Is
the European Union
pro-peace?
PressInfo #
231
December
9, 2005
By
Jan
Oberg,
TFF director
You've heard it like a mantra: the
EU is an actor for peace in Europe (8 pct of the world's
population) and outside it (92 pct).
True, it has made a contribution to
heal Europe after 1945.True, as one actor it has done
nothing like the US in Iraq. True, it is great that it
young people can learn and work in different parts of
Europe. True, it gives much more development aid than
others. And true, that integration of countries seems to
have reduced the risk of future inter-national warfare on
European soil.
But then there is the famous other
side of the coin: it's Treaty
text is devoid of peace
philosophy, policies and institutions. Read it and you
are in for a surprise!
It lacks every strategy to reduce
direct, structural, cultural and environmental violence
inside and outside Europe. Its basic security
"philosophy" is outlined in "A
Secure Europe in a Better World. European Security
Strategy (2003), a 16-pages
document signed by Javier Solana. It is little but a
random collection from different sources, presumably some
of his speeches. It's pretty self-congratulatory; EU has
succeeded so well already in making peace. It has no
theory or concept, no analysis and its list of threat
against the EU - terrorism and nuclear proliferaton
topping that list - is a replica of that of the Bush
administration.
One must be surprised that many
more security and peace intellectuals have not
highlighted this document's superficiality. (TFF
Associate Johan
Galtung has.) What an
insult to the 450 million EU citizens to produce such a
qualitatively and quantitatively thin document as the
basis for their future security and peace, not to speak
about the rest of the world that the EU professes to make
peace in!
It requires of its members that
they must increase their military strength; it
connects most closely to NATO of all the world's
organisations - not the UN or OSCE - and it establishes
the basis of a European military-industrial complex. It
centralised security affairs at its very top and leaves
its Parliament without any substantial influence on these
affairs.
The Charter of the United Nations
is a hundred times more visionary and peace-oriented than
this outdated Treaty. And the Treaty has been read by
maximum 1 per cent of the Europeans. The reason? It is
474 pages long, partly unreadable, and regulates details
that never belonged to a Constitution.
In addition, the EU has been unable
to shape a common policy concerning the Balkans,
Afghanistan and Iraq. The big members ignore the
requirements of a common policy; the small - such as
Sweden - have stopped having an independent foreign and
security policy in order to integrate with a common
policy that repeatedly fails to materialise.
And, let's not forget it: the Union
is based on nuclear weapons since France and the U.K.
have them; but this fact isn't even mentioned in the
Treaty.
* *
*
TFF and its Associates have been
engaged in the security, conflict-resolution and peace
dimension of the EU for many years. For instance, 33
years ago TFF Associate Johan Galtung wrote critically
about the EU in "The European Community. A Super Power in
the Making". To a large extent he predicted today's
situation and lack of peace competence of the EU.
Over the years TFF has developed
the EU
Conflict Management Forum
with lots of analyses, debate articles, alternatives and
links for the student of EU, its role in defence,
security and peace in particular.
Most recent articles are by two of
our advisers Erni
and Ola Friholt who have
taken it upon them to not only read and criticise the
Treaty but also formulate its paragraphs differently.
Here is their visionary, constructive article
"We
want a constitution for the 21st Century, not for the
20th."
Some may find their proposals
"idealistic" - but before you judge them, please study
the Treaty text and ask yourself why this constitution is
devoid of new thinking that fit our time and even the
smallest vision about what is needed the next few decades
to create a more humane world.
One reason could be that the work
with the Treaty text was presided over by three men at
the average of 70 years. One of the criticisms the
Friholts raise is exactly that this Treaty is imbued with
old patriarchal thinking and worldviews.
It is important that the women of
Europe see this and act for a more gender-balanced
approach to the EU and its peace philosophy.
Finally, I have recently published
a small book, "Does the EU Promote Peace? Analysis,
Criticism and Alternatives." Existing so far only in
Danish, it was written for the Danish think tank New
Agenda and - predictably - totally ignored by the
mainstream media in Denmark. One must assume that the
reason is that I did not confirm the image of the EU as a
peace organisation that they have promoted without any
independent investigative journalism for years. But then
again Danish mainstream media are not overpopulated by
peace intellectuals.
In this book I go through what the
Treaty says about direct violence, structural, cultural
and environmental violence. By means of the simple
content search you can do on pdf documents, I thought it
was interesting to see how often certain words are
mentioned in the Treaty text. It's so simple and quite
revealing.
Her are the main words and how
often they appear throughout the Treaty text:
Peace 8
x
Conflict prevention/prevent
conflicts 5 times
Defence/defence policy 64
times
Security/security
policy/inner security 81 times
Military/armed forces 21
times
Terror and terrorism 10
times
The new EU foreign minister
71 times
Trust-building, arms control,
reconciliation, détente, disarmament,
non-violence 0 times (!)
In rough terms, the "balance"
between words that refer to peace, conflict prevention
and other non-military concepts, on the one hand, and
words that refer to military-related security thinking on
the other is 1:20
The analysis also elaborates the
alternatives - what the treaty text could have said had
it been written with a different contemporary mind-set by
younger men and women with just a little intuition about
and education in defence, security, conflict-resolution
and peace affairs. Like the Frihol analysis, I find it
intellectually most honest tonot only criticise but
present alternative ideas and policies. There are 25 of
them towards the end of this little study, some of them
repeated from a 2001
article by Hårleman and
Oberg.
It is argued - strongly - that
there is no way the EU can or should become an
alternative military power to the United States; instead
it can become the much-desired alternative to it by
conceiving security and peace in a fundamentally new
manner. And if it does not take the opportunity now while
the United States is slowly but surely going down as an
empire and finds few real friends around the world, the
EU is losing the best chance it has ever had.
Excerpts of this analysis are now
being translated into English and other EU languages.
Those who understand a bit of Danish are guided to this
place on TFF's site where the
report can be downloaded free of
charge.
Whether or not this Treaty proposal
will be revived - as Chancellor Angela Merkel intends -
or it will be formally buried, rest assured that the
defence, foreign, security and "peace" policy of the
European Union will be based on the kind of thinking and
worldviews in that treaty. There is nothing else to base
it on!
This sorry state of affairs would
be useful to discuss much more in the countries that
wait to be let into the EU. But unfortunately the
liberal pluralist West that they ran into the arms of
when getting out of the Soviet grip are not liberal
enough to give them a free choice. The EU's democratic
message is abundantly clear: you have no other options
but joining the EU and NATO and on our conditions, none
of yours! And as a minor point understated: when inside,
you can't get out again!
Given the importance of this
"Constitution" of the EU - hundreds of millions of
citizens inside and waiting outside - it's time the
media, intellectuals and NGOs sit down and read this
document and start debating much more intensely
how we can create something new, something that would
catch the attention and energies of young people in
Europe and beyond - a real Constitution that would offer
hope about a more just and peaceful world.
So, please get hold of the
Constitution/Treaty
text here. Read it and
you'll see that you are in for a surprise! Contrary to
what you have heard repeatedly, there is no hope for real
conflict-resolution and peace there. In this field, the
EU is more in need of reform than the United
Nations.
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