Internationalism, Withdrawal, and Europe's Role in International Affairs

Abstract

CAN EUROPE PUNCH AT ITS WEIGHT IN WORLD AFFAIRS? The short answer is that it has not done so in the past, and it is not likely to do so anytime soon.The reason is a familiar one: Europe is less than the sum of its parts. It is still not epluribus unum. In spite of a historically unprecedented match toward integration over the last fifty years, in spite of more and more states joining the European Union (EU) and yielding more and more sovereignty, Europe is still a collection of nation-states rather than something resembling the United States.True, integration has come a long way. In the beginning in 1952, there were just six nations and the fusion of just two sectors of the economy: coal and steel. Five years later the original six took a much larger step: they founded the European Economic Community which began by integrating agriculture and proceeded over the next35 years to evolve into a single market for goods, capital, and services. And over the course of those years, the original six turned into the fifteen.On 1 January 1999, the European Union took the boldest step of all: the monetary union of eleven of the fifteen. If it works, monetary union will alienate national sovereignty in a truly critical area: public finance, the control of which has defined the essence of the modern nation state.What is left? Foreign and security policies. If the EU manages to capture this core of the nation-state-the - the inner sanctum of sovereignty - the process will be complete. Then Europe will no longer be a strange constitutional animal suspended somewhere between sovereignty retained and sovereignty foregone; it will be the United States of Europe.But precisely because the European Union is not the Union of Europe, there is not yet a common foreign and security policy (CFSP), nor will there be any time soon. And that is why an actor in world affairs called Europe is still more aspiration rather than reality.How do we know this? Better to ask: How shall we count the ways by which Europe has shown itself deficient as a great power? Shall we go back to the War of the Yugoslav succession that began in 1991? We all know that the sorry record there shows a vast gap between ambition and performance.First, the patterns that Europe formed on this issue seemed to reach back to its darkest days at the beginning of this century. Germany and Austria lined up behind the secessionist states of Slovenia and Croatia, both former Habsburg possessions. Britain and France edged to the side of Serbia, their old ally in the First World War. While Austria and Germany pressed for the early recognition of the two breakaway republics, France and Britain began to suspect the making of a 'Teutonic bloc.'After that rift was patched up, another opened. While the EU told the United States (in so many words) to stay out of its war, Europe went every which way over the next three years. The British and the French committed ground troops while the Germans stayed out. Decisive force could not be applied because the Europeans, unable to forge a common policy, preferred to hide behind the United Nations, which was guaranteed to uphold the lowest common denominator as shaped by the rivalries within the Security Council.The EU as such stayed on the side-lines, despatching eminent Europeans such as Lords Owen and Carrington and the former Swedish prime minister, Carl Bildt-wearing - wearing either a North Atlantic Treaty Organization or an EU hat - in search of a mediation mission.What changed the picture? United States cruise missiles and the American envoy, Richard Holbrooke, the human equivalent of a conventionally armed Tomahawk. The missiles bludgeoned the Serbs to the bargaining table in Dayton in the autumn of 1995, and, once there, Holbrooke, unlike Messrs Owen and Bildt, managed to twist arms all the way down to the dotted line.Holbrooke and the cruise missiles were so successful because behind them stood the Sixth Fleet, and behind that the massive military clout of a superpower obeying, on this rare occasion at least, a single Washington will. …