Who Rules in Brussels?
Daniel Berman looks at the EU, its foes and the future of democracy.
19 Dec 2011, 09:30
Who rules?
The British Historian AJP Taylor once said that the great question of European History between 1870 and 1945 was that of “Who Rules In Berlin.” After a chronological survey of the candidates, he concludes that the reality was that for most of that period, no one in fact ruled in Berlin.
The same question could very easily be asked of Europe today, in the form of “Who rules in Brussels?” It is almost certainly not the forgotten Jose Manuel Barroso, the nominal President of the European Commission – he was not even invited to the recent meeting David Cameron walked out of. It is likely not his gaggle of second-rate Ministers, many of whom do not even speak a common language – they were sent to Brussels precisely because of their political ineptitude at home, not in spite of it. And it is absurd to expect anything from a European parliament elected in protest against the domestic policies of their home governments, and whose European identities began and end with their meaningless acronyms. Nor despite the coverage the recent summits have received, do the various national leaders – they have far better things to do with their time, and have little understanding or interest in what makes Europe work as long as it does work.
The truth is that no elected leader or leaders run Europe because none can run Europe. The European Union is run by the only class capable of governing it, namely the bureaucratic “Mandarins” who draft the laws, frame the regulations, and more than anyone else, symbolize what the EU actually means. Unlike Barroso and his cabinet, they are permanent. Unlike the MEPs, their constituency cares not a whiff for ideology or policy, but only for increasing their own power through increasing that of the EU. And their response to the current crisis is identical to what their response has been to every challenge the EU has faced from its establishment: to place the blame squarely on the national governments and their democratic institutions, and demand that the responsible adults in the room, namely themselves, be given more power.
In this political context, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy are the perfect European leaders since they are understand their role. They exist not to lead themselves, but to follow the advice of the Mandarins, and to act as the public face of their policies. And their performance of the part is extraordinary. Watching Merkel lambast David Cameron for his refusal to sign over control of the British Budget to the Eurocrats, one could almost believe that the new agreement was a personal achievement on her part, and that it held the promise of resolving the long-term debt crisis facing the Union.
And in a sense it does. The fundamental problem in Europe is democracy, not that there is too little but that there is too much. Pesky things like pensions and welfare, not to mention regulations, are sacred to governments because they are sacred to voters, and removing them from the purview of said governments will free them from the fear of retaliations from the voters. Or so think the Mandarins. After all, the same approach has worked with the abstract concept like “human rights.” Transferring them from Brussels has nicely insulated them from the vagaries of democratic input, and the various member governments from any sort of accountability.
There is nonetheless a gem of truth to the claims made by Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy that their people had participated in enough bailouts and demanded an end of the. But the agreement they proposed did nothing to prevent future bailouts, and everything to expand the EU’s power. In the clash between the demands of their people and those of the Eurocrats, they had already made the decision to sell their people out in the name of Union far before they arrived at the meeting.
David Cameron while grasping the appeal of such options, as evidenced by his response to demands for a referendum, failed in the end to play his part as a European leader and to buck party and national opinion on the altar of necessity. In this sense he is a bad European, for which he is being lambasted vy the French and Germans. His real crime is not that he torpedoed an agreement that would have saved the Euro, but that he embarrassed Merkel and Sarkozy in front of their own populations, who are now at risk of raising the question why their own leaders have failed to behave in a similar fashion. Hence the blame must be put on British nationalism and parochialism, lest the people ask too many questions at home.
One can forgive this response when one considers how rarely the Mandarins and their allies have been bucked in the past. In fact, they would do better with almost any other British party.
Nick Clegg would be a good European. He enjoys the occupation of office without its responsibilities, and his buzzword is not popular consent, but “responsibility.” He is loyal to the Coalition because he is responsible; he has voted to raise tuition fees because it is responsible. He would in turn happily sign away Britain’s fiscal independence because it would be the responsible thing to do. Nick Clegg would sign away British freedoms because he aspires to appear strong; Ed Milliband would only do so because he is weak.
Barack Obama too would make a good European. He has decades of experience in acting as a figurehead, since it defines his career since law school. As the Editor of the Harvard Law Review he never published a single article, but he was diligent in presenting the work of others as the collective product of his Editorship. As a politician he happily became the vacant figurehead of the idealist within the Democratic Party, those who hated Clintonian realism. And as President he has aspired to be the chairman of the board, the funnel through which the ideas of the best and brightest will become policy. How often does he announce a policy or make a speech where he does not mention the process of consultation by which he came to his position, or the number of experts and interested groups whose views he polled before proceeding.
As such, it is easy to understand why has been far more “European” than the nominally “European” Cameron. He sees Europe as the future. A real American President would have offered Cameron a life-line, perhaps seen recent events as a once in a life-time opportunity to detach Britain from Europe and to offer the British membership in NAFTA. With the Irish looking longingly at the Dollar, this would have been a chance to create dollar zone on the far side of the Atlantic.
Instead Obama joined Merkel in lecturing Cameron on “responsibility”, his responsibility to the Eurozone and the World economy, as if the actions of a country that is not even part of the Eurozone could be more at fault than the unelected Mandarins who have been actually running policy.
In reality though, none of this should be surprising. Writers like Thomas Friedman have long been predicting that the globalization of capitalism will lead to a convergence between East and West in norms of government and they are right. Where they have erred is in assuming that this convergence would be on Western democratic and pluralistic principles. We now know this is nonsense. A modern multi-national super state cannot be run by the voters. It requires a professional class of Mandarins. And so convergence is happening, but rather than China becoming Norway, Europe is becoming Singapore.
It is on this question of “Who Governs?” that the great battles of the 21st century will be fought. It is increasingly clear that greater integration means less democracy, and technology has so far exacerbated rather than reversed this trend. Democracy grew in the shadow of the nation-state, and it cannot govern without it.
Of the major political parties in the Western world, only the Republicans in the United States and elements of the Conservatives in the UK are even vaguely aware that the battle is taking place, and they uniformly reject its logical conclusion. The fact is that a rejection of bureaucratic government requires a rejection of globalization, that raises the specter of socialism, if not of the leftist variety, than of that of Disraeli and Bismarck. They have not resigned themselves to the fact that the cost of abandoning One Nation and Rockefeller Republican Policies abroad is to embrace them at home. They think they can vacillate in an effort to do both, and so do neither.
Therefore they have increasingly joined the Left in the abdication of government. The answer of “Who Runs Europe ?” can therefore only be answered in reference to the Mandarins who have stepped into the breach, not by election or coup d’etat, but by default.
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