How it all started- the beginning of WWII

I read today an article in le Soir about the different dates of the beginning of the WWII. For some it was 1 September 1939, for others December 1941. I started thinking, how can we write about the origins of our world if we cannot agree on a single date. Did our epoch start with the beginning of IIWW or with its end? And even the end is different in Europe 8/9 May and in Asia.

In 2007 Commission launched a big campaign 'Together for 50 years'... commerating the Treaty of Rome. But there was the High Authority and the Treaty of Paris before. And before the Schuman Declaration there was the Council of Europe. Where should we start the chronology? We need a sense of origins if we are to build a sense of belonging....

Or maybe we should look at the end of the old empires as the beginning of a new order. When Tsarist Russia, Ottoman Turkey and Austro-Hungarian duarchy seized to exist it was a new beginning for the whole terrain West of Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

I am afrain we shall get nowhere with dates. We have to go back to the ideas. And I am afraid we need to look at lawyers and philosophers: Hugo Grotius and Immanuel Kant. Maybe the law as a civilising power has to be the grounding idea? Maybe the idea of peace - perpetual if possible should be traced for being behind the European project? We need to be careful about looking for the origins... cause they will determine the objectives and the future. So if we look at the beginning of the WWII we talk about all that superiority and megalomania which seduced Germans in 1933. Tracing sins and vices leads you nowhere. You can find them everywhere. They are part of the human nature. Maybe we should look at examples of humans who went beyond it...

So the story of Europe starts with people who tried to reconcile the heimats (small territorial entities) with the power of the market and the notion of state as a regulating authority. National state was only a one example of reconciling these notions. And it had a catastrophic consequences. So not detaching yourself from local patriotism you need to establish a legal order where these heimats can survice and exchange (trade). And the centre cannot get to big so that it does not overshadow the small demoi, which it is composed of.

So the concept of funding fathers might be also exclusive. We should look beyond Adenauer, Monnet and Spaak. We should look at ideas that drove them. Or maybe anybody gets mature only when he/she liberates from the parents... Let the European dove fly and fly higher than the eagles of the nation states. The German eagle once managed to call all the other birds on the sky. We cannot let it fly under any other colours.

L'Europe puissance - the key question

Many years ago I read an article comparing the prevailing visions of Europe in France, Germany and UK (divided among their respective political parties). The main conclusion was that French tend to think about Intergovernmental Confederation (which guarantees respect of their nation-etat and is a vehicle of their interests), Germans about a Federal State (with clear delineation of power between different government levels) and the Britts about a Free Trade Union (reducing internal barriers for trade and competition, with limited central powers).

But I am afraid that many of these divisions disappear when people start to talk about spreading European values and L'Europe puissance (Europe as a political power). Recently I came across another article where the author complains that EU has concentrated too much on 'regulation', abandoning the political project as such. I cite his words:
Ce n’est pas la régulation qui est un objectif en soi, c’est le projet politique qui est l’objectif. (It is not the regulation which is an objective as such, the political project is the objective).

This small innocent phrase which follows on the speeches of many so called 'founding fathers',made me think about value of thinking small against thinking big. I am afraid that whenever we start to talk about 'projet politique' there is a tendency to think in terms of the traditional nation state which has been the major political project of XIXth - XXth century (unification of Italy and Germany, the emergence of nation states in Central Europe following the I world war etc.). And with own its merits (declaratory equality of citizens, social protection, concept of demos), a nation state has been probably one of the biggest oppressor and source of violence in the international realm (wars 1914-1945), postcolonial conflicts in Africa. So if we think about EU in these terms, there is a risk of creating a new imperial structure which will repeat the nation-state experience in the larger intercontinental context. But it will not change the rules of the game, which have proved to be so dangerous for the humankind.

I think that we should accept the European project as precisely rather a regulation of relations between states than creation of a new political entity which will finally make the 'European' voice heard. It does not need to go any further. Europe should be a big think-tank, regulator and place for discussion/peaceful confrontation among different actors. It does not need to go much further but make all the internal actors play according to the rules of the game.

And precisely the French reflex of talking about 'l'Europe puissance' is dangerous in this context. We need much more moderation in our approach to foreign policy. EU should behave rather like inward looking China who tries to prevent external threats but does not have this intervention reflex that we so painfully experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Europe will not be a better, more efficient France. We cannot expect that by giving money, sending troops or negotiating trade deals we can fundamentally change the reality of countries in Africa, Asia or Latin America. We can support positive tendencies, help in sharing good practices but our influence will always remain limited.

I think that if we continue to talk about Europe as a sort of 'better, bigger nation state' we shall only bring back the imperialist thinking which partly lead to the second world war. There is tention between the 'Europe as a project to guarantee peace' and the 'Europe puissance' megalomania. I hope that this is what meant Schuman, Monnet, Spinnelli, Spaak and Adenauer. Moderation should become the major spice of European foreign policy.