Eurotolerance

By Christopher Caldwell
Prospect, May 2009

Edited by Andy Ross

A central problem in welcoming people from poor countries is that Europeans have lost faith in parts of the civilization to which migrants were drawn in the first place. It is hard to follow Europe's rules and embrace Europe's values when Europeans themselves are rewriting those rules and reassessing those values.

The Europe into which immigrants began arriving in the 1950s was reeling in horror from the second world war and preoccupied with building the institutions to forestall any repetition of it. NATO was the most important of these institutions. The EU was the most ambitious.

Postwar Europe was built on an intolerance of intolerance. What were Europeans thinking when they welcomed immigrants in such numbers and in such naive and overindulgent ways?

Just because they were migrating to Europe did not mean immigrants accepted, understood, or even noticed the European project to leave behind "the history written in letters of blood." On the contrary, many immigrants, and many children and grandchildren of immigrants, kept alive dreams of cultural, national, and even racial glory that were beyond the reach of Europeans' understanding.

Over time, the ideology of tolerance changed in two ways. It broadened as the classes of people entitled to protection from intolerance grew and it hardened as what constituted an offence against tolerance was codified into law. The result was punishment for conduct that had been until quite recently considered normal.

The campaign against "Islamophobia" threatened to erase the distinction between the criticism of minorities on intolerant grounds and the criticism of any minority on any grounds. It threatened to extend the de facto censorship that already existed on matters of race to matters of religion and to political acts done in religion's name. Europe's toleration laws were beginning to work to the advantage of the intolerant.

The policing of tolerance had no inbuilt limits and no obvious logic. Why was "ethnic pride" a virtue and "nationalism" a sickness? Why had it suddenly become criminal to ask questions today that it was considered a citizen's duty to ask ten years ago?

Increasingly, immigration became a pivot of all European politics. The immigration problem was also the race problem. So declaring immigration a success and an "enrichment" became the only acceptable opinion. To hold immigration a failure was to reveal oneself a racist.

Diversity described both a sociological reality and an ideology. The ideology was in tune with the European ideal but it could never be a neutral ideal because Europeans knew too little about other cultures. Europeans who considered churches houses of stupidity, sexism, and superstition didn't know enough about mosques or ashrams to form a judgment. Immigrants could indulge prejudices and myths that natives would be disciplined or jailed for indulging.

Europe's demographic revolution had long been defended as a means of providing a transfusion of youth. But how much youth did Europe need? And what did Europe need it for? Was it to provide a rush of dynamism to a society too old and tired to provide such things for itself?

Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born sociologist in Germany, suggested that German culture be understood as the Leitkultur in Germany's multi-kulti society. He was pilloried for the suggestion. The values that were supposed to liberate Europeans have left them paralyzed.
 

Eurodemocracy

By Siobhán Dowling
Der Spiegel, June 2009

Edited by Andy Ross

The European Union parliamentary vote used to be a domestic political barometer. With this week's results, the pundits rushed to find a wider pattern.

Social Democrats suffered across the EU as voters turned to the right. Far-right parties did well in Holland, Austria, Hungary, and elsewhere. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso declared his candidacy for a second term and will likely be unopposed.

The perennial European election problem is low voter turnout. Just 43 percent of Europe's 375 million eligible voters went to the polls this time. German commentators blame nationalists for failing to campaign on European issues and for using Brussels as a scapegoat when things go wrong.

Süddeutsche Zeitung:

Opinion polls show that the majority of Europeans value the EU, that they would not like to do without it, that they appreciate the advantages of the community, and that they would like to see more Europe to deal with big questions such as climate change, energy supplies, or foreign and security policy.

Why then does this majority not turn out to vote? Because no one has convinced them that it is important. Almost every party in every country in the EU has failed in the task of encouraging voters to take part in the process.

Politicians should resist the temptation to attack the EU to score points at home. They should defend it when it is unjustifiably or unreasonably attacked. Politicians who explain and stand by what they do in Brussels could revive trust in the European project.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

The European Parliament's increase in meaning and power has not made its elections any more attractive. The campaign focused only on domestic issues. National governments like to claim everything that goes well in their countries for themselves and use the EU as a scapegoat for any inadequacies or mistakes.

The EU is incomprehensible to most citizens. The expansion of the EU by a dozen states and the start of accession talks with Turkey gives the impression that Europe has no borders. If the future dimensions of the EU are as unclear as the aim of European integration, then it is hardly surprising that only its opponents can mobilize the voters. As long as the European Parliament does not elect a government or the citizens have no direct vote for the president, the EU institutions will remain alien.

Die Tageszeitung:

Eurocrats and the skeptics are once again moaning about low turnout and the lack of interest in Europe. But the election results show just how similar European societies have become after 20 years of accelerated globalization and open borders. Despite some national quirks this election's major trends point in amazingly similar directions.

Throughout Europe social democracy is in crisis. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is launching one record bail-out after another and German Kanzlerkandidat Frank-Walter Steinmeier is offering big state aid packages. The Greens are profiting from the feeling that the current crisis is more than just economics and says something about the limits of growth.

The conservative successes look greater than they are. In Italy Silvio Berlusconi just about held steady, in Spain the opposition was unable to profit from the economic crisis, while in Germany the conservatives had their worst European election results ever. Only their pragmatism and image of competence saved them from disaster.

Die Welt:

The voters were not concerned with the fate of the EU. The political class across Europe has not succeeded in focusing on European politics and their plans for the EU. There is a debate about whether state aid for companies is good or bad. Or whether Europe needs a real president or a real army. Or if Europe should be a nation in the true sense of the word. This is discussed in think tanks or universities and at conferences. But it is not debated in everyday life. That has to change.

Financial Times Deutschland:

The election campaign in nearly every country focused on national themes. Everyone likes to attack Brussels for its over-regulation. This is wrong. It is the representatives of the various EU states who make the decisions on laws and regulations. It is the task of European parliamentarians to make the proceedings in Brussels simpler and more transparent. If things go on like this, Europe's elites will destroy their grand project for peace and stability themselves.
 

Euroimmigration

By Esther Ben-David
Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009

Edited by Andy Ross

Western Europe has gone through two major stages in its recent immigration history. In the first stage, European leaders misjudged the effects of immigration and, in the second, they miscalculated how hard it would be to stop an immigration dynamic.

Most non-European immigrants to Europe are Muslims, many of them from rural and traditional areas. Push factors lead the immigrant to leave his homeland and pull factors attract him to a new home. Europe and other Western liberal countries exert a strong pull on immigrants. However, stopping immigration is not easy, since the same European liberal laws that attract immigrants also prevent states from acting to stop them from coming or to deport them.

It will be far more difficult to stop immigration than it was to initiate it. A unified European approach might help. Immigration to Europe might have developed differently with tougher, more restrictive immigration policies, but as long as Europe offers opportunities for work, education, and personal safety, and as long as it offers a liberal democracy with the rights and privileges such a lifestyle entails, it will continue to attract mass immigration.

The West is proud of its moral standards. The right to marry is recognized as a fundamental right that in many European countries brings citizenship. However, in a society where arranged marriages are the norm and forced marriages are common, the right to marry can easily place the law on the side of the aggressor. Defining refugee status so that many categories fulfil it renders it meaningless and encourages economic immigration.
 

Eurodefense

By Anatol Lieven
Prospect, June 2009

Edited by Andy Ross

Britain will soon have two aircraft carriers of impressive bulk and uncertain purpose, at a cost of £4 billion. The new ships will be named the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales. They come from a mixture of imperial nostalgia, blind attachment to the US alliance, and failure to decide on strategic priorities.

British military spending should be reduced by some 10 percent to bring it in line with France. It should be refocused away from irrelevant cold war-era projects like the Eurofighter and the Type 45 Destroyer, and from long-range expeditionary operations. The emphasis should be on the army's ability to fight small wars on Europe's periphery.

If the economic depression is deep and prolonged, democracy and peace will be threatened in parts of eastern Europe and the Balkans. These threats could appear in EU and NATO member states. In the event of serious ethnic clashes in Latvia or Estonia, western European forces must be ready to step in. Kosovo and Bosnia remain unsettled. Romania contains a Hungarian minority whose status remains unresolved.

Failure on its own territory could doom the entire EU project. Democracy has been spread in the world in recent decades not by force, but by example, and the success of the EU is central to the appeal of this example. If the EU cannot contain wars or ethnic conflicts within its own borders, then we can forget about preaching democracy elsewhere.

Britain is critical to any European security effort not because it has the largest armed forces but because together with the French it has the only ones that will fight if necessary. At present, the EU and its member states are shockingly weak even when it comes to dealing with small states on their own periphery.

The security and stability of Europe is a vital US interest. Britain can choose to act either as the leader of Europe's defense against new wars and upheavals, or to continue following US forays far from Britain's shores. This does not seem a difficult choice.
 

AR  I see the issue of sorting out a worthy concept for Europe and how it serves its citizens and sees its future in the world as a worthy one to absorb my philosophical energies for a while.