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SPEAKING FREELY
Thanks, but
no thanks, to empire
By
Subhash Kak
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
The French and the
Dutch have spoken. Their "no" to Europe's proposed
constitution halts the strengthening of the union
of the 25 countries, for it needed approval from
all the nations to take effect next year. Europe
wants to take time out. How to resurrect the
process in a year or two is the challenge
confronting its leaders.
Europe's process
of unification is a turning inward of an expansion
that began in the 15th century and accelerated
with the Industrial Revolution. At the end of
World War II, the idea of a united Europe seemed
perfect as the third force in a world dominated by
the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.
But the Soviet Union broke up 15 years ago, and,
economically, the world is becoming multipolar
with the emergence of new powers such as China,
India and Brazil.
The empire paradigm was
in consonance with the principal technologies of
the past two centuries, such as the
transportation, electrical and chemical
industries, which required the consolidation of
political and financial power. The 21st century is
the age of information and the Internet. The
profits are in the management of information, and
this does not require physical control of land.
The cost of direct empire can be great, as
witnessed by the American occupation of Iraq.
Meanwhile, the pressures of global
competition are increasing the mechanization of
life. American pop-culture is superseding local
traditions, and many have started grumbling about
the social costs of unfettered globalization.
There is fear that a super-state such as the
European Union will increase the concentration of
political power, making it harder for the voices
of individuals to be heard.
The drive for
a single Europe was supported by influential
sections of both the left and the right. For the
left, it represented the idea that different
nations could come together to create a new
future, which would allow the region to move
beyond the horrible fratricidal wars of the 20th
century, and it would be able to play a role in
global affairs as an equal to the US. For the
right, it was an opportunity for Europe's
businesses to become competitive with those of
America by bringing down tariffs within the region
and making it easier to invest, by having a single
currency.
But now, important groups on the
left and the right are having second thoughts. For
one side, it is the bureaucracy, and the loss of
jobs to workers from the newly admitted East
European countries; for the other, it is the
danger to tradition from immigrants who are not
assimilating into the mainstream culture. On the
one side is the view that a larger Europe may
benefit the economy but the cost to the local
cultures is too high to pay for progress; on the
other hand is the argument that a united Europe is
an anachronism.
The forces unleashed by
the globalization of the past 15 years have led to
a concentration of wealth and increased the gap
between the rich and the poor. Just as America is
turning from a meritocracy to an aristocracy, a
united Europe would accelerate the concentration
of wealth as it depends increasingly on low-wage
immigrant and illegal workers and farmers lose
control of their farms to agribusiness. This
process calls to mind events that took place
nearly 1,800 years ago in late imperial Rome.
Latifundia and the decline of
Rome
Historians hold that big farms, called
latifundia, were a major factor in the
decline of Rome. If migrant Mexican workers
provide cheap labor on American farms; slaves did
so for the latifundia. There was a
consolidation of farms into ever-larger estates.
Slave labor depressed wages to the subsistence
level, increasing unemployment among the citizens.
The dispossessed took to crime. As
unemployment increased, Rome had to institute the
dole, in terms of pork, oil and bread, and
subsidies to farmers. The rule by aristocrats led
to a spiritual malaise. People were happy with the
ever more brutal attractions of the amphitheater
and the circus.
Rome was overstretched;
the costs of the empire exceeded the benefits. The
army slowly became dependent on foreign recruits
and mercenaries. Like present day US, Rome had an
adverse balance of trade. Roman currency poured
into India and the East to pay for luxuries,
leading to massive inflation. The cities began to
decay.
The provinces rose in revolt, and,
as always, barbarians were knocking at the gate.
The members of the military became the new landed
aristocracy. With increasing taxation came
regimentation. It was in this vacuum that religion
stepped in and took Europe into the Dark Ages. The
empire became despotic as it declined.
Fear of loss of sovereignty
Europe remembers its history well enough not
to ignore its lessons. The prospect of the
consolidation of farms and fear of high
unemployment due to low-wage immigrants reminds it
of its own unpleasant feudal past.
Like
the smaller city states in the Delian League of
Classical Greece, the Dutch have felt pushed
around by France and Germany. Although they are
Europe's largest per capita contributor, the new
constitution would lessen their voting power. They
made serious adjustments in their budget to
conform to the guidelines of the European Union,
but these rules were waived for France and
Germany. Furthermore, Italy and Greece have
admitted that they provided the union with false
budget information.
The right does not
like the prospect of Turkey joining the EU; the
left fears that if the service industry operates
more freely it would hurt the gains of the
workers. There is concern that new voting
procedures would make it harder to block major
changes to the common agricultural policy.
The Dutch were angry at the increases in
prices that have accompanied the replacement of
the guilder by the euro and unhappy at the
expansion of the community. The murders of
politician Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo van Gogh
had already increased anti-immigrant sentiment.
The Dutch were also afraid that they would
lose the freedom to provide their own solutions to
social problems. Unlike the Anglo-Saxon world,
their approach to drug addiction comes from a
pragmatic and social point of view; the addict is
not seen as a criminal.
America and
Europe
America believes that a united
Europe would be its ally in its competition with
China for economic supremacy. Europe could
facilitate the emergence of democracies in the
Middle East, and to that end America has pressed
Europe to hasten Turkey's admission into the
union. But America realizes that their
relationship will be beset by differing national
interests, as has happened in the continuing Iraq
war.
Europeans believe that America's
militaristic approach is depriving high technology
areas of research funding, and deepening the
international economic malaise. They complain that
whereas the US has kept its own economic burdens
low by not allowing full citizenship rights to its
Mexican migrant workers, Western Europe is being
asked to take on the burden of the immigrants from
East Europe, North Africa and Turkey. America is
witnessing a widening gap between rich and poor,
ballooning costs of medical care, relocation of
factories to China, and outsourcing of office jobs
to India. It is not clear that to be a bigger
state is an advantage in the current
circumstances. The US political establishment has
been paralyzed, as if by Medusa, by the
health-care problem. A looser union might enable
Europe to respond more nimbly to emerging
challenges.
Subhash Kak is
Delaune distinguished professor of electrical
engineering and professor of Asian studies and
Cognitive Science at Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge.
(Copyright 2005 Subhash
Kak.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
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