György Granasztói
Fragmentation to Integration
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The nation-state will remain, in a political sense, a determining factor for the future of the European community. The social and political character of the European Union will develop in association with the existence and destiny of the nation-states. Since nation and nation-state are also key terms in Hungarian political thinking, what that means for accession has to be clarified.
Earlier on, nation was a dominant category which determined a specific elite culture; precisely for that reason the culture itself was indifferent to ethnic and political commitments. Now, however, with the gradual disappearance of all- pervasive regional cultures, the role of nation has become all-embracing for society as a whole and the common national heritage has become extremely important.
In the old peasant societies culture seldom determined political units. Traditional societies do not usually turn nationalist. It is precisely from this point of view that the situation has changed radically. Local, diverse grass-roots cultures have been replaced everywhere by a standardized and uniformly coded high culture connecting everybody to everybody else through literacy and the audio-visual media. The culture they mediate then becomes the basis of modern national feeling. Since national feeling can now be shared by every member of society, there arises the special need and requirement of social equality.
Nationalism is, therefore, an integrating force creating a modern national character and a mass society through cultural homogeneity and centralized education. The integration of the new Europe will, however, hinge on the differences between nations and their adjustment to each other. This makes it apparent that a common European feeling is, of course, a long way off. Despite all the stars on a blue background as flags, parasols and car stickers, "Eurofeeling" is still a non-starter. Even if it should spread some day, the question still remains how far it will be based on a shared European memory and how far on the awareness of a common future.
The anxieties arising from economic insecurity, the general desire for stability and the disappearance of ideologies have brought to the surface a variety of inward-turning attitudes. The jargon term for this is fragmentation, intensified by the disappearance of the Cold War and bi-polar stability. Thus, in our times the nation-state finds itself caught in the dual vice between a national feeling it gave rise to and the tendency to fragmentation. This is something new, different from the chauvinist, archaic, integrating or populist nation state of the past.
Fragmentation poses a fundamental threat to the future Union. The divisive effect may be both political and economic, following from the mere existence of different sub-groups, regional units, interest and ethnic groupings as well as pressure groups, which work against national or international co-operation. In some cases, this results in specific action against unity. If a federate Europe, seen as supranational, is conceived as a mosaic of nation-states, then such trends clearly diminish the chances of unity since they divert, curb or paralyse the nation-state, itself in a given case.
This situation is further complicated by the emergence of "minor nationalisms". New closed forms of belonging (ethnic-national identities) are being born or are intensifying and these separate the awareness of belonging to a nation from the sense of belonging to a country, a state, citizenship. The sense of citizenship and the sense of national identity may, at times, even come into murderous conflict. These factors had been suppressed but, once the Cold War was over, the entire concept of the nation-state as it had evolved after the French Revolution, was questioned and in some cases actually threatened.
This seems to be a genuinely historic event. Cultural ties are undergoing change, taking on the increasingly violent forms of regional or ethnic clashes, or expressed in hatred against immigrants. Neither ethnic conflict nor xenophobia can be regarded as geographical peculiarities, they are more or less present everywhere; both may intensify at any time anywhere, even simultaneously. Fragmentation and the various forms of particularism make a paralysing impact on modern nation-states, while the more traditional (and because of this) less democratic nation-states are much less heavily affected.
The weakening of the nation-state has a debilitating effect in the process of creating a supranational state organization and its integrated institutions. Indeed, it actually limits their possibilities. The nation-states of the highly developed democracies are on the defensive against various ethnic, cultural and political ambitions, local forces, regionalisms, minor nationalisms and other ideologies. That reduces their capacity for settling conflicts, to find the uniform European principles and mechanisms for handling these.
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It is clear that in Central Europe, and especially in the Danube region, the problems of a nation-state and the tendencies of fragmentation are a great degree influenced by the multinational character of society. A further complication is that, compared to Western Europe, borders took considerably longer to stabilize. In fact, to the south of Hungary, some borders cannot be regarded as final even now, certain countries making territorial claims on others, and with quite a few borders not guaranteed by any international agreement.
Why is then some kind of great power solution required? Because the agreements, treaties and contracts between the countries concerned cannot be fulfilled if there is no controlling and sanctioning mechanism to watch over their fulfilment. In the lack of such a mechanism, nothing but a temporary and, in some cases, not necessarily sincere "goodwill" can be placed on record.
Controllable agreements are necessary because economic ties between the countries here are insignificant. Stability in relations therefore can only rest on political solutions. From the Baltic to Greece, every country is oriented toward "the West" today. External security is an indispensable condition for their approach to the West as well as for their internal development.
There are several international organizations, from the UN through the Organization for European Security and Cooperation to the European Council. Everyday experience has shown that none of them has the power to enforce agreements. On the other hand, the European Union, economically and politically integrated, and NATO create the belief that they have the ability to do just that.
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The system of consensus-based decisions reveals a lack of historical experience on how supranational organizations like the EU or NATO should operate. The present-day variant makes them communities of nation-states in which decision-making is based on a harmony between national interests, collective values and hierarchy. The Balkans crisis, as I have already pointed out, showed quite dramatically the paralysing effect of this. Today, it is still hard to imagine how this contradiction could be resolved. Yet the present structure of the European Union might actually splinter if new members are admitted. Thus the problem of enlargement in fact raises, or even intensifies, the grave internal contradictions of the two big organisations. A politically new federal Europe based on free elections, with parties cutting across borders declaring European programmes, and based on a strong parliament is still inconceivable. For that reason, governance remains on the basis of consensus, instead of the confrontation of definite European political wills. The situation in NATO is different inasmuch as when there is a crisis, the overwhelming strength of the U.S. carries the organization to the point of a major political decision, as was shown in the case of Eastern enlargement (Peace Partnership) or the Balkans crisis (Dayton).
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Hungary's own nation-state interests can be protected only in a federal Europe with strong central institutions. The special position of Central Europe and the dilemma within the Atlantic organizations requires that the Western World take on a peculiar role in the region. A cooperation based on Western-type democracy, a market economy and a balance of forces must develop, guaranteed by general stability agreements. All the states in the region are ready to sacrifice some of their sovereignty in return for accession. The great Western integrated organizations, however, appear to be incapable of taking on a great-power role in the region. Historical analogies cannot be applied to the situation today since there is no common foreign and security policy. The end of the Balladur Plan is highly illuminating in this respect. It seems as if today there is no party willing to take on the great-power role that has been so significant in the life and history of Central Europe. From a moral aspect, it may be possible to call this a good thing; the dilemma nevertheless persists. If Hungary's Slovak, Romanian and Serbian neighbours slip behind, or become undesirable as members, this might reduce Hungary's own chances as well as making the position of Hungarians living in those countries more difficult. A unilateral Hungarian success, on the other hand, would increase external tensions, which, in turn, would again threaten the balance of power. The internal equilibrium of Central Europe is going to be the great issue of the future.
György Granasztói
heads the Institute for Central European Studies in Budapest. He is a medievalist who has published widely on medieval urban life in Hungary. As Hungarian Ambassador in Brussels in 1990-94, he was also accredited to NATO and to the European Union.
