INTRODUCTION
This Discussion Paper's ultimate purpose is to stimulate discourse aimed at re-formulating the concept of European Security in politically holistic terms. The phrase 'ultimate purpose' is used advisedly because the focus the Discussion Paper is narrower, arguing as it does that there has been no such thing as a concept of European Security, just an Atlanticist formulation of European Security which has inevitably failed to serve Europe's security needs. It is a Discussion Paper to be viewed in the dual political contexts of the forthcoming European Union Inter-governmental Conference and the enlargement of the European Union. It assumes that the Inter-governmental Conference and European Union enlargement, rather than being one-off events, will turn into an ongoing process, thereby providing increased opportunities for political intervention, not least by the European Left.
The basic premise of my argument is that post-Second World War Europe has existed under a false sense of security. The mythology of Atlanticism generated and sustained this false sense of security. It is a mythology determined by external influences - influences having geo-political and geo-strategic interests conflicting with Europe's - that increasingly cannot serve the holistic needs of European security.
Such a premise requires its terminology to be defined. Thus, in using the term holistic European security needs, I'm referring to the fulfilment of Europe's environmental, economic, social and cultural needs in their entirety. These elements of security, both individually and collectively, are taken as constituting geo-political and geo-strategic interests in themselves of any political entity. Underpinning this terminology and the consequent analysis is the assumption that geographical factors are the prime determinants of geo-political and geo-strategic interests ultimately
By using such a frame of reference I aim to illustrate that the application of the Atlanticist European Security formula was in the worst long term interests of all parties, not least those of the United States. I shall argue that this formula for European security, being founded upon and sustained by illogical cold-war strategic decision-making with no reference to ultimate geo-political and geo-strategic realities, was bound to leave a post-cold war vacuum of conceptualisation concerning a more logical structure for European security. I shall then state the case for using this vacuum to conceptualise European security within a federalist structured Europe, arguing that the constitutional conflicts of interests within the European Union relating to the Inter-governmental Conference presents an ideal opportunity for the European Left to argue thus
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ATLANTICISM'S MYTHOLOGY
The basis of Atlanticist mythology has been that the ultimate fates of North Americans and West Europeans are inescapably entwined. Consequently Atlantic Alliance mythology has it that disputes within the Atlantic Alliance are themselves the root causes of, rather than the symptoms of, more fundamental rifts within the Alliance itself. A variant upon the theme is that such rifts are caused by the Washington's accidental lack of finesse or leadership within the Alliance. In both cases the message is that whatever rifts existing within the Atlantic Alliance are the exceptions proving the rule of ultimate trans-Atlantic unity.
It is a myth that the European Left accepts without question. By accepting such a myth, however, the European Left ignores the Achilles Heel of the Atlantic Alliance - its artificiality as a coherent geo-political and geo-strategic alliance. The Atlantic Alliance is fundamentally an artificial alliance because of how it was formed. Its formation stemmed from a marriage of convenience between a wave of anti-Communism within the USA that the Truman Administration represented, on the one hand, and a western European dire in need of economic aid, on the other. That the alliance has lasted for half a century bears witness to the emotive power of Stalin's ineptitude in generating the mythical Soviet threat.
Though the Soviet threat was mythological, it has had a pivotal effect upon post-second-world-war international relations. Its effect has been that of international relations distortion by default. Thus, in economic terms, the WE and western Europe are incompatible trading partners, not only producing basically same products with which to sell, but also, for the most part, relying on the same sources of supply from which to buy. Rather than being economic partners, in reality they are economic rivals. For example, in the MiddleEast not only did they compete to sell grain to Egypt but also undercut each other in their efforts to buy Saudi oil.
The consequence of such inescapable Trans-Atlantic economic rivalry has been suppressed in order to maintain an undefined system of ethical values as the basis of international relations. This resulted in a cold-war system of economic international relations divided into two blocks, based not on the logic of geo-economic compatibility, but on the basis of illusive common bonds overriding the logical conduct of international relations.
ANALYSIS OF ATLANTICIST MYTHOLOGY
As the result of this contorted cold-war international relations conduct, the end of the cold-war plunged the Atlanticist framework of international relations into crisis, its mythological Soviet threat foundations having been knocked away. The consequence is a system of international relations that functions within a structural vacuum. This vacuum of international relations structure is being filled by the application of atlanticist assumptions that have not been fundamentally challenged. To the extent that to which these atlanticist assumptions are challenged, it is an implicitly suppressed challenge coming not from the Left, but from the liberal wing of Atlanticism itself. An examination of this liberal atlanticist critique of Atlanticism is revealing, exposing a self-censorship that cuts short analytical logic just before the point where the very basis of Atlanticism is explicitly and undeniably questioned.
Picked at random, a classic example of this was a piece written in The Guardian last June by Hugo Young. Attempting to place political events in perspective, Hugo Young reflects on the transition of Douglas Hurd from Foreign Secretary to historian. Using this as a basis to slight Hurd's long term role for the UN, Young comments upon the factors causing the lack of collective political will to create a solution for ex-Yugoslavia as follows:
The inadequacy of the United States in a leadership role, Washington, like Kansas City, understood the Soviet menace and the cold nuclear war, but anything less fails to attract a proper seriousness.
Here, asserting that the US Congress refusal to commit American ground forces to Bosnia whilst lifting the arms embargo there to be irresponsible, Young fails to grasp the hard fact that such congressional behaviour is both logical and legitimate within the American cultural, geo-political and geo-strategic context when removed from ultimate illogic of trans-Atlantic solidarity. Implicitly and subconsciously, Significantly, he refers to the typical American sensationalist response to international crises, not the typical European response, to support this. No mention here of embryonic evidence showing European public opinion taking a pro-active stance on Bosnia.
I examine this piece, typical of so others in the progressive international press, because it is symptomatic of the hold that the subconsciously atlanticist frame of collective mind has upon the psyche of the European body politic, including the Left, when considering Europe's security requirements. It is a frame of mind that shuts out ultimate geo-political realism. Rather than performing an opinion forming role for foreign and defence policy-makers to mull over, this type of progressive Atlanticist critique of traditional Atlanticism acts an opinion consolidator. The result is that foreign and defence policy-makers, finding pieces like Young's stimulating in their apparent radicalism, fall back upon increasingly defunct Atlanticist precepts of strategic foreign and defence policy options comforted in the feeling that they have been entertainingly challenged and nothing more.
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POST-COLD WAR ATLANTICISM
These defunct Atlanticist precepts of international relations order going unchallenged in their basic assumptions have two effects that inter-act. The first effect is that they are being used to formulate the structure of post-cold war international relations in a context where such precepts of international relations cannot apply in geo-political reality. The result is that, albeit by default, the preservation of Atlanticist unity takes precedence over European security in the conduct of international relations. It is a result that creates a vicious circle, consolidating the applied dominance of these precepts whilst exposing how deficient they are in international relations application. This, in turn, causes the second effect, namely the postponement of serious negotiation, formulation and implementation of a credible institutional structure to ensure effective European security, thereby fuelling the vicious circle.
Nato's involvement in ex-Yugoslavia is a paradoxical yet acute illustration of this. Thus the United States' autumn peace initiative, accompanied by intensified Nato bombing of Serb positions, had all the elements constituting a means of enabling Clinton to reconcile the conflicting US foreign policy objectives of withdrawal from its Bosnian commitment and Nato's maintenance. It is an option detrimental in the long term interests of both European security and the US. The long term detrimental effect of such an option upon the US illustrates itself when the American Bosnian commitment is equated with its so-called Vietnam syndrome. The equation, though illustrative, is nevertheless a false one because the Vietnam syndrome is itself symptomatic of a compulsive irrational element in US foreign policy decision-making, epitomised not by the Vietnam syndrome of self-defeating international commitment but by its precursor, the European syndrome.
Placed in this context, the American fears of a Bosnian military quagmire are expressions of withdrawal from America's Atlanticist commitments. Such expressions of withdrawal from Atlanticism by American public opinion are a positive sign in themselves, potentially foreshadowing a constructive isolationism that could restore vigour into American society by refocussing its priorities. In spite of this, Clinton's use of Nato's intensive bombing of Serb positions, both for the purposes of domestic US politics and for those of crisis management within Atlanticism, is born by the future structure of European security.
This takes the form of alienating Russia by Nato's expansion into central Europe. Reports in The Financial Times last September bring out the point. In relation to Nato's intensified bombing of Bosnian Serb positions, one report quotes Yeltsin stating:
"Those who insist on an expansion of Nato are making a major political mistake."
An accompanying report quotes Sergei Rogov, the respected Director of the influential Russian US and Canada Institute, commenting:
"Russia is not going to be reconciled to the status of a third-rate power in Europe. Enlargement with Russia excluded, when Nato becomes the dominant security structure in Europe, is never going to be acceptable".
To dismiss such statements as mere rhetoric, however cynical one maybe of Russian motives, is to be either politically naive or politically crass to the point of political naiveté.
In this context, the ignition point of Russian alienation, or the potential for it, is probably not so much the actual bombing of Serb positions, but rather the use of Nato for the purpose. A report by John Palmer, writing in The Guardian last May, gives indirect evidence for such an interpretation. Thus he not only refers to Nato sources admitting Russia's preferences of negotiating with the Weu rather than with Nato. Palmer also quotes Nato sources as stating::
"Maybe the Russians calculate that accepting the east Europeans into a purely European defence organisation, linked to the European Union, is easier politically than the same countries in Nato".
This has the undeniable ring of psychological truth in terms of what Nato's cold-war legacy, and Atlanticism by projection, must evoke within the collective Russian post-cold war psyche.
This is not a conspiracy theory arguing that Clinton opted for Nato bombing of Serbs as a means to alienate Russia, thereby foiling pan-European collaboration on the formulation, construction and implementation of and post-cold war European security structure exclusive to Europe. Rather it is to demonstrate just how destructive the prioritisation of Atlanticism's crisis management, as a process, is to post-cold war European security considerations. Such prioritisation of a lost cause, namely the preservation of Atlanticism, reflects the void of constructive political conceptualisation needing to be filled but failing to be, being filled instead by political acts of implicit desperation.
THE CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE
Potentially, this void of future European security conceptualisation offers the European Left the strategic initiative in the context of the forthcoming European Union Inter-Governmental Conference. Potentially, because the ability of the European Left to utilise this chance is dependent upon the validity of two assumptions. The first assumption assumes that political circumstances will force the Inter-governmental Conference to be turned into an ongoing evolutionary process, enabling pressure-group politics to exercise its influence over time, rather than remaining a static event. How correct this assumption proves is largely, though not exclusively, out of the Left's control.
Such is not the case with the second assumption. This assumes that the Left is conceptually prepared to take on the task of redefining European security within a short space of time. The task requires the European Left to redefine European security not only in holistic terms that correspond to its own value judgements concerning socio-economic, environmental and Human Rights issues. It also requires the European Left to redefine European security in supra-national in terms that override purely national interests whilst encompassing regional, local and minority group needs.
It is a conceptual challenge made the greater by the fact that, whilst the Atlanticist concept of European security is the antithesis of that which the European Left needs to espouse, the traditional Leftist adherence to the nation-state concept, be it in the Internationalist or in the Statist form, is irrelevant as a basis for conceptually redefining European security.
Joschka Fischer's August 1995 Statement advocating massive military intervention in ex-Yugoslavia exemplified such a necessity for the European Left to forge a holistic concept of European security that is Euro-centric, federalist and supra-national. Fischer's statement threw out the conceptual gauntlet to the European Left to differentiate between the essentially militaristic, mercantile Atlanticist concept of European security, and a holistic concept of European security that subordinates military means to holistic ends. In doing this, Fischer's statement also conceptually underlined the need for the Left to accept the central role that military means play in the implementation of holistic ends in the final analysis.
The challenge is not so much the acceptance of military means as a valid political option. Rather, the challenge is separating Fischer's dubious Atlanticist bent from his substantive point concerning militarism as a legitimate political tool when used under strict democratic control. This means the European Left having to tread the conceptual tightrope between the Social Democrat Atlanticist tradition of implicit adherence to militarism on the one hand, and the pacifist tradition of the Peace Movement which totally rejects militarism on the other. Neither tradition fulfils the requirements of genuine European security.
The post-second-world-war history of the German Social Democrats exemplifies the inadequacy of the Atlanticist conception of European security. The SPD's Government record on European Defence and Security policy, initiating Ostpolitik as an Atlanticist kite flyer for East-West détente whilst assisting in installing Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces upon European soil, typifies the failure of west European Social Democrats to put European security issues first. The basic elements of SPD's Atlanticist fixation, Nato membership as a constant, rejection of cold-war neutralism and sensitivity to charges of anti-Americanism, crystallise the causes of European Social Democracy deficiency in formulating its own concept of European security. Rather than sharing a common concept of European security, European Social Democrat Parties share a common bond of Atlanticism divorced from the geo-political security realities of Europe. To the extent that European security is taken into account, it is within the context of providing a more substantial European pillar for Nato. When European Social Democrats cashed-in upon anti-Nato sentiment over the deployment of Cruise missiles, it was to cash-in upon its negative aspect rather than using it to generate support for a positive European security alternative.
Equally inadequate is the European Peace Movement's conception of European security, at least in its standard form. For instance, standard argument for withdrawal from Nato fails because it lacks a European geo-strategic perspective, being based conceptually either on the Nation-State or on vague internationalism. In both cases, divorced from considering supra-national dynamics, the argument fails to grasp both the strictly geo-strategic and the broader geo-political requirements of European security. This is graphically brought out by a brief analysis, picked at random, of The Peace Movement of the 90's -- A Civilian Face for Peace (Report of the Finnish Peace Movement's Committee for Security Policy, 1990). The report, totally rejecting "power politics", is based on the flawed premise that power can be divorced from the consideration of political issues in general. The result is a report symptomatic of why the vast majority of European Leftist analysis and conceptualisation of European security issues is inadequate to the point of being inept. Denying the reality that power is the essence of politics in whatever form, it comes to obvious conclusions but is unable to propose politically viable solutions.
This results in the European Left having a collective mental block when defining its own concept of European security, realising the need to unite Europe yet refusing to conceptually grapple with the question of how to do so. To some degree, the events in ex-Yugoslavia should clear this mental block by making the European Left accept military means as being legitimate when implementing European security ends. The intensification of Russian objections to Nato's enlargement, coupled with intensified European protests over French nuclear testing, should clear this mental blockage still further.
The combined logic of these two developments alone demonstrates that a genuine and holistic European security concept must neither be premised upon Atlanticism nor upon the use of nuclear weapons. The logic gets re-enforced when placed in the broader context of multi-national power over the environment. It is a logic that is most easily conceptualised in terms of what risks require such a security concept to be formulated. The answer should be self-evident to the European Left with its egalitarian principals and recently acquired eco-socialist awareness. The basic risks such a holistic security concept would guard against include;- Civil and Political Rights, the risks to the guarantee of democratic freedoms to minorities within a given society, inclusive of the freedom from persecution; Eco-Social Rights, risks to prosperity and conditions of life including the dysfunctioning effects of socially irresponsible economic deeds; Environmental Rights, risks to environmental resources caused by irresponsible environmental deeds.
These risks to European security rest in the increasingly supra-national evolution of political, economic and environmental forces corrosive to holistic European security. Consequently the European Left has to conceptualise counter-vailing supra-national structures and forces which also transcend nation-state boundaries. Hence, in this context, the acceptance of military means of last resort to implement the goals stated above would give the European Left a credible basis for asserting its own holistic European security concept. In so doing, the European Left could take the strategic initiative on the European security issue within the context of the Inter-governmental Conference and its aftermath.
THE EUROPEAN LEFT IN THE INTER-GOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE CONTEXT
The European Left's opportunity to take such a strategic conceptual initiative lies in the conjuncture of two sets of conflicts within the European Union, one geo-political, the other constitutional, in the context of the Inter-governmental Conference. The geo-political conflict relates to the European Union's foreign and security orientation in terms of European security. The constitutional conflict, namely whether ultimate democratic control should reside at the national or supra-national level, relates to what form the political power structure within the European Union should take. The juxtaposition of these sets of conflicts within the European Union in the Inter-governmental Conference context exposes the inner turmoil of the European Union political elite over how to justify its illogical conception of European security.
An analysis of the conflict and turmoil within the European Union political elite over European security reveals the potential the European Left could have in this respect.
The nub of the constitutional conflict pivots around the "pillar" structure of the Treaty of European Union which places common foreign and security policy outside the Community's framework. It is a constitutional conflict that poses the question of whether the European Union should subsume and ultimately eject Nato, or whether Nato should subsume it. This results in a suppressed European Union identity crisis expressing itself in schizophrenia.
Thus, to quote the Introduction of The PROSPECTS FOR A COMMON FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY - PRELIMINARY REVIEW, Edited by Thomas Grunert (European Parliament Working Paper, July 1994):
The signing of the Treaty on European Union in December 1991 marked an attempt by the Member States to make up lost ground by establishing an institutional framework and laying down political objectives for a European foreign and security policy. Under the Treaty, foreign policy became a global concept, extending into the economic, political and military fields.
Nevertheless, the same document admits Treaty on European Union subordinating itself to the North Atlantic Treaty, thus:
'the Treaty respects the obligations of certain Member States under the North Atlantic Treaty'.
The schizophrenia is pinpointed in another reference concerning potential Nato / West European Union conflicts of interests:
The USA, which has long held the main responsibility for security in Europe, no longer seems willing to take sole responsibility. . The sensitivity of issues such as the use of military and financial resources and public opinion in the United States point to the likelihood of a partial withdrawal from European affairs.'
This schizophrenia is illustrated when placed in the context of the Inter-governmental Conference consultation process. Hence the analysis in 'The EUROPEAN SECURITY POLICY TOWARDS 2000: Ways and Means to Establish Genuine Credibility, High-level Group First Report to the European Commission on Common Foreign and Security Policy, 19 December 1994, brings the potential for exploiting the conjuncture of these geo-political and constitutional conflicts into focus. For example, the Report spotlights the structural defects in the new dimension of the Title V of the Maastricht Treaty that established a "Common Foreign and Security Policy". In doing so, it states:
'it is essential to seize the opportunity offered by the Inter-governmental Conference to introduce more radical reforms involving amendments to Title V, a review of the institutional arrangements and clarification of the place of foreign and security policy, including defence, in the edifice of the European Union.'
In other words, amendments that would entail Qualified Majority Voting deciding European Union foreign, defence and security policy. Intentionally or not, this leads the Report on to opening an analytical Pandora's Box concerning potential conflicts between Nato membership and Western European Union in relation to the latter 'setting up an actual force projection capability endowed with the necessary intelligence, command and logistical resources'
The Report's analysis continues, stating that the WEU
'has yet to face up to the fraught issue of the legal and practical linkage between Article V of the Brussels Treaty and commitments entered into under Nato.'
Thus it quotes Article V which states
'If any of the High Contracting Parties should be the object of an armed attack in Europe, the other High Contracting Parties will, in accordance with the provisions of Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, afford the Party so attacked all the military and other aid and assistance in their power.'
Such an observation is followed by this analysis:
'the United States, on which Europe in the final analysis continues to depend for its security, has been preoccupied with domestic issues' listing the most obvious -- for example, Russia's nuclear potential, the Middle East, the North American Free Trade Area, and the economic, financial, technological and educational potential of the Pacific rim.'
Finally, the Report reveals the Expert Group split over the potential conflict between Nato and Weu membership, the split between those asserting the one option Weu/Nato package deal to new European Union members and those favouring offering Weu membership independent of Nato membership.
By manifesting so explicitly the European Union's schizophrenia over its geo-political orientation, this analysis illustrates the suppressive role played by that schizophrenia in repressing the development of a geo-politically logical European Union orientation. Just how this repressive schizophrenia asserts itself is revealed by The FINAL REPORT ON THE OPERATION OF THE TREATY ON EUROPEAN UNION (Commission Of The European Communities, 10th May 1995).
Thus the same Report reveals the Commission's frustration in this context. To quote in part:
'In preparing the entry into force of the Treaty (on European Union), the Council saw joint actions as the key instrument, backed up by common positions for day-to-day matters. This distinction has not been followed in practice. The result is confusion about the role of the different instruments. "Positions" can extend to cover both fundamental orientations and concrete actions. "Actions" can be limited to ad hoc diplomatic or administrative measures.'
That the Council created this confusion of instrumental roles is symptomatic of the Council's compulsion to fudge the issue of implementing and geo-politically logical common foreign and security policy in the name of Atlanticist solidarity. In this context the Report's paragraph 172 clause b , concerning the apparent inadequacies of the provisions within the Treaty on European Union, states:
'These have nothing to do with the Treaty itself, which has potential that has not been exploited either by the Member States or by the institutions....The common foreign and security policy is the flagship area in which this regrettable phenomenon has developed. The loss in terms of impact and identity on the international scene is considerable and the cost in public opinion far too high'.
In effect, a suppressed constitutional civil war wages within the European Union's power structure. In this suppressed constitutional civil war, the European Parliament should be the primary locus of the European Left's attention that the European Left were it to make the issue of a holistic European security concept its rallying cry. This is not just because of the European Parliament's potential in tipping the balance of power in the contest between the Council of Ministers' and the Commission towards the latter. Of more immediacy, the European Parliament would provide the European Left's best means of challenging, if not modifying, the European Social Democrat Atlanticist conception of European security.
Within such an arena, the schizophrenia that underpins the European Social Democrat European security conception could be exposed by juxtaposing its implicitly nationalistic and Atlanticist European security basis with that of a holistically federal basis for European security. For example, the aspirations expressed in The EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION ON THE FUNCTIONING OF THE TREATY ON EUROPEAN UNION WITH A VIEW TO THE 1996 INTER-GOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE - IMPLEMENTATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNION could be juxtaposed to the public statements of the British Labour Party.
Thus, concerning the actual organisation of implementing the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Resolution states:
There should be more effective European Union foreign policy within the framework of the Community pillar, integrating the common commercial policy, development co-operation policy, humanitarian aid and Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe matters, and achieving better defined security and defence policies at EU level, with a permanent common strategy within the international organisations which have responsibilities in that field. ..'
Regarding the structures within which to implement the common foreign and security policy, the Resolution states:
'The Commission should be fully integrated in the definition and elaboration of the OSCE, with a right of initiative. It should be given implementing powers. ..'
Contrast this relatively holistic federal stance with that of the 30/1/95 Press Release from Robin Cook, Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary Quotes:
"Labour sees no case for merging the Common Foreign and Security Policy into the bureaucratic machinery of Brussels or establishing a European army. The nations of Europe need each other to carry weight in a globe of trading blocks and we should try to present a common front to the world. But foreign and security policy is a defining expression of national identity. We should retain the present basis on which such decisions are made between governments rather than by the Commission."
Although the British Labour Party is rather an extreme case, such schizophrenia of European Social Democrats inevitably shares the common repressive element with the liberal Atlanticists as analysed above. It is a schizophrenia that represses the logical progression of the European Union's evolution along federalist lines, a suppressive role which European Social Democrats foster by stemming the potential implementation of eco-socialist and egalitarian solutions to Europe's problems because of their loyalty to the capitalist order.
It is a schizophrenia stemming from the same driving forces as those functioning within the crisis management of Atlanticism. The split within the German Government over the issue of Russia's opposition to Nato's enlargement illustrates this at Governmental level. Thus a piece in The European, dated the 5th of October, on Defence Minister and possible successor to Chancellor Kohl, Volker Rohe, starts:
'Suggest to German Defence Minister Volker Rohe that his country is setting a potentially dangerous pace in its diplomatic efforts to ease the eastern European countries into Nato and he looks sceptical.'
It quotes him as stating:
'Europe is still artificially divided along lines devised by Stalin. It is ridiculous that the borders of the Union and Nato come to an abrupt end only a few kilometres from here [Berlin].'
Contrast this with The Guardian report four days later by John Palmer on Chancellor Kohl's support of Western European Union's eastward expansion. In it Palmer refers to Chancellor Kohl suggesting accelerating arrangements for east European States to gain partial European Union membership. Kohl's reasoning is that, by facilitating east European membership of the Western European Union through the temporary suspension of the Treaty of Brussels's automatic assistance against aggression Article 5, Russian fears concerning Nato's enlargement would be eased.
John Palmer's report goes on to state that, despite official Nato assertions to the contrary, Nato Governments privately acknowledge that Nato's enlargement will be postponed until after the Russian and American Presidential Elections. Such a time scale could coincide with the Inter-governmental Conference process overflowing into 1997 or even 1998 when both the Treaty of Brussels and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation formally expire. It is a time scale that the European Left must exploit at all levels of Atlanticist schizophrenia.
In this context, Finnish domestic politics illustrates the windows of potential opportunities open to the European Left within this time scale, if not beyond. Thus, in party political terms, Finnish politics has significance because the Finnish Government is a coalition of the Conservative Party, the former communist Left Alliance and the Greens, its economy being healthy enough for President Ahtisaari to declare Finland to be a leading candidate for European Monetary Union. The Financial Times Finnish Survey interview last October with Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari bears significance in the context of coalition politics when related to the issue of European security. For example, when questioned on possible Finnish participation in Nato's Partnership for Peace project, President Ahtisaari answered, in part, thus:
'We want to help of crisis management and peace-keeping. We want to be active in the Council of Europe as well. [Our neutrality] does not mean that we want to sit on the fence..'.
In spite of, or indeed just because of, the statement's pragmatic rhetoric, being the product of hard won consensus politics with a large amount of Leftist input, such a statement is indicative of the potential for alliance building politics throughout the EU based on a Leftist platform of anti-Atlanticist European federalism.
The European Left's ability to trigger-off and develop such alliance building politics depends upon its willingness to internalise and assert the holistic security concept as outlined above. The proposition, for example, that the United Nations should have the monopoly control of nuclear weapons as a means of implementing global nuclear disarmament is an illustration of one possible platform upon which such an alliance building strategy could develop around the issue of European security. By not being specifically unilateralist, such a proposition could draw into the European Left's political orbit support from Social Democrats and progressive liberals. If turned into a central plank of a coalition building strategy, this type of campaigning issue would enable the European Left to gain the political initiative and set the agenda.
It could easily be argued that such a strategy, indeed the whole analysis and approach of this Paper, is mere reformism, lacking in socialist vision and chauvinistically Euro-centric. The contrary is the case. When placed in the context of such a proposition, the vision of a holistic, supra-national European security concept as a test-bed World Government comes into focus.
CONCLUSION: EUROPE IN THE BALANCE
Logically, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the consequent end of the Cold-war should have also witnessed the collapse of so-called the European Security concept, a concept which actually generated European insecurity. Logic undermined the Berlin Wall, the Cold-war and the Soviet threat, but left the myth of European security based upon the Atlantic Alliance intact.
The European Left's failure to dismantle this Atlanticist mythology results in European security hanging in the conceptual balance. It is a conceptual balance between the perpetuation of a mythological security concept that cannot logically secure Europe's holistic needs, on the one hand, and a holistic security concept which can secure Europe's needs due to its geo-politically logical basis, on the other. The European Left's failure to formulate this latter concept in any fashion, let alone use it as its core campaigning strategy, consequently paves the way for the crisis management within Atlanticism to impose the former concept upon Europe by default.
In all probability, the result will be a security system foisted upon Europe tailor made to the requirements of EUROPE PLC, a security system designed to optimise the free movement of capital, labour and technical resources consistent with the collective interests of multi-national Corporations. One need not be a paid up member of the conspiracy theory society to realise that such a project is securely pinned to the political drawing board. This is illustrated by a piece in The Financial dated 13/3/95 referring to developments relating to "The Transatlantic Treaty". Reporting on the various intensifyings Trans-Atlantic conflicts. This refers to 'a number of politicians, academics and business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic exploring the possibility of a new deal to reinforce the political and military ties which underpinned security in Europe since 1945'. Further on the report recalls Jacques Santer's call for a "genuine Trans-Atlantic treaty" including a Trans-Atlantic single market, etc.
An analysis of the Speech by Malcolm Rifkind, now the British Foreign Secondary, to the Royal Institute of International Relations, dated 30th January 1995, demonstrates the self-deluding lengths that Atlanticist crisis management will go. For instance, Rifkind admits the international relations of the cold-war were the exception, the international relations of the post-cold war reverting back to the nineteenth century pattern. His first priority of tasks in establishing a post-cold war international relations system - namely,
'to maintain a relevant and robust Atlantic relationship between North America and Europe'
- is a direct contradiction of this self-evident fact. The very foundation of cold-war international relations was the Trans-Atlantic relationship, a relationship that made cold-war international relations both exceptional and perverse. The rhetoric of Rifkind - for example, he states:
'It (the Trans-Atlantic relationship) continues to provide the only reliable means of bringing forces together into a military effective coalition'
- is symptomatic of how mythological and mesmeric Atlanticism is. Rifkind's rhetoric gave hostage to fortune in paragraph twenty seven, thus:
'The reality is that there is no fundamental American interest which must lead. to a difference of view between the United States and Europe on policy towards former Yugoslavia.'
The depth of Rifkind's 'Atlantic Community' conceptualisation reveals itself in his statement that it should be based upon the
'sharing of ideas and the promotion of co-operation, consultation and co-ordination throughout the four pillars of our common interests. In addition to defence and security, there is the rule of law and Parliamentary democracy; liberal capitalism and our shared European cultural heritage.'
It is a statement that ignores the increasing divergence of American cultural, economic and strategic interests away from those of Europe. Nevertheless, in his speech elaborated upon his fantasy, thus:
'Such an Atlantic Community would need to be more than a political statement of common values. It would need underpinning at the institutional level, and by extending to the legislative, economic, business and educational worlds the kinds of regular and deep-seated co-operation that Nato has already brought in the military sphere.'
This depth of conceptualisation, rhetorical in essence yet deadly serious in political intent, reveals the growing element of desperation in the search for means to perpetuate Atlanticism in spite of its inherent geo-political illogic. A prime example of this is Rifkind's hostage to fortune assertion that:
The reality is that there is no fundamental American interest which must lead. . to a difference of view between the United States and Europe on policy towards former Yugoslavia.'
This inherent geo-political illogic was brought out in a Financial Times report, dated 03/10/95, on splits inside the Clinton Administration over the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area proposal. Reporting on Leon Brittan's continuing efforts to foster the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade concept, it states:
'...the proposal for a free trade area, even as a long term goal, enjoyed mixed support in Washington. The State Department is much more enthusiastic about the idea, while the US trade representative's office is worried about negative reaction in the US Congress'.
The narrowing down of the focus upon the dichotomy between crisis management and geo-political logic to that which functions within the Administration of its leading member that makes this observation an acute one in itself. It is the more so when juxtaposed to the Rifkind speech and all that it is symptomatic of within the Atlanticist crisis, revealing as it does the degree to which Atlanticist crisis management is ultimately a lost cause.
Ultimate lost causes or not, such projects as the "Atlantic Community" and the "Atlantic Free Trade Area" are, without question, politically on the cards. The probable result of such projects will be the entrenchment and expansion of the existing Atlanticist conceptualisation of European security throughout Europe not by design but by default. If this occurs, its occurrence shall not just be due to the lack of collective European political will to prevent it. More fundamentally, such a lack of collective European political will shall, at root, stem from a lack of collective European imagination to conceptualise, internalise and robustly propagate the fact that Europe's security requirements need to be fulfilled upon a holistic, supra-national basis rather than upon one that is nationalistic and rhetorically international. The fact is that the choice of any security concept by a particular political system determines the input and output of that political system and therefore turns that choice into one of pivotal systemic importance in terms of its democratic control. Urgency is added to this fact when it is placed in the dual context of the European Union's enlargement and its forthcoming Inter-governmental Conference.
Hence, this Paper argues that the only way in which the European Left can reclaim its political credibility is by initiating a debate based on its own agenda of how to fulfil Europe's holistic security requirements within such a dual context and beyond. Underpinning this argument is the implicit assumption that the European Left needs to be organised accordingly. It is an implicit assumption that poses questions concerning the condition of the European Left which need to be explicitly addressed. For example, is the European Left conceptually up to the task, not in the short term but in the medium and long term? If it is, what methods and which political agencies would be best to inplanting such a conceptual re-orientation needed to embark upon the task?