Pax Europaea promise may not be kept
GLOBALISATION AND THE EU AS WE KNOW IT SEEM TO BE UNDER THREAT, AND THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING
SUDDENLY THERE IS FEAR, AGAIN, THAT EUROPE WILL RETURN TO ITS OLD WAYS
Sometime later this week, we might know whether or when Britain will leave the EU. Without the slightest pretence of bad faith, or indeed of cognitive malfunction (and all things considered), this may be the beginning of the end of the EU, and probably of globalisation.
The EU and globalisation represent two of my most idealistic, and unapologetically utopian, beliefs. The first is that through co-operation, exchange, the creation of transnational institutions and growing republicanism, countries can come together and form pacific relationships for the common good. The EU has always represented that, at least in my mind.
The second belief is that globalisation — not the global finance-driven globalisation that started in the 1980s — represents the cosmopolitanism and the coming together of people, regardless of their identities or multiplicity of affiliations, to promote and protect the common good. Both the EU and globalisation as we have come to know it seem to be under threat, and this is not a good thing. I will focus on the EU in today’s column, and leave globalisation for another time.
I remember the exact moment I “fell in love” with the idea of the EU. In September 1993 I had just attended a lecture on macroeconomics by Megnad Desai, and popped my head into a lecture hall on the way to The George IV (pub). I listened to the first few minutes of a lecture on the impact of war on 20th-century consciousness. I stayed for the rest of the lecture, and so began my interest in war, strategy and intelligence.
The first book I read that brought together my work in political economy and war, was John Maynard Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Another, which I read in a different context, was The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919 — 1939, by Edward Hallet Carr. Both books were about the mistakes made at Versailles — the 1919 post-World War 1 peace settlement — and its consequences, and presented some of the reasons why the world, specifically Europe, returned to war in 1939. This led many people to conclude that the developed countries’ war, which started in 1914, ended only in 1945. I share that belief.
This brings me back to why I thought, and still think, that the EU is important. It has to do with war. It would not be inappropriate in a business newspaper to use “emotive” terms such as slaughter, butchery and cruelty, and remind ourselves of what was probably the greatest injustice of the 20th century. The Holocaust, in which at least 6million Jews were killed along with tens of thousands of Romanis, Poles, people with disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Afro-Germans, stands out as one of the greatest evils of the past 100 years.
During the developed countries’ war, about 10-million personnel were killed, there were 7-million civilian deaths, 21-million wounded and 7.7million people missing or imprisoned. Estimated deaths during WorldWar 2 range from 50-million to 80-million. It is believed that 38-million to 55million civilians were killed, including 13-million to 20million from war-related disease and famine. That was in the 20th century.
Let us cast our gaze to the previous century. Much as the Treaty of Versailles (1919) was an attempt to secure some sort of peace in Europe, the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) had pretty much the same objectives. Nevertheless, there were about 50 wars in Europe in the 19th century, starting with the Napoleonic Wars in 1803 and ending with the GrecoTurkish war in 1897.
At the end of World War 2, the Europeans, much under the guidance of Jean Monnet, a French political economist, began to create what would become the EU. They created a polity based in part on the ideals of Immanuel Kant and of Adam Smith. They created transnational institutions, encouraged the exchange of goods and services, and secured the primacy of democratic domestic (republican) governance.
The EU would become one of the most peaceful, stable and prosperous regions in the world, until the conflict from Yugoslavia collapsing in the early 1990s. The 2008 global crisis shook the financial foundations of the EU — mainly because of inadequate financial institutions — and in the last 10 years we have seen an increase in nationalism, claims of sovereignty, and far-right movements from Britain to Hungary.
Suddenly there is fear, again, that Europe will return to its old ways. I certainly hope not.
● Lagardien, a visiting professor at the Wits University School of Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank, as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.