The Forgotten Role of the European Union

In 2012, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the European Union what is, perhaps, its most coveted honor: the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee’s choice drew some scathing attacks from critics within the EU itself. Mostly from those with axes to grind, politicians whose constituencies had been affected by the worst financial/economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s and the usual harbingers of doom who are always predicting the disintegration and demise of that multinational compact. But seen within the context of the seven decades of the post-war era, it seems at least disingenuous to express disdain, let alone condemnation, for the Nobel Committee’s pick, since the EU’s role in maintaining peace in Europe following two devastating world wars simply cannot be overstated.
The EU won the Nobel for what it has undeniably provided: “the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Even more importantly, it won the world’s top peace prize for “transforming most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace.”
I recently heard an interview with French far-rightwing nationalist Marine Le Pen in which she practically dismissed out of hand the role of the EU in France’s destiny. Her message was full of disdain for Europe as a united multi-state power and she spoke of it as if it were a hindrance to France’s advancement, a clearly shallow and misguided view for, perhaps, the next leader of France, when the country that was the stage of some of the worst battles in both World Wars and for humiliating occupation by a foreign authoritarian power was her own. And France has surely been one of the nations that has most benefited from a strong, united Europe. To hear her tell it, however, about the only benefit she could see from remaining in the EU was European financing, and if she wanted that, she seemed to think, she could always seek it from banks on any other continent including, she said, Africa.

Such lack of knowledge and/or sincerity in a potential head of government of one of the world’s leading nations is hard to fathom. But in these days of resurgent populist nationalist fervor it is, unfortunately, growing less and less uncommon. To a large extent, although created in her father’s extreme rightwing image, Marine Le Pen is a mere repeated symptom of a disturbing trend that would appear to denote collective amnesia on the part of major Western powers and certain segments of their people—as witnessed by the emergence, against all odds, of Donald Trump in the United States (who came to power with the votes of much less than 30 percent of the electorate, with a more than three million-vote advantage in favor of the main candidate running against him and with a majority of the votes in the Electoral College, which belied the popular vote); the astonishing Brexit referendum outcome in the UK (where the former Conservative PM David Cameron was so certain that the British people realized how important it was to remain in the EU that he authorized that plebiscite, losing his bet…and his office); and the strengthening of ultra-right-wing movements in nations throughout Europe, including countries like Germany, where its authoritarian past and the worst war in history that it sparked has, until now, served as an attenuating factor that has kept it one of the EU’s most liberal democracies, and one of its most powerful.
In the run-up to the Brexit vote last year, it was indeed British PM David Cameron who reminded Britons that, prior to the existence of the EU, Europe was a patchwork quilt of separate nations that were “forever at each other’s throats,” and that, thanks to that hard-fought unification, was now, and long had been, a multicultural union that lived and worked in peace. Many people old enough to recall the start of the post-World War II era, and, indeed, those who can still recall some part of the period between the two World Wars, would very likely agree that, back then, the thought of seven decades of peace on the European continent seemed like a noble and idealistic dream—but a mere dream nonetheless.

The achievement of this goal has been, without a doubt, astonishing. And it has hardly been the only advantage that Europe has gained through unity. For instance, the EU is, today, the West’s largest market, with half a billion people, and one of the world’s most affluent. In terms of trade, it has become, as a bloc, one of the world’s top economic powers and can deal on an equal footing, and from a position of strength through unity, with other major economic powers like the United States and China. It has its own multilateral financing. And its combined military strength makes it not only a major player in global security but also a force to be reckoned with in the face of any expansionist designs—like those that had plagued its members’ mutual history right up to and through the time of World War II.
There are, clearly, many things that the EU can be criticized for. It is, without a doubt, a work in progress. But it is also quite young as a fully-fledged entity and as a world power. It didn’t take shape as a Europe-wide community until 1957, when it was known as the European Economic Union. But then again, it has continued to develop, and is still doing so today. Those who complain that it has been somewhat ineffectual in its original mission as an economic community, miss the point that, due to the grave massive violence that many of its member states had suffered at each other’s hand, the mutual convenience of trade and economic enhancement was merely the best place to start in order to initiate a continental fence-mending and bridge-building process. The ultimate goal was to organize a peace-building process capable of ensuring that the horrors of the two World Wars would never again take place.
A symbol of this peace-building and peace-keeping role of the European Union was a meeting in 1984 of two iconic representatives of France and Germany, perhaps the bitterest of enemies in both the First and Second World Wars. On September 25th of that year, the two renowned leaders met at Verdun, the site of horrific combat action in both wars, but particularly during World War I, where it was to witness one of the bloodiest battles in world history, the Battle of Verdun. That historic confrontation began on February of 1916 and didn’t end until December 19th that same year. It was prosecuted on a battlefield that didn’t quite cover ten square kilometers, but where casualties, counting dead, missing in action and wounded would total some 800,000.

It was on the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II that France’s President François Mitterrand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met in Verdun’s Douaumont Cemetery and stood in their overcoats in the drizzling rain to lay wreaths in recognition of those who spilled their blood there. As they stood there side by side, in a spontaneous gesture, Mitterrand reached out for Kohl’s hand and the German leader clasped it with his. For long moments, they stood there holding hands, as European brothers. It was an emotional and emblematic moment, made all the more symbolic by the fact that Kohl’s father had been a German soldier who had fought in the hills surrounding Verdun in that epic battle, and Mitterrand had been a soldier wounded at Verdun during World War II and taken prisoner by Hitler’s army.
The significance of that moment, framed in an historic photograph, was that it symbolized the end of decades of enmity between two of the most powerful nations in Europe and that it definitively sealed a lasting alliance between erstwhile mortal enemies, within the fraternal framework of the European Union. If the EU has had its weaknesses, and even if it may still have a long road to travel in becoming a more perfect union, it has, undoubtedly, accomplished the goal for which it was envisioned. It has turned Europe from a warring region of constant strife into a continent of peace, unity, tolerance and understanding. And all of those today who are lending their ears to the siren-song of populist nationalists for a return to European nationalism and isolationism would do well to go back and review that image from 1984 in Verdun and the tragic story of the violent decades of the 20th century that preceded it.