Pourquoi l’Europe
In just over 130 pages, the Swiss sinologist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva, Jean François Billeter, invokes history, politics, philosophy and even music to make the case for the necessity for Europe. Over and above its erudition, it is so tightly written and persuasive that it is impossible to put down.
It is all based on the observation that China has become a major power that is extending its influence everywhere, including Europe. Chinese leaders “know what they want, whilst Europe no longer knows where it is heading”, the author quite rightly points out, adding: “if it gave in to evil passions that are constantly reborn within it and to the external powers that wish to divide it and carve it up; in short, if it should lose control over its own destiny, something essential will be lost” (our translations throughout).
“The Chinese leaders are operating a dual strategy. They are trying, in China and everywhere else, to discredit any idea that might call their power into question and to get their hands on all the resources the country needs to become – and remain – the principal world power. They must make progress in this dual enterprise because their future depends on it”, Billeter explains, going on to stress that “our ignorance helps them enormously. It is the lockdown information, the surveillance of foreign nationals and Chinese alike, that prevents them from communicating freely. It has root causes related to our unfamiliarity with recent Chinese history”. The author therefore undertakes to walk us through this history, both ancient and more recent, using Chinese culture, with its seemingly immutable points of reference, as a compass. Today, “when the Chinese government is trying to reclaim China’s glorious past, it is referring to the Empire, it is the glory of Imperial China that it wants to bring back to life”. “It is trying to do this by returning to its political traditions: at the top, power that is indivisible because it has been conceived as a powerful strategic initiative, which makes use of both the civilian and military elements, which recognises no counter-power and theoretically has no limits in either space or time”, the sinologist explains.
Europe “has become incapable of deriving any idea of its future from its past, even though it is under threat from outside and from within”, writes Billeter, who believes that the only political project that has any hope of saving Europe is that of a “European Republic”. This would require the people of Europe to determine what they are and what is most important to them. In summary, the European Republic for which the author makes an impassioned case brings with it political institutions, but it must be fed into by a philosophical reflection allowing a movement of self-awareness, the founding act of all history according to Hegel, and the identification of the societal project Europeans want to see.
In the absence of any such development, the universal values developed by the Europeans will come under threat from Chinese relativism. The concept of “autonomous individuals” and freedom must be defended and these very things are the main targets of a Chinese powerbase “which is undertaking to have full control over the social relationships and lives of its subjects with a view to creating a ‘harmonious’ society”, but also that of “big business”, which is developing related forms of control in our part of the world, the author argues, in reference to the instruments of surveillance and control offered by information technologies and artificial intelligence. With its history and the culture of freedom it has nurtured, Europe is in the best position to resist this development, Billeter stresses, quoting a distress call from a Chinese intellectual and personal friend of his: “if Europe fails, we are lost!” Olivier Jehin
Jean François Billeter. Pourquoi l’Europe – Réflexions d’un Sinologue (available in French only). Éditions Allia. ISBN: 979-10-304-2232-0. 138 pages. €8.50
La conflictualisation du monde au XXIe siècle
In this work, Alain Renaut, emeritus professor of political philosophy and ethics at the Sorbonne University, and Geoffroy Lauvau, associate professor of political philosophy, share their take on collective violence, using the starting point of the concept of genocide, to which much of this book is devoted. Tracing the history of the definition and application of the concept, they ignore the restrictive use that has been made of it by entombing it in a coffin of ethnicity when they consider that it would be better used to describe all forms of collective violence that are based on the negation of the other as an individual or group of individuals.
On the basis of this concept, the authors describe conflictualisation as a process of “othering” that evolves in stages (which do not necessarily follow a systematic order) towards exclusion, stigmatisation, extreme violence or even annihilation. As well as referring to the genocides of the 20th century, the book also devotes many pages to religious violence and jihadist terrorism, which are rightly perceived as one of the more significant trends of the early years of the 21st century. Referring to the work of Hannah Arendt, the authors lay emphasis on the process of ideologisation of Islam that has characterised salafism and the jihadist terrorism that stems from it. The latter shares two essential elements with the non-religious forms of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Stalinism: the pursuit of an unlimited domination brought to bear in all areas of human relations; to achieve this, the drive to “terrorise” reality, right up to the point at which the authors consider that despite the setbacks it has suffered, this ideology “may very well remain attractive or become so again in the future” (our translations throughout). Certainly, there is nothing that would lead one to conclude that this could not happen in “populations striving to find ‘meaning’, people who consider that state policy fails to recognise their needs, particularly the need to give their existence some comprehensibility”. They add: “this has also been the case for certain young Europeans who believed, or still believe, that an extremist version of Islam offers them spiritual nourishment that does not seem to be available from their host society – which could, if things go far enough, prompt them to convert”. The authors also stress how devastating it can be to use religion for the purposes of domination – history is full of examples of this – as it lends itself to the absolutisation of the true, which can be exploited to justify the most extreme violence. This has been responsible for the darkest periods of Judaism and Christianity, even though these two forms of the same spirituality shared a long tradition of interpretation of the canonical texts and rejection of a single interpretation. This is even more the case for Islam, which does not share this tradition and is therefore even more ripe for exploitation of this kind.
Renaut and Lauvau then move on to the culture of gender and mass sexual violence, for instance the rapes committed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (when hundreds of thousands of women were raped in a period of three months) or those committed in Kivu (on average 1152 per day in 2018). These acts are another branch of the same phenomenon of conflictualisation based on othering and aiming to dominate or destroy the other, Tutsi or Hutu in the African example, Bosnian or Kosovar in the case of the rape camps installed by the Serbian regime during the former Yugoslavian conflict. Over and above sexual violence used as a weapon, the authors also question the various aspects of male domination that are present within certain traditions, such as female genital mutilation (it is believed that 200 million women around the world have suffered this form of mutilation, 60,000 of them in France), inferior status for women, restrictions on women’s freedoms or specific obligations such as having to cover their heads. Here, referring to the positions of marginal Conservative Christians, the authors bizarrely refer to a biblical requirement for women to wear veils which does not in fact exist – as far as historians are currently aware, the requirement to take the veil in the Middle East dates back to the time of the Assyrian Empire, some 3000 years ago. The veil as an item of clothing may have spread from there, but there is no trace of it in the texts of ancient Judaism. Paul of Tarsus refers to the garment in one of his letters to the Corinthians as a potential form of modesty, but the apostle, who was known to have indulged in misogyny from time to time, gets bogged down in not particularly convincing arguments and does not hesitate to add that long hair is given to a woman as a covering (1 Corinthians 11:15). Conversely, surahs 24 and 33 of the Koran clearly require women to cover their heads. Irrespective of the contemporary relevance of these rules of propriety that are between 1400 and 3000 years old, the authors stress that they might be being adopted in our societies today by young women as a reaction to various forms of hyper-sexualisation. Between claims of this kind, the various forms of communitarianism, masculine domination and feminism, the conflictualisation of gender on the basis of setting up a distinction between “us” and “them” (i.e. feminine plural) isn’t going to go away any time soon.
The book concludes with an analysis of the “gilets jaunes” movement, which the authors consider to be the “perfect example of a situation of crystallisation of social antagonisms that may tend to tip over into violence” and of the populist movements that are producing as well as feeding off various forms of conflictualisation. (OJ)
Alain Renaut and Geoffroy Lauvau. La conflictualisation du monde au XXIe siècle – Une approche philosophique des violences collectives (available in French only). Odile Jacob. ISBN: 978-2-7381-5063-9. 394 pages. €24.90
Le choc démographique
Humanity is currently turning over a new page of its history, with demographic growth at just 1.1% a year and a growing tendency towards the ageing of the world’s population. This is the conclusion of political scientist Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the French Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research). Admittedly, the latest UN forecasts suggest that the global population will continue to rise: 7.8 billion people in 2020, 8.5 billion in 2013, 9.7 billion in 2050 and possibly 10.9 billion in 2100. However, median age is now 30.9, compared to 22 in 1965 and the proportion of people aged 65 years or above currently stands at 9% of the total.
“The Old Continent has never deserved its nickname more: median age in Europe is now 43 and one fifth of its population is 65 or over (compared to less than one tenth globally)” (our translations throughout), the author stresses, also noting that its demographic growth is now due to immigration alone. It is immigration that allowed it to rise from 508 million people in 2015 to 513 billion in 2019.
Africa will continue to beat all demographic growth records, as shown by the example of Niger: +3.8% a year, with a fertility rate of 6.9, 2000 births a day (2005-2010), 23 million currently, 40 million in 2035 and possibly as many as 164 million in 2100.
In 2050, China will have only 1.4 billion inhabitants. Overtaken by India, with 1.6 billion, it will “grow old before it grows rich”, the author comments, pointing out that the median age of the Chinese will be higher than that of the Americans for the first time in 2020, representing a new social challenge that the Middle Kingdom will struggle to meet. From an economic point of view, as the working-age population will decline rapidly, it may experience a “demographic penalty that could represent 0.7% of GDP in the 2030s”, the author warns, based on an American study.
Economic difficulties, emigration, not enough women, depopulation of its eastern regions, Russia will continue its “descent into demographic hell”: 145 million today, possibly just 126 million by 2100. Conversely, its traditional strategic rival “is benefiting from a demographic dynamism that is quite remarkable for a developed country”: the population of the United States could stand at 434 million in 2100.
Against this backdrop, of which we have sketched just the outlines, the author argues a series of theories: concern over a lack of resources or space in the face of demographic growth; the risk that Europe will be invaded by the Africans; the great replacement, etc. Although it is important to avoid fears and, in particular, the conspiracy theories that underlie them, and if it is correct to say that the current level of immigration is not likely to submerge Europe, the author struggles to hit the mark with some of his arguments, such as the increased use of fertiliser and mechanised agriculture in Africa to increase food self-sufficiency and even more with various approximations. The data quoted are no doubt the only ones available, but they are rarely entirely appropriate or comparable. Under the term Europe, the author at different times refers to the EU (without ever defining it in its current form of 27 member states) or Europe in the wider sense, including Russia. In the absence of any overall data, the line of argument is often based on data gleaned here or there for one country or another. The book reminds us that demographic prediction is not an exact science and that it is still important to improve the comparability and reliability of statistical data at the level of the EU and its member states. Finally, whilst the author expresses distrust at Anglo-Saxon-style ethnoracial statistics, it may now be useful to question the relevance of a statistical tool that identifies the relative share of the various cultural or religious identities within the territories. Information of this kind could be used both to rationalise the debate in the face of the concerns stirred up by populists and more effectively to manage the multiculturalism of our societies, so that they do not spill over into various forms of conflict. (OJ)
Bruno Tertrais. Le choc démographique (available in French only). Odile Jacob. ISBN: 978-2-7381-5092-9. 245 pages. €29.90
Cosa significa creare una capacità fiscale europea ?
In the journal “Il Federalista”, Luca Lionello and Giulia Rossolillo, lecturers in European law at the universities of Milan and Pavia respectively, remind us that the trusteeship exercised by the member states over the financing of the European Union does much to explain the predominance of the intergovernmental method and the absence of a European economic union. Creating an independent European budget, which at least one of the two authors sees as mobilising 5 to 10% of GDP, would be a key factor in European integration and, no doubt, of political effectiveness as well, the reader is inclined to add. Not only would the EU be free from the horse-trading currently practised during the establishment of the multiannual financial framework (for the amount of barely 1% of GDP), but the negative effects of spreading Community funding too thinly and other “fair returns”, more or less disguised, would be reduced. The authors point out that in the United States, the Federal Constitution of 1789, which led to the creation of a federal budgetary authority, had the effect of ending a serious financial crisis resulting from the refusal of the States to pay debts from the war of independence. However, it must be borne in mind that all budgetary decisions are made unanimously and that the creation of a fiscal authority would require treaty change, which would also have to be unanimous. To avoid these pitfalls, the authors consider the possibility of a new treaty adopted by qualified majority by a group of pioneer states, with the others to remain bound by the current treaty.
The same edition of “Il Federalista” features a speech by the President of the UEF, Sandro Gozi, a member of the European Parliament (Renew Europe) and former under-secretary for European affairs in the Renzi government. “Our European civilisation is at risk of extinction in a world that is tending to reinvent itself between Washington and Beijing and in which the only way to stay alive and in the game is to create a European power”, he states, calling for greater integration and the construction of a European security architecture. (OJ)
Luca Lionello and Giulia Rossolillo. Cosa significa creare una capacità fiscale europea e perché è così importante il processo di integrazione? (Available in Italian only). Article published in the journal Il Federalista, Anno LXI, 2019, edition 3 (http://www.ilfederalista.eu ).