Henry L. Stimson Lectures on World Affairs: Never Closer Union. Does the EU Have a Future?

good afternoon everybody and welcome to this fourth and final lecture in the Stimson lecture series on britain and europe in a troubled world by Vernon Bogdan or I should say that it's just been a real treat to listen to these lectures I should congratulate myself on having the presidents to have invited him at this juncture in the history of the relationship which I will happily do and but the the thing to say despite the incredible richness of Professor Bogdan ORS knowledge about the British and European relationship he is a thinker of astonishing range and you can find this out not only from reading his large numbers of books but he if you google in my upon YouTube you will discover an astonishing menu of lectures that he has given on subjects related to British politics and they are amazing lectures you'll see today that he is platonic form of a lecturer incarnate but he has a tremendous series of lectures for example on British political party six lectures he has a tremendous series of lectures on crises in British history he has another one called making the weather six six prominent British politicians who did not become Prime Minister but who he illustrates in those lectures arguably had more impact on the course of British politics than politicians who did become Prime Minister he has another series on British monarchs since Victoria all six really excellent excellent lectures and you can you can watch them you can as I do play them on audio books and it's just an absolute pleasure to to educate oneself from such an erudite and incisive speaker and this of course is to say nothing of his vast scholarly career at Oxford and elsewhere so this fourth and final lecture will this will these four books these will come out as with the other Simpson lectures eventually as a book from the Yale University Press in the next year or so in in in due course and we will make certain that we use the date of its publication as an excuse to bring Professor Bogdan over back and we will have a workshop on the book so you can all come back again and revisit some of these issues so that the the fourth and final lecture is called a never closer Union does Europe have a future professor Bogdan or welcome thank you [Applause] well thank you Ian but I have to say that each introduction has embarrassed me more than the previous one now this lecture is about the future of Europe and that involves understanding the European Union which is not an easy task and Madeline Albright who I believe is coming to Yale tomorrow once said that understand the European Union you have to be a genius or French now sadly I'm neither but I will do my best it is clear that brexit poses a challenge to the European Union because it must be a blow to an international organization when one of its largest and most powerful members decides that it wishes to leave and it challenges the standard European Union narrative of ever closer Union and so threatens what might be called the ideology of the European now so far I have spoken as if brexit is a British aberration as if it reflects factors peculiar to Britain but is that really the case or does it reflect anxieties which are held also in other member states in the European Union some of the leaders of the European Union do not regard brexit as a peculiarly British aberration Donald Tusk president of the European Council believed even before the brexit referendum that Europe needed to take a long hard look at itself and listen to the British warning signals and then shortly after the referendum at Bratislava in September 2016 just three months after the referendum he said this it would be a fatal error to assume that the negative result in the UK referendum were represents a specifically British issue that British Euroskeptic ism is a symbol of political aberration or merely a cynical game of populist s' exploiting social frustrations the brexit vote is a desperate attempt to answer the question that millions of Europeans ask themselves daily questions about the guarantees of security of the citizens and their territory questions about the protection of their interests cultural heritage and way of life these are questions we would have to face even if Britain had voted to remain president Macker all of France was candid enough to admit in a television interview on BBC early in 2017 that the anxieties felt in Britain which had led to brexit were also present in many other European countries indeed he went on to say that if a referendum were to be held in France on that country continual membership he could not guarantee that the outcome would be positive other European leaders must surely concede that some of the anti European sentiment is not exclusively British but is present across Europe as a whole therefore brexit should not be regarded as a specifically British aberration but a symptom of wider problems and tensions faced by the European Union as a whole in particular recent crises over the Euro and migration have revealed deep deficiencies in the structure of the European Union sometimes summed up in the phrase the Democratic deficit the European Union has been described by the Italian political scientist and Sergio fabrini as being like the United States a compound Republic and what he means by a compound Republic is a political system divided not only territorially along federal lines but with a division of powers at the centre in the United States obviously between the President Congress and Supreme Court in Europe between the council the commission of Parliament and a European Court of Justice of course there are many differences between the European Union and the United States though I think it's more sensible to compare those two political systems than it is to compare the United States with Britain or Canada or or Germany for example now the European Union unlike America has no army and no police force it's public expenditure is minimal comprising just 1.0 3% of the gross national product of the member states perhaps the European Union might be compared not with the United States as it is today but the United States as it was in 1787 with no federal income tax a Senate was not directly elected and an unwillingness to project its power upon world but there's one crucial difference the European Union is a free association of states which explicitly recognizes in article 50 of the treaty agreed at Lisbon in 2008 the right of secession a writer which Britain is currently taking advantage that right of secession was not even granted as I understand it in the Articles of Confederation which precedes the Federal Constitution much less in the Federal Constitution itself because as I understand the Articles of Confederation were entitled Articles of Confederation and perpetual union between the states and there is a further vital difference between European Union and the American system of government in the European Union the Commission is the only body that is given the right of a legislative initiative now in Britain and in countries influenced by the British parliamentary tradition the power of a legislative initiative is seen as the political power to be exercised only by those who are elected and not by appointed or unaccountable officials there is in Britain as in Canada Australia and New Zealand a fairly strict separation of powers by means of which political power lies in the hands of those elected accountable to Parliament and removable by the people with a minimal exception in Britain of a very small number of Ministers in the House of Lords now officials by contrast civil servants are not elected they are non partisan and accountable to ministers but not to the voters they cannot be removed by the voters but they serve whatever government is chosen by the voters and they cannot make political decisions the British do not understand the Continental conception of the unelected politician or the elected official I once heard a Conservative MP at a meeting address a member of the mission the mates thin gondola as an official mr. gondola bristled and I imagine drag dolor would have bristled even more being called an official but the British find it difficult to comprehend how a non-elected person can enjoy such wide powers now the Commission has admittedly become weaker since the end of the reign of Raptor law the most activist president the Commission has ever known and there have been attempts to make it more accountable the Commission now needs the approval of the Parliament before it takes office but the Parliament in itself seen as is the Commission as part of an alienated superstructure most European citizens continue to give their main allegiance to their member states the legislators of their member states while European Parliament elections attract and arise in return out and are generally decided not on European issues but domestic issues and many politicians call them second order issues because the issues normally or not how do you think the European Union should develop but what do you think of your national government there pleb is it's on the national government ironically there will be one exception to this if Britain takes part in the European palms elections next month because they will be only a European issue namely the question of whether breath it should be carried out or whether it should be reversed it will be in a sense a second referendum on the European issue but that is unusual but the European Parliament broadly speaking is seen not as representing the people but as part of the political class not us but them an attempt was made in the 2014 appointment of the Commission to provide democratic legitimacy to it through the so called spits in candidate process the lead candidate process and by this process each party grew being in the European Parliament would nominate its candidate for president of the Commission before the European Parliament elections and then the party which won the most seats would have the right to have its candidate appointed as president and that led to Ron Claude Younker former prime minister of Luxembourg and head of the European People's Party which is a Christian Democrat grouping becoming president but few in Europe had heard of a Yunker before the election and is difficult to believe that those who voted for the European People's Party were conscious of supporting him for the post of commission president at the time of writing it appears that the European People's Party candidate for the next president will be Manfred Weber leader of that party in the European Parliament since not 2014 but I suspect that even fewer in Europe have heard of Manfred Weber then have heard of jean-claude Juncker so the problem of the Democratic deficit cannot be resolved through this method and indeed the problem is inherent in the conception of European integration held by Jean Monnet the founder of the European Union now male was a great man who understood European unity was not - achieved by mere goodwill but required common policies and common institutions male however exercises inference from behind the scenes he never in his life held any elected position perhaps for this reason he never fully appreciated that political legitimacy is secured primarily by direct election a principle fundamental to the British conception of representative government the epigraph to the memoirs of zom on a declare we are not forming coalition's between states but union among people but the people he had in mind were the elites who would construct Europe by stealth using economic means to lock the nation-states together without the prose without the people as a whole being aware of the process until it had become irreversible he hoped to achieve a united Europe almost by stealth without the people noticing it the European Union urgently needs dat in front its democratic deficit European integration from the time of the Coal and Steel community to the European Union agreed at Maastricht in 1990 to have been developed by elites with little popper involvement that was understandable in the immediate post-war years when there was great distrust of the people because of the experience of mass support for fascism Nazism and collaboration but it is no longer feasible in his Sorbonne speech in 2017 in which he laid down a framework for the future of Europe president Mackrell said the founding fathers built European isolation of the people because they were an enlightened vanguard but he then went on to say European Democratic doubt put an end to that chapter chapter and I think we were wrong to move Europe forward in spite of the people we must stop being afraid of the people we must simply stopped building Europe in isolation from them the institutions of the European Union were constructed in the 1950s at a time when deference towards elected leaders and officials was much greater than it is today the structure of the Coal and Steel community and European communities out of which European Union has grown was based very much on the ethos of the French fourth republic in which as a result of the weakness of the political executive and the instability of successive governments considerable powers accrued to unelected officials the commissar ER general new plant formed in 1946 whose first head was Rahman a enjoyed enjoyed wide powers over the economy and was intended to represent the general interest as opposed to the parties an interest of the politicians but it was appointed and not elected mone believed that the Commission which he origin also the first head should also be appointed and all similarly to represent the general interests of Europe rather than the particular interests of the Member States indeed John mone and other founding fathers of European unity actually in visited the Commission as a provisional government of Europe and eventually the real government of Europe with the European Parliament as a lower house and the Council of Ministers representing the Member States as an upper house analogous to the German upper house the bundesrat which represents the various governments of the lender now such a conception might have been possible with six closely connected member states it is utterly implausible in a sprawling european union of twenty eight surely shortly to be twenty seven states in france the fourth republic system by which unelected officials enjoyed considerable power as a result of the weakness of the political executive was replaced by the go lists in the fifth republic by a system of strong government so while the european council composed of the governments of the Member States and the European Parliament are seen by many as remote from those who may represent the Commission is inherently remote the problem can be resolved as the French go lists have suggested by bringing the Commission under the control of the European Council which represents the Member States the council would then be clearly seen as the executive of the European Union while the Commission would become the Secretariat of the Council and would lose the power to initiate legislation such a reform will do much to undermine euro scepticism which thrives on the anatomy of an unaccountable body of official exercising legislative power something which the British have found particularly difficult to accept now in her brewed lecture of 2010 as significant in its way as American Thatcher's better known lecture in 1988 the German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized that there were two methods of European integration the first was the community method that of supranational ISM what might be called a Monet or Schumann or dolor method but that was not the only method of European integration there was also what she called the Union method of coordinated action by national governments Europe she insisted what to be built by both methods and not solely by the community method which had been too much emphasized that was a sanitary warning the community method has certainly continued with a gradual deepening of the European Union in many errors and are hardly noticed by the general public for example harmonization in the regulation of drugs and this has led to an an inter weaving and indeed interpenetration of the economic and even the social systems of the Member States and the difficulties of the brexit process show how how extraordinary difficult it is to disentangle a Member State after 46 years of membership but a delicate balance is needed between the two methods of supranational and the intergovernmental if that balance is upset and these super national methods in trenches upon national identities there will be popular resistance and the problems aroused by the if migration crisis show in graphic form how the European Union can run into serious difficulties if it goes beyond what is acceptable by seeming to challenge the national identity of the member states and the eurozone crisis and the migration crisis have been confronted primarily by the governments of the member states in the European Council with the Commission and the European Parliament playing a distinctly subordinate role but Moni Schumann the law conception of Europe which was responsible for the early successes of European unity is now coming to appear moribund indeed as long ago as 1990 when the law told the European Parliament at Strasbourg that he wanted Europe to become I quote a true Federation by the Millennium French president Francois Amitabha watching his speech on television burst out but that's ridiculous what's he up to no one in Europe will ever want that by playing the extremists he's going to wreck what's achievable there is no concrete intention in Europe to build a federal super state whatever that means except in rhetorical declarations it is indeed difficult to discover any Frenchman or French woman any in German or Italian who wishes to submerge his or her national identity in Europe instead they seek to pursue their own national interest constructively within an international cooperative European framework perhaps Britain should have done the same so the European Union will remain despite integration for the foreseeable future primarily an intergovernmental institution in which the member states dictate the pace of change it will remain what the goal called in Europe des ATAR but the EU is an intergovernmental organization with a difference since the member states learn to consider not only their own interests but the interests of your as a whole the continent has suffered in the past from the absence of such an internationalist perspective had it been present in 1914 had the states of Europe considered the interests of the continent as a whole rather than purely their own national interests war would probably have been avoided now in Britain the brexit has made much of the dangers of an overweening Europe and a federal super state but it's clear that most of the member states are no longer prepared to sacrifice much more of their sovereignty the European Union has become economically politically and culturally too diverse for a further drive towards ever closer Union to be feasible it will remain for the foreseeable future an association of states committed as a British Liberal Democrat former member of the european parliament and federalist andrew goth lamented it'll be committed to never closer union ironically from this point of view brexit Britain and gorlice France could be said to be in the vanguard of European development and not hindrances to it because they appreciated long before other countries what the sacrifice of sovereignty actually meant in practice Britain thanks to her long evolutionary history and the go lists as a result of French experiences during the Second World War when in the 1990s Prime Minister John Major together with other British leaders declared that Europe was not yet ready for a common currency his warnings were ignored and he was regarded as an obfuscator but perhaps the other member states would have done well to listen to his warnings that would certainly be the view of those young people in the Mediterranean member states who find themselves unemployed the result of the austerity policies Nessus neset ated by the common currency some of the other member states especially those which had recently emerged from dictatorships did not fully appreciate what the sacrifices sovereignty would mean in practice it was easy for them to say rhetorically that they were in favor of it but now we find that Germany when it comes to a transfer union that is the sharing of debts Greece when it comes to budgetary restrictions and the visit grad countries of Central Europe the Czech Republic Hungary Poland and Slovakia when it comes to accepting their new quota of Syrian migrants they find that their acceptance of shared sovereignty is subject to very strict limits the British together with legality in France have always been profoundly skeptical of the integrationist project and their skepticism has been borne out by reality it is the goal and not la moune who is the prophet of today's Europe and perhaps it was for this reason that the great French novelist Antrim algo who served him to Gold government said that the goal was a man of the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow if the European Union faces a democratic deficit it also faces a defence deficit it is the only one of the four major power groupings in the world the others being the United States Russia and China which is unable to defend itself but remains dependent upon an outside power the United States and this was not intended when the NATO organization was set up in February 1951 shortly after NATO was founded its first supreme commander of General Eisenhower a friend if in ten years all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States then this whole project NATO will have failed and he insisted that America and I quote cannot be a modern Rome guarding the frontiers with our legions but apparently at the signing ceremony of a NATO alliance the band played George Gershwin song it ain't necessarily so America currently contributes around 72% of NATO's defense spending Europe must take greater steps to defend itself that is demand note only a president chump it would almost certainly have also been the plea of Hillary Clinton had she been elected though she might have expressed her view in different tones because there's almost certainly a trend in American policy independent of who is elected to the White House to press Europe to bear more of the costs of her own defense in addition America is becoming more interested in the Asia Pacific area that is a development that preceded the election of Donald Trump and will almost certainly continue after his presidency there is therefore a strong case for NATO to become a two pillar alliance with a strengthened European pillar and the European Union has indeed been seeking to expand its role in the area of security and defence it seeks what it calls strategic autonomy though it is never very clear precisely what that means but in February 2015 Ursula Van der Leyen the German defense minister called for a European army and that call was echoed in March 2015 by jean-claude Juncker who said that a European army would convey to Russia that we are serious about defending the values of the European Union and of course pressure for greater cooperation has been given impetus by the fear that European defence and security may no longer be underpinned by the United States and that unconditional American support for Europe can no longer be taken for granted and perhaps this audience in particular may find it very striking that nearly 75 years after the end of the Second World War Europe remained so dependent upon the United States for its defense and security but in foreign and defense policy the EU is likely to move towards further intergovernmentalism rather than integration indeed proposals for a common European foreign and defence policy might prove dangerous since they could yield high sounding aspirations which come to mean little when tested against reality and that was the fate that befell the League of Nations between the wars it was full of fine phrases with regard to collective security and mutual solidarity but when tested by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 it fell to pieces a rules-based order clearly needs sanctions if it is be effective as a Hobbes said in Leviathan covenants without swords are about words and of no strength to secure a man at all and this was also a lesson which Americans drew from the failure of collective security in the 1930s Henry Stimson in whose honor these lectures are being held seems to have wanted to implement sanctions against Japan following her attack on Manchuria in 1931 but his President Herbert Hoover certainly did not and perhaps sanctions were not practical at that time but Stimson and his disciples certainly drew the lesson that something stronger was needed after 1945 if the post-war world was to enjoy genuine security now Britain which has the world's fifth largest defense budget and is with France a preeminent European contributor to NATO has always been skeptical of an integrated European defense policy and with good reason since she believes that such a policy if effective would undermine NATO it would at the very least involved a version of energy which would be better applied to strengthening NATO but the general British view is that is unlikely to prove effective the problem with an integrated European defense policy is that it could in theory require as the League of Nations did that a country would be committed to go to war against the wishes of its own government and Parliament while if military action required unanimity and currently decisions on defence and foreign policy do require unanimity in the European Union every one of 27 members would have a veto and that would be a guarantee that in the absence of American or British leadership nothing would be done moreover in the major foreign policy crises of the last two decades for example the action in Kosovo and the Iraq war Europe found itself divided the truth is that for effective defence the units to be defended must see their separate interests are subordinated to a common good this might prove to be the case in Europe at some future date but it is not there today and it cannot be created artificially by politicians or officials by simply providing a label of a European defence policy it requires a fundamental Allegiance and commitment to the unit that is to be defended and therefore there's a strong case for NATO to become a two pillar alliance with a strengthened European intergovernmental pillar soccer pillar is hardly possible without Britain one of two nuclear powers in Europe in 2014 it was agreed that all NATO members would seek to spend two percent of their GDP on defense in 2014 but Britain is at present one of just seven of NATO's 29 member states to meet that target she was a second larger spender on defense in the organization behind only the United States Germany not only has not reached a NATO target of two percent of defense spending she has not even reached her own target of 1.5% her defense spending being around 1.2 percent and all this casts doubt on the possibility of franco-german leadership of Europe here too we have to distinguish between rhetoric and reality in January of this year the two countries signed a treaty that Arkan seat of the Carolingian Emperor Charlemagne you this not only had provisions for greater economic cooperation but it provided the establishment of a franco-german Security Council with the Evangel aim of creating a European army and since the time of de Gaulle who would sign an earlier treaty with German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1963 the franco-german relationship has been based on what the French regard was a complementarity of interests France assumed it would have the political and defence leadership of Europe while Germany would provide the economic weight but radical move towards tighter integration on the part of France and Germany appear unlikely because they are at odds on the idea of a coordinated economic policy Germany being adamant that she cannot accept a European budget if that means a transfer Union by means of which she is required to subsidize what she regards as feckless Mediterranean States further and more important Germany for reasons connected with her history can only be a purveyor of soft power she cannot become a major power in a foreign policy and defense it had been objections on the part of the Bundestag the lower house of the and legislature which prevented a European response to the civil war in Syria the Trump administration has been pressing Germany to be more visible in the defense of Poland and it took a long time for Germany to support intervention in Mali in 2013 while eight NATO allies took part in intervention in Libya in 2011 Germany restricted herself to naval operations constitutional restrictions prevented her from participating in Bosnia in the 1990s and she's unwilling to take part in the French initiative for a euro Corps in Africa which has too many echoes or Rommels Afrika Corps in 1952 Harold Macmillan very prescient lee remarked the French are frightened of the Germans the Germans are frightened of themselves a senior British Foreign Office diplomat told me he'd said to his German counterpart brexit we'll make you more powerful than ever yes was the reply but even less willing and less able to use that power to the extent that Germany is a hegemonic power in the post brexit European Union she is a reluctant hegemon in 2011 tolis foreign minister Radek Sikorski said he feared german power less than he feared german inactivity a former British ambassador to Berlin has written it is not Germany which has set out to lead it as others who have chosen to follow and therefore it follows that for a genuine European defence policy the key lies not in Berlin but in London now if European defense must be intergovernmental and if Britain must play a part in it it cannot be within a European Union framework since Britain is leaving the European Union it must therefore be outside that framework and that too is what two-goal believed he believed if you're opposed to be a power in the world she had to develop defense arrangements outside the European Union that was the basis of his Fouche plan in 1962 and a suggestion in 1969 to the British ambassador Sir Christopher Soames that a four-power Directorate be established comprising Britain France Germany and Italy to be responsible for foreign policy and defense but such an approach was of course quite inconsistent with another branch of gaullism which was that Britain was not fundamentally a European power and it is inconsistent with the whole tradition of a fifth republic continued to some extent by president Makarov of marginalizing Britain as a power in Europe France sees brexit solely in financial and trade terms and not in geopolitical terms she sees it as an opportunity for French Business and Finance that strategy is self-defeating because the European Union is not only or even primarily an institution for economic development a series of linear processes that need to be protected but in part a means of strengthening Europe in the world and for that Britain is essential so France must appreciate that if a liberal Europe is to defend itself a revival of the ant ant is essential that ant ant had been abandoned when Britain refused to join the iron steel community and France had formed instead a partnership with Germany but Germany could never provide the political and diplomatic leadership that could have been given by Britain a renewal of the armed tant would not as is sometimes perceived in America be an attempt to push America out of Europe rather it would be strengthening and making more credible than NATO commitment now the European project is currently in some danger the European Parliament elections due to be held next month are likely to result in gains for the so called populist parties such as our own Nacional in France alternativa for Deutschland in Germany the league in Italy and the Sweden Democrats and if Britain takes part in these elections Nigel Ferraris new brexit party which polls today show is in the lead lead leads all the parties in Britain in the projection now these parties apart from Ferrara's party do not at present want their country to leave the European Union but of course they are against further integration but more important there were a liberal approach and in particular their intolerance towards the minorities lies directly contrary to the purposes for which the European Union was established president McConnell France has declared that the European Union faces an existential struggle with the protagonists of vote Viktor Orban prime minister of Hungary proudly calls in liberal democracy another name perhaps for populism all this makes brexit appear as part of a wider European crisis rather than a specifically British aberration president macro has become the spokesman of liberal Europe against populist Europe whose headquarters are in Budapest and the branch offices are in Warsaw Bucharest and now Rome but Britain too despite what I regard as superficial appearances Britain is also part of liberal Europe and Britain brought to Europe the economic liberalism of Margaret Thatcher whose credit so matter the impetus towards a single market belongs brexit will weaken therefore the forces of economic liberalism on the continent and as in the 1930s despite appearances Britain remains a stronghold of political liberalism there's a striking absence in Britain of neo-fascist or Islamophobic parties able to win parliamentary support there is no British equivalent to the from NASA now the alternativa for Deutschland or the Swedish Democrats Britain therefore is part of liberal Europe both in economic and political terms so breakfast is in danger of weakening liberal Europe the balance will be shifted in the direction of the populist and that is one reason why it's in the interests of both Britain and the European Union why Britain should retain strong ties with the continent after brexit and why France should modify her stature her strategy which began with the goal and has continued throughout much of the fifth republic of seeking to marginalize Britain in Europe the future of liberals in Europe depends in no small degree on solidarity between Britain and France after brexit sadly the British and French do not always recognize the importance of removing the current mess on towns and reviving the Anton's but the strength and stability of France and the success of President macron as a spokesman for liberal Europe hours matter British interest as a French one just as the success of post brexit Britain is a key French interest and the survival of a liberal Europe based on the rule of law is also an American interest as the whole history of the 20th century shows because if the European Union disintegrated it would in my view be a tragedy not just for Europe but also for Britain that is out of Europe and also for the world of the whole because as I said in my first lecture the European Union began not as an economic project nor as a federal project but a peace project and in 1949 or Bayer Schumann said it Strasburg we are carrying out a great experiment the fulfillment of the same recurrent dream that for ten centuries has revisited the peoples of Europe creating between them an organization putting an end to war and guaranteeing an eternal peace and the first step of course was to lock the economies of France and Germany together so the two countries should never go to war again that aim has long been achieved in 2018 France Timmerman's vice-president of the European Commission and a former Dutch foreign minister showed his 12-year old daughter the anti-tank defenses at the frontier with Germany where his grandparents had cheered the Allied bombing of often during the war he said this is part of the border and his daughter looked at him and said daddy what is a border and even if the European Union were now to break up of course France and Germany would remain securely at peace but a secure peace has not been achieved everywhere everywhere in Europe by any means in particular it has not been achieved in the Western Balkans where ancient hatreds threaten the stability of the region and when Yugoslavia broke up in 1991 at Booth's Luxembourg's Foreign Minister declared it is the hour of Europe it is not the hour of the Americans yet Europe appeared impotent to prevent the ethnic cleansing and Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo the worst crimes that Europe has seen since the Holocaust it was left in NATO and primarily Britain and America to intervene in Kosovo and intervention which led rapidly to the fall of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and the independence of Kosovo and the failure of Europe in the 1990s severely damaged its moral credibility in the Western Balkans most of all warring neighbors need a common home in that part of Europe membership of the European Union seemed the only way in which old conflicts and be overcome and this came to me with particular force and gave me a new perspective on the European Union when in 2006 I was asked to assist in the drafting of a constitution for Kosovo our meetings were held not in Kosovo itself since those members of the Slav minority in Kosovo who were prepared to participate insisted on meeting in Slav territory so we met in Skopje the capital of what was then Macedonia that is now called northern Macedonia I had never before seen such national hatreds on display the conflict in Kosovo made the quarrel in northern islands appear almost manageable and the conflict when Yugoslavia broke up offers a terrible warning of what could happen in the Europe that is once more broken up into national states indeed one important factor perhaps the prime factor preventing open warfare between Muslims and Slavs between Kosovo and Serbia was the desire of both countries to join the European Union and it was made clear to Serbia that her prospects of membership depended upon establishing a relationship with Kosovo in 2013 agreements were reached with the EU on such matters as bilateral trade cotta those participation in regional initiatives and the status of the Slav minority in Kosovo the enlargement strategy report of the European Commission declared the historic agreement reached by Serbia and Kosovo in April is further proof of the power of the European Union perspective and its role in healing histories deep scars the European Union has in the Balkans become a roof over the warring nationalities as the austro-hungarian Empire endeavored to be in the years before 1914 stability of the Balkans is of course is important to Britain as it is of the continent and it was after all in the Balkans that the great catastrophe of the 20th century began in 1914 dragging both Britain and the United States into war I return at the end of these lectures to Henry Stimson he was a leading architect of the post-war international order underpinned by American leadership he and those who followed him men such as Marshall and Addison were profoundly conscious of the fragility of that order they had seen it destroyed not just by one but by two ruinous world wars the same perception animated those European leaders who thought he united Europe after 1945 men such as Winston Churchill Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann international order had broken down in 1914 when the first world war called by George Kennan the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century broke out before that Europe had known almost a hundred years of peace broken only by local wars which had not involved confrontation between the great powers people had taken peace for granted under estimating the fragility of a balance of power which sustained it Europe could so some believed in 1914 easily survived a short war directed against a small recalcitrant state Serbia in the words of that great diplomatic historian AJP Taylor all thought that war could be fitted into the existing framework of civilization war was expected to interrupt the even tenor of civilian life only while it lasted the British Foreign Secretary Edward gray told the House of Commons if we are engaged in war we shall suffer but little more than we shall suffer if we stand aside when in 1914 the Austrian socialist victor Adler told Oscars Foreign Minister that war would provoke revolution in Russia and perhaps even in the Habsburg Empire itself the Foreign Minister Leopold from birth talk report retorted and who will lead this revolution perhaps mr. Bronstein sitting over there a central well mr. Bronstein turned out to be Leon Trotsky and he did indeed lead a revolution the chain of events which began with the murder of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo those to encompass all was the whole of the 20th century ending only with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 and from the ruins of the consonant the founding fathers began the process of European integration and it was as I have said constructed by a generation all too conscious of the dangers of a breakdown of international order but now as that generation which either entered the Second World War or which understands it as part of its historical memory has disappeared so also there has disappeared that sense of the fragility of international order which the immediate post-war generation understood so well now as in the years before 1914 there are siren voices saying that the international order would benefit from a shake-up and that any disturbance to it could be kept well under control that was the view of the Austrian leadership and the German General Staff in 1914 they were wrong then and their successes the leaders of the liberalism in Europe are equally wrong today in September 2014 christine lagarde the managing director of the International Monetary Fund told a lunch at the Financial Times that she was particularly concerned about what she sees as a structural disconnect between economic and political structures while the global economic system was becoming increasingly integrated the global political systems fragmenting and becoming more so because of the backlash against globalization Lagarde's interlocutor responded this makes for a dangerous cocktail since it creates a world that is interconnected in the sense that shocks can spread quickly but nobody's actually in charge and Lagarde nodded and her playful manner disappeared it is not clear which of these trends will win I am worried very worried I don't want my chill my grandchildren to grow up in a world which is disaggregated and fragmented and the aim of the European Union is to ensure we can prevent that world becoming one which is disaggregated and fragmented into conflicting national ethnic groups a world of competing national states in my first lecture I suggested that while liberals in the 19th century had welcomed nationalism their twentieth-century counterparts sort of transcended in a remarkable valedictory speech in the European Parliament in January 1995 just over a year before his death French president Francois meteor spoke of his childhood omits families torn apart by the first world war who were mourning their dead and nursing a hatred against their traditional enemies he spoke of his time in a German prison camp in the second world war war he declared was Europe's past but it is not only Europe's past it could also be Europe's future and it is up to us he said to be henceforth the gardens of peace of security and the future and he concluded by saying the Nacional is Uma c'est la guerre nationalism means war thank you [Applause] um Chancellor from here yes well that you imply vote into for brexit Scotland did not but the turnout in Scotland was far lower than the average it was the second lowest turnout in the country I think paradoxically brexit makes Scottish independence a less feasible proposition because an independent Scotland will be cut off from the rest of the UK internal market she would if she sought to rejoin the European Union which she would have to do under article 49 she would not get the benefit of the rebate which Margaret Thatcher negotiated in Britain in 1984 and she would have a difficult decision to make about her currency if she kept the pound her monetary policy would be decided in London by a foreign power as it were if she had her own currency that would require very high interest rates to keep money in Scotland but most likely if she did seek to join the European Union as a nationalist say they would they would be legally required to join the euro and that would mean their budgetary deficit would have to be 3% of GDP the current budgetary deficit is around 7% of GDP so it would make our austerity Chancellor look a bit like Santa Claus to who think of a policy needed to get it in order it's also important to note the National Park Scottish National Party has been itself riven by the brexit vote because one third of its voters supported brexit and for them brexit is more important than Scottish independence and it was found in the 2017 election but SNP voters who supported brexit were much more likely to defect to the other parties could brexit was more important than independence than SNP voters who were for Britain and a nationalist looms always in trouble when there's another cleavage cutting it down the middle on Northern Ireland Northern Ireland's in one sense and a more favorable position because it's been agreed perfectly sensibly but if Northern Ireland were to unite with the Republic she would not be required to join rejoin because she would become part of an existing member states as East Germany did with West Germany and I believe if there was a hot so called hard border that would encourage nationalists to support Irish unity but if there wasn't there's no evidence would the poll I quoted in May from May last year it may have changed since showed 21% support for Irish unity and even amongst Catholics of 46% and the favoured option for Catholics is power-sharing devolution of the kind set up by the devolution legislation but possibly Irish unity is more likely than Scottish independence so they most polls on the book the Irish don't like being called a mainland in Britain since the mid 80s have shown a majority in Britain that wishes Northern Ireland wouldn't joke the topic bring the water back here no I don't you see even if you take the brexit party for Rajas party although it may have racialist in it and the racialist sin possibly all the parties but I'm in mind you the strongest racialism is in the labour party in terms of anti-semitism got racism it is not a racialist party and when Farrar does lead review Kip he would not allow former members of a British national party to join his party and it it's put fall under the new UK which perhaps has left sorry so slightly convey is in this lament for weak parties but it's not doing as well as Ferrara's party which is in the lead and so I it's a party the the brexit party in the form of new Kip is a party which holds a a very legitimate proposition that Britain should leave the European Union and indeed is supported by some members of ethnic minorities and whatever you think of Boris Johnson and the right-wing leadership of the Tory party or right and potentially they are not racists or Islamophobes in the ideological sense or the front acinar Sweden Democrats or EF Dean's and so on so I don't think that there are sometimes called that Northern Quarter and although I don't share their view I think that's very unfair one leader a normally sensible Labour Party MP last week referred to Jacob Riis Morgan and someone else as Nazis which I thought was really into a dreadful stanza so I think the political culture remains unique extremely modern experiencing macro has raised that really for the first time in this form in previous forms a multi-speed Europe meant that every country reaches the same destination but at different speed speeds but macron raised in a different form I think for the first time namely that only certain countries should commit themselves to closing Union others could remain permanently in an outside tier and that he said possibly condescending they could give Britain the place in Europe in the outside tier well that perfectly perfectly fares probably what many British people would like but then it's true the core might you might on your view come to some defense agreement but I don't think Germany will ever would ever wish to take a leading part in defence arrangements whereas Britain obviously the nuclear power in a very large defence spenders so I don't think that would be plausible and III think proposals for European army are absurd and the rhetorical trimethylamine and ask you to elaborate a little further on the relations between the first half of the elective the second so much of the first part of your lecture was about the the Democratic deficit in the EU and project very powerful case you made and Tony Judd and others have made it that once it starts to run into crises this demographic chronic deficits going to surface and it has and you give chapter and verse of it and so you argue that it needs to be repaired on the other hand you know what we see is part of the reason the the elite project continues is is actually fear of the electrics as you said micron thinks that if the French had a referendum they might well vote to leave the is the SPD only rejoined the Beco in a grand coalition after seven years of seven months of failed negotiations with between her and the greens and free Democrats because the poll showed that by then if Germany had another election the alternative for Deutschland would do even better I was at a conference in Belgium not that long ago / actually Klaus offer was saying new people are getting screwed by the monetary arrangements in the EU you should leave and the powerful Belgian response from economists and lawyers was you know if Belgium left if Belgium left we would be printing money and out and democratic system might well collapse I mean not Belgium Portugal I should have said Portugal we would collapse and so they're terrified of their own electorate and so how do we on the one hand repair the Democratic deficit to keep Europe together which you think is so important but on the other hand in country after yes it's fair to say as as I mentioned the populist parties do not at present because they are responding as it were to popular opinion they do not advocate their country should leave the European Union that may change and some of them did in the past but I think the answer the answer to your question is that Europe has to get the balance right between what is a responsibility of national governments and what is not and on migration it's clear the attempt to have quotas of migrants has failed and on the euro that there's no appetite for what president macron wants which is in effect to transfer Union the European economic policy and in don't tusks words what Europe wants is not more Europe but better Europe in other words practical policies that make people appreciate the advantages of European Union one example is very clearly and what again this was in his fed say it was in macron Sorbonne speech the completion of a digital marking the completion of an energy market the completion of the marketing freedom of services I mean that is largely rhetorical if you try and set up as a solicitor or an architect in France you will find there is not freedom of professional services and that could do a great deal of good and did Marc Rutter the Dutch Prime Minister when asked what he thought of the freedom of the services in Europe he replied a very similar to Gandhi it would be a very good idea if we had it and the completion of that market would do a tremendous amount of good it's used by the French particularly from protectionist purposes long and itis hammocks and I think by the Germans I think the training period for hairdressers in Germany is I think three or four years so you can't easily set up ich or in Britain as a hairdresser in Germany and that that basic part of internal market hasn't been competing but create a digital marking from clean energy market which would lower prices for Europeans I think would make them see the practical advantages and I think Europe is constantly too much on high flowing rhetorical declarations on into further integration and constitutional measures which are remote from those people it and that's partly because the Commission is so remote from public opinion now I I didn't if I gave the impression I thought Britain should leave that was a mistaken impression to give I don't think Britain should leave I think Britain should remain what I've tried to point out throughout these lectures is that in a sense Britain had to make more adjustments than any other country to join because a constitutional system our electoral system had political structure all the resumption in in politics and economics are so different from the tonton but in my personal view which sadly was not shared by the majority of British people we should have tried to make those adjustments it was in our interest in in Europe's interest to stay but I can see why people chose to leave and I'm reminded in when I tried to put the case for Europe I'm reminded of something that happened to Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s when he was talking to a very enthusiastic University or perhaps a bit like this and one student was so enthused he said alright nineteen people will support you and he said that's not enough I need a majority that's what happened to the Europeans in my opinion on your second on your first point which which I'm answering second on the elite and the people absolutely right of course he states have been created by elites but almost all of them have moved in a personal period to accommodate themselves to a world in which deference to elites is much less and the most obvious example is France which established a system of direct democracy the one I think which has moved least towards moving towards of people in Germany for very obvious historical reasons and perhaps that is why you have the AFD in the movement away from the as it were consensual structure you've got the same in Austria which also established a highly consolation of structure those systems are under much strain because they haven't moved towards a revolution and Britain under Margaret Thatcher in particular and Tony Blair I think moved towards a much less deferential political structure now the European Union hasn't done that it remains in prisons perhaps understandably is difficult to change within the conceptual structure launched by Rome on a great man genius but a man of his age and not of the modern age I can't think because very very obviously if you leave an institution you don't get the benefits you had when in it and the hopes were larger benefits elsewhere I think I called in discussion my last lecture Singapore on tens that we become a global hub and free trade it's not as easy as some people suggest now the other countries lack the global ties of Britain so it'd be even more difficult for them but the some of the BRICS it is perhaps seem to imply you could as it will leave a tennis club because you think the subscriptions too high and you don't like the rules but still continue to play on the tennis courts on the same basis as when you were a member of the club now clearly you can't and if you say we'll do something quite different fine that's fine but that isn't what we are going to do because obviously European Union's our closest trading partners so you're bound to trade on less favorable terms and when you remember and that seems to be a matter of logic and some of the breaks it is implied that doesn't matter because we can have wonderful trade agreements with America Australia India like now I mean again I think the result might have been different as a referee been held after the election of President Trump which made it clear that once so ain't gonna be so easy to get trade agreements for the Americas perhaps we hoped so identicals much in and the problem of disentangling yourself from all that legislation is huge and what we've done in Britain is to incorporate the whole of it into our law so that Parliament can decide which it wishes to keep which it wishes to modify in which it wishes to repeal it's a huge and long job and say we have become very very entangled in into it so I don't think there's much really that would encourage other countries to leave no hit the line we say he said until we voted to me Britain's stance in negotiating with the Europeans was give us what we want or we will leave and that was the basis for Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron and others it's back to major concessions from Europe he said we've now put ourselves in the position of saying give us what we want or we will stay I think you later in fact gave an even more colorful rendition that they give us what we want or we'll shoot ourselves in the actions i but as as he said you do need a majority not just the right mind is rather unfortunate that they didn't pay more attention to use in what we are doing so now I think I really wanted [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Yale University

Views: 37,242

Keywords: Yale, brexit, europe, european union, uk, eu, united kingdom, england, ireland, northern ireland, vernon bogdanor, theresa may, brexit delay, macmillan center, yale, yale university, wales, scotland, parliament, jeremy corbyn, brexit deal, withdrawl agreement, transition period, no-deal, no-deal brexit, no deal

Id: UHGDe29nXkQ

Length: 76min 56sec (4616 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019