It is time we had a new theory of international relations. Hume, the empiricist, observed and wrote on the balance of power; Kant, the rationalist, constructed a model for perpetual peace. With Hegel we have the march of ideas; and the states that embodied them marching across each other's territory. The end of the 19th century produced Marxist theories of international class struggle, Leninist theories of imperialism and Darwinist theories of racial struggle. These theories were enough to ruin most of the 20th century and perhaps we have done well to avoid new ones for a while.
The intellectual context has now changed and our theories need to change with it. Christopher Coker does not put forward a new theory, but he looks at international relations from an existentialist/ post-modern perspective. Is this not right for the spirit of the times? International relations today is about values and identity at least as much as it is about ideas of balance or plans to engineer peace or romantic idealist theories of progress.
Identity has long been important for the internal cohesion of nations. Nations, as Benedict Anderson taught us, are imagined communities. A nation must first exist in the mind of its citizens before it can hold together on the battlefield or football terraces; or before its parliament can exact loyalty and taxes. This book is about the imagining of international communities, and about the re-imagining of the countries that make them up.
The most successful act of imagination in the postwar world has been the invention of Europe. Not the European Economic Community, the European Community or the European Union, none of which command very much loyalty, but Europe. This brings together history, geography, culture, philosophy and, above all, it is a project about the future, something Europe shares with the US.
The invention of Europe depended on the reinvention of France and Germany. France suffered two defeats: in 1940, when it was occupied by Germany; and in 1944, when it was liberated by the Anglo-Americans. The second may in some ways have been the more painful. The French escape route from these defeats was Europe. Europe was a way of dealing with both the German threat and the US threat. The governing idea was that France could regain control of its destiny only by cooperating with Germany. Creating Europe around this core would also allow France to stand up to the US. De Gaulle's veto expressed a key element in the French conception of Europe because Britain was seen as irrevocably linked to the US. The reinvention of France was neatly expressed by an unidentified German statesman: "Europe is the continuation of France by other means."
But how complete was the reinvention of France? France adopted a radically new foreign policy, but it was still a policy which conceived the world-and France-in the traditional language of great power rivalry and cultural clashes. Some elements in French policy might even be seen as regressive. In the early part of this century the Germans insisted on their cultural uniqueness and stressed the need to fight the shallow Anglo-Saxon civilisation. Is France now falling into the same trap, but from a much weaker position?
The greatest act of reimagination in Europe has been performed in Germany. The Federal Republic, Heidegger complained, was a country which existed to teach the German people how not to be German. If Heidegger was against it, it was almost certainly the right thing to do. France needed Europe to escape from the US; Germany needed Europe to escape from itself and from its past. But whereas the French imagination was confined to the international arena, Germany reinvented itself from the bottom up: as a state and as a nation. Domestically it became a civilian nation with a strong emphasis on equality and on social and civil rights. In foreign affairs it became an anti-Bismarckian state. Reunification was achieved in the end precisely without blood and iron, but by the speeches and committees that Bismarck despised. All this was pursued through consensus at home and cooperation abroad. This new Germany fits much better into the European dream than France does.
And while France and Germany were dreaming European dreams, what was Britain up to? It was thinking Anglo-American. What Eliot and Auden were doing in literature, what Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples did in history, Bevin and others did through the creation of the Atlantic Alliance. From Britain's point of view this solved the problem of America (keeping it in) just as for France, Europe solved the opposite problem (keeping it out).
One of the threads in Coker's stimulating book is the thought that the European idea is more powerful than the Atlantic idea. He is right. The Atlantic idea is shallow. Britain made no attempt to reinvent itself as Germany or France had. Perhaps it is beginning to do so now. The US never needed to. The American project is still there: "Like the Russians, the Americans were not interested in earthly empires. They were interested in eternity. They were not interested in colonising space but in colonising time." The American project abroad is backed by the American dream at home. The Atlantic Alliance promoted the American project, but it was not the project itself.
The Atlantic Alliance could not compete with Europe in the imagination of either France or Germany. Probably the same is true today in Britain-for those who see a European dream as well as for those who see a nightmare. It seems wrong, however, to conclude that the west is entering its twilight years. It is not just that Nato seems in some respects to be in better health than the EU. Nato has performed a remarkable feat of reimagination and has reinvented itself as a post-cold war organisation for military cooperation (whereas the EU is moving rather slowly towards what promises to be a serious punch-up over enlargement). Such circumstances can change rapidly. The point is that the western Alliance carries a lower emotional charge than the EU, because that is all it needs. It does not impinge much on the lives of ordinary people, except in a mildly reassuring way-if your soldiers go off to fight it is nice to know that they have powerful allies. The Alliance is a low-intensity dream which does not require a great effort of imagination to sustain.
Nor does it need so much extra money (on top of what governments would pay for defence anyway). The question of who pays is always worth looking at. The US did not pay for Lend-Lease; but it did pay for the Marshall Plan. Germany has long carried a large financial burden for the EU but, significantly, seems increasingly weary of it.
Germany has always been able to be both the most European and the most Atlanticist of the continental countries. And the US has always taken a generous attitude towards European integration, seeing it as strengthening rather than weakening the west. The two countries which, from time to time, have seen a conflict between Europeanism and Atlanticism-Britain and France-have had little success in persuading their favoured partners of this: Britain has had no more luck in enlisting the US against Europe than France has had in getting Germany to share its anti-Atlanticism.
The Americans and Germans, the determining forces in shaping the post-war world, were right. They have always seen Europe and the Atlantic as complementary. To begin with, Europe was possible only within the broader western context created by the US. Without the American presence in Europe and the integration of German forces into Nato, the EU is hardly conceivable. The story of the European defence community comes as near as possible to providing historical proof of this. And if "the west" is a weak form of political community, this may assist rather than hinder its longevity. Moreover, its cultural strength may compensate for its intellectual weakness. Max Weber located Germany between Anglo-American materialism and Russian authoritarianism. That was 100 years ago. Germany is now firmly in the materialist camp. (And yet European materialism is not quite the same as American materialism. That is why the question of welfare reform may be more critical for the Europe of the future than anything to do with European institutions. The welfare state is central to the European dream.)
It may be possible to feel more optimistic about "the west" than Coker does, but he is still right that the west also needs to reinvent itself in a post-cold war world and that it can do so only in communication with others. Coker is also right to point out that the debate on Asian values is one of the keys to the future. Debates about values are a quintessential part of the modern age. The main characteristic of modernity is that values are no longer given, but need continually to be reinvented and rejustified. The question is whether this debate will help or hinder communication. The nightmare scenario for the future is a retreat into international autism such as Japan went through in the 1930s.
Although Coker's prime concern is the west, he tends towards a Spenglerian gloom about almost everything. Not just the west, but Europe too and its individual components have lost all sense of historic mission. Meanwhile the question is: how can nations have a sense of purpose, destiny or history when the dominant value is irony?
But what else is there left for the citizens of a post-heroic, post-imperial, post-modern society? One of the key texts of our age is Camus's Myth of Sisyphus. If one must imagine Sisyphus happy it is because he has discovered irony. International relations in its traditional mode of realpolitik cannot be based on such values, but how much use are those traditional modes of thinking today in the post-modern parts of our world? One of the dominant features of our world is powerless politics. The US cannot get Israel to do what it wants. The EU cannot get the two halves of Cyprus to do what it wants. If war is the continuation of foreign policy by other means, what happens to foreign policy when war ceases to be an option?
Besides, if the dominant tone of the world in an existentialist age is irony, then we shall have to live with that. Provided it is tinged with humanity, irony is not such a bad thing. It suggests a certain modesty about oneself, one's values and one's aspirations. At least irony is unlikely to be used to justify programmes of conquest or extermination. If the times require communication and cooperation, irony is as good a basis as any. If the times require something else, then irony may not be enough.
Twilight of the west
Christopher Coker
West View Press 1998, ?19.50
