Europe, a model for other regional economic and political integrations or a unique experience: possibilities and limitations, in the light of Europe/Korea relations.
This paper will examine the undoubted success of the European Union’s (EU) integration process and assess the transferability of that model to North East Asia and Korea in particular.
I wish also to pay some attention to the question of the EU’s relations with North Korea and the possibility of the EU playing some mediator role in Korean and East Asian integration.
The EU as a model of regional integration
The search for parallels and similarities between the EU’s own undoubted success as a vehicle for regional integration and other regional integrations has produced a huge literature.
Some such speculation has been driven by the EU’s own powerful and effective propaganda machine which though rightly proud of its successes somewhat overestimates the transferability of its own integration model elsewhere in the world.
Some other such speculation is driven often by a "wishful thinking" in regions with seemingly intractable problems, where a body of intellectual opinion beliefs that a "European style" solution of integration can indeed as a sort of "deus ex machina" (Divine intervention).
This is a view I have come across in the Middle East and South Asia - and certainly exists also in this region.
Finally there is the widespread notion that the EU is somehow a "neutral" power. This view, more accurately, this hope, stems from the Cold War and the Moscow/Washington rivalry, and as above is kept alive by a mixture of EU propaganda and external wishful thinking. Could the EU be a third, more benign force, rather than having to take sides between Moscow and Washington DC.
The Chinese government has long played this card.
Even with the demise of Soviet power and the emergence of a unipolar world dominated by the USA, this notion of EU neutrality shows considerable vigour.
This view still informs much Arab strategic thinking about the EU possible role in the Middle East, where there is a strong notion that the EU can be a mediator on the Palestine question.
The reality is somewhat different. The search for parallels between European integration and other regional integrations resembles a journey through a maze. Temping paths are followed with enthusiasm only to come against an impenetrable wall. The enthusiastic explorer has to retrace his steps and follow another and perhaps prematurely rejected path before coming to another dead end. Eventually the weary and frustrated searcher has to backtrack while preserving some dignity.
To keep the analogy, I am not suggesting giving up, on the contrary I am suggesting that the realistic aim of developing a comparative analytic methodology towards regional integration by exploring the maze is the best we can hope for - rather than believing that the search will reveal a model for integration which can then be applied elsewhere.
The continued success story of the EU
The EU started from a "European Economic Community" established by the Treaty of Rome in 1956 to encompass six western European countries - two of whose rivalries (France and Germany) had engulfed Europe in three wars within 70 years (1871, 1914-18, 1939-45), wars which further had caused worldwide disruptions. Indeed, at its essence, the EU was seen as, and has proven to be, the vehicle for the epoch-making reconciliation of France and Germany.
The EU started life against a very specific set of circumstances. Very similar circumstances existed in East Asia - however there are all important differences which should be noted to avoid the temptations of superficial parallels.
Firstly, there was a widespread notion amongst the West European political elites that nationalism and nation state rivalries had had a disastrous effect on European history. The horrors of national aggression could only be set aside in a pan-European framework. This feeling, particularly in Germany, as I point out later, gave rise to a new generation of idealistic public policy practitioners who thought in European terms, not national terms.
Secondly, the prospects for a united Europe were immediately constrained by the channels of the Potsdam Agreement which split Europe along ideological lines and it was immediately clear that no alteration in that post war settlement would be allowed by the two major superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union.
Thirdly, the USA was eager to support west Europe’s integration in order to bolster its own anti-Soviet position and was prepared to give the emerging West European entity its nuclear protection and to support the economic recovery with a flood of dollars under the Marshall Plan. It has been said accruately and wittily that the EU owes as much to the Marshall Plan as the Schuman Plan. (The Schuman Plan was the original basis for the European Steel and Coal Community which was the putative Common Market)
Fourthly, the EU’s integration is predicated on the need to compete with an external rival, the Soviet Union, and this presented political elites with a common ideological, military and economic focus. Such an agreed enemy is a major driver of regional integration, and has been absent in East Asia. It existed elsewhere, for example in South East Asia, where fear of Asian Communism drove together the rather disparate partners of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand to form ASEAN. Also, in complementary parallel to the EU‘s own eastward expansion, the anti-Communist ASEAN, eventually provided the benevolent framework for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to transform their economies and step out of isolation.
So the EU begins life committed to regional integration, guaranteed by the USA and NATO and with a clear ideological aim of proving itself a superior model to the version of European integration offered under the Soviet model. It was in a sense a controlled experiment. Success was not guaranteed, that still depended on the political will of the individual member states, but a combination of powerful supporters and powerful opponents drove the EU integration forward.
Most interestingly in term of East Asian parallels, the division of Europe and Germany at Potsdam offered an immediate opportunity for the rehabilitation of the two Germanys. Both were offered redemption by absorption - the one in the West and the EU, the other in the East in COMECOM.
The mind speeds to the situation in Korea, but there is a fundamental difference which should be noted. Germany was the instigator of the calamitous war but because of the exigencies of the Cold War, West Germans had a unique chance for renewal as "Europeans" - and it must be said, seized the chance gratefully and productively. (West) Germany’s economic potential was harnessed for the west and contemporary fears were set aside as West Germany was allowed to rearm.
In stark contrast, poor Korea was both the victim of the war and the victim of the peace ! I shall return to the German/Korean parallel later when I consider unification.
The aggressor in Asia, Japan, was not divided by the great powers distrustful of a resurgent Japan, but was occupied by the USA and led to recovery under US protection and guidance. As we all recognise, the question of Japanese "guilt" has remained a major obstacle in any modern integration in East Asia, whereas despite the undeniable crude prejudices which remain regarding Germany, at the political and strategic level, German "guilt" is not a factor.
On the contrary, for the post war West German politicians "Europe" provided a channel for their abilities and talents and energies, which if they had been expressed in purely nationalist terms would have aroused suspicion in neighbouring countries as well as at home.
France too seized the opportunity offered by the then new order, realising that French national ambitions were better expressed as "France in Europe" rather than as France alone.
Post 1945, whereas East Asia continues its nation state rivalries and mistrusts, western Europe largely through the development of the EU surmounted the same historical problems.
From its foundation, the EU served as a secure basis for the economic recovery and welfare of western Europe drawing in previously sceptical nations (e.g. the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden). Membership of the EU became an attractive incentive for previously politically and economically backward countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Moreover with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its client system in Eastern Europe, the newly independent countries of Central and Eastern Europe used eventual membership of the EU as a lode star by which to guide their own moves towards democratisation and economic liberalisation.
The EU has proven a success for post war reconciliation, for encompassing countries of different economic and social performance and has provided a stable basis for expansion.
The current strength of the EU is based on its own agreed aim of economic union; the free movement of goods, capital, labour and services plus the overarching security carapace of NATO, which provided peace and stability after 1945. The more Europe integrates, the more successful it becomes.
However, for a number of reasons, which I shall examine later, when I look at the EU’s potential as a mediator, the EU has not been able, nor indeed allowed, to develop a security and military force to match its economic power.
Contrast this with the outward looking East Asian countries, Japan, South Korea and latterly China, whose growing prosperity has been dependent on planning in a national context. At the moment, East Asian economic success is predicated on outward expansion based on a secure national base, not regional integration.
In contrast to Western Europe there has been no little regional dimension in East Asia, and certainly no regional framework to absorb the energies and ambitions of the post war elites in East Asia and they have remained essentially nationalistic in outlook and action.
The EU’s external relation - trade power, but no political power
The EU has become an economic giant and it has been a major player in the shaping of the "globalisation" of trade which is now the undoubted driving force in world economic activity.
However, as the old jibe goes "The EU is an economic giant but a political pygmy".
The member states cede to the EU Commission to power to negotiate and enact trade agreements with third countries and the EU is represented collectively with only one vote at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) the body which virtually writes the rules by which the world trades.
This economic power has often forced other competitor economies to conceptualise their own economic strategies in a regional framework. Not least to avoid an increasingly asymmetrical relationship between on the one hand, an integrated Europe speaking with one voice in the international arena (e.g. the WTO) and nation states acting within the constraints of national economic planning (e.g. South Korea).
This for instance was case with Mexico. Faced with a potential asymmetrical relationship enhanced by the completion of the EU’s "Internal Market" in 1992, Mexico sought safety in the embrace of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). Such anticipations have also been a driving factor in the strategic thinking of ASEAN and the South American configuration of MERCOSUR.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that with the ever growing powers of regional trading blocks that the East Asian nation states themselves move towards a similar arrangement in order to stay internationally competitive.
In this way, the very success of the EU forces other regional configurations to emerge and the EU has been a prime mover in the new regionalisation of the world‘s economy.
The EU as a market is an enormous target for export driven economies as those in East Asia, and vice a versa the EU’s own external trade and investment is a power for stability in an increasingly interdependent world economy. The size and purchasing power of the EU has proven to be a great incentive and attraction to export driven economies, not least in East Asia. The fears that an integrated but protectionist EU might emerge in the 1990s have not been fulfilled. The EU has proven as open to the outsider as the insider, much to the delight exporters of goods and investment in Asia - not least from South Korea.
Moreover the eastward expansion of the EU has given access to highly skilled labour with relatively low wage levels, again a feature not lost by South Korean entrepreneurs.
However, the EU power in trade in not matched by a similar power in military and strategic terms.
The Iraq War has once again underlined that some member states, primarily the UK, will always reserve their right to make strategic decisions on their own, preferring in this case, to preserve the UK’s "Special Relationship" with the USA, rather than seek an accommodation with other EU partners who have shown a marked reluctance to follow the US line in Iraq.
The UK, Denmark and Ireland in particular, issue "reserves" on many statements about common security policy.
The one single attempt to have a common EU intervention, Yugoslavia, was a humiliating failure. Unable to enforce a common remit because of competing perceptions by individual members states, the EU forces were helpless to stop genocidal atrocities. When an upsurge of public disquiet in the West forced governments to commit decisive intervention, the EU leaders had to concede this be carried out by NATO, rather than any collective EU effort.
Since the late 1980s the EU has exercised influence on the internal affairs of other countries through the inclusion of human rights conditionality in its trade agreements. In effect, this means that the EU now insists on a "suspension clause" whereby trade access privileges would be denied if there was a lapse in democratic principles in that country.
For example, the EU has suspended its relations with Burma.
The other area of external policy where the EU has potential is as a development and humanitarian aid donor.
The EU however has been constrained from effectively using this power to develop a policy which significantly offers an alternative to other superpower agendas.
The most telling example is policy on Palestine. Since the late 1980s the EU has been a huge donor to the Palestine Authority virtually keeping the authority afloat. Yet the EU attempts to buy influence have led to little reward. The standard observation in Palestine/Israel relations is that "The USA makes the Peace - the EU pays for it".
In short, the EU has enormous economic influence but cannot translate that into political influence. It can be part of a benign climate to help solve problems, but cannot be the dynamic force to solve problems.
When considering the possibilities of EU intervention in regional disputes, this must be borne in mind.
It is against this background that I shall now turn to the possibilities of EU mediation in Korea.
Germany and Korea - a parallel ?
The parallels between a divided Germany and a divided Korea are striking, but need careful examination to avoid tempting but over-simplistic aspirations.
Others with more exact knowledge that I have are better place to make judgements on the probability of political and economic collapse in North Korea.
There are major differences between the situations in Germany and Korea.
Firstly, both Germanys had moved considerable further than the two Koreas in terms of mutual recognition and practical accommodation ,well before unification was precipitated by the Soviet Union releasing its control over East Germany. However, that collapse meant in effect that there was no unification in the sense of a mutually accepted fusion of previously different systems. What occurred was simply a West German take-over of East Germany. This could be a scenario for Korea and one which is predicated on the much-heralded political and economic collapse in North Korea.
Germany had been divided by the Great Powers making geo-political decisions in their own interests, but without consulting Germany, at the end of the Second World War. The Potsdam Conference (1945) divided Germany not only physically, but ideologically, with East Germany joining the Soviet bloc.
West Germany was rapidly integrated into the western political power structures of NATO and the European Union, playing a key role in Europe’s integration. A development which does not pertain in the case of (South) Korea and East Asia.
The Soviet system never achieved the same dynamics of economic and political integration, the individual states in the Warsaw Pact and its economic equivalent COMECON, were little more than subservient to the demands of the Soviet power system.
This resulted in a considerable asymmetry between the two Germanys, with the West becoming democratised, liberalised and integrated in the world economy and having a growing influence in the international sphere.
In contrast, East Germany’s economy mired in Soviet bureaucracy and its political elite found itself increasingly isolated from its own people and clinging to an ideology which was palpably failing the test of pragmatic delivery.
The Gorbachev reforms and the Soviet Union’s abandoning of its power control over its satellites to concentrate on its own survival caused an enormous collapse in confidence in East Germany.
The unification of Germany became an inevitability although one not particularly welcome by the rest of Europe.
Significantly, apprehensions about the process and results of unification were mitigated by the existence of global and regional factors.
The countries responsible for the division of Germany (France, UK, Russia and USA) had retained residual powers and West Germany had been successfully integrated into the EU. Therefore and crucially, German unification took place within a secure regional configuration, and the East Germans were not simply reunited with the West Germans, they were re-integrated into Europe.
The role of the EU in Korean unification
The EU has extremely limited access to influence on the question of Korean unification. It has no legal basis or mandate to be involved in the question, as it is not party to the division.
The EU had also no such basis for involvement in the talks on German unification and consequently was not a party to those talks. Where the EU had influence was that one side of the divided nation, was a member state (West Germany) The crucial point was that the unification of Germany was a matter for "4+2" - the occupying powers (The Soviet Union, the USA, UK and France, plus the two Germanys) - but how that unified "new" Germany integrated into Europe was a legitimate issue for the EU.
To be positive, there is scope for the EU in the eventual Korean unification. How Korea unites is a matter for the parties to its division, however, how that united Korea then participates in the wider world is a legitimate concern for EU involvement.
Particularly the trade arrangements between the EU and both Koreas will have to be recast in the light of unification, as will the united Korea’s adherence to the WTO where the EU is a powerful player.
This it seems to me gives a reason for consultation with the EU on any Korean unification in the negotiations of that unification.
In addition, the promise of continued stability in Korean/EU economic relations can be a beneficial factor in the unification.
However, the unification of Korea is a strategic issue and not a trade one, and we have seen above the limits of EU power in that sphere.
In the Korean situation, it is virtually impossible to imagine the emergence of a common EU strategy which would set any member state, again for the same of argument the UK, against the strategic line adopted by the USA.
At best, as seen in Iraq, the EU is likely to "neutral on the side of the Americans". Like Palestine/Israel, it will be the Americans who make the peace and the EU who helps pay for it.
Given its own commitment to free markets and liberal democracy, the EU would prefer a unified Korea along those same ideological lines.
Significantly, facing a rapidly deteriorating economic situations in the newly independent states in Central and Eastern Europe, the EU chose not to support a "soft-landing" but to take advantage of the political and economic collapses to exert pressure on those countries to adopt models of economic reconstruction favourable to EU interests. The EU is highly likely to take the same view of any collapse in North Korea.
It is realistic to assume that the EU has no influence on the politics of South Korea remotely commensurate to the USA, nor would it try to increase its influence at the risk of upsetting the South Korea/USA balance, or indeed the USA/EU balance.
The remaining question is can the EU have an influence on North Korea leading to a peaceful and benign unification ?
Recent attempts by the EU to engage with North Korea do not give ground for optimism.
Primarily as pointed out above, as not being party to the division of Korea, the EU has little purchase on Korean affairs - a fact which the quintessentially pragmatic strategists in Pyongyang have grasped better than their Brussels counterparts. The EU has accepted this limitations after an attempt to vivify its relations with North Korea and has shifted its emphasis from "engagement" to "conditional engagement"
Lessons from neighbouring China indicate that the EU has had little effect on the internal human rights situation despite agreeing a formal framework for dialogue and there is no indication Pyongyang is any more receptive.
EU trade with North Korea is irrelevant as far as the EU is concerned, but North Korean exports to the EU help keep North Korea afloat as does the EU’s humanitarian aid. However, there seems to be no practical way of translating this into any kind of leverage to hasten unification. Nor does the EU attaempt to do so, restricting itself to showing support for South Korea's own openings to the North.
The inclusion of the EU in the KEDO system does allow a benign presence and acts as a indicator of the EU’s ability to extended the ring of confidence building beyond the immediate parties to the division of Korea and the immediate regional players.
The EU remains a benevolent observer at best, and part of a chorus of potential international stabilising factors.
Its own history offers food for thought but not a model to be followed.
By recognising the limitations of what it can do, the EU may play a supportive role.
To quote the famous poet of the English Civil War, John Milton, "They also serve who stand and wait."
Michael Hindley
Delivered at Yeungnam University, Daegu, Siuth Korea
(Michael Hindley was a Member of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1999 and was Vice-President of the External Economic Affairs Committee)
June 2006