POLITICS
Tiptoeing over the threshold of the Common European Home
NOEL MALCOLM
Until Monday evening of this week, Her Majesty's Government had a policy on European defence. It was slightly compli- cated, but it made sense. The distinction it rested on was between 'defence' and `security': as Mr Hurd explained to the House of Commons on 6 December last year, security included such matters as arms exports and 'conflict prevention cen- tres', while defence involved the actual deployment of forces and weapons. He said he was willing to see the development of a common EEC security policy, as part of a common EEC foreign policy, but that defence matters could not and should not be handled by the EEC. By all means build up the Western European Union (the group of nine of the European members of Nato, the so-called 'European pillar' of the Atlantic alliance) as a body with a specifi- cally European defence policy; but 'I do not think that the Twelve are the right instrument for that'.
Why not? One answer is supplied in the Defence White Paper which was published by Mr Tom King less than two weeks ago: Building totally distinct Western European defence entities, involving the eventual absorption of the WEU by the Twelve, would be disruptive of Nato. It would result in at least two classes of Nato European state and erode the principle of equal security for all. It would erode the concept of Nato as a full partnership in which European and North America countries participated on the same basis. To follow this route would be to invite confusion.
But even that answer is somewhat mealy- mouthed. 'Disruptive' and 'erode' are euphemisms there; in the long run, what they really mean is 'destructive' and 'des- troy'. A unitary European defence policy run by a united Europe — a state regarding itself as at least the political equal of the United States of America — would sooner or later mean the end of Nato.
Already, the assumption in Brussels (I mean at the EEC Commission, not down the road at Nato headquarters) is that `European defence is a European matter, to be dealt with by Europeans'. It sounds like a self-evident truth, until you remem- ber that 'Europe' is not and never will be a nuclear superpower, unlike the Soviet Un- ion (which just happens to be the power against which a European defence policy is meant to defend us). Nevertheless, Article 3 of the Luxembourg draft treaty — the draft for the new EEC treaty in December — calls for a review process to begin in five years' time, 'with a view to the eventual implementation of a common defence poli- cy'. The EEC must have a defence policy rather for the same reason that every tin-pot third world country must have a national airline: not because there is any real advantage to be had from it, but just because it is regarded as one of the outward and visible signs of statehood.
For several months now, M. Delors has been touting the idea of putting into the new treaty a mutual protection clause (a, promise by each EEC country to come to the aid of the others if they were attacked), which would be the first step towards turning the EEC into a defence organisa- tion. The American government, seeing the long-term implications of this for Nato, made public its unhappiness with the idea, and earned this memorable reproof from M. Delors on 2 July: 'We do not interfere in American affairs; we hope they will have enough respect not to interfere in ours'. Which, being translated out of man- darinese means, 'Yankees, go home'. That the most senior representative of the EEC should regard the American defence of Europe over the last 45 years as interfer- ence in European affairs would be shame- ful were it not comical — and were it not also for the fact that he is not a representa- tive at all, but merely a French socialist politician on the make.
If I had been writing this article last week, I should confidently have said that the United Kingdom was the strongest bulwark in the EEC against that sort of nonsense. Now I am not so sure. On Monday evening a small but significant crack appeared in that bulwark, when Mr Hurd accepted at a meeting of EEC foreign ministers that Britain might agree in principle to the sending of a European military force to Yugoslavia. Of course it would only be a 'peace-keeping' force, of course it would go there only if invited by the Yugoslav government, and of course it would be organised through the WEU, because the EEC has no military structure of its own (yet). But it would be an instrument of EEC policy, and you can bet your last ecu that its jeeps and armoured cars would be decked out with little dark- blue-and-gold-star flags. Symbolism and rhetoric matter more than anything else here. The point of the exercise is not to implement a policy on Yugoslavia — the EEC doesn't have one. It is to make a symbolic move towards a policy of a very different kind, a European defence policy. As for the rhetoric, we heard it the moment fighting broke out in Slovenia, when M. Poos (then the foreign affairs figurehead of the EEC) declared: 'This is the hour of Europe, it is not the hour of the Americans.' So it was depressing to learn that Mr Hurd, in Brussels this Monday, described Yugoslavia as 'a European prob- lem which had to be faced by Europe alone'.
The point I am making is not that US troops ought to go to Yugoslavia as well. (On the contrary, I would advise all foreign troops, and especially American ones, to keep clear of the place.) It is simply that this EEC proposal is the first tiny step on a road which leads to the eventual decoup- ling of Europe from Nato — to Finlandi- sation on a continental scale. That destina- tion may seem so distant that the connec- tion I am making will sound fanciful and far-fetched. Anyone who thinks so should study the texts of the series of 'friendship treaties' which the Soviet Union has re- cently concluded with Germany, France and Italy. The Italian and German treaties include promises by those countries of non-assistance to any 'aggressor' against the Soviet Union — a novel pledge which, though compatible with the letter of the North Atlantic treaty, is regarded with distrust at Nato headquarters. The de- clared Soviet policy is to build up a network of such bilateral 'friendship treaties', each of which also pledges closer economic co-operation and technical assistance. And the long-term aim is spelt out in Article 2 of the Soviet-French treaty, in which both countries promise to 'co- operate to strengthen the bonds of solidar- ity, resulting in turning Europe into a common home and creating a confedera- tion of themselves and all European states'. (Curiously, the French have never published the text of this treaty; but a copy obtained from Tass has been printed with the other treaties — by a London research publication, International Curren- cy Review.) So now you know: the policy of the French government is to turn Europe into a confederation which will include the Soviet Union. One can only guess, of course, at what our confederal defence policy will look like then.
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