Twitter: @RoderickParkes, EU Observe
The German question is back, again. EU governments are trying to figure out how Berlin’s current prominence will affect the future of European integration. If they’re struggling though, it’s because the EU is an organisation without precedent – there’s no way to predict how the current renationalization of power will play out.
Or at least that’s the wisdom. In fact, the EU is not quite as unique as it appears. Like many other international organisations, it provides a microcosm of bigger international patterns. Brussels officials have long whiled away the hours by spotting parallels between European and global affairs.
Today, those parallels are clear. The states that established global rules are too weak to uphold them, and catch-up countries complain that their inclusion has been superficial only. Faced with cross-border problems, many of them are resorting to unilateralism, fancy-sounding ‘minilateralism’ or ineffective intergovernmental summitry. The same is true of the EU.
In this general power vacuum, all eyes are on the last few remaining powers to come up with a solution – at the global level, the US, China and the EU; in the European Union, Germany, France and the UK. And, given the neat symmetry of these two trios, it is hard not to ask: which of the global G3 mirrors Germany?
It would be comforting to say the US. Germany and the US rank as the last two hegemons at the European and global levels respectively and as the only states ready to underwrite common rules and institutions. But don’t be fooled. If the US has a doppelganger in the EU it is not Germany. Rather worryingly, it is France.
Both France and the US have a strong belief in the universality of their values but also in their own exceptionalism. Both countries heavily supported international rules when these reflected their values, but have struggled with demands to make them more inclusive. And both have been ready to resort to unilateral action, not least to make up for their declining economic clout.
Germany clearly does not have that proprietorial sense of the international system. If it has to have a global twin then, it is probably China. 20 years ago, both were only half-in today’s international order (quite literally in the case of a divided Germany). But today their stealthy accrual of economic weight places them unwittingly at the centre of it.
This presents both with a dilemma: as pre-eminent powers they are acutely aware of the limits of unilateralism and individual state power. But, although they thus recognise their dependence on international rules, they would have most to sacrifice in terms of their new sovereignty and prominence in order to boost the system.
Both are now using their own history to abdicate responsibility. Germans are often the first to point out that nobody likes it when they do try to show leadership in the EU; China cites past tensions with its neighbours to avoid taking enlightened action. Their increasingly esoteric foreign policy philosophies effectively boil down to mercantilism or inaction.
So, two down and one to go. If Germany is China’s doppelganger and France is the US’s, a simple process of elimination can mean only one thing: the UK is the EU’s. In a delicious twist of irony, the EU is making the same contribution to global affairs that the UK is currently making to EU affairs.
The United Kingdom, a supranational project that once looked like the shape-of-things-to-come, is beginning to break apart. Abandoning its lofty internationalism, Britain is paralysed by centrifugal pressures from within. It has fallen prey to the general breakdown of international rules and institutions. Ditto, the EU.
So where does all this leave us? With the UK/EU seemingly intent on self-marginalisation, the focus is on France/US reconciling itself with Germany/China. But the chances of success are small. Germany, for instance, seems to look at the French model of active foreign policy as entirely bankrupted, deeming itself confirmed in its own relative passivity.
So don’t write off the European Union and the United Kingdom too soon. After all, both came into existence by uniting their disparate member states by innovative means. Can they now use their gifts of constitutional and institutional reinvention to save not only themselves but the regional and global systems?
This essay was first published, with a not entirely straight face, by IP Journal https://ip-journal.dgap.org/en/blog/eye-europe/germany-eus-china
Twitter: @RoderickParkes