To Build Upon Aachen
By Steven J. Grisafi, PhD.
In a speech given Wednesday, February 13, 2019 the Prime Minister of the Netherlands urged his fellow Europeans to embrace “realpolitik.” While I have no quarrel with this admonishment from Mr. Rutte, I find the substance of his speech to be curiously at odds with another recent statement made by the Prime Minister. Saying that he believed the upcoming elections in May for new membership within the European Parliament were important, he also added that he believed the elections were not as important as national elections. Whereas I dismiss the speculation that Mr. Rutte may himself be seeking election to replace Jean Claude Junker as the new President of the European Commission as mere rumor, I tend to view Mr. Rutte’s recent comments as more euro-sceptic than euro-strengthening.
The Prime Minister is of the opinion that because NATO remains as the first line of defense for Europe, he believes a european army would be redundant. I fail to see why the two must be mutually exclusive. More to the point, I surmise Mr. Rutte’s position to be directed against any formation of the European Union as a political union of equal states and support for continuation of the Union as a loose confederation of nations. Regardless of whether or not his fellow Europeans choose to utilize methods of political soft power, Mr. Rutte wants that influence exerted only as an assertion of the majority will of the European Union’s member nations. He does not envisage any such leverage to be exerted as an instrument of a federal european entity. It is this viewpoint that I find most discouraging and unfortunate for the sake of all Europeans.
Mr. Rutte’s rejection of a european army is implicit rejection of Federalism for the European Union and explicit support for Nationalism. There is no reason to suppose that all current member nations of NATO, that are also members of the European Union, could not retain their membership through the proxy of the European Union. It would be the European Union as whole that remains as a distinct member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and not the individual states of a Federal European Union. But to achieve this Europeans must overcome the Nationalism implicit in all of their viewpoints. It may very well be true, as stated recently by the Prime Minister of Poland, that while there are shared characteristics of the many cultures, there is no European Identity. As an American I find such thinking bizarre. Here in America, we of various European ancestry, have learned to live amongst peoples that at no time in any of our histories lived together. Never had our European ancestors lived amongst others of either Asian or African ancestry. Yet in Europe, at one time or another, all ancestors lived together in empire.
Often the viewpoint has been expressed that the monetary union implicit with the adoption of the euro currency was undertaken hastily without a plan for political union. While this is apparent, those nations that did choose to abandon their national currency to adopt the euro, ought recognize that their adoption was their commitment toward political unification. To cast about rhetoric expressing abandonment of Federalism, as Mr. Rutte has done, appears to indicate that the people of the Netherlands are not fully cognizant of their commitment. Rather than complain that there is no plan for achieving political unity one ought help to devise one. So where do we go from here?
We accept the implications rendered by President Macron and Chancellor Merkel with their embrace of the Treaty of Aachen. We build upon it. We take the treaty as the political unification of France with Germany. The two nations become one; a new Central European Republic that serves as the core nation of the European Union. All other member nations of the European Union must now choose either to join the core nation or leave with the United Kingdom. From my viewpoint from across the Atlantic, I can only conclude that too much eagerness to achieve a United States of Europe drove many Europeans to forego the necessary sacrifices required of all who desired unification and postpone the inevitable rejection by some Europeans who would never fit into the same project that others desired. While a core nation created by the unification of France with Germany may never draw into itself all other current member nations of the European Union, it is better to achieve this such political unity that to languish endlessly in a disparate and unhappy confederation. May your leaders have the courage to do so!