The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon five years ago on September 11, 2001, are now generally perceived as an historic event which marked the beginning of a new era in world politics. The principal characteristic of this new era is the loss of US invulnerability, demonstrated by the actions of an international terrorist organization; that is, a global non-state actor. Even though the main target was the US, the terrorist bombings in Madrid and London show that all the West is under attack and, besides the West, also moderate Islamic countries, such as Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and so forth.
What is new is the fact that the threat to our security does not come from another state: this enemy hides within our own societies. And yet, the obsession with terrorism has pushed the US to use the same tools against a non-state actor as those usually utilized against states. Hence, the misleading expression “war on terrorism”. The stated goal of eradicating international terrorism is far from being reached, although to date the campaign has lasted one year more than WWI and one year less than WWII.
The American response to terrorism is based on nationalism, unilateralism and war. While Europe is progressively giving up nationalism, on the opposite coast of the Atlantic Ocean the US is promoting institutions and policies which reproduce the same evolution toward power centralization, authoritarianism and militarism which was characteristic of the history of the European great powers during the 19th and 20th centuries until 1945. In Iraq, far from being welcomed as a liberation army, American troops are perceived by the population as the vehicle of a foreign mastery. The growing influence of insurgency in Afghanistan shows that a similar process is in progress in that country too. In the world now taking shape in this era of globalization, US foreign policy looks like the vestige of a bygone age.
The main justification for the Iraqi war – to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – has been proven groundless. The subsequent justification – the exportation of democracy to the Middle East – has been demolished by the revelation of abuse and torture in the Abu Ghraib prison. Moreover, the occupation of Iraq paved the way to terrorism, which was an unknown phenomenon there before the war.
Nor is this all. The struggle against terrorism has proved to be the occasion for an authoritarian turning point in the US, the world’s oldest democracy. The new powers conferred by the Patriot Act have enabled the government to restrict individual freedom and to erode the structures established for the protection of human rights against arbitrary state action. The government can now suspend the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens suspected of being connected with terrorism and detain them indefinitely without trial. The Patriot Act permits intelligence activities to infringe the right to privacy and gives unprecedented powers to listen, read and monitor US citizens’ activities. Another blatant abuse of power are the so-called extraordinary renditions, i.e. the arrest of suspected terrorists and their transport to foreign countries for imprisonment and interrogation, in order to shun US laws prescribing due process and prohibiting torture. The notorious Guantanamo camp in Cuba, where prisoners are denied the right to challenge their detention in court, is only one example.
In order to prevent terrorists from entering the US and enhance border security, new barriers to restrict international mobility have been instituted. The US is abandoning the cultural flexibility which allowed it to integrate and assimilate millions of immigrants. Now it is blocking claims for citizenship from among the eleven million immigrants without legal status. The tendency towards strengthening the cohesion of the American people has pushed the government to declare English as the national language of the US. The decision to build a wall along the US-Mexico border recalls the Great Wall of China, which was built to withstand the pressure of nomadic populations. Lastly, the Homeland Security Act established a new Department, namely a Ministry of Internal Affairs – the type of ministry which used to be typical of the centralized states of the European continent with their illiberal and police traditions.
More than 200 years ago Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers that “Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. … Nations the most attached to liberty [are compelled] to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free”. This is the lesson he learnt from observing the policy of countries on the European continent.
He was able to foresee that, because of its isolation and the lack of prominent military pressures on its borders, the US would not need to develop any imposing military machinery, nor an oppressive police apparatus like those of the continental powers of Europe. Until the World Wars, therefore, the US did not pursue (except for the wars against Mexico and Spain) power politics, but confined itself mostly to preventing foreign countries from invading its territory. The navy was sufficient for this task. Nor was there any need to control citizens’ and foreign residents’ lives for security reasons.
Yet today, owing to the threat of international terrorism, the US is embarking on the same course of action followed in the past by the continental powers of Europe. US nationalism is the symptom of a dangerous illness, which is the effect of the overload of responsibilities lying on the federal government. Following the European nation-state model – after a delay of two centuries – it is trying to build a homogeneous and closed society based on the adoption of one single language, the fortification of its borders, and suspicion of foreigners who are considered as potential enemies.
If the ultimate cause of the American nationalism lies at the international level, it is here that the remedy must be sought. The defeat of American nationalism and the evolution of the world toward a more peaceful situation can be best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces. The new forces which are emerging in the world states system should convince the US that alone it cannot prevail over terrorism. Only by co-operation among the most responsible countries in the struggle against terrorism, within a strengthened and democratised United Nations, can world peace be achieved.

When the newly-elected President of the Italian Republic made reference, on the island of Ventotene, to the birth of the European unification project, many were probably wondering: how did that idea come about, how did it become the dominant idea of a continent, and how did it enter the lives of all of us in the form not only of a promise or a remorse for unaccomplished things, but also in the form of so many laws that nowadays have prevalence over national laws. There is to wonder why we insist in giving to that idea the name, noble but shaky, of a dream. Giorgio Napolitano vividly recalled what then, in the midst of a war between Europeans, seemed a fancy born in the minds of three anti-fascist confined men – Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, Eugenio Colorni. Indeed, so was considered what they envisaged: the birth of a Europe where there will never again be wars, and where a fundamental conviction regarding the nation-States will take roots. The nation-States had digged their own grave, by transforming their absolute State sovereignties into a mutual annihilation weapon, and finally into a selfannihilation one. As in a Greek tragedy, from sorrow and guilt a lesson was to come out, which will lead Europe to a new life. This was the catharsis proposed as a remedy in the Ventotene Manifesto.
To a close look, it was a quite special dream. It was more similar to a prophetic vision of a man looking for the unconfessed roots of his present time, and sketching on what he found the possible reality of tomorrow. It was supported by a very strong awareness of reality – which always imposes on one’s political aspirations the respect of the conditions of the real world – and hence by a deeply-rooted practical sense, based on the experience and the memory of countless European wars. If it continued to be defined as a dream or utopia, it is because the States wanted that that be the general consideration of it, necessary for safeguarding their absolute national sovereignties. But it was not so for the founders of the Community: Adenauer, Monnet, Schuman, De Gasperi had clear in their minds the tragic sequel of Europe’s history, and considered the Union to be essential in practice, not only desirable as an Utopia. But the guardians of nationalism did not cease for decades to fight it with convenient expedients. Since the beginning, their main weapon has been to define the European adventure as an illusion, talked of as a thing of the past, like other Utopias.
It would be worth reading again the papers that James Hamilton and John Jay wrote between the autumn of 1787 and the spring of 1788 in The Federalist under the pen-name of Publius, when there was to ratify the American Constitution approved by the Philadelphia Convention on September 17, 1787. In the sixth paper, Hamilton explains where the true illusions, the true “Utopian speculations”, lie. Who was cherishing them were not the federalists, but their opponents, who supported the inviolable sovereignty of the thirteen American states or, at the most, partial confederations. Hamilton is stern: they believe possible “a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood”. They share the unwise optimism of those who believe that a republican spirit is substantially peaceful (“There have been, if I may so express it, almost as many popular as royal wars”). Reading Publius helps us reveal the deception of an Utopia that usually wraps itself in the mantle of a pragmatic respectability: “Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”, Hamilton writes.
Also for today’s Europe that is true. Certainly those who see in the post-war founding principles something noble but no longer attracting are right: just because the Union partly exists already, it is not easy to contemplate new wars among Europeans. But that is not a reason for the European project to be seen as an Utopian desire, an old rhetoric for a world that does not exist. The threats from which the idea of Europe was born are still present, only their names and the challenges have changed: they are called globalized economy, terrorism, scarcity and political use of energy. Today like yesterday the individual States cannot face them alone, and their rulers know it even when they are reluctant to delegate sovereignty. If they could look into their own history, they would know that theirs is not even real sovereignty: it is a shadow what they are clinging to. It is an illusion, as described in Abbagnano’s Dictionary of Philosophy: “an erroneous appearance that does not cease when it is recognized as such (...) it is like seeing kinked a stick immersed in the water”. By delegating decision-making powers to Europe, the States can regain a sovereignty that they have lost today.
Therefore it is for a sense of reality that we have to make Europe and give it a capacity to govern, just like in the Forties and Fifties. It is for a practical spirit that it is urgent to have a Union ready to act even when there is not unanimous agreement, instead of a Union blocked by the right of veto. Once again it is the historical experience that demands this, as called for by a prophetic dream, founded however on rationality. Today it is the nation-State to be under an illusion, when it pretends to be non-vulnerable and even wraps itself in the mantle of real-politik and pragmatism. The democratic rhetoric itself is a conjuring exercise, that risks to hide reality. Of course it is essential that Europe be accepted by the peoples. But without an efficient government it makes no sense to put that necessity as a priority: without a government, Europe may well be more democratic, but absolutely without any weight.
This too is a valuable lesson that comes from the American federalists of 1700. The generous democratic bursts may turn into a “torrent of angry and malignant passions”; “an overscrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people” may turn into “mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good”, Publius says in The Federalist. The dangerous ambition is the one of those who “lurk behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people”, not of those who, taking the harder route, are concerned “for the firmness and efficiency of government” (Hamilton, Paper No. 1). Democracy, under certain conditions, may even become a deceit. The referendums on the adhesion of Turkey, promised in France and Austria, are in effect a way for expressing the right of veto by individual States over Europe’s future foreign policy. More than respected, the peoples are thus made instruments. A realistic dream of the Union is today the Constitution, and it is not by chance that it too is declared dead, as happens for Utopias condemned by reality. The two referenda in France and the Netherlands in May-June 2005 would have ditched the idea of a suitable European government, able to complement the national governments. Of course it is advisable to do something, waiting for France to elect a new Head of State in 2007; something pragmatic with the existing treaties, said the President of the Commission Barroso, proposing – in view of the European Summit on June 15 – a common security policy, domestic and against terrorism. But it will not be enough, as long as the decisional powers in Europe will not be made clearer, besides being shared, and only a Constitution can do that. If possible, a Constitution approved this time by all the peoples simultaneously.
This project too is not illusive, and who has already ratified the constitutional Treaty knows it. Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she does not intend to give up: the German people and many other countries have voted for the Constitution, therefore the project cannot be dumped by some nations with easy presumption. Fifteen States out of 25 have ratified it (soon they will be 16, with Finland) and this means that a majority wants the Constitution. Also a majority of citizens – about 250 millions out of 450 – wants it. Reviving the realistic dream means to start from here, from this Europe that has already expressed herself by a majority for a working European government and for a continent that shall have a greater weight in the globalized economy and in an effective international policy. It is necessary to take into account those who are unsatisfied and denounce the faults of the Union, but also those who strongly want to complete the Union and give it a Constitution. To go back would be not only illusory, it would be a betrayal and a breach of the agreements, because all the governments have committed themselves to bring the Treaty to ratification in two years, when they signed it on October 29, 2004. It is important that Italy has got again a government team that has supported this project and is willing to even improve on it (for example, by abolishing the paragraph of the Treaty that requires a unanimous vote for constitutional revisions): President Napolitano will continue on this matter the struggle of former President Ciampi, and others will join in, starting with Prime Minister Prodi, who proposed an even more advanced constitutional Treaty – the Penelope Project – when he was President of the Commission. At that point it will indeed be a very good thing to revive the realistic dreams and put an end to the utopian national illusions: illusions that do not cease even when they are acknowledged as such.

Many Europeans are deeply ambivalent about the economic performance of the European Union. “The EU was meant to bring us a golden future, but instead it has brought us stagnation, unemployment and social discontent” has become a familiar refrain. What is worse, lest we abandon our relentless pessimism, our eternally optimistic American friends excel at reminding us that they are richer, enjoy faster growth with lower unemployment and are generally better off in every way. Lots of sensible folk buy into this story; but is it borne out by the facts? The right answer is not a simple yes or no, so let me explain.

In what sense is the US richer?
Average gross domestic product (GDP) in the US is about 40% higher than average GDP of the EU-15 when measured at purchasing power parity (PPP). The gap is slightly greater if we consider either the twelve Eurozone members (EU-12) or add the accession states (EU-25). Although GDP is a poor indicator of measure of welfare or happiness, let’s agree to use it for the sake of comparison.
The main reason the US is richer is, first of all, because a higher proportion of Americans are in employment and, secondly, they work about 20% more hours per year than Europeans. When we adjust for both these factors and look at GDP in 2005 per person per hour worked, there is virtually no difference between Germany, France and the US.
Economists often speak of this as revealing different American and European social preferences for work and leisure. In truth, both the employment rate and how long the average person works are explained mainly by political history. Until the late 1970s total hours worked were falling both in Europe and in the USA; since then, total hours worked have continued to fall in the EU-15 but have risen again in the US. Equally, if we look at employment data by age group, Americans join the work force earlier and leave it far later than Europeans. The key to understanding why this has happened is the change in US income distribution over the past 30 years. Since 1979, the bottom 40% of income earners in the US has been treading water, while the bottom 20% has become poorer. US workers have needed to put in more years and longer hours simply to maintain their real income position.

Who has Faster Growth?
Does the US grow faster than the EU? Again, the answer depends on what we measure. When we compare the growth rate of GDP of the US and the EU-15, the US rate averaged over the past decade is about 1.2 percentage points higher than that of the EU-15 (oddly, the difference is slightly smaller if we use the EU-25). But the usual measure of growing prosperity is GDP per head; i.e., if GDP grows at 2% but population grows at 3%, then GDP per head is falling! US population growth is a full percentage point higher than that of the EU-15, mainly because US immigration in the past decade has been higher. Expressed on a per capita basis, GDP growth rates in the US and the EU are virtually the same over the past decade. The same is true of labour productivity growth.
What is also true is that since the 2001 recession, the US has bounced back faster than the EU. At present, both GDP growth per head and labour productivity are growing faster in the US. But recent US productivity gains are concentrated in distribution rather than manufacturing, and US growth continues to pull in more imports than it produces exports, resulting in a growing external deficit – funded in part by the EU current account surplus.
On the EU-15 side, lower growth is reflected in a high and prolonged average rate of unemployment, which has remained about three points above that of the US for some time. Equally, looking at the disaggregated data, some EU-15 countries have done better than others over the past decade in terms of prosperity and unemployment; e.g., the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries. But these differences exist for quite different reasons and, equally important, we do not normally disaggregate US data to compare growth in (say) North Dakota and California.

Employment and Unemployment
Perhaps the most common argument is that contrasting the job-creating virtues of the US ‘flexible’ labour market with the sclerotic state of the EU, where unemployment is persistently high. Economics students attending US university (and increasingly those in the EU as well) learn that because EU labour is supplied at an artificially high wage rate, equilibrium employment in the EU is lower and unemployment higher.
Now while it is true that the US has a better employment and unemployment record, the key to understanding the difference between the EU and the US lies in disaggregating employment by age group. If we compare employment rates in 2005 of the 25-55 age group, there is virtually no difference; e.g., the employment rates are 86 and 88 percent for the EU-15 and the US respectively (ignoring differences in how the data are recorded). The US data show a higher employment rate for youth (15-24) and a much higher rate for preretirement (55-64) and post retirement (65 and over) groups. What the average employment and unemployment figures hide is the agespecific nature of the ‘European problem’. The picture remains much the same when comparing the US and the EU-25.
Once again, the crucial element in understanding these differences is income distribution. At the youth end of the scale, young workers in the US get less education and those who go to university are more likely to work part-time than their European counterparts. At the older end of the scale, pension provision in the US is neither as broad nor as generous as in the EU, so people – particularly the poor who cannot afford to save for retirement – carry on working.
Making labour markets ‘more flexible’ (i.e., cutting wages) does not cure these problems; if anything, it makes the problem worse. By contrast, putting resources into active labour market policies such as improved education, retraining and high benefit provision contingent on job searching helps workers to find and retain high productivity jobs. This is the strategy pursued by the Nordic countries, one which has paid and will continue to pay handsome rewards in terms of prosperity and job security.

Who wins?
Comparing the economic performance of the European Union and the USA does not lead one to conclude that America has the more dynamic economy, or that it has performed better in the past or will do so in future. The most important feature of the comparison is neither the growth nor the unemployment record of the US and the EU. It is, rather, that US growth, unlike that in the EU, is funded by a dangerously high mountain of foreign debt. US external indebtedness, in turn, is driven by the US house-price bubble, enabling US consumers to spend more than they earn. Ironically, it is the EU which, together with China and Japan, continues to lend the money to the US which keeps their households spending and their economy growing.
The truth is that neither side ‘wins’ in this beauty contest. Europe merely does less badly than the USA in some crucial respects. Yes, while it is true that the core Eurozone countries could perform far better, Germany, France and Italy have quite different problems – in comparison both to the US and to each other – which require quite different solutions. Anybody who claims that the US provides a model which the EU should copy needs to consider the basic economic facts of the case.

In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, the World Movement for World Federal Government (WMWFG) adopted the Montreux Declaration, in which it said as follows: “We consider that an integration of activities at regional levels is consistent with the true federal approach. The formation of regional federations… insofar as they do not become an end in themselves or run the risk of crystallizing into blocs… can and should contribute to the effective functioning of a world federal government. In the same way, the solution of technical, scientific, and cultural problems, which concern all the peoples of the world, will be made easier by the establishment of specialist functional bodies.”
So far, the world has been moving along the lines the declaration predicted. Quite a few of the regional unions, such as the AU (African Union, 2002, – as a successor of the Organization of African Unity) or ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, 1967) have formed. Who would ever have anticipated the present EU in 1947?
But it still does not exist any concrete organization in Northeast Asia. Michio Morisima, professor emeritus at Osaka University, might have been the first Japanese who elaborated on the formation of an East Asia Community as a well-grounded undertaking. He proposed to found an East Asia Community in his book entitled Collaborative Development in Northeast Asia (Iwanami Shoten, 2001). However, the idea of an East Asia Community as such was not a new one. Since the 1990s, it had gained considerable influence among regional policymakers. The initiation of the ASEAN+3 process (APT: Japan, China, and Korea) as well as the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) indicate that Northeast and Southeast Asians have begun to formulate their own cooperative mechanisms of regional self-help. However, the rapid proliferation of bilateral and subregional preferential-trade agreements in recent years does not correspond to the logic of building a collective East Asian identity. This article examines the origins of the major barriers to community building in East Asia.
The Manila Summit in November 1999 issued the Joint Statement of East Asia Cooperation in which APT leaders endorsed East Asia collaboration in the economic field, in financial and monetary affairs, in social and human resources development, and various other areas. Yet it is worth noting that the joint statement does not specify the intention of building an “East Asia Community.” A number of reasons retard this process. When Japan started the Pacific War on December 8, 1941, it stated that the war was to emancipate the nations that were suffering from Western colonialism and establish a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, but the military had their own ideas and reality turned out to be far from their declared objectives. After being “liberated” from the West, the attacked Asian nations had to face a new colonial power. After the war, the relationship between Japan and Southeast Asia began to change as a result of enhanced trade in the 1970s, so that from that decade onward the Asianist map was gradually widened to include Southeast Asia on equal terms.
Since the 1970s, Japan has issued quite a few war-apology statements. In the most famous of these, on August 15, 1995, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama formally stated, “During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly those of Asia. In the hope that no such mistake will be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humanity, these as irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology” (statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end).
These apologies naturally inclined the Asian people more favorably toward Japan and fostered better relationships among the three countries: Japan, China, and Korea. Moreover, they paved the way for formulating an East Asia Community.

Japanese Neo-Nationalism and the Idea of East Asia Community
However, coupled with a decreasing number of Japanese who knew of the crimes their government and military had committed in the Pacific War, Japanese politics has since been swinging to the right and toward militarism. Now the Liberal Democratic Party plans to amend the Peace Constitution, among other ways, by abolishing Article 9 (which renounces the right to wage war). Also, the tide of grassroots rightism or neo-nationalism is rising, especially on the pretext of threats from North Korea. This new Japanese neonationalism is a complex phenomenon. Unlike the traditional rightists, neo-nationalists tend to be rather young people who are socially disconnected from communities (companies, labor unions, and the like). Moreover, in recent years, the visits by high-ranking officials to Yasukuni Shrine have become a sticking point in relations between Japan and its neighbors. The enshrinement of war criminals, honoring them for having fought and died for their country (even though the Japanese Constitution implies the separation of church and state) has greatly angered the people of various countries that had been invaded by those same men. Especially, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has committed himself to visiting Yasukuni Shrine regularly, and did so every year as the Prime Minister of Japan, causing uproar in China and Korea. He used to say, when he visited Yasukuni Shrine, that he visited it to swear by God “eternal peace”, but his assertion could not persuade the people or leaders of Japan’s neighbor countries, China and Korea, and the leaders of China and Korea refused to see him formally. This friction was one of the main reasons for deteriorating relationships between Japan and its neighboring countries, China and Korea, and also hampered the formation of the East Asia Community.
At the same time, it seems to me that another explanation behind Koizumi’s visiting Yasukuni Shrine could lie within the USJapan Alliance. The American president and his colleagues are wary about the idea of the East Asia Community. For example, in a speech at Jochi University in Tokyo, last March, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice clearly opposed the idea of an East Asia Community and proposed instead the idea of a Pacific Community including America. The fear is that an East Asian Community would weaken the present strong US-Japan Alliance, especially in military terms. Mr. Koizumi, a loyal partner of the Bush administration, may have felt encouraged to carry on with his visits, accepting the fact that they made further talks with China and Korea about the formation of an East Asia Community more difficult.
The well-known peace campaigner Prof. Sung Suh of Ritsumeikan University in Japan declared: “For a long time, I have dreamed of a regional community of co-prosperity in Northeast Asia like the EU. The age of Northeast Asia will finally come to full fruition. I pledge to devote my whole heart and effort to bring about that day at the earliest possible time.” Sung argued that achieving a Northeast Asian Community will require two fundamental steps. The first and perhaps the easiest will be to reestablish an international balance of power, “to check US unilateralism… to recover the world balance of power, which was damaged by the United States, it is useful to set up a new ‘three-kingdom age’, that is, an era characterized by a balance among the ‘kingdoms’ of the United States, the European Union, and a Northeast Asian Community.”
The second and perhaps more difficult step, Sung continues, “will be to find a way to get away from where we are today”, facing the growing strength of Japanese neo-nationalism, and to where Prof. Sung believes we should be in the future: a Northeast Asian Community of peace. The fundamental problem is Japan. “Will Japan be able to turn to a Northeast Asian Community? What concrete steps are possible today?” I believe that answering these questions posed by Prof. Sung Suh must be the vital first task assumed by Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe. At this moment, it is uncertain what Mr. Abe will or can do to improve the deteriorated situation. He is known as a conservative and rather a more nationalistic politician than Mr. Koizumi. However, we hope that in cooperation with his advisors he will make a serious effort to establish relationships with China and Korea to form an East Asia Community.

In his seminal speech on European integration in the University of Zurich on September 19^th 1946 Winston Churchill spoke of the old continent as being, “united in the sharing of its common inheritance”. He portrayed the base of Greco-Roman culture and the Christian faith and ethics as “being at the origin of most of the culture, arts, philosophy and science both of ancient and modern times”. But it was our conflicts rather than our similarities that really motivated him. Everyone in that lecture hall knew that his reference to nationalistic struggles that had “…wrecked the peace and marred the prospects of mankind” was the real reason for his desire to see, “a United States of Europe” (albeit one from which Great Britain would stand somewhat apart). Certainly it was the agonies of divisive histories rather than any sense of a shared European identity that drove the Founding Fathers, such as Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenaur, Alcide De Gasperi and Paul-Henri Spaak, to propose a new institutional structure to help reconciliation and future peace. There were, of course, other reasons that motivated them also, such as the rejection of what one observer has described as “The false universalism of communism and the false particularism of fascism, one of which sought to make everyone the same and the other of which refused any sense of common humanity”.
Those times are now long past and the context of our present debate is different. The threat of fratricidal conflict in Europe has receded and our peoples seem, perhaps complacently, unconcerned by it. Also, apart from the faltering memories of past conflicts, we no longer have the need to be cemented together in mutual protection from the USSR.
So inevitably attitudes to European integration, particularly amongst the young, have changed and are challenged by new realities such as the enlargement of the EU. Their motivation for a belief in the process can no longer be promoted by the recollections of terrible events now only within the living memory of a small and diminishing minority. Therefore we must rethink and restate the case for European integration. This will be assisted by an understanding that the fundamental relationship between the nation state and the citizen has been changed in the globalising and increasingly interdependent world of today. Of course it had been the nation state, and the manner in which it functioned particularly since the nineteenth century, that created many of our historic problems. In 1826 the British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, remarked following the collapse of the Congress of Vienna system, “Things are getting back to a wholesome state, every nation for itself, and God for us all”. His world was that which many of us hope that we have escaped fearing, as President Mitterrand said in his farewell speech to the European Parliament, “Le Nationalisme, c’est la guerre”.
So what is this concept of a nation state which some eurosceptics and nationalists in particular wish to retain? It means different things to different people. Jeremy Rifkin (The European Dream, p. 166) has written, “The popular conception of the Nation State… is rooted in common culture, language and customs. (But) in reality is more of… an artificial construct…”. Often, in order to create it, he wrote, it was necessary to, “…create a compelling story about a common past, one convincing enough to capture the imagination of the people and convince them of their shared identity and common destiny.” The reality however is often more complex. There are indeed shared histories and values and the binding together of communities has many valid and positive aspects that are not contrived. It has to be admitted, however, that in many cases the alleged unity of peoples has been a recent phenomenon and is less than fully convincing historically. National languages have been important in this but, for example, in 1789 a small fraction of the French people spoke French and in 1861 only 2% of Italians spoke Italian. Castillian too was very much a minority language in Spain. After the Reformation, religion also had an effect in creating a sense of a shared past and a common destiny for majorities in a national state, although it also has had the divisive effect of creating a question mark over the nationality of minorities. However, the fact is that most people in Europe feel an intense and often passionate sense of belonging to a nation state. This could never be supplanted by a European identity and nor should it be. It is to national identity that people primarily cling. The Danish intellectual Toger Seidenfaden wrote: “There is no European people, no European ethnicity, no European demos; as a consequence the EU is notoriously incapable of generating popular enthusiasm on any major scale. This is, of course, one of its most attractive features”. Whilst this comment goes a little too far for my
taste, one can see what he meant.
Ernest Renan has written that the nation is a spiritual principle consisting of two things, “A common legacy of rich memories from the past and a consensus to forget the oppressions and injustices that once divided the members of the nation”. We have all seen this in action. If one looked into the heart of most Europeans today, they would see themselves as part of one race or another, although their DNA may well provide evidence of a more complex reality. Unfortunately, many probably see their race as being “better” in one way or another than others. This is part of the legacy of nationalism and perhaps the price for the cohesion of a community. Of course, too, there are confusing overlaps between nations within nations. Examples proliferate around Europe. The British are comprised by a group of perceived nationalities, as are the Spanish and many others. The question as to where their ultimate loyalty lies would be hard to answer for many a Scot, a Walloon, a Bavarian or a Catalan.
In his History of Europe, Norman Davies draws a distinction between civilisation and culture. The former is defined as “the sum total of ideas and traditions which had been inherited from the ancient world and from Christianity”. In other words it constitutes what binds us together. Culture, on the other hand, is seen by him as growing “from the every day life of the people… In earlier times civilisation was extolled and culture despised. Nationalism did the opposite.”
All of this makes for a volatile situation, particularly when one takes into account the new challenges of integrating the relatively recent waves of migration within Europe itself and also, particularly, from North Africa. We now have a Europe that is increasingly diversified within its component parts with, for example, 10 million Muslims living in the EU. Paradoxically, too, while the EU integrates nation states with each other it also can create the seeds of national disintegration. This is because nation states that contain different ethnic strands were often bound together in the past because of the advantages of economic integration within a nation state, combined with the need for protection from external aggression. Neither of these conditions exist today within the EU. Essentially, the completion of the Common Market and the removal of the prospect of intra-European warfare has removed the fears that formerly drove regions to adhere to a larger nation state. Many Catalan or Basque nationalists, for example, see little point in a continued connection with Madrid if it costs them money. In addition, a positive reason for division into smaller units is that, within the EU, there is increasing evidence of greater economic success amongst the smaller nation states than the larger. The three highest levels of GDP per capita are to be found in Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark. This is argued by some to be influenced by the greater flexibility in domestic economic policy that each can now deploy. These smaller states can adapt to the opportunities afforded by a full access to a vast Common Market in a more focused and effective way than larger states.
So today our political structures have to accommodate a series of apparently conflicting realities. These include separatism and integration and diversity and shared values and the EU can help in this accommodation. We have to build upon and develop our shared values to bind us together, whilst not attempting to stifle the legitimate distinctions and loyalties between ethnic or religious groups within our collective body politic. If we do not maintain a sense of some shared identity and interdependence, we will be unable to continue to justify the essential supranational aspects of what the EU is. As William Wallace, the political scientist, wrote in the early 1980s of the EC, “it is less than a Federation, but more than a regime”. This is particularly the case because, within agreed confines, laws can be made that are opposed by individual Member States, and the direct effect of Community Law makes national law and national courts less than fully sovereign.
The integration process should help to develop a common political community to protect the values, political diversity, democracy and human rights in which we jointly believe and which will act as a defence against the attack on any of these values at national level. The EU should, in a broader sense too, be the means for the resolution of, “The contradictions of tribalism and globalism” (Horsman and Marshall, After the Nation State, p.189). We are assisted in this because we are much more alike today than many recognise. Indeed, on the big issues of our time, European peoples are remarkably united in the attitudes that reflect their shared values. Their distinctive positions can be contrasted to those currently prevailing in other parts of the world, including the United States. In this regard Robert Kagan has detailed our differences. Although his description of a Europe of Kant’s perpetual peace as against a Hobbesian US defending and promoting a liberal order through force are gross simplifications, they reflect some truth. We here believe in communitarianism, solidarity and multilateralism in a specific European way. The fact that according to Eurobarometer surveys Europeans want, in a majority everywhere, ‘a more independent’ common foreign and defence policy is a reflection of an increasing European belief that we share more in our approaches to international affairs with our European neighbours than anything that divides us. That was shown in reactions to the Iraq war, where public opinion was generally negative to the war throughout the EU, even though European leaders notoriously divided with some courting unpopularity in supporting the US. On the domestic front too we share similar views on a wide range of issues, for example, from the death penalty to the extent and limitations of individual freedom. The European convergence means that we and others now have a capacity to work together to constructively influence a world full of both opportunities and threats. If we fail to do so together, even the largest states will reduce their influence over their own destiny, and the distinctive European viewpoint will be increasingly marginalised and ignored internationally.
In my opinion, the approach of the current leadership of some important Member States to global challenges facing the EU has regrettably been to retreat more towards national capitals rather than advance the integration process that we need to deal with the issues of interdependence. Should it persist, this will gradually undermine institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament having a limited but clear federal vocation. The ‘no’ votes in France and The Netherlands have incorrectly been interpreted as votes against European integration, and this may increase this intergovernmentalist tendency. They have also been interpreted by some as a warning against further enlargement, particularly in regard to Turkey.
Let me turn now to the issue of future enlargements and possible limits to the expansion of the EU having regard to this issue of shared identity. Firstly, however, it should be emphasised that the enlargement of the EU can no longer be considered as inevitable even for those countries within Europe that comply with the requirements set in what is known as ‘the Copenhagen Criteria’. There is a likelihood that in the future new accessions will only take place after specific referendums, at least in some existing Member States. It needs to be recognised in particular that amongst those most likely to oppose enlargement to include Turkey will be some committed integrationalists who argue that Turkish membership damages the cohesion of the EU.
The debate about Turkish accession, therefore, crystallises many of the questions about identity, history, attitudes and values within the EU. Religion plays a real part in this too. Even though the Founding Fathers of the EU were virtually all Christian Democrats, they did not invoke God or Christianity as a factor in European integration. Indeed, the separation of Church and State remained the prevailing position in the conclusion of the debate on the Constitutional Treaty, but Christianity remains the heritage of many Europeans. Although the status of the Church was included in Article 1-51, the invocation of God in the preamble was omitted (although only after fierce debate during which Catholics were joined by Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox). One can take it, however, as evidenced by the papal blessing of the politicians who convened on the 29^th October 2004 in Rome to sign the Constitution, that the Catholic Church, for example, did not reject the draft. However, this accepted division between the Church and State in the EU does not mean that there are no objections to Turkish accession, based upon a perception that the Turkish people are in some sense different and this is connected with religion. Thus, although Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia in Europe made the point that “…Europe must be equivalent to openness…”, it is apparent that this openness has limitations. Pope Benedict XVI is publicly against Turkish accession. He is not, of course, alone in this. The President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Giscard d’Estaing, has said that Turkish accession would mean “…the end of the EU”. Nor is it supported by President Chirac, Angela Merkel or Chancellor Schussel of Austria, and these politicians, amongst others, clearly reflect the views held by many Europeans. The question may be asked as to whether this opposition is related to questions surrounding the distinctive identity and values of the Turkish people or whether it is simply related to more pragmatic concerns such as the fear of migration, the lack of development of the Turkish economy or real depth of its democracy. It might also specifically relate to the treatment of religion in Turkey. Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, recently said “…freedom of religion is one of the key issues to be addressed by Turkey.” The reality is that the debates about secularism in Turkey today, such as whether to make adultery a criminal offence or whether boys who have been to religious schools can pursue a university education of their choosing, underline the fact that accession will create a very new and much deeper diversity in the EU, should it occur.
The bottom line should surely be that there is an existing commitment to negotiations. These will take many years to conclude and only then will it be possible to judge whether Turkey could or should be a full member. That judgement will depend, in turn, on a fair assessment of the extent to which Turkey can subscribe to a deepening political integration founded upon shared values and the attitudes that emanate from them.
The very fact of this debate taking place now, whatever its merits, underlines the fact that there is a widely shared belief that there is something distinctive and important in European values and attitudes, and that the EU is about more than the creation of a functioning market supported by some elements of cross border solidarity.
Even though the Constitution has not been adopted, it presents, in its terms, a reasonable template for our future development. Article 1.1 was exhaustively discussed and it simply states that any European country that subscribes to promoting the Union’s values is eligible for accession. It did not define what it is meant by “European”, but it is a geographic concept that has been interpreted to include states that are potentially within the border of the continent. The values, too, are set out in Article 2 as being “Respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy the rule of law” and “respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”. The objectives set out in Article 3 include, “Promoting cohesion and solidarity and respect for the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of the Member States”. These all seem to be an expression of identity that has a real meaning.
I believe that the meaning of these values and objectives have a particular – and shared – European interpretation. It is not intended to be divisive or disparaging to suggest that this interpretation is different to that applied in other parts of the world. Our cultures may be distinct, but our development has gradually brought us together in a unique way which we can build upon. The late Hugo Young once wrote in The Guardian about our European cultures “It is helpful to learn that there are not rival cultures a zero sum game of allegiance, but that they mingled and grew together.” We should seek to continue that process of growing together.

This article was first published in the autumn issue of Studies.

Philippe Val
Le Referendum des Laches (The Referendum of the Cowards)
Paris, Ed. Le Cherche Midi, 2005

Reading this small book was a surprise, a happy surprise, one which leaves you buoyant and light-hearted, and eager to share it with all your friends – which was soon done and rapidly spread out in concentric waves. That is the reason why, one year after the results of the French vote, a review presenting the content of this book may still be of interest at a time when the breakdown of the European construction is under the eyes of everybody.
During the electoral campaign for the referendum on the adoption of the European Constitutional Treaty (ECT) which took place in France in May 2005, federalist militants became aware, day after day, of the weakness of the campaign for the Yes led by the main political leaders and organizations, a campaign that the federalists could not help much with their enthusiasm. This is the reason why the message delivered by Philippe Val was welcomed as a good piece of news. The interest of its arguments, which will be summarized in the present note, was much increased by the position occupied by its author in the French political scene as a columnist. Director and Editorial writer of the weekly Charlie Hebdo, Philippe Val in his leader articles developed arguments in favour of the Yes vote, against the advice of most of his editorial staff, who were in favour of various currents in the French radical left. As a satirical paper, Charlie Hebdo does not mind its words when it criticizes established powers, be they capitalism, outdated values, authoritarian government trends, violence and the abusing of individuals. It is the reason why the support given to the ECT by a somewhat iconoclastic personality aroused at least some curiosity and a desire to debate the issues.
As far as new arguments are concerned, in the book there are few of them for the federalists, but on the other hand the tone, the way to present the problems, to link analyses, to connect arguments, all this adds to the usual style of a pro-European and federalist approach. For the first time a passion and conviction deeply rooted in a private history inspire words for a Europe of flesh and blood. It is not about a virtual Europe but a Europe which lives in men’s bodies and minds, in the reality of cultures which are both deeply rooted and of everyday use. And at a conference-debate between Philippe Val and the Rhône-Alpes federalists the writer confirmed the dimension of his commitment which we find now in his written testimony.
Of this small book, which Philippe Val meant as a scathing tract to spread his ideas, only few copies have been sold, due to rather weak advertising; but its publication allowed its writer to take a very active part in various televised talks. From the very first lines the book is presented as “a combative pamphlet expressing a deeply-felt commitment. I am devoted to the European cause in such a sensitive way, that I am astonished of myself” (p. 7). The form, which is a bit rugged and less structured than it should have been, is due to the hurry in which the writer found himself. Why did he submit to the “revolt and anger” which are the reasons of such urgency?
Because the author puts the stake of the referendum on the burning issue of the “nation”, which is the underlying taboo of this ballot. For him “the problem posed by the adoption of this Constitution is that it marks a fundamental stage on the way to the abandonment of national sovereignty. It announces the end of the nation in favour of a federation” (p. 56). Numerous elements of an analysis of the function and the history of the nation are to be found in the chapters of this book. In it we also perceive the denouncement of a strong personal conviction: “Everything happens as if the protagonists had agreed to speak of something else… nobody wants to touch this idea of the nation” (p. 16). “To open the debate entails breaking the taboo of the nation, a concept which is much more sacred in the minds of the citizens than one may imagine, although they are not fully aware of it” (p. 26).
In fact, the debate on the Constitution rekindles in France very old quarrels at the very heart of the debate on the “nation”: what are its foundations? The territory or an ideal? The primacy of the rights of man or the reason of State? This approach leads Philippe Val to a vigorous criticism of “souverainiste” ideas and even to the attempt to unmask hidden positions. The protesting upholders of sovereignty prefer criticizing Europe rather than “the holy nation”, even though the decisions they dislike are taken by national authorities. This observation, which regularly comes up in the actions sponsored, among others, by the French Communist Party, matches up with the conception of internationalism, which is connected with the idea of nation, which is also strongly rooted in the psychology of the main leaders of ATTAC, a radical-left movement.
Philippe Val denounces the caution of these leaders, who refuse to reveal their deeper motivations to militants; they are misled and attracted only by the radical economic criticism directed against the ECT. He charges the ones and the others with simply having chosen to unite against Europe all kinds of discontent. It is true that a wide variety of complaints and sufferings lead to say No to everything and anything – and never mind the European Constitution!
Another recurrent theme in the book is peace. Several times the writer is struck by the “weariness” or “boredom” that the lasting peace reigning over the European continent seems to engender. Peace for too long? “The argument according to which ‘Europe means peace’ is on the point of losing its meaning, since peace has become the natural element we live in” (p. 109).
From his dedication to peace, peace being a priceless value, Philippe Val opens two interesting perspectives. On the one hand, he considers that the construction of peace entails, explains and justifies the complexity of the European construction in general and of the ECT in particular. To his mind, such a lengthy and dull text is “the price to be paid for a political creation – the construction of Europe – with no precedent in the past, a consequence of the economic, political and moral collapse of Europe after the two world wars” (p. 12). On the other hand, this process leads to developing a culture of negotiation and discussion that progressively replaces the culture of confrontation and war, which used to be a much easier one.
From this basic remark it is possible to draw a strategic reflection for the federalist thought. To say No to the ECT is an act based on a national ideal. To say Yes means accepting compromise, negotiation, discussion. Consequently, it is a confrontation between a concrete ideal and an horizon which recedes as one moves forward. “One does not send men to be killed for an horizon”. Hence an important question on the forms of the federalist action towards a European people: how to galvanize and mobilize citizens for a federal Europe?
Dynamic and militant, the author launches a few pointed remarks at the supporters of the Yes in the referendum; for him, they got caught in a debate about real concerns, and in order not to appear cynical, they have prudently camped on the very ground of controversies chosen by the supporters of the No, so as to elude the problem of the nation. They did not fight against the strategy of a scapegoat (Europe) which was employed against them. He goes so far as to denounce their pusillanimity, not to say their cowardice, when they did not dare to speak of the construction of a European federation, of European federalism, which were the real issues at stake (pp. 70-71).
There are three positive aspects in the militant message delivered by Philippe Val, each one being an element which enriches federalist culture in an original way.
He contributes to the definition of a positive pro-European action. He strongly places his reflection in the field of politics. “When the supporters of the No protest that they are genuine Europeans, they play with words… Today “European” has in fact two meanings: a traditional acceptation, “of European origin and culture”, and a more upto- date sense, “in favour of the abandonment of sovereignty as necessary to the building of a new Europe”” (p. 23). He resolutely takes position in favour of a Federal Europe, but he disagrees with the tenets of militant federalists by stating that the present construction of Europe is already federal, in his opinion, in the institutions already in existence (European laws prevailing over national laws). Consequently, according to him, the ECT is only one additional, democratic stage towards a fully federal Europe.
The political debate on the referendum is a confrontation between républicains (in the French, quite nationalist, sense) and democrats. The Yes or No votes have been given according to the prevailing political leaning of the voters. The unquestionable democratic advances brought by the Constitution largely compensate for the loss of the former structuring values, i.e. the republic
associated with the nation.
Indeed, a debate did take place, but there is a final criticism on the role played by the media. A detailed analysis shows that in over 7 weeks of open debate, the agony, then the death and funeral of Pope Jean-Paul II was given a paramount place in the news for more than three weeks, clouding the political debate. It might not have changed the result of the ballot, but it may have had a greater weight in the balance than one thinks. The role played by the media has not been analyzed further, but we know that the history and analysis of this political event remains to be written.
In his conclusion, Philippe Val enlarges his topic to the scale of the world and mankind: “To be a citizen of Europe means sharing ideas and not origins… The European construction is a cosmopolitan thought, which asserts itself politically against any ethnic thought” (p. 112).