In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Mediterranean Quarterly 16.2 (2005) 11-38



[Access article in PDF]

The Mediterranean Region:

Reality, Delusion, or Euro-Mediterranean Project?

When seen on a map, the Mediterranean seems a clearly circumscribed unit contained between the Straits of Gibraltar and the Syrian coast, unless one chooses to include the Black Sea as part of it. Yet as Metternich maintained apropos of Italy, a geographical term does not by itself make for a meaningful political entity. Furthermore, geographical definitions in themselves are not simply givens but reflect different modes of perceiving the world. The problem becomes more acute when one looks at the "Mediterranean" as signifying the several countries on its shores and their immense cultural and sociopolitical variety. Yet in the face of such disparities the case for one Mediterranean has been made forcefully by important thinkers, notably historians. Jacob Burckhardt wrote that "the peoples around the Mediterranean and over to the Gulf of Persia are really one animate being."1 A unity less explicitly organic, perhaps, but rooted nonetheless in the deep structures of "the long duration" beyond mere surface events is postulated by Fernand Braudel.2 Others have underscored climate and geology, patterns of cultivation and settlement, and mores and ways of life.3 These themes have been taken up in countless statements of intellectuals, journalists, and politicians [End Page 11] emanating from both the northern and southern shores. These speak of the Mediterranean as a region marked by a shared destiny, formed by a common historical experience, and possessing an underlying unity of shared values.4

But is there such an animal? To what extent is thinking of the Mediterranean as a coherent unit dependent on a particular view of world history, such as that of Burckhardt, a view that is not necessarily shared by all the populations it supposedly embraces? To what degree is it a rhetorical figment intended to support a variety of claims for advantage and recognition? Can the Mediterranean be understood as a geostrategic region in terms of international relations? Does it constitute an intelligible unit of study in terms of scholarly analysis? Is it a category that can be brought to bear usefully in the formulation of policy? If it does not exist, are there good reasons for working toward bringing it about? These questions are explored in the pages of this essay.

The Mediterranean evokes associations of venerable antiquity and great symbolic power. The vogue for Mediterranean regionalism is, however, quite recent. It is part of the more general tendency toward regionalism that emerged in response to events of worldwide significance. The end of the Cold War created the spaces for regional patterns of cooperation in the absence of overpowering polarities. At the same time, global economic integration and other factors seem to demand responses at levels above or below the classic state, thus changing the relative importance of overlapping collective identities. The state enjoying the monopoly of force, sovereign with regard to its own subjects and with regard to other states, legitimized as the expression of a national essence or common will, no longer seems obligatory or exemplary. The nation and its state remain nonetheless the primary legitimating concept even though the pursuit of Wilsonian, homogeneous, sovereign states is often a manifest cause of suffering and disorder. Regionalism offers a way to get around such contradictions. [End Page 12]

The European Union is both a pioneer and a model of regional integration, combining the interaction of civil societies with intergovernmental cooperation, replacing war, conquest, and cultural absorption with peaceful integration. Beyond providing a remarkable example, the EU has an effect on other regionalisms by its tacit but evident desire to transfer its own model, especially in areas in its immediate periphery. Its purpose is to secure their stability as a matter of enlightened self-interest and to enhance its influence in several other ways. The particular conditions of each area—Eastern Europe, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean—are very different, of course, but there is a common impetus.

In all cases, the promotion of regionalism assumes a language of accommodation and cooperation, opposed to...

pdf

Share