Europe as a Living Organism: Organicist Symbolism and Political Subjectivity in the New Europe Mika Luoma-aho A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Politics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne September, 2002 Abstract This dissertation is a reading of organicist symbolism in the identification of Europe as a political entity after the Cold War. It begins by criticising theories of European integration for their marginalisation of the political dimension of the integration process. Then, it explicates Carl Schmitt’s conception of political subjectivity as a combination of willingness and ability to distinguish friends from enemies in territorial terms, and elaborates this conception into a perspective on the social construction of the EU as a political subject in and of Europe. It then outlines a history of an organicist political theory that has contributed in the social construction of territorial political entities from the ancients to late modernity. The dissertation consists of two empirical chapters, which explicate organicist metaphors in the identification of both willingness and ability of the EU to act as the political subject in and of Europe. The first one explicates the use of the metaphor of disease in the context of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The second one explicates the image of Europe as a “political giant” with a “defence arm” in the context of the 1990-1991 intergovernmental conference on political union. The dissertation concludes by noting the apparent failure of the organicist symbolism in the European construction, and argues that if Europe is wanted or needed as a political unit or reference, it needs to be re-symbolised and the old symbols need to be replaced. ii Table of Contents ABSTRACT II TABLE OF CONTENTS III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The Newest Europe 6 1.2 Critique of Rational Integration 12 1.3 Study of Two Political Contexts 22 1.4 Outline of Study 25 2 CARL SCHMITT AND POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITY 29 2.1 Brief Intellectual History 29 2.2 Dimensions of the Political 31 2.3 Defence of the Weimar State 35 2.4 Construction of a European Großraum 39 2.5 The Politics of Political Subjectivity 50 3 POLITICAL THEORY OF THE BODY AND EUROPE 57 3.1 Singularity and Symbolism 57 3.2 History of an Idea 63 3.3 European Body Politic 72 3.4 The Geopolitics of Depoliticisation 90 iii 4 THE ENEMY WITHIN: BALKAN WAR AND THE PATHOLOGY OF NATIONALISM 94 4.1 Europe as a Whole 94 4.2 Securitising the New Europe 98 4.3 Malignant Nationalism 110 4.4 Metastatic Nationalism 123 4.5 Logos of Integration 134 4.6 Conclusion 141 5 THE SUBJECT WITHOUT: POLITICAL UNION AND THE SYMBOLISM OF THE WEU 146 5.1 Death of NATO? 148 5.2 Europe as a Political Giant 157 5.3 Birth, Bedtime and Awakening of the WEU 168 5.4 European Pillar of the Atlantic Alliance 173 5.5 Defence Arm of a Political Union 181 5.6 Ethos of Responsibility 194 5.7 Conclusion 199 6 CODA 204 6.1 Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol 204 6.2 Towards a Newer Europe 211 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 iv Acknowledgements In preparing this dissertation, I have benefited enormously from the criticism and advice of my academic supervisors, professors David Campbell and Vilho Harle. In personal conversations and correspondence, Pami Aalto, Martin Coward, Simon Dalby, Marieke de Goede, Jussi Hanen, Aini Linjakumpu, Sami Moisio, Mika Ojakangas, Erna Rijsdijk, Gerard Toal, and a number of anonymous referees have shared with me information, valuable views and critical comments. I have also benefited from the criticism and support given to me by the examiners of my licentiate’s dissertation, Tuomas Forsberg and Juha Tolonen. At different scholarly meetings I have benefited from the comments and criticism of a number of fellow scholars. Naturally, none of these friendly critics should be held in any way accountable for the text’s deficiencies, which are wholly my responsibility. For providing me the financial resources for this dissertation, I wish to thank the Finnish Graduate School of Political Science and International Relations (VAKAVA), Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth’s Fund, The Academy of Finland, the Department of Politics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland, Aimo O. Aaltonen’s Fund, and Vammaiskoulutuksen Tuki ry. Finally, I wish to thank my wife Johanna for all the personal and professional support she has given me over the years. Without you none of this would have ever happened. v 1 Introduction This dissertation is about the use and the significance of organicist metaphors in European security discourse after the Cold War. It makes explicit how Europe has been identified as a political entity in European security discourse after the Cold War. As its point of departure this dissertation takes Carl Schmitt’s conception of political subjectivity, and from there it proceeds as a reading of the metaphors used in the identification of Europe as a political entity with the European Community or Union as its political subject. This dissertation concludes with a note on the limits of the political theory founded on the use of organicist metaphors. The use of organicist metaphors in political discourse has been studied, but not, to my knowledge, in a specifically European context. The foundations for the study of the political metaphor of the body were laid by David George Hale (1971). Hale’s The Body Politic traced the history of the analogy from classical antiquity, and explicated its use in Renaissance English literature, where it flourished with the rise of national states in Europe. Antoine de Baecque (1997) told the history of the French Revolution through the metaphor of the body as it appeared in the popular literature of the time, and showed how these metaphors were at the very centre of the language used to describe the revolution in progress. Jonathan Gil Harris (1998) studied the organic political analogy in Tudor and Stuart England and suggested that early modern figurations of social pathology echo in many twentieth century discourses of nation and social formation. In his study of identity politics, David Campbell (1998) identified an organicist discourse in the history of the practice of United States foreign policy and demonstrated how it has contributed to the reproduction of the political identity of that state. In other words, the metaphor of the body has been studied in the discursive production of statehood and states. But, is Europe a state? It does not qualify as a political entity in the sense that states do – or does it? This has been a subject of some theoretical debate, which has forced the discipline of International Relations to reconsider its dominant conceptions 1 of political “actor-ness”. For example, Simon Hix (1999) has argued that European integration has certainly produced a new and a complex political system, but, lacking a Weberian monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion, it is not a state. In the same note, Michael Smith (2001) has written that the European Union is a major presence in the contemporary global arena, but it is not a state in the accepted international meaning of the term, although it demonstrates some “state-like” features. The purpose of this study is not to assess whether or not Europe is “really” a state or a political entity of any other name or definition. Rather, the focus of this study is on the social practices of representation of political entities in general, and Europe in particular. By not looking to identify objects whose existence is independent of ideas or beliefs about them, this study embraces a logic of interpretation that, in Campbell’s (1998, 4) words, “acknowledges the improbability of cataloging, calculating, and specifying the ‘real causes’, and concerns itself instead with considering the manifest political consequences of adopting one mode of representation over another”. The title of this dissertation has been inspired by Rudolf Kjellén’s 1916 book Staten som Lifsform (State as Living Organism). In his book, Kjellén outlined the essential nature of states as political entities by asking: what should be the terms used to describe political entities? Before giving an elaborate theoretical answer to his question, Kjéllen opened the morning paper, and in what could be described as an early exercise of discourse analysis, had a look what were the terms used to describe them. Political entities, or states for Kjellén, were territorially defined subjects the identities of which revealed themselves in their external relations vis-à-vis other states, and the nature of which reflected by their representation in everyday use of language (Kjellén 1916, 17-18). To make his point, Kjellén cited an issue of Standard writing on trouble in the Balkans: ‘Austria’, it writes, ‘stands now as the champion of armed despotism, as an enemy of the law of nations – it is scandalous that one of the most civilised nations of Europe has ambushed Turkey and robbed it on a public highway’. Elsewhere, Austria is accused of ‘cheating Bulgaria to go forward with its silly attempts’; and of ‘pushing Bulgaria 2 forward in a resort to subterfuge’, in a bid not to ‘unscrupulously break agreements and breach the peace’, on the pretext of which it itself is ‘taking security measures’ and is ‘ready to compensate’. Then it writes that ‘Germany has its hands on every development’; Germany ‘stands behind’; it has ‘taken revenge and isolated England, and won Russia on its side by making references to the Dardanelles and Italy’s promises’, etc. And elsewhere, it is saying that ‘Germany is looking angrily at Bulgaria while pretending not to see, and thereby excusing, the infringement of Austria -Hungary’.