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Thursday, November 16, 2017

A Conceptual History of European Unity & What It Suggests for the Geopolitical Future of the Continent (Grand Narrative Essay)


Introduction:

The prolific 17th century European polyglot, philosopher, and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz once said that "ambition is not less effective than love" in achieving political ends beneficial to all (Roldan 2011). In particular, what he meant by this was that were a sovereign to decide to invest himself in the project of uniting the European continent, it would matter not whether this sovereign did it with the altruistic objective of establishing “perpetual peace,” or if he pushed such advocacy on the self-interested premise of causing the collapse of the House of Hapsburg for his own relative gain. So long as the effort worked to the ultimate political and material benefit of the vast majority, it was something to be supported in good conscience regardless of the hegemonic agency's ulterior motives. Leibniz's point was greater than that, though; he was attempting to illustrate through example a position of political realism in his critique of a popular treatise advocating 'perpetual peace' in Europe. Written in 1713 by Charles-Irénée Castel, better known simply by his religious title of the abbé de Saint-Pierre, the treatise advocated for the formation of a confederal union not only of Europe, but ultimately the entire world in idealistic eventuality (Roldan 2011). Leibniz, though he deeply admired Castel's work in its attempt and good intentions, asserted that the monk had not solved the perennial issue of how to make monarchs “want perpetual peace,” even if he believed that were such a hypothetical objective achieved, said perpetual peace was conceivably possible. The problem was not logistics or a lack of aggregate human ability to stop war, but the vicissitudes of human nature itself; and though we now live in an era where a form of European political unity has been achieved (whether meaningfully or nominally is a matter of strong debate), these very same critical observations ring just as true in form as they did at their time of conception three centuries ago. This essay will briefly summarize, investigate, and analyze the history of the concept of European unity and will present the ways in which such an investigation can give us a deeper understanding of the issues facing the contemporary European Union by posing and answering—to the greatest extent possible—what could be described as either one question in two parts, or two questions in one. First: what was the proposed anatomy of—and the ultimate cause of failure for—attempts at European unity proposed prior to the 20th century? And two: based on the demonstrable presupposition that such unifying projects were conceived of and organized in opposition to a larger perceived external threat and lacking such a similar cohesive opposition narrative as the Soviet Cold War threat with which the modern European project legitimized much of its supranational-integrationist character, what kind of future can be reasonably expected for the EU based on the patterns observed in a broader evaluation of the history of such a union in both concept and attempt? As well, all of this will be contextualized within the complexity of our present era, a direct result of the fracturing of these internal and external unifying grand narrative structures and contrasts across the world as a result of globalization and asymmetrical warfare with hostile non-state actors such as ISIS and al Qaeda.

'European Unity' Then and Now:
As of November 2017, the time of this writing, it seems clear to both political observers and scholars of political science that the primary source of dissonance in the Union exists in a clash between localized identities and cosmopolitan neoliberal capitalism (Pan 2016). The Brexit referendum of June 2016 is a clear demonstration of this as one of the greatest points of domestic controversy in the United Kingdom at the time was the prolific hiring of workers from Central and Eastern Europe for menial employment at low wages throughout the country. This was a result of an essential component of the EU Single Market facilitating the free movement of labor and capital throughout the Eurozone. The fact that such a concern for lost jobs focused on the continued presence of other Europeans simultaneous to the destabilizing influx of refugees and migrants from the war-zones of Libya, Iraq, and Syria speaks volumes on the resurfacing showdown between compartmentalized nationalism(s) and European integrationism throughout the continent. In one respect, it seems logical that long and strongly established nationalist sentiments would maintain a problematic magnetism as compared to the attempts to cultivate a larger, though ethereal, form of European collective identity. On another level, however, there indeed has been a potent sense of shifting common European identity for just over half a millennia which, up to and including the inauguration of the European Union itself with the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1952, has found greater stimulus and dissemination with the publication of formal and informal proposals for a European political union, sometimes in the form of a massive continental superstate, and other times through the looser intergovernmental framework of institutions established to facilitate perpetual multilateral dialogue and coordination. Such proposed multilateralism was an anomalous novelty until it saw practice through meaningful implementation in the 20th century amidst the aftermath of the immense industrial slaughters and destruction of World War's One and Two. However, collective identities are not forged with any meaningful longevity merely from proposition or disseminated discourse and debate alone, but from the composition, mythologies and institutional arrangements of concrete political entities such as states, confederations, and empires. In this respect, the echo of European unity was established in territorial precedent during the zenith years of the Roman Empire, though at this time there was no such concept—and thus no such thing—as “Europe” as we would understand it today. The story of the contemporary concept of Europe as we know it begins with the Christian religiously-centred geographical abstraction of Christianitas, which gained popular use for the first time in Late Antiquity with the ever-growing number of devotees to the new faith who scattered themselves across the Roman Empire—first, to flee persecution from Roman authorities, and not long after to evangelize so-called 'pagans' (Pasture 2015). This concept of Christianitas soon became supplanted by the near-equivalent and more ubiquitously recognizable term Christendom as the years of Late Antiquity faded into what would come to be known as the early medieval period (Pasture 2015). It is here that our survey investigation and analysis begins.

A Brief History of 'Europe' in Concept and Etymology:
Although the ancient Greeks coined the term “Europa” long prior even to the establishment of early Rome, it was not an abstraction of geography, but rather the name of one of their Phoenician deities. A princess god who, aside from a shared terminological etymology with “Europe,” had no relation to or influence on the future concept or its associated cultural and political practices (Pasture 2015). During their time, the Greeks actually feared and despised the greater European landmass and its inhabitants, preferring instead to cultivate a set of tentative connections in and knowledge of the civilizations to the east of their island-dotted peninsula. Historical records indicate that the term “Europe” was first used in reference to the continent (or segments of it) by Pope Gregory I in the 6th century not, as one may assume, in self-reference, but rather in reference to invading tribes from the northern Germanic territories. The term is then first used in external reference by those who we would traditionally consider culturally 'non-European' in the middle of the 8th century as evidenced from the work of an otherwise unknown Mozarab chronicler living in Umayyad Spain (Pasture 2015). In his writings, he identified Christian forces under the command of the Frankish King Charles Martel as “European,” thus implying that the Umayyad's were not. This demonstrates both the cultural centrality and the geographic ambiguity of Europe in concept throughout this and subsequent centuries, up to and including the present European Union. It is also a potent example of how external threats played a central role in the process of forming a European identity via contrast, regardless of whether such terminology was utilized by those external or internal to its amorphous and constantly shifting purview of definition. However, to provide a full synopsis of Europe as a basic cultural and geographical concept is beyond the scope of this paper. Having examined the relative linguistic and etymological origins of such, we will now turn to investigate the origins and first recorded instances of proposals for a political union of Europe (eg: Christendom), starting with the Hussite George of Poděbrady who was King of Bohemia in the 15th century from the year of his coronation in 1458 until his death in 1471.

The Project for Perpetual Peace:
George of Poděbrady, as sovereign of Bohemia, penned a formal diplomatic document known in English as the “Treaty on the Establishment of Peace throughout Christendom” sometime during or just prior to the year 1464 (Šimůnek 2010). Predicated on the aforementioned religious-territorial idea of Christendom, which at the time would have consisted geographically of roughly most of Europe west of the modern Russian Federation (with some notable exceptions), the Treaty sought to establish a permanent political union of equal but independent Christian/European states, both terms being at this time fluidly interchangeable (Šimůnek 2010, Pasture 2015). It differed quite radically from the conventional instruments of medieval diplomacy in that its proposal took the obtuse form of a multilateral agreement at a time when bilateral arrangements between realms were largely—if not entirely—the exclusive norm and practice. It is in respect to this attempted multilateralism that historians as well as political scholars of modern Europe assert King George's Treaty proposal to be the first clear precedent to the contemporary European Union in 'deep' history.1 George was also a part of the pre-Protestant Christian reformers known as the Hussite's and was thus considered a heretic by the Holy See in Rome. His strategic calculus in penning his proposal for a Christian union was in part influenced by his desire to offset the overwhelming coercive power of the Catholic Church (Šimůnek 2010) and can thus additionally be seen as an antecedent component to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Although serious formal discussions to realize this vision of political unity did indeed take place between 1462 and 1464, these efforts stalled and ultimately fell apart entirely as vitriolic accusations of heresy were flung back and forth and wars of words often escalated into physical military confrontations between states and sectarian actors (Šimůnek 2010). King George of Poděbrady died in 1471 having failed in his efforts to bring together the realms of Christendom in a political union on the justification of uniting against the Turkish threat to the east (Šimůnek 2010). Although a single sovereign had at least nominally taken up the cause of a relative form of 'perpetual peace,' the seminal impediment observed by Leibniz as to how to make monarchs “want perpetual peace” on a scale significant enough to truly manifest meaningful or even somewhat tangible results had not been overcome. Regardless, an important historical precedent had now been set which would be largely overlooked for centuries as new proposals for European unity began to appear independently of the example set by King George. One such proposal was the treatise mentioned in the introduction to this paper written by Charles-Irénée Castel, the abbé de Saint-Pierre, in 1713. Titled the “Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe” (which literally translates as the “Project to make peace perpetual in Europe”), Castel's treatise was inspired by and based on an even earlier proposal made by William Penn, the notorious English Quaker and colonial founder of the modern day American state of Pennsylvania, in 1693. Penn wrote that to secure peace and justice, the powers of Europe had to organize an international meeting place at which a European Parliament, assembly of Estates, or Imperial Diet could congregate on a constantly ongoing multilateral basis to coordinate certain matters of policy as well as arbitrate disputes between members of equal standing (Pasture 2015). In his proposal for a European Parliament, Penn even went so far as to elaborate on the the amount of seats any particular member state should reasonably hold, basing his numbers on population and existing geopolitical power differentials. The exact details utilized to illustrate his argument were only hypothetical in his writing seeing as there is no historical evidence to suggest he was privy to official information on European demography. In substance, his proposed European Parliament was not only much before its time, it was also so uncannily similar to the mandate and structure of the modern European Parliament of the 21st century as to seem almost accidentally prophetic. His proposal was also unprecedented in its injunction to enrol the non-Christian powers of the Muscovites and Turks into this supranational union as fully equal partners, thus uniquely marking the phenomenon of war itself as the primary external threat against which all should congregate in solidarity to defeat or, at the very least, restrain (Pasture 2015). In a continent still physically at war with itself over matters of religious conscience, however, Penn's was an extremely outlandish proposal. Though it was studied sincerely by scholars of subsequent decades and extracted of its most seminal insights, the broadness of his vision was not something that would convince a critical mass of already bickering and prejudicial sovereigns to take up the project of perpetual peace as it was based not on any sense of political realism, but instead on an extreme idealism. In other words, it was based on love and did not appeal to any executive ambition with which it could have perhaps garnered some relative leverage in the political discourse taking place within the corridors of power. Castel's work essentially repeated this naive faux pas as he, like Penn, was working not from a place of political sobriety, but religiously-inspired idealism. In both cases, the intentions were laudable, but Leibniz's central point still stood. In the century and a half following the publication of Castel's work, two of history's great philosophical powerhouses, Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, would also articulately insert themselves into the debate and subsequent discourse on this “Project for Perpetual Peace.” Having elaborated in detail on the primary precedents under inspection in this writing, however, we will unfortunately be largely overlooking the contributions of these two men as limitations on length restrict them both to beyond the scope of this paper. Having established the key precedents to the modern project of European unity, we will now briefly touch upon the events of the mid-20th century directly leading into the 1952 signing of the Treaty of Rome before concluding with a predictive analysis as to what all of the above can tell us about the geopolitical future of the continent as we edge closer to the dawn of the 2020's.

      Churchill, the United States of Europe,
and a Closing Word on Europe's Today and Tomorrow:
Winston Churchill, known best for his tenure as British Prime Minister during the chaotic period of the Second World War, had in years prior already been exposed to the cause of politically uniting Europe through the public relations campaigns and explicit overtures of such prominent organizations as the International Paneuropean Union created and lead by the famous Austrian-Japanese philosopher and politician Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (Packwood 2016). In fact, Churchill had been pondering European unity in some form or another since as early as 1904, as evidenced in papers on the topic which were in his possession at the time. His advocacy for a proverbial 'United States of Europe' began officially, however, on February 15th, 1930 with the publication of an eponymously titled article in the Saturday Evening Post where he described the overwhelming need to preserve what he identified as 'the best of European civilization' by abolishing “the tangled growth and network of tariff barriers designed to restrict trade and production to particular areas,” thus consequently returning to “the old foundations of Europe” in which unity was contiguously imposed and maintained by such venerated authorities as the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the “catholicity” of European Christendom, and Napoleon Bonaparte (Packwood 2016). Finally, it seemed like there was a chance of convincing a critical mass of sovereigns (or, rather, the political equivalents of their time) to endorse a concrete form of continental political unity. The destruction of (particularly western) Europe as a result of World War Two prompted a radical intervention from the United States in the form of the Marshall Plan (Pasture 2015). Its mandate was to bankroll as well as provide physical assistance in the reconstruction of the continent, but it came with a catch. In return for this unprecedented international assistance, Europe had to agree to re-organize itself along the lines of a bonafide United States of Europe. Though part of this was motivated by an altruistic will to assist devastated allies and alleviate the suffering of fellow human beings, another motivation—just as important—was to guarantee against the threat of further Soviet communist expansion, whether in the form of directly annexed territory or the exertion of indirect geopolitical influence. Churchill's official position on the matter notably changed following the agreement to and implementation of the Marshall Plan. Once a great supporter of the United Kingdom being “with Europe” but “not of it,” he suddenly came out in relative support of Britain's incorporation into this united European polity (Packwood 2016). Thus, through the force of collective economic compromise in the wake of the most devastating war in human history, the new unipolar American global superpower bargained a critical mass of these colloquial European sovereigns into finally endorsing political union. Leibniz's objection to the abbé de Saint-Pierre had finally been overcome by the force of history and the quirks of an ascendant world order, the likes of which the world had never known before. However, history is the story of precedents which are set and later used to guide future efforts, but too often we are dragged into new situations and world order's that have no precedent or existing playbook and which we must awkwardly stumble through blindly in order to truly receive their lessons for posterity. The 21st century is one such era, and at this point, we can only hope we as a race will make it through this catastrophic bottleneck to pass on what we have learned to future generations through the precedents we have—and have yet—to set. The grand unifying narratives of old have, for the most part, faded entirely or fragmented into the compartmentalized echo-chambers of partisan identity politics. For once, there is no clear enemy or conventional threat with defined borders and a standing army with which to identify collectively in opposition against. The new 'enemies' are jihadist sleeper-cells and lone wolves who legally pass as civilians until their deed is clearly already in process and it is too late to prevent their assault, as well as the shadowy 'political elite' in Brussels and the many cabals of elected representatives throughout the member states of the European Union who seem to be 'collaborating' with them; a worldview demonstrably acted upon in the slim victory of the 'Leave' campaign in the UK's Brexit referendum. The state is no longer a standard basis of identity, but an obtuse vessel in a world order defined primarily by relational asymmetry between individuals, groups, organizations, and, yes, even nations themselves on a nearly-unrestricted scale spanning the length and width of the entire globe. Previous attempts at and proposals for European unity throughout history failed because everyone knew far too well who they were and who they were not; hence a Catholic knew without a doubt that living in peace with a Lutheran was unthinkable as it was a matter of religious conscience and risked one losing access to eternal life in the Heavenly Kingdom. The current enterprise at European unity, if it does not collapse entirely under the weight of old ghosts and bad habits that refuse to die, will remain in at least relative precariousness—embroiled in political spats and potentially even outright geopolitical upheaval—until the end of humanity, and thus the end of large groups with which a spectrum of conflicting viewpoints much be reconciled with and compromised between. Old habits truly do die hard, as evidenced in our desire for that Biblical Shining City on a Hill, or for our desire to see an end to conflict in and of itself when conflict is an inevitable fact of life insofar as we have ever known or observed it. In conclusion, although length restricted him from incorporation through meaningful analysis in this paper, it seems that the words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau from his “A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe” are just as true now as they were in 1782:

The present balance of Europe is just firm enough to remain in perpetual oscillation without losing itself altogether; and, if our troubles cannot increase, still less can we put an end to them, seeing that any sweeping revolution is henceforth an impossibility” (Rousseau 1782).


1'Deep history' here meaning that it is beyond the usual purview of European Union history as investigated and reviewed within the limited confines of the 20th/21st centuries and their many seminal moments. Essentially, it is the investigation of precedents to European unity prior to 1900 CE, whereas anything after this threshold would be considered 'recent' history for the sake of this paper.       

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN ESSAY WRITTEN FOR A CLASS ON EUROPEAN UNION & INTEGRATION AT A POST-SECONDARY LEVEL.


Bibliography:


Kant, Immanuel. (1795). Towards Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Ebook. John Bennett. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1795.pdf.

Packwood, A. (2016). Churchill and the United States of Europe, 1904-1948. Comillas Journal of International Relations, 7(1).

Pan, David. (2016). "European Union and Holy Roman Empire". Telos 2016 (176): 202-208. Telos Press. Doi:10.3817/0916176202.

Pasture, Patrick. (2015). Imagining European unity since 1000 AD. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.11-31.

Roldan, C. (2011). Perpetual Peace, Federalism and the Republic of the Spirits: Leibniz Between Saint-Pierre and Kant. Studia Leibnitiana, 43(1).

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1782). A Lasting Peace Through The Federation Of Europe. Ebook. Zurich: International Relations and Security Network, p.5.

Šimůnek, Robert. (2010). "George of Poděbrady (Jiří z Poděbrad)". Oxford Reference. http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662624.001.0001/acref-9780198662624-e-2408.

van den Dungen, P. (2014). The Plans for European Peace by Quaker Authors William Penn (1693) and John Bellers (1710). Araucaria, (32), pp.69-92.

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