I. The Atlantic Perspective and the emergence of a Concrete West
What is a “single society”? Defining this-era limits for the Concrete West
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What is a “single society”? Defining this-era limits for the Concrete WestWhat are the limits for a viable union of societies? In Proposition 1 when we first presented the Atlantic Perspective, we described the West as “in many respects” a single society, its nations lacking existential mutual conflicts of interest; therefore capable of safety in union. How to define “single society”? Or “single enough that its internal conflicts are not ‘existential’”? It is not a trivial question. Here it is necessary only to clarify some aspects of “single society” that are important for Proposition 2: an ability to unite its members without severe or existential risk. That is, after all, the purpose for which we used these terms in the first place: to give us the criteria for delineating which countries can, at a particular time, be united deeply. A full discussion of the criteria for this would take a number of pages. The classic theorists of international integration -- Karl Deutsch for the consultative communications-channels school, Ernst Haas and others for the neo-functionalist school -- gave useful lists of criteria for integration. However, they failed to organize their lists sufficiently to enable one to determine what are the necessary or sufficient conditions to make integration advisable. They left out some criteria and obscured others. Their work did not go far toward clarifying, for example, what an EU official would need to know in order to decide whether to recommend acceptance of membership in the 1990s for Eastern Europe, or in the present decade for Turkey or Ukraine. They tended to conflate the objective criteria -- what societies are objectively in condition to unite -- with the subjective ones, or which societies are sufficiently interested in uniting. This served to confuse the practical question that the criteria are supposed to answer: for which groups of countries would it be advisable to have deep institutionalized unity? The answer to that question would determine whether to advise it and see if the subjective criteria could be realized; putting the subjective criteria first can lead to running around a vicious circle. The present writer undertook in 1989-92 to clarify and systematize the various criteria that were put forth by these classic writers, and to survey their implications -- in a period when the entire Soviet bloc was coming on the market for Western integration -- as to who could be united in the world and when13. Rather than treat the subject anew, I will summarize what I wrote then, as it has held up fairly well. The criteria for successful integration were elucidated as follows: “A. Objective criteria 1. A heavy load of interdependence. There must be major common needs and interests, enough to justify strong common institutions and a common identity. 2. Absence of any conflicts of fundamental non-negotiable societal interests. By “societal interests” are meant interests rooted in the structures or conditions of the constituent societies of the union, as distinct from the opposing power-politics interests that flow from the very fact of having separate sovereign states. Opposing power-politics interests are potentially dissolved by political union; opposing societal interests, if superficial, can be compromised for the sake of union, but if fundamental, are exacerbated by union. What is needed to insure against fundamental conflicts of societal interest. a. No “existentially unbearable” social or cultural differences; that is, none that create a fundamental moral opposition between the societies as a whole. Major cultural differences are unavoidable, and are often bearable in a union. However, if they create a fundamental moral opposition between the constituent societies, then they can impel the societies toward a situation of moral enmity or conflict, in which the federation government could not play forever a mutually acceptable mediating role but eventually would have to take a stand. When differences raise a fundamental moral opposition – as slavery did between North and South in the United States – they raise a danger of civil war. b. Comparable living standards. Living standards need to be on a sufficiently comparable level that labor forces can be safely integrated, internal borders opened, and union citizenship made homogeneous. Empirically that limit seems to be not much more than a 3:1 ratio of per capita incomes. If differences are too great for immediate opening of borders, some leeway may be allowed for a transitional period. However, the differences in living standards must not be too great to be brought within reasonable bounds during a modest, definable transitional period. Otherwise there would be permanent first class citizens and permanent second class citizens, and the spirit of resentment could grow faster than the spirit of unity. Seven years has not been an offensive transitional period in the EC. Twenty or thirty years would stretch it: it would consign an entire generation to living in transitional status. If differences were too great and internal borders were opened anyway, the massive immigration would destroy the stability of the wealthier society, ruining in particular its laboring classes whose property is mainly in their exclusive title to the jobs within the territory of the nation. For a worker in a wealthy nation, citizenship in that nation is a piece of property of irreplaceable value. Sociologists have long recognized that anything worse than a modest decline in living standards and employment is likely to cause civil disorder in modern industrial societies. Direct merger of a wealthy labor force with a poor and highly populous labor force would cause a catastrophic decline in living standards and a catastrophic level of unemployment in the wealthy labor force, bringing on a bitter civil-ethnic war within the wealthier society and a rebellion of the wealthier society as a whole against the new union. War not peace, destruction not prosperity: it makes it doubtful that such a union could be urged upon the wealthier society in good faith. 3. Democracy, in the modern Western sense of the word; with pluralism and markets allowing interpenetration of societies, and with representation enabling legitimate political structures on multiple geographical levels. B. Subjective criteria include: A will to unite. A feeling of belonging to a group with common needs, common interests, common ideals, and common purposes. A feeling of being part of a “common story”, in the sense of past joint efforts, present joint plans, or a vision of a common future.” Objective criteria have to be mostly met in advance; many subjective criteria can be met in the process of developing the political will to create structures of union. Even the concept of a joint past, the most objective of the subjective criteria, can be filled in retrospectively, if present plans or future vision motivate practical joint construction. Japan, to take the hardest single example for the Atlantic, has an institutionalized joint past with the West since 1945 and a cultural and diplomatic one since the 1840s. That is a fairly long joint past; and the much longer prior history and culture can be searched retroactively to bring out foundations for compatibility and confluence. The failed interludes of attempted isolation prior to Westernization, and of rebellion against it 1931-45, serve as a reinforcing part of the joint past concept; they act as a powerful object lesson against any reversion from the Joint West, much as the isolationist interlude of the 1920s-30s serves as an object lesson reinforcing Atlanticism for America, and the fascist period as object lesson for Italy and Germany. These were all interludes that were based on interpreting the long past of the country as requiring separateness; they brought a searing experience that led to a decisive rejection of that interpretation, a genuine mental block against its revival. Rejected separateness is the most powerful single part of a joint identity. The subjective criteria do have a degree of objective element, requiring evolutionary time to be developed in the full extent needed to sustain a union; but the converse side of that is the fact that in no historical union are they fully developed prior to the establishment of the union: they require union for their further development. This indicates a likelihood of gradualness or multiple stages in establishing a union, which should be distinguished from a deliberate gradualism or holding back, or the circular argument that the subjective criteria must be fulfilled before urging and negotiating structures of unity, which can lead to missing of historical opportunities for it. The subjective criteria are best viewed as subjective: not as preconditions for the effort to unite, but factors satisfied at each stage through the effort at uniting and at sustaining the unity, punctuated for legitimation by the ratification of the joint structures by each member state. The objective criteria, alas, are more objectively necessary as preconditions. It may be answered that our objective criterion (2) above is not really needed for the Atlantic-level structures, but only for a societal union such as the EU with its opening of borders. The point has merit, but less force than might seem at first sight. In practice it reduces only slightly the importance of this criterion for the Atlantic level. The sense of community on the Atlantic level underpins much of the work of the joint structures. This sense of community is connected with a sense of being a single society: a lack of potential existential societal threat among its members, and a consequent ability to see the borders among them as having administrative technical significance like the U.S.-Canada border rather than an existentially necessary significance like the U.S.-Mexico border or Europe-Turkey border. It depends, then, even if indirectly and unconsciously, on the objective fact that the borders could be opened without the norms or labor conditions of one member becoming a threat to the norms and conditions of another. If expansion of membership were to detract too much from this sense of community, it would undermine the functioning of the institutions both directly and indirectly: weakening the common spirit, increasing the divergences of interests, and a return of a power politics spirit, a return that would be gradual, quiet, slow, perhaps for a long time only implicit, but nevertheless fatal for integration. After working over the criteria, I surveyed where the criteria were met, and what practical conclusions could be drawn from this. This led to the following conclusions: The members of the existing European, Atlantic, and Trilateral groupings met the criteria well. They could move as far with deeper union as they wished. One could sincerely advise it to them as something good for them. Some sub-continental or semi-continental regions of the Third World meet the criteria, and could integrate regionally. However, it is not a central need for the world order, as it was in the European region half a century ago. Numerous regional integration attempts, and frequent U.S. and EU efforts at supporting them, have thus far produced little result. It may be that Western integration, not regional integration, is the main need for stability in most non-Western regions: many nations are as interdependent with the West as with their neighbors, and sometimes mutual differences are greater than their differences with the West, which is needed as mediator. The Third World as a whole does not meet the criteria. Often its regions are linked more through their connections with the global civilization of the West than directly with each other. South-South forums exist mostly for diplomatic coalition purposes vis-a-vis the North, only marginally for positive integrative purposes. Some, such as OPEC, are cartels; their activity is, in principle, criminal under international economic law. The criteria are not met by mixed First-Third World groups of countries; there is an opposition of some fundamental societal interests between First and Third worlds, and it will be generations before this changes. One could not truthfully advise union of First with Third World countries as something safe for First World societies. The World Federalists have implicitly recognized this by paring their main proposal down to “Triad voting”, which would replace national vetoes in the UN with a collective First World veto and collective Third World veto. What about countries on the borderline of meeting the criteria? I found that transitional arrangements had in some past times made it possible to take in countries that are within “striking range” of qualifying to join a pre-existing union. As I wrote in 1991, the countries of Eastern Europe were near enough to meeting the criteria that the EC and NATO could begin extending to them, with substantial transitional arrangements, without existential societal risks. However, Turkey did not meet the criteria and would not for a long time; transitional arrangements would not suffice. The EC could not take the post-Soviet space, however, because it would destroy the EC’s internal balance; this would be a responsibility of the Atlantic institutions. The greatest challenge the Western institutions would face would be not to get the criteria met by the East but to get themselves to do the deepening needed for accommodating such a major widening, and do it in time to catch all the post-Communist countries on their westernizing swing. These problems of enlargement policy were played out in the 1990s and after: insufficient deepening in the relevant directions (flexibility in decision-making, and increased fiscal and foreign policy capability) in the Western institutions; the export of further burdens of adjustment onto the post-Communist countries, to compensate for insufficient adjustment on the Western side; the rigid codification of the criteria, engendering more divisions than necessary between post-Communist countries alongside the integration with the West; considerable delay of the status of membership, on the ground of a generous-sounding slogan of not having any second class membership; and gaps in the criteria. In the EU (as the EC became after 1992), there was also a failure to declare the economic conditions criterion, leading to false hopes in Turkey, ongoing diplomatic tensions, and inflammation of public fears in Western Europe about Turkish membership, leading the public to vote down a Constitutional deepening treaty. Let us dwell a moment here on the second of the objective criteria: economic conditions. It is helpful for answering the practical question we are posing, for explaining why the European public has been so committed to rejecting Turkish membership, and for explaining the sequence and interim limits in our earlier projection of the Atlantic Future. We might start by saying that this criterion follows from the very phrase “common society”, which might be elaborated as follows: The set of societies could, if they wished, operate jointly as a society pretty much the same way they do domestically, with the same rights and freedoms of movement and intercourse among people, goods and information, and the same kinds of regulations but on a common basis, and do this without harm to any of the entering society. The economic criterion is relevant, no matter whether the societies considering anything near to full merger into a single society, for two reasons. First, it is an indicator of having a harmony of societal interests: its absence by definition means that the societies could in fact harm one another by coming too close together; its presence leaves, as an obstacle to unity, only nationalists habits and raisons d’etat, serious enough obstacles but ones susceptible to political cures. Second, lesser or intermediate forms of union are suspected of being “first steps down the road” to societal union; before taking them, societies want to know if it is safe if it does turn into a first step down such a road.14 This criterion is also useful in a scientific sense. It is more definite and semi-quantifiable than other criteria, and so helps in delimiting which groups of nations could constitute a single society. It has in fact helped in our projection of the sequence and timeframe for expansion of the Concrete West; and in projecting that the West is a nucleus of gradually deeper integration of the world system as well as gradually wider integration. As we have indicated, among First World societies the criterion is satisfied: were they to eliminate border controls among them, there would be no mass migrations inflaming their publics and labor unions; the consequent problems would be mostly limited to issues of governance of interstate crime and terrorism, i.e. individual deviants not societal incompatibilities. The criterion is also satisfied among closely similar sets of societies within some local regions of the Third World. It is not satisfied for the Third World as a whole, not between First and Third Worlds. The ratio of per capita incomes (pci) provides a rough indicator (in conjunction with other factors -- size of populations, extent of cultural differences) of which groups of societies satisfy this criterion. The pci ratio is under 2:1 among major states of the U.S., an old Union. It is under 3:1 among major states of the new union, Europe, although often stretching that limit for small recent joiners; arguably stretching it a bit too far for the new members in the Balkans, as their migrants have given rise to some social tensions in the old EU, resentments used by some parties on Right and Left to buttress opposition to the EU itself. The ratio is well under 2:1 among the major parts of the First World: the U.S. as a whole, Europe as a whole, and Japan. In no instance where the pci ratio is under 3:1 does a union seem to give rise to destabilizing movements of population; although, since unions have rarely been attempted among societies with extreme cultural differences, this should not be taken as meaning that there would be no problems if a near-3:1 ratio were combined with a sharp cultural difference. What it does mean is that, where the ratio is substantially higher than 3:1, problems arise; where it is 10:1, union seems excluded, apart from small exceptions. An example of a small exception is Puerto Rico. The U.S.:Puerto Rico pci ratio was very high when that border was opened, and the consequent migration was proportionally enormous, reportedly a third of the Puerto Rican population; but as that population was a small fraction of that of the U.S., it did not cause more than local tensions. The ratio is far over the 3:1 range between U.S. and Mexico, and EU and Turkey, despite long intense relations and border areas with higher incomes; and Mexico and Turkey have large populations with large mobile youth cohorts. This is why open borders are wished for by Mexico and Turkey, and why they are opposed by the respective U.S. and EU publics. It is a passionate opposition, held by a supermajority in all opinion polls. The opposition to open borders with large Third World countries is motivated by expectation of socially destabilizing migration consequences. It is an opposition conceived as a matter of fundamental societal interest. This is an example of what is meant by an “existential” opposition of societal interests; it is something far deeper than an opposition of national or state interests, and less susceptible to solution by political re-arrangement. It is also a contradiction of rights: Third World countries can claim the human right of free movement, First World countries can claim the right of a sovereign society to control its own borders. Union in such conditions risks being unsustainable if attempted, leaving conflict and re-division in more bitter and unstable conditions; and for this reason, is rarely likely to be attempted by freely given mutual consent. In exceptional cases, it might get tried anyway, due to passions of national identity: China threatens to attempt it on an unwilling Taiwan, whose shared society lies elsewhere in the First World; South Korea fears it may have to attempt it with North Korea if the latter collapses. A past Union that flouted the 3:1 ratio was Yugoslavia (we take no position here in the debate as to whether the country truly was formed voluntarily); the pci ratio between Slovenia and Kosovo was well above 3:1. For this reason, migration from Kosovo to Slovenia was restricted despite their being in a Union, with a Union citizenship and a Union government. It was restricted even during the Communist egalitarian phase of the Union. The Union collapsed after 1990, punctuated by civil wars. The 3:1 ratio is confirmed by these experiences as an approximate indicator of the limits of feasibility of and safety in union.15 It is, as we have observed, safely satisfied within the Concrete West as a whole, where the ratios are under 2:1 between its three continental parts; and a bit less safely but still acceptably within each continental part of the West, where ratios are under 3:1 for the main countries but sometimes over 3:1 between smaller countries. We can now see more clearly why it was possible to admit Eastern Europe into the Concrete West rapidly; why further expansion into the former European Communist space is also feasible in this period; why Asian tigers can be admieed; but also why other proposed expansions in the immediate future are inadvisable, and the terms on which they might become advisable further into the future. 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