Analysis: Why the rest of Europe must adopt German ideals of discipline to survive - Arts blog - Scotsman.com

We have been here before. Look what happened. These grandiose schemes never work. That was my reaction, and probably the reaction of many others, not only in Britain, when I heard the news from Brussels of the ambitious plan to save the euro and usher in a new era for the European Union.

And of course, for most of European history that negative view has been valid. In a sense we have always been trying to get back to the Roman Empire, ever since its collapse in the West in 476. In the ninth century Charlemagne restored something like it for a while, but his realm was divided among his sons. In the 16th century the Emperor Charles V, and in the 17th century King Louis XIV of France, aimed at what political thinkers called a universal monarchy. Across the Channel, revulsion at the idea was one force behind the emergence of English nationalism, and the same antagonism is still there today.

In more modern times the ideals of the French Revolution were meant to be ideals for the whole of humanity, but Napoleon perverted them as he carried them on the points of his troops’ bayonets from the River Tagus to the River Moskva. There followed right through the 19th century attempts at some sort of concert of Europe.

They all failed the test of reconciling different nations in an age when nationalism was the vehicle for the hopes of peoples first and foremost to be free and be themselves. As for the leaders who rode this storm, fortune impartially favoured the good and the bad, and often the ugly. For every Garibaldi there was a Bismarck, and later for every Mannerheim, Pilsudski, Masaryk or Venizelos there was a Stalin, a Hitler, a Mussolini, a Franco. Unfortunately, the bad guys left more memories than the good guys.

That helps to explain why amid such an orgy of nationalism any higher ideal seemed too ethereal and idealistic, something latterly that might be left to debate at the League of Nations by men in wing-collars and monocles. Only after the orgy had turned into one of death and destruction could the supernational ideal come down to earth and offer itself as something that at least had never properly been tried, in a democratic Europe anyway. And that was the place we had reached by 1945.

The way forward was still far from straight. Victorious warlords lived on and even spoke glowingly of European ideals, yet it was not always clear what they meant. While the ideals could bring tears to the eyes of Winston Churchill, nobody knows if he really wanted his own people to share in them or if he meant the British Empire and Europe to continue as separate pillars of a new global order. For General Charles de Gaulle, Europe was merely France writ large.

“Toute ma vie”, he said, “je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France”. And that idea was for France to exercise far more influence than its actual resources might have merited.

But in the end the greater might of Germany could not be gainsaid. That has been the central fact of European politics since 1870 when the Germans put their cobwebbed past behind them and unified their nation. Through catastrophic errors they twice brought it close to destruction. While by this experience they came to rue their bad qualities, they kept their good qualities of industry and invention.

The question was what to do with the strength and power their qualities gave them.

The question taxed both Margaret Thatcher and President François Mitterrand at the time of the second German unification in 1990. Mrs Thatcher would really have preferred two German states to continue after the collapse of Communism, and that was an idea floated at the time before being borne down by the desire of Germans in East and West to unite again. Mitterrand lent his support but it came at a price: united Germany must give up the D-mark. And so the euro was born.

What in European politics made a difference from earlier eras was that the German leaders shared these reservations about their country’s strength and power. Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl and now Angela Merkel are all too well aware that Germany just cannot throw its weight about as France and Britain used to do and as America still does.

Generations have passed but memories remain. Again amid the stresses of the present crisis the Poles, the Greeks and the British have found occasion to remind the Germans of history. Successive German chancellors have therefore chosen Europe as the vehicle for their ambitions.

But now the times are not normal. There is crisis, awful crisis, driving the nations of Europe apart again, threatening to destroy the single currency and put the progress into reverse. If German strength and power are to mean anything, they need at this point to be brought to bear. And they have been brought to bear. The agreement of 26 nations last week is the proof of it.

It was scarcely to be anticipated beforehand, but all these nations have in effect signed up to a German view of the crisis and a German solution. It consists in discipline, in everybody enforcing the same discipline over themselves as the Germans do – or if they cannot, agreeing that the European Commission and the European Court will enforce the discipline for them.

This has not come about as a result of chancellor Merkel handbagging her colleagues à la Thatcher. That is not Angela’s way. Her long-term love affair with Nicolas Sarkozy was a good place to start.

But go on to square the Dutch and the Austrians, warmly welcome new leaders in Italy, Spain and Greece and – hey presto! – you build up a continental impetus towards the accord that was actually reached in Brussels, among politicians scared of the crisis and anxious to spread the risks.

It is a triumph for German diplomacy, but the question remains whether it will work. The success of the German economy reflects the qualities of the German people, and unless the Portuguese or the Romanians assume the same qualities they will not achieve the same success. These and others in the toils of problems built up over decades have in effect to become Germans, and even then it will take them several decades more to get over their problems.

Yet perhaps it can be done. One reason why in Brussels 26 out of 27 nations supported Plan A is that there is no Plan B. The alternative to what has been resolved is the collapse of the euro and an even greater crisis. Not only were the politicians sobered by this, but their sudden clairvoyance seems also to have spread on to the streets of Europe: the demonstrators in Italy, Spain and Greece have gone home. It could be the start of a new era, in essence a German era, but wearing the friendly face and speaking in the soft voice of the woman who has brought it about.