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“The greatest political miracle since time began”
An interview with Robert
Cooper, EU Director-General for External and Politico-Military
Affairs.
Jacob Halpin
A British
scholar-diplomat, Robert Cooper assumed
his role at the European Council in
2002, where he is responsible to Javier
Solana, the European Union’s Foreign and
Security Policy chief. In 2003, to
critical acclaim, he published The
Breaking of Nations, winning the
Orwell Prize for Political Writing in
the process.
In his spacious office in
the towering, glass-fronted building of
the Council of the European Union, I
found Mr Cooper to be a refreshingly
passionate advocate of the EU, and a
little frustrated at the lack of
appreciation the body sometimes receives
from its citizens.
So why is it that Mr
Cooper holds the European system in such
high esteem when some characterise it
more as a meddling bureaucracy than a
set of institutions worthy of
admiration? An answer can be found in
the uniquely progressive position which
Mr Cooper assigns to Europe in his
shrewd analysis of contemporary
international relations.
The Cooper thesis
describes a world order consisting of
three distinct elements, which he
classes as the pre-modern, the modern,
and the post-modern. The modern
encompasses the classical
balance-of-power system, where state
sovereignty is key and a separation of
domestic and foreign policies exists.
The pre-modern world is
described as ‘pre-state, post-imperial
chaos’, where the state is incapable of
retaining a monopoly on the legitimate
use of force, exemplified by states such
as Somalia and Afghanistan.
Finally, the post-modern
world is one in which the classical
state system is again collapsing, but
this time into greater order. There is
no emphasis on a balance-of-power,
sovereignty, or a separation of the
domestic and the international, all the
traits of the conventional system.
Instead, there is ‘mutual interference’
in states’ affairs, a dissolution of
borders, and security based on
transparency, interdependence and a
rejection of force.
For Mr Cooper, the EU is
the one clear example of the
post-modern, and can be contrasted
against the continuing dominance of
geopolitics throughout much of the rest
of the world. The suggestion is that the
EU is not simply a different
political system, but one which has
surpassed anything to be found
elsewhere.
So why is it, I ask Mr
Cooper, that perceptions of the EU often
fail to recognise the achievements of
this unprecedented political structure?
When it comes to popularity among its
people, Mr Cooper answers, the EU has a
deep structural problem which can’t
really be avoided. All governments are
unpopular: they spend much of their time
telling people to do things they don’t
want to, such as paying tax. But
national governments have the benefit of
direct communication with their
citizens. They are held accountable and
can be removed in elections.
The European Union, he
notes, doesn’t have this advantage. It
is always vulnerable to governments
taking the credit when things happen
which citizens like and allowing Europe
to take the blame when they don’t. As a
result, Europe never gets properly
explained to its citizens.
The amazing thing,
continues Mr Cooper, is that people
haven’t understood that this is the
greatest political miracle, almost since
time began. The continent has a history
of almost a thousand years of war and
little else. In the eighteenth century
there was only one year when there was
not a major war going on.
The fact we no longer
fight each other would be a matter of
great astonishment to any previous
century. This hasn’t come about by
accident. Peace is not natural; the
natural condition of mankind is war. War
is prevented by institutions and by
building confidence.
A further miracle, he
continues, is that across Central Europe
we have just had revolutions which ended
in stable and democratic governments.
And to this one can add the freedom of
travel across the continent, and the
absence of needing to change currency in
most member states. We are all richer
than we’ve ever been before: the City of
London is a gigantic success story
because it’s a European financial
centre. Without the single market this
wouldn’t be the case. These things have
changed our lives completely.
It is energising to hear
this experienced and respected diplomat
speak so enthusiastically about the
European Union. I ask him about the lack
of ‘European-ness’ supposedly felt by
many of the Union’s citizens, and the
criticism that people are governed by a
body they feel little connection with.
Is this a problem? In the real world,
answers Mr Cooper, it isn’t in fact much
of a problem.
First of all, everything
that happens in Brussels can be debated
at the level of national governments.
Most of the time, he continues, people
don’t bother to debate the things that
happen in Brussels because it’s rather
technical stuff about agricultural
standards or food safety or the
environment. But if a country wants to
manage things like the environment it’s
no use it having perfect environmental
legislation; it has to do it along with
its neighbours.
This is a big problem,
continues Mr Cooper. Politics is local,
economics is global, and other subjects
like environment and security are often
regional. If we lived in an isolated
world in which everything happened at
the level of the nation state, then the
world would be a much, much poorer and
less well organised place.
Mr Cooper argues that
there is only one solution, and that is
for intensive cooperation between
governments. Governments have to be
elected, but we’ve understood for a long
time that it’s not enough to be
democratic. You have to have liberal
democracy because democracy on its own
can be dangerous. And now we need to
understand that it’s not enough just to
have liberal democracy, you need to have
liberal international democracy.
The picture painted by Mr
Cooper is one of a political body which
has surpassed anything seen previously,
and is consequently better-suited to
tackle today’s political challenges than
anywhere else in the world. A limited
appreciation of this on the part of the
European people may not matter too much
right now. But the EU seems set to
continue to expand, giving rise to an
increasingly intricate set of
institutional arrangements and political
challenges as it does so. If Mr Cooper’s
persuasive argument is endure this
change, I wonder whether this EU
‘rationale’ will in future need to be
communicated more compellingly to the
expanding European population.
Interview conducted in
November 2007 |
