The Uneasy 'New Europeans'
GELB, NORMAN
ON THE WAY TO 1992 The Uneasy 'New Europeans' By Norman Gelb London No one ever imagined that transforming Western Europe into a federation of nation states would be easy. And the...
...It poses practical dilemmas in terms of strategy and resources, as well as other problems...
...It appeared that the obstacles standing in the way of the process were being methodically dismantled or levered aside in a rather orderly fashion...
...The redrawing of the political map of Europe is a precarious affair...
...Western Europeans are relieved that the USSR no longer appears to pose a military threat, yet that presents problems too...
...For example, Senator Larry Pressler (R.S.D...
...Europe's two horrific wars in this century have taken tens of millions of lives and consumed colossal amounts of national resources...
...Over the past several months, however, the mood has changed...
...These people naturally applauded the recent efforts of European Community leaders—Margaret Thatcher excluded —to accelerate unification...
...There is a sense of helplessness in Western Europe as people look on and wonder whether Moscow will finally be able to peacefully resolve its momentous social, economic and political difficulties...
...Nationalist and ethnic pressures have revived antagonisms, suspicions and worse between East Germans and Poles, Hungarians and Romanians, Czechs and Slovaks, Croats and Serbs...
...Even the most optimistic among them are now unsure, and somewhat conflicted, about a proper course...
...The EC's Commission in Brussels, headed by Jacques Delors, expressed the hope that the new regimes in the East would put their relations with Western Europe onabasisof shared political, economic and cultural values, and of increased interdependence...
...The uncertainty set in shortly after the elation produced by the opening of the Berlin Wall last November...
...Following the collapse of Communism in the former Soviet satellites, Western Europe generously reached out for even closer ties...
...Every government is under pressure to cut public spending, though, and invariably the reflexive response is to sharply trim back military expenditures...
...But it was soon clear that this also reflected the existence of a power vacuum in Eastern Europe —and geopolitics, like nature, abhors a vacuum...
...Despite current plans for dropping all tariff barriers in the European Community (EC) by 1992, true unity of its 12member countries is still a long way off...
...Western and Eastern Europeans formally demonstrated an awareness of their common destiny in 1988, before the latest political eruptions...
...The feeling, moreover, was initially heightened by the disintegration of Communism's stranglehold on Central and Eastern Europe: With its horizons expanded, a united Europe would restore the declining standards of civilization in a world that has been badly thrown off course while negotiating the turbulent 20th century...
...They further believe that just as an intensive effort must be made to rescue East Germany from its economic paralysis, environmental pollution and the social confusions accompanying the dismantling of its Communist infrastructure, the same needs tobe done for other parts of Europe that are, to agreater or lesser degree, suffering similar difficulties...
...These are matters the EC cannot ignore...
...Nevertheless, Europeanization has spawned a breed of "New Europeans" —intellectuals who think of themselves not primarily as French or German, for example, but as heirs to a long and proud, if admittedly sometimes blighted, history of cultural achievements...
...West Germany's strength, after all, has been counted on to draw the economically backward sectors of the Community (in Britain and Italy as well as Greece, Spain and Portugal) toward sustained prosperity and social justice...
...The New Europeans consider the restructuring and revitalization of East Germany an obligation that should be fulfilled not only by the West Germans but by the entire European Community...
...At that time, the European Community and its Communist counterpart, Comecon, signed a joint declaration calling for mutual economic assistance...
...And the process certainly has been advancing very gradually since French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman first proposed establishing the European Coal and Steel Community 40 years ago...
...At the moment, perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the continuing European upheaval is the possible consequences of the Soviet Union's threatened fragmentation...
...Norman Gelb, the NL's London correspondent, is the author most recently of Dunkirk: The Complete Story of the First Step in the Defeat of Hitler...
...recently declared that, insofar as Lithuania's confrontation with Moscow affects the West, it is really a European rather than an American concern...
...Freedom was in the air...
...They pine for eternal verities and exalted standards, not the narrow materialism and violence many of their newspapers and television reports have led them to believe define the present-day United States...
...In the climate of uncertainty now prevailing across the Continent, EC leaders are especially sensitive to the importance of creating conditions that will prevent any renewed armed conflict...
...They hold that their legacy includes, among other things, the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, the extensiveness of the Continent-spanning Carolingian Empire, and the splendors of the Renaissance...
...Many also are anxious about signs that the United States is beginning to disengage itself from commitments in this part of the world...
...Thus on the heels of the excitement came the recognition that there is serious trouble to the east, that it will have a crucial bearing on all of Europe, and that there is no telling where it might lead...
...But a recent EC conference concluded that whatever assistance was rendered, it must not interrupt the Community's own integration process...
...As politicians in one country after another propose reducing contributions to NATO, and as Americans press for the "peace dividend," Western Europe is in danger of finding itself without sufficient leverage to defuse a military crisis before it turns lethal...
...Meanwhile, developments in the Soviet Union are of course also being scrupulously monitored...
...Liberation was infectious and spreading quickly...
...The Commission asserted that it was in Western Europe's interest to respond positively to what was transpiring, and suggested that it would not be inappropriate for the former Communist states to be granted some sort of formal association with the European Community...
...Also included is the colonization of America, although the New Europeans tend not to boast about how that has turned out...
...In this view, no one steeped in the Continent's history could maintain that Tomas Masaryk's Czechoslovakia or Louis Kossuth's Hungary is not of Europe and therefore unworthy of the Community's concern and care...
...The disclaimers of European Community leaders notwithstanding, member nations are alarmed that Community distortions are likely to result from the emergence ? f a German superstate once the inevitable happens and East Germany is absorbed by the Federal Republic...
...Germany, and the direction it will take, is a great worry, as it has been for most of die time since the days of Bismarck...
...Nor can Poland's present plight be ignored when one remembers how, three centuries ago, Polish King John Sobieski led the forces that saved Western Europe from being overrun by Turkish armies determined to bestow the benefits of Islam upon it...
...Talk of a United States of Europe was admittedly premature, yet a sense of Europeanization was taking hold...
...For EC officials and bureaucrats charged with mapping out long-term programs and plans in Brussels, what has been happening in the East involves much more than the issue of moral obligations...
...The New Europeans are finding many developments on this side of the Atlantic both distressing and unsettling...
...Not long afterward, bilateral trade agreements established commercial links throughout Europe and pointed toward wider, mutually beneficial economic dealings...
...The BBC, which doesn't normally pay that close attention to what is said on Capitol Hill, found the Senator's comment worthy of inclusion in one of its news bulletins...
...some say ever since German tribal warriors mauled elite Roman legions in 9 a.D...
...Whether it does or not, it will subject the Community to strains that had not been anticipated...
...Some EC countries are seeking to step up the pace of political and economic integration to ensure Bonn's remaining fully committed to the Community, regardless of any additional burdens it may take on...
Vol. 73 • April 1990 • No. 7
