Is the European Union moving towards closer integration or the opposite, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed At the G8 summit held a few days ago in Sea Island, Texas, Bush's "Greater Middle East Initiative" was renamed the "Broader Middle East Initiative", thus putting the accent on a different aspect of the proposal instead of concentrating on the geographical dimensions, light was cast rather on the social class it addressed, namely, the middle class, which has been promoted to centre stage over the last few years. This is not a surprising development; in a way, it is an inevitable consequence of the advent of the unipolar world order which has replaced the bipolar world order of the Cold War years, where location (the Middle East) is not necessarily the key element. Under the bipolar world order, the emergence of two mutually hostile poles divided societies ideologically, weakening the middle class and tearing it apart between an imperial capitalist pole on the one hand and a communist pole on the other. Now that the world system has become unipolar, only the capitalist pole has survived and the middle class is no longer torn apart. On the contrary, many believe that it now has the opportunity to flourish more than at any other time. The growing prominence of the middle class on the world stage raises an important question: will this new development replace extremism by moderation as the dominant mode of political practice, or will it, on the contrary, stimulate new unconventional forms of extremism? Judging by what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya and other hot crisis points around the globe, the latter scenario appears more likely. The three devastating wars which broke out between France and Germany in less than a century (in 1870, in 1914 and in 1939) convinced the two neighbouring states that they needed to find a way of breaking what had become a pattern of repeated outbreaks of hostility, to devise a mechanism by which the interests of the two nations would become so tightly woven as to preclude the possibility of war ever again breaking out between them. As to the US, no such need existed because America was protected by two oceans. 11 September, 2001, was the first time the American heartland was exposed to a devastating aggression; the attack on Pearl Harbour was directed at a naval base thousands of miles from its territory. At a time a group of European nations signed the Treaty of Rome and established the nucleus of a European community which would strive towards avoiding war, a process of a different sort was unfolding between the two superpowers. The seeds of this process, which came to be described as the Cold War, were planted in 1949, as the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was established primarily to counter the perceived military threat from the Soviet Union Moscow and its allies which set up their own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955 as a counter measure, followed soon after by the construction of the most telling symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall. War was avoided not by positive steps in the direction of peace, but by a system of "mutual deterrence", which actually boiled down to a dalliance of terror. Each side developed weapons of mass destruction capable of annihilating the other, not only once, but several times over. It hardly mattered which of the two sides had developed a greater overkill capability; after all, people can die only once. Because of this difference between the two tracks -- the European and the American -- at the point of departure, a serious difference emerged over how to avoid a collision, consolidate security and face the challenge of peace worldwide. The most significant feature of last week's European Parliament elections was the record low turnout in most of the 25 countries making up the newly enlarged EU. Voter abstention reached an average of 52 per cent in the 15 original members of the union and 74 per cent in the ten newcomers. In two of these, Poland and Slovakia, abstention reached an amazing 80 per cent! The low turnout, which is seen as a protest vote, has raised serious concerns about the future of the EU, particularly regarding the ratification of the European Constitution and the planned expansion to Romania and Bulgaria in 2007. The main issue which imposed itself at the end of WWII was whether war in future could be avoided or not. In other words, whether interests between the protagonists in various conflicts could be interlinked in such a manner that war would become impossible. Europe's long march towards peace was crowned by the embrace between the representatives of two erstwhile enemies, France and Germany, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy. This was the first time Germany was invited to take part in D-Day anniversary celebrations and the presence of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the ceremonial marking of the end of the war was hailed as a milestone in the process of European reconciliation. But although the occasion revealed the extent to which things have changed over the last six decades, there is no guarantee that the process towards greater European unity will proceed as smoothly as was once hoped. As the European Community gradually moved forward in the direction of becoming a European Union, the relationship between the two superpowers remained structurally the same until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s and, with it, the bipolar world order. The demise of the Soviet Union left a vacuum that neither the European Union nor the ideology of the middle class could fill. This left the field wide open for the United States, which, as the only surviving superpower, was quick to fill the vacuum and impose its hegemony over the rest of the world, most blatantly in the Iraq war. Europe's hopes of catching up suffered a severe setback with the shockingly low turnout in the European Parliament elections. It is clear that European integration is still a long way off. Although the leaders of the EU's 25 member states finally managed to agree on the text of the European Constitution at their summit meeting last Thursday, it still has to be ratified by each country separately before coming into force. Many countries are planning to hold referendums on the issue and the results are far from certain. Disillusionment with Brussels is running high and eurosceptics are gaining ground. The majority of Europeans who stayed away from the polls were sending a clear message to their leaders: "you have failed to deliver on your promises." The right and the centre-right still dominate the political life of the EU, even though remarkable achievements have been scored by the Socialists in a number of countries, notably France and Spain, despite the fact that they represented the opposition in both countries. The low voter turnout meant that constituencies which would normally have voted for closer European integration stayed away from the polls. Their absence negatively affected the overall picture, not least because the new parliament does not genuinely reflect the will of all Europeans. Moreover, it highlighted the gap that exists between representation in parliament and the will of the people. It also allowed the eurosceptics and populist parties, ranging from the extreme left to the extreme right, to gain more seats in the European Parliament than ever before. For example, the UK Independence Party, which is calling for Britain's withdrawal from the EU altogether and which won 17 per cent of the national vote (coming third after Labour and the Conservatives) won 12 seats in the European Parliament, quadrupling its representation since the last elections five years ago. The new configuration of the European Parliament has highlighted a growing political divide in Europe and threatens the very future of the European project. Indeed, the possibility of countries actually seceding from the Union is no longer as far fetched as it once seemed. In any case, the final nature, character, and identity of the European Union have not been decided upon yet. It is still a phenomenon in the making whose relations with its environment -- an issue which concerns us Arabs in particular -- have not been finalised yet. A factor that will have an enormous bearing on how Europe's relations with the Middle East are likely to shape up is how it will respond to Turkey's application for membership in the EU. Because Turkey is a Muslim country, its eligibility for membership is hotly contested in Europe and its chances of gaining admission have been further reduced by the results of the European Parliament elections. Europe's reluctance to admit Turkey to the fold is increasingly coming to be seen as a validation of Huntington's clash of civilisation theory.
