[Column] Europe in Crisis

John Feffer

Europe is in terrible shape these days.

The war on its eastern edge, in Ukraine, continues to resist the efforts of negotiators and their latest ceasefire. A new government in Greece has stood up to the austerity measures of the European Union and is threatening to pull out of the Eurozone. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen have raised fears of more blowback from the conflicts in the Middle East. With growth rates stagnant and anti-immigrant sentiment rising, extreme nationalists are capitalizing on the discontent. Never before has Euroskepticism – the opposition to European integration – been so popular at the polls.

What ever happened to the image of Europe as a safe, prosperous, and uneventful place to live and take a holiday?

It might seem at first glance that the problems that assail Europe are the result of misfortune, miscalculations, and the misdeeds of others. The current economic malaise is certainly a function of an economic crisis that began in the United States and spread globally. The war in Ukraine stems from a popular uprising a year ago in Kiev and a subsequent confrontation between the new authorities and Russia. The disintegration of Syria and Iraq have led to a spate of plots and attacks in Europe by those who have either returned from the Middle East or were inspired by militant organizations in that region.

But Europe’s current crisis can’t be simply blamed on a series of unrelated events beyond the control of European countries. Rather, Europe made a two-part deal after the end of the Cold War on economic and security issues. It must now face the consequences of that decision.

On the economic front, the European Union departed from its initial commitment to equitable growth and, over the last two decades, increasingly embraced a neoliberal approach. This meant fewer government services, less regulation over the financial sector, and austerity for all those who fall into conspicuous levels of debt. These rules apply all the more strongly for the members of the Eurozone who, because they no longer print their own national currency, can’t use their own monetary policy to pull themselves out of a downward spiral.

The continent’s economic stagnation is the result in large part of a refusal by Germany in particular to allow more stimulus spending in the Eurozone. The Greek rebellion, which culminated in the election of the anti-austerity party Syriza, is a direct repudiation of the neoliberal consensus on debt. The rising tide of Euroskepticism – buoyed by extremist parties like the National Front in France, the Popular Party in Denmark, and the UK Independence Party – can be explain in part by popular anger at unemployment and reduced government services. In Greece and Spain, the Left has capitalized on this anger. Where the Left has supported the neoliberal reforms, the far Right has swept in to appeal to the disenfranchised.

On security issues, the story is equally bleak. In the early 1990s, there was talk of a “common European home” from Paris to the Urals. The Cold War, after all, was over. Gorbachev was willing to work with Europe and the United States to transform trans-Atlantic relations. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which included Russia, America, and nearly all the European countries, could have been the basis of this common European home.

Instead, the United States pushed hard for the continued relevance of NATO. The CSCE became a full-fledged organization, but its funding remained minimal and its capabilities restricted. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, followed by the break-up of Yugoslavia, NATO sold itself to Europe as the only viable response to this anarchy on the edges. It also prepared new missions beyond Europe, the so-called out-of-area operations, that would eventually involve European countries in wars against predominantly Muslim countries.

If NATO had simply maintained its existing structure and membership, a new European security structure could still have been possible. But during the Clinton years, the United States pushed NATO inexorably eastward. NATO membership meant big bucks for military contractors who sold weapons to the new members so that they could come up to the required standards.

But even this was not enough, and NATO reached further east, into the realms of the former Soviet Union. In 2004, it accepted the Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) as members. Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova were in the queue for future membership.

And this is where Russia drew the line. It went to war with Georgia in 2008 ostensibly in defense of breakaway regions South Ossetia and Abhazia, but really to prevent Georgia from joining NATO. The war currently ravaging Ukraine, with Russia backing rebels in the eastern part of the country, similarly reflects Moscow’s fear of NATO troops marching up to its very doorstep.

Meanwhile, European involvement in the wars launched by the United States after September 11 aggravated tensions with Muslim immigrant communities at home. Moreover, terrorists who launched attacks in Europe -- or were caught before they could implement their plots -- frequently cited European participation in NATO operations in Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere as their reason.

The European Union once billed itself as an alternative to the laissez-faire economics of the United States. It once imagined a common European home that would include Russia. Instead, on economic and security issues, it took a different path.

Obviously Europe was not making these choices in a vacuum. The forces of economic globalization were pushing many countries to reduce barriers to trade and the flow of financial capital. And the United States, as the single superpower left standing after the end of the Cold War, had a tremendous amount of power and influence over the direction of European security.

Still, the current challenges to the EU’s political and economic unity are in part a result of Europe’s own decisions to reject economic and security alternatives that would have made the continent more inclusive and probably more prosperous as well. In the end, therefore, Europe is reaping what it has sown.

By John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus

The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]