Alphen,
Netherlands. 31 May. As I was about to board a plane at Oslo
Airport yesterday I found myself confronted by a dilemma. Do I read the latest
Dan Brown based at it is on Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth century classic “The
Inferno”, or do I read the new "Towards a European Global Strategy", Europe’s eternal infernal? Push came to shove and I finally decided I
would read the fiction and sat down to read “A European Global Strategy”. Now, don’t get me wrong, EGS (as it is known
amongst European strato-wonks) is well-written and well-structured. Moreover, reading it took me back to my
distant past when I used to write this stuff for the now long-dead and
ever-so-slightly misnamed Venusberg Group...and moreover believe it! In fact the idea that European nation-states
should work very closely together for the common good in this world is still
something in which I profoundly believe.
And, even though one
can feel the pain of those involved in its drafting EGS is a classy piece of work. Although led by four worthy and
well-respected think-tanks EGS was instigated by the foreign ministers of
Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Not surprisingly,
whilst EGS is strong on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of strategy, it is necessarily
weak on the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, even though it has a stab at the ‘when’.
There is of course much
talk of ‘solidarity’, i.e. those of us with not-so-much debt (I speak as a
Dutch taxpayer) should pay ever more for ever more those with deep-pan pizza-loads
of debt. There is also the usual wonk-speak
of “strategic objectives” and “instruments” and the need for a deepened Europe to
influence “multipolarity” and a “rules-based order”, whatever that means. Apparently, it is precisely that order upon
which Europe is today built and which should be exported via example first to
the wider European region and then to the world. There is also the usual blah-blah
about “shared values”. Yawn!
However, this report should not be under-estimated. The ambition of getting Europeans
to “think strategically about their global role” is to be commended as is the
analysis which fuels it (or is that the other way round?). The EU is (for the moment) the world’s
largest trading bloc with over five hundred million people and “European
engagement should be proactive not just a response to changes in the global
environment”. The attempt to strike a new
balance between improved co-ordination and integration is also sound.
Furthermore, the focus for
much of the report on interests is sensible as it addresses this very
contradiction at the top of power in Europe’s strongest state – Germany. It was fascinating talking with a senior
German recently. For all the
Euro-speak that Berlin generates Germany has a very clear sense of its national
interest and a strategy to realise it.
This involves a determinedly German focus on global out-reach (see Germany's China policy) whilst championing ‘Europe’ to organise Germany’s neighbours in pursuit of Berlin’s strategic goals. This was confirmed to me by a senior Dutchman
who told me that in spite of appearances from time to time the Netherlands will
ultimately do what Germany tells it to.
However, having waded
through the inevitable strategic political correctness and Euro-speak there are two innate
tensions implicit in the report. First, the need to ‘contain’ Germany flows
through the report like spilt Schnapps on Roesti. This is clearly the work of four peripheral
powers the futures of which are now so tied to Germany that their entire
foreign and security policies must reflect the strategic choices Germany makes,
the willingness of German taxpayers to fund ‘Europe’, and the extent to which Germany
is prepared to be constrained in the name of ‘Europe’. Second, in trying to define an alternative “rules-based
order” one can feel the pain of the authors as they try valiantly to resist clear
pressure from the European Commission and strike a new foreign and security
policy balance between Brussels and its member-states. In the end the report fails to deal
adequately with either option or find any middle way between them.
Rather, implicit in EGS
is a stark choice; German power or Commission power. On balance (of course) EGS rejects the greater
Germany option and opts for what is believed to be the lesser of two-evils. It
is the very subterfuge the European elite have always practiced on the rest of
us – the pretence that ‘progress’ is a partnership between Brussels and its
member-states when in fact the transfer of ever more ‘sovereignty’ is the very replacement
by Brussels of the member-state.
The subliminal message
of EGS is thus; either the European nation-state is too weak or too dangerous to
survive. The choice is thus between the “Infernal”
and the “Inferno”. As ever influencing the world comes second to organising Europe.
Julian Lindley-French
