Beautiful, refined and confident women are often alone – not for lack of
suitors, but because their standards are exacting. Often being on their own is
more appealing than descending to the less refined. Europe has curated the most
beautiful, refined way of living humanity has ever known. At the heart of its
collective psyche, Europe wants to be left alone. It wants the aggregation of
its societies that history and culture has banded together over the past 500
years to remain within a walled garden.
اضافة اعلان
But there is a storm gathering above the garden. The
rules of admittance to the garden as well as the code of behavior inside it
over the past three decades, since the fall of the former Soviet Union and the EU’s rise and expansion, have been based on a certain view of
socio-politics anchored in political liberalism.
This is no longer the case today, when the problem
is that the return of classic religiosity and traditional values, the rise of a
blatant nativism that sees danger and degradation in what is alien, the anger
against notions imposed from the center of the EU in Brussels, and the
increased willingness to challenge all of these have appeared not only in
countries that were admitted to the EU over the past three decades, but have
also emerged strongly and assertively in countries that designed, championed
and managed the EU’s rise and expansion.
Outside the garden, troubles abound.
First, in the eastern neighborhood of the EU there
are aspirants wanting to enter the garden. Europe wants some of them to do so
because within the deep recesses of the European psyche there are links that
connect the center and the west of Europe with that east. At the core of the
European project almost from its beginning in the 1950s there has been an
aspiration to bring within the garden the whole of continental Europe that had
fallen under the Soviet Union.
But as discussed in a previous article in this
series, Russia, resurgent and assertive, and yet anxious about the future, sees
any expansion of the West (including of the EU) as an encroachment on its
historic sphere of influence. The result is that Europe’s aspiration clashes
with Russia’s national interest, and this is not a simple problem that can be
dismissed lightly.
In the southern neighborhood of the EU, there are
potential migrants who want to enter the garden. But as European nativism
rises, many see these southerners as “the other”, people who throughout history
have been viewed with caution, often with hatred, and over the past two
centuries, with condescension.
Some true heroes of European liberalism, such as
former German chancellor Angela Merkel, have been willing to open the gates of
the garden narrowly because in their view, genuine suffering ought to be
relieved, and not just by financial donations and technical expertise so that
the potential migrants remain on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
But such true heroes are rare, and migration is
indeed widely feared throughout the whole of Europe. Yet, the foundations of
that fear stem from apprehensions that go way beyond migration. Europe’s true
fear is of what the future might bring, because that future presents Europe
with two serious challenges that are unprecedented in its history.
The first challenge is that Europe is compelled to side
with the US in its confrontation with China, yet sustaining Europe’s wealth
calls for healthy relationships with China and with countries in East Asia that
soon will fall into China’s sphere of influence.
The US is not compelling Europe. The nature of the
EU, a liberal political entity, makes Europe’s choice in the confrontation all
but determined. In addition, China is increasingly dealing with the world
through its historic view of how its culture differs from that of others.
Almost certainly this will prove the late US
political scientist Samuel Huntington correct. A notable feature of the
US-China confrontation will, at least for a period, be the “clash of
civilizations” that Huntington predicted. In this clash, Europe will naturally
gravitate to its US partner.
However, doing so will entail serious economic costs
– at a time when ageing and often decadent Europe is seeing its competitiveness
dwindle vis-à-vis the industrial tigers in Asia. The fear here is that while
the US and China are fighting over the world, Europe will pay a big price in
terms of its wealth, comfort, and gradually also its way of life.
The second challenge facing Europe is reduced
relevance. Western Europe spent the Cold War as a secondary player to the US
against the Soviet Union, but Europe was still the primary theatre of that
strategic confrontation, and this gave its choices paramount importance to both
the US and the Soviet Union. Today, Europe is neither the most important
strategic theatre – East Asia is – nor the secondary player to the US –
Britain, Australia, Japan and India are.
The result is that Europe is attached to the US
camp, but relegated to a much lesser role than it had in the Cold War.
Some European thinkers believe that there is a
single solution to both issues, the storms within and the challenges without.
This solution is that Europe must achieve strategic independence, which,
although no one has defined it concretely, can be discerned as some sort of
desire to remain in the Western camp, while maintaining considerable distance
from the US.
Promoters of European strategic independence believe
that it is a grand enough aspiration to unite Europeans behind the EU and give
momentum to the ideals upon which the European project was constructed over the
past 60 years. It will weaken the forces that challenge the EU and reject its
principles from within, such as the nativists, they say. In this way of
thinking, strategic independence would allow Europe to back Western ideals
against Russian assertiveness and Chinese expansionism without incurring major
economic costs and without losing agency.
However, in reality, such strategic independence is
a myth. Europe lacks the most compelling form of power-projection, namely
military. This has been clear for over two decades, but it became glaring after
the UK’s decision to leave the EU. It imposes close coordination with the US on
Europe, especially, but not only, when it comes to standing up to Russia in the
east.
In addition, the US-China confrontation will soon
impose binary decisions on different players. Being in one camp will dictate
certain choices. And as Europe’s place in the Western (US) camp is a given, so
will be many of its future choices.
Moreover, there is also a cultural challenge to
Europe’s strategic independence. Unlike in the US, Europe’s appetite for wars
and strategic confrontations is limited – natural for a collection of societies
that have achieved an epitome of refinement and cultural advancement. Living in
rich and beautiful gardens does not produce the fiercest fighters.
All of this leaves Europe in a unique position that
is different from that of all the other actors, namely the US, China, Japan,
India, and Russia. Unlike these, Europe has no strategic primacy to defend, no
rise to cement, and no spheres of influence to create. It merely wants to be as
it is: rich, refined and removed from the problems of others. It wants to
attend to the weeds that have been spreading in the garden.
But the problems of Europe’s neighborhoods, as well
as the inevitable place it will, willingly or not, assume in the nascent
US-China confrontation, will bring wars and challenges to its doorstep. The
beautiful, refined lady has no choice but to gather her will, summon her
resources and stand up to survey the horizon, for, dangers are close.
Soon Europe’s south-eastern neighborhood – the
Middle East – will demand much more attention, for there are several actors
there that are attempting to overhaul its strategic landscape almost beyond
recognition.
The
writer is an Egyptian author, commentator, TV presenter and documentary
producer who specializes in regional politics and political economy affairs.
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