It was significant that David Cameron made national security the central tenet of his pledge to forge a new relationship between Britain and the European Union. The word “security” came up repeatedly in the speech he gave this week. The paradox is that security is not high on the list of items Cameron wants to renegotiate with EU partners. Critics may say he is playing on the fear factor, in an almost populist ploy to harness voters to his strategic goal, which is to avoid going down in history as the prime minister who took Britain out of a project created to secure peace on a tormented continent. But it is hard to deny that fear – especially fear of the unknown – is a commodity in great abundance.
One speech won’t do much to either dispel that fear, or fuel it some more. The impact of globalisation and the rise of new threats have sown a sense of dread among middle classes across all western democracies. It’s hard to look at events in an impassioned way. Too much change is dizzying. Growing disorder activates passions – often of the nasty sort: intolerance, rejection, fortress building. All this forms the deep undercurrent of the Brexit debate.
It’s not only that models seem to collapse; it’s that no one quite knows how to define power any more, or how it should be used. There are huge doubts about our collective European and western capacity to face up to so many challenges unfolding at such a quick pace. The values of liberal democracy are increasingly questioned, and there are too few voices making a strong case to defend them. The very word power has come to be seen as a threat; it is hard to define and can be misused. Many in the UK and elsewhere in Europe harbour a form of nostalgia for what in my country, France, is called “the glorious three decades” of the postwar period when growth and stability made people confident that their children would enjoy a better life. That bred a sense of safety, of security that has now faded. Citizens today often feel that they have lost a grasp of events, and that politicians have too.
But if restoring a sense of empowerment is key, then the next questions are: where does power lie, and how can that notion be aligned with democratic values – values that Britons rightly take pride in having defended in crucial periods of European history.
Power is shifting dramatically, both geographically (the rise of Asia) and in its nature (non-state entities, hybrid warfare, economic sanctions, to name a few of the new dimensions). It was once tempting to think we had entered a postmodern era where global interconnectedness and mutual dependence would lead to rational international cooperation. That has proved to be an illusion. Yet it underpins the views of those who believe the UK can thrive as a kind of Singapore on the edge of the Atlantic. Take only the diminishing value of the US partnership – the “special relationship” with Britain – and it becomes obvious that the Singapore model is hardly likely to secure a comfortable, stable future: on Europe’s doorstep there is simply too much going on.
The point is that British anxieties are shared to a large extent by many others in Europe. Beyond our cultural and political differences, we are all fundamentally in the same boat. The power that we used to enjoy or believe in has receded, and we struggle to redefine ourselves in a new world – a world that hundreds of thousands of desperate people try to reach because it remains so privileged.
We want security for ourselves and fail to see how exactly that security can be shared with others who strive for it. We are attached to our values but have doubts about how they can survive, not to mention spread. But the point is that our strength and our power come from our values.
Here I’d like to pay homage to one voice: that of André Glucksmann, a prominent French philosopher and writer whom I very much admired, and who died this week in Paris. Glucksmann played an important role in reflecting on European democratic principles and how they should be considered a pillar of both our collective identity and power – something not to be squandered lightly or with fatalism.
Glucksmann was a key figure in the fight for human rights and pushing back against autocracy wherever it lay. He tried to bridge political gaps, not least between east and west Europe. The son of anti-Nazi immigrants, he was a communist in his youth and later even became a Maoist, of the romantic delusional sort that existed in France in the 1970s – beliefs he swiftly threw away after reading Solzhenitsyn. He made mistakes, such as supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (he saw it first and foremost as the overthrow of a bloodthirsty dictator) but never relented in sending out the message that we as Europeans renounce ourselves when we fail to unite around our values.
This is the type of voice that must prevail if Europe is to get things right. Simply put: Europe will feel empowered again if it stands up for its values. Europe without Britain – and vice versa – would lose much, if not all, of that crucial capacity, which urgently needs to be tapped into.
The essential question that will be put to Britons in the referendum is not about what they think of Brussels technocrats or the phrasing of this or that protocol, but about how they want to define themselves and their role in a changing world. It is not about the technicalities of a renegotiation, or about the political future of a prime minister. It is about what influence Britain wants to harness as a power that, because of geography and history, is European, and is able to shine and be admired because of its values.
