Reposted from The European Tribune
The Nobel Peace Prize committee has a curious sense of timing: awarding President Obama the Peace Prize before he had accomplished anything much in office, and now awarding the EU the Peace Prize at a time when it seems intent on unraveling much of what has been achieved in European Solidarity in the past 60 years. Perhaps both awards can be described as a form of preemptive peace making: Instead of the more usual approach of rewarding a peacemaker for a life-times achievement of making peace long after it can do any good to help their efforts, it chose instead to reward Obama early in order to make it more possible for him to unwind the warmongering of President Bush. And now it is rewarding current EU leaders for NOT YET having unraveled most of what has been achieved in terms of EU solidarity in order to remind them of the rich peace making heritage bequeathed to them by the EU’s founders, and thus make it more possible for them to reverse current negative trends.
In any case, that is the most charitable spin I can put on today’s Nobel Peace Prize presentation ceremony in Oslo. Many readers here may view it as a study in the increasing irrelevance of both the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the EU: The establishment congratulating itself on how relevant, innovative and peace loving they are – whilst all the while destroying the efforts of their predecessors and taking and giving credit where none is due. However it seemed odd to me that a forum dedicated to European Affairs would let the day pass unremarked, so this is my attempt to get a conversation going. What relevance has the EU and the Nobel Peace prize got to peacemaking today? Are both still making a valuable positive contribution, or are both living off (and diminishing) past achievements?
Can we seriously look to the EU to make a further positive contribution to European and world Peace today, or must we look elsewhere, and if so, where?
That would be a mean international relations examination question.
To begin with, it is helpful to note that the Nobel Peace Prize is Alfred Nobel’s attempt to undo for eternity the complex chain of events (we need a James Burke Connections book or video on this) that resulted from his clever invention of dynamite, gelignite, and ballasite as part of an arms manufacturing family. So one can draw one’s own conclusions about the karma attached to the prize.
Now, the EU. There is a fundamental contradiction in the EU, and that is that members have different strengths of relationships to it and to the monetary union. In a word (actually two), the United Kingdom.
What this means is the practical politics of the EU involves Germany, France, and everyone else. Right now, that means dominance by Angela Merkel and the center-right policies of the CDU (and the German banks behind them). Counterpoised to the politics within the EU itself is the politics of the European Central Bank, made of national central bankers, who have differing attachments to the private banks operating within their countries. But all of the banks have one song: “The debts must be paid–and soon.” Shades of the late 1920s, minus the reparations drag on Germany.
So the ECB pushed the EU to follow a policy of austerity, which was just fine with the center-right governments of the member nations (most of them) and a bunch of center-left governments as well.
But it was exactly the wrong policy for dealing with the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Apparently, “depression” is no longer a term of art for the economics profession.
Outside of handling the economci crisis, the EU does seem to be making a contribution, in spite of the mild back-pedaling on the Schengen Agreement during the Tunisian and Libyan revolutions.
Like all federations, the EU can do only what its member nations wish it to do. And common policies create winners and loser, which left unaddressed eventually collapses the federation. Right now the winners economically are forgetting this fact at their own peril.
To the extent that it maintains a stable Europe with an open single economy and open borders, you are not likely to return to the inter-nation conflict of 70 years ago. Being able to include the remaining European countries (inlcuding Turkey, a key geopolitical hinge nation) will help with that.
We must seriously look to the EU to make those further contributions to European and World Peace because there is no other reasonable institutional alternative. In fact, the only institutional alternative with the same scope is NATO, which as I have described elsewhere has some serious problems in term of its global vision.
So there is a North American’s view, FWIW.
And a very well informed view it is as well. (Well I would say that, since I agree with everything you said!). But it’s nice to get independent confirmation of ones view from outside.
The Irish Government is about to test that Germanic governing consensus by refusing to pay the Anglo-Irish Bank promissory Notes – €3 Billion p.a. or 2% of GDP – which were used to write off the debts of the defunct bank to its German and French banking creditors. That should set off a tidy row, but I suspect it will all be covered over by a “re-structuring” deal with which put off repayments entirely, or spread them out over 30+ years. In many ways they are comparable to the German war reparations payments in that they were incurred because of an alleged failure by the Irish authorities to police their own rogue bank adequately, and repayment is being refused (a) because the debts were incurred by a private bank which went bust, and nit the Irish people, (b) Ireland bailed it out to prevent contagion to the European banking system, and (C) Ireland can’t afford to repay now without imploding its own fragile economic recovery.
The EU is one of those big structures that is easy to blame for all our problems and whose benefits are easily taken for granted. We will only really appreciate its enormous contribution to our lives were it to seriously implode, which I don’t think will happen – with or without the UK. Indeed if the UK were to withdraw, Scotland would probably vote for independence partly in order to remain inside.
.
Will the UK ever be?
Due to the economic crisis there are more regions wanting autonomy.
I do belief the EU was rightly recognized in the Nobel Peace Prize. The original six states who perfomred the lion share earned the award. The rapid expansion and the manner of introducing and regulating the Eurozone is a failure.
The rapid expansion was opportunistic and has caused great difficulties for the Union, but perhaps greater benefits for the new members so it is difficult to say whether a slower or non-expansion would have been a net positive. I tend to the view that the difficulties can be overcome, although it would have been preferable if the governing structures had been amended prior to expansion to take account of the difficulties of achieving unanimous consent amongst 27 members.
The rapid Eurozone creation was also opportunistic and done in the full knowledge that it would require greater integration and European wide regulation to succeed, but was chosen as a means to that end. Again, I tend to the view that its origins in realpolitique made that (wrong) order of things being done unavoidable, and that it can overcome it’s teething pains and become a net positive for all members.
Strangely, I also have no difficulty with Scottish independence especially as they want to remain within the EU. England is a problem (and I mean England, not the UK) because the English elite have never reconciled themselves to the reality that they no longer rule the roost in Europe, never mind the world. They use the EU as a whipping boy for all manner of things they agreed to but don’t want to take responsibility for.
It is just about conceivable that a UKIP/Conservative alliance would take England out of the EU and I suspect the rest of the EU would say good riddance. It could be disastrous from Ireland’s point of view, but depending on how the transition and post membership relationships are managed, does not have to be a problem for anyone – apart from the English – who will become a backwater of little consequence anywhere – bar perhaps the City, which will become a mini Hong Kong in Europe. If the EU refused to allow the City to act as an offshore financial centre for the rest of Europe, a lot of its business could migrate to Frankfurt/Amsterdam/Dublin and England would be fucked.
Having won its wars, England would have lost the peace and become a retirement home for old soldiers dreaming of empire and looking for a bail-out from the Commonwealth. Somehow I doubt the English will be that stupid, but when I look at their football fans….