Since the end of World War II, the transatlantic focus has been on the northern hemisphere. This is a result primarily influenced by three factors:
- The inevitable realization that the defense of Europe against any aggressor can only be successful if North America, especially the United States, is included in any European security framework. Any attempt to imagine European defense independently of the US has failed so far.
- The main problem in Europe is the containment of the European center. This means the maintenance of peace between Germany of France, the containment of Germany, but actually, since the defeat of Napoleon, the securing of a stable balance of power on the continent, for which it ideally needs an outside force not invested too heavily in either side of the equation.
- The competition between, on the one hand, this Euro-American alliance by necessity, and on the other, another power block like the Soviet Union, Russia, China, or any other system contender. The Cold War has been the guarantor of NATO’s success, and currently, it is Putin’s Russia which, by ostentatiously questioning the strength and purpose of NATO is ironically strengthening its resolve.
If we widen the historical perspective though, two other major factors become visible:
- The two World Wars in the Twentieth Century have been preceded by other conflicts of a global reach: The Crimean War (1853-1856), the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) the Seven Years War (1756-1763), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). In all these cases, the global dimension of these wars is the result of European colonial empires.
- The American influence grows in direct correlation with the decline of the power of European colonialism, which declines as result to fights amongst the European powers themselves. This is what some historians call the “European Civil War.”
But even this perspective is not wide enough. European geography determines its security concerns. It is not an island. It has always been at the center of waves of migration, of empires and states fighting for dominance. The only relative period of some form of peace, or rather, predictability, was the time of solidified Roman power that united the Mediterranean. Connected with the fall of Roman power in the West – despite all attempts of reconstituting imperial power by Germanic kingdoms – is the loss of Mediterranean unity, and with it, the loss of the connection between the three continents of Europe (both East and West), Africa and Asia. From the beginning of what we can call Europe – namely the fall of the Western part of the Roman Empire in 476 – till the end of World War II, there have been a succession of military attempts to dominate the continent, none successful for very long, and if so, only partial. If Europe is supposed to have a future, it must, again, see a future in unison with its neighbors. Such a demand translates to the transatlantic sphere for reasons of security and prosperity.
There is another dimension as well. Colonialism and imperialism, conducted mainly but not exclusively by nations located in the Europe and Mediterranean area, has put its inevitable mark upon the entire world. No continent has remained untouched by this. The end of colonialism proper has not necessarily left the world a better place. We need to confront and account for the history of what Paul Gilroy calls the Black Atlantic. The combined impact of the transatlantic slave trade and the destruction of indigenous cultures mainly, but not exclusively, in the Americas dictate a charge for nations that can trace their origin back to the European area. For centuries, it was European colonial powers that shaped the world, for better or worse. It would seem only logical that centuries of domination and profit need to be followed by centuries of partnership, cooperation, aid and alliance. Historical responsibility must translate into present and future accountability.
(also published on trasym.blog)
Erratic Attempts 