Future on European idea depends on peace

An opposition supporter draped in an European Union flag attends a pro-EU protest in front of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers in Kiev, Ukraine. AP Photo

The 20th century will remain in history, first of all, with two crucial events, marked also two turns in the civilization progress of humanity. The first of them is the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, which opened the road to the unique experiment for an alternative social-economic and political perfection of the society and the state. No matter how we would evaluate it today, one thing is a matter of fact – it transformed not only the political card of humanity, but put its non-obliterated mark on civilization in general.

The second turn is also connected undoubtedly with the historical changes in Europe and the world in the end of the 80th and the 90th years of the last century. Although revolutionary by its character – unlike the October – they had as a whole an evolutionary process. Started with the ideas of the “perestroika” in the USSR, they overturned very quickly our concepts about the structure of society and the world. The “tender revolutions” in Eastern Europe showed ambiguously that there is no and cannot be anything unchangeable in the course of historical process, that the structure of society and the state depend directly on the what is “being forged” in a civilization plan. That’s why we can declare in firm belief that the start laid by “perestroika” in the Soviet Union gives the channel of a new historical change. It will determine the aspect of the world decades ahead reshaping not only the political card, but also making serious correctives in the value system and the life of contemporary society.

Both great turns of humanity in 20th century have their motherland in the “Old Continent.” Contrary to all pessimistic prognoses, built up over the thesis of the “civilization tiredness” of Europe, it has defended, this time, also its position of an epicenter of historical process. Not underestimating what is happening and becoming imminent in an economic or geopolitical plan beyond the Atlantic or the Far East as well, we can boldly declare the furor of the 21th century is also being built up in the bounds of this continent.

Which of this two directions will humanity take depends again on a very high degree on the choice of Europe. Now on the declared one – it was made in theory long ago – but on one of the real steps, which unfortunately are far away behind the declarative purposes. Evaluating objectively the present situation, both in a national and broad public, political and international plan, we cannot but find that the above two alternatives are still behind its historical solution. They keep on living together on the territory of European space, bringing destabilization, uncertainty and much drama both for Europeans and the world as a whole. It would not be forcedly if we say the impossibility to establish after Yalta and the balance of the block opposition a stable and effectively functioning planetarium system U.S.
security is closely connected with the U.N. successes of the European dialogue, both in the “narrow” scene of the word, i.e. referred to the situation in the European Union, and in a broad continental plan.

The presence, still, of fireplace of tensions and war conflicts, egoistically motivated, passing each other as aims and scope, visions for the future of the international process, the stagnation in the
negotiations about a new structure of the European space – this is only a part of the symptoms of the schizophrenic double-dealing of the civilization of European identity.

One of the basic problems which Europe is being confronted with today in rationalizing its new identity, especially in determining the limits of the integration process, is that of the future of the national state.

The social development refuter literally daily and noisily declared suggestions about gradually withering away the national identity as a basic factor on the formation of different models of the future. No matter how that may sound, this thesis unites the extreme apologists of two irreconcilable visions about social development – the communist and capitalist ones. Neither the experiment of the formation of a united socialist nation, nor the thesis of a gradual “talking at feeling of European identity” has succeeded. The artificially formulated and tenaciously imposed thesis of a “Europe of the regions” has, in practice, the same fate as the imposed by propaganda theory in Eastern Europe about the socialist integration destroying ethno-cultural and national-historical borders based on socialist internationalism.

The theory of globalization destroying the national-state borders should be regarded in this context as well. Of course, there is no reasonable thesis able to contest the “shortening of distances” between countries and peoples in the contemporary world. Nor the dynamiting of the ethno-cultural dialogue between different civilization circles connected with it. All this has a fully objective character. But this is far from an imposing tendency toward the unification of values and traditions, even less a possibility of imposing a uniform model of development, although subordinate to most democratic norms of co-existence and the functioning of the economic and political system in the framework of society.

Connected aggression

The philosophy of globalization established theoretically on this basis has managed in a short time to discredit itself as an instrument of hegemonies, as a comfortable screen, but also a brutally open intervention in the life of sovereign countries and peoples. The connected aggressions against different states not only have harmonized the world, but given rise to dangerous centers of tension and sowed additional mistrust toward the possibilities of a non-goodwill dialogue. They discredit the ability of the international structures to establish a new, effective system of European and world security, going beyond the known foundations of the block opposition and the “Balance of Fear.” The only positive thing the philosophy of globalization has brought as a result is the far more clear belief that there are not and cannot be any universal and ideological systems and that any attempt for an ideologically motivated “engineering” of the objective tendencies of development does not only accelerate its march, but set new “wolf’s traps” before the civilization process.

In this respect, the integration policy has a non-synonymous effect. The artificially speeding up of its rates, contradicting the objective course of development of the block, super concentration, strengthens the anonymous character of power and drifts the individual from real civil rights and limits its opportunities and abilities to react to the managing decisions dropped from above. The non-balanced delegating of sovereignty by the national state to European bureaucracy, which very often caters for itself and global geopolitical interests, makes senseless not only the traditional foundations of the state organization but also erodes purely and psychologically the trust of the people to them.

The development of Eastern Europe goring the last years gives many examples in this respect. But unfortunately, even strongly located today, they are not far from an irretrievable past. Such tendencies turn into a part of the public daily round at many places as the Balkans and the territory of the former Soviet Union. Although deaden and in a latent form, they hang as the “Sword of Damocles” over the foundations of society. It is even more terrible that from the destabilization from the “tender revolutions” and 20 years of unsuccessful experiments Eastern Europe, they find by a specific manner its manifestation in the life of the traditional West-European democracies. We can declare the fate of United Europe and the integration processes is being decided in a great degree on the basis of what happens in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. The civilization process emaciates not only distances, but also the existing in the past differences. It is high time to comprehend, in spite of the membership in EU, we all are in the same boat and the future of the European idea as a basic ferment of the civilization change will depend also on the successful decisions to many open questions connected with peace, security and prosperity in our joint home.

This is the speech by Prof. Zahari Zahariev at the 17th Eurasian Economic Summit.