Save the EU: Responding to Hinderaker

John Hinderaker was admirably clear in response to my query as to whether he really is rooting for the EU to fail. He is!

It is true that the EU consists of "a community of democracies," but the EU itself undermines those democracies and exists in large part because many of Europe’s leaders find democracy inconvenient. And I don’t think the EU deserves any significant credit for the fact that "centuries of strife" in Europe have come to an end. On the contrary, forcing Europe’s inhabitants into a currency and political union that most of them don’t want is likely to stimulate, not inhibit, strife.

The clarity about the basis of his ill-will is welcome–I had half expected him to make a realpolitik argument that a fractured, conflict-ridden and weak Europe would be best for America’s relative power. But not so: the argument is fundamentally based on values.   

There are a couple of large claims here. Hinderaker (and most of the commenters) fixate on the supposed elitist and anti-democratic nature of the European Union. I’m not sure what to make of the elitism part of the argument. Most political projects, including the American Revolution, have been led by an elite. The democracy part is easier to tackle. Hinderaker himself goes as far as to call the EU project a "coup." I think this is beyond hyperbole. The EU’s democratically elected governments have chosen repeatedly to continue with the integration project. Polls show majority support across the union for EU membership, with only about 15 percent opposing. Those opposed have made plenty of noise but they’ve never been able to prevail at the ballot box. If Hinderaker is right that the European project has been shoved down European throats, it’s hard to understand why anti-EU parties haven’t done better at the polls.  At a few moments, of course, particular populations have balked at particular steps in the integration process, and their objections have (appropriately) slowed and altered the process. Countries that objected were usually able to win key concessions or opt-outs.

But it shouldn’t be forgotten that when integration has been put before populations as a whole, it has usually succeeded, often overwhelmingly. And when referenda haven’t been employed, democratically elected national parliaments have backed key treaty changes and reforms. The (narrow) rejections of course make the news, but they aren’t anywhere close to the whole picture. Moreover, within the EU system, the democratic arm is gaining strength; each recent treaty reform has given more power to the union’s large, fractious, and directly-elected parliament. That’s a strange direction for an anti-democratic Union to take.

Moreover, Hinderaker’s outrage on behalf of supposedly disenfranchised Europeans is quite selective. He likes the common market and the free trade elements of the Union, but not the political ones. But have the former somehow been democratically enacted and the latter not? He certainly doesn’t make the case. And if he can’t, his opposition boils down to a personal preference about how far integration should go. As his airplane anecdote indicates, he doesn’t cotton to the idea of a European identity trumping a national one. But who cares what Hinderaker likes? This is Europe’s project, and so long as it doesn’t violate basic norms of consent, the preferences of outsiders are meaningless. 

Hinderaker is also skeptical that the EU has played any significant role in conflict resolution on the continent. It is of course impossible to prove that there would have been renewed conflict in Europe absent the integration process. But the idea of conflict prevention has been at the heart of the project from the very beginning. The original Coal and Steel community was designed to allow Germany to reindustrialize, safely, in the context of an economic partnership. It’s hard to dispute that the process of European integration has altered relations between former antagonists. Add to that the role the EU has played in shepherding the fragile post-communist central and eastern Europe toward (mostly) tolerant democracy. Accession was usually conditioned on aspirants resolving outstanding territorial issues, and there were quite a few. The case that the EU has helped reduce conflict on the continent is very strong.

Hinderaker’s claim that European integration will make conflict more likely is interesting, but completely unsubstantiated. If he’s right, why haven’t we seen the strife already?  One would think that at the most egregious moments of this rolling European coup (which, on Hinderaker’s view, is pretty far along), populations would have risen up and incited violence and unrest. Perhaps the oppressed Europeans have been cowed by the EU’s riot-control goons and are too frightened to take to the streets. The French, I am told, are quite reluctant to air their grievances via street protest and strike in any case.  

Fundamentally, there is something quite unconservative about Hinderaker’s casual desire to see the EU fail. This is now a decades-long, incremental project that permeates all aspects of European life. It is part of Europe’s DNA. And it builds on a centuries-old view that Europe has something important in common. If it somehow did collapse, who knows how it would do so and what the ramifications would be. But at least we know that from his perch in Minnesota, Hinderaker would be contentedly watching the show.  

Follow me on Twitter @multilateralist