By Sumantra Maitra
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Apparently, a devastating thunderstorm stopped President
Trump from gathering with French President Emmanuel Macron and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel to celebrate the 100th anniversary of World War I.
This came after Macron, in a feat of culot,
argued that France and Europe need to unify and have a joint European Union
army capable of defending the continent in face of a growing China, a
revanchist Russia, and even the United States of America.
This bold statement immediately drew a couple of
threatening tweets from Trump, an awkward joint press conference, and Trump’s
cancellation of the visit to the commemorative event.
“We have to protect ourselves with respect to China,
Russia and even the United States of America,” Macron thundered, a claim that
drew Trump to tweet caustically “President Macron of France has just suggested
that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S.,
China and Russia. Very insulting, but perhaps Europe should first pay its fair
share of NATO, which the U.S. subsidizes greatly!”
Macron carried on the feud with a veiled dig about
nationalism. “This vision of France as a generous nation, of France as a
project, of France as the bearer of universal values was displayed during these
dark hours, as the very opposite of a selfish nation that only looks after its
own interest,” Macron said in his speech. “Patriotism is the opposite of
nationalism and Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.” One wonders what the
French patriots and nationalist partisans who died fighting Nazi imperialism
must have felt.
Macron’s Napoleon
Complex
Macron’s Napoleon complex is nothing new. But the
question that led to this moment in history will continue to haunt the two
countries and the European continent in the future. Trump or Macron, or any
individual leader, is frankly irrelevant. For centuries, a joint Europe under a
single political umbrella was an English (and later British) dread.
The reason was geopolitical: if any hegemon unites Europe
under one single empire or political union, it would prove to be too powerful
for the maritime powers. One of the primary reasons for the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) was, in the timeless words of Lord Ismay, to keep
the Germans down, Russians out, and Americans in. The American hegemony was
therefore by design, not a flaw in the system, and followed the British grand
strategy of offshore balancing and divide and rule.
Unfortunately, that led to a paradox. European muscle
atrophied because there’s the guarantee that someone else will cross the
Atlantic and break glass if there’s a fire. The once mighty German air force
currently has four
operational Typhoons, the French infantry needs over
a month to deploy to the Baltics, and the less
said about the Royal Navy, the better.
The lack of European military resources and American
concern is not a new one, either, and will not go away after Trump. But instead
of spending money on individual armed forces as nation-states and retention and
maintenance capabilities, the European Powers, led by the EU, started to
duplicate NATO bureaucracy in parallel organizations like Permanent Structured
Cooperation (PESCO), a division of the EU’s security and defense branch.
If individual nation-states fund their own armed forces
and spend more than 2 percent of gross domestic product on it, which fulfills
NATO criteria, that might satisfy the U.S. leadership and military. But if EU
as a union forms joint command and joint military, that leads to a dilemma.
Some Tactical
Errors
First, on the superficial level, that makes American
presence redundant. If Europeans can defend themselves under Brussels, why
should America spend so much taxpayer money to stay on the continent? But the
moment American troops threaten to pull back from anywhere east of Danube,
European unity will be at risk. There is no question which superpower the
Eastern and Central Europeans want as their
security guarantor.
Second, on a broader grand-strategic level, any joint
parallel European military command would also make NATO obsolete, and with
that, the end of American hegemony in Europe. As I have written before here,
even without military muscle and an independent foreign policy, EU and U.S.
interests are diverging over trade, China, Russia, the Middle East, and Iran.
Also, the chances of Europe uniting under a single military union or fielding a
joint army and nuclear umbrella are statistically negligible and remain a
pipedream.
With the return of nation-states, national sentiments,
and great power rivalry, the last quarter-century of post-national utopia is
over. It is only a matter of time until that reality hits the EU. Macron and
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker might have Château
Latour-fueled dreams about a European superpower, but internal problems of law
and order, a broken social contract, lack of martial spirit and interest, and
centrifugal forces which are trying to pry the union open, are just going to
stay and grow.
The frog, so to speak, will continue to boil slowly.
Every political union, at one point of time, faces a choice to centralize and
crush internal dissent, and consolidate the union, or to federalize more and
give more powers to the regions. European leaders have not decided on that
course of action, yet.
One therefore wishes good luck to Monsieur Macron. He
will need it, and he probably realizes it as well, as he stands on armistice
day, next to a lonesome black-clad German chancellor once touted as the next
liberal leader of the free world who is now politically dead at home. He wants
to run the simulation of uniting Europe, under one military command, through
force if necessary, and he is free to test that hypothesis.
The paradox of European hegemony will continue. Europe
cannot be united without a single hegemonic force. If anyone from within tries
to unite Europe by force, it would bring about external great powers balancing
against it. Power, as Kenneth Waltz wrote, begs to be balanced.
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