A Small Victory For Europeanism
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein's article, "A Small Victory for Europeanism," appeared recently in Power and Interest News Report. As the publishers describe it, "The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an analysis-based publication that seeks, as objectively as possible, to provide insight into various conflicts, regions and points of interest around the globe. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader."
We at MBK feel that Dr. Weinstein has taken a very one-sided stand on this issue. Therefore - without making "moral judgments," - we are publishing our own comment on his "report", which we feel is not free of personal "moral judgment."
For the original text of this article, click here.
To facilitate the interested reader's understanding of the complex issues involved, we refer him/her to the article "We, the Peoples of Europe..."(Foreign Affairs, December 2004, pp. 97-102, unfortunately in hardcopy only) by Prof. Kalypso Nicolaïdis, currently at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. Prof. Nicolaïdis has lectured at Oxford, and was an advisor to G. Papandreu, at the time the foreign minister of Greece.
Nicolaïdis correctly points out that the European Union, still at a fledgling stage but about to adopt a formal constitution, is divided into two camps: those she calls "intergovernmentalists", who hold that "nations,which are bound by a common language, culture, history, and often ethnicity, are the only credible foundations of polities; and the "supranationalists," who "belive that it is both possible and desirable to aspire to a single European demos. In other words, they strive to "recreate a national mystique on the European level."
Nicolaïdis argues for a third way of understanding Europe: as "a transnational pluralism... rather than ... some extended notion of the nation-state." Weinstein, on the other hand, is clearly a supranationalist, with no patience for nation states of any kind. And he interprets the result of the "Hungarian referendum of December 5 as a vote for supranationalism." (His hero is Mr. Gyurcsány, the billionaire-socialist prime minister and Europeanist, his devil the nationalist ex-prime minister, Mr. Orbán.) He concludes: "The defeat of the Hungarian referendum on dual citizenship was a temporary victory for the E.U., but also a reminder that unresolved problems from the past can surface having the potential of disturbing European integration. The success of the E.U. design to westernize Eastern Europe depends more than anything else on robust economic growth and broad distribution of its benefits in the region. If rising expectations are not met, nationalist sentiments that can be exploited politically remain close to the surface."
From a Hungarian perspective, Weinstein has written a decidedly anti-Hungarian report, full of personal bias. Most regrettably, he has taken sides in internal Hungarian party politics. But we feel he fails to understand the essence of the European Union. In that context he also ignores the fact that the dual citizenship measure was not a revanchist, revisionist step, but the result of the failure of the system established after World War I, which was supposed to protect ethnic minorities as ethnic minorities, not as individuals whose only option in seeking equality and democracy was to become not merely good citizens (or subjects) of the so-called successor states, but to give up their language, their religion, their ethnic identity.
Louis Elteto, Professor
Portland State University