The European Union and Peace in Europe: a Response to Boris and the Brexiteeers
It was always inevitable the history was going to take its place in the European debate: not only do historians have a duty to reach out beyond the ivory tower and both engage with and inform public debate, but the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and even twenty-first centuries are replete with examples that can be drawn upon to fuel the debates of today. Over the past weeks, then, references to the past have cropped up on many occasions whilst both sides have accused the other of using and abusing historical examples to suit their own purposes. Most recently, the ever egregious Boris Johnson has caused outrage by seemingly comparing the European Union of today with the failed projects of Napoleon and Hitler. Though the pro-Brexit scholars of ‘Historians for Britain’ - the conservative cabal flying the flag of little England in the groves of the academy – have repeatedly claimed that Europhiliacs, as one so charmingly termed those opposed to them, have argued that the European Union has in and of itself brought peace to Europe - something that is patently untrue and has not, as far as I know, been claimed by anyone of any standing - I will not stoop so low as to suggest that dear Boris seriously believes that there is any direct comparison between EU Brussels, Napoleonic Paris or Hitlerite Berlin, let alone that he was actually suggesting such a thing. That said, given the historical illiteracy of the electorate, to utter the words ‘Hitler’ and ‘European Union’ in the same breath is, to put it mildly, both dishonest and dangerously demagogic.
However, let us set moral outrage aside and consider the facts of the case. Mr Johnson is not the first to point out that the European Union is but the latest is a long series of proposalsto unite Europe in a single polity. Yet, whenever this has actually been attempted, until the current moment this has been done by force in that a single hegemonic power has sought to impose its will on the rest of the Continent by right of conquest. As for the nature of the polities that they created, these are all too clear: of Hitler’s ‘New Order’ no further word need be spoken, but Napoleon’s Europe was in the end nothing but a colonial empire established in the French near-abroad, not to mention not a free-trade area, but rather an ‘uncommon market’ in which French manufactures were privileged at the expense of everyone else. These examples were indeed in all probability doomed to fail in that success in the end impelled Napoleon and Hitler alike to forget that war, like politics, is the art of the possible, but there is a crucial difference: whereas the European Union is founded on the democratic will and in principle treats its members on the basis of equality, the Napoleonic and Hitlerite empires were imposed from above and subjected to varying levels of control from the centre. Herein, of course, lays the rub: in 1814 and 1945 projects at European union of a sort certainly bit the dust, but that does not mean that the current project will inevitably meet the same fate or is even likely to meet the same fate. That it is imperfect is certainly true - speaking for myself, indeed, I believe that the European Union is in urgent need of reform - but catastrophic failure in the sense of an 1814 or a 1945 is not something that I think that I would bet on. What Brexit will mean, then, could be not we the British sailing on the serene seas of the North Atlantic in company with the good ship, USA, but, rather, we the British sitting marooned on a desert island (a desert, like many others, conjured up by human agency) while the good ship Europe disappears over the horizon. To put it another way, leave the European Union by all means, but do not imagine that the European Union is going to disappear. Warts and all, it is likely to be around for a very long time, and that means that we need a way to influence what goes on inside it.
Moving on, let us turn to the issue of peace in Europe. Here, again, let us ignore the jeers and smears. I do not believe for one second that World War III is going to break out the day after a British exit, just as I do not believe for one second that the European Union can genuinely be claimed to have been responsible for the peace that Europe has enjoyed since 1945: just as it was NATO and, yes, the bomb, that ensured that charging out of the fortress would have very nasty consequences for the Eastern Bloc, so it was not the European Union that generated the situation in which the militaristic impulses of the past were set aside (which is not to say that it had no contribution to make in this respect). At the same time, too, it is a most unhappy truth that, when push has come to shove, the European Union has had little to offer: it failed utterly over Yugoslavia and could make no response other than sanctions when Putin and his surrogates engaged in armed aggression in Ukraine: thanks to endless reductions in military spending, most European armies are little more than glorified gendarmeries, most European navies mere collections of gunboats and most European airforces able to deploy mere handfuls of planes and helicopters, when, that is, they are willing to deploy anything at all.
So far, so good (or, rather, so far, so bad: the disarming of Europe is not something that I am remotely comfortable with). This, however, is where I part company with the History Brexiteers. At the moment what counts is, above all, the United States. Against any major threat we are dependent on the United States, whilst, even when it comes to matters that fall in the area of policing rather than outright conflict -above all, combating terrorism - American intelligence is not something that I would care to be without. Of course, but can this situation be relied on forever? In Barack Obama we have already had a president who was very reluctant to engage in action overseas - remember his line in the sand in Syria? - whilst the idea of Donald Trump in the White House is quite terrifying. Nor have American commitments always proved entirely water-tight anyway, for proof whereof look what happened to South Vietnam. Whilst I can agree with the Brexiteers in their analysis so far, I therefore cannot see that leaving the European Union makes the slightest sense. To leave is to put all our eggs in the American basket, and this is simply too risky to contemplate, whereas to stay is to retain the cover offered by America whilst attempting to take the lead on the diplomatic and military front within the European Union and build the stronger Europe which may be the only thing on which we can rely in the future, the only thing in fact that really does keep the peace in Europe, whilst at the same time giving us some outreach in our own near-abroad. And, one last thing, remember this too: over and over again it has been shown that, to obtain its foreign-policy objectives in Europe, Britain needs friends in Europe, friends that I fear we are unlikely to have if we walk out in June.
To conclude, by all means let us talk history, but let us talk sense too. For all the importance of NATO and the United States, and for all the military and diplomatic deficiencies of the European Union in its current form, remaining in is infinitely preferable to risking secession.
Charles J. Esdaile, Department of History, University of Liverpool.