Apologies for being a day behind with this one.  But Jim Naugherty’s interview yesterday of German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fisher, is worth revisiting.  It vividly demonstrates the gulf between public discussion here about the meaning of Europe and the kind of thing that is said across the Channel.  We shouldn’t only blame Blair or Dennis McShane or, in their time, Peter Hain or Keith Vaz for this contemptuous and underhand treatment of the British public.  No one from any British political party has revealed as vividly as Fisher the driving preoccupations of the European political elite.

A while ago the always interesting if, perhaps rather client-centred George Freedman concluded an article on Iraq with the words, “geopolitics always trumps conspiracy.”  In terms of our EU debate we might well make that: geopolitics always trumps the need to explain anything to the common man.

One has the nasty suspicion that our political elite is convinced on the one hand of the absolute necessity to respond as a unified European entity to the redrawing of global power and influence beyond the reach of the nation state and, on the other, of the potential of the common man, if told of his marginalisation and impotence, to fuck it all up as fast as possible.  So we have a deeply asinine debate conducted by the elite with Straussian detachment and with the minimum ideological division.  The European project, meanwhile, just bowls along.  Oh Maggie, where art thou? 

The interview, recorded in Fisher’s London embassy, began with the possibility of German troops in Iraq and the need for a reformed UN.  Fisher discounted the first but bit hard on the second.

Naugherty: You mean the single superpower and a reformed UN are bound to be the pillars of world security?

Fisher:  I believe that.  I believe that.  And a globalised world will force us into cooperation, not confrontation.  We need reformed institutions to deal with that.  There are new challenges and there will be only losers if we are not successful.

Questions were begging all over the airwaves at this point.  But Naugherty wanted to progress to the accession of Turkey to the EU.  Fisher is supportive of the Turkish application, not least because so many promises have been made to the Turks by German governments of the past.  But then he makes the following linkage, “… there is another serious element.  Turkey is not a middle-sized country.  It’s really a heavyweight and will be the biggest country in the future, bigger than Germany.  And the big question will be: is Europe ready to digest such a big member state.  This is a question to our British friends and some others who are opposing, who are sceptical about the Constitution.  I don’t see that a Europe which accepts Turkey as a member, if this should be a weak one with weak institutions, with a weak democratic process, this would, I think, raise serious questions.  And, therefore, I think both parts should be promoted.

Naugherty:  We are talking about a Europe, were it to include Turkey in the EU, would stretch to the very borders of Iraq.  It’s obvious that you think that that is strategically important for Europe.  Are you saying that without a constitution on the current model Europe would be incapable of making that extension work?

Fisher:  I mean, a decision is made with enlargement to 25, or 27 now with Romania and Bulgaria.  So this would mean enlargement to the Black Sea, to the western shores of the Black Sea and the borders of Turkey.  And Turkey, a country with in the next decades more than 80 million people, in a strategic bridge function, would be left outside.  I mean …

Naugherty:  What would the consequences be?

Fisher:  The consequences would be again, in these situations, that they want to belong to the West since Kemal Ataturk, europeanisation means modernisation, now they have the real opportunity to modernise.  To modernise an Islamic, country based on the shared values of Europe would be, I think, almost a D-Day in the war against terror.  It would be the greatest positive challenge for these totalitarian and terrorist ideas.  So my view it’s in the interest – and definitely, from before 9/11 I was very sceptical about having borders as European Union with Syria, Iraq and Iran.  But if you look to the strategic situation, I mean our security will be defined for at least five decades in this region.  Whether we like it or not a European Union in the Mediterranean by the enlargement of 25, 27 and by the strategic challenge we are facing will play there a major role.

Naugherty: Do you see, just on the issue of Turkey and the relationship of the European west and the United States, to Islam, that reaching out beyond the Bosphorus as important as D-Day was at the end of, of your period of …

Fisher:  If the major threat is a blocking of the modernisation process in the Arab and Islamic world, and I think this is the major cause of this actual threat of terrorism, if this is the challenge, the strategic challenge, as part of a positive globalisation, political globalisation, definitely yes.

Naugherty:  It’s interesting that you pose these great questions of the new century – stability in the middle east, reconciliation with Islamic states, the extinction of terrorism – alongside the stabilising of the European Union through the constitution.  Why is it, in your view, that after years of talking about this so many Europeans in many countries - including your own, not just in Britain – are sceptical about the Constitution as a mechanism for doing it.

Fisher:  We love our culture.  We love our languages.  We love our way to cook, to play football, to applaud sometimes in strange ways as fans.  We love our nations states.  And this is Europe.  The diversity of Europe is part of our identity on the one hand.  On the other hand, it’s quite clear in the 21st century if we stay separated or we lose alliance of national interest with the Common Market others will make the decisions.  And, well, we shouldn’t forget we are Europeans and as Europeans – you never will find a European as such, you will always find a European as a British citizen,  a German citizen, an Italian or Pole or whatever.  So the average citizen – this is my experience – on the one hand he has very distant feelings about processes in these far away structures.  But on the other side he understands perfectly well that he needs Europe in everyday life for security, for jobs, for whatever.  So it tends to be a new balance of the experience of Europe.