The European Integration and a New Political Culture

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• An explosion to the south of Kabul killed one Italian soldier and wounded two on Tuesday.

French soldier weeping after the Battle of France, May 1940

Theories of the Causes of Aggression

• Prussian strategist Karl von Clausewitz in On War states

: “war (conflict) is merely an extension of diplomacy by other means”

“war is an instrument for states to use to resolve their conflicts”

Human Nature: Realist View

• psychologist Sigmund Freud

: aggression is an instinctive part of human nature

- that stems from human’s genetic programming and psychological makeup

• ethnologists, Konrad Lorenz

: human is one of the few species practicing intraspecific aggression (killing members of one’s own species)

• realists: assume drive for power and aggression is innate

• human: is essentially selfish and aggressive,: people murder and kill

- because of their innate genetic drives to act out aggressively

• human : has inherited a tendency to make war from our

(animal) ancestors

Cultural Determinants

• culture

: a kind of social road map

- telling people what is and is not acceptable

- providing guidelines and priorities for how people organize their lives

• the society (Germany and Japan during the WWI, WWII): organizes its society to accept the death : builds culture to affirm the death

• the governments encourage the people : to glorify the state : to respect warrior as a hero to accept the warfare against adversary

“Transcend life and death. When you eliminate all thoughts about life and death, you will be able to totally disregard your earthly life. This will also enable you to concentrate your attention on eradicating the enemy with unwavering determination, meanwhile reinforcing your excellence in flight skills.”

- A paragraph from the Kamikaze pilot's manual, located in their cockpits.

European Political Culture: War Culture and Dark Tragedy

• Europe

: the land of warfare and dark tragedy

- the Hundred Years War

- the Thirty Year’s War

- the Napoleonic wars

- the Prussian War

- the potato famine

- inherited social status

• during about 65 % of the time in the 16th century and 17th century: the major European countries armed themselves and

were engaged into warfare• between 1816 and 1945

- three-fifths of all interstate wars in the world took place in Europe

“During the wars there had been only slaughter to avenge slaughter, massacre in revenge for massacre …

What European would never do to their neighbors when the rules of morality apply …

… innocent European seldom had any control over the situations that destroyed them.” – Donald Puchala

Australian infantry wearing Small Box Respirators (SBR). September 1917

Throughout World War I, forces were stalled at trenches

The First World War

• the First World War: eight million European combatants killed

- Germany suffered most: losing 1.8 million soldiers.

- Russia with 1.7 million- France with almost 1.4 million- Britain with nearly 750,000.

• The worst affected country – France: one out of four male children born between 1891 and 1895

- died in battle by November 1918: 20 percent of the labor forces: wiped out

• Many of these victims

: beggars and drifters

- eking out a meager existence on the streets of Berlin, Paris, London, and Vienna

• World War I

: not bring about the wholesale collapse of states

• at European level

: its impact

– felt chiefly by small groups of intellectuals

German soldiers destroying a Polish border checkpoint on September 1939

Major deportation routes to Nazi extermination camps during the Holocaust

Prisoners of a Concentration Camp

Dresden in Ruins February 1945

• The Second World War killed 50 million

: little distinction drawn between combatants and civilians

: about 20 million soldiers and 30 million civilians.

• The estimated 10 million lives lost due to the Holocaust

• The Second World War

: a harsh and unforgettable experience

: caused the total collapse of almost every state on the Continent

: all governments

- incapable of guaranteeing their peoples the security

How Resilient is Culture?

(1) Some are skeptical: culture does not easily change: in the aftermath of the Cold War,

- basic religious and cultural differences: the main dividing lines of global politics

: Huntington, “Clash of Civilization”

(2) some scholars: political culture is subject to change over time

• Sweden and Swiss once warlike : have managed the conflicts without warfare since 1809

and 1815 respectively• since 1945, with exception of war in the former

Yugoslavia: interstate war has not occurred in Europe

• post-war Europe was built upon : the new political culture of “no more wars” and “the

rebirth of Europe” : the archetype “the European warfare” or “fear of death”

• lesson from mistake and history

• Preservation of peace

: only by pooling their sovereignty

: construction of European unity

• The new European political culture

: widespread throughout Europe.

• In the post-war period, the European unity

: a fascination

- because it seems to hold all hope for the future.

• Winston Churchill in 1948, at the Congress of Europe

: his own vision of a European unity

• “We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and … whatever they go in this wide domain … will truly fell, ‘Here I am at Home.’”

• today, two-thirds of the people living across the European Union

: “they feel European.”

• Six out of ten EU citizens

: “they feel very attached or fairly attached to Europe”

• 92% of European leaders

: see “their future identification as mainly or partly European, not national.”

Beginning

• in 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman

: proposed integrating the coal and steel industries of Western Europe

• in 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)

: set up, with six members

- Belgium, West Germany, Luxembourg, France, Italy and the Netherlands

From three communities to the European Union

• The ECSC was such a success

• In 1957 they signed

: the Treaties of Rome, creating the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and the European Economic Community (EEC).

: forming a "common market"

• In 1967, the institutions of the three European communities

: merged

• the members of the European Parliament

: chosen by the national parliaments but in 1979 the first direct elections were held

• the Treaty of Maastricht (1992)

: created the European Union (EU).

Integration means common policies

• a common commercial policy for coal and steel• a common agricultural policy.• Other policies were added as time went by

: from agriculture to culture, from consumer affairs to competition, from the environment and energy to transport and trade.

• the EU : negotiates major trade and aid agreements with

other countries: developing a Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The Single Market: banning the barriers

• the Member States

: removed all the barriers to trade between them

• a genuine single market in which goods, services, people and capital could move around freely.

: the Single Market was completed at the end of 1992

• increasingly easy for people to move around in Europe

: passport and customs checks were abolished

The Single Currency: the euro in your pocket

• In 1992 the EU decided to go for economic and monetary union (EMU)

: the introduction of a single European currency (Euro) 1 January 2002

: euro notes and coins replaced national currencies

- in twelve of the 15 countries of the European Union (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland).

The growing family

• Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined in 1973

• followed by Greece in 1981• Spain and Portugal in 1986• Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995. • The European Union welcomed ten new countries in

2004: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,

Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. • Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey: candidate countries

European Union Components

• European Council (summit meetings) - provides guidelines• Council of Ministers - cabinet ministers from the member states

- final authority over decisions• European Commission (Federal government?) - 20 commissioners (two each from UK, F, G, It, Sp,

and one each from the remaining states)- propose laws, implement common policies, oversee

EU treaties, execute Council decisions- 17,000 civil service “Eurocrats”

• European Parliament (Congress?)- elected in member states, increasing power- approve the EU’s budget, oversee the European

Commission• Court of Justice (Supreme Court?)

- interprets EU law for national courts, rules on legal questions, hears and rules on cases concerning individual citizens

• established its own military arm, a rapid-reaction force

• ambitious experiments

• enlargement creates the globe’s biggest free trade bloc

: transforms the Europe by ending its division

• put the different interests and territorial ambitions aside

: construct a “European-ness” identity

• the EU has marched toward ever closer union

• United States of Europe?

• the EU, a remarkable success story

• Could the EU replace the United States as the world’s hegemon?

Challenging Task

• disagreement

: over the extent to which the EU should become a single, truly united superstate or a “United States of Europe”, moving beyond the nation-state

• enlargement

: the UK the most reluctant member

: the great disparity between Western Europe and Eastern Europe

: Western European worry

- poor immigrants flocking in from the East will place an additional burden on overtaxed welfare system

: Eastern European worry

- Western European products will undermine domestic producers or raise prices for consumers

• a long way to go to reach its goal of becoming the world’s most competitive economy

The Quiet Economic Miracle

• we do not pay all that much attention to Europe

: a question of perception

: our frame of reference

- individual countries of Europe

: new economic and political realities are emerging in Europe

• a quiet new experiment is taking place

• 25 countries have pooled their vast human and natural resources

: partially committed to share a common destiny

• European states are part of the EU

: just as 50 American states part of the U.S.

• Germany’s GDP of $1,866 billion

: exceeds California’s $1,344 billion GDP

• the UK’s GDP of $1.4 trillion

: twice as large as New York’s GDP of $788 billion

• France, with a GDP of $ 1.3 trillion

: 50 % larger than Texas, with $742

• (neo)liberal theory

: promote peace and prosperity through IGOs such as the EU

• the EU is unique

• the globe’s greatest example of peaceful international cooperation

: a single economy and a common currency (Euro)

The Birth of a New Kind of Economic Superpower

• 61 of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European: while 50 are U.S. companies

• Royal Dutch/Shell and BP: the fourth and fifth biggest companies

• Nokia, the Finnish company, the number one producer of cell phones

• Bertelsmann, German media company, the third largest after Time Warner and Walt Disney

• Airbus, the European consortium, has outperformed

: Boeing for the past three years and now controls 76 % of the global airplane market

• in the top twelve in the motor vehicle

: Volkswagen, Fiat, Peugeot, BMW, Renault

• Europe boasts 2.6 million millionaires

: while North America has 2.2 million millionaires

• Europe added 100,000 millionaires in 2000

: while North America dropped by 88,000 millionaires

• the U.S. companies in some industries still dominate

: while in others, European are the market leaders

• European-based companies

: able to match their American counterparts

• the EU

: closing the gap with the U.S. economy