From peace child to warmonger

Exactly 22 years ago, the EU was still warning the Americans against a war in Iraq that would violate international law. For a short time, it seemed as if Europe was emancipating itself – today it is a colony and the EU is a dead project.

“Visit Europe while it's still standing,” sang the band Geier Sturzflug in the 80s. Well, Europe still exists, but really only as an empty shell of laws and institutions. The soul of the continent has suddenly escaped from its body. Among other forms of self-betrayal – for example in the fields of “social affairs” and “civil liberties” – one thing in particular stands out: the EU has ceased to be a peace project. And yet it was precisely the decision taken on the ruins of the Second World War that there must never again be anything like that on European soil that defined and held the continent together for a long time. The early generations of post-war politicians often had life experiences shaped by war, flight and landscapes of ruins, or at least by the traumatization of their parents. Accordingly, they were usually cautious about getting involved in wars and sometimes said a clear “No!” to an overly forceful protective power, the United States. All that is in the past. A new generation of inexperienced and irresponsible political apprentices is gambling away what their ancestors built. Today, Europe is no longer held together by the common desire for peace, but by belligerent confrontation with Russia.

by Roberto J. De Lapuente

[This article posted on 9/4/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/vom-friedenskind-zum-bellizisten.]

The European Union (EU) has a common denominator: to ruin Russia. That is what is left of the European project these days. In previous years, it reached the limits of its viability – the UK's withdrawal was just the tip of the iceberg. Even before that, it had become apparent that the EU, which had expanded to the east, had overreached itself. It entered the new millennium as a bureaucratic monster – at the time, this was still the biggest criticism of the union. All that came out of Brussels were regulations, some of them grotesque. A popular example of this is the cucumber regulation. Even then, the EU had forfeited its true spirit – but around the year 2000, no one suspected it yet.

At the beginning of the 2000s, people even thought they could discern the tender shoots of emancipation from the United States. When the US declared war on terror in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center, the EU actually warned the Americans against a war that was contrary to international law and urgently pleaded for a UN mandate – that was exactly 22 years ago today.

At that time, the spirit that had once brought the EU into being was still alive. Years later, after a financial crisis had finally split the continent into particular interests, nothing of that spirit remained.

The emancipation from the USA has failed – the old spirit or soul that drove the unification of Europe has long been forgotten. For once it was the appreciation of peace that was to unite Europe.

The House of Europe

The united Europe was initially an economic union. Six years after the Second World War, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Luxembourg joined together to form the European Coal and Steel Community, as the project was officially known in Germany. The name already reveals that the economy was at the center and not a Europe for the citizens. The first customs exemptions were established and the reconstruction of the destroyed countries was facilitated. In Eastern Europe, behind the Iron Curtain, this development was viewed with skepticism. There, the European Coal and Steel Community was seen as NATO's armaments forge. Today, one could say almost the same thing: the European Union (EU) of today, successor to the 1951 union, is at least the aggressive wing of the North Atlantic Treaty.

Anyone who addresses the failure of the EU hears this again and again today. It has not failed, critics then say, because the EU was an economic union from the outset – the idea that was later claimed that it could also become a united continent for all citizens only emerged later.

This is both true and false. The idea of a European federation that goes beyond economic motivations did indeed arise only later. Nevertheless, the European Coal and Steel Community was more than just an economic club. The founding fathers' idea was inspired by a fundamental idea that was to shape the EU for many years and decades to come – a motive that has, however, been completely lost today.

We are talking about the experience of war. The politicians who agreed on such a union in 1951 were, of course, exploring the economic interests of their nations. But the idea that European nations would not work against each other, but would consider a common interest, was a cornerstone of European peace after the devastating world war. The later European politicians stood in this tradition. Not because the EU favored it, but because they were all still children of the war. Helmut Kohl may have been laughed at and not loved within large parts of German society. But his foreign policy ideas were clear and respected. Just like those of François Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev or Margaret Thatcher. No matter how ideologically different these rulers were, they were united on this issue: Europe should never see war again. They wanted to shape policy to ensure this.

The minds of US presidents were usually far less sensitive when it came to war or peace. There is no question that the United States fought against Hitler in Europe and against the Japanese in the Pacific. And of course, further wars followed: Korea, for example, or Vietnam. But all of this happened far from home.

During the Vietnam War, horrific images found their way into the living rooms of Americans. The press was there live at the time. However, unlike today, they were not integrated into the military propaganda matrix.

The US presidents were only affected by the images to the extent that they caused unrest in the country. That is why seeing the war did not immediately make the most powerful man in the USA rethink. The Europeans, however, knew war. Both citizens and elected representatives. This made the latter reliable in terms of their politics.

Who screwed up: Schröder or Merkel?

The European idea and the further development into a monetary union – however flawed it may have been – was inspired by the experience: Never again war! Jacques Delors is considered the architect of the modern EU. In the 1980s and 1990s, he modified the European treaties. It may be that in retrospect one can speak of a bold idea. But at the time, the legacy of the war was still very much present for Delors. As a young man, he experienced air raids; his father came home disabled and with a hatred for Germans. Not only must something like this never be repeated, it also had to change, because mutual hatred was not a model for the future. Delors died last year, in 2023 – this can also be seen as symbolic.

The red-green government that held office from 1998 to 2005 was a fiasco in terms of domestic policy. Gerhard Schröder abandoned social democracy and laid the foundation for social division with Agenda 2010. In terms of foreign policy, however, he was rather cautious. He also experienced the war – after it was over. Born in 1944, he never knew his father, because he “was left behind in the field,” as it was euphemistically put, and he knew that foreign policy must be conciliatory in order not to conjure up the unimaginable again. The economic rapprochement with Russia was also motivated by this consideration. Today, political Berlin and its press blame him for this step. In doing so, he has, to a certain extent, messed up everything and made a war like the one in Ukraine possible in the first place.

Schröder was the last German chancellor to have internalized the oppressive legacy of the world war in his matrix. With Angela Merkel, the basic idea that Europe is an idea that once arose to prevent further continental wars, or at least to make them much more difficult, disappeared.

Her foreign policy was indeed a patchwork, and now and then she hesitated because she probably instinctively believed that she was going too far. But when the European Union fell into crisis, the euro came under pressure and Greece became a problem for German and northern European economic interests, she more or less abandoned the European idea. From then on, Berlin pursued a policy of hegemony, later interfering in Ukraine and signing agreements that were not meant seriously – as in Minsk. And the German Chancellor opened the borders to refugees without controls and without consulting her European neighbors. Britain's withdrawal from the Union was strongly fueled by this event.

Nevertheless, Angela Merkel was celebrated in her own country as the Iron Chancellor. The Bild newspaper caricatured her in the Bismarckian style. The Mutti, as many Germans respectfully and disrespectfully called her, became the mother of Europe, the patron saint of a continent that was now gradually losing the legacy of the Second World War. For Kohl, the common European house was a matter close to his heart. The EU stood for the fact that an older brother would never again have to lose his life in an air raid – as happened to him when he was 14 years old. The two chancellors' direct predecessors had suffered immediate losses – a father and a brother died in acts of war. Of course, you can't blame anyone for not being purified by war experiences – on the contrary, if the European idea takes hold, it is inevitable that at some point the next generation will not know war. But that explains a lot – as far as the policies of today's decision-makers are concerned. And unfortunately also that there is no collective memory.

The broken-down shack that is Europe

So it was not surprising that exactly 22 years ago today, the European Union warned against a war that would violate international law. And a year later, the German Chancellor declared that he did not want to get involved in the Iraq adventure. For a short time, it seemed as if Europe was emancipating itself from the USA. But who promptly flew to Washington to apologize? That's right, it was Angela Merkel. In doing so, she positioned herself for a future role as head of government. Did the woman, did her party supporters ever consider that with this action they were holding Schröder's biography against him? The then Chancellor was certainly no pacifist; under his leadership, the Federal Republic of Germany participated in the war in Yugoslavia in violation of international law, as he admitted years later. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that such a biography inevitably develops were still at work.

The mercy of late birth, as Kohl spoke of years earlier, came to power with Merkel.

In 2002, the EU was already at a crossroads, expanding and now defining itself as a monetary union – it opened up markets and the rich north benefited from the currency conversion. Especially Germany, which had cheap markets on its doorstep and was happily outsourcing industry and companies to the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. Wages were still low there, and the citizens still wanted to buy “Made in Germany” products.

The European Union may never have had a soul, but that would sound too melodramatic. But the protagonists who shaped Europe and went through its institutions still had a common soul. They understood each other on the basis of the terrible experiences they had had – and that regardless of their political orientation.

They were responsible people who had to present their CVs. And not a vita that had been trimmed, tightened and embellished. Their CVs revealed deprivation, death and destruction. That was the spirit of the common European house. The common denominator that allowed nations to work together who were not always sympathetic and who had different national interests in mind. The EU, which is now run by the elitist Ursula von der Leyen, has distanced itself from this to a great extent. Of course, she also criticizes a war that is contrary to international law: this time in Ukraine. But at the same time, she refuses any peace mission and turns off diplomacy. The EU has become soulless, or at least the decision-makers at its helm are.

Europe is no longer a common house, but a broken-down shack. The British have already fled. Other nations are very wary of the idea of a united Europe under these conditions – the European Parliament is a facade without content.

The war in Ukraine is perhaps the last thing to hold this project together, which no longer evokes any noble feelings. As long as it is possible to stand together against Russia, the European Union still seems to be united. But if this front falls, the Union will be thrown back on itself again and its process of erosion will probably continue.

It is a tragic irony of history that the EU is kept alive by war, when it was conceived as a project to ensure that no one would ever again experience war.

Roberto J. De Lapuente, born in 1978, is a trained industrial mechanic and ran the blog ad sinistram for eight years. From 2017 to 2024 he was co-editor of the blog neulandrebellen. He was a columnist at Neues Deutschland and wrote regularly for Makroskop. Since 2022 he has been an editor at Overton Magazin. De Lapuente has a grown daughter and lives in Frankfurt am Main.