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Europe Daily Bulletin No. 12427

18 February 2020
Contents Publication in full By article 33 / 33
Kiosk / Kiosk
No. 009

Une histoire mondiale de la paix

In this work, Philippe Moreau Defarges, a former diplomat and then researcher at the Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri), where he was co-director of the Ramsès report, does more than just relate a history of peace. He analyses and cross-examines ancient and contemporary history in a style that is all his own, erudite without ever slipping into pomposity, and with the dynamic style for which he is well known (reading him is a bit like listening to him speak), abundant yet constantly moving under the impulse of pensions driving him on.

The alternative to building peace is hell on our earth. For most Europeans, who have had since 1945 to get used to the comfort offered by the American protectorate, this idea was and, for many people, still is hypothetical and far distant. However, as the author stresses, “the Pax Americana of 1945-2003 is and can only be the last ever imperial peace as, from the end of the 18th century to the dawn of the 21st, the United States held a unique position in history that will never be repeated. Globalisation, which is dynamic, worldwide and conflictual, now condemns any planetary imperial ambitions, even those of a reawakened China, to unleash against it far more spirals of hostility than it can defend itself against” (our translation throughout). Moreau Defarges therefore recommends “resuming the laborious process of striving for perpetual peace, a contractual, democratic and institutional peace, as explored by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, amongst others”.

The author takes us on a breakneck journey through the conflicts and various imperial times of peace that have marked the history of humanity, not without stressing that “whilst ultimately nothing more than a ceasefire between two wars, imperial peace needs to learn how to see itself as a perpetual state of being”, with any empire unavoidably destined to face innumerable confrontations before it is finally put to the sword. Among other examples, he refers to the Alexandrian Empire, which was fragmented after the death of its namesake in 323 BC, the Roman Empire, the USSR and the immense British Empire, which broke up after 1945 and for which Brexit may become the epilogue, if the Scottish and possibly even the Northern Irish decide that they would rather be outside the United Kingdom than outside the European Union.

The latest of these chronologically, the Pax Americana flourished between 1945 and 2001, but “now, in the early years of the 21st century, this peace is on its deathbed”, states Moreau Defarges, describing the symptoms of an “agonising and almost certainly irreversible decline”, the perception of which by the Americans themselves explains their recent inward-looking tendencies and the election success of Donald Trump. “With its spectacular renaissance in just a handful of decades, China is tempted to see itself as the ‘Middle Kingdom’ once again. History is revolving around it once more. However rich and diverse the inter-dependencies are, they do not curb either the bitterness or acrimony of being weakened or desires for revenge. This is where the enormous grey area of the ‘irrational’, which is capable of triggering the least controllable and most destructive downward spirals begins”, the author notes.

So where is Europe in all this? From major discoveries to two world wars, it has been the driving force and the centre of the world. After 1945, it rebuilt itself and benefited, just the Western part to begin with, from the American shield to develop economic inter-dependencies and new institutions, until the process of European integration began to falter in 2005, when the draft constitutional treaty was permanently shelved. Today, “Europe is entering the unknown. It is no longer the centre of the world. It is no longer exceptional (…). Europe is ageing, weighed down by a welfare state that its underwhelming growth rate will probably no longer allow it to support. Europe’s relative weight in the global economy can only go down”, argues Moreau Defarges, continuing: “lacking natural resources, Europe has always made itself in and through trade. A closed-off Europe will be like a city under siege, an impoverished backwater full of lukewarm bitterness and rancid nationalism. Europe needs an open and interdependent world”. He concludes with a colossal challenge: “if Europe wants, and is able to have, a grand design, this must have no other object than to build a Europe-Middle East-Africa space stretching from the North Cape to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Atlantic to continental Asia, to stand against the Asia-Pacific axis”.

Olivier Jehin

 

Philippe Moreau Defarges. Une histoire mondiale de la paix (available in French only) Odile Jacob. ISBN: 978-2-7381-5069-1. 225 pages. €22.90

 

Grote verwachtingen in Europa 1999-2019

Although the title is reminiscent of a novel by Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), the Dutch journalist (whose CV includes NRC Handelsblad) and writer Geert Mak provides a sequel to his 1500-page work on the European history of the 20th century, which took us up to 1998. The success of his 2004 book “In Europe”, which ran to 400,000 copies, was particularly noted for his documentary work on the two world wars. “In Europe” was even the origin of a series of 35 television documentaries with the author in the lead role. With his “Great Expectations”, Mak picks up where he left off to take us through the last three decades.

In a highly readable style, the author surveys the entire continent, setting off from a small town in the far north of Norway and 7 km from the Russian border. Kirkenes, to which he will return more than once in this book, is a vulnerable witness to Russia’s new stance and the concerns this has generated, but also to climate change. The work, which does not follow anything like a linear path, takes us from place to place, in all directions, from happy events such as the change of millennium or the introduction of the euro in the first chapters, to the crises that marked these early years of the 21st century, such as the financial crisis of 2008, terrorist attacks, the influx of migrants and Brexit. The journey ends in Budapest in 2019, having travelled via Barcelona, in a Catalonia in the grips of a pro-independence fever.

Travel, interviews, anecdotes, older memories punctuate these 557 pages, at the end of which Mak compares the current period to the one experienced by Europe in the early 16th century, with the upheavals brought about by the discovery of the world, the introduction of printing, the reform and calling into question of institutions. In deference to Dominique Moïsi, who has since the beginning of the 21st century described the conflictual tendencies dominating the world as a “clash of emotions” – a culture of hope in China and the rest of Asia, a feeling of humiliation in the Arab-Muslim world and a culture of fear in the West – the author stresses that “everywhere, fear has replaced confidence: the fear of the other, the fear of the future and the existential fear of the loss of identity in an ever more complex world”. In Europe, but also elsewhere, these fears have driven voters away from the traditional parties and offered fertile soil for the growth of populist forces, thus weakening European integration, although the “democratic immaturity of the EU is a particular problem given the rapid development of new forces and powers in the virtual world”. In this dawning decade, the European Union must find answers to rapid technological development, particularly of the information society and artificial intelligence, the economy and global governance, the author argues, also stressing the need for democratic deepening and a greater cohesion of the EU. Whilst stressing that although they will come up against opposition and that it might take a major crisis to succeed, the author suggests solutions such as transnational lists for the European elections and creating a federal hub or “kern-Europa” within the EU. (OJ)

 

Geert Mak. Grote verwachtingen in Europa 1999-2019 (available in Dutch only; translation rights for other languages have been acquired). Atlas Contact. ISBN: 978-90-450-3977-0. 557 pages. €29.99

 

A minefield of opportunity – Transatlantic defence in the Trump era

In this report, Paul Taylor takes no prisoners with his analysis of the transatlantic relationship in defence matters (EUROPE 12413/24).

For instance, he stresses the highly unequal nature of the defence market, marked by American hegemony and protectionist rules (the 1933 Buy American Act de 1933, the 1946 Berry Amendment and the 1976 ITAR regulation) which make it hard for the Europeans to sell to the United States and to export European defence products to other countries if they contain any American-origin components. With the exception of BAE Systems (the United Kingdom is officially included in the industrial and defence technology base of the United States), there are no European businesses on the list of “prime contractors” authorised by the Pentagon and therefore they may take part in calls for tender only if they team up with an American partner. On the other side of the Atlantic, the defence sector remains extremely fragmented and highly profitable for American businesses. In 2014-2016, for instance, the US exported armaments worth a total of €62.9 billion to the EU, while the total imports of armaments from the EU to the US was not more than $7.6 billion. In 2017, the Pentagon’s acquisitions of armaments from the EU stood at just $3.52 billion, or just 1.1% of the DoD’s entire budget.

The Pax Americana is not what it used to be”, observes Taylor, stressing that the American leadership in the sector is now contested by China, Russia and regional powers such as Iran, Turkey and North Korea. Under Trump, the European allies are now finding out about the American decisions that affect their strategic interests (as in the case of the withdrawal from Syria) on Twitter, the author points out, also stressing that they are up against a President who, not content with treating the European Union as an enemy, is constantly trying to divide it.

In its recommendations, the report urges the EU to forge ahead with its European Defence Fund and Permanent Structured Cooperation projects, but also stresses the need for these projects to take account of the capability gaps of NATO. The EU should also show goodwill by swiftly concluding an administrative arrangement between the European Defence Agency and the United States. Major priority should be given to cooperation with NATO in the fields of military mobility and cyber security. United States (DARPA) and the EU (European Defence Fund) should establish a common fund to promote collaborative research into artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyber security and digital communications. The EU should continue to involve the British industry in the European industrial and technological defence base after Brexit and allow British businesses to participate in projects of the European Defence Fund. Finally, EU leaders should refrain from using divisive terms such as “European army” and “strategic autonomy”.

To sum up, this report is rich and brilliant in its description of the situation of the powerlessness of the European against a declining American hegemon, but refuses obstinately in its conclusions to acknowledge the fact that the European Union, which is under attack from within and facing an unstable and dangerous environment, has no choice but to move forward on the path to integration. How can one fail to see that the European army objective is the only one capable of bringing about a freedom of action that has become vital now that the American ally has become uncertain? Why not accept the fact that the United Kingdom has chosen to leave the EU and that its industry is already integrated in the American industrial and technological base? Why cling to models and organisations that have done their time, such as NATO, which has been condemned by Donald Trump as obsolete and brain-dead by Emmanuelle Macron? The Atlantic Alliance and the Euro-American relationship now need some serious work and rebalancing in order to survive and this requires a European capacity to constitute a robust and autonomous defence union. (OJ)

 

Paul Taylor. A minefield of opportunity – Transatlantic defence in the Trump era. Friends of Europe. The report can be downloaded free of charge from the following address: https://www.friendsofeurope.org/insights/a-minefield-of-opportunity-transatlantic-defence-in-the-trump-era/

 

Histoire intellectuelle de l’Europe

Europe was the “mother of arts and culture” between 1500 and 1960, François Chaubet reminds us in this work devoted to the unparalleled space for the movement of people and ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries. “Europe is par excellence the universe in which similitudes never mean similarities: it means pluralism”, he states, in a reference to the writings of the French historian François Guizot. To illustrate this, he refers to the exiles and travels of intellectuals across the continent, the conferences and the first “summer universities” that have brought together intellectuals since the beginning of the 20th century, including the Décades de Pontigny in Bourgogne (1910-1939), translation and the proliferation of reviews and publishing houses.

Although literature was marked for two centuries by France, Germany, with its universities, its philosophers and a veritable scientific hegemony (between 1901 and 1940, Germany won 35 Nobel prizes, compared to 23 for Great Britain, 16 for France and 13 for the United States), dominates the European cultural scene. This domination is also facilitated by the key role played by the German language in central Europe, Scandinavia and Russia, together with the remarkable strikeforce of German publishing. Servicing a national cultural universe that was already in rude health in 1914 (61,000 students, 4000 daily newspapers and 35,000 titles published), German publishing houses would weave a network that would include most major European cities.

In this history of the circulation of ideas, translation obviously plays a leading role, as the number of translations can attest to a form of intellectual or linguistic Germany, but also, inversely, in some cases to a lack of openness. In 1991, translations represented just 3% of publications in the United Kingdom, compared to 14% in the FRG, 18% in France, 25% in Spain, 26% in Italy and 32% in the Netherlands. Translation has grown since then, accounting for 38% of publications in the Netherlands in 2008 and as much as 65% in Sweden today, echoing the wise words of Umberto Eco: “the language of Europe is translation”.

After the 1960s, “intellectual Europe got back into line a bit”, the author recognises, but university exchanges continue (9 million Erasmus students since 1987) and new technologies have facilitated and accelerated them. How, then, can a renaissance of the European cultural phoenix be discounted? Intellectual Europe has always had enough resources to overcome all its cultural and political collapses, following the religious wars of the 16th century, after 1918 and after 1945. Chaubet concludes by saying that the “incessant narrative of the self and the other is the definition of the European subconscious and its frontispiece. Let us warrant that the continent retains the secret of this and that it never loses its intense curiosity about its neighbours. It is the duty of the cultured to maintain this ambition”. (OJ)

 

François Chaubet. Histoire intellectuelle de l’Europe (XIXe – XXe siècles) (available in French only). Que sais-je ? / Humensis. ISBN: 978-2-7154-0166-2. 126 pages. €9.00

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