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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - February 22, 2010
When Will Europe Defend Itself?
By: William Pfaff
Paris - Much has been written and said about making the
European Union a "world player." The Lisbon Treaty was
expected to begin this by bestowing upon it a president,
foreign policy representative and diplomatic service. It
was another expression of Europe's inability to come to
terms with the reality of Europe present and past, and
thereby liberate its future potentialities.
The leading members of the EU ? Germany, France, Britain,
Spain, the Netherlands ? are already major world "players"
as economic and technological powers, manufacturers, and
financial and trading states.
Historically, with the other European states, and crucially
with Greece and Italy, they created western civilization
itself, and the modern western intelligence, which may
arguably be identified with the modern mind as it exists
elsewhere.
Not one of these nations can today be considered a "failed"
or archaic nation -- one living on its historical legacy.
The great Islamic civilizations of the caliphates in
Damascus and Baghdad, and that in Andalusia which in learn-
ing, libraries, architecture and political sophistication
was contemporaneous with, and dazzlingly in advance of,
the Christian states of the early West European middle
ages, all are long since gone.
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The Ottoman empire, their successor, which perpetuated
Islamic rule and civilization but was unable to advance
it after Western Europe had graduated into Renaissance
and Enlightenment, was destroyed by Europe's first world
war.
China and India were in their time great civilizations,
but like Islamic society proved unable to make the crucial
transition from the political institutions and forms of
antiquity and the pre-modern world, and during the age of
European exploration were picked apart by small European
states like Holland and Portugal, and then Britain, all
of much less power and sophistication than their victims.
They remained under European domination until our own
times.
India and China now demonstrate the will to return to their
former eminence, but will take many years to succeed. Japan
is the single exception to Asia's disastrous failure.
So what is this problem about Europe's standing in the
world today that so obsesses the Europeans today? That
generates constant self-examination, endless academic
seminars and political conferences, all permeated with
inarticulate anxiety?
Such has no foundation in the real circumstances of Europe
today. Obviously some of the EU's recently-entered members
have legacy problems of corruption and crime, weak
political structure and uncompetitive industry and
agriculture, but thanks to membership in the EU, more is
being done to solve these problems that would ever have
happened without EU membership.
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All the EU members today suffer the consequences of crisis
in a globalized financial system mainly created by Britain
and the United States, not by Western Europe. It has been
a concantenation of financial interdependence exploited for
corporate and individual gain in all but total indifference
to the social consequences of its activities. It has been
a phenomenon of an intellectually fashionable or faddish,
and sometimes fraudulent, deregulation of the international
economy, and disregard of moral norms asserted by Adam
Smith himself.
As a result, the European economies are in trouble, but in
the long term theirs are no worse than America's troubles,
and they are generally better off than the U.S. today in
terms of employment and corporate debt. In state deficit
they are objectively far better than the United States in
terms of wasted state spending on irrelevant weapons and
unnecessary wars.
But here, curiously enough, we seem to arrive at the source
of the EU's present belief in its own inadequacy. Its
members do not compose a military superpower engaged in
world interventions intended to shape international society
in a manner that will profit Europe and gratify the self-
regard of the European public. This is taken as a weakness.
The actual explanation is one of elegant and edifying
simplicity, linked to memories of modern terror and
suffering. To use the American colloquialism: Western
Europe has already been there, and already done that.
And paid the price: in nihilism, death and waste in
1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Eastern and Balkan Europe ?
and Russia ? subsequently suffered still more during
the Cold War.
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The European Union today is allowing itself to be intimi-
dated by the American accusation that it shamefully and
selfishly exists under America's protection, doing only a
minimum to support the United States in Washington's great
tasks of international security.
Europe humors the increasingly dangerous American fantasy
of global mission. It is time that for America's good, as
well as its own security, that the EU ceases doing this,
and tries to shake the U.S. free of its illusions -- which
may lead it, and others, into new disasters of its own
creation.
During the Cold War the United States defended Western
Europe from the threat of Russian attack. Since the Cold
War ended, there has been no threat from which to defend
Europe. The so-called war against terror was, and has
remained, a war by Islamist groups against the American
military presence in the Middle East and Central Asia.
It has never been directed against European societies,
other than those that have intervened in this "war" on
the American side. Washington, even under Barack Obama,
seems determined to add to its enemies in Asia ? possibly
to include China, and Russia as well. The new foreign
affairs apparatus of the European Union should assure
Washington that this is not a course on which the
Europeans will become its fellow travellers.
Copyright 2010 by Tribune Media Services International.
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