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Blair’s hopes of leading Europe are doomed

The headline read, “Stop Blair: ambition to lead Europe hits fierce opposition.” Forget the opposition, I wondered, what about the ambition? We thought Tony Blair hated Europe, loathed its summits and preferred the Anglo-American camaraderie of Camp David. Europe has never tolerated being led. Diversity is its glory, cantankerousness its defence. It is not a family or a community but a marketplace. Those who have sought its unity, even as a political metaphor , have come to grief.

The first man to lead Europe did so only after Antony “thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse.” Julius Caesar died slumped in a pool of blood. His eventual successors were seen off stage as they have always been, by other Europeans, variously Huns, Goths, Franks, and Saxons.

Not until Charlemagne in the 9th century did something like a European empire re-emerge, corresponding to a remarkable extent to the original six nations of the common market. But half a century of dynastic wars and Viking raids soon destroyed it, a point glossed over by the Eurocrats who cite Charlemagne as their forebear. The key to the much-underrated Viking expansion was that it was colonial rather than imperial.

Not so the Holy Roman Empire. Its rulers rarely found peace, whether at home or overseas. The 12th-century Frederick Barbarossa ended his attempt to amalgamate Europe under the banner of the third crusade, in the course of which he drowned.

Charles V of Spain, perhaps the first true leader of a European coalition, was elected head of the Holy Roman Empire with the help of German money. But that involved the enmity of France and England, resolved by constant wars and excommunications. Charles’ supremacy was supposedly “to exterminate heresy,” yet he tolerated the Protestant sack of Rome and fended off the imperial ambitions of Suleiman the Magnificent, another potential ruler of Europe who conquered its eastern half and reached the gates of Vienna. In 1556, Charles wisely vanished to a monastery.

The story of 17th and 18th century Europe mirrors that of post-war Brussels, of attempts by the custodians of a big idea, in that case Popes and inquisitors, to impose a centralised bureaucracy. The House of Hapsburg believed itself dynastic ruler of Europe but was rarely accepted as such. Attempts to unify the core nations of Europe, from the Peace of Ryswick to the treaties of Utrecht, Aix-la-Chapelle and Paris, read like a catalogue of dyspeptic Euro-summits. All ended in conflict and war. Europe seemed at peace only when it stuck to trade — be it the Lombard banks, the Calais Staple or the Hanseatic League.

Edward Gibbon, writing of the fall of Rome, might have been describing his contemporary Europe when he concluded that, rather than empire, “independent states linked by a general resemblance of religion, language and manners are productive of the most beneficial consequences to the liberty of mankind.”

Yet one megalomaniac after another thought he could buck the trend. Napoleon understood the concept of subsidiarity, of “nationalities freely formed and free internally,” but as under all dictatorships, and the EU, things never work out that way. His European ambition, he later wrote, “will be linked to my person because I have carried its torch.” Adolf Hitler approached international leadership in a similar spirit. “Never tolerate the establishment of two continental powers in Europe,” he wrote.

Those who used to play the board game called diplomacy will recall that certain patterns recurred irrespective of the skill of the players. Germany always did well for a while, until everyone combined against it. Britain did best by standing aloof. The two states on the fringes of Europe — Russia and Turkey — could never win but could cause havoc.

Determinists would argue that any attempt to “lead” Europe is bound to fail for two reasons. First, its nation states, big or small, are culturally too idiosyncratic to be led by any but their own. Secondly, the mere act of trying to lead induces a putative ruler to stray “out of area” and overreach himself, as if Europe exists only against a common foe.

That overreaching also has a pattern. It seeks to control the Near East and it seeks to conquer Russia. All champions of Europe have met their fate on the roads to Moscow or Jerusalem. It is uncanny that Mr. Blair’s two great failures in foreign policy — which surely disqualify him as a leader — involved alienating Russia and the Muslim world.

The paradox of the EU remains that of diplomacy down the ages, of how to discipline trade between nations without putting an intolerable strain on their sovereignty. The new Lisbon constitution rejects any such paradox. It claims, with Napoleonic hauteur, the euphemism of all autocracy, the level playing field and the acqui communautaire (agreed laws). It may lead to ever closer union for a while, but every moment in history says that, at some time, such hauteur will be swept aside, as it almost was in the referendums of 2005.

By merely incanting “Europe” at all heretics, wrote historian Tony Judt a decade ago, “we shall wake up one day to find that, far from solving the problems of our continent, the myth of Europe has become an impediment to our recognising them.”

The truth is that the one ideology to which all Europe’s aspiring emperors have played host is amnesia. Mr. Blair should read history and forget the job. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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