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THE
STRATFOR WEEKLY
3 March 2003
by Dr. George Friedman
The
European Question
Summary
The Iraq crisis has redefined relations
between the United States and Europe. It also has redefined relations within
Europe, where the desire to build a transnational entity has encountered the
desire to build a Europe that is a great power. The Franco-German entente
driving European unification now has encountered the deep suspicion with which
France and Germany are viewed by others. In many ways, Iraq can be said to
have marked the end of European innocence: It was the collision point between a
romantic vision of Europe and the hard realities of European
life.
Analysis
One of the unintended consequences of the American
obsession with Iraq is that it has raised the question of Europe in striking and
unexpected ways. It has been said that the U.S. relationship with Europe will
not be the same after the Iraq experience. In a similar and connected sense, it
would seem that Europe's relationship with itself will never again be the
same.
The concept of Europe is itself enigmatic. There has always been a
Europe, in the simplest geographic sense. Within that Europe has been embedded
an extraordinary paradox: European states, taken together, not only conquered
most of the world, but actually invented it. Before the European imperial
adventure, the world was divided into sequestered universes -- the Aztecs did
not know of the Islamic world; the Chinese did not know the Norwegians. Europe
blasted through all of these self-contained universes, creating, in the process,
the world -- a single entity aware of itself and of all of its parts.
At
the same time, Europe itself was caught in an unending civil war. Until 1945,
European history was an unremitting tale of bloodshed and horror on an
ever-increasing scale. In this sense, there was no such thing as Europe, only
its constituent parts -- dynasties and nations, engaged in endless bloodletting
and maneuver.
The concept of Europe that emerged following World War II
was the mirror opposite of the older Europe. The new definition of Europe, at
least conceptually, repudiated both the imperial enterprise of the old Europe --
in effect, trying to abandon both European states' domination of the world they
helped bring into being and abandoning the obligations that came with creation.
Europe repudiated its identity as conqueror. At the same time, it elevated the
notion of Europeanism in an attempt to overcome the bloodletting that had marked
its history. The imperial Europe ceased to be, along with Europe's interminable
civil war. "Europe" now came to mean a peaceful entity that had overcome its
nationalism.
The idea of Europe was partly defense against its own past;
it also was partly a contrivance designed to give Europe weight in the world.
The end of World War II created two global giants that both occupied Europe and
competed for the legacy of European imperialism in the rest of the world. Caught
between the United States and the Soviet Union, the fragmented countries of
Europe had no weight. Europe needed to transcend nationalism if it were to
engage in great power politics. This is the paradox that lies at the heart of
Europe, and the underlying crisis within Europe today.
In a sense, the
United States invented the concept of Europe for its own reasons. One of the
advantages of the American alliance system over that of the Soviet Union was
economic: The economic benefits of being aligned with the United States were
inherently greater. The modern EU emerged from experiments begun in the 1950s
within the framework of a Western Europe integrated within the U.S. alliance
system, particularly NATO. NATO was created as more than just an alliance
system: It was intended to subsume the particular national interests of the
members -- particularly the European members -- into a single integrated,
transnational framework
The NATO model in defense policy became, in the
broadest sense, the model for the EU. The Union was a transnational entity that
shifted decision-making on a range of economic issues from the individual
nation-states into a multinational bureaucracy that administered the system
partly on automatic, and partly as an autonomous decision-making tool. There was
an inherent asymmetry between NATO and the EU: The former contained the United
States, the latter did not. In effect, Europe came to compete with the United
States economically but was intimately tied to it militarily and
politically.
Until the fall of the Soviet Union, the EU had not
sufficiently matured for the inherent contradiction to be felt. But the tension
between NATO as a multilateral, transnational framework and European nationalism
had already been felt. France under Charles de Gaulle had repudiated the idea
that its fate was inherently and automatically subordinated to NATO's decision-
making process. Paris did not so much reject the idea that it had a common
interest with the rest of NATO or the United States as it rejected the loss of
sovereignty that was inherent in NATO's processes. If France were to go to war,
it would go to war based on a French decision and not as an automatic response
to events.
France -- indeed the rest of Europe -- understood that no
individual nation could hope to counterbalance the United States, particularly
after 1991. Therefore, a series of ideas came together. First, there was the
idea of Europe as a pacific power, no longer seeking to dominate the world.
Second, there was the idea of Europe transcending its nationalist past. Third,
there was the idea of Europe -- as a state power in its own right -- taking its
place among the great powers, asserting and protecting its own
interests.
There is obvious tension among these three concepts, but the
conceptual tension was not nearly as great as the institutional tension. In
order to genuinely transcend European nationalism, some sort of federalism is
needed. An integrated economic system without an integrated political and
military system simply doesn't work -- or, more precisely, it works only if
Europe is not expected to become a great power in its own right.
For
France and Germany in particular, an interesting notion had emerged. On the one
side, the great power competitions and imperial pretenses of Europe had to be
put behind them. However, Europe itself should emerge as a great power in its
own right with not only a single currency, but a single citizenship, a single
legal system, a single military. Europe could not become a nation, but it could
become a state.
This European state was to be the expression of European
interests on a global scale. In other words, if France and Germany could no
longer express and achieve their own nationalist goals on the world stage,
Europe could. With its huge economy, huge population and huge potential military
power, Europe could become the global equal of the United States and thereby
protect the interests of its constituent states.
This is where the crisis
came in. The core assumption of what we might consider the radical conception of
Europe as a federated republic was that, at heart, the European nations had a
shared and singular interest that a combined state could protect. In other
words, the assumption held that European nationalism, with its divergent and
contradictory interests, had been sufficiently transcended that a single,
comprehensive state could represent them.
For France and Germany in
particular -- the two mutually hostile powers in Europe from the early 19th to
the mid-20th century -- there had indeed been a reconciliation, so that a single
state might express their interests. Their assumption was that this commonality
of interest ultimately encompassed all of Europe. What they failed to understand
was that the very commonality of interest achieved by Paris and Berlin
frightened and repelled much of the rest of Europe.
The emblematic moment
came recently in NATO, when France, Germany and Belgium stood alone and isolated
in opposing planning for Turkey's defense in the event of an Iraq war. In a
broader political sense, the Franco-German entente did not reduce nationalist
feelings; it exacerbated them. The Spaniards, Italians, Dutch and the rest saw
exactly what the French and Germans saw -- which was that Europe could become
the expression of this Franco-German understanding. They understood and were
repelled because in the broadest sense -- political and military -- they did not
trust the French or Germans sufficiently to want to live in a Europe organized
by Paris and Berlin.
This became even clearer with the reaction of
Europe's former communist countries: None of them were deeply concerned about
Iraq, but all of them were concerned about the power of Paris and Berlin
combined. For Poland, historically trapped between Germany and Russia, the
distrust of Berlin was visceral. If France and Germany combined, Poland would be
a very weak player facing its own historical fears.
The idea of a Europe
that transcends nationalism collides with an idea of a Europe as a great power.
A great power must make decisions and act. How those decisions are made and who
makes them is a matter of fundamental importance. The Europe that France and
Germany envisioned cast them as the decision-makers. That they might find a
common basis for shared sovereignty might well be a historic achievement, but it
is not necessarily comforting to lesser nations expected to align themselves
with those decisions.
This is why the United States remains of
fundamental importance to many European countries. They want the benefits of
economic integration; they do not want this to extend to political or military
integration. A system of relationships in which they are economically bound with
France and Germany, but maintain close politico-military ties with the United
States, is ideal. Iraq is of no interest to any of them, but domination by a
Franco-German bloc is of great interest and concern.
The Iraq issue has
crystallized the European problem. The idea of a transnational Europe is, in
principle, desirable. The practice of a transnational Europe federalized into a
system dominated by France and Germany is not. This is not merely an immediate,
practical problem -- it is a deeply felt historical problem. Neither France nor
Germany is trusted to put European interests ahead of their own -- nor is it
clear, in a practical sense, that there is such a thing as a European interest.
What they discovered was that much of Europe didn't trust them to pursue a
European course. They stood with the United States not because the United States
was right, but because they did not want the French and Germans to become too
powerful.
This, then, is the irony. French and German leaders tried to
use the concept of Europe to limit American power. Much of the rest of Europe
sought to limit French and German power by standing with the United States. None
of this really had anything to do with Iraq. All of it had to do with the fact
that it is easier to say that national interests had been transcended by
European interests than it is to actually transcend them.
Europe now has
lost its innocence. The "Ode to Joy" cannot hide the fact that European nations
do not see each other as brothers and sisters, but as foreign countries with
whom they share some interests and some rivalries. In other words, from the
viewpoint of Poland or Hungary or Spain, Paris and Berlin are as much foreign
capitals as Washington.
The Iraq issue is about many things -- but one of
the most unexpected things is that it is about the end of European
innocence.
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