EUROPE v USA : TWO CENTURIES OF IR HISTORY COMPARED

 Compared to the US' attitude to border changes today, the leaders of the Great European Powers of the 19th century - although generally opposed to territorial modifications themselves - proved to be much more flexible when these occurred, as illustrated by the examples of Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Romania. As leaders of land-based powers, they knew from historical experience that border changes can never be completely avoided.

 I believe that the current crisis in Ukraine gives us historians the opportunity to make a comparison between two centuries of modern world history, the one between 1815 and 1914 and the period of American hegemony between 1920 and 2020, as well as one between autocrats and democrats.

The 19th century was dominated by several great European powers, united in alliances designed to prevent the spread of secularism and border changes in Europe. Beginning with the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia and Austria), continuing with the so-called European Concert (Russia, Prussia, Austria, France and Great Britain) and ending after the unification of Germany with the Bismarckian League of Emperors (Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary) the 19th century was, with a few small exceptions, one of peace.

The promoters of this formula for managing military conflicts on the European continent were, with the exception of the French or British leaders, autocratic emperors, namely the rulers of  Germany, Russia or Austria. The collective guarantee of the great powers, as it is known in the history of diplomacy, prevented major armed conflicts, promoted Christian spiritual values, and in 1848 opposed the violent changes via revolutions of the states they ruled.

However, the European concert did not oppose the independence and neutrality of Switzerland, for example, or the appearance of Belgium, Italy, Germany or Romania on the map, which are still among the solidly built states of Europe.

Between 1920 and 2020, the United States was the leader of global affairs, the champion of liberal democracies, and since 1945 the number one military power, becoming the only superpower since 1989.

Although official propaganda has always affirmed that the democracies in the American camp are essentially peaceful or peace-seeking, the conflicts of this period have unfortunately proved otherwise.

Since the end of World War II and continuing with the wars in Korea (1953) Vietnam (1960s and 1970s) or those in Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Yemen, the list of military conflicts, most  of them initiated by the US and/or NATO , is getting longer. 

Both in the 19th century and between 1920 and 2020, new state constructions appeared on the map of Europe or the world. The most solid were and remained the states formed during the time of the autocrats,  namely Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy or Romania.

States which appeard after 1920 based on the Wilsonian principle of self-determination, did not last long. Thus, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia disappeared from the map after 1990, while Romania lost the territories it  acquired after 1920 in the east and in the north, which have not been recovered. Puppet states like South Vietnam have disappeared, and South Korea lives daily under the military threat of North Korea and with American troops who have been there for decades.

However, since neoconservatives have taken over the management of American foreign affairs, things have gotten worse. The post-1989 period, which led to the implosion of the USSR, Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, proved to be very turbulent. The construction of new states under the auspices of the Americans began with the creation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, which has never experienced political stability and is in the process of disintegration.

After 2000, the United States tried its luck in the Orient, sponsoring nation-building in Afghanistan or Iraq, or in North Africa, where Libya is still a deeply divided and dysfunctional state. Since 2014, the American neoconservatives have also become deeply involved in the internal affairs and administrative reforms of Ukraine, with dismal results .

The fashion of allied occupation of a defeated enemy began with the occupation of post-Napoleonic France. Its occupation by Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain and Bavaria started in 1815 and lasted until 1818.

During the 20th century, a new coalition of victors at the end of WWII occupied defeated Germany. The Soviets remained in East Germany between 1945 - 1990 and were the first to retire their troops from Germany. The last French battalion, however, left Germany only in 2014; the British contingent left in 2020; while the US still has 20 military bases and around 35,000 soldiers on German soil. Worse still, the NATO military alliance has not been wound up after the end of the Cold War and it even expanded to the Russian border.

Undaunted, however, Antony Blinken has commented - during the recent Russian-CSTO military intervention in Kazakhstan - that it is the Russians who are in the habit of overstaying their welcome in the countries they offer military assistance to.

After a brief review of the two formulas for managing global international affairs, one from the 19th century and today's,  one will be able to judge for themselves whether and to what extent the Americans have succeeded in giving the world more peace and stability than their 19th century predecessors, the crowned autocrats of Europe.

Undoing Germany's "Reluctant" Hegemony

 July 30, 2015

To those in the know, the Italian peninsula was not only the cradle of the Roman Empire or Rome the centre of the Catholic faithful, but also the birthplace of capitalism and of countless statecraft innovations and institutions still widely used around the world today.

During the middle ages, the Italian city-states thus discovered and perfected what is commonly known among IR specialists as the “balance of power” mechanism. Every time one of the city-states became too powerful economically or militarily and tried to subdue the others, most of the rest of the city-states would form a coalition against the offender, thus preserving their sovereignty over their economic and political affairs.

This time-honoured tradition continued long after the development of nation-states and was successfully used to control the hegemonic designs of European powers, such as France or Germany, to give but two of the best-known examples. For the past two centuries, until some sixty years ago, balance-of-power arrangements were initiated, financed and operated by Britain, which succeeded in defeating both Napoleon and Hitler and in bringing their hegemonic designs to an end. British leadership in this field prevented the loss of sovereignty by continental nations and during the 20th century it preserved democracy and the rule of law, albeit not always by peaceful means.

It would be a mistake to believe that old hegemonic designs nurtured by economically more powerful European nations have vanished since the creation of the European Union. If anything – as demonstrated by the recent developments from the 13th of July 2015 – such hegemonic efforts which chiefly belong to Germany are played out within the existing political structures and institutions of the European Union.

Institutions such as the Eurogroup, although they do not have a legal existence, nevertheless wield enormous power over the economic and financial affairs of EU member-countries since the introduction of the euro. Within this group, Germany plays the leading role and with the help of a few satellite-states makes all the important decisions.

There are other EU institutions, such as the ECB, the ESM or the Commission, that are manned by technocrats who have more decision-power than any elected political leader of any country. Here too, Germany has succeeded in throwing its economic weight around and has used the European Union’s design imperfections to establish its de facto leadership .

Reluctant or not, German dominance within the EU is by now an established fact and should be actively resisted by the rest of the EU member-states, like any other hegemonic episode in our continent’s history.

When one country becomes economically or militarily too powerful at the expense of all other members of the group it belongs to, there are usually two standard responses to such a situation: bandwagoning or balancing.

Today, countries like Austria, the Netherlands or the Baltic states have preferred to bandwagon, becoming German satellites in the process. They have displayed a propensity to endorse Wolfgang Schaeuble’s vision of “reform” for the EU’s structures. The German Finance Minister has declared during a conference at Brookings Institute in April 2015 that even Germany’s former arch-rival France, not only Greece, needs to be “restructured” by a troika, citing however “democracy” as a temporary stumbling block…

The other response – that is balancing – is the preferred method of Italy and France, consummate operators of balance-of-power mechanisms in the past. This is how Shahin Vallée, former advisor to ex-President Van Rompuy, has recently described the current situation in The New York Times:

“This forceful attitudes and the several taboos it broke reveal that the currency union that Germany wants is probably fundamentally incompatible with the one the French elite can sell and the French public can subscribe to. The choice soon will be whether Germany can build the euro it wants with France or whether the common currency falls apart.

Germany could undoubtedly build a very successful monetary union with the Baltic countries, the Netherlands and a few other nations, but it must understand that it will never build an economically successful and politically stable monetary union with France and the rest of Europe on these terms.

Over the long run, France, Italy and Spain to name just a few, would not take part in such a union, not because they can’t but because they wouldn’t want to. The collective GDP and population of these countries is twice that of Germany; eventually, a confrontation is inevitable.”

Since the 13th of July 2015, the number one priority in most EU capitals is no longer the Greek crisis, but how to deal with Germany’s latest hegemonic offensive. Ideally, a “Dexit” followed by the formation of a two-union Europe along the lines I have described in my earlier posts could replace the current dysfunctional union. Alternatively the union might disintegrate, USSR-style, into a myriad of nation-states large and small, dominated by populist or nationalist governments. Such a development, however, would gravely affect economic life as well as the security situation on our continent.