As Prepared:
A European Outlook
There is no single Europe. There are at least four Europes.
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What Donald Rumsfelt called ‘old Europe’, the old core of the EEC, six countries, led by France and Germany.
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Atlantic Europe, basically the UK. Ideally, UK policy elites would prefer UK to be located halfway across the Atlantic. Geography has decided otherwise. The old Special Relationship is reinforced by the emergence of Americanized English as the universal lingua franca.
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New Europe, the ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe. Thery would prefer to be further away from Russia, but again geography has decreed otherwise.
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Europe is not synonymous with the EU. It includes the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus.
There is no single European view of its place in the world. But there are two broad doctrines. The first is ‘multipolarity’. This is the view that following the collapse of the bipolar world and in view of the relative decline of the United States, the world would consist of a number of poles of power. This is the official doctrine of France and the Russian Federation. In other words, the unipolar moment, much discussed by analysts in the 1990s, is over, if indeed it ever existed.
In this configuration, Europe is one of the poles, and China is another. After that the notion starts to distintegrate. Will Russia be one of the poles or part of the European pole? Former President Putin believed that Russia’s sheer size, natural resources, and nuclear and military capacity qualified it for a pole role. It is not clear how far President Medvedev believes this. The recent economic crisis was a reminder of Russia’s vulnerability. Also its demography counts against it: it would be much the smallest pole in terms of population. What about, India, Middle East, Latin America –any poles there?
Those who reject both unipolarity and multipolarity readily slip into the second doctrine –multilateralism. This is essentially the doctrine of an American-led global partnership. America will continue set the global agenda, but it will not be able to get its way unilaterally, it will have to secure the agreement of others. The UN Security Council, NATO, IMF, the World Bank and GATT were the classic American-led multilateral institutions. Now optimists hope that consultative bodies like G7 and G20 will develop into institutions of world governance. (Governance is one of those buzz words hovering uneasily between power and influence.)
Multilateralism is a one-world perspective. It is probably the preferred European option, since the EU fondly imagines itself to be American’s best friend, and chief partner, both in terms of history and values. It resonates particularly strongly in the UK, where the USA is widely regarded as having stepped into Britain’s shoes.
Even if we accept multipolarity as a first approximation, it is doubtful how far Europe will qualify as one of the poles. It qualifies in terms of GDP and population, but not in terms of military capability. Like Japan, Europe is an economic giant, but a military pygmy. There are two issues here. The obvious one is lack of political cohesion. In political theory, the state is defined by its monopoly of coercion. Without a European state, there can be no European foreign and security policy and no European military forces to support it. In combination the EU members spend almost half as much as the USA on their militaries: but they project nowhere near half of US military power. Most of the expenditure is useless, a form of social service. Without the classic sinews of power, Europe cannot seriously claim pole status, even though military power has become less important for maintaining world order.
The second issue is psychological: Europe no longer sees itself as a fighting machine. Having caused two world wars, it has renounced old dreams of military glory. Germany’s transformation to almost complete pacifism –matched by Japan –is the most striking illustration of this. There are various ways of talking about the new pacifism: In Robert Kagan words, Europe has surrendered the role of Mars for that of Venus. Robert Cooper calls Europe the first ‘post-modern’ state; other analysts argue that Europe’s ‘soft’ power –roughly the power of attraction – partly compensates for its lack of ‘hard’ power.
None of these generalisations completely apply. The UK and France remain ‘fighting nations’, but separately rather than together. Stretching from Scandinavia to Italy is a great pacifist wedge dominated by Germany. Since WW2, the strong DM has been Germany’s virility symbol, its substitute for a strong foreign policy; hence the psychological trauma to Germany of the contamination of the Euro with sub-prime Mediterranean assets. East of Germany, military values survive. Russia can provide the EU with a military shield, but no one wants to swap US protection for Russian protection. Given that security in a world of states will always need a military component, the EU’s unwillingness to take responsibility for their own security, means that the EU, like Japan, will remain a protectorate of the United States. Venus will continue to need to be protected by Mars. Ideas of a new ‘strategic concept’ embracing both the EU and Russia, and new forms of civil-cum-military intervention in troubled areas adjoining Europe’s borders remain vague.
What one can foresee is the growth of regionalism. Certain powers, or clubs of powers, will take leadership responsibilities in their own regions, without becoming global players. Regional roles for China, Japan, EU, Russian Federation, Iran, India, Brazil, South Africa can easily be imagined. In this scenario, the USA will be the fifth wheel on every regional coach, without driving any of them. The conceptual problem is to fit the concept of a regionalising world into the dominant paradigm of globalization, which is conceived as a single process taking place according to a single set of rules.
Even regionalism, though, has insufficiently acknowledged the problem of sovereignty. Sovereignty still resides with individual states. This is because governments are responsible to their own people –not to world institutions or to international bankers. The EU, as has often been said, has a ‘democratic deficit’. This deficit is a chasm in other regional groupings. Globalization and regionalism alike are driven by political elites. As a result the disconnect between elites and masses has been growing. Even economic gains –which are not continuously guaranteed –may be insufficient to compensate for the alienation of voters from their political systems. Unless we take steps to strengthen the legitimacy of what we seek to do economically, we risk a massive peasants’ revolt; the least disruptive consequence of which will be a revival of protectionism, in one form or other.
This brings me back to the dichotomy between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power. Europe’s claim to special political status has depended crucially on two connected factors: its economic position and the strength of the Euro. The Single European Act aimed to make Europe the new technological powerhouse of the world; the single currency aimed to create a reserve currency which could ‘look the dollar in the face’. Both of these ambitions are starting to look a bit sick. Large parts of the EU –like Japan –are in relative economic decline. Whether this is also true of the USA –Richard Cooper challenged it this morning - is irrelevant in the short term: the USA has further to fall, and what Keynes called ‘the old Adam’ seems to be more alive there, replenished by millions of immigrants. A low growth Europe can be seen as a civilisational advance: why not collectively step off the growth ladder when we already have plenty? However, a society with this attitude cannot be expected to remain enthusiastic about globalization.
It is true there are powerful non economic arguments for globalisation, but for economists the main argument has always been an instrumental one: it raises world average GDP per capita through its superior efficiency in allocating resources. It is also a mighty instrument for alleviating poverty in developing countries, and this appeals strongly to humanitarian instinct. But applied to rich countries, the case for globalization is far weaker. The reason is that it contributes directly to increased inequality. Competition from cheap imports shifts income from wages to capital; immigration depresses the relative wages of the unskilled. This is why big business and finance favour globalization. But this is the view from the top of the machine, with consumerism as the new opiate of the people.
Let me be clear: I am not predicting global disaster. But history tells us that crisis and disaster have been history’s most important midwives. We may have learnt some wisdom on the way. Certainly it would be highly immoral to wish disaster on the world for the sake of further progress in wisdom. But we must always be alert to the possibility of catastrophe, and should deliberately frame our politics and economics so as to give reason the best chance of combating the ever present forces of blind passion. We should never forget was is lurking below the smooth surfaces so beautifully on display here.
