Post by Bozur on Dec 27, 2008 2:18:05 GMT -5
The lurking danger of nationalism for new model Europe
Financial Times, UK - 5 hours ago
Nationalism was the destructive fever that drove the continent mad in the first half of the 20th century and flared up again in the Balkans in the 1990s ...
---------
The lurking danger of nationalism for new model Europe
By John Thornhill
Published: December 27 2008 02:00 | Last updated: December 27 2008 02:00
Nationalism has long been a dirty word in Europe's polite political circles. Many politicians still bristle at the term. Nationalism was the destructive fever that drove the continent mad in the first half of the 20th century and flared up again in the Balkans in the 1990s with murderous results. "Nationalism is war," said François Mitterrand, the late French president.
Europe's greatest postwar achievement has been to dilute that nationalist poison so as to make war unthinkable. Sovereignty was pooled in the European Union, the "most effective conflict-resolution mechanism ever devised," according to George Schöpflin, a historian of European nationalism and Hungarian MEP.
Paradoxically, the success of European integration has now helped decontaminate nationalism, making it "safe" to fly the flag again while national electorates have rejected the perceived over-centralisation of power in Brussels. French, Dutch and Irish voters voted against the EU's reform treaties with no fear of negative consequences. The financial crisis has also highlighted the primacy of nation states. As they bail out banks and pump money into their economies, national governments have rarely seemed so necessary. Who said that the EU and globalisation had rendered them irrelevant?
But how will Europe react to the rise of national sentiment during this increasingly severe downturn? In Brussels, the belief is that the EU will simply evolve to reflect the new realities, leading to more pragmatic co-operation between member states. The fear is that escalating competition between national interests will encourage protectionist instincts, jeopardising the European ideal.
Two significant developments this year have highlighted how fast Europe's political landscape is changing: the French presidency of the EU, which some hail as a new model of running Europe; and the further "normalisation" of Germany.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has boasted of putting his country back at the head of the EU. His active response to the Russia-Georgia conflict and the financial crisis certainly injected fresh dynamism into the EU leadership. Never mind the institutional niceties, just focus on results, has been the refrain of France's six-month EU presidency.
Mr Sarkozy, though, has a very Gaullist conception of Europe: a strong Europe run by the big national governments, with EU institutions playing only a supporting role. Charles de Gaulle argued that Europe could act as France's Archimedes' lever, multiplying the country's influence in the world. Mr Sarkozy appears to share that view.
Partly in reaction to this approach, Germany has been rediscovering its own national voice within Europe. Dismayed by the EU's failure to adopt institutional reform and irritated by Mr Sarkozy's impulsive ways, Berlin has been drawing an increasing distinction between German and European interests, most notably over policy towards Russia. If European institutions no longer intermediate disputes effectively, then Germany must become more assertive in promoting its own state interests directly. Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, has turned into Frau Nein.
Jan Techau, a Europe expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, says that Germany's postwar Bonn consensus that projected the country's national dreams on to Europe has shattered during the past few years. "Germans have lost faith in their ersatz religion of Europe," he says. "Nobody would now automatically say that what is good for Europe is good for Germany. Europe is perceived in a more instrumentalist way."
In this sense, Germany is simply behaving like other big member states, such as France and the UK, having largely abandoned hopes of European federalism. To some, this transformation of European politics is both welcome and healthy. The EU is becoming a community of nation states that co-operate solely on issues that they cannot address alone.
Yet there are limits and dangers in this approach. Can Mr Sarkozy's EU leadership model outlast France's presidency? Will the smaller EU member states revolt against the overweening bigger countries? Many of the EU's most important policies - including monetary, trade and competition - depend on an integrated approach, not just a co-operative one.
Mario Monti, the former EU commissioner, argues that inter-state integration is Europe's main competitive advantage in a globalised world, perhaps its only one.
There is also a danger that economic crisis will provoke far uglier forms of nationalism. It would be comforting to think that the good sense of voters will restrain these forces. But any complacency should be shattered by reading Stefan Zweig's chilling autobiography, The World of Yesterday , written in 1942. The Austrian author describes how the golden age of security that accompanied the first wave of globalisation rapidly descended into the barbarism of two world wars.
"There was as little belief in the possibility of wars between the peoples of Europe as there was in witches and ghosts," Zweig wrote of pre-1914 Vienna. "Our fathers honestly believed that the divergences and boundaries between nations and sects would gradually melt away into a common humanity . . . Now that the great storm has long since smashed it, we finally know that the world of security was naught but a castle of dreams; my parents lived in it as if it had been a house of stone."
The writer is FT Europe edition editor
www.ft.com/