Why The European Constitution Has Imperilled European Security

I wrote this post for Eurodefense UK - www.eurodefense.co.uk

Few reforms are needed more urgently in Europe today than the forging of a coherent and, as far as possible, single EU foreign policy and yet few reforms are less likely to see the light of day in the current political climate. The blame for this must lie squarely at the feet of the European Council, ultimately responsible for trying to insert the proposals for an enhanced decision making process and an EU foreign minister, amongst others, into a confusing constitution that never had much chance of being approved by an angry electorate.

When the citizens of the EU were asked to rank the most serious problems facing the continent earlier this year by the German Marshall Fund, they naturally put terrorism and the credit crisis at the top of the agenda. However, a large majority also expressed grave concerns about the resurrection of the Russian bear and its use of its energy supplies as a weapon, not to mention its tanks and warships, whilst almost as many said they wanted closer relations with America and that NATO was still essential to their security.

It’s safe to say the ‘masses’ were on the money in their assessment of the most immediate threats to European security. Indeed, their concerns, along with illegal immigration, cyber-crime and climate change, have featured heavily in the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy’s drive to establish a new security strategy for Europe. Central to formulating a single European response to these challenges, therefore, has been the push to update the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP).

As they are, the policies have failed to unify the EU in its dealings with the rest of the world, rendering the Union inefficient on the occasions when member states do take a common approach, such as in the Balkans, and wide open to manipulation by foreign powers when they don’t, such as the United States during the Iraq war and Russia now. The reforms envisaged by the constitution went some way to addressing these problems: a single foreign minister to represent the EU abroad; a legal personality to allow the EU to conclude international agreements; EU-wide investment in research and development; an EU equivalent of NATO’s clause 5 committing all states to collective “aid and assistance by all the means in their power”; the agreement of all member states to make available troops assigned to other multi-national task-forces to European battle-groups too; as well as a refined decision making process with opt-outs for any member state opposed to any EU decision to deploy troops.

So why then, if European electorates agreed on the supra-national nature of the threats and challenges facing their countries and their governments agreed on a set of measures to tackle them, were the proposed reforms thrown out by the Irish this year when they voted in a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, seen by many as simply a watered down version of the constitution? The answer is simple. The EU’s attempts to package these paramount changes within a vast and unreadable document that few wanted made it impossible to pass them. Indeed a poll taken of voters immediately after the Irish referendum revealed that the majority of those who voted ‘no’ did so because they did not understand what they were voting on.

However, Europe’s electorates lost faith in their elites long before then. The reasons behind the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes on the constitution proper in 2005 were far less kind than the Irish and revealed a deep-seated resentment of European elites and indeed their own. And for what? A flag and an anthem that we already have and that nobody cares about. Since then, any attempt to do the sensible thing and try and pass the reforms necessary to create a single coherent foreign policy has been viewed with suspicion and contempt. Indeed if the Lisbon Treaty hadn’t been voted down by the Irish it probably would have fallen at a later hurdle. Of course, the peddling of half-truths and even outright lies by the Europhobic press in countries most likely to need a referendum on such treaties like Ireland and the UK hardly helps.

What hope remains for a single European foreign policy then? Ironically, it would seem that the security of the continent now lies in the hands of national leaders regaining their people’s trust and convincing of the merit and the need for a unified approach. The election of a President in the United States with a respect for the transatlantic alliance and an understanding of the importance of a multi-lateral approach to the world’s most serious problems would go a long way too.

Is it fair to villify the bankers?

'The week that shook the world' is the modest term being used by one of my favourite online publications, 'The First Post', to describe this week's events starting with the collapse of Lehman Brothers Investment Bank. The economic turmoil and mass panic that has ensued has inevitably led the press, hungry for the 'goodies and baddies' formula that sells their papers by the dozen, to pin the blame on whoever they hastily declare to be guilty within minutes of the news breaking. No prizes for guessing who they decided to pick on.

Will Self of the Evening Standard, for example, said: "All you bankers have had your fat years. Now get ready for some very thin ones."

Alice Miles wrote in The Times of "compensations in watching the comeuppance of the hubristic and the avaricious".

Now, anybody who knows me also knows that I'm not in the business of painting multi-millionaire investment bankers as an innocent and victimised minority. Indeed I must confess that when I first saw the pictures of all the newly unemployed brokers on the front of the papers, I reacted with a distinct sense of schadenfreude rather than the compassion my better judgement mandates of me.

I also agree that the corruption, greed and complaceny that has poisoned the City over the last couple of decades, following its rise to pre-eminence during the Thatcher years, is predominantly to blame for this crisis. However, the sadist, self-righteous and personal nature of the media's attacks with their "Don't let the spivs destroy Britain" headlines has truly made me wince over the last few days.

This is not only because bankers are still people with families to feed and mortgages to pay(despite their many shortcomings)nor the fact that it is hard to deny that the success of the City is what kept this economy so strong for so long right up until the crash. Rather, it is because the last thing any of them were actually worried about when the story of the biggest crash since 1929 broke was the suffering that would be felt across the country as a result.

Where were these crusaders, apart from the odd legitimately concerned journalist, when the City's excesses led the nation's wealth gap to widen into a chasm, when the bankers - now villified by all - were paying less tax than their cleaners on their salaries and no tax on their bonuses, and when the rest of us were being hopelessly priced out of the housing market? There might have been a day's headlines to be sure, but nothing compared to the vitriol heaped on benefit 'scroungers', unruly youths and unwelcome immigrants that filled the tabloids' pages on a daily basis.

Those were the days when it might have been appropriate to pour scorn over the financial sector and even then it was the system and woeful lack of regulation that was to blame rather than the people themselves (not that I doubt that investment banks have had more than their fair share of sociopaths amongst their ranks). Now though, is the time to be getting behind those who have lost their jobs and their employers who have lost everything else. For should they continue to fall down the big black hole they admittedly dug for themselves, there is little doubt that the whole country will follow right behind.

Diagnosis by google and the man who ate too much fish

So, on Monday I had to go to Accident and Emergency. Nothing serious, but worth getting checked out to assuage my own over-active paranoia. However, before going to the A&E I went to the walk-in clinic in Soho - kind of like an emergency GP's office - to make sure that it wasn't something that could wait a few days to go see my actual GP about.

After spending an hour waiting to see someone, and having to subsequently cancel my evening with two old friends to which I had been looking forward for some time, this little Irish lady popped her head out of her room and called my name like it was an item off an Indian takeaway menu. Nevertheless, I followed her in and I told her what was wrong. Now what followed was possibly the least confidence inspiring experience I have ever had in a doctor's office.

At first, everything was going normal. She checked my vitals and asked all the right questions, but then it came to making a diagnosis - or even just a rough estimate would have been helpful. After reading all my symptoms that she had scribbled hastily on to her little notepad for the third time, she said: "oh my God, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. If I were you, I'd go to A&E, but I just don't know."

Now, you can imagine how I, the patient who had been panickly saying those exact words to myself for the last hour, felt on hearing these words. Fair to say, I was starting to have my doubts about the ability of this particular nurse practicioner. Yet lo and behold, she had an idea. Perhaps I had misjudged her. Maybe she did know her stuff all along and I was just being too hard on her.

So, I stood next to her and watched as she typed my symptoms into google and then proceeded to scroll through each website that came up, most of which were internet forums dominated by random people discussing the details of their own exotic illnesses to each other. For a brief moment she thought she had struck gold when she found one post listing all the same symptoms as me. Alas her hopes were dashed as she read on and discovered that the author had in fact been complaining about mercury poisoning he had contracted through eating too much fish.

So, I finally put our brave friend out of her misery, informing her that I now definitely would be going to the A&E where I could see, you know, an actual doctor. She asked for my number (try not to get too hot under the collar here - it's not what you think) so she could check on my progress because she was "just curious" as to what the hell exactly was wrong with me. Luckily she has not yet called me, so either she forgot or she finally found the answer she was looking for on google. In any case, she has saved me an awkward conversation and an unwanted reminder of the dilapidated state of British medicine today.

God bless the NHS!