EU couldn’t keep peace in a Buddhist monastery

In the wake of the EU’s reaction to the events in Egypt, I can’t help thinking again of President Van Rompuy’s recent Warsaw speech. “Europe is the best guarantee for peace. It was and is a work of peace.” Then, “Europe has to be the fatherland of peace. We owe this to our history ... The bloody battlefields from our history have been replaced by Brussels negotiating rooms.”

No-one could accuse Van Rompuy of the sin of an original thought. 60 years of peace, runs the Schumann foundation. 60 years of peace, says Merkel, Sarkozy et al. This EU "achievement" is repeated so often that the more it’s rolled out, the ever more dubious it becomes. Why, otherwise, does it need repeating ad nauseum? Partly, I would argue, because it's a foundation myth, and also because it's completely false.

False because in the post-war period America dominated Western European foreign policy, false because the Soviet threat acted as a sufficient glue, false because the only country capable of waging another war – Germany - was occupied, hamstrung, partitioned, false because Europe was warred out.

This, however, will not stop the EU, with its "negotiating rooms", from fatuously trying to take the credit for matters it has been nothing but a spectator to. It suffices to think back but eight years to the last Gulf War to see what impact its diplomacy had as the Union split in two, half of it going off into the Iraq adventure. “Ah yes, Europe, the fatherland of peace” – that must be on the lips of all the citizens of Bagdad and Basra. As it is, er, in the streets of Belfast and Bucharest...

Indeed, it suffices to think back only a few days. Echoing Obama’s weasel words that Egypt’s demonstrators should express themselves “peacefully” against government hired thugs marauding in Tahrir Square, Lady Ashton called on “all parties to exercise restraint and calm.” Later, once Mubarak fell, “I pay enormous tribute to the calm way people have conducted themselves.” And “It is fantastic to see all the young people come out and to say what they want in a calm and orderly way.”

Leaving aside the sham evenhandness of asking “all parties” to exercise restraint, it is completely untrue that the people behaved in a “calm way.” The last thing you need if you want to topple dictators is “calm and restraint”. Calm, restraint, and expressing yourself in an “orderly” way are exactly virtues that keep dictators in palaces and private jets in the first place. For Mrs Ashton, the courage and boldness of the Egyptian people is actually but a side effect of Chlorpromazine use, or some other mood-suppressant.

But we can expect nothing less, because the EU’s instincts are cowardly. Bureaucracies thrive not on boldness, courage or innovation but on their opposite, which is why Ms Ashton’s vision of the Egyptian revolution is so deadening, so devoid of vitality, and so untruthful. As long as wars and revolutions occur in far-off lands, such cowardly instincts have little immediate impact on us over here, but will not save anyone the day Brussels ever has to handle any internal crisis or major stress of any scope. As long as we’re ruled by realpolitik, I doubt that the fatherland of peace could keep things zen in a Buddhist monastery.

UPDATE: For those who think this is a rabidly Europhobic piece, please look at my clarifying comment below - GF