Will Someone Please Save Europe from Belgium?

Alphen, just over the Dutch border from Belgium.  Friday, the 13^th.  Will someone please save Europe from Belgium?  The influence of this chocolate superpower is growing by the day.  Now, my own country, Her Imperial Britannic Majesty’s Dis-United Kingdom, has made the odd mistake over the years.  We are good at mistakes. Indeed, London is currently working through Britain’s new foreign policy manual; “101 Mistakes To Make Before You Collapse”.  Perhaps Britain’s greatest mistake came at the very height of Empire – we made Belgium!  Yes, I know, it is a terrible admission to make and hardly a testament to sound British judgement.  Sorry.

The 1839 Treaty of London was a British-led deal between the Great Powers, the Dutch and the “Kingdom of Belgium” to create a buffer between the French and the Dutch.  Belgium was to be perpetually neutral and Britain was to guarantee Belgium.  Now, having led Western Europe’s only failed state to the heights of its ‘glory’ it is Belgians leading the way towards something all the more ambitious - a failed European super-state. 

Eveywhere I turn there are wild-eyed and ever so slightly dishevelled Belgians leading calls for the Super-Onion.  Be it Onion supremo ‘President’ Herman van Rompuy, or Chief Euro-Parliamentary Onionista Guy Verhofstadt.  Everywhere I turn Belgians are telling me I have no alternative but to bow to the ‘power’ of Belgium, sorry Brussels, and scrap my country so that Belgium can be made to work.  Did I miss something?

The latest piece from the chocolate superpower goes under the characteristically misleading title of “The European Council and the Community Method” (no, it is not some form of bizarre group sex but one does need a good smoke after reading it).  Written by one of those consummate Onion insiders Philippe de Schoutheete, former Belgian Ambassador to the Onion, it is a true horror story.

Like all good horror stories the paper starts by presenting the very essence of normality.  Europe was made up of a series of cozy hobbit-like shires nestling in the green and pleasant vale that was 1950s ‘Europe’.  Because the Hobbits had no issues that divided them they all agreed to come together to grow a European Onion.  However, because they were all as lazy as hell and did not really trust each other one little bit they also agreed to create something called the European Omission, whereby they all pretended to ignore their many disagreements and let some bloke called Manuel, a Portu-Belgian, decide things for them.  Of course, the Belgians maintained ultimate control by making their own lad Herman, King of the Belgians and President of Europe at one and the same time.  After a particularly damp period the Onion went mouldy and the only way to save it was to make the Omission responsible for ‘growth’, overseen of course by Herman.

And then the descent into horror quickens.  The good Ambassador cites the secret Treaty of Lisbon which the Belgians, sorry Brussels, had imposed after French and Dutch Hobbits had rather objected to their country being taken away simply to save Belgium.  The Belgians having given this democracy thing a try demonstrated that it did not work but avoiding a Belgian government for many years and decided this would also be good for Europe.  Thus, the only solution was to recast the Onion in the image of Belgium and overseen by the sprouts in Brussels.

At the end there is nowhere to run.  There is no life after debt.  Sooner or later the Onion crushes all before it and Europe is finally turned into Belgium; a happy but broke place where the people live happily ever after, love each other deeply but have no say over anything. At least the beer is good.

To be fair, the Ambassador is right about the essential challenge of our Euro-time; “One may ask whether the true debate today is not between the Community method and intergovernmental decision-making, but rather between governance and government”.  For those of you not-versed in Onion-speak the meaning is simple; is there any way we Hobbits will ever again trust the Muppets who have created this mess?  Moreover, is there any way that we can be convinced to give Belgium, sorry Brussels, even more power but ask less questions.  For that is what at the end the good Belgian Ambassador is offering.

He concludes with a warning.  “No political system can survive without giving hope to its citizens. Europe has been a great channel of hope for several generations, including mine. And today? It is not hope that encourages integration, it is market fears. Is this enough? What we see around us, rather, is hopelessness. Many Europeans do not see a light at the end of the tunnel. Who will bear a message of hope, if our leaders and institutions do not?"  Hope springs infernal - there is no life after debt but the Onion.   

British Prime Minister William Pitt once described Belgium as a “pistol pointed at the heart of England”.  It is about to be fired, if they can find the bullet.  Belgium - coming soon to a town near you. 

Julian Lindley-French

Can the Franco-British Strategic Defence Relationship Survive?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  11 July.  Can the Franco-British strategic defence relationship survive? Yesterday, at the close of a modest lunch in Downing Street, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he had, “found much common ground” with French President Francois Hollande.  Following discussions ranging from the Eurozone debt crisis to Syria and Iran Cameron talked of a “strong relationship” and that both agreed the planned increase of the EU’s budget to €14 billion ($25 bn) by 2020 was “unacceptable”.  Clearly, the many issues of contention, such as France’s call for a financial services transaction tax, were either avoided or kept secret.  Cameron only hinted at the fundamental issue dividing the two countries; “We are clearly better off within the European Union…but I don’t think Britain is happy with the current relationship”. 

The Franco-British strategic defence relationship matters. First, it is a key European-European state relationship beyond EU competence.  Second, it is perhaps the only European relationship willing to think big about military matters in a very big military world.  Founded on two landmark defence agreements the relationship has long been a strategic cornerstone.  The 1998 St Malo Declaration seemed for a time to have resolved tension between NATO and the EU’s defence ambitions and paved the way for the now moribund Common Security and Defence Policy. 

On 2 November, 2010 the Franco-British Defence and Security Treaty was signed and heralded a new dawn in the two countries’ strategic defence relationship.  The treaty called for “mutual interdependence” and the sharing and pooling of defence materials and equipment, the building of joint facilities and “mutual access” to each other’s defence industries.  In addition there were agreements over nuclear stockpile stewardship, a new framework agreement for exchanges on operational matters and a proposal for a Combined Joint Expeditionary Force.  At the time there was also agreement that Britain and France should work together on the next generation of aircraft carriers.  However, the British decision to revert to the use solely of carrier-based short and vertical take-off aircraft effectively scrapped that line of co-operation.

Two other developments have undermined the relationship. First, the Eurozone crisis has pitched Anglo-French relations into uncharted waters inevitably affecting the strategic defence relationship. France is not only at the heart of the crisis whilst Britain is fast becoming a full-paying third-class member of the EU, Paris has always seen such agreements as a step on the road to a full-blown European defence construct to which Britain is implacably opposed.  Economic union will in time make that more likely not less.  Second, the 2010 treaty came at a time when Cameron was still early in his premiership and was hoping to ‘rebalance’ Britain’s relationship between Europe and the US.  However, such a rebalancing pre-supposed a Britain that would not be forced to choose between its economic relationship with Europe and its strategic defence relationship with the US.  The January 2012 shift in US defence posture towards East Asia will indeed over time force Britain to choose. And, given the Great European Defence Depression the British are rightly going with the Americans, even though that will have its own problems.   

Given those pressures it will be a miracle if the Franco-British strategic relationship survives…but survive it must for the good of all.  In the short-term some sensitivity will be needed.  The British must not under-estimate the attachment of the French to the Euro as a symbol of the French view of Europe.  The French must stop lecturing the British about said view of ‘Europe’, and stop attempting to subordinate Britain to French ambitions and the bill that goes along with them.

Sadly, the toxic chemistry between the two countries makes trust a rare commodity.  Sometime ago I had a chat with a French four-star general whom I like and respect.  The conversation was not easy.  He told me a story of a recent deployment by the French aircraft-carrier Charles de Gaulle, which had been escorted by a British frigate.  He claimed that Paris learnt later that the frigate only had orders to protect itself.  He even called the British “perfidious”.  I checked.  Not only was mon general wrong, but London found working with the French proved difficult because agreed operational schedules were never maintained.  What is clear is that Paris does feel let down by London at times and has a point.  Britain and France need to rise above this kind of thing.

The road ahead will be rocky.  Cameron’s contradictory argument that more European integration is needed, but that non-integrating Britain is better off in the European Union is patent nonsense.  Something is going to have to give and unless the two countries can demonstrate a genius for statecraft both have lacked for many years then it is hard to see the Franco-British strategic defence relationship surviving.  That would be a shame given the world in which these two middling powers are moving.

Julian Lindley-French

All at Sea

Alphen, the Netherlands, 09 July. Admiral, the Lord Nelson, one-time senior naval super-person, once said that, “Desperate affairs require desperate measures”.  Had he attended the Royal United Services Institute Future Maritime Operations Conference 2012 in London he might have amended that to read, “Desperate affairs require desperate measures…and some new, radical, but above all strategic thinking”.  I came away from two days of debate with senior naval persons from many lands with a profound sense of ‘gap’ between the big, strategic role navies will and must play in the twenty-first century and the small, tactical thinking of those charged with making the case for future navies, particularly the British. 

Most telling for me was a breakfast meeting I attended to consider ‘sea-basing’.  I had prepared a major report for the head of the Royal Netherlands Navy to develop creative thinking in this area.  My intervention to that effect was met with the resounding thump of a good idea hitting the deck and being ignored.  It left me with a profound sense of senior military officers being simply unable or unwilling to think radically, unable to make a compelling case for expensive navies, and only really willing to listen to each other.  The rest of us were…tolerated.

This big futures twenty-first century will place Western navies right at the heart of strategy; influence, deterrence, dissuasion and defence.  However, we talked about almost everything but that – peacekeeping, supporting civil-military relations, counter-piracy, counter-drugs, supporting Afghanistan from the sea etc.  They are all important but they are not core business and we really must look beyond Afghanistan.  We only just touched on AirSea Battle and the access denial/area denial debate.

At times I thought I was attending a kind of floating politically-correct hell.  One academic offered a ridiculous, cartoon vision of modern Britain.  However, being of an ethnic minority Whitehall political correctness demanded all and sundry celebrate such nonsense.  It explained a lot.

Without a clear strategic ‘narrative’, and a means to sell it, strategically-inept politicians faced with ever more strident demands from the pressure groups and single-issue lobbyists who now infect democracy will cut navies to the point of strategic irrelevance.  In that event the world-wide strategic brand that is still the United States Navy, and to some extent the Royal Navy will be finally laid to rest and with them a key tool of strategic influence will be lost.  As I was speaking the British Defence Minister, Phillip Hammond was on his feet in the House of Commons announcing the Army 2020 plan by which the British Army will be cut from 102,000 to 82,000 over five years.

The conference at least offered a glimpse of the future.  This was the Anglosphere at sea.  In addition to the UK, senior naval speakers came from Australia, Canada, Ghana, New Zealand and the US.  There were no French, German, or Dutch speakers, although an impressive Italian Rear Admiral spoke.  Having been in Rome the previous week it is clear the Italians do not wish a) to be left alone in the European Onion without the British; or b) let go of the coat-tails of the Anglosphere.

Tellingly, I was upbraided for my suggestion that all was not well either between the three British services nor inside NATO.   That response demonstrated to me the kind of ‘steady as you go’ thinking that bears no relation to the mess in which we all find ourselves.

What is needed is a new concept of naval power which combines global reach with a shared warfighting ethos that in turn reflects a new balance between manpower and technology.  This concept requires in turn all the serious navies represented at that conference to learn far more effectively from each other and that means first and foremost learning how to learn.  That was not at all apparent and yet, ironically, that can be found in Army 2020.

Gentlemen, the bottom-line is this; the economic depression in which we are mired will likely get worse before it gets better.  Countries such as Britain will not be afforded the chance simply to get off the world for a bit to fix it.  Therefore, if the future navy that will be needed is to be afforded in sufficient numbers over a sufficiently reasonable timeframe at a cost that I can bear then you will need to build a much more coherent case with the Army and Air Force to forge the kind of organic jointness implicit in the Army 2020 plan, and across government. 

Given that reality my sense is that the leadership of Western navies (especially European navies) are being nothing like radical enough neither in their thinking about ways, ends or means nor in the building of all-important partnerships – both civil and military.

 

If we can get politicians thinking about navies they might just begin to think strategically. It is time to think radically about OUR navies otherwise they really will be all at sea.

Julian Lindley-French  

Bomber Boys

London, Bomber Command Memorial, 5 July. It is sixty-seven years too late.  The Bomber Boys gaze over me looking exhaustedly and exhaustively for comrades who will never return.  Seven RAF Bomber Command aircrew cast in bronze probably just off a Lancaster that has somehow miraculously survived a World War Two ‘trip’ over Nazi Germany.  Etched into the sombre Portland stone of London’s beautiful new monument to the men of Bomber Command are Churchill’s famous words of September 1940, “The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of our victory”.

RAF Bomber Command flew 364,514 sorties during ‘the war’.  Of the 125,000 who clambered almost daily into Wellingtons, Halifaxes, Stirlings and, of course, the iconic Lancaster, 55,573 lost their lives.  Only the German U-Boat crews suffered greater losses of any service in any force anywhere.  Men had a 30% chance of surviving their first tour. As for the rest life was a lottery and they knew it.

Two weeks ago I had the honour to take breakfast in the mess at RAF Leeming sitting at a table where many young Britons and Canadians had eaten their final meal before being consumed by a fiery death over Germany.  Last week Her Majesty the Queen unveiled this simple memorial to very brave men in front of thinning ranks of veterans from many nations as a lone Lancaster dropped a field of poppies over London’s Green Park.

For five years with growing accuracy and intensity RAF heavy bombers pulverised German cities and killed large numbers of German civilians night after terrifying night.  One has only to visit a German city or read Max Hasting’s harrowing account of 5 Group’s 1944 attack on Darmstadt to get some understanding of the suffering that Bomber Command inflicted. 

However, whilst I regret the suffering I have long-learned not to judge a past age by the values of the current age.  This was total war that had to be fought and won totally against a regime that was seeking to subjugate Europe with its appalling mix of nationalism, racism and militarism. This was a regime that was sending millions to the gas chamber.  In 1940-1941 Luftwaffe attacks on British cities such as Coventry, London, my own Sheffield and many others led to tragic loss of civilian life.  Air Chief Marshal Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris made Britain’s position terrifyingly simple; “The Germans have sown the wind.  They will now reap the whirlwind”.  In August 1943 that whirlwind hit Hamburg which over two nights was virtually obliterated by the RAF.  The damage was so great that Goebbels told Hitler that a few more raids like that and the war would be lost. Cologne, Kassel, Berlin and of course Dresden suffered raids of up to one thousand aircraft, as did much of the Ruhr industrial basin.

The debate over the strategic value and morality of the bomber offensive will continue on for many years to come, as will the debate over the value of Britain putting so much of its wartime industrial effort into producing large bombers.  However, I will always recall the words of my Dutch wife’s great aunt who died two years ago at the age of 102.  She told me that in the four years before D-Day the sound of the ever-increasing bomber streams passing overhead night after night to strike the Nazis hard gave real hope to the Dutch people that so long as Britain was fighting hard deliverance would one day come from brutal occupation as indeed it did.

Perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer these young men is not just this stunning memorial but the fact that Coventry and Dresden are today twinned in reconciliation.  That atop the rebuilt Frauenkirche in Dresden sits a golden orb from Coventry.  It also places today’s contentions in stark perspective.  Whatever the tensions and irritations of the latest European crisis this is not a war; far from it.  Britain and democratic Germany are today friends and it must always be thus.  Indeed, even if Britain is forced to leave the EU, as I believe in time it will, we will leave as friends.  L.P. Hartley’s famous reminder that the past is another country is nowhere as eloquent as Europe. 

At the base of the memorial I found a note left by a relative.  It commemorates New Zealand brothers John and George Mee who perished on sorties a few months apart.  “As with their comrades they did not seek glory, they asked for no collateral for their lives, they demanded no privileges, no power or influence as they flew steadily into the valley of death”. 

Strike hard, strike sure, Gentlemen.

Julian Lindley-French

Stop Playing Games over Europe, Mr Cameron

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 July.  In an article yesterday in London's Sunday Telegraph, British Prime Minister David Cameron hinted at a possible in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.  “Let us start to spell out in more detail the parts of our European engagement we want and those we want to end”, Cameron urged.  Sadly, this is PR Meister Cameron at his smoke and mirrors worst.  Cameron has no intention of putting the question that in recent opinion polls up to 90% of the British people want to answer; should Britain leave the EU?

There was a time when EU membership made strategic sense for Britain.  Not any more; the Eurozone crisis is a tipping point.  EU membership costs Britain £55 million per day ($86m) or £20 billion per year ($31bn), which is over half the UK defence budget, making Britain the second net contributor after Germany for far, far less benefit.  Those politicians who want to lock Britain into an unfavourable relationship with a debt-crushed, economically-sclerotic, growth-free Eurozone (the only EU that matters) claim that should Britain leave the EU the country would lose some 40-50% of its global output.  This is scaremongering.  Britain has an enormous trade deficit with the Eurozone and some 50-60% of Britain’s trade is with the wider more dynamic world.  One only has to visit the UK to see there are few of those beguiling EU signs that one finds all over France and elsewhere celebrating ‘Brussels-funded’ projects; the British are paying for them.

Like much of Britain’s political class David Cameron’s strength is that he is a master political tactician at home, but a hopeless strategist abroad.  Indeed, PR-Meister Cameron’s performance at recent EU summits has been utterly lamentable.  The Sunday Express article reflects this.  It is negotiating madness to say one is going to wait until the Eurozone has decided its future before Britain re-negotiates its membership or indeed its exit.  At the very least Cameron needs to re-negotiate the cost of Britain’s EU membership now.  This is something former Defence Minister Liam Fox has today rightly pointed out. 

There are now only two likely outcomes for this crisis.  There will be either a German-French dominated EU that will use some elements of political union to lock the current balance of power into European law, which is not in Britain's favour.  Or, a move towards genuine political union will take place via fiscal and banking union of the sort favoured by the EU President, Herman van Rompuy.  Both options are utterly irreconcilable with Britain’s political culture. 

In his efforts to dance on the head of a political pin Cameron tries to make the distinction between the Euro-EU and the single-market EU.  That distinction simply does not exist.  Last week’s Van Rompuy plan for banking union shot Cameron’s one remaining fox.  In effect, a two-tier single market in banking is being created; one for the Eurozone and the other for the non-Eurozone.  For Britain a true single market in banking and financial services has been the holy grail for many years.  However, even before the current crisis Germany did everything to block such a market because Berlin and Frankfurt feared the power of the City of London.  Under current plans London would be shut out in favour of Frankfurt, not least because it is the Germans who are going to write the rules of banking union. 

 

One can only hope that behind the scenes there is some method in Cameron's madness.  By calling on the British people to “show tactical and strategic patience” he is maybe hoping to make the case for exit irresistible or at the very least creating negotiating space.  He claims after all to be a “pragmatic euro-sceptic”.  He may also be right.  Indeed, as power shifts away from most (not all) EU member-states to Brussels, and the European people become ever more subject to distant, technocratic unelected fiat, the dangers of political union will become obvious.   

 

Sadly, my bet is that Cameron is mortaging Britain’s strategic future for his own political neck.  By calling for “patience” Cameron’s real concern is to stop votes leaking from his political base to the UK Independence Party and to kick this particular can down the road until after the next election when he hopes that will not have to co-habit with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, the European Commission’s point man in London.  And, by then the referendum over Scottish independence will have been settled. 

There may be a way for sensible people in London, Berlin and Paris to find a way to make EU membership work again for Britain but it is now very hard to see.  Today the British people pay far too much for far too little in an unbalanced relationship.  That relationship will become set in European political concrete unless Prime Minister Cameron ups his game and begins to exert demonstrable influence over a Brussels run by people who are not natural supporters of the British view of Europe.

Stop playing games over Europe, Mr Cameron.  It is far too serious and your position indefensible.

Julian Lindley-French

Is NATO Deterring Itself?

Rome, Italy. 29 June. Is NATO deterring itself? A two day meeting here in a searingly hot Rome on NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture Review (DDPR) reaffirmed to me the deep transatlantic gulf over NATO’s twenty-first century role. Sadly, no answer will be found to NATO’s existential twenty-first century question: is the Alliance integral to America’s world view or merely a group of failing regional actors with whom Americans may from time to time act?

The DDPR concerns the twenty-first century modernisation of NATO’s core Article 5 collective defence, or at least it should if the Alliance knew anything about public diplomacy. DDPR has four elements; nuclear deterrence, missile defence, defence against cyber-attack and the maintenance of a sufficient number of linked up, moveable fighting soldiers to deter or strike back at any aggressor be it a state or a terrorist organisation. There is also a fifth element; arms control and disarmament inserted mainly at the insistence of the Germans to assuage domestic political opinion.

What DDPR actually reveals is the many inherent contradictions within the Alliance that now render weak NATO’s deterrent role. Indeed, far from communicating a sense of real strategic purpose DDPR acts rather like a roll of thick wallpaper designed to cover cracks and holes in a deeply-cratered wall.

At the highest level (what we ‘wonks’ call grand strategy) the friction between the two new blocks that now make up NATO – the Eurozone and the Anglosphere – are plain to see. In the German-led Eurozone strategic truth has now become so toxic that denial and delusion have become the stuff of contemporary politics. Just look to Brussels and today’s latest instalment of the now long-running EU Muppet Show.

The US-led Anglosphere is slowly turning away from continental Europe towards Asia-Pacific. Indeed, last night’s Eurozone decision to begin moves towards a Eurozone-only banking union will in time confirm Britain’s exit from the EU and its re-orientation towards an Anglosphere embedded in the world economy beyond Europe. As the Americans and British shift away from Europe they will leave behind a legacy NATO. DDPR in many ways reflects that; a last ditch offer to modernise the strategic nuclear deterrent and reinforce it with a missile shield in the hope that Continental Europeans modernise their soldiers. They will again be disappointed.

Germany is the critical power. Indeed, the DDPR reeks of German domestic angst. As Germany emerges as Europe’s political and economic pocket superpower Berlin’s influence over the continent will be legitimised by reducing its military power and much of the rest of Europe with it. To Berlin’s mind the Russians must be kept happy at almost any cost even if it effectively gives Moscow a veto over NATO modernisation. And, all matters nuclear are taboo, barring any nuclear role for NATO whilst pretending NATO remains a nuclear alliance. The effect is to increasingly detach NATO from its three nuclear powers – Britain, France and the US.

The other problem is purely bureaucratic. I was attacked at the meeting by some of the DDPR’s drafters for pointing this all out. Their argument was that ‘this was the best we could do given the circumstances’. Well, chaps, in purely strategic terms your work is simply not good enough and the future will confirm that. But, of course, neither politicians nor bureaucrats live in the future. What comes across is a NATO that is becoming increasingly like an ant-hill in which all that matters takes place within the colony with little or no regard for where the colony sits in the bigger strategic picture.

In the old days NATO had a pretty clear idea as to its purpose. In the very British words of NATO’s first Secretary-General Lord Bruce Ismay the Alliance was, “to keep the Germans down, the Americans in and the Russians out”. Today, the Americans are on their way out, the Germans are up but not really in, whilst the Russians are far too far in and want NATO out.

The next five to ten years will see a revolution in the way power is distributed across the world and in Europe. The first lesson taught in Class 101 for strategic dummies is that structure follows power. This is the last chance NATO will be given to prepare for what is very clearly going to be a very bumpy century with much of that friction on Europe’s doorstep. Therefore, like it or not defence cuts in Europe mean nuclear weapons will become more important not less so. Germany and those who want both nuclear disarmament AND deep cuts to conventional forces are destroying the very foundations of a strategic NATO. Worse, such strategic pretence is the appeasement of reality and we all know where that leads.

Lord Bruce Ismay must be rolling in his patrician grave. NATO is deterring itself.

Julian Lindley-French

European Political Union: What Would it Look Like?

Rome, Italy.  25 June. Hot! Cicero, that great defender of the Roman Republic and implacable opponent of those that would abuse power in the name of the people once said, “Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscene than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system”.   The great man’s words seem prophetic as Chancellor Merkel daily calls for “more Europe” whilst daily refusing to pay for it (Germany alone cannot) as Europe’s peoples sit paralysed in the middle of a metaphorical autobahn as an out of control debt juggernaut with 26 steering wheels bears down on them.  So what would a ‘Europe’ with one steering wheel look like?  Is European political union, to given the stated ambition some formality, really possible or desirable?  And, is it at all relevant to today’s emergency?

Think of any federal state; Australia, the US, or more appropriately Germany and you begin to get Merkel’s thinking. Having gone through all the many structural economic financial reforms Germany has set as the price for German support ‘Europe’ in her vision would end up looking pretty much like the Federal Republic.  Specifically, Europe would have a constitution similar to the one (irony of ironies) that was drafted mainly by British lawyers for post-war Germany.  It would be a system of loose federation designed to prevent an over-bearing centre, in which EU member-states would become something like the German Landes themselves based on the old states and kingdoms of the German Confederation prior to Bismarck’s reunification of Germany. 

Brussels (backed of course by Berlin) would be the pivot around which Europe would spin and would over time take on more and more of the attributes of a state. The nation-state is essentially about three things; money, foreigners and killing. In other words - tax, foreign and security and defence policy.  To be fair to Berlin few are thinking in such Realpolitik terms it is simply the logic of the mess Europe is in and what Chancellor Merkel is calling for.  Indeed, the ineptitude of European leaders is really a function of today’s totally unworkable Europe.  Power is like giving birth – one cannot be a little bit pregnant as Europe is today.  Either ‘Europe’ truly integrates or becomes a real inter-state alliance. The strange mix Europe has today is simply confusing and paralysing everybody.

There is of course a big ‘but’ to all of this.  In fact there are several.  First, European political union has nothing to do with this crisis, here right now.  Indeed, it is a distraction from the crafting of the Ten Year Plan for European Recovery that is so desperately needed if the markets are to be reassured. Union might be made closer by the components of such a plan (fiscal union, banking union etc.) but is not the aim of a rescue plan.  Second, whilst some southern European states might be willing to accept economy-saving, democracy-crunching technocratic fiat from Berlin/Brussels because national democracy is a relatively recent phenomenon, northern and western Europeans will most certainly not.  Democracy therein has evolved over many years of political struggle and states such as Britain, France, the Netherlands and the Scandinavians are not going to surrender national democratic sovereignty easily. It is hard to believe either that those in Eastern Europe who gave freedom back to Europe would accept such diktat.

Third, there is no system to afford either credible political legitimacy or effective oversight of such a necessarily remote executive. “Do the math”, as the Americans would say.  Germany has a population of some 81.7 million people served by 622 MPs/Representatives in the Bundestag.  In other words in Germany there is a ratio of 1 MP for every 131350 citizens. The Netherlands enjoys a ratio of 1 MP for every 111337 citizens, whilst Britain has 1 MP for every 96000 citizens.  The EU has a population of 502.5 million very different people served by a European Parliament with 745 members, which affords Europeans 1 Euro MP for every 674,496 very different citizens.  European political union would mean the abandonment of effective democratic oversight.  

The first rule of good strategy is to exclude the irrelevant.  Talk of European political union at this juncture is precisely that; irrelevant.  In any case the most that could possibly be achieved but only after many years is not a federal European state but a confederal state such as Switzerland.  The Swiss are neutral mainly because they agree over very little.  A confederal Europe would make a mockery of suggestions from the likes of Tony Blair (beware he is back and looking for a top European job!) that the reason for more European integration is world power and influence.  Rather, the opposite is likely; a weak Europe with no voice for any voice would offend someone in Europe.

So, Euopean political union would more likely than not lead to a weak Euro-state, with too much power over its citizens and not enough influence in the world.  Is that really such a good idea? 

Julian Lindley-French