EUROPE'S WORLD DEBATING FORUM
Is the Mediterranean the Achilles heel of security in Europe?
Autumn 2008
The European Union, notwithstanding its exceptional success in constructing 'Europe' in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second World War and the divisions of the Cold War, has had its fair share of missteps in the realm of foreign policy. The Mediterranean is often portrayed as one of those foreign policy areas where the European Union has been not-so-successful.
This is not for lack of effort. During the 1970s and 1980s Euro-Arab dialogue was tried. In the 1990s, the EU became grew more ambitious and launched the Euro-Mediterranean partnership process. While the latter effort has succeeded insofar as it helped to generate a 'we' feeling and a sense of shared destiny in the Mediterranean, the impression remains that the EU is not doing enough about the Mediterranean and that latter may turn out to be the Achilles Heel for security in Europe. Be that as it may, what exactly is the nature of weakness that the Mediterranean has generated for security in ‘Europe’?
Securing the Mediterranean for ‘Europe’
From its very inception, the European Union's oeuvres toward its southern Mediterranean counterparts have been shaped around its non-military security concerns. During the 1970s and 1980s, these concerns were mostly about the secure flow of oil and natural gas at reasonable prices. Through the Euro-Arab dialogue, these concerns were largely addressed. At the time, the European Union (then the European Community) distanced itself from United States policy-making through adopting a more even-handed approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Following the end of the Cold War the European Union sought to capitalise on the vacuum created by the post-Gulf War (1990-91) disarray in the Arab World and the momentum generated by Palestinian-Israeli peace-making, and set up the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (1995). As in the past, the Euro-Med Partnership was designed to meet the European Union's security concerns. At this stage, concerns of the EU were structured around illegal migration and its effects on European societies. To put it somewhat dramatically, EU actors were vary of Southern Mediterranean problems becoming European problems.
The Euro-Med Partnership has so far had an uneven record. On the one hand, it has been successful in revitalising the Mediterranean as a framework for thinking and action. The Mediterranean has become a ‘framework for thinking’ in that those of us on the two shores of the Mediterranean have once again begun to think of ourselves as 'we'. Generating 'we' feeling is no small success, even if 'we' do not seem to be getting along all-too-well at the moment. The Mediterranean has also become a ‘framework for action’ in that a number of reform processes as well as trade agreements were jump-started. What is more, the EU was able to mobilise civil societal actors in the South in various reform-related projects. Yet, the impression remains that the EU is not doing enough about the Mediterranean. Some even give this lack a sense of urgency and suggest that the Mediterranean may turn out to be the Achilles Heel of security in Europe. But what exactly is the nature of the EU’s Mediterranean dilemma?
Europe’s Mediterranean dilemma
The nature of the weakness that the Mediterranean has generated for the European Union is not merely a consequence of the failure of Arab-Israeli peace-making, or a measly combination of EU irresoluteness and Southern unwillingness. Surely elements of both have contributed to the current impasse. Southern unwillingness is well-documented. Southern Mediterranean partners of Euro-Med are invariably portrayed as half-hearted, pretending to be interested in ‘European values’ while pursuing the economic, financial and other carrots that the EU promises. The EU, on the other hand, is regarded as irresolute because of its inability to decide whether it is pursuing its ‘interests’ (understood as seeking ‘stability’ through close cooperation with heavy-handed regional governments) or its ‘values’ (through encouraging transition to ‘democracy’ as well as liberalisation).
However, the EU’s Mediterranean dilemma is not one of ‘stability versus democracy’ though it may often come across as such. It is often suggested that the prudent thing for the European Union to do is to put its values (i.e. democracy, human rights and the rule of law) on hold and pursue stability in the Mediterranean. This is justified on reasons of the primacy of the kind of challenge illegal migration poses: there are boats that need to be intercepted, borders that need to be policed there is so much more collaborative police-work to be achieved if one does not get on the wrong side of regional governments by calling for transition to democracy.
This is a misconception of the European dilemma insofar as it suggests that pursuing greater democracy in the Mediterranean does not serve the purposes of stability. Both democracy and collaborative police-work would help achieve stability. The difference between the two is that collaborative police-work produces some short-term results. However while pursued on its own it runs the risk of generating problems in the medium-to-long term. This is because heavy-handed police-work alienates citizens from their governments as well as the EU. Pursuing democracy in the South (without leaving required police collaboration aside), on the other hand, may demand sacrifices in the short-term but is likely to produce greater stability in the medium-to-long term. That is to say, Europe’s Mediterranean dilemma is one of choosing how to achieve stability: purely through collaborative police-work (which requires putting ‘European values’ on hold when the Mediterranean is concerned) or through democracy (which is the model the EC/EU used for re-creating ‘European values’ in the post-War era).
The weakness the Mediterranean has generated for the EU, then, is a consequence of its inability to decide how to achieve its interests defined as stability. The European Union is not trying to choose between its values and its interests. The European Union is unable to decide how exactly to pursue its interests: whether to pursue its short-term interests purely through collaborative police-work or to pursue its medium–to–long-term interests through empowering civil societal actors and encouraging regional governments to strengthen democratic institutions. Both serve the EU’s interests; both have values embedded. If the EU prioritises collaborative police-work over democracy, this would be a step to safeguard European values against ‘foreigners’ who come to Europe but experience difficulties in living by those values. If the EU prioritises democracy over collaborative police-work, this would be a step to export the EC/EU model of stability through deepening democracy. Therefore it would also be in accordance with ‘European values’.
How to address the dilemma?
Recognising the nature of the dilemma would be a constructive first step: Europe’s Mediterranean dilemma is about choosing between the short-term and the medium-to-long term; choosing between which values to safeguard first and foremost, and for whose purposes.
Apparently, the South is not interested in owning the Euro-Med process, because it is not interested in ‘European values’. If true, this may help address the European dilemma. It is not the EU’s place to impose its values upon anybody.
But, what if it is not entirely true? How about those citizens of the South who actually want to live in countries that reside by those values and are willing to risk their own and loved ones’ lives to achieve this? In such an eventuality, it befalls upon progressive actors on both shores of the Mediterranean to come up with an alternative approach. Here is what I propose:
Jean Monnet’s strategy for avoiding a repetition of the violence that characterised the first half of the 20th century in Europe was integrating regional countries to the point that war would become unthinkable. Encouraging further democratisation, greater respect for human rights and the institutionalisation of the rule of law was at the heart of this project of creating a zone of peace that lived by ‘European values’ constructed as such.
Notwithstanding their own not-so-distant experiences, EU actors’ approach to the South evinces no awareness of such shared experience. Such lack of empathy, in turn, has not allowed either side to recognise that ‘Europe’ itself went through a period of insecurity. ‘European values’, which are currently being sought to be exported to the South as a solution to their insecurities were not visible during those turbulent times amidst the militarism of the 1930s, ‘anti-communism of the 1940s and 1950s when it would have been difficult to think of ‘Europe’ as a ‘normative power’. ‘European values’ were constructed in and through the project of securing Europe through integration.
Understanding ‘European values’ as the means and end of a security project as such has the benefit of providing a common ground for the North and South. The North would avoid projecting itself as a neo-colonial power. The South would run out of reasons to reject ‘European values’ if they are presented as a security project, which does not require buying into any ‘cultural’ baggage. What the Southern partners need from their Northern counterparts is learning about the ways in which ‘European values’ have been re-constructed in ‘Europe’ amidst the insecurities of the post-war period. What the Southern partners need is to learn from EU experiences and then seek to secure the Mediterranean in and through constructing ‘Mediterranean values’.