Europe's Story: Phoenix or Phantom?

I was once introduced by the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton who was recently been in the news and he said Timothy Garton ash is of course a bail man referring to that college which famously produced left-wing intellectuals and politicians and I said no no no I wasn't opinion I was an Exeter College and without missing a beat Scruton said objectively you are a Bailey old man so if you look at Tim Snyder's CV you will see that it's according to the text he started at Batum College Oxford but objectively he's a Stannis and Anton is now and and there's a little more a little more basis for that claim than there was in the Scruton case because Timothy Snyder was our student in the early 1990s in a wonderful seminar in the immediate after glow of 1989 which you will well remember an amazing group of people including even Christ Jeff I then had the great pleasure of supervising his doctoral dissertation on kazimierz Keller's Krauss together with a great Purdue scholar yogi Lipsky and we're very proud of what he's done since which is in the first place to become over a period of about 20 years probably the leading historian of Central and Eastern Europe in his generation culminating in the book which you will all know blood lands Europe between Hitler and Stalin which catapulted his work into a wider public debate in a very important way and I think has become an absolute reference point for both historical and political discussion and then catalyzed I think it's fair to say by the advent of Donald Trump he stepped more into a public intellectual role with a small best-selling book called on tyranny his most recent book the road to unfreedom and he's currently working on what sounds like a fascinating book on the future of freedom that proposed and often his work but for this evening we have tempted him back to European history as it relates to today please join me in welcoming this year's Dominic thank you so it's it's a it's an ambiguous pleasure at best to begin by agreeing with the person who introduces it's there is something to the claim that objectively I am a student of st. Antony's as I was as I was listening to the recollections last night it was it was all too obvious what I would have talked about because I spent my early twenties in this place or rather this was the place from which I escaped to Poland and Ukraine and the Baltics and Czechoslovakia and the other places that I really wanted to go which means that I was a student here when rothgery North was was working and I appreciated this at the time as much as anyone in their early twenties fresh from the United States and appreciated in retrospect and and with a bit of age I I now appreciate much more just how difficult it is to unify a life in politics public policy academic institution of all intellectual life as ralf dahrendorf did I'd like to begin this lecture though from illumines of my not understanding so both of my both of my initial tutors are in this room my education my moral tutor as it was then call that I hope still is Martha Conway is also here and so they will remember a young American coming to Europe for the first time Americans coming to Europe for the first time face certain interpretive difficulties one of them has to do with senses of humor so in general it's the case that we think the British are joking when they're not and with the Germans it's the other way around which means that were confronted with the August figure of ralf dahrendorf I faced a special kind of interpretive problem because here you have a man who was books at the same time so a quarter of a century ago I was in this room but I was occupying not this rather the role of the students I was a I was a paint assistant organizing a conference or helping organized a conference on a very similar topic and in rough dahrendorf was was running around 10:00 as well looking after the various East Europeans who had come with their luggage and so on and it was a problem with the East Europeans in their luggage in particular one Romanian had lost his suitcase and robbed their girl said to me let's establish a principle everyone should be responsible for his own lunch I could not tell if he was joking or not was this a sincere cartoon ISM extending down to the smallest aspects of life was this a moment of exuberant overconfidence about our ability in the West to project our values for a neighbor I wasn't sure at the time and honestly I'm still not sure I'm thinking about it 25 years old ralf dahrendorf was not only the director of the LSD as many of you will know he wrote a biography of the LSD it's very characteristic of him to go to do something that reflect upon it at the beginning of one of the chapters of this fire is this microphone working at all or my despair at the beginning of one of the chapters of his biography of the LSC there's a passage where again I'm not sure but I think it's supposed to be fun you can you can help me he's this the chapter is about the 60s in the LSE and I think much of what we're talking about is actually a kind of return to the late 1960s work as I experienced it anyway as the next generation a kind of last hurrah of debates of the debates of the 1960 and any event daran earth begins this chapter by describing the anthill reports of the director of the LSE and the text runs like this annual report in 1960 in 1961 this has not been a year of great changes 1959 to 1960 this year saw no major developments or important changes 1958 to 1959 this year saw development on lines already established 1957 to 1958 this year witnessed no major new developments 1956 to 1957 this year saw no major events now in fairness to sort he was describing the LSC but what is tempted to think about this and ralf dahrendorf course is one in this direction in this chapter this book she would consider this more as a comments on the United Kingdom at the time but in the late 1950s early 1960s one to just say we're just moving along soon you will never have habits of it but of course in 1957 all of you who are here for the conference on the European Union are at the edge of your seats I know raising your hands you want to say Treaty of Rome Treaty of Rome but I would like to start some right we all still remember the dream yes we're doing I guess the but I want to start somewhere else which is Malaya independence 1957 was the year of the lion independence coincidentally sir Sidney cane had actually been the vice director of the university now why do I want to begin with this I must your connection because it seems to me that this is where we have to begin if you want to understand the level of European identity and the mobile of European narration now one of the one of the constant themes of the earlier panels and lectures and interventions has been Empire we must integrate the history of Europe with history of Empire we must bring in we must bring in the earlier industry of liberal capitalism as much cognition we must be able to think reflectively about your role in the rest of the world we must consider the first globalization and not just the second I would like to put this in a much more straightforward way as an girl Adams Morgan Mellon have already done and simply use the word Empire it seems to me that the way to make love with European self duration make sense now is to speak sensibly about the continuing history of Empire no why why am i way to insist on let me not talk about it what is the narrative it is very easy to play with narratives to which one is not actually personally attached it is very easy to contest someone else's narrative to see the holes in it to understand how its self-serving for them it's very easy to look on as we have been doing a business conference at a kaleidoscopic field of mutually contestable and contesting narratives and to catalog and to analyze but wind is a narrative a narrative matters when it's so deeply within you that you do not feel it or to apply a second test a narrative matters when when its existence is pointed out to you it hurts this process that we've been calling deconstruction is only real if it hurts if it's not painful to realize that you have been inside a narrative then it was not a meaningful narrative then we were just played so this is the kind of surgery which I would like to try to undertake now with Europe because what I would like them but I'd like to suggest is that the reason why it's so hard to bring the history of Empires back into the history of the European Union or back into the history of Europe the reason why we have these scattered calls all the time to reign in the rest of the world or to talk about the global side we aren't able to actually achieve this is a narrative and it's not the narrative of the bad guys that we don't like or you don't like it is the narrative of the good guys it is your narrative your narrative the narrative of the good guys the supporters of European Union is an imperial narrative this is the case that I want to make and because it's an imperial narrative it itself is what prevents you from being your history straight and I'm going to suggest that this has two mythical consequences now for our time which leads back directly into the problem of the digital world so gran claims how how am I going to make them what's your Harry okay let me define the second part what do I mean my Empire that's another word which is easily tossed around let me throw out a few features call this and of course disagree but let me just put these out for this purpose of argument an empire is is is a political entity in which there is a center and there is a periphery it's a political entity in which there is the rule of law but law is applied on the event with some people are full subject of it some people are not in practice especially in we're making empires our political entities that do not recognize other political political entities as equal so for example the United States did not recognize native nations as nations or Germany in 1939 did not recognize Poland as a state right in that sense an empire will tend to aim for autarky that is to imagine that the economic unit can be carved out over territory which will allow for self-sufficiency an empire will tend to believe that technological superiority which allows for conquest is actually the result of racial or some other kind of superiority and it will keep on the leading that until the technological superiority the final thing that empires do and they do it beautifully and they do it well is that they narrate empires narrate they narrate better than nation-states may the rate better than Europe they narrate fantastically well which is why when they try to think of the great European literature we very often run into literature which has to do with Empire one way or another Joseph Conrad would be an excellent example from here because here we have a British writer who is notionally writing about British Empire but it was in fact a Polish writer but not even exactly a Polish writer because he comes from the part of Poland which is in fact Ukraine and his first in Paris experience of colonialism is actually polish colonialism in Ukraine which is why we can have a book about Ukraine by Ukrainian author which is called Poland's heart of darkness and have that made perfect sense which in fact it does the empires narrate and I went to enforce those concepts together because when we talk about in higher here we very often mean something dark in distance it's certainly not us because we negate it but when we talk about narration that's something friendly and played with us but I want to claim that empires narrate and the thing to rate better that we do and that your best narrative the one that's close to you and the one that's going to hurt is an imperial narrative okay what is what is that marriage the European narrative the one which is too close to critique right goes like this the European narrative says there are nation states these nation states are durable they've existed for some very long time and these nation-states learn they've learned over time in particular after the Second World War these nation states learned that war was a very bad thing and as a result these nation states came together in a program of economic cooperation with the goal of lead political cooperation which would make more it possible that unbeliev is the closest thing to a standard European area as your is clapping history and deserve this commemorated on practically every occasion if you already repeating the birth this perhaps pronounced less likely at least 10,000 times in your life and to challenge it as I'm going to do I imagine is going to feel a little bit tense one must challenge it and here's why it is older - he is absolutely not true and here I'm not addressing narrative as narrative I'm not going to say that's your narrative I have a different narrative I'm not going to speak as a very conservative story in and say this is simply baseless conceptually and empirically there is nothing to it there are two old European nation states and he came from European powers that fought the Second World War which were not the nation states by the way did not learn from the second world world that peace was good was that that never happened if you haven't written integration process it had to come from somewhere else no let me try let me try to make the factual case here so one so this narration which I call fable of the wisest but there's a narrative that you carry aside to this Europeans is the fable of Elias station a nation that's old and that's increasingly wise the fable of the wise nation begins from this axiom that there are European nation states so let us ask wherein when were there European nation states and what did that look like this is interesting because the place and time there were in fact European nation states is the Balkans that is to say the crumbling ruins of the Ottoman Empire and second and third quarters of the 19th century this is where the nation-state is born not just in Europe but but in the world right not in France which was never a nation-state ever in a modern period but even the Balkans in the Balkans we have interestingly the first decolonization right we categorize colonial histories beyond Europe right this is if this is a mistake this is a mistake that allows these narratives to go on the first decolonization is Greece and Serbia and then Romania and later Bulgaria that's the first econ ization and these are the first nation-states these nation states as all because all of you are Astoria satirical no have certain inherent problems one of their inherent problems is they don't have access to a large market leaving an empire me leave large market another of their problems is they don't have access to the sea they handle this problem with a political economy of nationalism the political economy of nationalism says since our only tax base is land the people who live in the land across this river are our people and then you come up with other arguments that are linguistic or cultural historical as the case may be this is the history of all came through one sentence in the 19th century a series of wars of militaristic countries that are nation-states technically but are unsustainable and there unsustainability arrives in a package which we know as the First World War which is in fact the third Baltimore it was the first one of 1912 the second one of 1913 and the first one the Balkan states defeat an empire in the second one the Baltic states fight among themselves and in the third the energy of one Walton state certainly is turned against the Habsburg monarchy and then we have the event known as the First World War so that is one part of the career of the European nation state the second part the career of the European nation state I would venture to say is even less glorious after the first world war the solution to a war which was initiated by a small nation space turns out to be the creation of more small nation states which are Austria Czechoslovakia Lithuania so six states are created from former empires more or less exnihilo and then a number of other states Hungary Hungary for example are conformed in different boundaries but the principled response the first world war is more nations to these new I'm not gonna go into the reasons for against this of course there are historically intelligible reasons why this happened but I'm just going to make the simple chronological technical point that these entities do not last for very long all six of the newly created nation-states Austria Czechoslovakia Poland the three Baltic states ceased to exist completely by the middle of the Second World War their entire career as nation-states lasts for about two decades we heard the case of which is the honest of Austria last night all that's a special that's that is one example of in general pattern Austria has a sort of a loose the Texan slow lost time with the trail in Munich the poles and the vaults have a vault our group interact there's a national story that the national story covers up the general truth which is that all of the new nation states were destroyed after the Second World War the territory of all of these new nation states and the territory of the balkan nation states almost all of this territory then falls under Soviet domination right which is not really a career as as a nation-state so that's the history of the european nation state that's it I mean with some small exceptions here and there that's pretty much now you might be thinking what about the great national unification of the 19th century Belgium Belgium gets through one year old but the second Leopold buys the stretch of real estate in the center of Africa which remembers the Belgian Congo which is an integral part of Belgium for the central part of Belgium history Italy Germany are not founded as nation-states that's a retrospective projection by people who think that nation-states are normal they're founded as national monarchies as kingdoms as empires the word right does have an operational meaning the German state from the very beginning was Imperial not just with respect to your polish population but very quickly with respect to its colonial territories in Africa and Hasidic Italy also ventures as quickly as it can into Africa these were not meant to gather birthdays nor were they the nation states in the 1930s under fascism the imperial game Imperial nature or the imperial aspiration to all turkey is particularly clearly pronounced no I have now told the history briefly I know of all of the founding members of the European integration project if you will just spot me Luxembourg please this is the history of all of the founding members and the history of the countries that joined in the first enlargement or to be very brief about it Germany in the 1940s right if we think of the European integration project made in the 1950s in the nineteen forties Spain Portugal Germany Italy Britain the Netherlands these are all empires they see themselves as empires they see one another as empires so into the 1940s every single one of these entities is an empire and so it begins to ask when that moment could have been with the West European nation states realized that war was a bad thing and began the process of European integration that moment didn't happen because it could not that happened because these entities were never nation-states let's attend them in very briefly to the postwar years in the beginning of European integration and let's begin with with the most important case which of course is is German the general case that I want to make is not that war is a good thing I mean less I mean this understood you know what my American accent be taking the wrong way the case I want to make is that Europeans did not learn from the second or that war was a bad okay not in any straightforward way there are a number of ways to make this case one is to point out where people have suffered the most from the Second World War were Jews Russians Ukrainians and Russians and however one wants to evaluate this you wouldn't want to say that some kind of cult of peace prevails among the National memories of those countries right so it's that's one of they make the orbit I'm gonna make government way and that is the major participants are not learning from the Second World War the major participants Western and Central European are losing colonial wars and exhausting themselves that is what they have in common crucially that is what they have in common to make this case I have to begin with Germany because Germany is the most important example and as in so many things Germany here is the leader Germany is the leader in narrative production Germany is the leader in a half-true at best account of itself during the Second World War which by its nature not only shelters Germans that shelters other Europeans how do monuments the Second World War is at its essence in Europe of these a colonial war this would be the war aims of Hitler are above all Ukraine and secondarily oil in the Caucasus Hitler describes this absolutely clearly as a colonial war according to every classic definition he interchangeably speaks of it as being like the conquests of America the conquest of India the conquest of Africa but he's making it abundantly clear these thinking of a frontier Empire the way that Germany fights the world that is not recognizing Poland and the Soviet Union as States and not recognizing what it's doing firms as an occupation and not recognizing the peoples of that zone as having the rights at occupy people's those are all mainstream traditional European colonial practices and by the way a decent pay and Pantanal and how now and in a number of people I don't know why I pronounce his name French accent they they pointed this out at the time right african-american and now for your pian intellectuals had a way of making this point that I'm making more or less at the time and this was a colonial war above all and if it's understood as as a colonial war that one begins to see a larger pattern in the way that war is misremembered so the Germans do remember the Second World War I don't want to overstate this case and Germans do more than anyone else have a culture of reflection about the second world war however that culture of reflection is startling I would say shock me auntie geographically in so far as Germans remember the Holocaust they start with the camps which is not where the Holocaust happened they focus on the German Jews most of whom survived two or three percent of the victims when there's a secondary group of victims it's the Russians as though one could kill lots of Russians without killing more Ukrainians Ukraine and Hillary sir of course the territories after Jews the places where people suffered the most and by the way the Holocaust as it happened is unthinkable in a number of ways without the colonial aspiration to control it figure because it is the colonial aspiration to control Eastern Europe which brings other German control the places where Jews actually live so the the canonized German minimization of the Holocaust as well as the more or less complete blanking out of Ukraine as a colonial object or are not specifically German however this is the way it goes in general the story of European reconciliation is a story which allows a colleague Egyptian history to be ignored right so when Germany turns to France for post-war reconciliation this is among other things a divergent the Second World War much as I have much as I appreciate back home and Merkel meeting the Second World War II is not centrally about three and France Germany was only concerned to get France out of the way so we could destroy the Soviet Union the war was not centrally about France for most of the Second World War V sheet which was a really legitimate French state was not in the way of German more plants and more French citizens fought on the side of the axis and fought on the other side which is why they will never be realized historian should not predict but this is why there will never be an official French history the Second World War so in those conditions treating franco-german reconciliation as as a kind of proper memorialization the Second World War is a kind of diversion and it's the first step towards the larger diversion which is which is the fable of the Lord the fable of the wise nation the Netherlands and not the Netherlands you that the Netherlands of course as you all know are a major European incredible power that April Brazil until they lost to the Portuguese until the nine years war when they lost a great deal of territory the pressure and the English they were maybe though they wanted D major maritime major powers into the 20th they're still several Dutch colonial territories including most prominently the Dutch East Indies during the second world war was common it was common sense in the Netherlands that the only way we could have a post-war recovery will be with the help of the Dutch East Indies a starving Netherlands at the end of the Second World War II took for granted that the Dutch East Indies would help in other words recover immediately after the Second World War the Netherlands begins fighting for the recovery of the Dutch East Indies of 140,000 Dutch troops 140,000 Dutch troops fight from 1945 to 1949 in the Dutch East Indies now no like Germany this is not a nation state there are no nation states here this is not a country which has learned from the Second World War that one does not fight wars it immediately and it only leaves that work because it's easy because the Americans won't help enough that's that's that's the story France after the Second World War France fights colonial wars more or less and uninterrupted for sixteen years and it does not do so as a nation-state it does so as a new fire when France fights in when France fights in Indochina three-quarters of the world casualties that the French army takes are not French people right it is fighting as an empire for an empire for 16 years more or less uninterrupted first in Indonesia as you will know where those world counties are about seventy five thousand very serious humbler right although most of them not French then in Algeria and now in the Algerian world through 1954 notice how in French political rhetoric of the time the word digital asean is used so it's actually quite striking if you're coming to today's when you do it about you know of course means that you got some help yeah into classy old means at the beginning of the Algerian work into classical means that the fridge army was responsible for integrating the Arab population into the French state by 1961 the dominant means a devotional is that the French in Algeria will be integrated into the emerging Algerian state but that's what they did last moment in the time in the place as late as late as 1961 and as you will know the story with one colony of the slightly different way it is Empire which makes Republic the Republic difficult right Empire which brings that version of the French Republic to an end is Empire is the problem the goal was meant to Seoul and which does in fact in which he doesn't facts all but how does he soul is there any moments where if your goal magically says now in there is a French nation state that moment never arrives that moment simply never happens the goal recognizes that the French Empire he wouldn't use these words of course is no longer sustainable and he chooses Europe the the the visitors or the German officers in 1962 the Treaty of 1963 in which Tony jet calls the decisive turn to Europe are also a decisive turn away from empire there is no moment for there's a French nation-state making a decision there is a french empire which is choosing Europe as as a substitute that's probably the most important moment now what does this choice of Europe mean for the Europeans involved well let's think of another refugees let's think of that let's think of the millions of Germans after the Second World War the hundreds of thousands of PNY the tens of thousands of Dutch who are coming for lack of a better word back what are they coming back to are they coming back to a nation-state in the case of the Germans who settled in Western history in Austria a number of other countries which one of those was the German nation state exactly for the PNY was settled in Belgium in Switzerland in France but also all over Europe for the Dutch many of whom incidentally are Jewish are they really suddenly any Dutch nation-state is there a nation-state that's reading them there or what as they return in the 40s 50s and 60s are they perhaps returning is also the wrong word for most of these people are they impact packed arriving in some image is not really a nation-state mainly an emerging drug the the interesting thing about the 1950s to 1970s if one thing's about imperial history and this is the part which is motor sasaki most surprising and they're almost taken for granted right is the economic recovery that from 1950 1970 in Europe average rates of growth were 4% a year after previous decades when the average was 1% that is the shocking thing it's shocking in a whole number of levels high levels like if you fight a second world war like this should you really be recovering this quickly in this and this well but more profoundly if you are losing the technological advantage to the rest of the world that was brought to you by the Industrial Revolution which is what's happening right the thing which is enabling Empire industrialization his feeding precisely in those two decades how can that be the time when your growths versa how can that at the time which is remembered as the glorious years at the time they never had it so good how can that be and the answer of course is Europe and there are people who are looking upon this phenomenon and recognizing it for what it was there were people who are looking upon what the Germans and adduction French were doing and recognizing that this was how you go from Empire precisely into something else and those people were called the British political elite so in the late 1950s early 1960s from the point of view of London this story that I'm telling was then clear maybe not in every detail maybe not give this the crane and so on but the general outline that you need a place to go after Empire and the Europe was that place that was generally soon I would go so far as to say that was something like common sense of course the British escape from Empire was not as straightforwardly bloody categorical than an inmate as it was with the Germans French and and the Dutch the the key moment might be 1956 as an imperial humiliation at Suez rather than rather than Malay in Ghana in 1957 or even India in 1947 but the general lesson was as we moved from Empire we need a substitute in 1961 on the motion the House of Commons as I'm sure everyone will remember to join the European Economic Community passed by we hon 13 - 4 so on the ornament the argument that I'm making more or less prevail part of the problem in the 60s were written was that Empire was still mixed into the question there wasn't a categorical woman as there was for the Dutch sort of the Germans and for the French which meant that you could still debate Commonwealth versus Europe and the British press was still loudly debating that which helps to go as he prepared his arguments for lovino by the end of the 1960s it was harder to make that argument because the balance of trade was then clearly favoring the continent over the Commonwealth which the or which which was the argument for applying again Britain applies for a second time in 1967 and in one of these non coincidences which helps bring even I think to events that are one events together it's in 1968 that Wilson brings back all the British forces east of Suez the moment of applying for the European Economic Community is the moment of conceding that the British Empire in its traditional form is over it is the same moment and at the time I would think I would say that was self-evident the story in the the rest of the enlarging much reason is in this first enlargement we're starting the second enlargement personal in Spain is very similar right political is a major European Empire by by the 20th century what remains is chiefly Africa Portugal stayed out of the Second World War but Salazar governs all the way through Orient's Portuguese ideology and the economy around Africa African cotton is grupo de Portugal maskull 1968 how long Portuguese colonies would remain he said it's a question of centuries he later nearly 500 years okay you know that that's wrong but what's interesting about Harris were and at that time when he says this in the late sixties early seventies 80% of the Portuguese already is in Africa your kid 80% of your armies on another continent maybe you're not a nation state in 1974 what's striking about your Portugal is the way that everything happens at the same time if you're following the European integration narrative you will notice that the people who come out of the red carnation revolution are talking about Europe right away yes they were if you're calling about a democratic narrative notice that they were talking about democracy indeed but they were also talking about in the colonization it was interesting is that they were talking about all three things at the same time and I believe correctly identify them together because after all you can't really have a democratic Empire and losing the Empire was a condition of joining Europe and Suarez was making these points in single sentences at the time in 1974 Spain interestingly follows the same pattern Spain the Spanish Empire has also been reduced to two Africa mostly North Africa by the 20th century the Spanish Civil War which precedes the Second World War is a colonial war in interesting ways Morocco is a colonial officer he fights the war on the Spanish mainland according to what he himself characterizes as colonial methods in large measure it's out they fought by African troops that is not only Spanish troops who were veterans of African Wars but by Africans themselves on Spain right so Franco is himself a creature of empire and he identifies Spain with the Empire it's another one of these non coincidence coincidences that Spain loses his last claimed Empire the Spanish Sahara within a few hours of Franco's death and again it's not a coincidence that the process of losing Empire the death of Franco democratic transition used to say and the application of European Union all happen at the same time the application to the European that Europeans are European community takes place three weeks after the first parliamentary election was three provincial elections in they know when I was at that first conference 25 years ago Spain and Portugal were reference points for Eastern Europe Spain and Portugal had joined the European it was so than the urban community just become the European Union they have democratized after dictatorship so these were these were comprehends or Poland and Czechoslovakia and and all the rest but something else it happened by the end of the 1980s early 1990s and that is that this very West European fable of the wise nation had already crystallized by then each of these nations individually and all of them collectively has built up this story about how we as European nation states learned lessons from war in the middle of the century and hence we have all joined together in this project that story was already there by the time the East Europeans emerged from communism at Cana and then the Ethiopians came along this is important and rather than disrupting it because why would they affirmed it their story was yes of course we are nation-states recently liberated and we would like to return to your a very powerful saying at the time now that whole notion that here we have more European nation states looking for a home is unchallenged because the fable of the wise nation has already the fact that these places had not really been successful nation states ever or that when they had the nation states that was the thing that tended to bring about those world which you were supposed to be solving this isn't really noticed what one might have done at the time is look under their reaffirming rhetoric right because to some extent they were self-consciously affirming the West Europeans in their own illusions about the way history works if you look under if you scratch the surface and you find that their intentions you see that like everyone at the moment when Empire falls apart there is an understanding of what the purpose of European integration actually is later we forget it and the East Europeans here are no exception but at that moment the same to return to Europe what do mean is we know perfectly well from Munich and 19th tens Munich and Yalta and possum we know perfectly well from 1956 we know perfectly well from 1981 we know perfectly well that we are not sustainable as a nation of states now that's not what you say out loud but that is what the return to Europe actually meant it meant that we know that we need a larger body in order to be space right let's pop your across you spoke yesterday about independence being the achievement of the European Union that might have surprised some of you but that is what is meant it is precisely people understood that at the time in some holes to think this way is precisely your communion which makes the state possible no this is a story which in some way coincides with and overlaps with the rescue of the nations which on resolution cited earlier right and I believe it is true that the European integration saves the state but there's a very important qualification it wasn't the nation state because there were no nation states to rescue you cannot rescue something that has never existed it wasn't exactly a rescue either it was a transformation because there was an imperial city and all of these examples there was an imperial state and what the European project did was allow that Imperial state to become something else but there was no nation state to rescue so that can't quite be the right way to formulate it in Eastern Europe what we have very interesting lately is the second kind of integration in the first part what you have are one sort of Imperial private bit around the bit around Lisbon or move it around London the bit around Paris these are the Imperial metro holes but were once much lower tier Empire until very recently Brazil substantial times these are the metro polls there these are what remain after a certain kind of imperial disintegration so up until the 1980s what Europe does is it brings together Frank the Metropolitan right onto their product it's great success after 1989 was to join with the Metropolitan fragments also different fragments because these nation states is not particularly successful nation states are all the imperial fragments of the Hapsburg of the Romanoff or to some extent the German empires that is what they are and the great and interesting success of the European Union in the early part of 21st century is that it solves the problem not of the Second World War but of the First World War the First World War that's it's not actually the piece it's not it's not the piece it's not the peace agreement after the first world war that's what these national questions arise and it is in 2004 2007 2013 that these national questions are merged into the European you okay now so the enlargements of 2004 2007 2013 you might think in the history of Empire at least in Europe but not quite now I've said before that when you are just about to join the European project this argument that I'm making is fairly clear although you might be getting some other terms that are you know a little bit kinder to yourself this argument is fairly clear once you were inside the ER the cell of the people of the wise nation is totally adjustable and basically everybody goes but when you are outside and you want to get in the purpose of the European Union is absolutely clear and this is the strange thing about the great misunderstanding between Ukrainians in 2013 precisely and many Earthlings because then the chief Ukrainian argument for joining the European Union or for one day to sign the association agreement was we are perfectly aware that our post Imperial state is deeply flawed but we know that other post Imperial States became less flawed because of yep you can say oh and the integration process I'm not making this up this is what opinion polling Ukrainians shows this is what it was about meanwhile in Europe inside the European Union because of the fable of the wise nation this makes no sense listen if you don't understand that your state was also at one time probably an untenable posting period fragment you don't understand view of another untenable post-imperial Frank there's another group of people now in 2013 who understands this the way that I understand it and that is the Russian elite but they draw different conclusions there are three historically possible answers for what to do after Empire in Europeans have supplied all three there are three possible answers one of them is the nation-state which I've already talked about as a short career the second is European integration which is the solution without a name because we all know that it's happening but as far as I know it's very rarely referred to as what you do after Empire the third thing you can do after Empire is of course more empire and that is what Russia openly proposes in 2013 and here again we have a major misunderstanding between this type of Russians and Europeans because the idea that one would want to go back to Empire when Empire has been totally displaced as a category of discourse and analysis doesn't really make sense even though if you look at basic documents of the foreign policy concept the Russian Federation published in February 2013 it is absolutely clear that they have made a term which is explicitly Imperial in precisely the ways that I described there are now centers and peripheries law no longer applies there are other countries around us which are not fully fledged countries this is cleared not just in the rivers of mr. Putin in Russia ideologist is stayed in Russian foreign policy in in 2013 so the Empire comes back in 2013 between Russia and and Ukraine and strikingly he comes back as narrative among many other things becomes back traditionally he comes back as an organist and referee's about who was central who was peripheral it comes back in the Russian argument that Ukraine is not really the state right it comes back in the argument that one state can define the ethnicity of citizens in another state these are all things that are very familiar and it comes back as narration as very powerful I see almost hypnotic be powerful narration and the reason why the narration was so good not horrible is that there was something new about it which was that it was targeted so and now we're moving closer to the subject of the digital world when Russia tried to persuade you that invading Ukraine was a good idea that wasn't happening anyway the way they work if you were known to be on the British left your social media in 2014 told you that Ukrainians were fascists if you were known to be on the British farmers it it did not matter that these narratives contradicted because in the digital world we don't actually have personal contact all that matters is that the narratives reach you and disarm you or disempowering the way that they are meant to do but what's interesting about this is that narrative returns this time self-consciously so I when I say that narrative is Imperial I'm not just making a playful claim I believe this to be the case I mean its Imperial and it's apparent intellectual sense the way that no matter what it is that you argue from whatever academic or other position it can be described as your narrative right that's that's impure that's Imperial right now into 2+2 is 4 which is where Orwell tries to draw the line you can say well that's the 2+2 is 4 is just your narrative right about another narrative I got a way of identifying with - which is you know - feels like 2 is more than 2 and the other 2 feels like so interesting is that this kind of narrative is subconscious so the Yale Marshall Studies program in its wisdom during the beginning of the Russian invasion is Ukraine devalue the Russian ambassador to come to explain it which it and his explanation I mean beautifully stayed clear of anything which might resemble a pact and at the end of it the Yale student raised his hand tentatively and asked what about the Russian troops that are actually right now on the territory sovereign territory of Ukrainian state and the answer was you have your narrative and I have mine and there is a self that was literally morning set right and there was a self-consciousness about narrative here and what do you think about this is that you know it is in the famous story just probably not true they only say this to resolve it of the famous story about the lady and Bertrand Russell when he says she says it's Turtles all the way down um it's narrative all the way now its narrative all the way down which which brings me to where to where I went to close what it what is the European Union really when we get away from your self-destructive papal imagination what is the European Union what is it what is it in fact and here I want to recall what Roth dahrendorf said at the end of that conference where our fellow students I want to recall the toast that he raised at dinner on the last day which I only have understood at the time that we still comes action regularly in different ways he said above all I wish to see the end of clams clams I thought okay clams what does he mean and then last night after dinner I was talking to I was talking to Daniel Jedi on servo and I also said who has narratives public relations people and ethnographers narratives are about States and this gets me thinking about where narrative might actually be leading us because and an imperial narrative that goes all the way down which has no other object but the lead you astray from the institutions that you already have European institutions are the most important example maybe leading us back to a place which is a lot like clan life and what I want what I want to what I want to propose here is that it is jörgen is the fable of the wise nation that is making this possible okay so what is the European nation what does your opinion really your opinion really is something fascinating and new the case that I would make the European Union is now ready in case it is an example of natality it's an example of people creating something new in the world that has never been anything like this before and it has as a result surprising origins and also surprising potentialities and both the origins and the potentialities are overlooked when we stay within the familiar narrative it's not a collection of nation-states because those nation-states didn't exist it's also not an empire because the way that it treats is they treat its own constituent elements and the citizens has to do with with an overemphasis on law and aniline quality but what I want to say about this is that this in mrs. problems so I'm not just against a marriage right it's narrator if one does not understand that historically if one sees it as a narrative and where the sundar said historically then what is exposing it to to weakness in the creation of the European Union understanding that Empire was coming to an end it was crucial but that is what made the European Union possible of course you make the decisions for one reason and then you forget about them right I mean but that's what made it possible I want to submit that getting that history right now is probably just as existentially important because if one gets the history wrong if one if what accepts the phantom of the nation-state I think where you end up going is chasing the phantom of a nation-state right into the Imperial of this because the thing about the fable of the wise nation is that it creates a huge problem in domestic debates in their foreign domestic policy because the fable of the wise nation the narrative of the good guys precisely opens up tremendous opportunities for the bad guys I'm sorry when we make a bad guy I mean that each this is reversed yesterday it opens up it opens up an opportunity for those who dare to bring European Union to an end right because there is an axiomatic consensus about what the European it is the axiomatic consensus is that it is a group of nation-states who in their duration and wisdom learn the world as bad as ever right that is very convenient for people who like the European and I'm hope this all its own post if it doesn't matter it's all very convenient for the good guys because you can say we have learned that's very pleasant you can say we're smarter than the Americans right that's the undertone the Americans haven't learned the world as bad can be little bit more was bad huh right and it's mostly because it allows you to suppress and displace a history of empire the history of the Treaty of Rome suppresses and displaces the history of life in general this whole story of European nation states learning and the fact that the action takes place on the content of Europe allows everything else that is go away it's more a narrative the narrative the good guys which allows the colonial history to vanish completely this creates a risk in domestic policy for the people who like your community because the opponents of the European Union simply have to accept your terms of engagement if you say the nation-state was always there and it learned stuff from war then the opponent's at European you can just say well the nation-state is always there what can possibly happen if we leave the European Union and no one has a counter-argument for that because they've accepted your terms of engagement whereas in reality there is no particular historical reason to believe that any of the existing entities inside the European Union would survive recognizably estates if they let me repeat it is to put it mildly an open question I think in case of the existing United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland the chances that it would survive as a state under that name for more than a year is a bracelet but it's a general to general point now it opens up this problem in domestic discourse in policy but it also opens up a huge vulnerability in foreign policy and here our concern to Russia because the way that digital foreign policy works is that it plays on pre-existing vulnerabilities when Russians would mean in the American elections these were things like fear of black people fear of Muslims when Russia intervenes in grexit which it did I wait the British royal report with bated breath would Russia intervening there means and brexit or the new visa Germany on top 10 which it does or intervenes on behalf of the fullness of Holland France which it does etc etc etc etc interestingly the vulnerability that they play on is precisely the fable of the wise nation one of the main lines of Russian digital propaganda is to say well yes of course you always have a wonderful nation-state who did himself even formulated this personally during the brexit campaign when he assured the British that all would be well and the Great Britain had always existed and none of his commitments were ever binding right he went out of his way personally to affirm the people of the wise nation they are on to you they see as vulnerability what you think is true they see is vulnerability what you think is true and that's what a narrative is and there it is the thing that you don't see which hurts when someone else goes for it either by trying to explain it or by trying to exploit it now the reason why this matters so deeply is that the people the wise nation allows the whole category of empire to be put somewhere very far away so even though our efforts to say we have to bring back the global south or bring back a little history or talk about globalization an empire is a thing is still very far away Europeans contesting whether they should be in the European Union or not are not thinking empire they're thinking nation-state and this is the trap this is the trap the idea that you're going to go back to the nation-state is purely a result of the logic of the fable of the wise nation purely as a result of nothing else is now the result of industry in Europe for sure it's a result of the table of the wise nation the idea that there's a default category of nation-state and all you have to do is kill away the artificial layers of European integration which lie on top of it right that's the people over wise nation there never was a Britain just like there never was a France or a Netherlands or in Germany there never was a nation-state on which this all accumulated instead you had a post imperial unit which became a European community and the difficulties of the British Parliament has with brexit are emotive things a reflection of this fundamental reality the reason why it seems so strange is that the thing which is being talked about does not in fact exist and is never in fact now and what is this matter because it matters so deeply because out here in the rest of the world out here in the nominee you world Empire Neversoft never stopped and Empire is here waiting for you and the people the people who are working so energetically are usually working on behalf directly or often I should say working directly or indirectly for one of these empires mine the Russian one the charleen is one the various digital ones what is it exactly that digital technology is so prominent in the effort to break up the European Union could that possibly have something to do with the fact of the European Union is the only entity which seems able to do anything about the doing rights could that possibly be the case could there possibly be a connection there Chinese American and Russian efforts to disrupt the European Union mean heavily on digital technology and I'm stressing this not as a matter of technique because I wanna close this lecture by trying to get a sense of what the Empire out there is actually like the Empire out there is not just Chinese power and investors of Russian power investors of American power investors the Empire out there against which the EU is imperfect but the only known projection it's also a digital entire it's an empire in which various kinds of entities corporations corporations individuals and states are using a technology which allows you to be seen in terms of your preferences or really your vulnerabilities it's a technology which takes advantage of psychological practices on mainly behaviorism to categorize all of us into groups and then define the ways that the most we have the most reactive stimulation France fennel who was a psychiatrist as you will know very much concerned the colonialism rights in black skin white masks that the problem of his profession in colonial settings or Imperial centres is the way that it allows humans to be transformed from wild creatures into how creatures which is one definition of what imperialism does some of us are white creatures but the rest of us the colonial objects are how creatures I can't go into this more deeply but I want to suggest it but no one is saying about traditional and also applies to the digital imperialism which is out there and which is and which is active so um my my my my closing my closing thought is that the way that the EU is historically interesting that it is a soft landing after Empire is the same way that the EU has a future that is as a buffer and a protection against the empires which are still there and which are forming up in different in different ways in this sense you can say that the EU is a penis but my argument is that the Phoenix wants to revive has to know the managers own passing [Applause]

Channel: European Moments

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Id: Dsy2assQ6uU

Length: 67min 7sec (4027 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 04 2020