BEIJING - The recent meeting between US President George W Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi broke many old molds in trans-Atlantic relations and opens new geopolitical perspectives other European and Asian leaders will be forced to consider.
Asia has been interested in recent years in the future of a united Europe that could counterbalance the power of the United States. But the lonely presence of one single European leader, representing one country, Italy in this case, and not the unity of Europe, tells the story of the new division of Europe. The Bush-Berlusconi meeting could be the beginning of the end of the political unity in Europe. If Europe is shattered and no longer a political entity, this will create a different space Asian countries will need to confront.
Each country of the European continent, in other words, counts more than the unity of all, and the fact that the country receiving the big welcome was Italy is even more interesting, as Rome has been for centuries the inspiration for the European identity and union.
The fact that Europe is vanishing as a looming political entity changes all global perspectives, and makes all geopolitical calculations different in Asia. The United States, now more than ever, is the sun of the Earth.
The hug between the two leaders at Crawford, Texas, before millions of TV viewers worldwide is more telling for those excluded. Given the fact that US ties with Britain are those of a close family, France and Germany appear as distant relatives. In the hierarchy of meetings, Crawford is the symbol of greater closeness, a talk at Camp David is more removed, a chat in Washington even further, and a meeting at Evian, such as the handshake between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac, is even further away.
For decades the US relationship with France was central to trans-Atlantic ties, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall Washington considered moving eastward, embracing strong links with Germany. Both France and Germany were supposed to be the kernel of a new European union, which should have been born after the euro. War in Iraq has shattered both visions, but it was not only that. Before the war on terrorism, Europe had failed to unite on two fundamental issues: Yugoslavia and the euro. For more than 10 years the European countries did not manage to get a unified political line on Yugoslavia, and thus did not muster the political will to send troops to die in the Balkans - nor could it muster the military forces.
The euro didn't do much better. Since the unification of the currency, the drive to political unification has stalled. Far from giving more power to the European Parliament (the only democratic institution in an organization otherwise dominated by appointed technocrats), the centralized European banking body failed to gain authority with the national governments beyond currency controls. The standards for budget spending, the independence of national tax systems, coupled with the power of the central bank to set the central interest rate on the euro, have made economic policies in the countries of the eurozone very cumbersome.
The founders of the euro anticipated these difficulties but believed they could be overcome with greater political unity. But the mandarins running Europe now have little political clout. They can administer the existing euro's Europe but cannot project Europe beyond the euro. They do not have a strong constituency to back them up: they are not democratically elected, neither have they inherited their power thanks to God's will (a monarchy), nor to a revolution (an authoritarian regime), nor can they show brilliant economic performance to justify their drive for political unity.
In this fragile and shattered Europe every country is in reality on its own, as two Italian analysts, Lucio Caracciolo and Fabio Mini, anticipated a few years back. Industrial interests bind the countries together. Defense industries in France and Germany are now busying themselves to build a transnational platform that could provide the new technological backbone of the continent. And Europe is the only place that can muster the resources and technology to bridge the yawning gap with the US armed forces.
For this reason French and Germans are sore with the Italians: Finmeccanica, the largest remaining chunk of the once-almighty Italian state industry, with its technological niches of excellence, is collaborating more with trans-Atlantic than with trans-Alpine partners. Finmeccanica's choice not to join hands with French and German companies is not an Italian choice, but part of a larger European pattern. The European car industry, strategic in many senses, has more links with America than in the old continent. The German Mercedes-Benz has merged with America's Chrysler and not with a French or an Italian car maker, and the German Opel belongs to America's General Motors. In other words, large companies in each European country have more ties with the United States than with other European countries.
The war in Iraq, with the French and Germans against the conflict and the British and the Italians for it, furthered the European divide. Bush's hug with Berlusconi excludes French President Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and thus seals for everybody to see the nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Europe is not simply divided into old and new Europe. Europe is divided into many countries electing their couple of dozen different governments, for which the unity of the euro is of little help.
Framania (France and Germany) may have the economic power to bind Europe together but do not have the historic and moral authority to do so. Europe recognizes itself in the tradition of the Roman Empire, either the ancient one or the more recent one comprising Germany and called "Holy"; in that of the Vatican in Rome, whether admitting its authority (the Catholics) or rejecting it (the Protestants); in that of the Renaissance, kindling the flame of capitalism in the whole continent. All these traditions dream of the Mediterranean Sea, when it was trade route between Christians and Muslims, and when it was mare nostrum under Rome, or when it was the battleground of Greeks and Phoenicians, Egyptians and Persians. All this makes Europe, and Italy is the hub of it, so much so that Italy could claim to be Europe even without the other European countries, but the opposite would be hardly true.
Now Berlusconi is feted in the United States, and rightly so, as he managed to keep Italy, crucial for the unity of Europe, on the US side while most of Italian public opinion and Italy's largest moral power, the Catholic Church, were against the war in Iraq. But greater dangers loom ahead for European countries and the US in the old continent.
As the French historian Michel Korinman pointed out, the US presence in Europe for half a century managed to de-historicize Western Europe. Hundreds of conflicts and hatred pitching Germany against France and Britain have vanished. Their wars and the millions of dead are almost a curiosity of the past that now is related only with horror, as something that should never occur again.
Feelings change if one crosses an old invisible line in the east of the continent. Czechs and Slovaks could not bear to be together. Hungarians hate Romanians and are repaid in kind. The Poles are still scared of the big bad Russian bear, Bulgarians dream of stretching their fingers on to Macedonia, and to top it all, the Greeks can't even bear to pronounce the name "Istanbul", as for them the city is, after more than 500 years, still Constantinople. In fact, many times only the old Cold War pressure pulled Greeks and Turks away from the brink of war.
But now the Cold War is over and these two Europes are reunited. For one, Western Europe, the past starts after World War II; for the other, Eastern Europe, grudges half a millennium old are still part of national pride. How can these two Europes co-exist? Can the fears of Eastern Europeans restart old memories, and grudges, in Western Europe? The ambitions and old family estates of some Germans in Polish Silesia and of some Italians in Slovenia have been so far suppressed, but old animosities from the East could restart them. Ten years of war in Yugoslavia are there to remind us that war has not been forever banned on the old continent.
The rules of the European Union might well aggravate centrifugal forces in states in Western Europe. In a way giving more weight to states than to populations in the EU will reward smaller units. In this fashion Lombardy, with its bellicose and ultra-nationalist Northern League, may think it will count more in the EU if it splits from Italy and goes alone than if it trusts Rome to represent its requests to the Union.
Then, while China is on the rise, followed by Southeast Asia and India, Europe, far from moving to unification, might fall apart in many splinters. This eliminates the possibility that Europe will become a US competitor in the new globalized era, as some US circles fear, but it also creates a new problem for the United States, now also concerned about political and economic growth in the Pacific basin. Italy, historical bridge between East and West, could perhaps have some role both in trans-Pacific as well as trans-Atlantic relations.
But there is nothing easy and clear-cut on the old continent, now at 25 members and growing, while peace in Iraq and Afghanistan has not been fully established and the US is thinking of a new mission in Africa.
No solutions are easy, but there is one fact: if the United States wants to be an empire, it needs allies, such as the United Kingdom, or Italy. (2003-07-24 Asia Times)
