Europe today is a continent of borders. The second-smallest
continent in the world has more than 50 distinct, sovereign
nation-states. Many of these are part of the European Union. At the core
of the EU project is an effort to reduce the power and significance of
these borders without actually abolishing them — in theory, an
achievable goal. But history is not kind to theoretical solutions.Today,
Europe faces three converging crises that are ultimately about national
borders, what they mean and who controls them. These crises appear
distinct: Immigration from the Islamic world, the Greek economic
predicament, and the conflict in Ukraine would seem to have little to do
with each other. But in fact they all derive, in different ways, from
the question of what borders mean.
Europe's borders have been the
foundation of both its political morality and its historical
catastrophes. The European Enlightenment argued against multinational
monarchies and for sovereign nation-states, which were understood to be
the territories in which nations existed. Nations came to be defined as
groupings of humans who shared a common history, language, set of values
and religion — in short, a common culture into which they were born.
These groups had the right of national self-determination, the authority
to determine their style of government and the people who governed.
Above all, these nations lived in a place, and that place had clear
boundaries.
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The
right of national self-determination has created many distinct nations
in Europe. And, as nations do, they sometimes distrust and fear one
other, which occasionally leads to wars. They also have memories of
betrayals and victimizations that stretch back for centuries before the
nations became states. Some viewed the borders as unjust, because they
placed their compatriots under foreign rule, or as insufficient to
national need. The right of self-determination led inevitably to
borders, and the question of borders inevitably led to disputes among
states. Between 1914 and 1945, Europeans waged a series of wars about
national boundaries and about who has the right to live where. This led
to one of the greatest slaughters of human history.
The memory of
that carnage led to the creation of the European Union. Its founding
principle was that this kind of massacre should never happen again. But
the union lacked the power to abolish the nation-state — it was too
fundamental to the Europeans' sense of identity. And if the nation-state
survived, so did the idea of place and borders.
If the
nation-state could not be abolished, however, then at least the borders
could lose their significance. Thus two principles emerged after World
War II: The first, predating the European Union, was that the existing
borders of Europe could not be changed. The hope was that by freezing
Europe's borders, Europe could abolish war. The second principle, which
came with the mature European Union, was that the bloc's internal
borders both existed and did not exist. Borders were to define the
boundaries of nation-states and preserved the doctrine of national
self-determination, but they were not to exist insofar as the movement
of goods, of labor and of capital were concerned. This was not absolute —
some states were limited in some of these areas — but it was a general
principle and goal. This principle is now under attack in three
different ways.
The Movement of Muslims in Europe
The
chaos in the Middle East has generated a flow of refugees toward Europe.
This is adding to the problem that European nations have had with prior
Muslim migrations that were encouraged by Europeans. As Europe
recovered from World War II, it needed additional labor at low cost.
Like other advanced industrial countries have done, a number of European
states sought migrants, many from the Islamic world, to fill that need.
At first, the Europeans thought of the migrants as temporary residents.
Over time, the Europeans conceded citizenship but created a doctrine of
multiculturalism, which appeared to be a gesture of tolerance and was
implicitly by mutual consent, given that some Muslims resisted
assimilation. But this doctrine essentially served to exclude Muslims
from full participation in the host culture even as they gained legal
citizenship. But as I have said, the European idea of the nation was
challenged by the notion of
integrating different cultures into European societies.
Partly
because of a failure to fully integrate migrants and partly because of
terrorist attacks, a growing portion of European society began
perceiving the Muslims already in Europe as threatening. Some countries
had already discussed resurrecting internal European borders to prevent
the movement not only of Muslims, but also of other Europeans seeking
jobs in difficult economic times. The recent wave of refugees has raised
the matter to a new level.
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The
refugee crisis has forced the Europeans to face a core issue. The
humanitarian principles of the European Union demand that refugees be
given sanctuary. And yet, another wave of refugees into Europe has
threatened to exacerbate existing social and cultural imbalances in some
countries; some anticipate the arrival of more Muslims with dread.
Moreover, once migrants are allowed to enter Europe by any one country,
the rest of the nations are incapable of preventing the refugees'
movement.
Who controls Europe's external borders? Does Spain
decide who enters Spain, or does the European Union decide? Whoever
decides, does the idea of the free movement of labor include the
principle of the free movement of refugees? If so, then EU countries
have lost the ability to determine who may enter their societies and who
may be excluded. For Europe, given its definition of the nation, this
question is not an odd, legal one. It goes to the very heart of what a
nation is, and whether the nation-state, under the principle of the
right of national self-determination, is empowered
to both make that decision and enforce it.
This
question does not merely concern Muslims. In the 19th and 20th
centuries, the Ostjuden — the Jews coming into Western Europe as they
fled czarist edicts — raised the same challenge, even though they sought
more vigorously to assimilate. But at that point, the notion of borders
was unambiguous even if the specific decision on how to integrate the
Jews was unclear. In many countries, the status of minorities from
neighboring nations was a nagging question, but there were tools for
handling it. The Muslim issue is unique in Europe
only to the extent that the European Union has made it unique.
The bloc has tried to preserve borders while sapping them of
significance, and now there is an upsurge of opposition not only to
Muslim immigration, but also to the European Union's understanding of
borders and free movement.
The Greek Crisis
The question of borders is also at the
heart of the Greek crisis.
We see two issues: one small, the other vast. The small one involves
capital controls. The European Union is committed to a single European
financial market within which capital flows freely. Greeks, fearing the
outcome of the current crisis, have been moving large amounts of money
out of Greece into foreign banks. They remember what happened during the
Cyprus crisis, when the government, capitulating to German demands in
particular, froze and seized money deposited in Cypriot banks. Under EU
rules, the transfer of deposits in one country of the bloc, or even
outside the bloc, is generally considered legitimate. However, in the
case of Cyprus, the free movement of capital across borders was halted.
The same could conceivably happen in Greece.
In any event, which
is the prior principle: the free movement of capital or the European
Union's overarching authority to control that flow? Are Greek citizens
personally liable for their government's debt — not merely through
austerity policies, but also through controls imposed by the Greek
government under European pressure to inhibit the movement of their
money? If the answer is the latter, then borders on capital can be
created temporarily.
The larger issue is the movement of goods. A
significant dimension of this crisis involves free trade. Germany
exports more than 50 percent of its gross domestic product. Its
prosperity depends on these exports. I have argued that the inability to
control the flow of German goods into Southern Europe drove the region
into economic decline. Germany's ability to control the flow of American
goods into the country in the 1950s helped drive its economic recovery.
The European Union permits limits on the movement of some products,
particularly agricultural ones, through subsidies and quotas. In theory,
free trade is beneficial to all. In practice, one country's short-term
gain can vastly outweigh others' long-term gains. The ability to control
the flow of goods is a tool that might slow growth but decrease pain.
The
essential principle of the European Union is that of free trade, in the
sense that the border cannot become a checkpoint to determine what
goods may or may not enter a country and under what tariff rule. The
theory is superb, save for its failure to address the synchronization of
benefits. And it means that the right to self-determination no longer
includes the right to control borders.
Ukraine and the 'Inviolability' of Borders
Finally,
there is the Ukraine issue — which is not really about Ukraine, but
about a prior principle of Europe: Borders cannot be allowed to change.
The core of this rule is that altering borders leads to instability.
This rule governed between 1945 and 1992. Then, the fall of the Soviet
Union transformed the internal borders of Europe dramatically, moving
the Russian border eastward and northward. The Soviet collapse also
created eight newly free nations that were Soviet satellites in Central
and Eastern Europe and 15 new independent states — including Russia —
from the constituent parts of the Soviet Union. It could be argued that
the fall of the Soviet Union did not change the rule on borders, but
that claim would be far-fetched. Everything changed. Then came the
"velvet divorce" of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and now there are
potential divorces in the United Kingdom, Spain and Belgium.
Perhaps
most importantly, the rule broke down in Yugoslavia, where a single
entity split into numerous independent nations, and, among other
consequences, a war over borders ensued. The conflict concluded with the
separation of Kosovo from Serbia and its elevation to the status of an
independent nation. Russia has used this last border change to justify
redrawing the borders of Georgia and as a precedent supporting its
current demand for the autonomy and control of eastern Ukraine.
Similarly, the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia shifted
dramatically as the result of war. (On a related note, Cyprus, divided
between a Turkish-run north and a Greek-run south, was allowed into the
European Union in 2004 with its deep border dispute still unsettled.)
Since
the end of the Cold War, the principle of the inviolability of borders
has been violated repeatedly — through the creation of new borders,
through the creation of newly freed nation-states, through peaceful
divisions and through violent war. The principle of stable borders held
for the most part until 1991 before undergoing a series of radical
shifts that sometimes settled the issue and sometimes left it
unresolved. The Europeans welcomed most of these border adjustments, and
in one case — Kosovo — Europeans themselves engineered the change.
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It
is in this context that the Ukrainian war must be considered. Europe's
contention, supported by America, is that Russia is attempting to
change inviolable borders.
There are many good arguments to be made against the Russians in
Ukraine, which I have laid out in the past. However, the idea that the
Russians are doing something unprecedented in trying to redraw Ukraine's
borders is difficult to support. Europe's borders have been in flux for
some time. That is indeed a matter of concern; historically, unsettled
borders in Europe are precursors to war, as we have seen in Yugoslavia,
the Caucasus and now Ukraine. But it is difficult to argue that this
particular action by Russia is in itself a dramatically unprecedented
event in Europe. The principle of national self-determination depends on
a clear understanding of a nation and the unchallenged agreement on its
boundaries. The Europeans themselves have in multiple ways established
the precedent that borders are not unchallengeable.
There are two
principles competing. The first is the European Union's desire that
borders be utterly permeable without the nation-state losing its right
to self-determination. It is difficult to see how a lack of control over
borders is compatible with national self-determination. The other
principle is that existing borders not be challenged. On the one hand,
the union wants to diminish the importance of borders. On the other
hand, it wants to
make them incontestable.
Neither
principle is succeeding. Within Europe, more forces are emerging that
want to return control over borders to nation-states. In different ways,
the Muslim immigrant crisis and the Greek crisis intersect at the
question of who controls the borders. Meanwhile, the inviolability of
borders has been a dead letter since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The
idea of borders being archaic is meaningful only if the nation-state is
archaic. There is no evidence that this is true in Europe. On the
contrary, all of the pressures we see culturally and economically point
to not only the persistence of the idea of nationality, but also to its
dramatic increase in Europe. At the same time, there is no evidence that
the challenge to borders is abating. In fact, during the past quarter
of a century, the number of shifts and changes, freely or under
pressure, has only increased. And each challenge of a national border,
such as the one occurring in Ukraine, is a challenge to a nation's
reality and sense of self.
The European Union has promised
peace and prosperity.
The prosperity is beyond tattered now. And peace has been
intermittently disrupted — not in the European Union, but around it —
since the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 to create a common
economic and monetary union. All of this is linked to the question of
what a border represents and how seriously we take it. A border means
that this is
my country and not yours.
This idea has been a source of anguish in Europe and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, it is a reality embedded in the human condition. Borders
matter, and they matter in many different ways. The European crisis,
taken as a whole, is rooted in borders. Attempting to abolish them is
attractive in theory. But theory faces reality across its own border.
What Borders Mean to Europe is republished with permission of Stratfor.
![The US equipment would go to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania [File: EPA]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vogx4rShjbjdCTy5hbwv60jaz32LVIWQlt9tfRtcoWVS_Zx_HGPabMdRA0OWA1aX7dca8uHCaCXcXzaI1fsQD8eeQ4kDm20oZWo94iPcJrmGlmKSeeGX-XAVlB9SnyzCahcW9wakezo4pJuLt-78wJVyeOVpjb60P9U5XAGhV7UBh6HmXMQxt7xByuce-CcBtp7xlRoKKUmhUH=s0-d "US to send military equipment to NATO allies in Europe")
