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Last
Friday afternoon, an event occurred which proves that the international
system has indeed changed radically. It was not so much President
Bush happily enlisting into his coalition for freedom those well-known
democrats, Presidents Zhiang Zemin of China and Vladimir Putin
of Russia. It was instead the fact that the EU summit in Ghent
was preceded by a mini-summit between the British Prime Minister,
the French President and the German Chancellor. As the discussions
began, Tony Blair must have realised that he had finally bagged
the prize which has eluded the British foreign policy establishment
for fifty years – the replacement of the Franco-German couple
with a Franco-German-British ménage à trois.
To
put it bluntly, Mr. Blair has bombed his way to the negotiating
table. Knowing that Britain's "influence" in Europe
cannot come through the euro, his government has instead banked
on the principle that political power grows out of the barrel
of a gun. In the 1999 Nato attacks on Yugoslavia as in the present
Anglo-American attacks on Afghanistan, Bombardier Blair's demon
eyes have flashed as the British armed forces have stood shoulder
to shoulder with the Americans. This has earned him not only a
standing ovation in the US Congress and a solid reputation in
the Middle East as an American envoy; it has also enabled him
to remold the EU's traditional pattern of husbandry around himself.
Mr. Blair has achieved this by taking to heart the one lesson
upon which solid pro-European opinion has always insisted: that
there is no contradiction between European integration and the
Atlantic alliance. As American foreign policy itself becomes increasingly
globalist (the memories of the Bush administration's unilateralist
attitude towards Kyoto and Durban having now been decisively buried
in the rubble of the World Trade Centre) there is now precious
little difference, from the point of view of free nationhood,
between the supranationalism of the Atlantic community and that
of its European counterpart. Just as Bush Senior was the first
to proclaim the New World Order in 1990, so his son and heir spelled
out the new rules very clearly last month: "Either you are
with America or you are with the terrorists."
If British Conservatives have been in denial about American support
for European integration for decades, the denial has only become
more raucous as the thing itself grows more obvious. Tories persist
in thinking that there is some kind of choice between America
and Europe. However, ever since the American Senate voted in March
1947 on the motion "That this House supports the creation
of the United States of Europe" – indeed, ultimately
ever since Jean Monnet went to work in Washington DC in 1940 –
US foreign policy giants from John Foster Dulles to Zbigniew Brzezinski
have worked tirelessly for European union, cajoling the Europeans,
overtly and covertly, into some form of American-style federation.
American plans for the political and military integration of the
European continent through NATO and the EU are now so interlinked
that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe rightly speak
of "Euro-Atlantic structures." Or, as French sovereignists
have put it for years, the United States of Europe is the Europe
of the United States.
Yet
even though the continuity between the new NATO and the EU is
now so seamless that a scion of the New Left like Javier Solana
can flit effortlessly between the two Brussels institutions, the
British Tories remain convinced that European integration is a
threat to the Atlantic alliance and that a pro-American stance
will somehow save them from it. The reality is the opposite. It
is precisely because he is so exceedingly pro-American that Mr.
Blair has forced the Europeans to take Britain seriously. Moreover,
this is not just a matter of force majeure. It is largely
because our EU partners themselves are all fully paid-up supporters
of the pax Americana – another fact the Conservatives
seem unwilling to take on board.
While
British Eurosceptics might agree that Germany prospers well as
America's principal continental ally – they might even grudgingly
recall that Germany was reunited, in the teeth of British and
French opposition, only on American insistence – they remain
convinced that the French are somehow working towards the destruction
of NATO. This view owes more to memories from 30 years ago than
to any observation of contemporary reality. France has happily
assisted in every American war since the Gulf War in 1991; she,
like everyone else, insists that the euro army – which NATO itself
has called for repeatedly – will act only when the Americans
choose not to act; and she is a completely integrated part of
the US/NATO protectorates up and down the Balkans. Why, French
army officers in Bosnia now even give their press conferences
in English. Far from European politicians clamouring to be independent
from the United States, the principal sound coming out of European
chancelleries in recent days has been that of French, German and
Italian frustration at not being allowed to biff the Taliban as
well.
It
should be obvious why this is so. Whenever two or three heads
of government are gathered together, they naturally form a cartel.
Whether at a meeting of the European Council or at any other international
meeting, their professional and personal self-interest as the
chief executives of large governmental apparatuses unites them
more deeply than any national priorities which may divide them.
By transmogrifying themselves into "the international community"
in virtue of the mere fact of being there, national politicians
on the international stage can appear to rise, by a mysterious
process of political levitation, into a superior realm out of
the reach of ordinary voters. Such meeting are called summits,
after all. From their lofty vantage point, leaders can safely
operate their wizardry of sending down difficult political questions
into the hands of "independent" institutions which they
in fact control, like the European Commission, the European Central
Bank, NATO, the IMF or the WTO. International government, in short,
is bad for democracy – and that is why all governments like it.
In
view of all this, the Conservative notion of opposition to the
government's foreign policy is somewhat novel. Whenever Labour
bombs anyone, the Tories just say the government is not bombing
enough. And whether it is Sudan, Yugoslavia, Iraq or Afghanistan,
the party that claims to stand for national sovereignty in fact
stands for the unconditional alignment of British foreign policy
with that of Washington. This principle is now totally embedded
in the Tory psyche, even though it stands in direct contradiction
to Lord Palmerston's wise injunction against "eternal allies".
British Conservative foreign policy is therefore as ideologically
incoherent as it is politically insane: there is very considerable
public unease about this present war, as the astonishingly large
peace demonstrations have shown, and it is the duty of the opposition
to articulate the opposite point of view from that of the government.
As Disraeli used to say, "Trust the people!"
Ultimately,
the explanation for the Tories' behaviour is probably psychological.
Annihilated in two successive elections, Conservatives console
themselves for their loss by privately flattering themselves that
Labour is simply implementing their own policies. Foreign policy
offers the same kind of vicarious fantasy. It often seems as if
Britain is making up for the loss of world status simply by standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with the new imperial power, even if this
means complementing our de jure loss of national freedom
in the EU with a de facto abandonment of it in the Atlantic
alliance. One might expect as much from a megalomaniac New World
Order groupie like Head Prefect Blair. But how sad that the Conservatives,
of all people, should connive in purchasing such transient vainglory
by tossing aside two quintessentially traditional British qualities
– a sturdy sense of independence and an instinctive sympathy
for the underdog.
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