument developed in the discussion, reproduces a subtler version of that dynamic. Currency union without deep fiscal union creates persistent divergence: an undervalued competitive core, and an overvalued periphery that loses industrial capacity and accumulates debt. Without national exchange-rate adjustment, countries in the south can’t devalue to restore competitiveness; without robust transfer mechanisms, persistent divergence becomes structural. That combination produces deindustrialization in the periphery and political resentment — the very soil from which centrifugal forces grow. Far from eliminating imperial dynamics, a monetary union without fiscal solidarity risks freezing and institutionalizing them. ## Yugoslavia and the center-periphery split The conversation elevates Yugoslavia as a useful, underexamined case. It was a deliberately hybrid project — mixing religions, economic levels, and regional identities — kept together under a charismatic leader and a balancing institutional architecture. Tito’s central authority masked underlying asymmetries: wealthier northern republics subsidized less developed southern and eastern regions; rotating presidencies slowed decision-making; and, as with other large polities, the death of a unifying figure exposed centrifugal pressures. Yugoslavia’s collapse is instructive because it shows how formally egalitarian or bureaucratic systems can fail when they lack mechanisms to reconcile redistributive tensions and to act decisively in crises. The northern-southern split in Yugoslavia echoes the north-south divergences in the EU, where different development trajectories and political priorities erode the sense of common purpose. The lesson is institutional rather than moral: without credible redistribution and decisive governance, multi‑region polities devolve from integration to fragmentation. ## Borders shift and the escape problem Borders in Europe have always been fluid; what varies is the manner in which they change. The recorded exchange reminds us that the real question is not whether borders move but whether they move peacefully. Brexit, Northern Ireland’s complexities, and more dramatic redrawing of maps in earlier centuries demonstrate that different forms of integration — economic, monetary, political — proceed at different paces and along different vectors. That mismatch creates stress. The “escape problem” articulated in the conversation is a twofold predicament. First, peripheries trapped in an integrated system lack effective exit mechanisms that allow for orderly adjustment. Second, the elites who architect integration often lack the political will or legitimacy to implement the redistribution necessary to stabilize diversity within a union. The combination produces a trap: membership imposes constraints, but the union lacks flexibility to correct imbalances, and exit becomes messy, politically explosive and costly for all. As history shows, repeated attempts at creating a European order have stumbled on this same knot; escaping it requires reconceptualizing the terms of membership, adjustment and sovereign agency. ## Fourth theory and real-time planned economy One of the more provocative strands in the discussion is the appeal to “fourth” paradigms of politics and economy. Drawing on debates about pathways beyond liberalism, Marxism and fascism, the conversation explores whether new technological capabilities — data, sensors, AI — open the possibility of a very different kind of economic organization: a real‑time planned system. This is not a throwback to Soviet five‑year plans; it is an entirely different operating model where digital tracking of supply chains, predictive analytics and AI-driven optimization could coordinate production and distribution far more efficiently than mid‑20th‑century command systems. Prof. Yotsov points to cybernetic experiments and proposals from the Soviet era that were dismissed as impractical then; today they appear technically feasible. In a world where logistics are visible end‑to‑end, where algorithms can anticipate shocks and rewire supply relationships, a coordinated approach could, in theory, address the very imbalances that haunt monetary unions: targeted investment, dynamic industrial policy, and responsive redistribution. Yet this raises deep questions about political control, whose priorities such systems would serve, and how to guarantee rights, pluralism and accountabilit

Europe’s Unification Curse Returns AGAIN | Prof. Ivo Yotsov Can Europe unify without repeating empire and breakup cycles? Is the euro a trap without a shared budget, and could real-time AI planning replace markets? I sit down with Captain Ivo Yotsov, professor at the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy, to map six failed unifications and a choice for Europe. Links: Ivo Yotsov ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0300-9417 Ivo Yotsov on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ivo-Yotsov Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Merch & Donations: https://neutralitystudies-shop. fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:02 Liberal institutionalism vs realism 00:03: 09 Six unifications from 800 to Napoleon 00:12:41 German order and the eurozone trap 00:20:00 Yugoslavia and the center-periphery split 00:24:19 Borders shift and the escape problem 00:26:01 Fourth theory and real-time planned economy 00:33:10 Direct democracy and system control 00:38: 56 Museum Europe or reindustrialized Europe #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. I'm Pascal Lottaz, an Associate Professor at Kyoto University, and today I'm joined again by my Bulgarian colleague, Captain Ivo Yostov, a professor at the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy. Ivo, welcome back. Thank you. Always happy to see you. And I'm happy to see you because you reached out and said we need to discuss the European Union's attempt at unification and a couple of things, and I'm very happy to do that. So, where do you think we stand at the moment when it comes to this process of EU integration—sovereignty versus the member states? #Ivo Yotsov First of all, I think it's a very big historical process, this unification of Europe. I would say it's a fundamental clash now between two worldviews. The first one is liberal institutionalism. There’s a clash between liberal institutionalism and realism. Liberal institutionalism is almost a quasi-religious belief—the belief that history is a linear process moving toward liberal democracy and the free market. It’s seen as a one-way movement from darkness to light, from chaos to peace and order, from the rule of power to the rule of law. #Pascal That's the belief behind the framework. That's the narrative we've had for the last 30, 40, maybe 50 years. Everybody now talks about the rules-based order. -- 1 of 13 -- #Ivo Yotsov Yes, and this is famously encapsulated in Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History.” In contrast to that, reality rejects this linear view. History is actually a circular spiral, driven by quite predictable phases of rise, peak, and decline. Therefore, the so‑called post‑historical, peaceful Europe is just a vacation from history. Right. And I think now this vacation is already over. Heavy decisions have to be made. From a historical point of view, there were several attempts at European unification. The first one was the so‑called Carolingian synthesis—it was the Frankish Empire, proclaimed on Christmas Eve in the year 800. The ideological pillar of this attempt was religious homogeneity. Christianity was the main factor unifying the peoples of Europe—let’s say, Western Europe. #Pascal And may I just add one thing for our audience? Right before we started recording, you told me that Europe is currently going through the sixth attempt. Yes. So now you’re starting with the first one— the first one being the Hungarians trying to unify Europe under a European framework. #Ivo Yotsov Actually, it unified Europe, but only for a very short period—something like 40 years. About 42 years later, the emperor’s nephews divided the empire into two, let’s say, proto‑Germany and proto‑France. This attempt failed because it didn’t have institutional structures, and the main collective power was the will of the emperor. When he died, everything disintegrated. So, the second attempt is the Holy Roman Empire, which is very similar to today’s European Union. #Pascal Yes, it is. #Ivo Yotsov This was actually something like the first attempt to create a universal state. #Pascal Although we’re talking about the period even before the Peace of Westphalia, we’re talking about a moment of very great differences, but also of coming together under a bit of political unity—though still very dispersed. #Ivo Yotsov -- 2 of 13 -- Yes, this union was made up of more than 300 quite independent entities—church lands, cities, commercial and independent republics within the Holy Roman Empire. They tried to create a rule‑based empire. In the Reichstag, there were very strong discussions about everything, even the color of the seating places, and the emperor was elected—very similar to how the Pope is elected today. This election process also created a very strong, let’s say, money‑related influence. There was a possibility for the electors to receive rewards, so it was very difficult to reach a common decision within this organization. And actually, this rule‑based state was not able to stand in front of the enemy when Napoleon appeared. They discussed everything in the parliament, but Napoleon redrew the map of Europe without asking them. Nowadays, the European Union is almost in the same position. It’s very difficult. #Pascal Sorry, do you consider Napoleon the third attempt? #Ivo Yotsov Yes, Napoleon is the third attempt, but I’ll speak about that later. The second one, the Holy Roman Empire, was exactly like the European Union—it couldn’t reach a common decision quickly. You probably remember the events during the war in Georgia. The war ended before the European Union was able to make any decision, even a common opinion about those events. And, of course, the third attempt at unification is the so‑called Napoleonic system, Le Grand Empire. It marks the change from the medieval approach to the state. Napoleon had the so‑called Civil Code, called the Napoleonic Code, in 1804, I think. #Pascal He imposed his legal code on all the territories in Europe, including Switzerland. Switzerland got rid of the French occupation, but they kept the code. #Ivo Yotsov Okay. #Pascal Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this could happen again at any time. So please consider subscribing not only here but also to my mailing list on Substack—that’s pascallottaz.substack.com. The link’s in the description below. And now, back to the video. -- 3 of 13 -- #Ivo Yotsov So, the idea was to have common procedures—to have a standardized contract law, procedures in customs, and so on. And it was, well, nowadays the Russians have an expression for this: the “vertical of power.” So, from the emperor down to the last governor, there was very strong administrative centralization in this Napoleonic code. During this attempt, the bureaucracy became a weapon. It functioned as an efficient administrative machine, and citizens didn’t like that. The citizens didn’t like it, and the reaction was very furious in Spain. In Spain, there was the so‑called guerrilla, a kind of partisan war. In Germany, proto‑nationalism appeared during this time. And in Russia, when the country was invaded, the rulers managed to present the resistance to the people as, let’s say, something like a holy war—a national war against the intruders. Something very similar was happening at the same time: the so‑called Continental Blockade. The Continental Blockade was a blockade imposed on Britain by Napoleon. I think it was a kind of cognitive error on his part, because he believed that the industry of Great Britain was very closely tied to the markets in Europe and would collapse without them. But Great Britain quickly managed to reorient its markets toward the empire—his empire. #Pascal Yeah, so it was basically the early 19th‑century version of today’s sanctions—“Let’s sanction Britain.” Yes. #Ivo Yotsov Different players, but the ongoing events were almost the same. So, in the end, the economy of Europe was in very bad condition. It was like a backfire, something like that. And the fourth—well, I think that’s enough for the third one. The fourth attempt is, let’s say… I don’t know how to describe it because it’s very tricky. The German attempts during the 20th century. Apart from the inhumanity of the Nazi doctrine, there are several things that are very similar to what we see nowadays. Germany, from—well, I think in 1914—applied a policy in which Germany was the leader. The center of industrial development was the region of the Ruhr and the mainland, and those regions were supposed to provide technology and capital. The periphery, the other regions such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, served as a source of raw materials, cheap labor, and, of course, a market for German exports. This approach at the time created imbalances between Germany and the peripheries, such as Romania, Bulgaria, and so on, because of trade disparities. The German mark was artificially kept at a very high level. The Nazi “new order,” let’s say, from an economic point of view, was about creating a large space—a new territory—that would serve as a resource for the center. The idea was -- 4 of 13 -- that the common development of the European economy should bypass global markets. Germany believed that this internal European market would be enough to avoid dependence on the dollar and, at that time, on the British pound. #Pascal This attempt also failed, right? Yes, it failed, because it ended in very, very large-scale violence. And there are quite a few people who said, you know, if Hitler had stopped with Czechoslovakia, he might have gotten his way. But that would have been the whole of Europe, right? Actually, I’d add more. #Ivo Yotsov Yes, actually, this attempt was destroyed—was stopped—but not by itself. It was stopped by the coalition between the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States. But anyhow, it had very strong economic imbalances. And if it hadn’t been stopped for political reasons, it would have stopped by itself. So nowadays, the Eurozone is doing the same, because it creates imbalances between, for example, the economies of Germany and Italy. In Germany, the euro is undervalued; in Italy, it’s overvalued compared to what the economy should be. And the trade exchange between the two countries—well, for Italy, it’s, let’s say, cheap to buy German goods. In this way, it creates a trade imbalance between Italy and Germany. And debt flows from Italy to Germany. This trade imbalance became a financial imbalance—it turned into debt. And Italy can’t escape from that because it’s almost, let’s say, close to bankruptcy. Germany can’t escape either, because it would lose the money it’s supposed to receive from Italy. So it’s like a trap for both sides. And actually, this is the reason for deindustrialization in Southern Europe—countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain as a whole—and also in Eastern Europe. The more developed, industrialized countries keep pulling ahead, and the difference between these two parts of Europe is getting bigger and bigger because of that. #Pascal Because if the currencies were not the same, then the Italian currency would actually, over time, devalue. So it would get cheaper for Germany to import goods from Italy, and that would balance things again. Yes. Within nation-states—also in Switzerland, or in others like the U.S. as well—what you do is have a financial exchange mechanism where you redistribute the profits from taxes. #Ivo Yotsov But that’s what the European Union doesn’t have. #Pascal -- 5 of 13 -- They have currency integration without fiscal integration—at least not to the level they need. And we saw that during the crisis with Greece, yes, and in other moments too. This creates a structural imbalance toward the imperial center, Germany. And I wonder, why is it that your country, Bulgaria of all places, decided to adopt it? What