British politicians love to tell us about Britain's leading role on the international stage. But the reality is that Britain has not been master of its fate this past half century; its place, and its role, have been framed by two factors over which it has had no control: the rise and fall of the cold war and the policies of the US.
Why pick on Britain? The whole world has been subject to these two factors. The difference between Britain and most of its partners in Europe, is that the latter have devoted longterm efforts to trying to shape those areas of their strategic environment which were not determined by these two factors. In practice this has meant focusing on European integration.
By contrast, the British have been unable to find any means of coming to terms with European integration as part of a grand strategy. As a result, they have limited their options to reacting to an agenda set by the two mega-factors.
Thus, the postwar period marks a fundamental break in British foreign policy: for the first time in centuries, Britain has opted out of any national grand strategy.
For Britain, the past 50 years can be conveniently divided into five periods. The first: Victory (1945-56). Britain claimed the glory of victory and the privilege of empire. Britain was a permanent member of the UN security council, Nato was created, and Britain developed its own nuclear weapons. But Britain's delusions of grandeur ended abruptly and without recall at Suez in 1956. Not because it was a stupid adventure (which it was), but because the Americans put a stop to it. Thereafter, Britain never again risked offending the US.
The second period: Follow My Leader (1956-70). Britain adopted the role of the faithful acolyte of the US because it could not afford, and did not dare, to pursue any alternative. One of the central events of this period was Harold Macmillan's belated attempt to take Britain into the European Economic Community. But Macmillan had not really made a strategic conversion to the full implications of Community membership; he saw it primarily as an instrumental device for staying in with the US. With the Nassau agreement for the purchase of Polaris, Macmillan publicly demonstrated to General de Gaulle where his real priorities lay, and thus fatally jeopardised his European tactic.
The third period: European Interlude (1970-79). Edward Heath took Britain into the EEC, and after the 1975 referendum, Harold Wilson just about managed to keep Britain in the Community. But Britain secured membership of the Community without any stra-tegic shift in attitudes towards the project.
The fourth period: The Empire Strikes Back (1979-91). During the partnership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the two premises of Britain's special relationship-US leadership, and the cold war confrontation-were restored in all their former vigour.
But by 1991, the Berlin Wall had fallen, Germany was united, eastern Europe was free and the Soviet Union had collapsed. The fleeting triumph of the Gulf war could not prevent everyone from seeing that the bitter four-year conflict between Europe and the US over the war in former Yugoslavia was reaching the point where it would cause fatal damage to the Atlantic Alliance.
The fifth period began in 1991: Strategic Dilemma. The Soviet Union has vanished, and with it the life-and-death polarisation which made Britain a desirable adjunct for US strategy. Even if the US remains committed to Europe, it is now clear that Britain has been displaced as its principal ally in Europe by a re-united Germany.
Meanwhile it has become clear, ever since the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1991, that Britain's refusal over the past 24 years to develop a viable European strategy, is no longer sustainable. I do not mean that Britain has a reprehensible European strategy, or merely one that I disagree with. I certainly do not mean that Britain has some kind of moral duty to follow a federalist strategy. If the British want a non-federalist strategy, or an anti-federalist strategy, or an isolationist strategy, or any other kind of strategy, that is fine with me.
The problem is that they do not now have, and have never had, any kind of strategy for dealing with the central strategic problems in Europe. What are they? There are two. The first is structural and permanent; it is called Germany. The second is somewhat more distant, circumstantial and conditional; it is called Russia.
For 40 years after the end of the second world war, the Russian problem loomed so large that it entirely overshadowed the German problem. But the German problem existed long before the Russian one and precipitated two world wars inside 30 years. Today, the German problem remains. Unless it is solved, no other problem can be solved.
What is the German problem? It is simply that Germany is much larger, richer and more powerful than any of its neighbours. This is a problem for all of Germany's neighbours, all of whom need a strategy for containing Germany's strength.
There are three possible ways to contain an over-powerful state. You can conquer it, occupy it, and divide it up. You can form an alliance against it, a sort of balance of power or deterrence strategy. Or you can build treaty-based relations with it.
Immediately after the second world war, the victors followed the first of these strategies. They conquered Germany, occupied it, divided it up and limited its independence. Britain and France also set in motion the second strategy of a balance of power alliance against Germany in the 1947 Treaty of Dunkirk. But it was soon obvious that neither of these two strategies was going to provide a longterm solution. Both strategies had to be abandoned because the allies needed to co-opt Germany's growing strength to help deal with Europe's other strategic problem, the threat from the Soviet Union.
But British policy followed the assumption that the German problem could be dealt with as a cost-free by-product of western strategy towards the Soviet Union. Germany would be divided and its sovereignty limited, while Britain and France would be nuclear powers with permanent seats on the UN security council. Britain also had a weak version of the third strategy: the promotion of unambitious institutional arrangements run on the basis of consensus, such as the Council of Europe.
But institutions which operate on the basis of unanimity do not deal with the problems created by over-mighty states. Some people believe that consensus means that every member state has an equal vote and therefore a veto, and thus strengthens the position of weak states. This view is wrong. The central characteristic of consensus institutions is that they strengthen the position of the strong. Nato is run by consensus. Does this mean that Luxembourg has an equal voice with every other member and therefore a veto? No, it means that Nato is run by the Americans.
In any case, the political benefits of this strand of British policy were annulled by the unconstraining nature of the institutions. For if they were to be unconstraining on the British, then they must also be unconstraining on the Germans.
The French came to quite different conclusions. They knew, from their history, that they had to find a solution to the German problem. After dabbling in the first two strategies, they concluded there was no alternative to strategy three, the negotiation of close, treaty-based relations with Germany. Thus in May 1950 Robert Schuman proposed the creation of a Franco-German Coal and Steel Community.
Britain reacted with suspicion to the Schuman plan. It also misunderstood almost everything about the plan, starting with the belief that this was an economic proposal, but with detestable political connotations. There are many people in Britain who still suffer under the illusion that the primary raison d'?tre of the European Community is the promotion of trade liberalisation.
But even when the political agenda was perceived, it was widely misunderstood. In 1950, Sir Roger Makins told Ernest Bevin that the Schuman plan posed the stark choice between intergovernmentalism and federalism, as if there were no middle ground. Malcolm Rifkind is arguing the same today.
The other European countries, starting with France, were not interested in creating a nice, inter-governmental, free trade area. They wanted to deal with the German problem, and that required a politically charged treaty with constraining institutions.
The key development of the past 50 years is that the Germans themselves have concluded that Germany is a central strategic problem for Europe; they have further concluded that this problem must be settled by a treaty-based relationship between Germany and its neighbours. This conclusion sets the parameters for everyone else.
If the Germans and the core countries in Europe want a treaty-based system which tends in a federalising direction, that is the kind of system there will be. Whether it pleases Whitehall or the House of Commons is completely immaterial.
The only real alternative for a British government to falling in with the strategic preferences of the core countries, is to hope that the EU will run into such difficulties that the integrationist process will come to a complete halt, or even go into reverse, for example, if Emu is delayed, or perhaps starts on time and then blows up.
But if Emu goes ahead, does not blow up, and proceeds relatively constructively, then the stakes for Britain, between taking part or not taking part in the integrationist process, will rise steeply. Whether any British government can rise to that challenge, before the entry fee becomes politically unaffordable, is one of the biggest conundrums in the general election.
