European Crossroads

The idea of a unified Europe has always had problems. Individual states liked the idea of economic integration, a single currency, open borders, all the pleasant stuff that made life easier. But they haven’t wanted to actually give up sovereignty. So we have seen have and have-not states at loggerheads in the economic crisis, and now over a huge refugee mess.

Germany is willing to take 500,000 refugees a year. This perhaps should be taken with a grain of cynicism since the country has a record of using guest workers to do menial tasks at low wages with no hope of eventual citizenship. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile member states like Hungry and Greece, which have become points of entry and transit, have been expected to bear the responsibility and cost of coping with the influx. Other European countries have deplored the chaos and the incompetence seen in attempts to secure the borders. The rounding up and interning of crowds in makeshift camps has uncomfortable echoes of the bad old days. Particularly when the head of Hungary says he in hindering the refugess to protect Christian civilization. But most EU members haven’t rushed to help.

Europe is deeply divided. Some countries see this as a humanitarian imperative. But the Hungarians are not alone in seeing this as a Christian/Muslim issue. And the Danes have called for more secure borders and have laid the blame for the problem at its origin, the Middle East. There is an unsurprising feeling that the responsibility to fix this catastrophe lies with Turkey, Syria, and the wealthy oil states. If ISIS is really only a force of 50,000 aggressive fanatics, shouldn’t at some point a far larger population rise up and fight back? So far, there are four million refugees or more. That ought to provide the makings of a motivated resistance.

The problem, of course, is that stateless, penniless, unarmed, unled people aren’t likely to become an army. And no one from the Gulf autocrats to the barbarous Syrian dictator, to the theocrats of Iran or the fanatics of ISIS wants to see a mighty army of freedom fighters seeking to make the Middle East safe for democracy.

So the refuges will continue to arrive. Europe will continue to be deeply divided about welcoming them. And any asylum is only a temporary solution given the nature of European identity. Unlike America which, despite its temporary, rolling distaste for the latest arrivals, is in its bones an immigrant nation, France, Germany, Spain, Italy each have an ethnic, cultural, linguistic identity and “the other” will remain “the other,” not the latest candidate for assimilation.

Madeleine Albright tells a story with a lesson about her own Czech family that fled the Nazis and arrived in England. After the war they moved on to America. Her father told her why. In England they were treated with great kindness but always asked, “When will you be going home?” In America, they were generally asked, “How long till you become citizens?” Night and day.

The Eurozone experiment has been challenged by the recession that put prosperous northern European nations at daggers drawn with poorer southern neighbors. They call each other greedy and lazy, arrogant and incompetent. The refugee crisis will add new, intractable strains. It may turn out that a unified Europe is an idea whose time has not come. One thing is certain. No one has a solution for the vast migration of Middle Eastern peoples taking place. And Stein’s law of economics also applies to geopolitics: “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.”

The problem is, the way it is going to stop in this case will be ugly. Inhumane refugee camps and a lost generation. Wholesale murder. Ruthless protection of borders, as in the alleged case of the Greek Coast Guard sabotaging boats of asylum seekers at sea. What a world.

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