Might Europe’s increasing involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war accelerate European unification? Perhaps. But this would not prevent the war from being a calamity, and not just for the belligerents: for the whole of mankind.
Philosopher Philippe Van Parijs reflects on current debates in Brussels, Belgium and Europe
For the first time since the beginning of European integration, Europe can be said to be at war. Is this to be cheered by anyone pleading for a more unified Europe?
War makes the state.
One intriguing argument in support of this view can be found in Uniting states, a book published in 2011 by Joseph Parent, a political scientist now at the University of Notre Dame. The book analyses five cases: the United States of America, the Swiss Confederation, Bolivar’s Gran Columbia, the Nordic federation involving Sweden and Norway (in the 19th century) and the European Union. Why did the US and Switzerland manage to form stable federal states, whereas Gran Columbia and Scandinavia failed? The books offers a simple answer : fighting a common enemy without the protection of a greater power is the key condition.
What about the European Union? In what was then the foreseeable future, Joseph Parent did not have much hope: “In the short run, the outlook is favourable that no state will endanger Europe. It seems probable that the prolonged period of great power peace will continue […]. This may be good for the world but not for European unification.”
Nonetheless, he did identify one possibility: “If the desire for unification is more than a velleity, plans for an ever-closer union should key on external threat. […] The most likely source of danger is Russia.” Fifteen years later, this possibility has become reality.
But in Parent’s account, this is not enough. You must also be without a protector. “The blessing of the Atlantic security community has been a curse for European unification, sapping the need for unification. Only when America's continental commitment grows intrusive or inadequate can Europe unify.” With Donald Trump’s return to the presidency and with America’s “continental commitment” seemingly on the way to becoming more negative than positive, this possibility too has become more real than ever.
The idea that the current war could be a blessing for European integration and hence for Social Europe may sound crazy. But it is consistent with the famous thesis put forward in the 1980s by social historian Charles Tilly: “Just as the state makes war, war makes the state.” And when the war-making state needs to rely on the taxation and conscription of its citizens, it is not just that war makes the state. It also gradually makes the democratic state.
So, if the European Union wishes to become a genuine democratic federation, it is well advised, on this view, to join Ukraine in a full-scale war against Russia, without America’s umbrella. Is that what we should hope for?
A calamity for the belligerents and for the world
Of course not. True, if smartly used by European leaders to boost military integration rather than swell national arsenals, this war might have as a welcome by-product the creation of a Communauté européenne de défense bis. — a long-delayed realisation of what Jean Monnet saw, in the early 1950s, as the twin project of his European Coal and Steel Community. But recent events have shown that such a European Defence Community 2.0 would have made far more sense had the United Kingdom remained part of the European Union. Moreover, very different histories and geopolitical positions may pit Member States against each other rather than bring them closer together.
Above all, whether it fosters European integration or not, this war is a calamity. A calamity in the first place for the belligerents themselves, who each day try to kill and wound each other as much as they can. A calamity also for the whole of Europe and indeed for the whole of mankind.
The most fundamental reason why this European war is a worldwide calamity is not the most obvious. To avoid irreversible damaging climate change, mankind needs to avert a tragedy of the global commons. It needs to prevent self-serving nation-level rationality from precipitating a collective disaster. In the absence of a world state, forestalling this disaster requires mutual trust and collaboration, including with the world’s largest country. A slow healing process will be needed to restore such trust between today’s belligerents and their allies. The longer the war lasts, the later the healing process can start.
Extinguish fear!
In 1914, when Europe started World War I, it housed (Russia included) nearly 25% of the world population and had colonized half of the rest. Today, Europe has thankfully lost all its colonies and has — less thankfully — shrunk to 9% of the world population. Now that climate change presents mankind with a more widespread, more permanent, more formidable challenge than any war has ever done, tiny, shrinking Europe owes it to the rest of the world to put an end to its new war as soon as possible.
Given that full victory of one of the two sides and capitulation of the other is either unacceptable or inconceivable, the sooner a somewhat decent compromise can be found, the better. It will not be a just peace, in the sense that each side gets what it believes it is morally entitled to.
However, it must be a lasting peace, and therefore a peace that rests on a mutually face-saving compromise, as philosopher Jürgen Habermas already dared to write two years ago. A compromise that paves the way for a security architecture that enables each European country, East and West, to feel safe, an architecture that extinguishes as much as it can what the Greek historian Thucydides memorably identified, twenty-five centuries ago, as the fundamental cause of all wars: fear.
Note: This column is an adapted excerpt from chapter 1 (“Fighting for Social Europe when Europe is at war”) of Social Policy in the European Union, published by the European Trade Union Institute and the Observatoire social européen.
