Europe after the European Age: historical reflections

well ladies and gentlemen a very warm welcome to this the latest event in the Elysee European Institute perspectives on Europe public lecture series which we organized in partnership with apco worldwide and as you know we're delighted to be able to offer you quite a star turn this evening it's in the form of Martin ZOA who is currently professor of history at Columbia University in New York where he is also program director for the Center for International history and just a complete the CV to date as it were mark has previously taught it birkbeck college here in London at the University of Sussex and at Princeton well with a very close friend in common in Greece and many overlapping Greek interests and affiliations I have felt a strong affinity with mark not be through his his writings on Greece and the Balkans and Salonika for a very long time even though we only actually met about a year and a half ago and I think those of you whose know who knows writings will know what I mean when I say that few writers convey quite so vividly that extraordinary cultural mosaic which are which is the Balkans and and the eastern Mediterranean and pieces say that this is also part of the world with the Elysee European Institute can flatter itself housing as we do the Hellenic observatory at the center of a contemporary Turkish studies and now LS ee that is LSU research on Southeast Europe so you'll appreciate that we've been on Mars case for quite some time but of course just as many of you here this evening I'm sure will be here because you know mark also through his other books those in which he paints on a broader European canvas that famously there was Dark Continent some ten years ago Turner which offered a pretty searing of Europe's 20th century dystopias and a valuable corrective to the more rose-tinted ideas of Europe and the West and their place in but when their mission in the world suddenly peddled by the likes of me an 18 months ago came Hitler's Empire a brilliantly researched account of the Nazi occupation of Europe but mark also paints on a global canvas thinking and writing about international norms and institutions particularly the united nations including in the press and you may have seen his pieces over the years and the pages of the FT some of you may have heard him on radio three last night discussing genocide and humanitarian intervention with Daniel Goldhagen so I hope you'll agree that his credentials for sharing some thoughts with us this evening on Europe after European age are pretty good ones so without further ado ladies and gentlemen well thank you Morris very much for that kind introduction and to the lse for its hospitality it's a common place today to say that Europe faces new global challenges and the Lisbon process and I should emphasize I am NOT an expert on the EU but the Lisbon process and in particular the election of a president of the european council and a high representative for a common foreign security policy which was originally as you know to be entitled a union minister Foreign Affair expresses I think a decade's worth of ambition to see a unified post Cold War Europe established more presence on the world stage alongside the inevitable debate about whether the two successful candidates in these elections seem capable of spearheading such a transformation and that's not a debate i want to spend much time on here there's a less personalized set of arguments about the nature of europe's world mission about whether indeed europe presently makes or should in future make some distinctive contribution to International life these are arguments that emerge in discussions of Turkish membership of European soft power versus American hard power of the need to defend or extend the reach of European social model they've emerged above all in the last few years out of the sense that the Atlantic Alliance has been fracturing and that Europe and the United States are set to move apart in this brief and necessarily is very sketchy set of reflections I'd like to set these arguments of the present in some kind of historical perspective one that goes back a little further than the start of the Iraq war the Treaty of Maastricht or the end of the Cold War I think that much of a present debate offered more often than not in a radically d historicized form it's plagued by confusions and assumptions that can only be made manifest if one is conscious of the complexity of the concept of Europe itself and its genealogy a term not merely this is obvious debated over for more than a century but one whose normative charge lies or lay embedded in the foundations of the key institutions of international line another way of putting this rather abstract point is to talk about it in disciplinary terms how should we bring together or to presently the different discourses about Europe evident a in the Europe ology of academic EU specialist studies today be the understandings of historians of diplomacy in the Cold War and see the understandings of meaning of Europe are offered by historians of ideas these different fields do not merely not talk to one another they scarcely recognize each other's existence and yet it seems to me that we cannot talk about Europe today and as we have a clear understanding what Europe meant in the past we live globally speaking in a post European age if 1945 mark the moment for many Europeans when their continent but parenthesis were they really talking about their continent ceased to exercise autonomy nevermind global leadership 1989 the year in which the continent was politically brought back together again demonstrated the weakness of Europe as an entity on the world stage and yet never had people talked so much about Europe as they did after 1989 when this weakness was obvious what I'd like to trace now is the trajectory of a discourse or rather the replacement of one way of utilizing the language of Europe with another and to conclude my asking whether these two can be or should be brought into alignment as some now suggest for the European age to begin with perhaps the primary development in world history in modern times was the ascendancy of Europe to global dominance in the century and a half after the late 18th century not that there had not been extensive colonial empires one and held by European powers before then of course but the sheer speed of expansion of political control from European centres after 1800 the transformation of global trade and later in the century technological impact of steam the press Quinn I'm a new weaponry were unprecedented the Scramble for Africa from the 1880s was mainly the most visible phase of a process of European expansion that had started earlier and continued later with a scramble for North Africa and the Middle East that lasted though it's not usually turned thus into the interwar period now there was to be sure no unitary Europe that was responsible for these developments or overseeing them to the country i still find plausible a JP Taylor's contention that one of the drivers of the entire process of 19th century European imperialism with the emergence in Europe of nationalist rival power struggling for mastery on the continent and continuing or diverting their competitive energies overseas as well politically of course the continent had democracies monarchies and Republic's as well as large autocratic empires it would have been hard to argue that democracy was dominant especially bearing in mind the limited suffrage available in even the most advanced cases capitalism coexisted with barter economies in march of the expansive rural hinterland of course hinterland is really the wrong word because demographically peasants largely excluded from the political process and cultural life still outnumbered everyone else the big transformation in this respect wouldn't occur until well into the last century and yet there was plenty of talk of Europe much of it galvanized by Napoleon and his effort to transform the continent in the aftermath of his defeat the concept of Europe provided a cultural and civilizational ideal for an increasingly ascendant bourgeois class the a beta Pratt who was uncannily prefiguring much of what euro file liberals have been saying about Europe today saw in Napoleon's defeat in 1815 the sign of a Europe returning as he put it from its military state to its civil state through what he called the rise of a new divinity civilization a civilized colonial order he wrote would carry civilization and spread European tastes around the world the process had worked in Russia and North America he's writing about 1816 and had started in Egypt it should be applied to the Ottoman Empire generally through a moral not a territorial conquest back to this idea of Europe's mission being immoral not a territorial conquest Hagel saw contemporary Europe standing as the end point of the historical process quiso to even in Britain j/s mill asserted in his 1836 essay on civilization that I quote all the elements of civilization exists in modern Europe in parenthesis he added especially great britain in a more eminent degree than in any other place all time and such talk was not confined to philosophers and historians on the contrary it entered to diplomatic practice and this is what I mean about the concept of Europe embedded in our international institutions by the 1840s it was clear that Europe was not in any sense a geographical term but rather connoted a set of diplomatic and legal practices that others might sign up to a kind of mid 19th century international law aquia community one fertile intellectual elaboration of this belief emerged as we've learned from the work of martika scania me through the new discipline of international law and its impact on diplomacy a rationalization of the values of the concert of Europe international law was being redesigned as a kind of moral procedural aid to the preservation of order among sovereign states and its principles were explicitly stated as applying only to civilized States much as mill saw his principles of Liberty applying solely to members of the civilized community in 1845 the influential american international lawyer henry wheaton had actually talked in pluralistic terms have quote the international law of Christianity versus the law used by powers but within 20 or 30 years such pluralism had vanished in favor of a unitary Eurocentrism according to the late 19th century legal commentator w/e Hall international law and I quote is a product of the special civilization of modern Europe and it forms a highly artificial system of which the principles cannot be supposed to be understood or recognized by countries differently civilized such dates only can be presumed to be subject to it as our inheritors of that civilization thus conceived international law define the problem global community in terms of the nature of the relationship between a civilized chiefly European Christendom and the rest of the chief Leen on civilized non-european world states could join the Magic Circle through the doctrine of international recognition which took place when I quote a state is brought by increasing the civilization within the realm of law James lorimer a Victorian international lawyer suggested there were three categories of humanity civilized barbaric and savage and three corresponding grades of international recognition most Victorian commentators believe that barbaric States might be admitted gradually or in part westlake proposed for instance that our international society by which he meant the Great Powers exercises the right of admitting outside states to parts of it into its international law without necessarily admitting them to the whole of it others disagree sovereignty was unitary you could either be admitted and recognized or not in the case of the Ottoman Empire I think this is relevant in the light of discussions of Turkish membership exemplified this art bivolo process european states have been making treaties with the salt incidence in 16th century of course but following the Crimean War the Empire was now declared in the treaty of paris as lying within what the treaty called the public law of europe that's what I mean when I say Europe no longer had a geographical meaning it had now a diplomatic legal meaning in fact despite its internal reforms and despite the Treaty of Paris something but blip I think the Empire was never regarded in Europe as being fully civilized the capitulations remained in force therefore making Ottoman sovereignty conditional and throughout the 19th century the chief justification of the other powers for supporting first the autonomy and then independence for new Christian Balkan states was a civilizational inferiority of the Turks but such confidence that European norms should provide an international standard of civilization was broken by the First World War not instantly and the League of Nations didn't abandon the premise on the contrary the league remained not merely a highly urine trick organization but one dominated by the established European imperial powers Britain and France indeed found their empires larger than ever before in 1919 and the system of graduated conditional sovereignty that was imposed on East European states through the minorities treaties in 1919 and on the former Ottoman domains through the Class A mandates not to mention the civilizational assumptions underpinning the treatment of the B and C mandates in Africa and Asia all demonstrated that the Victorian ethos of a european standard of civilization had survived the war according to the british liberal historian ramsey muir in his 1919 book the expansion of europe the victory over germany had permitted quote the extension of European civilization over the whole world and he distinguished decisively between what he dismissed as imperialism not something we did and this process through which quote the civilization of Europe has been made into the civilization of the world if you like the culmination of the process that the aveda prod had heralded a century earlier and yet of course doubts about Europe's continued civilizational validity were evident already in the 1920s and grew by Marian cultural pessimism was an obvious expression of this spangler for instance believing that in the face of Eastern dynamism Western civilization faced inevitable degeneration Freud himself in his analysis of civilization and its discontents suggested that for very different reasons civilization carried within it the seeds of its own emasculation with the rise of fascism and especially Nazism after 1933 and the collapse of the authority of the League of Nations the pessimism spread to British and French liberals if you read the historian HAL Fischer's best-selling history of Europe that appeared in 1935 you'll find him reminding historians that they were what he called quote trustees for the civilization of the world but it all sounds a bit half hearted and unconvinced international lawyers now openly questioned whether the old assumptions still served wrote one in 1938 European civilization that has shaped modern in turn more but is European civilization still what it was and if not how did the changes affect international law it was a good question especially at a time when Nazi lawyers were denying that there was such a thing as international law at all cultural commentators in the 30s were still gloomier of course that european republic of letters that had unified the bourgeois intelligentsia of the pre-1914 continent have been smashed fleeing the wreckage of Central Europe Stefan spy composed the world of yesterday as a lament to that Europe of the Spirit a Europe that some souls had tried to preserve in the 1920s but the by the eve of the Second World War seemed to be more about and yet it was precisely in this interval moment of gloom gloom about the continents internal rivalries and by the sense of looming Menace from Bolshevism in the East and for some from fort ism across the Atlantic in the u.s. that we find the adumbration of the first recognizably political projects for Europe coutinho calories pan Europa movement of course moderately successful as an exercise in publicity had a strong anti-bolshevik dimension I think it's been puffed out of proportion to its contemporary influenced by post-war historians of the European idea but it's significant that the 1920s was when it emerged the same may be said for brianna's moment in 1929 1930 an interesting prefiguring a French European ISM that founded on the shoals of the Great Depression equally unsuccessful though for different reasons are not usually thought of in the same bread was the Nazi idea trumpeted briefly between nineteen forty and 1943 that it might be Germany to unify and stabilize the continent in accordance with national socialist ideals of course an idea that might approve popular in other hands suffered from the brutality and evident bad faith of those deploying it indeed in some ways one might argue that the experience of Nazi occupation made this kind of European is talk more rather than less unpalatable across much of the continent for some time after 1945 for many people in Belgium or the nether for instance remembering Nazi broadcast on Europe the lesson of Nazi rule was that the sovereignty of small nations needed to be preserved small nationalisms needed defending and Europe could be a slogan for sweeping them away say what you might about Adolf Hitler he had a european hist perspective europe not overseas was his primary focus the core of his empire building project the homeland besieged not only economically but also racially in his mind by the twin dangers from american and soviet power he saw germany's task as leading europe and preserving its world leadership role more successfully than British or the French had done even those who disagreed profoundly with this analysis had no difficulty in seeing 1945 that's a cataclysmic moment it heralded not merely the collapse of Germany but the end of the European age as a civilization and a world force farewell to European history was the title of the book that the 78 year old German sociologist Alfred Faber published in 1946 were soon to become a standard trope for understanding Europe's new diminished standing in the world by the time that Felix Gilbert another historian published his farewell to the European era in 1979 another book that assumes the post-war era is the end of the European era the idea was commonplace looking around the first meeting of the UN General Assembly in London in that same year 1946 the french Foreign Minister George beador was struck by the extent as he puts it quote to which Europe is absent the new United Nations was a product of a very different outlook and configuration of forces from the league if Europe still counted it was only as the main theater of the initial stages of the Cold War which like the hot war that had preceded it was a European conflict before it became a global one a divided continent Sean of its Imperial possessions was unable now even to determine its own destiny lying in the hands of two superpowers with much wider global interest of their own history itself was now being made elsewhere that was the meaning of babers phrase in Europe history had ended to be replaced by social scientific expertise a technocracy and if you look until recently at the ways in which universities divided up their professional labor between historians and social scientists you'd have to say they agreed post 45 Europe was not dealt with by historians it was dealt with by social scientists but this was not to say that the idea of Europe after 1945 was moribund on the contrary the paradox is if it is a paradox is that it was precisely at the moment that the old 19th century language of Europe finally disappeared that this new way of Europe emerged it starts I think with Allied war planning and UN agencies for continental recovery and reconstruction but then the Cold War interposes itself and people cease to start that just used to think about planning on a continental stage and those organizations that had been established the united nations economic commission for Europe for instance end up with a much more diminished role than their founders had intended their victims of the Cold War's narrowing of geographical and political expectations but also of a transformation in the kind of work that Europe could do as a concept and Churchill I think was amongst the first to see how Europe could offer and attract a political platform to counter the Soviet threat hence his Federalist moment in 1946 and 1947 but there's life returned to the West European nation states the initially Federalists and highly political cast of these initiatives proved their Achilles heel as I say a lot of people come out of the war wedded to the protection of their sovereignty much more than they do to any kind of European ism and so in an involution that's been well-documented the European movement shifted gear and moved instead towards a functionalist sectoral approach that built on the convergent interests of economic interest groups by passing Parliament's in the political system the bolstering of managed capitalism was primarily technocratic european project that got underway with the Coal and Steel Community and fuel the common market it was entirely different to what had preceded it the new Europe European of Schumann's spec adenauer Monet left the realm of culture values and the International entirely to one side and it was in comparison with the old global vision of civilizational hegemony introverted pragmatic the latter had been umbilical II connected to imperialism and colonial expansion this kind of Europe thought was an alternative to empire and a safety net brilliantly grow a successful growth platform for decolonizing Metro poles if it talked to values it was chiefly in an economic monetary sense the language and the processes were elite Aryan but these were new technocratic elites of specialist ministries they were not philosophers it was a vision of Europe in short in which administration replaced politics because politics have been proven to be too explosive I neither need nor wish to rehearse the brilliant success of this project in the five decades that followed the Treaty of Rome despite the inevitable disappointments the go slow's the blind alleys the European Community and then union found itself capable as the cold war came to an end a vastly expanding its vision of itself both the substantive Lee and geographically the extension of the Union to encompass most of former communist Eastern Europe after 92 was smoothly achieved for the first time making the geographic and political senses of contemporary Europe more or less coterminous southern Europe had already been brought in with equal efficiency after the collapse of the dictatorships in the mid seventies but this reunification or more properly unification of the continent at the end of the century merely raised the old question a fresh what was Europe's proper place in the world did it have a mission and if so how should that mission be defined the events of the past decade have inevitably perhaps shaped the kind of answers that have been given to these questions and I wish to explore two or three of them now but I can't refrain from noting in passing how rarely one sees people argue that Europe european union that is need not have any particular place in the world that is unnecessary for its intellectuals and comment area to fret over the nature of its special mission i shall return to this in a moment take the case of the debate over Turkish membership for example the debate underway well before serious negotiations started four years ago five years ago now for an hour positions for and against this are commonly presented in terms of Europe's character and its global role it's often argued if you're in favor of Turkish membership that the accession of a large Muslim state will improve the global attractiveness of the European model demonstrate its lack of exclusivity and allow the Union to play a more prominent diplomatic role in the Middle East than its so far managed to do on the other side it's even easier to find opponents of the idea capturing their opposition less in terms of the practical considerations involved for Union policymaking than because it will contravene what they regard as the European asst of the European Union assume the culturalist dimension is on the table again Islam is incompatible with European values whether because historically it's argued that the continent has a special affiliation with Christianity judeo-christianity all on a different tack because Islam has theocratic dimensions that Europe's political institutions repudiated in favour of secularism you find the first kind of argument the Christian argument more commonly I think in Germany and Austria the second kind of argument in France it's hard of course to see how they compose be right which should tell us something useful about the slipperiness of culturalist accounts of what Europe stands for very similar kinds of arguments are evident in recent debates over immigration as well the racial argument against immigration is rarely heard in mainstream circles still too discredited by Europe's own recent history but culturalist critiques of mass immigration supposedly threatening Europe's heartland's with colonies of alien intruders have made their way into serious discourse the spengler in quality of these gloomy broadsides is evident I think for instance in Christopher Caldwell's recent anti-immigration reflections on the revolution in Europe which is a kind of mainstream reworking of some of the ideas about the degenerate of Arabia that have been percolating in neo conservative think tanks in Washington sometime multiculturalism far from being something Europeans should be proud of has in fact weakened the European assup Europe on this account well what is that European in Caldwell's Burkean account it's a strange combination of social conservatism high culture and as an afterthought perhaps human rights ironically perhaps what many neocon see is the problem europe's could toleration of cultural pluralism its liberal expansion of Rights of deer various kinds to indigenes and newcomers alike its belief that politics should be conducted without force others have seen as the mark of its success and the Pacific quality of its statesmanship its retreat from force its pursuit of consensus is what liberal commentators from Timothy Goff mash to Antibes arab chick have singled out as what europe has to offer the world in the future I've already cited the a beta prods idea a rage originating from the early 19th century that the superiority of Europe's contribution to the world lies in its ability peacefully to spread its values if this idea not surprisingly disappeared from sight while the memory of fascism was still fresh it's in sri emerged with a vengeance the credit perhaps for the post-war recuperation of this idea is owing to the journalist Louie Francois Duchene an early supporter and associate of jean monnet it would Duchene who in 1970 I think spoke of the European community as the world's first post westphalian political arrangement an exemplar of what he called civilian power that offered a way to peace for a torn world naturally the idea has been combatted since it's exception by realists who mocked before that old-style national interest and the threat of interstate anarchy could so easily have been laid to rest but with the emergence of the Democratic peace thesis of political theory in the United States douche ends version of the European achievement has one new support in 2000 for instance yoshio Fischer then foreign minister offered one version of this when he described the European Union as a former political arrangement based quote on the rejection European balance of power principal and the hegemonic ambitions of individual state that had emerged since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 some argue that an entirely new way of doing politics as thus emerged in which legitimacy is obtained not through Parliament's and parties not even the most ardent defender of the EU rest entirely easy on that score I think but rather through the gentle application of regulatory power and the introduction of administrative and legal norms if it may look less popular than the old kind of politics is also less violent this idea that Europe has a special democratic mission gathered force of course in the aftermath of 911 as the gap grew within the Atlantic Alliance it became tempting to contrast the realist trigger-happy unilaterally heavily armed beer moth there from Washington with a more softly spoken wiser multilateral list in Brussels contrasting attitudes to the death penalty to international human rights and criminal law seemed to bear this out Robert Kagan contrasted jokingly Mars and Venus but this was the kind of thinking that was in the air in this way Europeans began to define themselves a new not against Bolshevism not against barbarism but against the supposed political values of the United States of America and there is of course also a Social Democratic variant of this one which identifies the singularity of Europe's achievement not in the realm of law or the creation of new emollient forms politics but in terms of social welfare of the European Union's ability to tame capitalism and defend the continent social model supporters of this viewpoint to its intervention in environmental health and labor law to the striking contrast between the EU 25 and the USA in terms of income inequality longevity infant mortality and workforce unionization rates but before deciding on the validity of these claims I think it's worth putting them in their contemporary context it was 911 and above all the war in Iraq that split the Western alliance down the middle left liberals torn and encouraged Europeans to see the EU or much the same thing to urge it to become a counterweight in hegemonic terms the united states of george w bush it was thus in the wake of the invasion of Iraq that Tony Judd ends his magnum opus on post-war European history by extolling quote Europe's emergence the dawn of the 21st century as a paragon of the international virtues a community of values held up by Europeans and non-europeans alike as an exemplar for all to emulate and it was in his my Europe will run the 21st century published at the same time as judge that New Labour thinker mark leonard looked forward to a new european century that by consonant able to synthesize in his words the energy and the freedom that come from liberalism with stability and welfare that come from social democracy jeremy Rifkin's language in his book previous year the European dream was even less restrained and I quote the European dream is a beacon of light in a troubled world it beckons us to a new age of inclusivity diversity quality of life deep play sustainability universal human rights the right of nature and peace on earth products of their moment such effusions counterparts to despair at Bush's America were quickly countered Peter Baldwin has mischievously suggested recently that all this represented what he calls in his book the narcissism of minor differences that in fact Europe is too varied to allow for meaningful generalization and one may as well argue with the basic similarity of economy the society on either side of the Atlantic of the difference in a less positive vein Perry Anderson in his new work on Europe sees it all as nothing more than self-deception in fact he argues Europe moon remains exactly what it has been since 1945 a satellite of the American Empire bound to the same set of capitalist pressures and neoliberal strains autonomy in his reading is an illusion talk of European values merely masks the reality of weakness and the unwillingness to face up to that reality there is a striking convergence here between Anderson's Trotsky's on critique from the left and right wing realist critiques of European Union degeneracy neither by is really the idea that the old politics is dead and they both see the European achievement is internally precarious and liable to implode far from seeing the way to a new European century to the admiration of a new global role for the continent they live in anticipation of a new phase in the perennial struggle for geopolitical mastery that Germany slips its bombs Russia flexes its muscles and the rest come running too late no doubt to the luke warm embrace of the Americans I think they're wrong I think that the historical trajectory has in the face of any comfort commonality of values produce to quite divergent outcomes in the United States and in Europe the former a single polity largely self-sufficient in energy and with a large internal market allowing for a relatively small external trade footprint has tilted resources shortly where external relations are concerned from diplomacy to armaments the latter the European Union is a composite polity whose members despite the recent shift towards a common foreign and security policy have made sure that they retain the nation-state autonomy in their own external relations the continent in fact spends lavishly on arms second only in the worlds of the United States but because it does so on 25 separate armed forces much of this spending is completely useless in two areas on the other hand the diplomacy of foreign trade and humanitarian assistance increasingly conjoined the European Union has been highly effective but i think the critics are right to criticize the efficacy of this model european union remains unable to convert its powerful trade and aid presence into diplomatic leverage it has proven week in its dealings with Russia ineffectual in the Middle East the so-called Barcelona process has to be crude about it poured money down the drain in the Mediterranean to little tangible return and even in the Balkans whether in battling criminality in states that have now been admitted or in nation building in candidate members and potential candidates and their has I think been relatively little to show for the European its efforts as for the domestic dimensions of this model this too looks a lot less sustainable than it did in 2005 the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy that was the goal if you remember set in 2000 has founded the continents university systems are in crisis and there seems little public willingness to divert sufficient funds to improve them demographic slow down and now the extreme fiscal tightening imposed by the European Central Bank monetary tightening have pushed down growth rates had it not been for the Eastern newcomers the statistics would look even worse as income inequality grows and budgetary pressures bear down on healthcare spending the European social model faces a stern test to conclude in this climate I suspect we'll hear a lot less about the coming European century and the continents discovery of a new form of diplomatic car the Lisbon process was a victory of sorts for those who wanted a more prominent global role for the European Union but the way that the successful candidates were chosen and the character and backgrounds of the candidates themselves suggest that this victory will be short-lived national electorate's it seems still do not want diplomacy to be conducted for them at a European level and the result means that the European Union will remain a much weaker world force than its economic weight would suggest its capacity to spread democratic values and human rights turns out to be independent on the leverage brought by the pledge of eventual membership absent that and the European model may not turn out to be exportable at all does that matter the idea that Europe has a special civilizing mission for the world needs to be handled with circumspection I think it has a history as I've tried to show sketchily and the history is not a pretty one that history may have been forgotten I think it has been forgotten by most Europeans but its memory is fresh in the former colonial world Europe may see itself in decline adjusting to a multilateral world others remember it in its ascendancy does that mean then assuring all normative pretensions certainly not one would not have the memory of Nazism of the war forgotten nor the walkway that memory helped redefine and reconfigure democratic values in Europe the surpassing of let's call it westphalian sovereignty has been a real achievement the internal project rightfully introverted for so many years has been largely accomplished but its internal contradictions on the one hand the pledge the desire for greater popular acceptance of legitimacy on the other the attenuation of democratic forms in the Union itself on the one had the promise of Social Solidarity on the other the deflationary caution necessitated by defense of the euro these contradictions will be with us for years to come in these circumstances one wants to think carefully about how exactly Europe should project itself abroad there are values there are interests so far as the latter are concerned coherence and weight and decisiveness and external affairs of desirable but building those up may also push the European Union back towards more traditional understandings of diplomacy and security so far it has crept at a snail's pace towards the creation of co-ordinated security diplomatic and defense bodies that would help realize this but as for values I'm tempted to say that we've surely had enough talk of values in the global arena let the europeans tend to their own fields according to their own lights europe can surely have a continued and increasingly attractive meaning for europeans without europeans having to dream of a universal europe spreading its light over everyone else thank you very much well not thank you for a wonderful rich and historically informed and provocative polemic ready you've offered us I'm sure it's good to elicit lots of questions I hope it does you kindly agreed as per usual format they take some questions we have about half an hour says I hope you sure you weren't shy just to be boring just to remind you please wait for the roving might put your hand up I think in terms of you want to cluster pressures take my mobility I think I will tend to favor individual fish I think of this kind of thing that saucer to make nobody get short for it if you can just wait for the microwaving Mike and please stay who you are and where you're from or what your affiliation is because I would also give my congratulations for the lecture I wonder in this finely balanced tour that you gave us whether the question is actually being set too high Europe may not be exporting its normative value a value perhaps as strongly as in the past but he's not obvious there is major competition on some other power which is more successful for in the world we don't think it's so much about the normative power of the United States of knowledge even with Obama and I wonder in terms of the success of the European Union your point about enlargement seemed to me perhaps just a shade too dismissive that in the context of the post-cold war world isn't it a major achievement to the European Union and indeed isn't perhaps the European Union the major external agency for the democratic transition and stability of Central Europe possibly in the future other border areas as well but I thought that in turn if the European Union's success is quite significant in terms of the First World War I strongly agree with your final sentences that the Europeans perhaps shouldn't be so bothered by this question but I'd who thought that overall the question about Europeans normative force in the world is qualified by the fact that they don't seem to be other powers which are having more success than Europe at the moment well you may be right and I think that this debate such as it was was as I as I tried to suggest in the talk very much triggered off by a sense of panic after 2003 2002 the the United States and Europe were going in different directions and that sense of panic has subsided with the election of Obama and therefore there may not be the same sense of polarity as there was then the bait can be traced still I think in Washington think tank swear maybe there is a greater sense of believe minh tinh something tax but maybe think tanks that didn't welcome the election of Obama but as far as Europe is concerned you met you may be right we may be talking about a kind of discussion that you know had a shelf life of a few years but I would defend it a little more than that I mean there's been a series of not merely political pronouncements but exhortation within European Union documents to ensure that any common foreign and security policy should be linked to a democratizing agenda 11 which advances fundamental freedoms and human rights so I don't think that I'm making that up not that that in itself is a bad thing but where it links to the kind of older civilization or arguments I think we need to be wearing on enlargement I completely agree in the sense that again what I tried to suggest was where eventual membership offered lever the European Union was efficient and successful in imposing its democratizing norms it manages in southern Europe and it managed it in Eastern Europe it's getting a little trickier now in much of the former Yugoslavia but I don't think there's any reason if people pay attention to the problem to think that the outcome will be any different my point was really how are people thinking about Europe's presence in the role were presence in the world beyond what any eventual Union might be so those parts of the world where you can't offer membership as a as an ephah and there it seems to me the tools at hand are much more limited Georgia talk very much I wondered I mean I share your nalysis about civil liberties where eventual membership or Association isn't on the table if there was some other set of values where Europe has been very effective at exporting and these might loosely be called regulatory values I mean think that could you imagine a situation where the you japan would accept the US telling it how to regulate one of his major industries but it adopted all europe's chemicals legislation two days after reach was agreed large parts of latin america has adopted willy nilly europe's competition legislation russia has most of Europe's financial services legislation we should just cut out and placed even on things like immigration european readmission agreements agreements for where fences should I mean I'm not saying unnecessarily support this and I wondered precisely because this is that he's like low profile but this is where one could say there is obviously quite a confined with but quite an important way in one of it one extended its things like the ISO national standards organization which is dominated by the year you in the US they are both agenda citizen veto players whether many of the things that form part of our lives and other people's lives within an hour Europe Europe's in quite powerful again I think I completely agree and that is one ways in which sought power is a reality and I I do think that the realists are wrong about this something new has been built and the regulatory the sort of under the table push for regular certain conception of regulatory stands been very very successful that that's that's right that is not highfalutin enough for most of the people who are trying to define a new place for Europe in the world they're not now they're not but they wouldn't be content with resting as you know the world's regulator but they may be maybe they're wrong because I agree i think i think it's been quite successful in those areas right thank you so much i didn't know that gentleman over there put my then gives thanks very much Michael Williams and making a similar point previous spigot perhaps what on Europe offers to the world is not so much a set of values but a mode of governments perhaps a way of reconciling national sovereignty with pressing common problems it's a way of offering collective action really overcoming problems of collective action I remember reading an article on the FT a few months ago by Gideon Rahman and he talked about the way Europe was offering him model for global governance through the g20 and how heavily represented the European powers were in the g20 how europeans were playing such an important role in the World Trade Organization in the IMF so perhaps it's this is the way in which the European Union is contributing to the week the world is developing by offering in model of governance that has a wider application to the world as a whole because if you think about the problems facing the world there are problems of collective action and this is what the focus I myself have no problem with it with the thought that other people might find outside Europe might find attractive all sorts of things that Europeans do because i think that the achievement has been remarkable as I say the question is really what do you do with that thought that the Union offers a model of this or that does it provide the basis for some kind of missionary effort to encourage other people that's where I start to worry as I say one should be very happy if other people think this is the right way to do things and then go about doing it but I oppose in a way that that I'm coming at this out of a much broader set of arguments about what has happened to the notion of intervention around the world and where the limits should be to intervention and so as I say because Europe has this history in which it intervened on these kinds of civilizational grounds I think we have to be careful about the slippage so I you know I agree with you I think there are many things that that are done in the union that would be wonderful if they could be replicated but I don't think it's up to Europeans to try to get them to be replicated around the world I suppose that's what I'm saying thank you it's lovely yes I wonder whether I might so I appreciate the difficulty of spanning 150 years or 200 years in a in a three quarter of our lecture so I suspect my question may be an unfair one because of that but I wonder whether you might like to comment briefly on a period that I suspect you slightly press the fast-forward button when talking about in your lecture namely the the period which you characterized as of the post-1950 period which you characterized as one of its internal internalized technocratic advance because I would suspect so i would suggest for my own work on that very period that the debate you're talking about innocently in your whole lecture in a sense is very active during that period also the European desire to have an influence the European desire to mattoon the world does not go away not is not necessarily terribly effective during much of that period although I think you could argue that in some of the sort of what might be termed near abroad particularly the Mediterranean region it is it does have some effect but the basic European volition the basic European desire to have an influence in the world to matter he is pretty alive and kicking throughout the 1960s the 1970s in the 1980s even if it takes place it has to sort of play second fiddle to the wider reality of the Cold War well I mean I would like to hear more from you because you've worked on this and I haven't I suppose what would be interesting for me to know would be the desire may have been there but how did it express itself the the decision to invest in some kind of rudimentary diplomatic machine was not present as far as I remember in founding of the common market that came significantly later and the budgetary resources were pretty limited for a long time to do anything of that kind and all of that has is a product what the last 20 years of the most so is it would it be fair to say that there's a history of aspirations and and hopes and rhetoric that operates on one level and then the history of implementation which is a more recent one I don't know how to do my question to you mark upon me was put a question to you the I just suggest that European values it's almost bred in the bone for Europeans to think of their values as exportable universal values and so on and amongst the courses we do here we have a course called the idea of Europe where we inexorably get back to the two if you like cornerstones of the European intellectual and ethical traditions namely the Bible and the Greeks there it's not totally and from the Bible we get the idea of course that we are all God's creatures and put in the eyes of God and from the Greeks and subsequently in their light and so on we get the idea of human beings as all possessing the Faculty of reason and being rational and purposeful agents and that these are features which actually mean that when we think about human human beings and think more in terms of what unites us then than divides us we think of a universal human nature and it is absolutely it's almost our default is to think about the valley is to think of our values as therefore being Universal I zabal by dint of the fact that they relate to they follow from human nature or from an idea of the individual as having a soul or whatever it runs that deep and and since what you're the implication that you really earthy the conclusion one would draw from say the more kind of retrenching idea of europe's ification in the world which you suggest is what i'm saying is that it really goes against the grain and it's hard to imagine European politicians elaborating a discourse which is essentially inward-looking on just you know you for Cutie be able to a little jar down or whatever it's just it's just not what Europeans do or how we think about morality so that's not to say say that we shouldn't go down the road or or exercise more prudence of cautions you're suggesting but fundamentally it is something about it that sticks in the craw of Europeans and of Westerners my dad put it that way in general than identity europe in the united states are at all different in that in that regard well you know I i come from a university that has taught something called Western civilization since nineteen nineteen and still does and we have long and interesting arguments about the usefulness of such course and we now have other courses on non-western civilizations and I've learned quite a lot from teaching that one of the things I've learned is that there are different Universal isms that's one of the things so whose universalism is spread around the world may be a question of who has power and it may be as you say that the Europeans are used to thinking in universal terms or certainly think they have been over the last century but we're waking up to the fact that other people outside Europe may also think in universal terms rather similar ways but as a result of different traditions leading in different directions and we're not necessarily a position where we can ignore those those traditions in in quite the same way that's 11 thought that I have so that the power balance shifts the intellectual balance will necessarily shift and the other is that I think that you may be right but the European assab all of what you described is a relatively recent afterthought in other words the connection between Bible on one hand Greeks on and and and Europe is perhaps a product of the last 200 years 250 years but maybe that seems like a long time but I think that those philosophies were being studied in geographical Europe long before that without being thought to connote in any way a sense of European mission or European asst so I think you know that the history of these ideas of European universalism with Western civilization is an interesting one it's a much more modern one than we tend we tend to think okay more questions and you from this side of the room at 10 yeah John thnxcya thanks very much for the lecture I think I'm very sympathetic just on this last point about some your skepticism to some of the values talk we've had in recent recent discussions of Europe I wondered whether it is perhaps worth distinguishing between two kinds of skepticism one might have towards that one is scheduling towards politics in the language of values in other words we should be a bit more hard head is a kind of interest based language or some other vocabulary gister of politics or one course one could say well there's nothing wrong with the principal politics it's the problem is when you tear it to authorize those values in other words you put them under the sign of a certain territorial units that you make them European ones and you play them out as in some way connected to have a certain avena with all the problems that may follow from that or positing and aren't you how much in that you're positing some kind of politics which is insensitive the diversity of some kind so I wonder whether the argument which can be made against the values talk is not necessarily an argument against Europeans being value oriental or principle in that kind of politics it could be that but it could also be against doing so under the banner of a certain territorial denomination European values rather than kind of valued politics which is separated from the territorial denomination what's the context in which there's discussion about European values about what Europe stands for right now it seems to me primarily a context of debate on immigration is there one set of values that Europe stands for that immigrants should be allowed or encouraged or forced to sign up to through immigrants bring with them different values it seems to me that's the arena in which there is this talk of values and I think it's inevitable that there would be that talk but often one finds in that talk the most preposterous assumptions underpinning it about what in fact European cultural history or religious history for that matter as actually being about that's I suppose all I'm saying and and perhaps add to that I mean it's an interesting distinction that you make but I think often it's difficult to disentangle your two options that when people talk about values they're talking about when Sarkozy is talking about the debate about French identity it has implications for for price it's not a very tip d territorial eyes debate in that sense so it may not be very easy to disentangle those two things to play but I'm just a brick there any questions from that side of the room yes yes and then hopefully can be able to take the gentleman yes and then the gentlemen of the far ends many commentators talk about resurgence of nations the nation state ID there in Europe with regard to particularly to this rub lick definitely has been ratification and the appointment to but to relatively obscure figures to head the foreign policy and to head the to head Europe but also within with respect to Ireland's unilateral response to the banking is it seemed to show a nation-state concept of Europe was was coming to the fore rather than the alternative well I myself I've always been very persuaded by a Alan Millwoods wonderful work on the history of the European Union which emphasized the clothes into connection between the revival of the nation stage in Europe after the Second World War and the emergence of the common market and for him there was no contradiction the contradiction existed in the minds of the Federalists but the Federalists although important in the story actually got the outcome wrong and what you had was the product of negotiation bargaining amongst nation states and and I think that if you accept that perspective despite the increasing complexity of the web of institutional arrangements that is the European Union in a lot for you as the fundamental insight remains true and as you say these recent developments would seem to confirm it again that nation nation states are and political elites in nation states presumably the electrics behind them are really unwilling to forfeit much more power than they have so far done to the European level you gentlemen writer than something towards the wall of the back thank you very much for this very interesting lecture I just want to ask about let's go to the Middle East and now mr. Obama just took office in state can you speak up I'm just talking about now let's talk about the Middle East and the European mission towards achieving peace in the Middle East because you know the Arabian they have been waiting for long alone until maybe some opportunity can can can come they can take take place and now mr. Bush's has been like past tense fortunately so do you think now the European would take serious are they going to wait for Obama to achieve better to achieve peace in the Middle East or do you think that would they will have something to do to act now well this is one question this is one one question the other one could you comment elaborate more on your last sentence when you said about the olivium values and they spreading an Enlightenment to the whole world could you please elaborate a little bit and where do you think the flaws in the European system thank you well to take the the Middle East a question first you know my personal opinion is that this was an issue in if there was any issue on which the European Union might be expected to push strongly and use find some way of using its very considerable economic leverage in the region to push for the kind of settlement that I i think was regardless that this regardless of desirable in Europe this was the one issue where you'd think it would have done so and yet in fact and a whole series of points over the last three or four years and up to now it seems to me that it has taken a backseat and perhaps regarded itself as simply a member of the quartet but then other members of the quartet do not regard themselves just as members of the quartet so there is something going on and I don't know enough about the politics of this to know what it is whether it's simply a failure of political imagination lack of a coherent agreement amongst the members of the Union I don't know what the answer is but but my own my own feeling is there was apparently little to stop the Union doing much more than it has done diplomatically in the Middle East at a time when its view on what should be done differed very profoundly from the Americans now of course it differs much less i think but that that could be an equal argument for doing it doing more and it doesn't on your second question what do I think the floors are in these European values well you know first of all and as I suppose is my major point you have to say what you think these values are and I've tried to get across I think that Europe is to all intents and purposes let's exaggerated slightly the concept of Europe is an empty box you put into it what you want and you have to understand historically that that is how it is functioned so you know you put into it a traditional family values if you want you can put into it multiculturalism if you want so be clear about what you mean by Europe and in fact when you when you start to be clear you may find that you don't need to talk about Europe at all personally I'm in favor of human rights and democracy and so forth what's what's the floor in that there's no floor intrinsically in that I I think they're admirable things I do think there there is a weakness in telling other people what to do in general and perhaps I feel that because I'm primarily a story of a very small country and if you if you study small countries still more if you come for small countries you have a thing about larger countries and more powerful state telling you want to do they may tell you to do admirable things but you don't like them telling you what to do and I think that's something that sometimes Europeans lose sight of Paul Taylor I have a question about your association of European values with a particular a particular territory it's often said that expansion to the east really reflected a triumph for European values but one could also argue there are we the opposite but that that actually detracts from the unity as it were of these values of what one is talking about really is Western European values and it so happens at the some extent they have been picked up by the East European members but of course many of you are still to be really implemented and a kind of incidental sacrificed Iran are available where you put Britain in this is it really part of the European Social Democratic set of values or is it more than with what has been called often Anglo American values I'm really questioning your your linkage between European values and a particular territory because I think that when you look at it more when you do look at it I hate to say multi more closely but you begin to see that there are different areas reflective and perhaps I can ask you what do you think these values of Western Europe are well the social democracy the solidarity I being helpfulness all those things that come under the heading of social democracy as compared say with the American values to tend to be somewhat different in in stress and which arguably many of the East European states are more acute than those well if I was going to be mischievous i would say that surely there was nothing more solid Aristocles democracy in Eastern Europe the kind of welfare arrangements that they had their trumped what you had in France but you know so that's not what you're thinking you're you're thinking of the political values of the now perhaps but the political you know political preferences in Eastern Europe right now would have to be understood in the light of that history and they may they may change so there that's a very nice for me that's a very contingent understanding of values and yet the other problem is if you try to historicize those values one gets into hot water as well I'm not sure that there's a long history of solid aristocratical movements in Western Europe that couldn't be found elsewhere for for instance so this is why I I think one has to be so careful in using this language of values at all where does Britain stand there are many countries that you go in inside what we commonly think of was geographical Europe that you could say have one foot in and one foot out and put in this an egregious example in Greece you sometimes talk about things as their you're in Europe and sometimes you talk about going to Europe so I don't think Britain is is is the only case but it has its own its own specific history its imperial history of course the peg makes it quite different gentleman in the front row well I think a lasting European value almost exclusively is the product of a native son of Britain John Locher it was transmitted relayed we're not true conquest or or Crusades but because it was a desirable value and it's still on it's been working i think and there's no real alternative to that in other words what it's 24 and would it still stands for basic rights democracy and so forth he is there an alternative anywhere is Confucian coming back for Buddha maybe I don't know perhaps they are but they they're not still visible wear this is a tangible product of you but fellows when you say there's no alternative you see what I'm not sure about is that as that a power political judgment or is that a moral moral you know in 1940 there were plenty of alternatives and some of them lasted a long time and there may be yet again so it seems to me that the understanding of history which says it must end up in a kind of lock Ian world that's part of our tradition that's something that should be historic site but that to me is not necessarily a good guide to the history it's a life yes it is yes so so but you have to be careful if you make what works your your criteria because then everything is a matter of your of where you stand and when you're standing there and in the long run good time we're going to take one more I'll take one more question gentleman at the back put my tension Rises very bad yeah thank you very much it I would like to ask about the other Universal non-western cultures I mean we are live in the world with the growing emergence of China and I would like to maybe hear your affections on the response of the European universalism taller the growing other Universal cultures like Chinese one I think that would I be very long or very short and I think at this point to need naked it ought to be very short perhaps I should be the subject for another lecture we talk about it afterwards okay good we'll mark thank you very very much um it was a fantastic talk we've had a standard which is a more than commensurate with LSC on one of its very best days and that's principally thanks to you also gave me the wonderful pythonesque quotes I'm afraid which I won't let you forget about which went along line say what you like about Adolf Hitler but which will go down as my quote of the day but seriously seriously you gave us a tremendous tool and you gave interesting and full ask questions thank you we love to have you back see

Channel: LSE

Views: 3,187

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: LSE, London School of Economics, Public, Lecture, Event, Seminar, Professor, Mark Mazower

Id: XAN8D0_vu0E

Length: 74min 31sec (4471 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2010