Introduction
By Steve McGiffen
Those of us who live in capitalist states with consumerist cultures will be familiar with the phenomenon of a yawning gap between appearance and reality. Never has this been more apparent than since the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring, which has seen western governments supporting dictatorships that attack unarmed demonstrators, while at the same time launching a war against a dictator on the grounds that he attacks unarmed demonstrators; failing to explain their support for decades of dictatorship in Tunisia and Egypt, while simultaneously helpfully offering these countries advice in their transition to democracy; and imposing austerity policies on domestic populations already suffering from high rates of unemployment and bankruptcy, before mysteriously being able to find the considerable sums necessary to launch the United States’ and its allies’ third major war of the century.
There are few realms, however, where this gap between image and reality is quite as enormous as it is when it comes to the European Union. As I suggest in my own essay in this collection, the positive image that the EU enjoys in much of the rest of the world can only be explained by that other ubiquitous phenomenon of the contemporary world: the failure to pay attention.
The European Union is the principal means by which neoliberalism has been imposed within Europe. The aspects of European life which often seem most attractive to visitors from the United States or from poorer areas of the world, or from anywhere lacking a developed social state, are precisely what the EU was established to undermine and ultimately destroy. Some who pursue this agenda do so in order to create a bloc capable of rivalling the US in every field of competition; others wish to see the EU complementing America, providing it with a reliable ally and trading partner – a partner in the construction of a brave new world terra-formed to suit the needs of corporate capital. This spat between ‘Continentalists’ – who favour a more independent Europe – and ‘Atlanticists’ – who advocate closer ties with the United States – is one of the few meaningful political battles still being fought within the European mainstream. It touches on issues such as defence and transatlantic trade, but its outcome will have little effect on working people, at least in the short term.
Take the subject of the first essay in our collection, ‘US-EU Defence Relations: Competitors – or Partners in Crime?’ In a sense the answer to this question is one of the least important aspects of the issue. As the two Dutch researchers argue, US economic decline and the military difficulties this has brought in its wake have led neither to a common European defence capable of rivalling America’s own, nor to any real alternative political agenda which might seek to challenge or even supplant United States neo-colonialism. Europe is showing a tendency to militarise; it has for the most part embraced, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the militarisation of foreign policy which has long characterised the US approach to the world; and – recent doubts over intervention in North Africa notwithstanding – it has scarcely demurred from the excesses and absurdities of the War on Terror. Yet the EU has no army, and its unified defence capability is embryonic. This is, however, a feature of the fact that it remains a bloc of twenty-seven formally independent nations, each with its own military tradition and modus operandi. It does not, as Van Steenderen and Koster note, ‘mean that no progress in the creation of centralised EU defence is being made. The institutions are in place, the economies are intertwined, and there is a long tradition of military cooperation, up to and including the most recent wars.’ If integration under neoliberal economic conditions continues, the emergence of a centralised European defence system is inevitable. And that is something which we, as socialists and internationalists, must resist.
Neo-colonialism is, however, distinguished from colonialism proper by the fact that it relies to a far lesser extent on military means, replacing them whenever possible with more subtle forms of domination, such as those practised by the international financial institutions, the World Trade Organisation, or the lopsided trilateral trading system which is NAFTA. The assumption that critics of the EU are either open or disguised nationalists is less widespread than once it was, but hasn’t entirely disappeared. It has always created difficulties for me in particular, as I left my native country almost two decades ago, and have little feeling for the place. Curiously, moreover, I have never once been accused of being ‘nationalist’ when criticising the IMF or the WTO. Yet the European Union works according to precisely the same principles and agenda as do the great presiding institutions of globalising neoliberalism, and it has, moreover, a great deal more power. This is what I investigate in my own article, in which the coup d’état referred to in the title is the EU’s undermining of democracy through the relentless narrowing of the policy space available to elected parliaments and elected governments.
The economic austerity imposed by the EU is exacerbating social crises which are increasingly destabilising the member states. Some of these crises, however, have their origins outside Europe and its political structures. Stine Vejlby is a young Danish researcher horrified by what is happening in her country, whose social system was until recently amongst the finest achievements of post-war social democracy. Her investigation of the roots of her society’s growing racism, and the way in which this is aiding those who would dismantle Denmark’s highly-developed welfare state, led her to examine how Danish foreign policy has become subordinated to that of the United States. Denmark is small, incapable of producing an army big and well-armed enough to alleviate to any great extent the burden of America’s self-appointed role of global police force, yet it has long been accorded a special place in the US’s international relations. Aside from its Cold War anxiety to see a solid Western European bloc on board and on message in relation to NATO, the US has valued two crucial strategic assets of Denmark: it stands at the mouth of the Baltic Sea, which provided the least problematic access to the Soviet Union; and it has final say on the foreign policy of its autonomous region of Greenland, which is prized for its remoteness, its access to the Arctic, and its crucial role in the Atlantic weather system. Ever since these considerations cemented a foreign-policy and military relationship between the two countries, Denmark has remained a loyal member of NATO and ally of the US.
This came to the fore when Iraq was invaded without the support of NATO or most of its member states. Denmark was amongst the most willing of the Coalition of the Willing, and Danes have fought alongside the American and British soldiers who prosecute this illegal war. The results have been many and varied: Denmark’s biggest corporation, Maersk, and several other Danish firms have done very well out of it. And Anders Fogh Rasmussen, prime minister at the time of the invasion, is now NATO Secretary General. Within Danish society, however, the effects have been dangerously divisive. The country’s population is scarcely warlike in its temperament, and so needed a visible enemy to whip it into line. Immigrants, a large proportion of whom are Muslims, fill this role very well. Even Danes’ solid attachment to a welfare state, under pressure from neoliberal policies encouraged by the EU, can be distorted into a xenophobic response: we built this fine system, and these people come here to take advantage of what we have fought, worked, and paid for. Vejlby analyses persuasively a process which must be painful for any of the country’s inhabitants who maintain an attachment to what have been seen as its longstanding values.
Some of the horrifying effects of racism are graphically illustrated in the photographs of Piet den Blanken, which show the ill-treatment to which refugees seeking asylum and migrants seeking work and a better life are subjected. Some S&D readers will no doubt be familiar with the work of David Bacon, who has documented the recent history of mostly Hispanic migration into the United States. Den Blanken shares an interest in Latin America, but this series of photographs, taken from a group exhibited at the European Parliament last year, concentrates on Fortress Europe and its determination to exclude the ‘huddled masses’ of Africa and Asia.
Patrick Clairzier’s article – on the effects of the EU’s aggressive promotion of neoliberal trade agreements with Caribbean countries – demonstrates how the EU, like the US, has no interest in recognising the clear link between immigrant-flow and its own neo-colonialist external policies. Only once you have made it in the world do you consider visiting Europe to see the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum, or drink German beer and French wine. Most people who migrate to Europe do so looking for a decent livelihood, and if they could find it at home, then far fewer would need to leave. So the fact that demands placed on developing countries in agreements such as the Cariforum-EU Economic Partnership go further than do those which led to the breakdown of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations fuels a problem which the EU prefers to deal with in ways that have the tragic consequences pictured by Piet den Blanken. As Clairzier concludes, ‘the EU’s “activism abroad” policy is endangering developing countries’ ability to build a viable infrastructure, establish firms that are able to compete internationally and integrate regional production networks that are essential for achieving their development goals.’ The key phrase here may be ‘firms that are able to compete internationally’, for outside of its own borders, this is of course the last thing the EU wants to see.
Taken together with Clairzier’s look at one area of its external economic policy, and my own paper on the EU’s method of dealing with its recent internal crisis, Stuart Shields’ look at the impact of Brussels-imposed neoliberalism in Poland forms a neat trilogy. Shields’ theme, which is in part the undermining of sovereignty and thwarting of democracy by the narrowing of economic policy choices through external intervention, will be familiar to many readers. Yet his attention to detail, to specifics, takes us well beyond the realm of rhetoric to provide the kind of empirical evidence and intelligent analysis that are so badly needed. In doing so he fulfils what I believe should be the role of the intellectual as advisor to the broad movement for global social change. In the process he questions not only the way in which Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) have been redeveloped and redesigned since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also the key concepts on which neoliberalism is based. Set against those concepts is an analysis of how crucial areas of governance have been ‘depoliticised’. In the ECE context, this involves a focus on the incremental process of creating a capitalist economy, and the institutions to match, as the only possible way in which the former ‘Communist’ countries can be reintegrated into not only the economic, but the political and cultural mainstreams of European life.
Lastly in this special collection on the EU, Raj Chari and Daniel Hillebrand O’Donovan examine the failure of the European Commission to regulate lobbying effectively, in particular, its refusal to make registration compulsory – meaning that only somewhere between a fifth and a third of all lobbyists active in Brussels are registered with the authorities. Despite the clear and demonstrable failure of the voluntary registration system, there are still no plans to introduce an obligatory system. Chari and O’Donovan put what appears to be a rhetorical question: ‘what are the real reasons for not having a mandatory “one stop shop” for all lobbyists to register in for all of the EU’s institutions?’ One reason I have put this article last in the collection is simply that, having read the rest, the reader will no longer see this as a rhetorical question, but instead should have no doubt as to the answer. As the conclusion states, if lobbyists were subject to a stricter, more transparent system, ‘EU citizens would be equipped and empowered with an analytical tool that could facilitate increasing genuine popular involvement.’
Popular involvement, as each of these essays in its own way demonstrates, is far from being what those who run the European Union want. An elitist club dedicated to the perpetuation of a capitalist system based on neoliberal principles may well embrace a version of ‘democracy’ which suits its agenda. The real thing, however, would be as much anathema to it as it would be to any of the Arab dictators currently under challenge from their own angry, determined people. If we are to win Europe back for its people, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Rome, Prague, Warsaw and Athens must all begin to look as Cairo did at the beginning of the year.
