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1190@SURTITRE = Where Is Europe Heading?
France’s Minister of Defense Michèle Alliot-Marie has won her nom de guerre: ‘MAM’, an acronym formed by her initials. As it turns out, the lady minister embodies both the familiarity of the Ma’am of America’s Old South and the respectability of the Ma’am used in addressing the Queen in Buckingham Palace. The monicker has stuck and has gained popularity in the French armed forces, as well as in the French political world.
MAM managed to stand up to the daunting Donald Rumsfeld – who now greets her with the respect that she has earned – during a memorable meeting at the February 2003 Wehrkunde in Munich. MAM is elegant in the style of the Parisian grande bourgeoise. She conveys the self confidence that has made her a leading figure on France’s political scene. By dint of her personality and character, she has earned the respect of the men who embody France’s defense establishment to whom she does not hesitate to speak her mind. A Defense source in Paris explained: “The sigh of relief at the Ministry was audible when we learned that MAM would remain in place, after 29 May, although there had been some question of her being slated to head up the Foreign Ministry at Quai d’Orsay and of Douste Blazy’s taking over at Defense.” As it turned out, MAM remained at Defense and Douste took over Foreign Affairs.
In her entourage, there are those who are of the mind that if the fratricidal struggle between Villepin and Sarkozy were to end in eliminating the chances of either to succeed Chirac, Alliot-Marie could offer a novel solution, with her being able to position herself as a sort of French Hillary Clinton: a potential President. In her public statements, we note a propensity – rare for a minister in charge of one of the ‘sovereign domains reserved to the President’ – to speak in the first person, as the veritable guardian of the central pillar of France’s independence and sovereignty.
In the International Herald Tribune of 10 June, an article on the position of France’s minister of defense offered some positive pronouncements in these times of Chicken-Little and Calamity-Jane defeatism, following the French and Dutch ‘No’ votes of 29 May and 1 June. Here’s what she had to say: “Defense is the area where Europe has progressed the most in the last three years. At a time when a ‘No’ to the constitution in two countries raises questions inside and outside of Europe, defense is a pole of stability and consensus, even among many who have said No.”
To this unusual pronouncement in the European domain, effectively revealing what the commentators have obstinately refused to recognize, i.e. that significant advances have been made in European defense over the past few years, Alliot-Marie added these thoughts, which also contrast starkly with the politically correct views currently expressed by the trans-Atlantic experts, who speak with imperturbable aplomb of the tremendous gap that separates the US and Europe in the field of technology: “We are currently at the same technological level as the United States – if we want to stay there, we have to do a lot more. That is the price for being not just an economic power, but a political power.”
This judgment of the equivalence in technological capability between Europe and the US, followed by a ringing call to Europeans to put forth greater effort on the defense front, confirms that Alliot-Marie is now a voice to be reckoned with on the European defense scene – a voice destined for a role of leadership.
A few days before Alliot-Marie’s statements, another statement of great importance made the news. It was a statement by Nick Whitney (British), Director of the recently created European Defense Agency (EDA). On 3 June, Whitney declared that, in the ongoing work to open the borders between the EU Member States and to establish a framework for cooperation between the Member States, the framework “should eventually include a buy-European preference”. He hastened to add a clarification, both to show that the concept was more than a mere abstract notion and to show that it could become a serious working assumption: “We’re not going to get consensus on that concept this year and probably not next year, either. The Member States are still too split on the issue.”
What is at stake here is the idea of a ‘European preference’ – the European equivalent of the ‘Buy-American Act’ which drives many of the aspects of United States policy in defense procurement and technology transfer matters. The official mention of a proposal involving this idea is an event of historic moment. For several decades, the idea has been mooted, until now without the slightest prospect of its becoming official policy. That is now changed – and that is historic!
According to a European source, the issue of ‘European preference’, if posed as Whitney intends for it to be, is going to “confront the Europeans with their responsibilities: Do you want or don’t you want to commit yourselves to a serious European defense, with the industrial and technological base on a European scale that such a defense requires?” The response given to that question will be the moment of truth.
The issue is all the more interesting since it is being raised at the same time as another question – that drew little attention – raised by Tony Blair in the House of Commons on 15 June, relative to his forthcoming presidency of the EU that is to begin 1 July.
In the House of Commons, Blair affirmed that the economic choices and the link with the United States “are the real questions posed today for the Europeans”. The EU will remain “uncertain about its future and voters will have a problem approving constitutional treaties” as long as these issues are not resolved. On the second question – the one that interests us and the one that no one is addressing – Blair had this to say on a somewhat Sibylline note: “The second question is about the trans-Atlantic alliance, our principal alliance with the United States.” Blair did not provide the British ‘response’ to the second issue for debate.
An interesting question, surely – whatever the ulterior motives and mental reservations of the British (which must be sprouting in all directions because the question poses, politically, the same question as the ‘European preference’ for defense procurement: “to confront the Europeans with their responsibilities: Do you want or don’t you want to commit yourselves to a serious European defense…” in an independent and autonomous Europe, uncoupled from the links that are clearly those of subordination, of subjection? Here too, the answer to Tony Blair’s question will lead to the moment of truth.
In a Europe totally caught up in a crisis that is without precedent in over a half century (the first treaties, the ECSC, the European Coal and Steel Community, go back to 1950), it is true that defense emerges as the sole domain where a certain stability is to be found. Alliot-Marie’s analysis is correct. Sources from European military circles indicate the since 29 May, work has continued without letup. On the morning of 30 May, France’s ambassador to the EU put out the word to his defense team to forge ahead as if nothing had happened, and even to augment the level of effort.
No one among the Member States uttered the slightest suggestion to slow down work on the development of a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and work on developing EU military structures. The situation is quite the contrary for the other areas, which were thought to be the most sure guarantors of European unity: for example, serious suggestions were heard in Germany and in Italy about rethinking the role of the euro, and even of returning to the pre-euro national currency. Where is what remains of Europe’s stability to be found today amid a Europe in crisis – in the euro of the champions of an economically integrated Europe or in the arrangements for and the nascent military structures of a European defense, which has, however, been the subject of so many jokes and of so much derision among the effete elite and from the Neocons?
The spirit of logic of the French would be tempted to look for answers to the questions posed – Blair’s questions and the ‘European preference’ question. What one would glean would be overweening expectations or, more likely, a renewed pessimism, depending upon where one’s coming from. One would be wrong, in either case, The answers are not what matters, for no one – not even the British, not even the French – has a ready response, positive or negative (except perhaps on the ‘European preference’, a more technical issue). It is at this point that one begins to understand that the interest of the questions lies not in the answers. The sole and fundamental interest is that the process opens a breach to reality by forcing us to pose the problems in their true terms.
Europe’s drama, the crisis in which Europe finds itself, does not stem from a political system, or from an economic system or from a model. Those are all things that change and that adapt. A British academic, Margaret Blunden, Professor Emeritus at the University of Westminster, in London, shows us how much less liberal the UK is than had been thought, and how much more liberal France is than had been thought. The quarrels on this score are quarrels among ideologues and publicists who have to justify their emoluments and have to feed their egos. It is not there that we can hope to find a European identity or European sovereignty. Europe’s crisis – and it is a vast crisis within a still more vast crisis – is the collision with reality of the world that we have built for ourselves. The distance, the tensions and the contradictions between the two have become so great and so intense that collision has become inevitable. The ‘No’ vote referenda have been the first real harbingers of this collision. The debate on the trans Atlantic controversy, and especially the need for the debate made felt by such matters as Blair’s question and the issue of the ‘European preference’ are other signs of the impending collision. The clear identification of the issues only makes the mix that much more explosive.
The ‘European preference’ issue, once its potential repercussions are understood, will rapidly become highly explosive, even if an effort is made to approach the issue as a ‘technical’ matter or as an issue of internal European industrial policy.
The subject of armaments is obviously the common link between the more lofty issues of the European debate (sovereignty, independence); the more political issues (European defense); and the more concrete but unavoidable issues (technological base, armaments industry). The debate is being joined at the very moment when those Europeans who still believe in trans Atlantic cooperation are confronted with the impenetrable wall of an America imprisoned by its own technology. This reality is sufficiently strong to cause the British and the Italians to despair of ever realizing an acceptable return on the JSF program and is sufficiently strong to lead the British to consider abandoning their cooperation with the Americans on the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) and shifting to the European Neuron Program led by France’s Dassault.
The reality is sufficiently distressing to cause Mike Turner, head of BAE, to say that Britain’s technological base had been severely “weakened by an open competition policy that has failed to secure high-level technology and jobs in return. I am pessimistic about the U.K. industrial base.” Turner concluded by saying that it was now necessary to consider turning toward Europe (toward France!) in order to try to save that technological base.
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