Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/100592/1005640.000

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                                                                                ESSAY, Page 92

A Vote Against Fragmentation


By Dominique Moisi

[Dominique Moisi is deputy director of the French Institute
for International Affairs.]


    Contrary to the predictions of Euroskeptics, the French
have voted for the Maastricht treaty for a more unified Europe.
It was not a resounding yes, but a significant one that is a
tribute to the maturity and sense of responsibility of the
French people. This yes comes as a relief in spite of Europe's
continuing monetary turmoil and Britain's misgivings about the
treaty. A French no would have unleashed a political earthquake
upon the Continent, not only because of the centrality of France
in the painstaking process of European integration, but also
because of the timing of the referendum.

    The international system is in search of a new order and
guiding principles. Fast emerging is a competition between the
logic of economics, entailing globalization, interdependence and
regional integration, and that of politics, in which at present
the reality of fragmentation seems to be gaining the upper hand.
In this context, French voters had a responsibility that went
well beyond France and its position within the new Europe. The
issue could be summarized as follows: In post-cold war Europe,
will democracy and stability spread from West to East, or will
fractionalization, with all the strains it is likely to engender
for the Continent and its people, spread from East to West?

    Yesterday Western Europe was united in order to confront
a Soviet bloc, artificially brought together by the Red Army.
Today Western Europe has to be united to face the vacuum left
by the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the powerful forces
of fragmentation that the collapse of the Soviet empire
unleashed.

    Fragmentation in the eastern part of Europe was largely
inevitable and the product of three forces: the weight of
history, the legacy of communism and the democratization process
itself. Unlike Britain and France, which have secure identities
and stable boundaries, the nation-states of Eastern Europe are
the relatively recent product of empire -- Austro-Hungarian,
Ottoman or Russian. They have had tragic histories of lost
freedom, submerged identities and shifting boundaries. Add to
this the legacy of communism, which in the former Soviet bloc
acted as a refrigerator, freezing all political, social and
cultural evolutions, leaving pre- and post-World War II problems
unresolved, accumulating economic and spiritual frustrations.
The worst example of this tragic history is, of course, the
former Yugoslavia, with its explosion of violence, where even
the cold war freezer had not stopped the putrefaction that comes
with ethnic hatreds. Contributing to the acceleration of the
fragmentation process is the revival of democracy itself. In the
years before 1989, democratic opponents to communist rule were
united in their struggle against totalitarianism; now they are
free to fight among themselves and are doing so with little
hesitation.

    The ultimate dilemma for Central and Eastern Europe -- not
to mention the former Soviet Union, where the problems may be
even more serious -- is that while democratic institutions can
be established in a matter of months, it takes many years to
move from centrally planned economies to decentralized free
markets, and far longer still to create a modern, Western-type
civil society with all the reflexive responses of democracy.
Frustrated economically, in search of a political, if not
national, identity, Eastern and Central Europeans are still
looking to Western Europe as a model and as a solution for their
political and security needs. They are banking on a predictable
West and dreaming of joining not just a larger market, a Europe
of shopkeepers, but a successful and dynamic democratic union.
In Central and Eastern Europe, democratic forces would have
voted for Maastricht because they see in an integrated Europe
the best bulwark against nationalist temptations.

    It was at this critical juncture that the French vote of
Sept. 20 took on such importance. At a time when key nations in
the West, such as the U.S. and Germany, are painfully searching
for their new internal and international identities, the
existence of a cohesive, integrated Europe is absolutely
essential. The western part of the European Continent may have
disappointed the East by the modesty of its help, the evidence
of its selfishness and its display of diplomatic and military
impotence in dealing with the Balkan crisis. But until French
doubts about Maastricht materialized, the process of European
integration in itself had not been an issue, notwithstanding the
treaty's rejection by Danish voters.

    In the present European atmosphere, dominated by a per
vasive negative mood, pessimism could easily lead to
self-fulfilling prophecies. But the French and other Europeans
alike must be convinced that the divided Europe of the cold war
will not be replaced by an impotent Weimar Europe marked anew
by nationalism, xenophobia and, above all, economic depression.
In spite of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the fragmentation
in central Eastern Europe and the uncertainties in Western
Europe, we are neither in 1914 nor in 1933.

    In the end, the French people said yes to Maastricht
because in spite of their hesitations, they were, in their
majority, persuaded of the necessity and ineluctability of the
continuation of the European integration process. They also
voted yes because they were moved by a reflex of prudence, and
a no vote would have opened the gate to the unknown.