Because he had once hurled himself out the door of a C-47 over the Netherlands, my old platoon sergeant in the 82nd Airborne had personally experienced how a complicated, overly optimistic and poorly thought-out multinational effort can turn into a debacle.
Moreover, because he had made four other combat jumps in addition to this one in September, 1944, to capture strategic bridges on the Dutch-German border, he understood that when complex undertakings go awry, even temporarily, confusion and panic can quickly set in; that once-respected leaders can collapse into incompetence and even cravenness. In other words, Sgt. Edwards would have understood the current plight of the United Kingdom, and the rest of the European Union, as the two embark on an unprecedented political and economic dissolution following the “Brexit” referendum in Britain last month.
Nijmegen, in Holland, where the 82nd Airborne jumped as U.S., British and Polish troops struggled against Germans, is only 115 miles northeast of Brussels, seat of EU governance and only 90 miles straight north of Maastrict, another river town, where the treaty to push for a common European currency was signed 24 years ago.
British Gen. Frederick Browning coined the phrase “a bridge too far” to describe, in rueful acknowledgement, how the goals in the battles to secure the bridges were a bit too ambitious. The phrase now aptly captures the fundamental error of EU planners. Like the Allied attack, the EU is a good idea that might have succeeded if the goals had been kept more limited. Now its future is cloudy.
To understand this, review some history. The attack my sergeant participated in failed, but Germany still surrendered eight months later. Much of Europe was physically devastated and the USSR increasingly posed a threat. In 1951, leaders of six former enemy countries reached an agreement to free coal, iron ore and steel shipments from usual trade barriers so that the industries could be more efficient in meeting the needs of cold and unhoused populations.
The “European Coal and Steel Community” became the primary precursor to what is now the EU. But there was a political subtext that was more important than the stated purpose: to so tie old enemies together economically that they would never again go to war; that Europe never again suffer the death and destruction of the preceding 40 years.
The initial six countries grew to 10 and eventually 12. Free trade in coal and steel became a general free trade area, with no tariffs on trade between members and common tariffs and quotas applied to imports from the rest of the world. The terms “European Economic Community” and “Common Market” entered global vocabularies.
There always are knotty questions. Can France keep out sparkling wines labeled “champagne” that flout its own exacting criteria? Can other countries bar French cheeses made from unprocessed milk? Is it fair to trade without restrictions if one country requires its employers to provide much higher fringe benefits than another? Whose laws apply if a Dutch insurance company wants to sell life policies to Italian households? If France subsidizes its farmers can it keep out cheaper food from another member country?
Resolving such questions prompted rules and a growing bureaucracy. But economic integration was generally popular as the market grew.
There always was politics in new admissions. French president Charles DeGaulle’s nationalism kept the United Kingdom out until 1973. Spain, Portugal and Greece all were admitted, at least in part, as a reward for their turn to democratic government — but without regard for long-term economic viability. We’re seeing the problems of that playing out now as well.
In the 1980s, what had become the European Union seemed to be on a roll. If it had progressed from basic commodities to all merchandise to some services, why not make it apply to all services, including retail financial ones? If British tourists could also get dental work done cheaply while vacationing in the south of Portugal, why not let Portuguese dentists set up practice in London or Leeds? Why not simply let all factors of production, including labor, flow freely between member nations?
That led to an immense effort to achieve such free flows by 1992. Doing so required many regulations to accommodate entrenched interests and differences in historical institutions. But it was largely a success.
This probably was where things should have stopped. But, as in waging war, short-term successes can breed hubris. If free flows of resources are good, wouldn’t things be even better with a common currency? It was no accident that the Maastricht Treaty calling for a common currency and monetary policy by 1999 was signed in 1992, the year the Union declared victory in economic integration.
This was not occurring in a vacuum, however. Communism was collapsing, Germany reunified and Czechoslovakia broke apart — both peacefully; but Yugoslavia fissured and fell into bloody civil war. Allowing once-eastern bloc nations like Poland and the Czech Republic into the Union was a way to consolidate democracy and markets in these crucial neighbors. Admitting the Baltic States, former Soviet republics, demonstrated resolve to keep Russia from threatening their independence. Holding out eventual membership as a reward for not fighting was a tool in bringing peace to ex-Yugoslavia.
As is often the case, bad metaphors cast a spell. The EU was said to be like a bicycle, if you didn’t keep moving forward you would fall over. Move forward it did, with membership rising to its current 28 and with a subset of nations adopting the euro on Jan. 1, 1999.
Wise observers saw the internal tensions developing, but as in financial booms and battlefield successes, naysayers find few hearers.
When my old sergeant and comrades pulled back from eastern Holland, the civilians left behind, as well as some on the liberated side, went into the first of two winters of near starvation. There is a cohort of Dutch, Danish, German and Polish people who were permanently stunted by the hunger they experienced as small children in 1944-46. That generation was willing to pay a high price for European integration that maintained peace. But they are now approaching 80. And their children have other priorities, including lack of jobs and slow economic growth.
One referendum in the United Kingdom does not mean that the EU is at an end. But June 23, 2016, will go down in history as a watershed, not just for Britain, but for Europe as a whole.
The EU is a political and social experiment unprecedented in history. So we have no historical examples to go on when it encounters head winds or even runs on a reef. Pundits can speculate, but no one knows how British withdrawal from a complex institution built up over 60 years will affect either that country, the other 27 in the Union or the rest of the world. This is uncertainty in its deepest sense.
Financial Times writer Martin Wolf, who I think is one of the best economics columnist in the world, says withdrawal is the most momentous mistake in UK history since the end of World War II. Whether or not he is right, I think the UK and Europe are in for a very rough patch indeed. It will be impossible for the United States — or even Minnesota — to escape unaffected. But exactly what will happen is unknowable.