Europe should be able to go its own way
In the mid forties, Europe was wracked by internal conflict. The Second World War left its scars on the whole continent. The economy had to be rebuilt almost from scratch, and the European countries had lost their guiding role, both within Europe and in the world outside. The United States of America played a key role in restarting the European machine. In return for the Marshall aid however, the dependence on the States has resulted in Europe giving up part of its military and political powers. Today, in the first years of a new century, Europe is an economic giant, which keeps the United States up and running by lending huge amounts of money to fill up its budget deficit. Times have changed; our foreign policy should reflect this.
By Ton Monasso and Jan Wouter Langenberg
As long as the European and American interests fall together, our political and military dependence is not by definition a bad thing. For a long time, since the Second World War and during the Cold War, it could be argued that this was the case. However, in the last decade, more and more eruptions of conflicting interests have surfaced. There are European wishes that are not shared by the Americans such as a desire for more prominent action in Africa, and a more balanced role of both the Palestine and Israel in the Middle East peace process. On the other hand, the Americans are not always willing to help Europe in extinguishing its own fires. The Kosovo operation would not have been possible without the United States. The States are very conscious of this point, and are urging Europe to take its own responsibility. Moreover, Europe is likely to face new problems along its borders following the admission of Turkey as a member state, for which a solution will be needed.
The role of assuming injured innocence and playing the girl who looks away when seeing a fight does not fit Europe anymore. Individual European countries have not been able to truly exert influence over world politics for a long time. Since the Suez crisis, when France and Great Britain made a last attempt to exercise their powers, Europe has not showed any ability to be a key player in global politics. Therefore, in order to serve Europes values, or simply stated: Europes interests, a common foreign policy is needed. Only with the combination of the powers of the member states, and the European institutional power, influence can be regained.
Europe has a lot of attractive powers to exercise. Our defence capabilities are not as developed as the American by a long way, but our trade relations, diplomacy, large commitment in development aid and position of respect, are very valuable in the global political arena. In that sense, we do not have to fear an arms race, because we do not compete with the American powers, but choose another way. With respect to the direction of the common foreign policy, Europes interests are not always shared by America, but they are seldom obstructed by them, either. Think about the attention paid to Africa, a continent that is not very interesting for the United States, but due to our colonial history is important to Europe.
However, the use of soft power cannot be effective without being backed up by serious military muscle. This creates the necessity for shared European military power. Whether that is a cooperation of national armies, or a single, common European army, does not really matter.
Wishes for a common foreign policy have been expressed for some time now, but its realisation is a slow and hard process. It is obvious that combining different interests of the member states of the EU on a substantial matter such as this is almost impossible, so we should not begin with the construction of a universal foreign policy on all issues. By following an evolutionary growth path, Europe can rebuild its strong political role in the world. At the beginning, cooperation should only be sought on those topics where the interests of all the member states are quite similar. A good example would be African peacekeeping missions of some size. Plucking this “low hanging fruit” can contribute to the self-esteem of the Europeans. By carrying out these tasks one can gain experience and mutual confidence, and at the same time allow institutional structures time to evolve. It should also be possible to offer these structures to a group of European countries that wishes to act, as long as other nations do not have serious objections. The common security and foreign policy can then be given the time it needs to grow to maturity, and the more difficult cases can be dealt with within several years.
NATO has proved that this kind of cooperation is very feasible. Integration of different armies within one mission, including the transfer of command to a supranational organisation, is possible. And nobody has to fear that defence budgets have to increase because of the cooperation, it is quite the contrary, by the step-by-step integration of defence functions useless redundancies can be wiped out. The European Union itself has already taken some large steps, too. This December a European peacekeeping mission relieved the SFOR in Bosnia Herzegovina, after having gained experience with peacekeeping operations in Congo and Macedonia. Moreover, some parts of the foreign policy are already an exclusive EU responsibility, for instance trade agreements with other countries.
Most of the things stated above are in the European Constitution. A coincidence? No, merely another reason to vote in favour of it!
Published in Libel, magazine of IFLRY.
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