Europe: Centuries of Commonalities and Conflict

British historian Arnold Toynbee compared civilizations to living organisms. Civilizations, he said, are born, grow, flourish, and, after several centuries, die—that is, they fail to exert political or economic influence.

The European continent has spawned a variety of civilizations over the course of time. For many centuries Europe was the equivalent of the known world, and its impact on global events has been truly formidable. World history was long defined from strictly European perspectives, a tendency that has been labeled Eurocentrism. However, two world wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) were to a large extent fought in the European theater, and the devastation that they wrought reduced the continent’s prestige and influence. Europe’s leading position in the world rapidly faded as a result.

In recent years, however, Europe has proven to be a reservoir, stronger and more durable than most analysts and observers had deemed possible.

EUROPE AND THE NEW WORLD ORDERAlthough death and destruction during World War II were not confined to Europe, the continent took a thorough beating during those years. No wonder, then, that shortly after the war ended, disgust and revulsion with war emerged among Europeans. These sentiments, in combination with observation of the stunning success of the United States’ economic aid program for Europe known as the Marshall Plan, led a Frenchman named Jean Monnet to envision a European economic and political federation. His vision was translated by Robert Schuman, another Frenchman, into a declaration that aimed at Europe’s eventual political and economic unification. The Schuman Declaration (1950) heralded the European Communities, which came to be known during the 1980s in the singular (that is, the European Community, or EC). In the early 1990s, the EC entered one of its most critical phases, that of political union—a concept that would grant Europe a powerful impetus in world affairs. Indeed, the EC has since 1993 come to be called the European Union, or EU.

There is no certainty whether a European “superstate” is in the making. But a most remarkable coincidence is taking place: The “renaissance of Europe” (a phrase that in this context has political and economic overtones, in contrast to its fifteenth-century meaning) has coincided with the disappearance of the rivalry between the states and the confrontation of the two Cold War superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. These superpowers emerged as a by-product of World War II. Nearly half a century later, in 1990-1991, one of them, the Soviet Union, crumbled and disintegrated. There can be little doubt that a new world order is emerging and that Europe is to playa large role in that construct.

The world as a whole bristles with European concepts and ideas. This is well illustrated by the struggle for economic advancement and greater political autonomy in many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—often called the Third World or developing countries. The belief in prosperity and the belief in self-government both derive from the European treasury of ideas (their transplantation to the United States boosted them substantially). Another major change in world politics that illustrates the enduring influence of European ideas is the rise of Japan as a global economic power. Japan’s current democratic system of government as well as

its technology derive from European foundations, although both have also been shaped by indigenous traditions.

WHY STUDY EUROPE?Three major sets of reasons explain why the study of Europe is critical. The first is cultural or philosophical and has to do with the significance of European ideas. The second is political and strategic and concerns the economic and political importance of Europe today as a group of countries that, even though they no longer control the known world, nevertheless exercise considerable economic and diplomatic power and influence. The third is scientific and analytical; it embraces the opportunity for comparative studies to learn from the modem democratic systems of Europe as they cope with similar challenges as evolving, postindustrial societies.

The cultural or philosophical reason for studying Europe focuses on the dominant role of European ideas around the world. The U.S. Constitution, to cite one example, is one of the finest expressions of European ideas about the limitation of power, freedom, and human rights; and the legal and political arguments in the United States concerning civil rights—what they are, and how they are best protected—are based on European ideas about society, citizenship, and freedom. In addition, there are the concepts of the “just war,” the justification of self-defense, and peace, all issues that have been perennial questions in the American (and European) debate. Religious pluralism, arguments over the separation of church and state, and the relationship of religion to politics are also issues paramount in the United States that first sprouted in Europe.

There are also important political and strategic reasons to study Europe: For half a century, Canada and the United States have been militarily allied with 14 Western European countries. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; also called the Atlantic Alliance) was founded in 1949, primarily as a collective-security alliance against possible expansion on the part of the Soviet Union. It has experienced a great many ups and downs. In addition to some intra-NATO quarrels, there has been recurring friction concerning the very superior position that the United States has taken in NATO as well as frequent squabbles about the relative contributions that members should give to the total effort. Until recently this effort was, as NATO’s Charter stated, in large part dedicated to the containment of communism in the European theater. For decades the alliance was far and away the most important foreign-policy commitment to which the United States was bound.

Interestingly, when the Soviet or East bloc (terms referring to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries) collapsed beginning in 1989, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (NATO’s opposite number, known as the Warsaw Pact) disintegrated as well. NATO was left intact. However its future has become uncertain, and the organization’s mixed record in containing the various nationalist crises in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s gave rise to considerable skepticism about NATO’s purpose and effectiveness. As of yet, no plans have been made to dismantle the Alliance; on the contrary, it was enlarged in 1999 by the admission of three countries from the former East bloc: Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland. In 2000, EU countries agreed to form a rapid-reaction force of 60,000 troops, which some view as the seed of a European army. The multilateral force would be available after the year 2003 for deployment in crisis areas where NATO (and the United States) might choose not to intervene. Some U.S. officials have warned that a more autonomous European military force could undermine NATO’s solidarity and capability. However, not only are the French and German governments supporting the plan, but so are the British and others. In 2004, seven additional

post-communist states—Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—joined NATO as full members, bringing the total to 26.

For many North Americans, Europe conjures stereotypical biases. An example is the perception that Europe is fragmented and, in fact, irreversibly divided. Until recently the main fault line was the so-called “Iron Curtain,” an ideological barrier that divided Communist Eastern Europe on the one hand and democratic Western Europe on the other. Other North American notions concerning Europe have reference to an abundance of internal continental differences, such as ethnicity, varieties of beliefs, and lifestyle and linguistic differences. One may also point to class distinctions, believed to be more endemic to Europe than to the supposedly egalitarian societies of Canada and the United States.

Thus, the notion persists that people in Europe generally favor democratic ideals but that their societies have on the whole remained stagnant. As a contrast, in the United States, modern democracy materialized, coming to expression in the 1787 Constitution. Even Thomas Jefferson, one of the most sophisticated Americans of his day—a man who had lived and traveled in Europe—at one point exclaimed, “We are ahead of Europe in political science.” By this he meant that while the science of government might have originated in Europe, the United States had started to apply it, testing democratic tenets by putting them into practice.

Since North American values are closely related to those nursed and fostered in Europe, many Americans and Canadians assume that most Europeans are like them and certainly less different or intriguing than Chinese, Arabs, Japanese, or any other powerful non-European group whose activities appear to be more dramatic or seem to affect North America more immediately. In the first decades after World War II, Europe certainly diminished in political and economic importance. But it has clearly risen again, another major reason for studying the region.

Finally, study of Europe is valuable because of the similarities and differences that its varied political and socioeconomic systems have with those of North America. In one sense, this blend is useful in attempts to develop general explanations of political and socioeconomic changes. For example, theories about party and party-system changes, voting behavior, or generational value changes require cross-national data in order to be adequately tested. In another sense, this blend provides the opportunity for applied learning from the reform experiences of other “sister” countries. Americans could learn from the environmental initiatives, campaign-finance laws, and drug policies found in various European countries. The classic example is the Scandinavian office of ombudsman (basically, a citizen’s advocate to deal with individual complaints about perceived maltreatment by bureaucratic agencies), which has been emulated under various names in other parts of Europe as well as in North America. Some scholars argue that U.S. “exceptionalism” is on the wane. In any case, the possibility exists for increased theoretical and applied knowledge from paying closer attention to European countries, especially those at similar levels of socioeconomic development.

How Should “Europe” Be Defined?During the Cold War, the continent was split into two artificial entities, “Western Europe” and “Eastern Europe” (or, in the semantics that emerged in the 1990s, “Central/Eastern Europe”). Although historians may find echoes in the civilizational split between Catholic/Protestant Christianity and Orthodox Christianity, those earlier West-East borders were never as clear-cut as the Iron Curtain erected by Communist forces after World War II. (In this reconfigured

Europe, Catholic Poland ended up in the East, and Orthodox Greece ended up in the West.) The post-1945 division was never strictly geographically descriptive. To the far northeast, Finland, though neutral, was generally considered by academic specialists as being within Western Europe. To the far southeast, despite a sizable Turkish Muslim community, Cyprus was more often than not viewed as an appendage of Western Europe. Vienna, the cosmopolitan capital of Austria, also perceived as a part of Western Europe though neutral, lay farther east than Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, and East Berlin, the capital of East Germany (officially, the German Democratic Republic) —both countries that were loyal members of the East Bloc until 1989. Thus, geographical terms were in actuality rooted in ideology. On one side of the postwar divide emerged a Europe generally characterized by democracy, market or mixed economies, and technological progress. On the other side was a Europe generally characterized by communism, command and control economies, and technological backwardness.

During 1989-1990, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall came down. However, “Eastern Europe” did not disappear so quickly. As a Romanian explained to the author in 1992, communism is gone, but the Soviet system remains. In those parts of Eastern Europe at the forefront of the economic transition from communism to capitalism, participants in the democratic opposition movement often found themselves out of work while former Communist officials were “capitalizing” on their resources, connections, and knowledge to gain control of former state enterprises. Indeed, the legacies of communism will be played out over generations. However, by the late 1990s, the evidence that “Europe” was being redefined, often painfully, had become compelling. This has been illustrated most dramatically by the candidacies of the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe for membership in the European Union. However, even those ex-East bloc countries at the top of the organization’s candidate list (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Slovenia) are likely to face long and difficult transitions after entry before they become EU members in the full sense, like Spain and Portugal (which, as new democracies, joined in 1986).

With the circumstances still in flux, this book embraces for the most part a political, rather than a strictly geographical, definition of “Europe.” For example, it does not view Russia and the other (non-Baltic) successor states of the Soviet Union as politically a part of “Europe,” even though they may be members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe. The primary focus here is on the “Europe” of the 25, EU member states and those countries that are closely aligned with the EU’s economic regime through the European Economic Area (EEA) or, in the case of Switzerland, through bilateral treaty agreements. Obviously, aspiring members on the eastern and southeastern peripheries of “Europe” cannot be ignored, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and even Turkey. It is most likely that over the next decade, the scope of “Europe” will expand further, and future editions of this book will do likewise: “Europe” is not yet finished.

HOW TO STUDY EUROPEGiven its variety of political, economic, and social arrangements, there is no best single way of looking at Europe. It is thus necessary to combine elements of four approaches. The first approach to studying Europe concerns the level of individual countries, which has been the traditional method of historical and area studies. The concept of the nation-state emerged when the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648. That same era also gave birth to international law. As a result, Europe was rarely viewed as a consistent entity but, rather, as a conglomeration

of countries, internally fragmented and competing for power among themselves. Two questions may thus be raised. First, why is Europe not more integrated? (One of the answers would undoubtedly be because ethnicity and culture have proven to be such strong variables.) Second, is it possible to speak of a European political system? (Here the answer would be, “Not yet.”)

The second approach focuses on the supranational economic and security networks such as the European Union and NATO. At this level, we learn of the broad limits of policy, how European leaders perceive their common interests, and how these countries relate diplomatically, economically, and militarily as a group to other actors on the world scene, the most important or dominant being the United States and Russia (the main successor state of the Soviet Union). Russia, of course, is no longer considered a global superpower. But in terms of geography, it is a very large, neighboring power—with a huge nuclear arsenal. Several things should be kept in mind when examining Europe at this level. First, more is going on in Europe than merely the activities of organizations like NATO and the EU; for example, there are the activities of the OSCE and the Council of Europe. Second, the memberships of these organizations do not include all the countries of Europe. (And, in the case of NATO, it includes non-European members.) Finally, ideologies and religions in Europe operate most distinctively at this level. Conspicuous examples are the environmental and peace movements, and the Roman Catholic Church.

The third approach to the study of Europe focuses on regions within countries or crossing borders. Regionalism is a term that has come up in the EU vocabulary, where it refers to some of the more outlying regions (such as Sicily and Scotland) among its members. These regions usually have been poor or less developed, and needing of special policies for economic activity. One has to bear in mind that regional issues often also involve ethnic issues—that is, on the fringes of nation-states, one tends to find ethnically divergent peoples. In recent decades, many ethnic groups have “rediscovered” their roots (such as the Welsh) and cross-border connections (such as German-speaking Italians). This has given rise to a range of activities, mostly cultural, but some political. In the future, these areas are likely to merit increasing attention.

The fourth approach to the study of Europe is truly comparative, concentrating on government institutions, policy formation, issues, and the all-important linkage mechanisms such as party systems and interest groups. This approach endeavors to find how governmental and nongovernmental institutions compare in several or all countries. Among the many issues that need to be studied and compared are the environment, social-welfare policy, unemployment, and immigration.

It is possible to construct a time frame that employs all four approaches. This time frame has six sections: 1) the pre-1945 background; 2) reconstruction, 1945-1951; 3) the consolidation of Western Europe and the Cold War, 1951-1963; 4) prosperity and detente, 1963-1973; 5) stagflation and insecurity, 19731989; and 6) since the end of the Cold War, 1989-present. While such a division is practicable and useful, one must bear in mind that the dates are somewhat tentative and that the periods overlap to some extent. There can, for example, be no doubt that both the consolidation of Western Europe and the Cold War started earlier than 1951, while detente was an intermittent phenomenon at best, punctuating an extended phase, much longer than the years specified.