La mondialisation dangereuse
Globalisation has gone from being beneficial to dangerous and it is this new world that historian Alexandre Del Valle and graduate of the French Ecole Normale Supérieure, Jacques Soppelsa, set out in this work to unpick, examining the dominant trends (geography, history, religion) and contemporary variables (Covid-19, energy, economy, organised crime) that make up the melting pot of tension and crises we face today.
The authors’ central argument is that “globalisation has laid bare the major vulnerabilities of Europe, the soft underbelly of the West, which has ended up, as a result of its unlimited openness, exposed to a whole range of new challenges that it is struggling more than the other major challenges to deal with: pandemic, endemic unemployment, recurrent economic and financial crises, depopulation of the countryside, the ageing population, the brain drain (particularly to the United States), bureaucratisation, lack of entrepreneurial culture, industrial delocalisations, social dumping from Asia, unfair competition from China, uncontrolled immigration, drugs trafficking and organised crime, energy rivalries and hybrid threats” (our translation throughout). “A curious secondary effect of this process is that Europeans are the only people in the world who reject and demonise their own identities and borders while other non-Western nations, starting with China, India, Turkey, south-east Asia (etc.), are developing in response to Western universality and are instead using globalisation as leverage for their national and civilisational power”, write Del Valle and Soppelsa, going on to argue that “behind the consumerist, hedonistic and politically correct utopia of McWorld (the Anglo-Saxon globalising culture in which the individual as a consumer is king: Ed), the other nations of the embryonic multipolar word, most of all China and its allies, are discovering a new form of deterritorialised cognitive imperialism (…)”, while the “West, with its globalist reading of globalisation, shoots itself in the foot by participating in the annihilation of its own civilisation and its founding moral values and standards”.
Although they deliver a highly nuanced criticism of the various theories or “prophetic visions of the post-bipolar world”, from Kennedy to Barber via Fukuyama, Huntington and Allison, the authors identify the doctrine of American political scientist and strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski as the source of the war currently being waged by Putin’s Russia in Ukraine. “Brzezinski suggests using any and all means to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition (in Eurasia) that could challenge America’s primacy or the possibility of a country taking over from the United States as the arbitrator in Eurasia”, Del Valle and Soppelsa point out, adding that he also argues in favour of “supporting the forces and states once occupied by the Soviet Union or its allies, with particular attention to Poland, the Baltic states, Romania and, above all, Ukraine. In his vision, the last of these is a security lock that will prevent Russian expansion into its immediate neighbourhood, the final barrier to Russia’s advance south, hence his keenness to finance the anti-Russian forces of Western Ukraine, in order to take away Moscow’s control over this pivotal country that lies between Russia, Europe and the Mediterranean (via Crimea and the Black Sea and the Turkish Straits) (…). His recommendation of ‘double enlargement’ (expansion as far eastwards as possible of both NATO and the EU) has in fact led to a new Cold War between the Atlantist West and the post-soviet Russia”. The authors also take the view that “America has succeeded in making Europe once again the theatre of operations for a ‘forward nuclear battle’ on the borders with Russia”. They go on to assert that “this process – commenced in the years 1992-1998-2003 – of the West excluding Russia, designated its supreme enemy, has effectively made it possible to continue the Atlantic-American domination of the European continent and, therefore, its division”.
The authors consider that we have entered a “world of uncertainties, asymmetric risks and the return of high-intensity conflicts” with major and potential conflicts based on: – geo-energy antagonism and pensions surrounding water and rare earths; – ongoing rivalries and infra-state conflicts that have spread to an international or regional level; – the geo-economic and financial war around the rivalry between the West and its outsiders and between the principal players in the poly-centric world; – identitarian conflicts, described by Samuel Huntington as belonging to the category of “clashes of civilisations”; – uncontrolled mass migration phenomena; – international terrorism, for the greatest part Islamic in nature; – clashes of nascent or resurging empires (neo-Turkish Ottomanism versus Arab nationalisms and Europe; United States versus China and Russia).
The EU would be well advised to stop playing the role of the “fall guy of globalisation”, to put into place the equivalent of the Buy American Act, which requires American public funds to be awarded to American businesses, the authors argue, adding: “Europe, a prisoner of its own universalist myth, which presents itself as the continent of non-identity, of human rights, of social democracy, has now worse enemy than its own desire for powerlessness and its guilty conscience, as well as its declining demography. If it does in fact one day become a geopolitical player, it will be the only one that has given up the right to assert an identity, to define its borders, and has given up the desire for power”. “The European Union is now a hybrid organisation: a UGO, an unidentified geopolitical object: it is neither a state nor a federation, nor yet a confederation, but a highly divided and uneven international organisation, united superficially only by a universalist socio-democratic ideology and a market economy, which applies rules to itself to limit sovereignty, to repress national identities, of geo-economic naivete, of strict adherence to rules on competition, protection of the workers and the environment or of multiculturalism which other world players do not impose upon themselves but demand of it when it suits them to do so, with a view to defeating it”, Del Valle and Soppelsa argue. They are not entirely wrong on this point, at least as regards the hybrid nature of the European institutions (for more on this subject, see the work on constitutional law reviewed below), the desire for powerlessness and the inability of the European elites to understand the gap between the rules they impose on Europe and the ambitions of rival strategic players on the global chessboard. That said, one might struggle to argue against the usefulness of rules in place to protect workers and the environment. And as for the supposed “repression of national identities”, this is clearly a figment of their imagination.
The authors devote no fewer than 50 pages to organised crime, one of the big winners of globalisation, and a similar number to Islamic terrorism. On the latter subject, they note that “although radicalised individuals in a position to turn to violent actions are estimated to number between 12,000 and 20,000 in France (supporters of Islamic State or Al Qaeda), the more usual Islamists who believe in the supremacy of sharia law and the caliphate, but who are evolving in an institutional framework whilst adhering to the same basics, are estimated at no fewer than 500,000 in France and between 1 million and 1.5 million in the European Union, which is a major ideological pool for jihadist recruiters”. They go on to point out that according to a study by the Institut Montaigne carried out by Hakim El Karoui, “46% of French Muslims are good Republicans, but the 25% are in favour of women wearing a veil in public and agree with much of sharia law, and that 28% of them experienced a marginal youth and have joined the so-called Islamist secession, against French society”.
“We need to be ready to engage in a fight for survival (…). The balance of power is once again becoming the way nations resolve their differences (…), we must resolutely prepare for this, bearing in mind the fact that high-intensity combat is becoming a very likely option”, General Thierry Burkhard, the chief of staff of the land army, said on 31 July 2019. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine simply confirms this. He also stresses that neither the European Union nor its member states taken individually have the capabilities needed to face up to the threats of the contemporary world.
“What it all boils down to is that Europe’s most dangerous enemies are not external predators, Chinese or Islamist, drugs barons or the US Empire, but its own ‘desire for powerlessness’”, Del Valle and Soppelsa reiterate by way of conclusion, asking whether “Europe, the ‘sick man of the world’, a tired, flagging civilisation, full of complexes and disabused, would rather risk disappearing from the pages of History than continue to fight to survive? Will the Old Continent come out of its lethargy and conjure the decline prophesied by Spengler? It will all depend on whether the European leaders decide to return to a policy of civilisation and sovereignty”. And that is by no means certain! (Olivier Jehin)
Alexandre Del Valle, Jacques Soppelsa. La mondialisation dangereuse – Suprématie chinoise, islamisme, crise sanitaire, mafias, défis éco-énergétiques: vers le déclassement de l’occident ? (Available in French only). L’artilleur. ISBN: 978-2-8100-1022-6. 517 pages. €23,00
Dit is Europa
The Flemish political scientist Hendrik Vos (University of Ghent) lays before us the history of the European Union on the basis of archives created by the players of this construction that was built, stone by stone, without an overall plan. The narrative, which is enriched by countless anecdotes taken from such sources as the press from each era, is a highly pleasurable read – for those who can read Dutch. This essay, which was published in November 2021, richly deserves to be translated into other languages.
Although the work starts with a prologue that takes us back to March 2020 and the Dutch village of Koewacht, a settlement of 2600 inhabitants on the border between Belgium and the Netherlands, to illustrate the chaos of the way the first few weeks of the pandemic crisis were managed, with the re-establishment of borders and challenges to solidarity within the Union, the author naturally starts out from the time spent by Altiero Spinelli as a prisoner during the Second World War and the manifesto of Ventotene, before tracing the next stages of a European adventure that is still unfinished. The work takes us to 24 December 2020 with the conclusion of the trade and cooperation agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, finally closing the Brexit saga.
As the author stresses, the history of European construction is by no means a long and tranquil river. The Europeans did not choose a uniform system with a strong leader, but one based on respect for diversity, requiring them to seek compromises which all too often limit them to the lowest common denominator and slow progress. “However, this ill-fated compromise may also be a test of civilisation. This is a continent with many languages, with diverging history and all sorts of cultures, experiences and opinions that cannot be reduced to a single common denominator. For decades, Europe has had to deal with this, and not without success. The EU is not a paradise by any measure. There is too much poverty, inequality, discrimination and cynicism. That said, there are few places in the world where life is better and safer”, Vos writes (our translation throughout).
Vos also refers to the growing number of breaches of the values of the EU and the rule of law, particularly in Hungary and Poland, but also of the fundamental rights throughout the continent. “The pillar of principles and rules on which European integration is based is still shaky and fragile. The nonchalance with which it is treated by the member states makes it difficult and hypocritical to act decisively when the line is crossed somewhere. They deliberately avert their eyes from the spot where the worm is eating it away from the inside. If the interior wall is reduced to dust, it may one day all come crashing down”, he argues, concluding that “it is in the incorrect and clumsy management of the fundamental values that the greatest threat to the survival of the EU hides. You have to act at once if a worm is eating away at the foundation. It is a question of self-preservation”. (OJ)
Hendrik Vos. Dit is Europa – De geschedenis van een unie (available in Dutch only). Borgerhoff & Lamberigts. ISBN: 978-9-4639-3686-6. 630 pages. €39,99
Droit constitutionnel de l’Union européenne
“Long envisaged as a technical and depoliticised construction, the European Union has become a hotspot for political decision-making. Whether it has been sufficiently prepared for this and is sufficiently equipped to take on this role – both institutionally and materially – will clearly remain a matter of discussion, but it is difficult to argue that there is no shift of political expectations towards European level underway. Take, for instance, the fact that the European question now tends visibly to reverse internal political goals in the member states and the way in which the citizen conceives his or her individual or collective existence. The European challenge is saturating a political space in which it remained for a long time in the background”, argues Prof Édouard Dubout (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas), in this first manual on the constitutional law of the European Union (our translation throughout).
Although he recognises that the constitutionalisation of the European phenomenon has come about essentially from a lengthy series of judgment of the Court of Justice (Van Gend en Loos and Costa, Kadi, The Greens, etc.) and that current constitutional law created on the basis of the nation-state is difficult to transpose in that form to the European Union, Dubout observes that further to European integration, the characteristics of the nation-state also affected: “not only does the EU have no vocation to create itself a new sovereign nation, but the former nation-states, now ‘members’ of a Union on the grounds of the mutual independence that connects them to each other, also looms the main characteristics attached to the quality of national sovereignty. Their own institution needs to be rethought and reformed. In this context, it no longer makes any sense to talk of nation-state and it is necessary to conceive a constitutional law above and beyond the national-state prism”.
The author stresses that the federal dimension – understood as a good balance between the levels of government between the EU and its member states – and the liberal dimension – in other words the rules surrounding the exercise of European and State political power so as to give rise to a sufficient sense of liberty – of European integration overlap in the constitutional structure of a European Union seeking democratic reinvention. However, he considers that the “perspectives opened up by federalism and liberalism will not be enough for the full legitimisation of the European phenomenon until such time as they are rooted in a social practice”. “If there is one lesson learned from the constitutional approach to EU law, it is that reconciling federalism and liberalism in the European context cannot result from a simple instrumental arrangement, from seeking useful effects of individual emancipation or collective decision-making. It must undertake to reflect the social behaviour and imagination within which the new ethical balances of a transnationalised life reside”, Dubout argues. He states in conclusion that “ultimately, the benefit of a constitutional approach to the European Union does not lie in seeing it as a technical organisation seeking its own efficacy, but in a greater awareness of the presence of an ethical phenomenon, of a project that is as social as it is legal”. (OJ)
Edouard Dubout. Droit constitutionnel de l‘Union européenne (available in French only). Bruylant. ISBN: 978-2-8027-6989-7. 515 pages. €75,00