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By Norman Friedman, author, Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems
Danes Think Again on European Community
In May, the Danish people voted against the new Treaty °f Maastrict, which would greatly have strengthened the European Community. The Danish vote is significant both for t le future of the Community (formerly the Common Market), and tor the future of pan-European defense policy. It seems to have been directed particularly against an increasingly powerful yet largely uncontrolled bureaucracy in Brussels, run by a Frenchman, Jacques Delor, the Chairman of the European f-ommission.
Like the other Community members, Denmark must decide etween the economic benefits promised by the single integrated uiarket and the loss of sover- ®'gnty threatened by Brussels.
hat loss is felt in one major area the heavy sales tax tvalue-added tax) that finances the Commission—and ln many small ways. For ex- arnPle, last year the bureauCrats decided to ban Turkish ntgarettes, which had been Popular in Britain, on the os
tensible ground that they were °° carcinogenic; some suspected protectionism. On a °re trivial level, the British P|ashc model maker, Airfix, ent out of business when the ommission decided, some
bears ago, that the art on its °xes could no longer depict eapons in action (that was o warlike); Airfix could not ord a whole range of new Packaging.
For
most Americans, the
estion has been whether „
')a8 European Community Wgu p * a disastrous trade e li European countries gen- on ^ suPP°rt social benefits oha. scale far beyond what One'nS t*1C winded States, hish ConsetIuence seems to be that the cost of doing business is suit an^ nCW ^rms °^ten ^lncl '* difficult to start up. As a re- pro' SUC^ P°''c'es °ften seem to have the paradoxical effect of see °tln® high levels of unemployment (which are also, it ^s> encouraged by high benefit levels). cjes°.r lLe public, one major indirect effect of the social poli- a lar ant* °* Ver^ stronS government bureaucracies, which take ge fraction of the overall national income) is to drive up
r°Ce*dings / August 1992
Upgrading Phoenix
Enhanced AIM-54C Phoenix air-to-air missile is equipped with a new high-power traveling-wave tube transmitter that will increase the missile's range.
consumer prices. For example, an American in London finds that prices would make sense if the pound sign were replaced by a dollar sign; but the pound is worth about $1.80, so prices are really about 80% higher than here. All of this translates into protectionism, since the home industry cannot easily compete with lower-priced goods from abroad, including the United States.
Intimate relations between European governments and their high-technology industries also translate into pressure to buy domestic. For example, European airlines are being pushed hard to buy Airbus rather than Boeing or McDonnell-Douglas airliners. There are international agreements to limit such pressure (and subsidies), but it is almost impossible even to determine how large a subsidy Airbus receives; it is organized in such a way that there is no annual corporate statement, for example.
Many European arms manufacturers are more or less completely owned by their governments. This sort of arrangement matters far more than in the past, since with reduced local spending, U.S. arms manufacturers will have to compete with the subsidized manufacturers in the world market.
All this leads directly back to the issue of the Community, the “European Idea.” When the Community was formed, sovereignty was guaranteed partly by giving each member a veto. Periodically the original Treaty of Rome has been revised and re-ratified; Maastrict was just the latest instance. The British used the threat to weaken the central power, but they had never vetoed the central treaty. Now that Denmark has done that, the other members have begun to threaten to pass the treaty and then exclude Denmark. In doing so, they are acting as though their written constitution is irrelevant; guarantees to small members do not matter. The threat seems particularly explicit in France and Germany; many in Europe see the Community as a Franco-German creation, although some would argue that since Germany would exercise even more power from outside, it is better to include it.
Maastrict was the peculiar product of another facet of the Community’s constitution, the rotating Presidency. Each of the twelve heads of state takes charge in turn for six months.
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This is not a figurehead position; the President can and does shift the Community in the direction he chooses. The Dutch in particular have long argued that small countries can maintain their position only inside a tighter community. When their Prime Minister took charge, he changed the draft treaty, which was concerned mainly with monetary union, to a much tighter one, pledging movement toward common defense and foreign policies by about 2000. The British, traditionally unwilling to surrender their sovereignty, recoiled, but ultimately they agreed to the draft (they were permitted to opt out of pan-Community social policies).
Throughout Europe, the evolving Community is generally treated publicly as an inevitable movement. Many people wonder, however, just how beneficial it is; they suspect that it is a racket for the benefit of (1) politicians and bureaucrats and (2) French and possibly German farmers (the Common Agricultural Policy is a notorious form of price support, creating vast quantities of unusable products). Many Germans were also unhappy with the prospect of exchanging the solid Deutschmark for a European currency controlled from Brussels.
There is also a darker issue. Union means absolutely free immigration within Europe. For years, countries like Germany imported workers from poorer countries like Turkey. As their own unemployment rose, they tried to eject those “guest workers.” In the East, countries like Austria (which want to enter the Community) find themselves trying to keep out refugees from communist countries who are looking for work. Italy actually ejected large numbers (about 60,000) of Albanians at gun point. No Western country has shown the slightest willingness to accept refugees from the horrors of Yugoslavia. Americans travelling to Europe are quite familiar with this problem: their passports are always stamped with something like “forbidden to work.”
The Community already encompasses poorer countries whose main export is people seeking jobs: Ireland, Portugal, and Greece. John Major, the British Prime Minister who becomes president of the Community in July, promised eventual membership for Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Since Britain hopes to export heavily to those countries, he will also have to find some way for them to break the Community’s current protectionist barriers, particularly on food. As the Community grows beyond its current 12 members, the immigration issue cannot long be controlled. Germany already experiences it in the form of former East Germans within its own territory.
The other side of the coin is political. French foreign policy in particular sometimes seems designed to push the United States out of Europe. For example, a Franco-German combined brigade is to be operational by 1995. It is generally seen as a direct challenge to NATO. As the Yugoslav crisis continues, France seems particularly concerned with preventing U.S. involvement, which would demonstrate a continuing need for the United States in Europe. The French probably particularly valued the Maastrict language on a common foreign and defense policy.
Now the Danes have spoken; the emperor may have fewer clothes than those he was credited with. The real message may well be that a trade association is fine, but that a federal Europe is neither wanted nor needed. The Danish vote will almost certainly encourage other skeptics. The French Government plans to put the defunct treaty to a referendum of its own (to show how strongly it is supported, and incidentally to boost the very weak popularity of President Mitterand), but many in France are less than enthusiastic. Once people know there is a way out, many take it. It is probably far from accidental that the current British best-seller, Fatherland (set in a Europe in which the Germans were victorious), shows crossed Swastika and Community flags on its cover.
The Yugoslav disaster has probably also contributed subtly to the sense of futility. The Community met repeatedly, but was unable—probably unwilling—to do much. The United Nations ordered sanctions, but both the Serbians and their Bosnian victims agreed that the war would be over long before the sanctions had much effect. Quite clearly there was little or no stomach for military intervention, apart possibly from flying in relief supplies. After all, no matter how terrible, surely it is an internal affair; surely it cannot go farther.
Not quite. All the parties to the conflict have outside friends. Austria has strong ethnic ties with Slovenia, and Hungary with Croatia. The new Croatian army is armed largely with Hungarian-supplied equipment. Both states fear that a Serbian victory in Bosnia-Herzegovina would lead to an offensive against them, so they are trying to help the Bosnians. In the south, Serbia is trying suppress independence movements in Kosovo and Macedonia. Much of the population of Kosovo consists of Albanians, so it looks across the border for help. Turkey supports Kosovo because of historic ties dating back to the Ot- I toman Empire. Bulgaria also supports Kosovo. Greece finds j herself supporting Serbia, largely because she objects strongly to Macedonian independence (Greece charges that the very nam® of Macedonia is illicit, an attempt to claim its own territory of Macedonia). For that matter, with strong economic ties to Serbia, France was less than enthusiastic about crushing that country (reportedly, except for Serbia, France had failed to create strong ties with the ex-Communist East).
Thus the war could, for example, lead to renewal of the traditional conflict between Greece and Turkey. It could boil into intervention by Austria and Hungary. No such conflict is immediately plausible, but then again no one would have imagined the ferocity of the current war and its immediate predecessors.
At the very least, the conflicting ties to Serbia make it difficult for the European Community to act. The Community has made strong statements, but it has been known to avoid acting on its policies. Moreover, the strongest land army in the Community, the German Army, is apparently constitutionally
The Yugoslav horror is almost like the endless civil war in ;• Lebanon, proving that neither local Arab culture nor the pres- , ence of Israel has much to do with such conflicts. For Euro- > peans it is even more terrifying, because even the most stable countries harbor subnational groups thirsty for independence- In recent years only the Basques have attracted much attention, but there are many others. To some extent, too, the v'3* in Yugoslavia can be traced back to the arbitrary character the 1919 peace settlement, much of it dictated by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (areas like Croatia and Slovenia wef® awarded to Serbia to reward it for its part on the Allied side)- Another of Wilson’s creations, Czechoslovakia, also seems t® be unraveling, though this time without a direct threat of v*' olence. The Cold War may not be really over, but rather r®' placed by the new wold order.
Looming beyond is ethnically mixed Russia itself; Russians have begun to suggest that Yugoslavia may be their own fu' ture—then what? A strong man will probably enforce some son of peace. He may well not be our friend, not least because h® may ride to power on a wave of nationalist or xenophobic timent. In that case we may awake to discover that the War was caused, not by communism, but by basic geopoliti®5' so that the death of Communism will not have saved us. may even find that communism rather hobbled the Sovi® Union.
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