Keep the UFO flying [BARF ALERT!!!]

In the third extract from his new book, Timothy Garton Ash argues that the European Union is unique, but in order to thrive we must embrace welfare reform, immigration and enlargement

If I go to Warsaw, Berlin, Paris or Madrid, I am abroad. If I go to Warsaw, Berlin, Paris or Madrid, I am at home. This "being at home abroad" is the essence and wonder of Europe. Some people don't like it. The American writer PJ O'Rourke describes a gloomy month he spent in Europe. "I've had it with these dopey little countries," he writes. "Even the languages are itty-bitty. Sometimes you need two or three just to get you through till lunch." But that's exactly the delight. Europe is an intricate patchwork, unmatched anywhere else on the globe. This Europe has an extraordinary story to tell. It's a story of the enlargement of freedom. At the height of the second world war, in 1942, there were just four perilously free countries in Europe: Britain, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland. By 1962, most of western Europe was free, except for Spain and Portugal. By 1982, the Iberian peninsular had joined the free, but the whole of what we called eastern Europe was still unfree. By 2002, there was only one country in Europe that Freedom House classified as "not free" - Belarus - and just a handful, in the new eastern and south-eastern Europe, that it judged "partly" rather than wholly free.

With the enlargement of the European Union to 25 members, and of Nato to 26, most of the countries of Europe belong to the same political, economic and security communities, with equal rights and obligations. This enlargement of freedom is the great success story of Europe over the 60 years since the Normandy landings. It also provides a central purpose for the next 20 years. We should already be thinking ahead to an EU of some 40 states and at least 33 languages in 2025.

Constitutionally, the EU is like no other polity. As Jacques Delors once put it, this is an unidentified flying object. What matters is that the UFO continues to fly, with an air cushion of support from a majority of its people. For this to happen, political pilots in a sufficient number of member states need to agree on a strategic direction for the union, and win the support of their own peoples.

But what is a sufficient number? The Iraq crisis has shown that a leadership group comprising just France and Germany is no longer sufficient. Unless they extend the couple to make a threesome, Britain will form alternative ad hoc alliances, and Europe will be torn between two magnetic poles, rather than gathering around one magnetic core. The political question for the EU is not: "should France and Germany open their marriage to Britain?" Obviously they should. It is: "will even those 'big three' be able to provide the strategic leadership in a EU of 25, going on 40?" The answer seems to me self-evidently "no". They will need to be joined by at least two or three other medium-weight states.

Such a strategic coalition is very difficult to achieve, given that European politics are still mainly national. We are more likely to end up with different groups of states working more closely together in different areas of policy. At worst, the union could gradually weaken into irrelevance, like the Holy Roman Empire, while real politics take place elsewhere.

The EU has solemnly declared its intention to make the European economy the most competitive in the world by 2010. If it succeeds, I will eat my hat. As more of our manufacturing jobs go to China, our services to India and our scientists to America, the question for the welfare capitalisms of Europe will be: how much are we prepared to fall behind the growth rates of other economies in order to preserve our "social model"?

There is a choice. If we carry on as we are, then in 2025 our welfare states won't be able to pay our retired people a life-supporting pension. If we think that's unacceptable in "social" Europe, then we need to reform our pension systems, have more children, and allow in more young immigrants to help fund those pensions. The trouble is that Europe has not been good at making immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, feel at home.

If we don't get better at it, populist, anti-immigrant parties will win the votes of less affluent native-born voters who resent rapid change and blame immigrants for rising crime and job losses - even if those jobs actually went to Asia. To halt this downward spiral is our single most urgent task. This domestic imperative also dictates the top foreign policy priority for Europe: supporting change for the better in our near abroad, stretching 10,000km along our southern and eastern borders.

Trade is our most effective instrument; military force, our weakest link. Where genocide threatens, Europeans should always be ready to intervene.[like in Kosovo?] Europe should also anticipate a lesson of the 21st century: that tyrants and terrorists must be prevented from gaining possession of WMD before it's too late. If we don't like the Bush doctrine of unilateral pre-emption, we had better develop a new practice of multilateral prevention.

These challenges are huge, but so is the prize. Let's imagine, for a moment, Europe in 2025 at its possible best. A political, economic and security community of some 40 free countries and 650 million people, producing a large part of the wealth of the world; a further 650 million people, born in the most explosive parts of the early 21st-century globe, but now living in a great arc of partnership with this EU, from Marrakesh, via Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Tbilisi, all the way to Vladivostok. That would not be nothing.

· This is the third of five edited extracts from Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time by Timothy Garton Ash, to be published next month by Penguin, £17.99. To order a copy for £15.99 plus p&p, call the Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875

2 posted on 06/08/2004 8:57:36 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Back to an old favorite: DEFUND NPR & PBS - THE AMERICAN PRAVDA)

for almost every problem he cites, the solution he provides is just more of the policy that caused the problem in the first place. The acme of insanity is doing a thing over and over the same way every time and expecting a different result.

Trade is our most effective instrument; military force, our weakest link. Where genocide threatens, Europeans should always be ready to intervene.[like in Kosovo?]>>>

You mean, like in Bosnia?

Oh, yeah, I forgot, that was extermination and genocide you LIKE. Never mind. I forgot that the thought of a musselmannerfrei europa (using the classic methods) gives you a warm fuzzy feeling.

At the height of the second world war, in 1942, there were just four perilously free countries in Europe: Britain, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland. By 1962, most of western Europe was free, except for Spain and Portugal. By 1982, the Iberian peninsular had joined the free, but the whole of what we called eastern Europe was still unfree. By 2002, there was only one country in Europe that Freedom House classified as "not free" - Belarus - and just a handful, in the new eastern and south-eastern Europe, that it judged "partly" rather than wholly free.

Oh, by the way, you're welcome.
America

5 posted on 06/08/2004 9:20:57 PM PDT by Kozak (Anti Shahada: " There is no God named Allah, and Muhammed is his False Prophet")

By 1982, the Iberian peninsular had joined the free, but the whole of what we called eastern Europe was still unfree.

And if the Guardian had had its way, this would still be the same.

.....If I go to Warsaw, Berlin, Paris or Madrid, I am at home.....

Good For You!
Then Next Time You Go, Stay There!

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Give the EU 20 to 25 years and I feel it's will be the cause of another blood bath in Europe. They already have a track record of not being able to play nice with one another.

Given the soccer holiganism and the downward spiral the socialism is bringing their economy I don't think it will take that long.

But that's exactly the delight.

"We should have the EU because it's really cool." Sorry, that's not enough to keep a union going.

The EU is doomed to failure. The only question is when and how it will collpase.

In 1942, there were just four perilously free countries in Europe: Britain, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland.

And only the Brits had the stones to fight Hitler! Shame on the others! All of them!

a further 650 million people

This is actually a heck of a compliment to the US. The reason for the EU was to unite enough European states to form an economy equal to the US. While we get bigger by growing more productive, the stagnate EU has to grow by adding new territory. This article, in so many words, says in twenty years they will need 650 million Europeans to compete with us.

Although I have serious doubts about their ability to be successful, I can't help but think of how the world will change if they are considering their animosity towards us.

Without size and wealth as an advantage, what happens? I don't like to think about it.

That's the standard liberal/socialist line, i.e. If what you 're doing is not working then do more of it If that makes things worse then you have to increase your effort geometrically, you have to multiply it rather than just add to it; square the effort or cube it. If that still doesn't work then you must square the cube.

I'm not sure the EU will actually collappse. I foresee a long subsidence, and I hope that England pulls its foot out of the bog before it is trapped in the swamp.

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