Europe's alternative
model
to American war-making
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
March 30, 2007
LONDON - When, two centuries ago, Sweden was defeated
by Russia enough people in Sweden said “never again”. And
Sweden, once one of the great powers of Europe, turned inward to concentrate
on its own economic and political development. The Napoleonic wars were
followed by almost two hundred years when peace was perceived as Swedish
and wars as European.
When Finland was torn away from Sweden by Russia in
1809 Sweden, albeit not without difficulty, decided discretion was the
better part of valour. Norway in 1905 was also allowed to liberate itself
peacefully from Swedish rule. Today, thanks to the European Union, peace
has been de-Swedicised and Europeanised - Europe’s attititude nowadays,
after hundreds of years of being the most war prone part of the world,
is that peace is more easily kept by peaceful integration and shared economic
competiveness.
After 50 years of success Europe can truly say, as Sweden did before it,
that it has found a better way. Even the “off piste” wars
in ex-Yugoslavia do not distract from that accomplishment, although in
retrospect one wishes that the EU had used the lure of European membership
before the wars began rather than after. The Yugoslavian crises could
conceivably have then been defused.
Mark Leonard in his book, “Why Europe will run the 21st Century”
has described the EU’s present power as “passive aggression”.
“For countries such as Turkey, Serbia or Bosnia, the only thing
worse than having the bureaucracy of Brussels insisting on changes, implementing
regulations, instigating privatizations and generally seeping into every
crack of everyday political life, is to have its doors closed to you….
Europe’s obsession with legal frameworks means it can completely
transform the countries it comes into contact with, instead of just skimming
the surface. The U.S. may have changed the regime in Afghanistan but Europe
is changing all of Polish society.”
The American political economist, Richard Rosecrance, has argued that
this the first time in history that a great power has arisen without provoking
other countries to unite against it. Around the blue map of the EU’s
450 million citizens there is another almost 400 million people who share
land and sea borders with the EU, and beyond them another 900 million
umbilically linked to Europe because it is their largest trading partner
and source of credit. Leonard calls this the “Eurosphere”,
which is gradually being transformed by the European idea, adopting European
ways of doing things. In a recent conversation the Indian prime minister,
Manmohan Singh, held this up to me as the ideal way a great power should
be.
It’s odd that British prime minister, Tony Blair, cannot see what
he is part of, and prefers to cling to America’s coat tails instead.
Zbigniew Brzensinki in his new book, “Second Chance”, says
that Washington, uneasy about a more confident Europe, consciously set
out to encourage Britain to be more “Atlantist” and less “European”
and that “London was only too eager to accommodate.”
But now that the U.S. has been so badly defeated in Iraq, coming, in historically
terms, hard on the heels of its terrible defeat in Vietnam, is it not
time that the U.S. adopted the Swedish/European method? The U.S. has sent
troops into its neighbours more than fifteen times over the last 50 years
but many of those countries have barely changed, lurching from crisis
to crisis and often enough sucking American troops back into their problems.
Washington tends to pursue short-term goals, such
as defeating an anti-American insurgency, stabilizing a friendly government,
destabilizing a hostile one or seeking to reduce drug trafficking. Unlike
Europe it does not offer the lure of long-term integration.
Europe increasingly seeks to deal with crises in its
“near abroad” by working to pre-empt them, as it has in Macedonia
with negotiations, peacekeepers and institution building. The U.S., under
the presidency of George W. Bush, has gone in diametrically the opposite
way, seeking to physically remove a threat before it can be deployed against
the U.S.. As a result of its misconceived venture in Iraq the U.S. is
spending more on its failed attempt at reconstruction there than the EU
spent on bringing democracy to the entire former Soviet bloc in eastern
Europe.
The nineteenth century jurist Henry Maine wrote that “War appears
to be as old as mankind but peace is a modern invention.” Seen from
today’s perspective that is not quite true: Sweden pioneered it
two hundred years ago. The European Union has developed the notion further
over the last 50 years. It is now America’s turn to end its entrapment
with the old fashioned ways of military might.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
Last 
Next
Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
Jonathan
Power's book from 2001
Follow
this link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book written
for the 40th Anniversary of Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty International"
Tell a friend about this column by Jonathan Power
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
Get
free articles & updates
|