The Man Who Wasn’t There
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Sometimes a gesture of reconciliation is not as salutary as a custard pie in the face. Europe has done its damnedest to ignore the valedictory visit of President Bush, but it could not ignore the Irish referendum.
By a substantial majority, Ireland, one of the smallest of the European Union’s 27 member states, has driven a coach and horses through the Lisbon Treaty, which itself emerged from the wreckage of the ill-fated European Constitution that was torpedoed by the French and Dutch referendums of 2006.
The treaty is the latest attempt to impose a federal system on what is legally still a confederation of sovereign nation states. It would have been a constitution de facto, if not de jure, because it would have removed the right of individual states to block future changes and given the E.U. a legal personality. Like any other sovereign entity, it would have been able to sign treaties and even make war or peace.
Of the 27 member states, the Irish are the only nation to be given a direct vote on this fundamental change, because their constitution requires it. The British were promised a referendum too, but that promise was broken. The Irish took a long hard look at Lisbon; they did not like what they saw and they threw it out.
Now the Germans and the French are blustering about throwing the Irish out unless they think again. But there is no legal mechanism for expelling a member state, so these threats are empty — that is another thing that would have changed if the treaty had become law. All that the European elites can do is to continue their process of ratification by parliaments and to hope for the best. A summit of E.U. heads of government begins today in Luxembourg — an occasion at which the full absurdity of their plight ought to have dawned on them.
For the basic design fault of the whole European project, which has now brought the contraption to a juddering halt, has been plain to see from the beginning. It may be summed up in a single word: democracy.
The E.U., unlike America, is not a democratic institution — nor was it ever intended to be one. For its origins lie far back in the past: in the attempt by the Germans and their collaborators, twice thwarted by the Anglo-Saxon peoples, to impose on Europe a single, centralized, bureaucratic system. It came close to success between 1940 and 1944, but as Mark Mazower’s new book “Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe” demonstrates, this system could only ever be maintained by force, not by consent. Ever since the E.U. emerged in the 1950s, the attempt to abolish the nation-state has been pursued by stealth, but it has never been possible to gain democratic legitimacy for this abrogation of sovereignty.
It is, in fact, quite apparent that Europe’s elites are not trusted by their voters and this “democratic deficit,” as they call it, has a profound impact on E.U. foreign policy. It is the underlying reason for Europe’s timidity in dealing with dictatorships and unwillingness to back the Americans when the latter make a stand. The problem is that the European political class thinks the way to fix the deficit is to centralize Europe even more, replacing national legislatures, executives, and judiciaries with European ones. Hence the impasse: the cure is worse than the disease.
How could they be so pig-headed? The answer is: historical amnesia. As far as the statesmen of Europe are concerned, what happened before the E.U. is prehistoric.
This brings me back to Mr. Bush’s visit. On Monday Prime Minister Brown gave a dinner at Downing Street to which, apparently to please the president, he invited a number of historians. In principle, this was a good idea. Two or three of them were worthy guests, such as Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Mr. Bush’s hero, Winston Churchill, and Andrew Roberts, whose “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900” continued Churchill’s own work. Mr. Roberts is rumored to be a possible candidate to ghost-write Mr. Bush’s memoirs.
Others present, however, were prominent critics of Mr. Bush, some of them virulent ones. Professor Simon Schama of Columbia often has denounced Mr. Bush in terms that, had he repeated them to his face on Monday, might have provoked Mr. Bush to respond with some less than presidential language of his own. Other historians present undoubtedly share Mr. Schama’s contempt for Mr. Bush.
The historian whom Mr. Bush would most like to have seen there, however, was absent. Here I must declare an interest. Two years ago, my father, Paul Johnson, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award. It is rare for an historian to receive such an honor, still rarer for a foreign historian to do so. It may be unique.
The medal was awarded to a man whose many works of history have been taken to heart by the American people like no other Englishman’s, because he offered a credible narrative for our time.
At least two presidents — Reagan and the younger Bush — have been influenced by Mr. Johnson. His achievement has been recognized in the most formal way by America in the person of its president.
Yet Mr. Johnson, who will be 80 in November, has never received any honor in his own country. He was not even invited to the dinner for President Bush. There may be many excuses for this omission, but none of them is plausible. The British establishment has forgotten a man who is recognized in America as one of the greatest historians alive. What better proof could there be of Europe’s historical amnesia?
Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint.