Centrepiece
Europe awake
Colin Welch
rian Crozier, in an article in the I) current Encounter I mentioned last week, cites scornfully two past Euro- absurdities in foreign affairs: the Venice summit of 1980, with its Palestine initiative and implicit recognition of the PLO; and the Afghanistan initiative, which was de- signed to secure a Russian withdrawal, which earned a snub and which Mr Crozier thought at first 'an elaborate public school joke'. He attributes the absurdity of these initiatives to the fact that Europe doesn't exist. 'Any pretence that there is or can be a "European" foreign policy is therefore . . . a delusion.' Attempts to produce common policies are doomed to failure 'by the unreality of the setting in which they (are) conceived.' Without disagreeing, I would say rather that it is through such absurdities, as also through wealth redis- tribution, that Europe struggles to create and inflate herself.
She thus does one thing she should not do at all, strives feebly to do another which she can't do yet, while neglecting that internal liberalisation which is the surest foundation of her existence. She is like a deformed child, with some organs monstrously over-developed, others piti- fully weak, her circulation obstructed, who tries to compete in events she is not fit for.
I don't deny that Europe has common interests and needs a foreign policy to defend them. But first, as Mr Crozier says, she must exist. 'I have a foreign policy, therefore I am' is cart before horse. A foreign policy requires someone regularly in charge of it; he must be answerable to some representative body in which the common interests are defined by debate, in which how best to safeguard them is regularly discussed, in which a European public opinion on these matters can grow, develop by dialetic. A foreign policy can- not be sustained by errand boys like Lord Carrington hastily despatched in obedience to the ill-considered whims of occasional summits. Policies made by committees are notoriously inept. Sillier still are policies devised by committees which meet spas- modically, with much publicity, with mem- bers struggling for the limelight, with consequent posturings and windily pom- pous communiqués.
Above all, a foreign policy demands defence forces adequate to give it effect. Who will care a damn what Europe's more widely heard 'voice' says if she lacks the force to back it up and defend herself? Nato of course blinds us to this reality. But who is still so deaf as not to hear influential American voices, Irving Kristol's among them, advocating an American withdrawal which will leave Europe on her own? And are not ordinary Americans becoming more and more audibly sick of thanklessly carrying our burdens? Are not American forces visibly deteriorating?
The suspicious reader will already dis- cern looming behind all this the dread word 'federation', which produces night- mares not only in anti-Europeans but among many who think themselves 'pro' and even want a concerted foreign policy. But still less than a foreign policy can defence forces be left hanging in a constitu- tional void, created, organised and kept up to the mark by no one in particular, answerable to no one in particular. A foreign policy demands defence forces; defence forces demand some measure of federation. It is sentimental to yearn for the first without the other two, or the first two without the third. They are as logically linked as menu, meal and bill.
And what is so dreadful about federation anyway? Its enemies see it as an all- powerful djinn which, once released from its bottle, will grow irresistibly; a mon- strous engine of oppression which, once in existence, will rob all those subject to it of all individuality, of all they hold dear, and will somehow constrain them into courses which none of them singly or severally would choose to pursue. It would have a life of its own, lived at the expense of all its component parts. No anti-federalist can see how it is possible to love England, or Great Britain, and Europe too. The two allegiances are for them incompatible. They fancy that a Euro-federation must inevitably commit all the follies Europe commits now, but on a grander scale. And of course, operating in new fields, it could and would commit vast follies as yet undreamed of. (Incidentally, anti- Europeans are very unfair in hailing every Euro-folly as an unanswerable reason why we should quit Europe. Our own govern- ment at Westminster commits follies in plenty, under Labour little else. But these are not widely viewed as grounds for breaking up the United Kingdom — not consciously even by Scottish or Welsh nationalists, who normally seek the free- dom to commit like and bigger follies of their own. Labour's nationalism is similar.) Anti-federalists of course include many, in this country perhaps a majority, of those who are or think themselves pro-Europe. Their Euro-allegiance is strictly condition- al, founded on the conviction that federa- tion should and will never come, and on the indefinite survival of those national vetos which are the principal safeguard against it. Many others, favourable to federation or not fanatically opposed to it, think it silly, unrealistic, far-fetched to talk about it ('it's not on'), likely to frighten the horses. Perhaps they are right, or seem so for the time being, as many like Chamber- lain, now thought wrong, seemed right in their day. But it is certainly silly, unrealis- tic and far-fetched to babble about a foreign policy without discussing the in- stitutions needed to sustain one.
What anti-federalists quite overlook, what a study of the American founding fathers might reassure them about, is the extent to which a federation may be made, by prudent constitution-making, extremely respectful of the customs, identities, in- stitutions and rights of the constituent states and their individual citizens. The power to operate effectively abroad, and to raise the revenues necessary to this end, may be conceded while others, already improperly exercised by the existing Euro- pean constitutional monstrosity, may be specifically withdrawn. Economic follies can be constitutionally prevented. You can have a foreign policy without forcing Bri- tons to drive on the right, or preventing Manxmen from whacking criminals or giv- ing away food to our enemies. A federa- tion, equipped with not only accelerator but steering, good brakes and an emergency cord, could be less oppressive than the existing community, more accept- able to Mr Nick Budgen, whose advice on how to construct it, did he consent to give any, would be specially valuable.
Among the necessary checks and ba- lances would be more powers for the European Parliament. What, to that talk- ing shop, to that pack of fools? Well, yes. But it too would have to be checked and balanced, its powers narrowly defined and limited, more of them negative than posi- tive, and all subject to an aged second chamber and constitutional judiciary. Not all Euro-MPs, moreover, are fools now. But new powers would attract a better class of person, of a sort which is now unwilling to waste time in chasing shadows or bombi- nating in vacuo. Soon we would find; d.v., the great interests and passions of Europe represented at Strasbourg, the parties re- arranging themselves across national fron- tiers and forming new coherent entities to defend or amend or attack the status quo, European issues debated as never before.
However sketchily, I try to picture a Europe which could exist and would pro- vide a comfortable home and sure fortress even for those who, understandably, don't yet like or trust it. To create such a Europe will take not only the enthusiasm of the founding fathers but also their prudence, caution, sagacity, worldly wisdom and mis- trust of human nature — all qualities, alas, more common in their day than ours. It may also take, again alas, some grave external development or threat, which is the normal mother alike of disaster and of constructive statecraft. Europe must wake up. We can only pray that the crash which wakes her is not fatal.
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