Peter Gowan: What alternative to the Atlantic Alliance?
The case for a socialist united states of Europe
Introduction by Red Mole substack
Peter Gowan (writing as Oliver MacDonald)'s article "What alternative to the Atlantic Alliance?" (published in International, No. 7) presents a compelling critique of the Labour Party's traditional stance on NATO while proposing a concrete socialist alternative. MacDonald directly confronts the contradictions in Labour's Atlanticism at a time when the Reagan administration was pursuing aggressive militarization.
MacDonald exposes the fundamental clash between US objectives and social democratic commitments: "Ronald Reagan and the United States government have their own programme for Western Europe. Stated simply, it is that Europe should accept US political hegemony, under pro-US right wing governments." This program, he argues, "leaves no room for collaboration with old-style social democratic governments, committed to the welfare state and political consensus."
The article dismantles the mainstream Labour position of "reforming NATO from within" as an "empty phrase" that would only make sense "if it meant reforming American policy towards the world from Western Europe," which is impossible without "a significant ally in mainstream American politics." MacDonald acknowledges the left's call for NATO withdrawal but correctly identifies this as merely "half a programme—the negative part."
MacDonald's key contribution is his insistence that the left must articulate a positive alternative: "What the left has not yet started to seriously discuss is its positive programme for Europe—with what are we seeking to replace NATO and the Warsaw Pact?" His answer is "the fight to overcome the division of Europe—and for a United Socialist States of Europe."
The article provides a nuanced critique of economic internationalism, noting that while socialist transformation may begin at the national level for political reasons, the left must simultaneously "advance its own international economic programme." MacDonald contrasts this with mainstream Labour's vision of "a neo-Keynesian West European revival hinged on the strength of West German industrial capital" that ultimately depends on "US acquiescence, if not enthusiasm."
Rather than simply opposing NATO as a military alliance, MacDonald frames the issue within a broader struggle for socialist transformation across Europe, challenging the left to develop a comprehensive alternative to both NATO's military structure and the economic arrangements that underpin Western capitalism. His article represents an important intervention calling for an internationalist socialist strategy that goes beyond mere opposition to military alliances.
What alternative to the Atlantic Alliance?
Introduction by International
The campaign in the Labour Party against British participation in NATO is gaining strength. But, argues OLIVER MACDONALD, the Labour left and the peace movement must advance its own alternative to the Atlantic Alliance. This alternative must be the fight to overcome the division of Europe — and for a United Socialist States of Europe. MacDonald concludes with a thought-provoking and controversial series of objectives for the left to fight for. We welcome readers' comments on these proposals.
RONALD REAGAN and the United States government have their own programme for Western Europe. Stated simply, it is that Europe should accept us political hegemony, under pro-us right wing governments. Such a programme leaves no room for collaboration with old-style social democratic governments, committed to the welfare state and political consensus. On the contrary, it involves full acceptance of the United States' cold war ideology, a fundamental weakening of the labour movement, and full participation by Western Europe in the us's militarisation drive.
Denis Healey's desperate hope that someone powerful in Washington will take him and a right-wing Labour government seriously as collaborators is the purest utopianism — as the very public attack on the Labour Party by administration officials during the Labour Party conference showed. In this connection, Mr E Willens provides some interesting information about official thinking in Washington (in an article in the summer 1986 issue of Foreign Policy). He informs us that administration officials are worried about the new obstacle — the welfare state — to good relations between Washington and Western Europe. 'American officials', says Mr Willens, 'blame the welfare state for Western Europe's lack of seriousness about building up military strength.' It is possible that Mr Willens is ill-informed, but since he was senior European affairs specialist at the State Department until 1984 this seems unlikely. In which case, Labour Atlanticism these days sounds a good deal more way-out and exotic than the moonies.
Yet what are the alternatives? We are offered, by the Labour leadership, the policy of 'reforming NATO from within', but this would only make sense if it meant reforming American policy towards the world from Western Europe, and nobody has been able to tell us how that is to be done in the absence of a significant ally in mainstream American politics. In short, it is an empty phrase that either means quietly subverting us policy objectives on fundamental issues, or it means quietly following us objectives while making demagogic anti-American noises.
The left within the Labour Party, of course, argues for the policy of withdrawal from NATO and argues for it honestly as part of a general effort to reduce American power in Europe and thereby undermine its global militarist efforts. But in fact this is only half a programme — the negative part. What the left has not yet started to seriously discuss is its positive programme for Europe — with what are we seeking to replace NATO and the Warsaw Pact?
On the economic issues in such a discussion, the left generally argues for a national programme of measures to break the power of the City and the multinationals on the road to a planned economy. This is attacked by right wing Labour opinion on grounds of economic internationalism — the impossibility of national solutions to economic problems and the need for a European recovery programme. The truth of the matter surely is that the left's economic programme is justified on political grounds: any socialist breakthrough is politically conceivable first only on a national level.
The right wing Labour line uses the reality of an international economic interdependence in order to escape the political necessity for a socialist programme in Britain. But at the same time the left must advance its own international economic programme. Mainstream Labour's European economic programme involves the idea of a neo-Keynesian West European revival hinged on the strength of West German industrial capital and the continuing links between West European Christian democracy and the welfare state and trade unionism. The idea is that these forces would resist Anglo-Saxon finance capital — New York and the City — develop an industrial strategy behind the protection of the European Monetary System and preserve and even extend the welfare state through reviving detente and thus resisting pressure from the us for a big shift to increased military spending. At the same time all this would be pursued within the framework of a liberal world economy and thus under the sway of the dollar and us global power. The whole edifice depends upon us acquiescence, if not enthusiasm.
The real attractiveness for the right wing of this vision of a new Keynesian class alliance between labour and industrial capital in Europe lies in the fact that it offers the prospect of a revival of economic security and some prosperity for working people without the need for a struggle for socialism. But it hinges on two crucial assumptions.
First, that West European industrial capitalists and their political representatives will prefer an alliance with labour to a struggle against labour alongside the rentiers and financial speculators.
And secondly it depends upon the idea that there will be a renewal of harmony between Western Europe and the USA in the field of international economics.
Both these assumptions are threadbare. The alternative economic programme of the left should be both socialist and pan-European. It should accept the inevitability of the class struggle between labour and capital and thus be geared to forcing through measures for the 30 hour week, for the right to work, for nationalisation of industry across frontiers and so forth. And it should be pan-European in the sense that it should seek to unite the West with the 300 million people in Eastern Europe including the Soviet Union in a new international economic co-operation and division of labour, taking full advantage of the complementarity of, for example, the Soviet and West German economies. Such a socialist, internationalist programme of economic co-operation would both free the working class in the West of dependence on the dollar area and at the same time provide a genuine leap forward in the productive forces in the entire Eurasian territories.
Too often, the Left discusses the question of how to get a Europe free from the threat of war in superficial or purely negative terms: all missiles out, all American bases out, for an end to NATO (and the Warsaw Pact) and so on. The superficial ideas on peace include such notions as simply getting rid of weapons. This is a positive development of course, when it occurs along with conversion schemes for military industries, but as a way of ending the war threat it is naive. How many Labour governments would it take to convert British Aerospace and GEC from tigers into lambs?
More radical is the idea of removing US power from Western Europe. Yet the idea that without us power in the region, the states of Western Europe would show themselves in their true, peace-loving colours is an absurdity. It is surely evident that these states are bureaucratic war machines sitting on top of a capitalist system with voracious appetites for power and profits. We have the precious right to grumble against this set up, but the idea that the people in the form of voters will keep the militarist ambitions of these states in check is an absurdity. We need a programme for building authentic democratic systems of popular power in Western Europe, based on a socialist economic system.
That social basis already exists in Eastern Europe, but democratic structures of popular power do not, nor even liberal structures allowing people to grumble openly. Some currents of opinion in the peace movement wish to avoid any discussion of the social basis of a peaceful Europe, while seemingly being very concerned to gain the right democratic political structures. Thus they present a vision of peacefully co-operating states in Eastern and Western Europe, some socialist and some capitalist, once the us and the USSR have 20 been removed from the scene. All that is needed to ensure this peace, they believe, is Western-style democracy in the East. This overlooks the little fact that the West European 'democratic' — notably France and Britain — states have a track record second to none for engaging in bloody wars in the third world, not to speak about their 20th century liking for savaging each other in two world wars. And what do they do about the possibility of a militarist West European super-state?
On the other side, some argue that all that matters will be sorted out provided only that the West goes 'socialist'. Yet experience has demonstrated that states with socialised economies can also behave as military bullies using brutal power politics: the Sino-Soviet rivalry, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, relations between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, for example. This raises the need not only for both authentic popular democratic control in socialised states but also the need for big nations to be brought under higher authority. When considering what this higher authority must be, we must return to the traditional slogan of the socialist movement: the United Socialist States of Europe. A federal, pan-European state, socialist and democratic, would comprise two great national groups — the Russians and the united Germans — balancing each other. So much of the seemingly insoluble problems discussed in the peace movement come from the fear of being dominated, under new arrangements either by the Russians — if the US is pushed out — or by the Germans — if the Russians no longer dominate Eastern Europe. The simple solution is to accept the reality of a Europe embracing both. But this can be a progressive development only on the basis of socialism and democratic power.
But what then of the slogan of national independence? For understandable reasons this slogan retains great appeal in countries like Poland. Yet in a world of such great economic, (and ecological) interdependence, the slogan of national independence retains its progressive character only as a historical safety clause: the right of any nation to secede from a federation as a last resort. The idea that European economic development, European relations with the third world or other regions and internal European peace can be best served by a myriad of independent small and medium-sized states across the continent cannot be taken seriously. The ultimate breakthrough to an anchored peace in Europe will come from the nations voluntarily ceding their increasingly bogus pretentions to total sovereignty in a voluntary socialist union. This alone will bring politics into harmony with economics across the continent.
This may seem a wildly ambitious programme. If a new stable revival of the world economy is on the way, if relations between the West and the third world are about to switch to genuine co-operation based upon a born-again change of cha-racter by the banks and multi-nationals, and if the Soviet-American rivalry is about to dissipate, while the Thatcherites and their equivalents disappear from the scene — then this programme for a socialist united Europe will prove a great red herring! But if we are in the first phase of a pre-war world, this programme will be the minimum 'peace' programme.
Only fools and utopians can believe we are entering a period of capitalist stability and prosperity. In the real world, the fight for peace must be linked to an international socialist perspective. Supporters of the programme for a United Socialist States of Europe from Reykjavik to the Urals, should pick up that wizzened acorn which nevertheless offers a tiny glimmer of a united Europe — the Helsinki agreements with their three baskets of economics and technology, military matters and people's rights and we should advance our own programme of objectives for transforming Helsinki into an engine of progress: a trade package for the planned growth of East-West European trade by 10 billion a year, to slash unemployment in the West and to boost growth in the East, coupled with the scrapping of technology controls and a plan for free scientific exchanges and a disarmament programme including the well-rehearsed anti-nuclear demands of the peace movement.
In the field of rights we must demand two basic clauses: that the people of western Europe have the same right to work and basic economic security as the peoples of the East and that the peoples of the East have the same rights to freely grumble as the peoples of the West: the mass media and the key levers of power may not be under popular control anywhere in Europe, but the peoples of the East must be able to curse their governments at meetings or in print just as vigorously as we should be cursing ours.
But what about the Americans (and the Canadians) who are involved in Helsinki? It may be discourteous to boot them out — though the US' role was to use human rights to sabotage any agreement, albeit without success. But let them stay, if they wish, with the same voting power as anybody else, such as Iceland. This is perfectly fair. After all, if they don't like progress towards European unity social and democratic progress, they can always suggest something better via the usual diplomatic channels.