Wallerstein on EU

I'm posting this partially in response to keith's request for ws
literature on the EU.  It's as good a place to start as any, because
it has the benefit of being up to date.  For those keeping score at home,
it seems to me that Wallerstein is now beginning to suggest that it's
do-or-die time for Europe as a serious global contender, and it may in
fact be that a "spanner has already been thrown into the works".  This
sounds more or less right to me, as does the analysis of the divergence in
the politics of EU expansion between Europe and the US (witness the
European rebuke of Bush in Sweden for suggesting that the EU should
continue to expand, and a reminder to him that the US is not actually a
member of the EU...)

-- 
Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm


Comment No. 67, July 1, 2001
"Europe: The Turning-Point"


Europe must make three decisions in the next five years, on which its future
depends. They are whether Europe is to have an executive structure that is
political in form, who is to be included in Europe, and what Europe's
relationship will be with the rest of the world. The three questions are
interlinked. The three questions are presently totally undecided. Europe has
probably five years at most to achieve some consensus on these three
questions, or Europe will probably not survive in a meaningful form. Let us
look behind the rhetoric to see what are the issues at stake.

First, what structure for Europe? The issue is usually discussed in terms of
how much power should Europe have. Should it be a federal structure or a
Europe of nations (that is, a confederation)? This is not a very useful way
to pose the issue. Any student of federal or quasi-federal political
structures knows that the division of power between the larger structure and
its constituent units is a matter of constant, unending political debate,
and is not something that is or can ever be settled once and for all. Europe
will be no exception to this banal generalization.

The real question is not how much power the European central structure will
have in the near future but whether this power will be politicized. That is,
will there be some form of executive that is chosen to represent some
political point of view (right, center, left, or a coalition) through some
process of democratic choice? At present, the executive structures represent
states, not parties. As long as they do not represent parties, they will
never have popular legitimation, and the structures will remain subject not
merely to national vetoes but to popular disinterest, if not worse. A
non-politicized structure is not likely to survive any real critical
division within Europe.

The second question is the geography of Europe. The European Union today has
fifteen members. The EU's official rhetoric is that it is in favor of,
indeed enthusiastic about, expansion: include everyone in, eventually. But
do they mean it? And anyway who is everyone? Europe's first political
structure was the empire of Charlemagne. It covered essentially most of what
is today France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, western parts of
today's Germany, and northern parts of today's Italy (plus parts of
Switzerland, Austria, and Spain). 

Charlemagne's empire lasted his lifetime. After his death, it was divided
into three parts, more or less France, Germany, and a thin strip between the
two then called Lotharingia (which ran from the Low Countries to northern
Italy). It is no accident that, when the European idea was revived in the
1950s, it was the same six (core) countries that constituted the initial
structures. The first postwar Europe was, if you will, the reconciliation of
France and Germany, the reconstitution of the Carolingian empire. Europe has
slowly expanded since to include all the countries that were not under
Communist rule (except for Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland, who refused to
join). This gave us the present 15, who constitute the European Union.
Twelve of the fifteen have constituted the European Monetary Union, whose
euro will become the common currency on Jan. 1, 2002. 

Europe is presently discussing the inclusion of a long list of formerly
Communist countries plus what might be called the outlying Mediterranean
(Malta, Cyprus, Turkey). These countries are ranked in a complicated order
of eligibility. Why do these countries want to join the European Union? Two
reasons mainly. First, it would serve as their legitimation, denoting them
as morally and culturally part of "civilized" Europe, constituting (they
hope) an end to their marginality. Once in the European Union, they feel
they would no longer risk being assimilated conceptually to the Third World.
A subsidiary consideration for many persons is that inclusion in the EU
would ensure that non-"democratic" forces would find it more difficult to
come to power in these states. And the second reason goes along with the
first. These countries all hope and expect that entry into the European
Union will aid them economically in substantial ways, bringing their
standards of living far closer than they are now to those of western Europe.

Why might western Europe want to include these countries in the EU? This is
far less clear. Some argue that it will have some beneficial effects on the
internal politics of these countries, and thereby preserve the peace in
Europe. There may be some economic benefits of an open market. But neither
of these arguments is really persuasive. What we have is a situation in
which publicly no one wants to say no to these demands, but many members of
the EU hope that other members of the EU will drag their feet, and make it
difficult or impossible to proceed. The recent referendum in Ireland which
voted against the Nice agreements on expansion constitutes a veto which, if
it isn't reversed, has in fact thrown a spanner in the works.

There is another enthusiast about the inclusion of at least the central
European states in the EU. It is the United States. And the reason is
simple, and ties in with the third problem. All these countries tend to be
far more viscerally pro-American today than western European countries. All
these countries want to be in NATO and want NATO to survive.

Europe, as it is being constituted, has three foreign policy relationships
to resolve: the United States, Russia, and the South in general (and Africa
and the Middle East in particular). The United States means NATO. Europe is
beginning to create its army. The U.S. is unhappy about this. The Europeans
keep insisting that such an army will work within and in cooperation with
NATO. But no one really believes this is true in the long run. A European
army will only come into existence if NATO goes out of existence. The U.S.
wants NATO to continue primarily to be sure there is no serious European
army. Europe wants an army in order to be a serious actor on the world
scene. The two objectives do not mesh well. 

Central/East Europe, if it has to choose between NATO and a European army,
chooses NATO. This is because of Russia. Western Europe doesn't think there
is a Russian "threat" (at least any more). Quite the Contrary. Western
Europe thinks that a reinforced Russian center might be a force for
stability. In addition, it might provide a long-term economic partner. These
are not views widely shared in the former satellite states. Again. quite the
contrary. 

There is a second point of discord between (western) Europe and the former
satellite states. This is the relationship with the South. Central Europe
wants an infusion of west European money. There would be two losers here:
the small amount of money that flows to the South and the fairly large
amount of money that flows to the "less" developed states currently within
the EU: notably Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.

So who is Europe determines what is Europe and what will be the geopolitical
stance of Europe. This is a Gordian knot that needs to be cut. There is a
great deal of reluctance of European leaders to take decisive stands on this
interrelated set of questions, largely because each government is afraid of
the repercussions on internal politics, and to some extent afraid of how the
U.S. would react. On the other hand, the very indecisiveness has had the
effect of reducing support for the EU within each of the present member
countries, since it hard to arouse popular enthusiasm for a structure which
is still unsure of where it is heading on some fundamental issues.

Immanuel Wallerstein





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