An empire in the closet?

The Mediterranean region may seem like a clear dividing moat between Europe and its southern neighbourhood. But the problems that it throws up seem increasingly to unite Europe to northern Africa, at least in demanding integrated, holistic solutions.

The latest challenge - the quest for nuclear civil power in countries like Algeria and Libya - is only one example. So how is Europe to act?

One option would be for the EU to begin to behave like an empire. That is, while having stable external borders, it would seek to have "soft" boundaries so that it could impose some of its regulations on its borderlands.

This option is seen as inevitable for 21st century Europe by a German scholar, Herfried Muenkler, whose recent book Empires (Polity), traces the history and logic of imperial order. It concludes that our age must accommodate "the surprising return of empire", not only by recognising that the US is one (although of a particular kind) but also by seeing that "Europe's future will not be able to do without borrowing from the imperial model".

Referring to the boundary of Europe stretching from Belarus and Ukraine, through the Caucasus, down to southeast Europe, the Middle East and from there to the African shores of the Mediterranean and Morocco, Prof. Muenkler writes: "Since state failure, social strife and economic collapse in this arc have much greater implications for Europe than for the United States, Europeans will have to work to ensure that Western policy there is not shaped by the United States alone. It would be best, of course, if they took overall charge in their own 'backyard'..."

And this means "exercising influence in the periphery of the EU, in ways that have a greater affinity with the requirements of empire than with those of an interstate system".

I have characterised this approach as an option, but for Prof. Muenkler it is no such thing. Rather, it is necessary, if the EU is not to be rendered unstable by resistance and developments on its periphery.

Perhaps the main reason why he believes the EU must accept "the imperial challenge" is because he believes (correctly, in my view) that Europe's so-called soft power "exerts considerably greater influence than hard power on the lifestyles of societies: It changes people's identity, whereas hard power only affects power relations".

He goes on to point out: "Fundamentalism, in its various forms, is principally a kind of resistance to the soft power of an imperial centre. The resistance does not have to be violent. But, faced with the dynamic of the soft power that empire deploys, it is continually tempted to have recourse to violent methods".

Two things need to be pointed out here. One is that Prof. Muenkler wobbles between saying that Europe needs to act like an empire and that Europe already is acting like one because of its soft power. Admittedly, he might retort that the wobble reflects political practice: Europe has some of the practices of an empire, but not all the necessary ones.

Second, Prof. Muenkler states flatly what is implied in many less reflective European statements, both by politicians of various stripes and by NGOs. If the EU is to act like a policy-giver - or rather, policy imposer - with its neighbouring states, then it is behaving like an undeclared empire, whether we like it or not.

What the policies are - whether they are, say, impositions of free market conditions, or environmental regulations - is less relevant. It is the political coercion that counts. On this point, I believe he is right. And politicians and NGOs, however far from or alternative they may fancy themselves to be Europe's political centre, need to face up to this and "out" themselves.

They also need to ask themselves if behaving like an empire will not help generate some of the instability that imperial order is supposed to solve.

But is Prof. Muenkler right to say that there is no option other than to embrace empire? An article by Salvino Busuttil in the latest edition of the Ocean Yearbook (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers) suggests there is plenty of room for argument.

Prof. Busuttil's article is actually a criticism of the insufficient good governance of the Mediterranean region at present. But in building his argument, he traces the various regional institutions that exist that one could build on and whose functioning could improve. Of utmost environmental importance, there is not only the Mediterranean Action Plan but also the Mediterranean Commission for Sustainable Development.

The point is that suggesting an alternative institutional arrangement to the imperial model of policy imposition is possible. There have been flaws in implementation, as well as dragging of feet. But some of the ideas that Europe is taking on right now - such as the idea of a Mediterranean Investment Bank - were advocated for years by people like Prof. Busuttil as examples of regional institutions that could make real, non-imperial partnership in the region possible.

ranierfsadni@europe.com