Pretend that Marine Le Pen was elected on the 24th. France and the European Union would probably be upside down today in the midst of one of their promises, to reform the bloc from within — whatever that means.
The far-right, long-time anti-Europeanist, sought to tone down her radical image in this latest campaign and adapted what was perhaps her most radical banner in other elections: taking the country out of the EU. The realization of this plan would have been infinitely more serious than what happened in the post-Brexit UK in 2016.
Without France, the bloc would have a territorial hole between Germany and Spain, with all the logistical problems that this madness would create. And a political complicity that Paris and Berlin had built since 1957, when the Treaty of Rome created the European Common Market, would also be destroyed, an institution much more modest than the current European Union.
In a way, a united Europe is a solution, but also a problem, according to the conclusion of four conferences held in March last year, in Paris, at the Collège de France — an institution that teaches everything at a very high level.
The speaker was the Dutch philosopher and political scientist Luuk van Middelaar, former advisor in Brussels to the European Council (which brings together rulers of the 27 countries of the bloc) and today, at 48, one of the rising names among intellectuals on the continent.
The lectures, gathered under the title “From the Ukrainian Crisis to the Pandemic: Europe, a Geopolitical Thriller”, were aired by France Culture, a public radio station popular among the cultural elite. The podcasts, in French, are available on the internet.
The philosopher does not carry the legacy of the builders of Europe in the 1950s, who believed they were building a space of peace — something precious in a century with two world wars — due to the close commercial interdependence of their economies. Middelaar believes that the purpose of Europe today is division.
A first example. It split in 2015, when Turkey threatened to dump an unimaginable crowd of Syrian refugees through Greece (a member of the EU). Alongside a subtle middle-class xenophobia, governments vie to receive smaller quotas from immigrants.
The continent was also divided in 2014, during the first war in Ukraine: France and Germany believed that supplying that country with more sophisticated weapons would criminally increase the number of deaths caused by Russian geopolitics. New arsenals were defended by European chancelleries, such as the British, closer to the United States.
And new division came with Covid-19. As of early 2020, no member countries have shared their stocks of masks or respirators with Italy. The government of Rome was the first to launch an appeal to its European partners. The death toll in Bergamo was not higher only because an external producer, China, started massive exports to the Italians of masks, medicines and equipment.
The pandemic, says the Dutch philosopher, led Europe to abandon one of its most solid axioms, the one that considered the border a secondary and despicable factor. Europeans would be “allergic” to borders. After all, integration started from the assumption that the bloc had a continuous territory, for, according to the slogan, the wide and free circulation of goods, ideas and people.
Let’s look at other European veins that the Dutch philosopher speared. “Without geopolitical consistency, Europe will be nothing more than a toy in the hands of the powers.” The latter are not just the US and China, but also smaller countries that have managed to put the Europeans in check. It happened to the apparently weak Turkey, which knocks on the doors of Brussels without being allowed in to occupy a member country seat.
Turkish president, authoritarian and populist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, managed to push the EU into the wall during the 2014-2015 refugee crisis. He demanded and obtained material help to respect the Greek borders, which, if they collapsed, would uncontrollably drive refugees to the Austrian border. Erdogan has shown more strength than Morocco (in negotiating with Spain to close the refugee corridor) or Libya — or what’s left of it — in relation to Italy.
Luuk van Middelaar is careful to approach China as a supplier, rather than a customer, of European products. Its strategic plan is to put itself at the forefront of all technology, especially war and space. His plans are easily defined due to a highly centralized regime and the lack of channels of democratic expression through which the population would discuss their priorities.
China, says the philosopher, with the pandemic took a qualitative leap in its plans for greatness. Two examples of this that went unnoticed: the first load of masks he sent to Italy landed in Rome, the political center, not Milan, the city around which the coronavirus was proliferating. And the Beijing regime — while the American Donald Trump described Sars-CoV-2 as a “Chinese virus” — pegged itself to Germany and suggested by electronic messages that the government of then-Prime Minister Angela Merkel praised its performance. That’s what she did discreetly, to help a drop in new infections and the death toll.
All proportions saved, Germany turned the obedient little dog next to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s armchair for a few hours. This was not quite the comparison made by Middelaar. But he got very close to her.
