Sir Ralf Dahrendorf: Sanford S. Elberg Lecture in International Studies; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

When the economist Mancur Olson published his book on The Rise and Decline of Nations in 1982, his prognosis for Europe held out little hope. Stagflation, the bane of the 1970s, was the result of the logic of collective action under conditions of long-term stability. Cartels of special-interest groups kept on raising expectations while preventing their satisfaction, until in the end nothing goes any more. Olson saw little prospect of gradual, reformist change from within. Whereas the workers of Detroit could move to Houston and perhaps to San Diego, attracted by air conditioning and high-tech jobs, those of Manchester, Lille, and Essex had nowhere to go. Indeed, Olson took Eurogloom to its catastrophic extreme: "We can appreciate anew," he says "Thomas Jefferson's observation that 'the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.'" Tyrants apart, this was hardly helpful advice! Six years later, in 1988, the historian Paul Kennedy published his book on The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Kennedy shies away from theory, and also has the historian's sense for the creative potential, if not of chaos, then of a degree of disorganization. Yet he likes "great powers," so that his discussion of Europe on its way out of "Europessimism" and "Eurosclerosis" is striking. There are, he says, "many signs of European competitiveness," and if Europeans manage to get their act together without falling into the trap of overcentralized empire-building, the old continent may have a future after all.

The two authors differ in temperament, background, and intellectual predilections, but there is also the difference in the publication date of their books. Olson wrote his under the influence of the corporatist immobility of the 1970s; Kennedy could not fail to take note of the long boom which began in the very year in which Olson's book was published, and began incidentally (the Falklands War apart) without shedding the blood of either patriots or tyrants. Instead, Schumpeter reappeared into the world of Keynes, the entrepreneur disturbed the coziness of demand management, with a few simple theories thrown in, such as monetarism à la Friedman and the Laffer curve. The yuppies reared their well-coiffed heads and supported the new governments of Mrs. Thatcher in 1979, Mr. Reagan in 1980, Mr. Kohl in 1982, Mr. Gonzales in 1983. Contrary to their 1970s predecessors, these leaders all managed to get themselves reelected, as did others in more unlikely places -- Mr. Craxi in Italy, Mr. Nakasone in Japan, Mr. Delors as President of the European Commission. The 1980s were a decade of astonishingly stable political conditions coupled with exceptional economic advance, until in the end people have begun to wonder whether cycles, be they economic or political, have been abolished altogether. The price of success can be high, and the 1980s are probably no exception. In economic terms, a new "big is beautiful" mentality has led to the creation of financial empires which seem to have lost all contact with the real world (if such exists). Much of the 1980s boom is credit-driven and leaves individuals, companies, and countries heavily in debt. Moreover, the boom has left a significant portion of the people out of its blessings; it has created "two-thirds' societies," or at any rate societies in which a significant percentage are denied full citizenship rights. None of this can detract, however, from the fact that in the OECD world we have seen a decade of rapid advance and, more important still, of a sense of forward movement. Europe was a part of this process, and while it affected its countries unevenly, it has dispelled the gloom and doom mentality of the 1970s.

The 1980s have also been a decade of tangible new initiatives. The European Economic Community emerged in 1957 from the debris of a European Defense Community and a European Political Community. It became a success because its objective -- the creation of a common market without tariff barriers -- responded to the interests of all advanced nations during that earlier period of rapid growth. By 1970 the initial objective had been achieved; the European Community of six members moved on to enlarge its membership by the accession of Britain, Ireland, and Denmark, and to explore new horizons of common policy, notably economic and monetary union. The debacle of this plan, which began on that fateful August 15, 1971, on which the United States gave notice to the postwar international economic system, and was compounded first by subsequent monetary developments and then by the oil shock of 1973, led the European community into a prolonged period of despondency and inaction. Recently, Roy Jenkins, the British statesman who was President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981, has published his Brussels diary. Its most striking feature is to find a great man in an important position at an almost total loss when it comes to define a theme, let alone a policy. Europe at the time was floundering, although certain consequential new beginnings were made at the margin of the Community. Organized Political Cooperation (that is, regular meetings between foreign ministers and their political directors about matters of foreign policy) and the European Monetary System (that is, the agreement of some, though not all, finance ministers and central bankers to contain floating between European currencies somewhat) are the main examples.

Then, in the mid-1980s, an entirely new initiative came to be taken. It is rightly linked with the Commission President Jacques Delors, who first took office in January 1983, but also with Chancellor Kohl of Germany and President Mitterrand of France. The initiative has come to be known under the heading of "1992," because it aims at creating a Community-wide economic space by December 31, 1992. The main features of the project are "four freedoms": free movement of goods, of services, of capital, and of people. The legal basis of the project is a so-called Single European Act, ratified by all twelve member states (the accession of Spain, Portugal, and Greece having taken place in the 1980s also) in 1987. The Single European Act not only defines the objective of the single market, but also reaffirms the ultimate political objectives of the European Community in some form of European Union.

Progress toward "1992" has been significant. In good Brussels style, the Commissioner responsible for the internal market from 1984 to 1988 -- curiously, in view of his regulatory temperament, a former member of Mrs. Thatcher's cabinet, Lord Cockfield, whom she promptly failed to renominate to the Commission in 1988 -- had devised some 280 "regulations" (that is, Community laws) which would have to be passed in order to guarantee the four freedoms. About one hundred have in fact been enacted, and while the tougher problems such as fiscal harmonization have yet to be resolved, the momentum of the process has fuelled people's imaginations, both inside and outside the European Community. The magic date of January 1, 1993, will no doubt pass like any other day, but in looking back a few years later, people will probably conclude that Europe has made great strides toward dismantling internal barriers to the movement of goods and people, as well as toward presenting a common front to the outside world.

Europe? Having been a European Commissioner myself (from 1970 to 1974, thus at the tail end of the first phase of progress in the EEC), I am naturally tempted to say Europe when I mean Brussels, and to devote the rest of this lecture to the European Community. But I have learned to resist this natural temptation. Not only is the European Community a curiously flat and bureaucratic subject, it also detracts from the real social, economic, and political forces which have determined the postwar history of that troubled part of the world, and have made it today an area of prosperity and of peace.

In the beginning there was of course the compact between France and Germany -- West Germany, to be sure. We now say of course, but in a sense the compact was no more likely than that between Israel and a Palestinian "entity" is today. (It is relevant to note that when the Franco-German compact was first concluded, West Germany was still an "entity" rather than a sovereign state, and a significant chunk of land -- the Saar territory -- had been all but annexed by France, only to be returned to Germany after a referendum in 1955.) The basis of the compact was not so much the discovery of common interests as that of complementary interests. France wanted to contain Germany, to tie it firmly into a Western alliance which it could never hope to dominate. Germany wanted to find a way into the international community, to recognition and participation. There were other, more down-to-earth interests too. West Germany wanted, and needed, a larger market for its industrial products; France wanted to make sure that the threat to its farmers remained cushioned by a well-financed, not to say German-financed, agricultural policy.

This is not all there was to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, and the EEC and Euratom in 1958. There were the Benelux countries, which epitomized a union of sovereign states in certain significant respects, which was based on mutual respect and the assumption of equality. There was Italy, the unsung champion of Europe, which has contributed much to the sharing of sovereignty in the European Community. There was Jean Monnet, the author of the ingenious plan to start the road to the United States of Europe in one little comer of common policy and rely on the functional necessity of progress to the ultimate goal.

But all this is now past history. The Community survived as one of very few historical examples of supranational institutions by voluntary agreement and without a hegemonical power. It has plausibly been said that the most important institution which it has created is not the Council of Ministers assembling the national interests of member states, nor even the Commission with its exclusive right to propose legislation in the name of the European interest, and certainly not the curious afterthought of the Treaty of Rome -- the Assembly or Parliament -- but the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. The Court is the guardian of the treaties, and it has produced a remarkable body of enforceable jurisdiction in the admittedly limited areas of Community competence. The Community survived, though the functional process foreseen by the founding fathers did not take place. Progress was based on the interests of member states rather than the alleged automaticity of the institutions. It is these interests therefore which require inspection.

Four countries stand out in such a picture today. The first two are France and Germany, whose compact still determines whether Europe progresses or not. But things have changed. Germany has long ceased to be worried about mere recognition (though strange identity problems remain). Instead, another older German quandary has come to the fore again with the recent revival of the concept of Mitteleuropa. Is Germany really a part of the West, or should it straddle West and East and thereby promote its own national aspiration of bringing the two Germanys closer together? It is worth remembering that when the Treaty of Rome was ratified in the Bundestag in Bonn in 1957, Social Democrats and most Liberals voted against ratification on the grounds that West European integration made German reunification that much more difficult. Today, Germany's original European fervor has abated; there is much overt and covert skepticism, and considerable reluctance to move too far too fast in the process of integration.

Not surprisingly, the French position is the mirror image of that of Germany. French worries about Germany's drift away to an unknown but suspicious destination are probably exaggerated, but they have led, after a long period of French coolness toward Europe, to a new Europeanism in Paris which surprises those who remember only too well how French ministers were invariably "difficult" in the councils of the Community. Once again, economic interests parallel the political ones. They are no longer simply about the common market, or even about agriculture (where all European governments have chosen to embrace a costly protectionism in order to pacify a dwindling farm vote which is perceived to be critical by ruling parties). Economic interests now have to do with France's desire to introduce a greater element of stability into its monetary and economic policies by closer ties to Germany, or at any rate to the German Mark, and Germany's reluctance, for the same reason, to allow institutions and policies informed by traumatic memories of inflation to be eroded. Thus, today, France is all but united in its European enthusiasm, whereas Germany is; divided and therefore less predictable than in the past.

Britain is not so much divided in political terms any more as in the European commitment of all its leaders. The option for membership in the European Community is no longer in dispute. Whoever governs Britain in the foreseeable future will take an active part in Community affairs, but certain residual interests of a different kind have recently come to the fore again. Insofar as they concern Britain's role in the Commonwealth, they are very residual indeed. On the other hand, the Thatcher-Reagan relationship has revived the notion that Britain is situated somewhere halfway between the European continent (which is still called "Europe" in everyday language) and the United States. Prime Minister Thatcher in particular likes to equate Europe with that dreaded S-word socialism, of which she believes she has freed Britain (with the unintended result of turning the Labour Party more pro-European). But, above all, the British notion of sovereignty, tied as it is not so much to the country or the state as to Parliament, is jealously guarded by all. Whether the subject at issue is the role of the Brussels Commission, or a common foreign policy, or monetary union, Britain tends to draw back and concentrate on matters of narrowly defined interest. Thus Britain has been and will continue to be a loyal yet reluctant member of the Community, and not one which is going to push for further integration.

The opposite is true for Spain. There are few more pleasing European stories in the 1980s than the successful transition of the Southern dictatorships to democratic rule and international involvement. We know today that such transitions require a precarious balancing act between stable political institutions and economic advancement. Very few have achieved both democracy and prosperity; many have achieved neither. We all watch developments in Latin America with dismay, and those in the Soviet Union with bated breath. Transition is one of those processes which call for unusual qualities of leadership, and probably not just one political leader but two, like Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard in Germany -- one for the head and one for the stomach, one for political stability and one for economic growth.

Two of the three South European members of the European Community have been fortunate in this respect, and Spain is clearly the most important. Felipe Gonzales is arguably the greatest European statesman-politician of the decade. Along with King Juan Carlos, he got democracy firmly established even among the military; he persuaded the Spanish people to accept NATO and to join the European Community, and he took the country through the economic valley of tears which seems to be a necessary condition of the ascent to lasting prosperity. Today Spain is experiencing an economic miracle, and while Gonzales may not reap the political fruits of it, his nerve and his vision have much to do with his country's success. From the beginning, the European Community played an important role in his project. To him it represented an association of democratic countries and at the same time a bearable version of the world economy. In the event, he won his case.

Success stories such as those of Spain (and Portugal) are of course themselves a source of encouragement for the rest. This brief inspection of national interests in relation to Europe yields a rather mixed picture. Internal pressures toward further integration are present, but they are not overwhelming. If they prevail, some will be left behind. It is no accident that Britain is not a member of the European Monetary System, nor is Germany's reluctance with respect to monetary union surprising. European progress is not only likely to occur in "two speeds" -- that is, with some moving forward while others are dragging their feet -- but also at the margin of the institutions of Brussels. Yet there is enough of it to inspire others in Europe with a mixture of fear and attraction. This is notably true for two groups of European countries.

One is that of the remaining EFTA countries, the deserted members of the European Free Trade Association, which was once formed around Britain. They are Switzerland and Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. Looked at as one bloc, they are easily the most important trading and general economic partner of the EC. At the same time the frequently reasserted political objectives of the European Community make it very hard for them to consider membership. Switzerland has firmly decided that its perpetual neutrality is incompatible with the goal of political union which was reaffirmed in the Single European Act. Austria would quite like to test its freedom under the State Treaty to join a Community of which Germany is a member, and the Austrian government is considering an application for membership while anxiously listening to the crackling noises from Moscow. Norway is of course a NATO member, and had negotiated accession to the EC along with Britain, Ireland, and Denmark in the early 1970s, but is reluctant to repeat the experience of a referendum which left the country deeply split, right down to the villages and indeed families. Finland is not as sanguine about testing its sovereignty vis-à-vis the Soviet Union as Austria. Sweden would like to buy its way into the advantages of the European Community by paying a major fee for joining the common market without joining the political community.

Here is a European story if ever there was one! It is beautiful in its variety, hopeless in its incompatibilities, and it is also worrying. I certainly fail to see any justification for using trade barriers in order to define, and at the same time divide, Europe. Recently President Delors has proposed "bloc-to-bloc" negotiations between the EC and EFTA, and the EFTA Council has agreed on a draft proposal at its Oslo meeting in February 1989. But the text did not survive the next two weeks. Already the diversity of interests of the remaining EFTA countries has begun to assert itself. There clearly cannot be one EC-EFTA agreement which satisfies all the diverse needs of which I have hinted here. Thus we have a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation which will be a test for the readiness of the European Community to be open to the world around it and reject all appearances of a Fortress Europe.

It is the more important for the European Community to pass muster in this test in view of another group of countries which are watching the process with uncommon interest -- the countries of Eastern Europe. At least one of them, Hungary, is already toying with the idea of applying for membership in the European Community. In due course, the most lasting effect of the Gorbachev revolution may well turn out to be the loosening of the periphery of the Soviet empire. This process will in part be political, at any rate in the domestic sense of the word, but it will above all be economic. Moreover, it is most likely to be tolerable to Moscow if it remains confined to economic relations with the outside world, based on the relative success of internal developments.

Hungary and Poland are obvious examples (though it would be an overstatement to speak of economic success in either country). One cannot help feeling that, one day soon, Czechoslovakia will follow suit. Even the Baltic countries may discover a certain amount of economic room for maneuver, especially in relation to their Scandinavian neighbors. Will the ugly term Finlandization acquire a new and desirable meaning? The challenge to the European Community is evident. Europe is changing in many ways. There is momentum in the process of developing a common voice. It would be a tragic mistake on the part of the leaders of the European Community if that voice was unable to speak in the tongues of those whose peculiar history and condition makes them distinctly European, yet unable to join the club.

Two questions remain to be answered before even the outline of Europe's changes becomes apparent. One has to do with the context of European developments: in what kind of world is Europe seeking its place? The other question takes us back to Europe itself: what is the distinctly European contribution to human welfare? I have skirted the first of these questions, and yet it is arguably the key to the process of European integration. After , all, common institutions rarely emerge by. a solemn compact of free and equal confederates; they are much more likely to be a response to the common enemy, or at least the result of a declaration of independence.

The postwar world was determined by two incongruous but oddly compatible processes -- the Cold War and the Pax Americana. The two were related in intricate ways, which became apparent as early as 1946 when George Kennan tried to explain to a bewildered State Department why the Soviet Union would not join the Bretton Woods agreement: "Russians will participate officially in international organizations where they see the opportunity of extending Soviet power or of inhibiting or diluting the power of others." Thus they joined the UN, but eyed it with increasing skepticism, and they did not join any organization which was bound to put them at a disadvantage. The seemingly paradoxical result turned out to be surprisingly stable. The postwar international system remained based on the assumption of universality; even the founders of NATO argued in 1949 that the treaty was "within the charter of the UN." In fact, however, this system was guaranteed by American power, both military and economic, which held at bay the initially implausible -- then, at least in the nuclear field, increasingly real -- rival claims of the Soviet Union. The European Community fitted into this combination of universalist claims and a real balance of power as an additional element of cohesion within the Western camp.

Today, both the Pax Americana and the Cold War are no longer. At least they are no longer the evidently dominant facts of international life. The Soviet Union under Gorbachev appears to have abandoned all claims to world domination, and indeed the entire conflictual approach to foreign policy. After a brief attempt to entice Europeans into a "common house" from the Atlantic to the Urals, Soviet foreign policy has now turned to consistently emphasizing universal issues which require the cooperation of all nations. One is more likely to hear statements from Moscow about the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect than about the impending collapse of capitalism or the need to keep Cuba or Angola or Afghanistan or even Hungary or Estonia on the straight and narrow path to socialism.

Such new-found Soviet universalism encounters a growing American impatience with all multilateral arrangements. Since 1971 the United States has not just given notice to the international monetary system, but left UNESCO, stopped the Law of the Seas Conference, ignored judgments by the International Court, threatened GAIT, squeezed the World Bank, and abandoned all pretense at being the creditor of a world dependent on American power and prosperity. None of this has changed the underlying facts. The United States is still by far the most powerful, wealthy, and attractive country in the world. Tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of people all over the world dream of living in America. In many guises the dollar remains the lingua franca of international economic relations. But there is an unmistakable trend not only for the United States to reject institutional constraints imposed on its power by multilateral organizations, but also to withdraw from commitments outside its own borders, or at least to threaten to do so.

The result is a degree of anomie in international affairs. The monetary system (if that is the word) tells the story. A huge annual jamboree of bankers plus a plethora of groups with a capital G -- G5, G7, G20 -- have replaced effective institutions; moral exhortations are supposed to do the trick of firm arrangements. In the meantime, real currencies float about in more or less "dirty" ways, with pegging and regional agreements adding to national interventions, and speculation in exchange rates taking the place of stability. It is not surprising that in such a condition people look for certainty, and settle for small favors. There is talk of three blocs in the economic universe. (Not so long ago, Henry Kissinger found the pentagonal world useful for his nineteenth-century power games, but in economic terms at least, China and the Soviet Union are more like developing countries.) Alongside the dollar, some detect a growing role for the yen, and perhaps for the ecu -- the basket of European currencies.

Such notions are supported by some evidence. The U.S.-Canadian free trade agreement has, at least from the U.S. perspective, more than economic motives. Japanese business and government invest all over, but establish their base and influence most systematically in Asia. And there is the European Community. Those at the margin of the blocs, or outside them, feel threatened, and (as the relationship between EEC and EFTA shows) have some reason to do so. The dissipation of the international system creates practical problems of stability as well as metaphysical problems of identity for many, and it could be argued that both contribute to promoting European self-confidence and political organization. In other words, the "federator" of the late 1980s is not a common enemy whose presence calls for cooperation, but a need for definition which, in the case of Europe, means above all to keep Japan out and draw sharper lines of demarcation in relations with the United States.

Such trends are fostered by what one might call the discovery of "culture" in economic and political life. The inverted commas around culture are necessary for I am referring to a psychosocial black box which is undefined and perhaps indefinable, though it may contain something real. Two years ago I chaired an GECD High-Level Group on "Labor Market Flexibility," in which the three comers of the First World were represented. We soon agreed that the prescription of labor economists -- or perhaps of the United States -- to allow real wages to float downward in order to "clear" the labor market was not applicable elsewhere. At the time, Japan's large companies were still hoping to be able to cope with new challenges by "internal mobility" -- that is, by keeping reserve armies of employees on the move from one job posting to another. European governments and "social partners," on the other hand, insisted on the importance of "sticky" real wages for social peace, and were at best prepared to consider a redistribution of work by shorter working hours and new forms of employment. It not surprising perhaps that a report was adopted unanimously, the central conclusion of which said "that so far as labor market flexibility is concerned, there is no one package or measures which . can serve all countries equally well."

If a note of irony has crept into these last comments, it was not unintended, and yet perhaps misleading. There are different ways of dealing with major issues in different parts of the world, and there is no evidence that only one path leads to the optimal advancement of human life changes. Decision-makers and voters in Europe no longer intend to go down the American route (though in this respect, too, Britain may provide the partial exception), and they know that they cannot adopt Japanese prescriptions. As we face the cost of the successes of the 1980s, this is important. The revival of a concept of full citizenship rights marks a growing skepticism with respect to the ability of markets to solve all problems. The notion of "a universal right to a real income which is not proportionate to the market value of the claimant" (to quote T.W. Marshall's 1950 lectures on "Citizenship and Social Class") may well provide a peculiarly European response to the yuppie fatigue which is detectable in the behavior of electorates at the threshold of the 1990s. Thus the internal momentum of the process of European integration -- "1992" -and the external incentive for greater regional definition -- "three blocs" -- are backed up by a growing confidence in Europe's peculiar social and cultural traditions and their effect on economy and politics.

Does this means that all is well in the best of all possible worlds? Despite the fact that I am a social scientist and therefore professionally obliged to end somewhere between skepticism and cynicism, I would have liked to offer you a picture of European hopes by way of conclusion. Many European speakers might in fact have done so, for there is, as I tried to convey to you, a new mood of confident optimism in many European quarters, and notably in Brussels. If I proceed to spoil this party somewhat, this has, however, little to do with my social science, and more with my being an unreconstructed eighteenth-century Whig, with a tinge of Kantian cosmopolitanism thrown in. For even if it involves a revival of Europe's fortunes, the picture of regional blocs in a world of uncertain if not nonexistent rules fills me with more dismay than hope. This is a world of protectionism and of crude power, and neither bodes well for the future.

Protectionism too has its "cultural" peculiarities. In the United States, it is the subject of open debate and, from time to time, of legislation in a trade bill or as a part of some other package. In Japan, protectionism is subtle, sometimes almost unconscious though not undeliberate, a result of arcane institutional arrangements, impenetrable customs, and even the Japanese language. In Europe, the European Community has increasingly been used to do what its member states would feel ashamed to do individually. I doubt whether even one member state would defend the agricultural policy which Europe continues to espouse, but as a Common Agricultural Policy it appears once removed from national responsibilities and almost impossible to change, a protective smokescreen which conveniently hides cruder interests from sight. Coal, steel, textiles are other examples of the use of Brussels for purposes of protection. Are there those who when they say "1992" mean Europe-wide barriers against Japanese cars or electronics? Perhaps not; in any case, both Commission and Council of Ministers in Brussels insist that that opening of borders within the Community will create a frame of mind which supports free exchange worldwide.

It is remarkable how the long boom of the 1980s has, contrary to the economic miracle of the 1950s, not engendered a general desire for freer trade and general openness. From day one, the Uruguay Round in the GATT compared badly with the Kennedy Round. Perhaps those were right who spoke of the "casino capitalism" of the last decade and pointed to the hectic nature of economic growth which barely camouflaged an underlying sense of its cost, and its precariousness. Boundless expectations and bottomless fear were as close to each other as the nouveaux riches and the underclass are in our cities. Such a climate breeds the desire to close all doors behind one once .one has got inside. It breeds economic protectionism, but also the social protectionism of those who almost desperately seek to escape the complexity and heterogeneity of the world. Fundamentalism, xenophobia, ethnic and racial conflict thrive. Recent elections in Europe have all shown a decline of traditional parties of a more business-minded right and a more socially minded left, and a rise of movements which stand for simple prescriptions and often violent means.

It does not help that such changes are taking place at a time at which the international system is in a state of flux. Anomie never lasts. Even the partial normlessness of the relations between three economic giants, their numerous satellites, and two other powers with nuclear if not with monetary power creates a rather unlikely and certainly an uncomfortable condition. Just as civil society protects us from the crude power of Hobbes's world, so we need a world civil society to make sure that "the life of man" does not once again become "poor, nasty, brutish and short." I said civil society, but I had in mind institutions and should perhaps have said, with Hobbes, that "civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature." World civil government is of course the issue here, a very unlikely prospect at this time. What has to happen to create a system of international rules accepted by all powers, great and small? One remembers the heroic phase of the postwar order which occurred in the middle of the Second World War through the work of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, the Universities Committee on Post-War International Problems, and the deliberations of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes -- all preceding and preparing Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco, Bretton Woods, and Havana. Does the blood of patriots and of tyrants have to be shed to create a world order?

World civil government or, more modestly, the creation of multilateral institutions means that governments accept the fact that certain issues elude their reach. However hard nation-states try, they cannot guarantee the stability of their currencies, or the openness of frontiers for trade, or indeed the protection of the environment and ultimately peace by themselves. But though reasonable people, and even experts, might well agree on the need for multilateral rules and organizations, and even on their construction, those who think they have power will stubbornly resist any change. In this respect, too, the prevailing protectionist mood works against what is needed. Perhaps some catastrophe is necessary to shake people out of their complacency -- a super-Chernobyl, an evident change of climate, the massive and visible impoverishment of a hitherto prosperous country. Perhaps a world federator has to use great power for multilateral ends. In the meantime, we must be grateful for small favors, such as the European Community, and do whatever is in our power to make sure that the remnants of a world order are defended, new beginnings are carefully fostered, and ideas for world civil government are advanced -- if need be, against the tide.

Speech by Sir Ralf Dahrendorf, April 4, 1989

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