The Logos Reader: Rational Radicalism and the Future of Politics

Europe as a Political Project

In the 1980s, with several friends, I helped produce a program called “Europein -Formation” at the New York left-wing public radio station WBAI. This was a time well before the ultimate internal weakness of the Soviet Union became apparent and when a true or good or purified socialism remained a hope for many leftists. Our idea was that the model of a European Union, enlarging the welfare state and challenging the realpolitik cynicism of a U.S. government that supported repressive regimes in the name of fighting the communist enemy, would encourage political criticism that was still leftist even though it contained a dose of realism. The process by which Europe was coming into being was to serve as an inspiration for the creation of a Left that was at once democratic and social. Two decades later, the question of Europe remains relevant, but the challenge it poses is different. Whereas the Left had been the stubborn victim of its own ideological dreams or hopes, today, after the end of the cold war and with the victory of liberalism and capitalism, there is no serious left-wing political project. In the earlier moment, the Left was full of ideas, inventing Projects (with a capital P) and knitting together the undeniably important but always partial and often temporary successes into a global vision. Today, the Left has few ideas; its politics consists in opposing the most egregious elements of the economic free-marketeers and the attempts by social reactionaries to roll back the achievements of modernity. The European idea has gained some attractiveness as, even in the countries that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refers to as the “new” Europe, healthy majorities have appeared to oppose the preemptive unilateralism of U.S. foreign policy. In contrast, the “old” Europe has been denounced—not without some grounds—as the weak-kneed “Venus” whose well-being depends on the military strength of the American “Mars.” What is more, in at least some countries (such as France), large minorities within the orbit of the Socialist Party seriously considered the idea of rejecting the ratification of an eventual European constitution if it were put to vote in a referendum. To them, Europe seemed to be the vehicle of an expanded capitalism, its advances in the sphere of human rights standing only as a concession to liberalism. Europe, from this Europe as a Political Project Dick Howard 323 perspective, is said to suffer from a “democratic deficit”—although it is often unclear just what is meant by this vague concept. To get some perspective on the status and implications of the European model today, I propose to return to the old distinction between two kinds of liberalism and the two models of democratic politics with which they are associated . The roots of this distinction are both historical and conceptual, while its manifestations can be seen in the contemporary political cultures of the Europeans and the Americans. One appealing approach to the Euro/American cultural distinction is suggested by Pierre Hassner, who traces the difference back to the geopolitical fact that Europe is composed of nations defined by their borders, which entails the need to form alliances and maintain a balance of power, whereas America can choose isolation and decide when to use force or opt to employ the peaceful arms of commerce. As a result, Europe has learned to recognize the usefulness of rules that bind sovereignty, while ensuring that war is limited to those who are actually fighting, whereas the United States refuses to accept limits on its sovereign will and, when it does go to war, accepts no constraints (such as worry about “collateral damage”). Old Europe calls the agreed-on rules “civilization ,” while virile young America treats them as limits and denounces them as a sign of weakness of will.1 This difference is manifest, for example, in the different attitudes toward the creation of the International Court of Justice. But Hassner recognizes that the European solution is threatened. Its civilized rules were based on a Westphalian notion of a sovereign national will (and the material reality of states that could protect their citizens as well as their economies); that vision may be simply a dream in a globalized and “postmodern ” society that cuts across national boundaries and transforms the citizen into a mere consumer. This could explain some of the complaints about a “democratic deficit” in the EU. But that is too simple. The institutional question depends on cultural premises. To denounce...