The Atlantic just got wider
William Pfaff
SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2005
VENICE Europeans, chastened by French and Dutch rejection of the European Union's constitutional treaty, are receiving much well-intentioned advice from American specialists and officials on what Europe needs to do, and some righteous pronouncements on the EU's impending demise.
Europe is "history's has-been," says Robert Samuelson of The Washington Post. It is "slowly going out of business." Europe "isn't a strong American ally, not simply because it disagrees with some U.S. policies, but also because it doesn't want to make the commitments required of a strong ally."
There will be no United States of Europe now, Niall Ferguson, the Yale historian writes, not without satisfaction, in the current issue of The New Republic.
But then there never was going to be a United States of Europe. That was always a terrible misunderstanding, made by Americans - and Britons - who know little of Europe or of the EU, and by Europeans ignorant of the real United States, and of the civil war that was necessary to keep it united and turn it into a centralized state.
There is never going to be a vastly enlarged EU, as the constitution envisaged; but that is just as well for the coherence and integrity of the Union.
Instead, the EU will go on as an unprecedented federation of sovereign nations, trying to find its way toward an unclear destiny (and possibly failing; failure cannot be excluded). It will exist alongside a United States whose post-Bush destiny is also unclear, and could prove stranger than we now imagine.
Americans from the political and policy mainstream in Washington, and the universities and institutes, usually voice three reproaches to Europe. The first is that its most important members cling to what Americans regard as an outmoded and inefficient economic and social model.
The second is that the Europeans spend little on their military forces, take an unrealistically complacent view of international relations, prefer jaw-jaw to war-war (as Churchill put it), appease troublemakers, and don't help America enough. Europeans are told that they are selfish residents of Venus. Or as tougher American critics (the Martians) put it, they lack guts. They expect America to defend them. Anyway, they are in decline, and Europe is unimportant.
The third criticism is that some Europeans (we know their names) think Europe should compete with or counterbalance the United States. Washington says these Europeans had better watch out.
Not a great deal can be said about the first reproach. Everyone knows about French and German unemployment, labor market inflexibility, bureaucratic obstacles to the creation of enterprises, and failure to find reforms the public will accept.
Similarly, the issue of multipolarity versus monopolarity of power, and of power balance versus American power primacy, has been exhaustively discussed.
Not so much has been said about the military question. Europe spends much less than the United States, and much of that is spent on duplicated or overlapping military capacities.
The important question, however, is why does Europe need expanded military forces? What is the threat? Terrorism? Nearly every government in Western Europe thinks terrorism is a matter for the police and intelligence services, not for armies, and that invading Middle Eastern or Asian countries is not the intelligent way to go.
The more they see of a wrecked and destabilized Iraq, the more convinced they are that they are right. The United States is generating terrorists and terrorism at terrible cost to the Iraqis and to itself. Europe's police forces, meanwhile, are arresting and jailing terrorists.
What other threats are there? A Russia of reawakened nationalism or expansionism? China in crisis? Conceivably. Any government with a serious military tradition knows it is essential to have a professional military cadre capable of managing rapid expansion. In 1939, the United States Army, including what became the independent U.S. Air Force, had a total force of 174,000 men. Today, France alone has more professional soldiers and airmen than that.
It is essential to have the scientific and technological capacity to produce advanced weapons and to possess an advanced aerospace industry. Europe has both.
So why does it need bigger armies? The American answer is, to help the United States keep order in the world. If, however, one thinks that America's policies are destabilizing international relations, generating terrorism and conflict, and have little to show for their military activism, why should the Europeans help?
The EU allies are much too polite to say this, but most of them believe it. And this adds up to a basic disagreement that is not going to be solved. Mars seems to walk alone. Venus is unwilling.
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