The Geopolitics of the European Union Bilderberg Conference (Stresa, 3-6 July 2004) On 1 May 2004 the European

Union took in ten new member states, eight of them Central-European. It was an event of geo-political importance. For the first time in all its history almost all Europe was united in one area of peace, stability and growing prosperity. No more will the New World be called in to redress the balance of the Old, at the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. And there is more to come: Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia and the other successor states of Yugoslavia. Who lets in Turkey will have difficulty refusing the Ukraine. Ministers who at home say Never the Ukraine, sing a different tune when they visit Kiev. So we are looking at a European Union that may well in fifteen or twenty years time consist of close to forty member states and exclude mainly Russia. The European Union will export stability. It will of course also import some instability but that is likely to be smothered in the interminable negotiations that make up our work in Brussels. In addition the EU is now setting afoot a programme of help for our Near Abroad, to use a Russian term. It will concern the countries of North Africa and the Near-East. It will consist of assistance predicated upon good governance and the respect of human rights. These actions, plans and programmes are, again, of geo-political importance. The EU is a pole of unparalleled political, economic and cultural attraction for the world around it. It will influence that world by example and by conditionality.
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But it will not be a superstate in common political parlance or, more accurately, it will not become a federation after the German, Canadian or American model. In a federal Europe France and the UK would occupy the same position as Bavaria in Germany or Catalonia in Spain. That will not happen. The conditions that obtained at the time of the American war of independence simply are not present in Europe. And it is time this were admitted in public. Europe could do with some plain speaking. Economically, the European Union is a world power. It is now the largest market in the world with 450 million consumers. True, together the ten acceding countries amount economically to no more than the Dutch economy. But their economic growth is about twice what it is in the Old Europe. Soon the magic of compound growth will make itself felt. Of course there are competitors. There always are. I well remember the Japandebate of the eighties. Japan was said to employ a scorched-earth-strategy. Where their exports had been, directed with laser-like precision, nothing European would grow again. This debate has died a quiet death. Now it is China that makes people quiver. Delocalisation is now the buzz word. Such fears are understandable in a time of low growth and high unemployment. But to call for national champions, to preach economic intervention by the state, to blame Central European countries for their low rates of taxation is not only pointless: these proposals, if realized, would lessen competitiveness and thus growth. Old Europe is too much beset by corporatism, by encrusted economic habits, by the inflexibility of its labour markets, by yesteryears outworn thinking
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much more now than New Europe. The eight new Central European member states have been through fifteen years of continuous economic transformation. They will be much more inclined to adapt to new realities than West-Europeans. In the big trade-off between solidarity and motivation the new Europeans are more likely to stress motivation than those in the West. So by and large Europeans had better pull up their socks if they want to remain an economic world power. This is important for most foreign relations of the EU are economic in nature. There our aim is and must remain a rules-based-system. Such a system, WTO and all, is of geo-political importance. And we must work the system so as to increase free trade. The European Commission has proposed abolishing all support for the export of agricultural commodities and that is an excellent thing. It deserves emulation. Economically, the European Union is a world power. Politically, it is not. That is not only because a common foreign policy has so far eluded us, a consensus among 15 or 25 member states several with a neutralist or pacifist tradition being conspicuously difficult to achieve. It is also because our military strength seems inadequate. But let us look more closely at threats and means. It is now unlikely that a major power will use nuclear weapons against the European Union. That is at the highest lever of the spectrum of violence. There are also the British and French deterrents, which should be sufficient to ward off any rogue state; There is of course the possibility of a terrorist threat by nuclear means but that would require a different response.

Lower down the scale of violence is a large scale conventional war. Massive tank battles on the North-European plains are not likely to recur in the near to middle-term future, if ever. The Red Army is now a basket case. Where else might they occur? The major flash points are now in Asia. Any conflagration there would not be life-threatening to the European Union.. What about the Middle East? The Iraqi army was no match for the American one. I dare say it would not have been one for a European force, either, in particular because of Europes clear superiority in the air. The EU-25 collectively spends 180 billion a year on defence. That makes the EU the biggest military spender after the United States. All in all it does not look likely that the Europeans would have to fight a major conventional war, either singly or collectively. And if that unlikely event were to occur, the Europeans would most probably fight alongside the Americans. No, the challenges will be different. They will consist of nasty, messy, dangerous, small scale outbursts of violence in failing states in Africa or the Middle East. Here the European Union may have a comparative advantage because of its tradition of imperial policing and its experience in the Congo, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and other places. The capacities needed to do this dangerous and bloody work are different from those necessary for a large-scale conventional war. Here the emphasis should be on the single man and his weapon, highly trained, very mobile and with the latest electronic gear. Does this mean less expenditure? No, it does not. Money is needed to acquire large range transport aircraft, precision guided munitions, unmanned
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reconnaissance aircraft. In February 2004 the UK, France and Germany decided to have nine battle groups, each of 1500 men, deployable within two weeks. By 2010 Germany is planning to have an intervention force of 35.000 men and a stabilisation force for peace-keeping of 70.000 men. All these things will cost lots of money. The EU should not try to emulate the United States but rather to complement it in the area of what is called low intensity warfare but also by using soft power, where again it has a comparative advantage. Soft power is used to get others to do what you want without resorting to violence. After World War II the US used soft power to draw others into a system of alliances that has lasted for almost sixty years. More recently NGOs have forced through a treaty outlawing anti-personnel mines in spite of opposition in the American Congress. Mr. Joseph Nye has written much about this and on the whole I find him persuasive. Unfortunately, because of its reckless policy in Iraq the United States has become so unpopular that being pro-American is a kiss of death in domestic politics. That is the reverse of soft power. To sum up. The geo-politics of the European Union consist of the export of stability: by its enlargement, its good-neighbourly policy towards the countries that surround it, by its insistence upon a rules-based-system in international economic relations and by its willingness to engage in peace-enforcing and peace-keeping missions. Frits Bolkestein, July 2004 1378 words
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