Europeanism: Culture First, Politics After
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on February 9th, 2010
It has been one of those weeks when the grand themes of European politics have promised much but delivered little. The French have given Lady Ashton a bashing, but few people, including Lady Ashton herself, appear to have taken much notice. Mr Van Rompuy has remained below the parapet (though doubtless doing valuable work down there).
The Ukrainian elections have been declared free and fair (or thereabouts) and though the result has been close it now looks likely that Prime Minister Iulia Timoschenko will have conceded defeat and arranged an orderly handover of power before you read this.
The European Parliament looks likely finally to approve the new European Commission. Which has about it the feel of being distinctly underwhelming. There are worries about the euro collapsing; but then there are always worries about the euro collapsing. The euro won’t collapse and life will go on.
What the week has offered is more evidence that the Iranians are closer than ever to building a bomb. I wrote various things about Iran last week in a blog that attracted 67 comments, none, so far as I could see about Iran.
What I said then in a nutshell was that it would be sensible to recognise that Iran had legitimate security concerns, being as it was surrounded by nuclear armed states and with American troops in two countries on her borders. The response of trying to acquire a nuclear weapon seems to be as rational as anything the Iranians have done. As someone pointed out the other day it is not the states with nuclear weapons – like North Korea – that are invaded; it is the states without such weapons, like Iraq, that are.
I cannot conceive for a moment of Iran using a nuclear weapon aggressively – for to do so would be certain suicide. A retaliatory strike would wipe out Tehran in an instant. I may be in something of a minority of one but I would rather we didn’t fuss over whether Iran actually acquires a nuclear weapon and instead concentrate on making available to the Iranian government the technology to help prevent accidents of any sort and the leakage of nuclear material to terrorists.
(While Iran has sponsored terrorism – it seems unlikely she would take the risk of providing terrorists with nuclear material. The biter could too easily be bit).
The blog I wrote last week did indeed attract many comments. Apart from Iran, very few of them had anything to do with anything else I wrote either. (Indeed more than two-thirds of the comments were supplied by just two individuals who appeared to be having their own private discussion).
As far as I could gather this thread – in which others joined from time to time – was essentially about whether ‘Europeanism’ – that is a natural shared sense of identity between Europeans – exists.
That is indeed a question that crops up on many blogs. And it seems to me one of those futile arguments that can never be settled. Some people feel ‘European;’ others don’t. It is something subjective. It is not something that can be demonstrated by arguing whether one country is more or less like another. I think European, therefore I am European; or not as the case may be.
What we can be pretty sure of is that however you define ‘Europe’ you will find a majority of people prepared to defend this concept of Europeanism. That doesn’t mean they reject the nation state in which they live (although they may do this). Most feel a national as well as a continental identity and of course they have other more local allegiances as well, determined by geography, tribe or clan.
The allegiances are voluntary. No one makes me European, or British, for that matter. It’s what I choose to be, though living here and having European ancestry helps. And if this majority – and repeated opinion polls have shown a majority – chooses to co-operate economically, politically, culturally to give effect and purpose to this shared identity in the knowledge that more can be achieved in collaboration with others, then of course this is legitimate.
Those of us who espouse the European cause may indeed disagree on all sorts of things to do with the way Europe is being built. I have written repeatedly of my dissatisfaction at the democratic deficit at the heart of European government; I am infuriated at the lack of strategic thinking about the long term evolution of the European Union and the taking of decisions in a manner that without knowing these long term goals is often ad hoc. But that does not make me doubt my basic identity.
Those who disavow the concept of Europeanism and deny it exists are in the minority. But this is politics. We are all in minorities in something or other. Democracy cannot exist without there being as many minorities as majorities. Politics would not exist if people did not disagree.
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I have to confess that I contributed one of the 67 comments on last week’s blog myself. I was trying to stand up for the Little People – specifically the Leprechauns, which I feel obliged to do seeing as my Grandmother came from Ireland. I have always felt a particular attachment for this species of fairy folk about whom much has been written.
Anyone wanting to make their acquaintance could do worse than to read James Stephens delightful book ‘The Crock of Gold,’ written now a century ago in that sunny interlude between the ‘Entente Cordiale’ and the sad events of Sarajevo that started the First World War. It is still in print and available cheaply in paperback from online booksellers. It is a part of our European heritage.
The book is loosely about a dispute between a Philosopher and his neighbouring leprechauns in which the police become involved. The account of a posse of frightened and truculent policemen guarding the Philosopher whom they have arrested and are marching down a dark country road somewhere in middle Ireland only to be attacked in the blackness by a group of leprechauns is one of the finest passages of comic writing anywhere in the English language.
It is Irish writing, indeed, but it is also European writing. And it is from this and from ten thousand other such passages and from our heritage generally that our common European culture – our Europeanism – springs. Culture first, politics after.
Photograph is of James Stephens
Ashton, Iraq and Iran
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on February 2nd, 2010
Here in Britain we are being kept interested or aggravated by the inquiry the government is holding into the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003.
Ever since that ill-fated invasion, and indeed even before it, a growing number of people have wanted to indict its authors – and in particular Britain’s then Prime Minister Tony Blair – on charges ranging from incompetence to war criminality.
Despite there already having been several inquiries into this imbroglio and there being few facts that have not already been disclosed, the Government has yielded to pressure and allowed the present full inquiry under Lord Chilcot.
Plenty of people, including Baroness Ashton now Europe’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, were convinced at the time by Mr Blair’s rhetoric. Many now claim they were misled and that had they known then what they know now, they would have have behaved differently. ‘Blair lied to us about Weapons of Mass Destruction, having already ‘signed in blood’ a secret deal with George Bush to topple Saddam.’ Or so they allege.
This language of Victorian melodrama was indeed employed by Blair then and is being retailed now. Its colour might have given some souls a clue to its veracity. The claim that mass destructive weapons (which included simple gas shells) could be launched in 45 minutes, for instance. Blair also declared bravely that Saddam had rockets capable of reaching British bases in Cyprus, though why Saddam should ever have wanted to attack a British base in Cyprus was not explained. Perhaps someone supposed he was in the pay of bin-Laden!
Indeed, those who believed Blair’s suppositions seem also to have a singular faith in the guidance capability of Saddam’s non-existent rockets. To hit the island of Cyprus would, after all, have been some achievement; the idea that Iraqi rockets could be targeted to hit the NAAFI building at Akrotiri, was just fanciful.
Even the 45 minute claim was melodramatic. What is the point of a weapon of mass destruction if you can’t launch it in 45 minutes, you might reasonably ask? The three-quarter hour ‘warning’ – so reminiscent of the Cold War – struck me as a desperate attempt to frighten us into submission.
All this was pretty clear before the fatal vote for war. So claiming that you were misled is really just sophistry. Besides, there was the little question of legality.
For members of the European Union, going to war must surely only be something undertaken with the full-hearted consent of the United Nations. This clearly wasn’t the case with Iraq.
Any competent lawyer can make a case out the muddy vacuum of several oblique United Nations resolutions. Especially when the lawyer will never have to defend his client in court. But because a case can be made, it does not mean that the case is justified. No resolution to authorise war was put because it would have failed. The war was illegal.
This bothers me though others are more concerned about the loss of life – both the lives of British and Allied servicemen and the lives of Iraqis, though at the time few seemed to foresee that an invasion would trigger a sustained insurgency; that the overthrow of Saddam and the Baathists could not be compared with the overthrow of communism in eastern Europe.
Nor how terrible and destabilising this insurgency would become to the whole Middle East. From being a bulwark against Al-Quaeda, Iraq became a gateway. From being a counterpoint to Iran, it provided a weapon for Iran to wield against the West.
Yet this is not to say that there would have not also been pain if the invasion had not taken place. It seems erroneous to assume that if there had been no invasion politics would have stood still; that people would not have died, violently; that the Middle East would have been stable. Yes, the coalition drew a low card – but we cannot guarantee that other cards would definitely have been higher.
One aspect of the war that did much damage but which I suspect will not be tackled by the inquiry is the European dimension. The war split ‘old Europe’ from ‘new Europe’ and indeed even ‘old Europe’ was far from united. Europe’s disunity suggested that while a Common Foreign and Security Policy might be fine in theory it evidently wasn’t so in practice. In this respect the war has set Europe back as a force for peace, order and moral authority, for at least a generation.
So Europe has to learn to act together again and to act within the UN system to promote better governance at the global level. The job of repairing this legacy is now in the hands of Baroness Ashton. She has to show the leadership that will convince Europe’s member states to pull together. It wasn’t exactly encouraging when she admitted to having few ideas on UN reform during her recent hearing before the European Parliament, but there is time to learn. The lessons of Iraq in particular.
The stakes are pressing: the Middle East, from Gaza to Kabul, remains an active volcano; Iran rumbles the seismometer everyday. Dealing with Iran will require above all unity – but also intelligence and sensitivity too. It is Cathy Ashton’s big task.
Were we playing some diplomatic board game and you were playing Iran, then it would be entirely logical for you to seek a nuclear weapon, not for aggressive purposes, but for deterrence. You are, after all, surrounded by nuclear states, while two countries on your borders have been invaded in the last decade by American Presidents seeking regime change. Just because you are a hardline, repressive, fundamentalist state doesn’t mean you don’t also have genuine security concerns.
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Those who read what I wrote recently supporting Blair for the Council Presidency will perhaps accuse me now of hypocrisy, or at least of turning my coat. No! Despite not exonerating him for his part in the Iraq war, I still think that Blair’s skills would have helped Europe. Would Blair (even as a designate) have seen Europe left out of the Copenhagen accord, for instance? Sometimes even your adversaries have skills you need.
Photo, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows the Red Arrows display team performing over the RAF base at Akrotiri.
Questions for Mr Fuele
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on January 26th, 2010
Last week I wrote about how those making policy – or undertaking any serious activity at all – should first ask themselves ‘what are we really trying to do here?’ But there is another injunction on similar lines which is just as vital, especially as we all tend to get carried away on a flood of short-term political excitement: it is to ask ‘and the ultimate consequence will be?’ The latter in particular is a question that could usefully be addressed to the new Czech Commissioner for Enlargement-designate, Mr Stefan Fuele.
You can see how these injunctions work together by considering – as Mr Fuele will now be doing for the next five years or so – the delicate matter of further European Union enlargement and specifically the controversial issue of Turkish entry, which has again been in the news this week.
The Spanish Presidency is pledged to carry forward Turkey’s candidacy, just as other states, such as Austria, have pledged themselves to fight a rear-guard action through a referendum. It may be 327 years since the Turks waved their scimitars outside the gates of Vienna but the scar from this earlier ‘clash of civilisations’ has not quite yet healed.
Perhaps I should say that I am neutral on the subject of Turkish entry. I can envisage a successful European Union with Turkey inside it and one with Turkey outside it. What I can’t envisage is that these two European Unions would be identical. They will not – they would be radically different.
Nor can I accept that it will be possible to draw a line after Turkish accession and keep out any other countries to the north and east. If Mr Fuele thinks that would be possible then he should think again. The Ukraine, which has a rather better claim to be European than Turkey and which needs support from its western neighbours every bit as much, has long had its eye (and why not?) on a European Union future. With the Ukraine come other nations: the three countries of the Caucasus, Moldova and Belarus.
These countries arrive in addition to those whose entry ticket (sooner or later) has been more or less assured: the candidates Croatia and Macedonia; the would-be candidates Bosnia-Herzogovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania; and the ‘apply anytime you want’ countries of Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
If Mr Fuele is thinking about drawing lines around EU enlargement then it will be infinitely easier to draw a line today than tomorrow and certainly this side of Turkey’s potential entry rather than after it.
You see when people debate whether Turkey should join the Union they do so against the assumption of the existing 27 member states (or 28 if we assume that Croatia’s entry is close). If this were the case then, yes, Turkey could be accommodated, without vastly changing the existing Union.
Nevertheless, the balance between rich countries and poor (and therefore the EU budget) would still be tilted decisively in the latter’s direction. It would be harder to police human rights and governance standards of the sort that continue to give problems in some of the more recently adhering states (simply because there would be more problems distributed over a wider area) And there would be an increased danger that the general high standard of probity in these matters across the former Union would be diluted ).
These are real issues but not ones that could not be overcome with sensitivity and commitment. And against the negatives there exist real advantages, both political and economic, in bringing Turkey on board.
But all this is based on a false premise. For Turkey will not be joining the Union as it is now. Turkey does not come to the door alone – even though that is what both the Turks and the champions of Turkish entry might wish. Whether we like it or not Turkey brings with it a whole family of nations to the east and the west – including the Ukraine.
It really is not sufficient to dismiss the Ukraine – as Mr Fuele did before the European Parliament – by saying he had an ‘open mind’ on the subject of its possible future accession. Nor is it good enough to say Ukraine will not be ready for entry until many years in the future. Time goes by quickly; before we know it we shall find ourselves far in the future. By not preparing to act now we are, in effect and by default, taking an irrevocable decision about the future shape, prosperity and governance of the Union.
What would the Union look like, how would it function, how would the budgets work if seven Balkan states, Turkey, the Ukraine, and five other peripheral states accede in the next thirty years? Two large countries and twelve small countries? This is the enlargement package that Mr Fuele must consider, and consider as a whole, and consider now.
Of course, it is not impossible to imagine a Union of 40 plus states, but if it is to remain a homogeneous unit it will inevitably be a weak, diffuse body. The alternatives to this are either a federal state with central democratic government, or in effect two Unions, a two speed Europe of inner and outer unions.
By ruling out the idea of a ‘privileged partnership’ for Turkey (which could then be extended to other states) as he did at his recent European Parliament hearing Mr Fuele is both ducking this challenge and closing off his options.
It seems to me the longer we fail to face up to the fact of a potential Union of 40 plus states and the constitutional challenge that this would represent, the more painful will the reality turn out to be. What will happen here will affect significantly every European citizen. We do neither ourselves, nor Turkey, any favours by dissimulating.
I ended my blog last week by writing that it was not too soon for us to be starting to think about a new constitutional settlement, one designed to come into force in ten years time. I was writing then about democracy and the need for the European Parliament to ensure some greater political coherence within the European Commission. But you can see how such a settlement needs to look wider and to provide for the structures that will keep us together as Europe grows.
The picture of Mr Fuele is courtesy of the European Parliament.
No Such Thing as a ‘Europe’ Party
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on January 19th, 2010
Like most of us, I suspect, I have been watching the Parliamentary hearings of Commissioners-designate last week and this with a mixture of interest and bemusement. But the conclusion I come to is not that so and so ought to be thrown out (or even that the Parliament should surely have the right to reject individual commissioners, rather than to have to accept or reject the whole pantechnicon of a Commission-designate as a whole) but that someone ought to be standing up in the hemicycle and asking over and over again one simple question: ‘What is it that we are REALLY trying to do here?’
The trouble is to answer that question we actually need to ask what the European Commission is there to do in this the first half of the second decade of the twenty-first century; and indeed to ask what the European Parliament is there to do as well. Who are these people who are being grilled each for three hours at a time; where have they come from and what do we expect them to be doing?
Oh yes, if I were giving a lecture on the European Union I could give you an answer, which would not differ greatly from the Commission’s own publications. I know what ought to be (and theoretically is) the case. And I know the unwritten assumption that lies behind such answers which is that the system actually works: indeed, that this is the best form of European government and this the best possible of modern Europes.
Yet for me as I watch these Commissioners-designate, fluent in some cases, stumbling in others, now submissive, now combative – and as I watch their interlocutors now trying to catch them out, now grinding a party axe, now delving into the big picture and now again into fine detail – it seems that something overwhelming is missing.
It is like being at the parade of the Emperor’s new clothes: nobody can spot – or if they can they certainly daren’t say – that the Emperor has no clothes at all!
Given my general and longstanding arguments in favour of greater democracy at the European level you might expect me to say that I think Commissioners ought to be elected. But I am not going to say that. Or at least not straight away.
No, what seems to be missing is the idea that government should stem from a widely-based democratic political movement – or possibly two such movements in agreed coalition. It is the sheer randomness of the Commissioner-designate selection process and the haphazard nature of the group that results that strikes me as odd.
Step back thirty or forty years. The European Union (as it then wasn’t) was a fledgling. It hadn’t matured to what it has become today. Its powers were feeble, its reach limited. The European Commission could safely be entrusted with the task of ‘building Europe.’ And it didn’t matter terribly if you built Europe in a left-wing way or a right wing way or a green way or a liberal way or any other way, really, so long as Europe was being built because, with the possible exception of agriculture, the influence of European government was pretty small and there was consensus on the way forward.
Today we are still using the same model for the Commission and the same model for consensus. But the Commission has nothing like the power and influence (in Europe building matters) that it once had. It has lost ground to the European Council and to the European Parliament. Moreover, there isn’t even a consensus that Europe should be ‘built’ at all anymore – gaps filled in, yes, deficiencies rectified, yes. But not extended, not ‘built.’
Hence all the internal tensions over further enlargement – Turkey? Ukraine? – hence the Wise Men’s group who are trying to decide at what point, geographically and in terms of its competences, Europe should unsaddle its horse and pitch its final camp.
Hence all the talk of pioneer groups, further and faster integration and other talk of partnerships and looser associations – more federalism on the other hand, more inter-governmentalism on the other.
These great questions cannot be decided other than by the people of Europe themselves, through their elected representatives. And until the elected representatives, through their political movements and campaigns and conferences and television shows and all the paraphernalia that constitutes modern democracy come to a settled view according to their party’s broad philosophical persuasion – we shan’t get very far.
It is that absence of any deeper philosophy that has me scratching my head at these Commissioner-designate hearings. It is not enough simply to be thought competent in your subject (though whether the designates were competent to run a directorate at all seems to have been curiously overlooked or poor Neelie Kroes would never have had such a hard time) there surely has to be some philosophical coherence between the candidates as to their direction of travel.
Last week Mr Barroso tried to get around this question by replying to a questioner ‘my party is Europe.’ That is an answer that would have worked in the 1960s, but today - living as we do in this politically complex world? There is no such thing anymore as a ‘Europe’ party – there are many visions of Europe, most very poorly sketched out.
That needs to change. Instead of European government trying to be all things to all men it needs a respectable political coherence.
From something appointed to be a fig-leaf of democracy covering the otherwise private parts of the European construction, the European Parliament has moved, slowly and painfully, into a position of great influence. It should ready to demand more and not be content to settle easily.
I am not saying that it should issue blackmail threats about blocking the new Commission unless it is granted the right to propose legislation, as European Alternatives are calling for. But I am saying that Parliament might well put some effort now into considering a new settlement in the governance of Europe including how it might involve itself more effectively in securing a Commission that had more political coherence and accountability.
Of course there is no appetite today for another constitutional treaty. But a new treaty would take ten years to bring into being. And by that time I do believe we shall need it.
A Seed From Which Much Will Grow Fast
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on December 22nd, 2009
First things first. Should anyone still be reading these pieces, stuck as we are in the snowy wastes of the mid-winter solstice then let me wish them – in the language of the ancient Britons - Nadolig Llawen or a happy Christmas, which I extend to one and all. May we all prosper in 2010.
As we leave this curious year, that has seen so much trouble but also new beginnings, particularly in the shape of the Lisbon Treaty at last now come into force, let me add my own note of a new beginning and optimism for the year ahead.
Many people are still wringing their hands following what was held widely to be almost the worse possible outcome to the Copenhagen climate change negotiations. Yes, it would have been wonderful to close the books on the year with an all-singing, all-dancing treaty, embracing 192 countries and wrapped up like some Christmas parcel with deadlines and limits and finance and agreements to do this and to stop doing that all, tied together with some legally binding string.
And yet the more I think about this the more unrealistic it seems our assumptions were. Did we ever truly think that this is what would happen? What could happen?
This may have been what was needed but the problem with legally binding treaties is what to do when they are broken? We can offer and pledge and monitor and verify and accuse countries of being non-compliant – but even in our tight and right little Europe we have problems at times in enforcing treaties, particularly when the going gets rough and tough. Then all the talk is of ‘a light touch’ and interpreting the regulations ‘flexibly.’ But in most cases countries that don’t like treaties simply ignore them and leave it to the European Commission to do its (not very awful) worst.
How then did we expect the world to police a complicated climate treaty? Or did we naively expect that countries would simply deliver on their pleadges no matter what the cost or inconvenience or whatever the future held? Did we expect that hope in this instance would triumph over expectation?
And our expectations were absurdly high. We looked at what the scientists said was needed – and I don’t for a moment resile from what the scientists are saying – and assumed that because – in an analogy – the bridge needed to take ten tonne trucks we could merely command the bridge to take ten tonne trucks and it would happen. Just as the King in St Exupéry’s story of The Little Prince commands the Prince to obey him without any power to make this happen and so to preserve his impotent authority is reduced to issuing an order that sometimes his orders are to be obeyed and sometimes not. That is the true nature of so widely drawn an international treaty. It is sometimes to be obeyed and sometimes not.
We know that politics is the art of the possible. Regardless of what needs doing, regardless of what size trucks our bridge needs to take, we can only send over a weight that the bridge will bear. But we do so in knowing that provided the bridge isn’t broken by the weight then it can be strengthened and a new bridge constructed with the materials thus shipped to the other side.
And that is how I view the Copenhagen Accord. Yes a failure in terms of what the world needs but nevertheless a start in constructing the edifice that will finally have the strength to deliver the solution. Yes you may think my specatacles rose-tinted, you may call me naive – but I seriously believe we should take the Copenhagen Accord at its face value. It doesn’t represent a new bridge, it doesn’t even represent the footings of a new bridge, but it does represent ground being cleared somewhere where the new bridge may be built.
Who would have thought it possible, even a mere twelve months ago, that the United States and China – the two biggest producers of greenhouse gases, the one per capita, the other absolutely – would have reached agreement on a climate accord and an accord, moreover, designed to be built upon. That alone seems to me to be grounds for optimism in all sorts of ways that go beyond climate and into the very bosom of the future of humanity.
The one sad part of this accord – for me anyway as a dedicated European – was that Europe seemed to be nowhere to be seen. We are pursuing our own track, keeping our powder dry, refusing to commit to our carrot-dangling offer of a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020. We have taken back our ball, retreated from the real job of climate change leadership and persuasion. And that makes me sad.
We said we led the world on climate change. Our actions and asirations were indeed worthy and reached further than anyone elses actions and aspirations. But in fact no-one was actually following us. No-one paying us much attention and if we are not careful our influence will wane even further over the coming years.
Will the coming decade – the decade of the 20 teens – therefore relegate us to a bipolar world of the United States and China or will we see a tripolar world in which Europe is an equally important player? That is indeed a question suitable to ponder upon during the turn of the year.
Meanwhile I expect to see the Copenhagen Accord as a seed from which much will grow and grow fast. Therefore I shall not be wringing my hands this Christmas, but be quietly confident that at long last the world has come together even if it has come together in disagreement and confusion. We are human after all and this is our sad condition. But we have come together and that is to be celebrated.
The Old Woman of Hvalsey
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on December 15th, 2009
I am trying to make sense of Copenhagen. What I cannot understand is the fury of those who deny climate change is man-made. Even on the principle of Pascal’s bet – (whether God truly exists or not, the prospect of hell surely makes it advantageous to assume that He does) – you would have thought that the sceptics would have wanted to give those engaged in these epic negotiations a fair wind.
In a sense we have been here before. So as this is Christmas, let me crave your indulgence by telling you the story of the Old Woman of Hvalsey.
This sad tale of a community extinguished by climate change contains all the elements of our present, larger story: the despoliation of the environment, the refusal to listen to predictions, false hopes, encroaching poverty, the escape of the wealthy, the fury of the deniers; even misogyny is there.
It’s a story I first heard long ago, on the radio, during a childhood illness. The words climate change were unfamiliar then, but I remembered this tale of an old woman, whose voice seemed to fill my sickroom with prophetic chill….
She spoke of a little colony by the sea, somewhere where once there had been trees: great birches, six metres tall, and abundant grass with which the farmers made hay to feed their wintering animals. Indeed, so green was this land, she said, that Erik the Red, the Norseman who founded the colony, had called it Greenland.
The settlers erected houses and at Hvalsey, one of the biggest settlements, they built a high and wide church, plastering the outside with pulverised mussel shells whose nacre glowed in the low rays of the sun, making the church appear white and sparkling and fluorescent.
The colony thrived until some time around the beginning of the fourteenth century when the farmers began to notice how little soil there now seemed to be on their fields. The trees had been cut for building and firewood and to clear new land for crops. The rich loam that had once lain under the birch trees had been eroded by the rain and the wind and washed into the sea.
Whenever it rained now the hill streams ran thick and brown, carrying away the earth to the sea. And now also the summers themselves seemed to be shorter, the winters longer. The settlers had to go further for timber, cut down more of the forest. The thin fields were less productive; everyone grew poorer.
Indeed so poor did the colony become that the elders of the Hvalsey church sought a dispensation from the Pope. From 1345 the settlement was absolved from the payment of tithes. Some settlers began to leave. But Norse folk are hardy and tenacious. Most clung on. Yet the old woman, whose words had chilled me, said that the colony was doomed. It was being extinguished, she said, by the cold and the snow of the ever lengthening winters.
She said that on the low hills that rose above the sea, where once the beech trees had grown, snow now lay. Of course the hills had always been snow-covered in winter but the summer sunshine would melt the snow and the cattle would graze on the summer pasture and the wildflowers. But now there were patches of snow that didn’t melt all summer long, even on those hills beside the sea. Snow began to fall on snow.
Each summer the size of this permanent snowfield grew. The farmers marked it with sticks. Sometimes the snow retreated. Then the farmers were happy for a year, or perhaps two. But the old woman foretold that decade by decade the summer snowfield would grow and keep on growing, faster and faster, until at last it came down the hillside and overwhelmed their remaining crops. And so it came to pass. And sooner than they had expected.
The colonists witnessed a sad succession of ‘lasts.’ In the year 1408 came the last marriage to be performed in the church with its nacre plaster. Love flourishes even in the harshest conditions. We even have the names of the bride and groom.
She was Sigridur Björnsdóttir, high born and originally from Iceland, who had sailed to Greenland as a young woman to marry a man who had many farmsteads at Hvalsey. But he died soon after leaving Sigridur a widow.
Her groom was Thorsteinn Ólafsson, a sailor, captain of his ship in fact. He had been blown off course and by a happy accident had put in at Hvalsey in 1406. While making repairs he had met and fallen in love with the grieving Sigridur. And so occurred the last marriage in Hvalsey. The final recorded Norse document to come out of the settlement.
Sigridur and Thorsteinn didn’t stay long. His ship seaworthy again, Thorsteinn Ólafsson sailed out of the fjord and turned south before rounding the cape and running before the west wind up to Iceland and home.
That wasn’t the last of the colony, though; ships continued, very occasionally, to call. Many people left when they could. But the old woman stayed for she had nowhere else to go.
The colony was reduced to a few families, famine struck and riddled with disease, clinging to their homes and to life itself through those chilling, snow-enveloped winters when all was dark. And in their poverty and misery and the bleakness of their environment they turned upon each other, fighting over scraps of land or possessions.
The colony began to die a slow and lingering death, killed by the encroaching snow and poverty and the internecine struggles. But before it did those remaining colonists fell upon the old woman, who, years ago, had foretold what would happen when snow began to fall on snow, unmelted from the winter before.
They accused her of witchcraft, of poisoning the colony, of bringing insanity and death to its people. Bundling her into the church for a show trial they condemned her to death.
It is said that whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. In a last act, to propitiate the gods of weather, as if fire itself could drive away the snow and the white glow of the earth, the settlers tied the old woman to a stake and used what little firewood remained to burn her to death.
Today little remains at Hvalsey, though the church, now without its turf roof and fluorescent plaster of ground mussel shells, still stands. Six hundred years later we would do well to listen to the old woman’s story. It is the story of what climate change can do to a people who won’t listen.
Picture is courtesy of Wikipedia
Sarko’s Secret Plan?
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on December 1st, 2009
Baroness Ashton, who today takes up office as the Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy under the Lisbon Treaty, could do no better than study the life of another of her noble predecessors on the European stage – that of the Prince de Talleyrand-Perigord, Foreign Minister of the French Empire and architect not just of much of the present French state, but of much of present inter-European relations as well.
An aristocrat who served Louis XVI, the Directory, Napoleon, the Allies, the restored Bourbons and finally King Louis – Phillipe, no-one could claim to be a better survivor. But the twists, turns and accommodations that his tortuous life entailed, have left him a detested figure in much of France. Which is rather sad when you consider that but for his efforts to have it restored, the Tricolour might have flown for the last time at Waterloo.
Talleyrand’s negotiating skills were supreme: France even came out of the defeat of Napoleon, thanks to his negotiation, with more territory than she had had at the beginning.
But his crowning triumph, achieved when he was already into his ninth decade and on his final mission as Ambassador to Britain in the 1830s, was finally to align British and French foreign policy and to set it on the course that would result in the ‘entente cordiale’ and an unbreakable alliance that later survived two world wars.
That he should have done so in the aftermath of twenty years of bloody war with Britain’s traditional enemy, when Germany was the rising nation in Europe and when even the household language of the British court was German, should be enough to make any aspiring diplomat go weak at the knees with admiration.
Asked what had driven him throughout his long and turbulent life, he said that he had always acted in the best interests of Europe, believing that what was good for Europe would also be good for France and that what was good for France was also good for Europe.
Nevertheless, if Talleyrand is generally despised by today’s French politicians, his famous dictum seems still to be imbibed with their mothers’ milk. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the whole European construction, certainly in France’s eyes, turns on this very premise.
This is not necessarily something to be regretted, still less opposed. From a British perspective what is good for Europe can also be good for Britain. We too, in our own way, have wanted to civilise the world. So the French motivation is not necessarily something to fear, just to be aware of.
With that in mind – and if it is not too much of a bother – let us return to the much tilled ground of the Lisbon appointments. You remember that the initial reaction from the commentariat was astonishment when we learned that two relatively unknown figures – Mr van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton, had been appointed.
This astonishment was certainly real enough: we had been led towards thinking that while one group of politicians did indeed want a low key President of the European Council, others wanted a strong campaigning figure such as Tony Blair, who, at various times, was espoused by a raft of senior European leaders, including President Sarkozy of France.
Indeed, even as late as 19th June, and after he had dropped his support for Blair, Sarkozy was still saying: “…if we have Lisbon I’d like the first President of the Council to be someone strong and ambitious for Europe because Europe deserves and needs such a person.”
Once the Lisbon appointments had been made, however, the commentariat rapidly switched tack, arguing that no-one had wanted strong figures in these roles, that France and Germany did not want their national prestige usurped by some traffic-stopping figure; that what was required was a back room person, an organiser. And on the foreign policy side, someone who would not make waves.
I am still wondering whether this is correct. Has the leopard really changed his spots?
You remember Sarkozy’s French Presidency? (More Sarkozy’s than French you might think). The lavish expenditures, the rushing around all over the world waving the European flag. The frenetic pace continuing right to the very last day and last hour of the Presidency, trying to show what might be done, what ought to be done, with French leadership.
Put this together with Mr Barroso’s second Commission, now assembled. Its composition is very much in the French interest. The wings of free market liberalism – something for which Barroso’s first Commission was roundly criticised for embracing too closely – are now almost certain to be clipped. Agriculture, too, so important to France, is in safe and friendly hands. In Pierre de Boissieu, France has also secured the Secretary-Generalship of the Council.
Consider also that Sarkozy, has been careful to stress that Mr van Rompuy’s appointment as Council President is for two and a half years. Of course the appointment can be renewed for a further term when in comes to an end in May 2012. That is, if the member states so wish.
But whose term of office expires in April 2012? None other than Mr Sarkozy’s! Should he not stand again for the French Presidency, the Presidency of Europe – the ‘strong and ambitious’ figure that Europe ‘deserves and needs,’ could be his. Why not?
Fifteen years ago a newspaper cartoon from the dying days of the government of Edouard Balladur pictured the French cabinet as if in a game of Cluedo. Every minister was depicted as attacking another. Each was being shot, stabbed, clubbed, poisoned or strangled by a colleague. Meanwhile, through a window, we see Sarkozy, retreating from this mayhem with a gleeful smile.
Sarkozy’s volte-face, first supporting Tony Blair, then abandoning him, now becomes explicable. Britain is palmed off with the foreign minister post – which is not important because, should Sarkozy indeed become President of the Council, he will want to play the chief diplomatic role himself. Skilful, very skilful. Worthy of Talleyrand himself.
Talleyrand also said, memorably, that zeal was the enemy of diplomacy. That the best things came to he who waited. I am wondering whether Sarkozy has learned this injunction too; whether Mr van Rompuy is no more than his stalking horse. Having got his Commission ducks in order and disarmed his possible opponents, will Sarkozy now descend in two and a half years time to claim what he regards as his (and France’s) inheritance?
Two Legged Democracy
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on November 24th, 2009
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under George W Bush, was speaking the other day about the recent and much criticised Lisbon treaty appointments. He said something, which struck me as both profound and untrue at the same time. See what you think.
I am quoting from memory, but the gist of his comment was: “Europe has to make up its mind whether it is a nation state under construction or is going to remain a collection of nation states.”
It was a typically blunt and forthright remark. Either this, or that. And I think that it is a comment that many people would agree with, whatever their views about the European Union. The Committee of Wise Men deliberating Europe’s future under the guidance of the former Spanish Premier Felipe Gonzalez is asking similar questions. That is why Bolton’s comment was profound.
But is it true? Europhiles tend to say that the European Union is a partnership of member states. This is written into the treaties. Politician after politician will tell you that ‘Europe’ is not a state, still less a superstate.
Equally, those of a more sceptical persuasion argue frequently that the pass has already been sold. That the EU ‘machine’ has taken over. That we are now all enslaved to an undemocratic Brussels-based tyranny. This has always seemed to me to be ludicrous – nevertheless it is a common belief, particularly in parts of the United Kingdom.
Let’s start with the ostensible and legal position – the European Union as a collection of sovereign nation states which have agreed to pool parts of their sovereignty in legal structures aimed at given them powers to achieve more than they could alone.
So far so good. But is this all there is to Europe? Surely not? If Europe is only about member states (and their representative democracies) what is the point of the European Parliament – enhanced now by the Lisbon Treaty to give it legislative power practically on a par with member states themselves?
If Europe is just about member states – why bother to write a provision into the Lisbon Treaty to allow a million citizens to trigger a legislative proposal from the Commission? Indeed, what is the point of the Commission’s role in proposing legislation at all? Cannot member states identify what is in their common interest? Why talk of ‘European citizens’ and embark upon consultation exercises across member states to find out what these ‘citizens’ expect from their European institutions?
The reason is surely that the concept of ‘Europe,’ – of the continental common interest – goes far beyond a simple partnership of member states. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. An independent European identity exists alongside that which derives from being a citizen of a member state.
Most Europeans recognise this European identity, easily and comfortably. It doesn’t replace national identity, of course, or detract from it. The fact that I consider myself European – very obvious on the other side of the Atlantic – in no way lessens my Britishness. Just as supporting one’s home team does not undermine a desire for one’s national team to win.
Indeed, the concept of ‘Europe’ comes happily to hand at European sporting and cultural events. The role of football in uniting the folk of the continent shouldn’t be underestimated. Moreover, we all recognise aspects of history, culture, politics, science, language, architecture, as distinctly European. Although our member states are each different they nevertheless possess sufficient commonality to mark them out from other parts of the world.
We Europeans hold many political beliefs in common, too – welfare, the social market, human rights, the environment, international development. We want our Continent to be a peaceful and prosperous place wherein we can travel freely, live freely, set up business freely. And we are content (in the main) for there to be institutions to manage these overarching European aims.
In short there is a European dimension to life and politics that exists in parallel to the member state dimension. Men and women are legitimately concerned about what happens to Europe directly, as opposed to viewing the European interest through some national prism.
They recognise levels of decision-making. Some, like climate change, are global in their scope. But others are continental, others national, others regional, others affect only individual cities and districts. Others again are local. All are valid.
Moreover, this feeling among the citizenry of concern, of wanting to be involved, of caring about the future direction of the continent, is growing. Europe is a collection of member states but it is also a Europe of people, of folk, of citizens; of businesses and concerned institutions seeking to express their feelings and concerns not as nationals but as Europeans. Precisely, in fact as if the European Union were indeed a ‘nation state under construction.’
So John Bolton is wrong. It is not a question of this Europe or that Europe but a Europe which embraces both aspects (member states and citizens) at the same time.
The direct interest of ordinary Europeans across the continent in the process and outcome of the Lisbon treaty appointments is therefore entirely legitimate. It is not enough to say that these matters should rest in the hands of member states alone.
When, 2000 years ago, the Emperor Caligula appointed his horse consul, it was the citizens who were outraged. The recent Lisbon appointees, Rompuy and Ashton, may well perform excellently, but in wider Europe they are even less well known than was Caligula’s horse, Inciatus. Not surprisingly folk are disappointed at yet another decision, another process, from which they have been shut out.
The European Parliament should be representing this folk interest, but so far it has been weak: too ready to compromise; too self-regarding; too willing to accept constitutional provisions (such as where it should sit) laid down for it by member states.
It has failed to create the strong pan-European political movements to answer the people’s interest in the future of Europe; it has failed to throw up the leaders, to challenge the direction of the European project.
Thus we have a real and legitimate democratic deficit in Europe. Pace John Bolton, the Union walks on two legs. Europe has both the characteristics of a partnership of states and a partnership of peoples, without being exclusively either. But we need to see democracy in both if both are to survive.
No, no, no, no, no!
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on November 17th, 2009
No, no, no, no, no, no! Has it really come to this? Is the selection of the two highest representatives of the European Union to be reduced to some shabby horse-trading to find a lowest common denominator? Is the appointment of those who will now lead the Union into discussions with prime ministers and presidents across the world to be done in a way that would make even eighteenth century leaders wince?
Consider: at a special summit this coming Thursday evening – which may drag on into the next day – the leaders of the 27 member states of the EU will sit down to appoint their semi-permanent President. Whoever is chosen will find themselves the focus of world media attention, whether the appointee (or anyone else) likes it or not.
They will also consider who should be the Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy – another post (in effect the Union’s Secretary of State) whose holder will be key in securing the EU’s position in negotiations with other states across the globe.
Member States will also appoint a Secretary-General of the European Council – a lesser post and one not in the international limelight – but nevertheless one with considerable influence. These three positions will be considered jointly, as some sort of ‘team.’
Don’t underestimate the potential capacity of whoever is appointed to these posts to influence the development of the Union internally and to project its interests across the world. On their shoulders will depend in large part whether the Union continues in its present status of economic giant and political pygmy, or whether at last it begins to exert real influence over the issues that matter to Europeans – climate change, human rights, democracy, terrorism, international development, a secure world order – in an otherwise new bipolar world of the USA and China.
To the world outside whoever is chosen will embody the European ideal. Like it or not, the President and the High Representative will become, in media eyes, Europe’s ‘shop window,’ even if they are not so regarded by Europe’s own citizens.
So let us look at how the Union is proposing to appoint these two key representatives. The process appears to break every possible rule in the book. And ‘appoint’ it is. Despite their political nature, any element of direct democracy – even consultative – is ruled out.
There isn’t even a clear understanding of what the jobs entail. In the case of the High Representative various internal duties have been laid down, but his or her role on the world stage and relationship with the President of the Council has not been thought through. Besides with one foot in the Commission and the other in the Council the High Representative will serve two masters – always a recipe for chaos.
The Presidency is equally blighted. Some states want a low-key, backroom ‘fixer.’ Others want someone who can take a rightful place beside Presidents Obama and Hu.
An immediate fault line thus runs right through the selection process between those who want actors who will promote the EU across the world and those who want people who are focused downwards and inwards.
So member states will meet on Thursday to make appointments to positions whose fundamental requirements have not yet been determined. At best this is a recipe for a complete impasse. At worst for appointing someone who represents the lowest common denominator.
One might as well pick names randomly out of a hat. Indeed the process is worse than that. Names picked out of a hat would presumably not be subject to veto by a member state with an axe to grind.
And veto they will – even the best candidates will be vetoed if they do not fit with other members of ‘the team,’ according to an arbitrary set of complex political criteria.
We are thus not looking to find the best people for the job, but for a slate, artificially ‘balanced’ between left-wing and right-wing; between large countries and small; between old member states and new; between male and female; between charismatic candidates and non-charismatic candidates and between federalists and inter-governmentalists.
Nor do we want, apparently, candidates with political ‘baggage’ (like being from a country not in the euro) even if this is completely irrelevant when it comes to doing the job.
Moreover, tradition dictates that candidates should not declare themselves. This makes the whole process appear even more arcane and secretive. Former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga (herself a candiadate for the Presidency) likened the process to embracing a ‘Soviet style contempt for the public.’
And she is right. The Swedish Presidency running this bizarre appointment process knows that we lecture less happier lands on good governance – on correct appointment procedures. We send in consultants. We try to ensure appointments on merit – or else, if they are political appointments, by free and fair election.
Yet at the heart of what Newsweek Magazine last week called ‘The Modest Superpower’ we are about to make three highly important political appointments, which we have yet to define properly, without a whiff of democracy and via an appointment process designed to make it impossible to select the best man or woman for the job on merit alone. Worse, all will be wheeled and dealed behind closed doors. What a shameful and disgraceful position to find ourselves in!
So what can be done? Despite knowing about these appointments, literally for years, no attempt has been made to ascertain precisely what we want from these roles. Nor has any real attention been given to the selection process. That is an indictment both of member states and European Institutions. We may be a modest superpower but at the moment we have much to be modest about.
Why rush these appointments? Would it not be better to take a little longer and to get them right?
What needs to be done? First, reach agreement as to what the roles should entail and how the incumbents should relate to each other. Secondly, have declared candidates, prepared to offer a manifesto. Thirdly, there has to be an element of democracy involved – a consultative on-line referendum, perhaps. Not ideal and not of course binding, but something to give a guide. And fourthly, the final decision should be confirmed (as it will be for the High Representative) by the European Parliament. Let’s not rush this.
The Price of Liberty
Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry in categories EU on November 10th, 2009
I first visited the Berlin Wall as a student back in the mid sixties. It had not then long been constructed and was far from the smooth and forbidding concrete behemoth that it later became. I was taken there by a young West German – not much older than myself – bitterly angry at what he saw had been perpetrated on his city by an occupying power.
It was an untidy structure, built from elongated concrete blocks thrown together hurriedly by people who clearly had never so much laid a brick in their lives. It was not even particularly high and so ugly coils of barbed wire, now decayed and rusty, had been wound on top. The overall effect was crudity, roughness, hasty slipshod work by people who cared not for anything or anybody, but were enslaved to an idea.
I remember a sparrow flying out of the East and alighting for a moment on the top of that wire before flying off into the West – a poignant image that remains with me to this day. How come sparrows could cross freely when thinking people could not?
Of course, the Wall was enhanced soon after, but as the fabric of the structure was renewed, the political substance that kept it in place gradually crumbled. Twenty years ago it came tumbling down.
That it did so, largely amid tears of joy rather than of grief and sadness, can be attributed to the statesmanship of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet Premier. With the sense to recognise defeat he determined ‘not to lead to destruction what (he saw) had already perished.’ From this followed consecutive revolutions in central and eastern Europe and, later, the enlargement of the European Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev was writing this week in The Times newspaper - looking back on those events and forward into the future. His described a zeitgeist – a force practically irresistible. Glasnost and perestroika were a response to this – but the pressures kept building. A unity of popular purpose brought the revolution into being.
Could today a new unity of purpose be assembled to fight climate change, he asked? Likening climate change to a Wall he invited President Obama and other world leaders to ‘Tear it Down.’ ‘You cannot dodge the call of history,’ he implored.
Indeed. But just as the multi-faceted and multi-causal movement that culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of democracy to countries that had not known it for decades, or in some cases ever at all, was a movement more profound than simply tearing down an iron curtain, so today’s problems go beyond climate change alone.
For instance suppose that at a metaphorical click of a switch we could solve the climate problem tomorrow. Let’s suppose that the scientists working on the ITER project – aimed at bringing us unlimited amounts of cheap and clean energy from nuclear fusion – make a sudden breakthrough and that never again need we worry about burning a single drop of fossil fuel.
Let us then suppose that the climate soon reverted to normal: glaciers growing again nicely, only occasional typhoons in the Philippines, East African droughts consigned to the history books.
No more climate change – but we should all still be in peril. In the next century the world will acquire another three billion people. Another three billion mouths to feed – all demanding their share of the planet’s resources. Already each year we consume the sustainable resources of three planets. Despite this, two thirds of folk are poor, malnourished, illiterate, diseased. We know the only way they will stop having large numbers of children is by raising their standard of living. This will take resources.
So the crisis is not just about climate change – it is far wider than climate change. It is a crisis of sustainability itself within which climate change is just one element.
But neither is sustainability the only threat we face. With the ending of the Cold War we exchanged one ideological struggle for another. Today we face a new battle for hearts and minds, a new conflict of fundamental ideas as to how mankind should behave towards one another. And if the struggle has not the same potential for disaster as Cold War armageddon, it nevertheless still has the potential to kill untold millions.
We have exchanged the Cold War for the ‘War on Terror’ – or rather more accurately – the Jihadist struggle. Since the Wall fell, cities all over the world have grieved over Jihadi outrages. New York, London, Madrid, Rawlpindi, Bali, Mumbai, Kabul – the list is a long one. Yet despite the world’s attentions, both military and civil, the activities of the Jihadis are undiminished, if anything they grow stronger all the time.
Not all are wedded to violence though there are plenty that are willing to kill no matter whom. Others just encourage the suicidal struggle, preaching the doctrine of a brutal medieval caliphate stretching from the eastern Himalayas to the Atlantic ocean – a clock-turned-back-world of fundamentalism in which human rights are extinguished, women deprived and oppressed, democracy extinguished.
NATO is fighting this threat in Afghanistan. That is where the conflict was yesterday – but already it has spread to the mountain valleys of nuclear-armed Pakistan and threatens to undermine and destabilise that country with consequences that do not bear thinking of.
Yet incredibly as we celebrate in Berlin the defeat of one kind of totalitarianism, Europe is already debating whether we should end our commitment to Afghanistan. Debating whether we should withdraw out support, our finance, our forces and leave the majority population there to their fate and the Jihadist movement to exult.
This Afghan conflict is unlike those of previous generations. It is a global threat we are fighting, not specifically an Afghan one. This fight can erupt violently at any moment in any territory of the world. The evil of the terrorist knows no bounds – either as to place, or as to victim or as to method.
It is as much a threat to peace-loving and tolerant Islam as to any other religion or belief. It is a terrible diversion from the wider struggle towards sustainability. So it would be ironic if, at the moment when world leaders are commemorating the passing of a dark chapter of oppression, they should choose to turn away from the Jihadist threat. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance and Europe must be vigilant.
