(asterisks in the original)[1] Empire 2.0 is presented as a fictitious letter sent to Debray from an old acquaintance, a French expatriate named Xavier de C***, who is writing to him from America in October 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
In de C***'s eyes, as American power wanes from lack of coherence, guidance, and grand strategy, which only European knowledge and insight can provide, Europeans will find themselves in a much more degraded state, and at the mercy of social and political ideologies and forces which are incompatible with Western virtues and conceptions of individuality; a decline that must be avoided and reversed by either a large influx of new citizens into the American structure or expanded national, civic and cultural awareness, among a broadened, cohesive citizenry.
Xavier advises Debray, and the French to lead the effort for this "official merger" between Europe and the United States, instead of persisting along the current path, because the current tendencies of European governments have led to a precarious situation and continuing along this trajectory only serves to preserve a kind of servile, political half-life among European nations and citizens, either as "junior partners" in U.S. led ventures, or conversely, as merely resentful, reluctant critics in ineffective organizations such as the United Nations and NATO or other naive, self-deluding social organizations.
Xavier asks rhetorically, if individual liberties, namely women's rights, religious freedom and tolerance, political stability and domestic order, would be better preserved if Europe were to accommodate totalitarian Islamists as France and England did with Hitler at Munich, or alternately whether Europe and the West would survive the ideological and political machinations of China, if China were allowed to become the world's only economic and military hyperpower, following U.S. military overstretch or economic depression resulting from this lack of Western cohesion, and the blowback effects of U.S. unilateralism operating without a moderating European influence.
He firmly believes that the United States should extend United States citizenship (through a modernized Edict of Caracalla to all Canadians, Latinos, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, New Zealanders and Australians, in order to formalize the political center of Western civilization, which in fact, already exists and is tacitly understood, thus formally extending democracy to people who are already governed by U.S. economic and security policies, as well as dominated by American cultural forms, yet have no vote or official representation in the U.S. government, and thus no real say in strategic or economic affairs.