(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
We may not need to establish a de jure Federal Europe
if many regions will increasingly operate as if they
were constituents of a de facto Federal Europe. This is
because both at the state and, to a lesser extent, at the
regional level, conventional political authority—tradi-
tionally encapsulated in the concept of sovereignty-
is increasingly shared among a number of units within
the state system. The absolute nature of the nation-
state can no longer be sustained as if it were a closed
system. Pooled sovereignty, permeable borders, Euro-
pean Community-wide socioeconomic and environ-
mental policymaking, freedom of movement and to a
lesser extent shared foreign policy—through interre-
lated agencies such as the Western European Union,
NATO, CSCE—-‘all characterize the contemporary
state system and render it more interdependent, both
on respective member states and on subordinate con-
stituent regions. Clearly such integration and mutual
dependence is not without its structural strains.
Ethnic Insiders and Ethnic Outsiders
The major ethnic issue facing Westem Europe in the
coming decade is the question of the status of outsid-
ers. Since the 1960s several regions have experienced
an influx of migrants who are often religiously, ideo-
logically, and racially different from indigenous Euro-
peans. Approximately 30 million people entered
Westem Europe between 1945 and 1975, one of the
largest migratory movements in modern history. An
estimated 13 million legally settled non-Europeans,
and perhaps as many as 2 million “illegals,” are within
the European Union. Tension between indigenous
Community members and “outsiders” is present and
most likely will increase.
The “outsider” question has become significant in the
context of the collapse of the bipolar system and the
emergence of a new world order. At least two major,
contradictory processes are at work here. The first is
the opening up of Europe to democratic ideals and
representative politics, which follows the advance of=
capitalism eastward and its penetration and creation of
markets, resources, and supply sources. The other,
occurring simultaneously, is a reaction that seeks to
protect the individual character of West European
states by closing borders and limiting immigration.
The resulting tension in the hindrance of the free
movement of people, ideas, and goods is a major
source of ethnic tension. Neonationalism, facism,
crypto-Communism, and blatant racism are all too
obvious a response.
Race and Ethnicity
It might have been assumed that in tandem with the
so-called “ethnic revival” of postwar Europe would
have come an increased tolerance to racial as well as
ethnic minorities. However, this is not the ease. As
MacLaughlin (1993) demonstrates, both ethnicity and
race are being used to categorize groups and structure
policies in ways that defend the integrity of Europe-
ans. Within sections of the European media and the
political arena, ethnicity is increasingly used to refer
to the positive, quasibiological identity that links an
indigenous group to a specific place in Europe. Race,
in contrast, has come to “signify a set of imaginary
properties of inheritance that fix and legitimate real
positions of social domination or subordination in
terms of cultural differences between native and for-
eigner in the European Community,” (MacLaughlin,
1993). As a classificatory category it reflects prima-
rily, if not exclusively, negative tendencies of dissoci-
ation and exclusion at state and EU levels.
Ethnicity, Migration, and Frontiers
For this crude distinction between ethnic and racial
categorization to be maintained in an increasingly
multiethnic world, Europe has to reinterpret its posi-
tion, to defend its frontiers from incursions from the
east, mass migration from the south, and refugee
absorption from the Balkans. What son of society
would a fortress Europe thus conceived seek to con-
struct? Surely such isolationism, state-inspired nation-
alism, and racial cleansing is an anathema to the
European dream of free movement of labor and open
borders? Unfortunately not; the lessons of history
remind us that every generation since 1648 has fought
for the control of the Lotharingian Axis——the Rhine-
Rhone Corridor—and its associated networks.
Granted that the European Union exists in part to seal
the respective futures of West European societies
within one common framework, but the issues of
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268