What Unites Europeans?

In the space of three weeks in June, the president shuttled across the Atlantic on a diplomatic itinerary that read like that of a demented tourist–Rome, Paris, Normandy, Dublin, Istanbul. When he wasn’t receiving their hospitality, Bush was treating European leaders to some of his own–at the G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, or on the fringes of President Reagan’s funeral.

Throughout a hectic month, the talk was of hatchets buried, pages turned, old alliances renewed, friendships rekindled. In Paris, he enjoyed what aides said was a fine dinner with his old chum President Jacques Chirac (Bush may not have eaten any crow, but freedom fries were definitely off the menu). At Sea Island and in Istanbul, at the NATO summit, he exchanged warm words with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (no mention of certain former members of the German cabinet who once likened Bush to Hitler), and in Dublin he expressed his affection and appreciation for the leadership of the European Union (never a discouraging word about the differences between Old and New Europe). If Bush had broken into a few bars of the “Marseillaise” or donned a pair of lederhosen, his message could not have been clearer.

You don’t have to be a cynic to believe there is a degree of pragmatism about this newfound fondness for Europe in the West Wing. Getting a U.N. resolution passed on Iraq last month was essential to an orderly transfer of power. Having the Europeans on board was the sine qua non of that project. Demonstrating to the American people that others are willing to take on some of the burden in Iraq is critical to puncturing the Kerry critique that only the Democrats can build an international coalition that will pave the way for an eventual U.S. departure.

And yet beyond these short-term political reasons, there does seem a steadily strengthening conviction, even among some of the most reluctant Atlanticists in this administration, that the United States might need Europe after all. Sure, the pacific old continent is never going to belly up to the bar when there’s serious fighting to be done. And those who can produce something meaningful in military terms–the British, mainly, and some martial Eastern Europeans–have stuck with the United States all along, even in Iraq.

But Europe, the quasi-mythical entity, still seems to count to the rest of the world, and even to Americans. It just isn’t enough to have the ever-loyal Tony Blair and a bunch of anonymous folk from the Eastern Bloc pulling for you if France and Germany, and through them the institutions of the European Union and NATO, are standing resentfully, contemptuously aside. If only we could get a united Europe, as we did in the Cold War, on our side, surely–Americans seem to be saying–we could achieve much more of what we want in the world.

You could be forgiven for thinking, with Americans now evidently less confident about their ability to remake the world, with Kerry and Bush apparently in a desperate competition to prove who is the more multilateralist and Euro-friendly, that this might be Europe’s hour.

The once derided Old Europeans, it seems, have been vindicated and are in the intellectual and geopolitical ascendant. The French, Germans, Belgians, and others have, you would think, won the battle for the future of Europe. In Spain, José María Aznar, the conservative prime minister, was ousted in March; Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, Bush’s other main European backers, are hanging by a thread.

With public opinion, fueled by the distortions of Michael Moore and the connivance of a complaisant media, hardening against the United States and its aims and ambitions in the Middle East, it would be easy to imagine Europeans uniting around the Franco-German leadership, with its lofty ambition to build Europe as a counterweight to American power in the world.

And yet, last month, even as Bush was making nice with European leaders, the voters on the old continent were giving a rather different verdict on them.

IN THE EUROPEAN parliamentary elections in early June, Chancellor Schröder’s Social Democrats in Germany suffered humiliation at the polls at the hands of their conservative opponents. In France, Chirac’s Gaullists were soundly beaten by a combination of socialists and nationalists. Even in plucky little Belgium, the spiritual home of Europe’s dreamers, the ruling party, which had fervently backed the Franco-German axis, got trounced.

It would be nice to think European voters had had a change of heart about Iraq, but sadly that was not behind the rout of the Old Europeans. In Britain, too, and in much of Eastern Europe, ruling parties got kicked.

Try as they might to blame a continent-wide set of special factors for the startling setbacks, there was one clear explanation for the rejection–and one that has even bigger implications for transatlantic relations than Iraq.

Europe’s voters were reacting angrily, with a unified voice rarely seen in European politics, against the ambitious plans of the continent’s elite to accelerate and deepen a process of political integration that has, as its ultimate ambition, the creation of a superstate to rival the United States.

Not only was support for governing parties substantially down, support for parties that have been opposed to European integration was up sharply. In Britain, the U.K. Independence party, which favors outright withdrawal from the E.U., got more than 16 percent of the vote, placing it third behind the already Euroskeptic conservatives and Labour. Euroskeptic (or Euro-realist, as they prefer to be called) parties did well in France, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, too.

More striking still was the result in Eastern Europe. Having been admitted to the E.U. just a month earlier, voters in eight former Communist states voted against the E.U. in large numbers. In the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Baltic states, Eurorealist parties fared well. And across Europe, in another sign of disenchantment and disdain for the European project, turnout was pitiful.

European voters–especially in the New Europe, which is alive and well, it should be noted–have good reason to react against the E.U.; there is a widespread view reflected in polls that it is out of touch, corrupt, and bureaucratic. Its economic policies stifle enterprise with complex regulations; its leading economies espouse high taxes and expensive welfare states even as the population ages rapidly. Above all, its Franco-German leadership still dreams of creating what amounts to a single, multination state, with its own foreign policy, that will make the E.U. much more effective at blocking U.S. policies.

To all this, most of Europe’s voters said last month, politely, roughly what Dick Cheney said to Democratic senator Pat Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

And yet, in what must rank as another Marie Antoinette moment in Europe’s history, the continent’s political leaders simply ignored the popular verdict. A week after the historic elections, the E.U. leaders agreed on a treaty containing a new “constitution,” the first ever for the E.U.

If ratified, this 400-page document would accelerate and deepen European integration. Over the objection of Britain to some of the more extreme elements, it would, in the fields of economics, social policy, justice and criminal law, and even foreign and security policy, establish broad, overarching European, as opposed to national, competence.

In other words, as voters were rejecting the vainglorious ambitions of Europe’s elite to create a federal state, the leaders themselves were finalizing an ever more grandiose plan.

Happily, that is not the end of the story. The voters will get another chance. The treaty now has to be ratified by all 25 member states. Giving in reluctantly to enormous pressure to consult the public, at least eight countries–including Britain and France –will submit the constitution to a referendum.

In the interest of sane and safe representative democracy, it is fervently to be wished that the voters of Europe reject the plan. Under the treaty, if just one country fails to ratify it, the agreement becomes null. But another more likely and intriguing possibility is now in prospect.

Core European countries, most of whom, such as Germany, are not submitting the constitution to a vote in any case, will give their approval. France, a country with a long record of consulting its often truculent population, may prove trickier. But voters in the referendum there will come under serious pressure from all the mainstream parties to approve the treaty.

In Britain, too, Tony Blair will campaign hard for a Yes vote, but it looks a tall order. Opinion polls show more than two thirds of voters likely to reject the constitution.

If Britain rejects the treaty, it is possible the whole project will be scrapped. But more likely is an outcome hinted at in the constitution itself, which would enable those countries that want it to go ahead with closer integration in the political, economic, and social spheres. Under this “enhanced cooperation,” in Euro-jargon, the core countries might accelerate the process by which they become something resembling a single state.

But other countries, like Britain, are likely to want to hold back, valuing their national independence, but also their economic systems and their foreign policies.

In a decade or so, then, it is possible to imagine not one Europe but two. A core group of countries would be characterized by aging and sclerotic economies, overregulated and overtaxed, as well as by exaggerated global ambitions to rival the United States as a superpower. An outer eurozone might be made up of Britain, Scandinavia (two of whose members have already rejected the euro), and several of the most dynamic former Communist countries, plus Turkey (which, unless French opposition prevents it again, will begin the process of joining the E.U. later this year).

These latter nations are likely to be strongly Atlanticist in outlook, promoting free markets and open trade and being broadly supportive of American global leadership–and, with Turkey on board, perhaps also offering a vital link to the Islamic world, promoting democracy and economic freedom in the Middle East, in line with the long-run strategic objectives of the United States.

Now that is a Europe America could really do business with.

Gerard Baker is U.S. editor of the Times of London and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.