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By Georges Berthoin*

Emerging from World War II, whether victorious or defeated, we experienced as individuals or as groups the total annihilation of peoples, riches, institutions, values. Naturally we shared, with the same intensity, the same desire that it should never happen again. Total war led to a resolute quest for peace.

We knew that peace could not be established merely through the rhetoric of speeches or through good intentions. To build peace we had first to understand war. Why and how had our European civilization fallen into destruction on such a scale that the very fabric of our societies had almost collapsed? This meant undertaking a fundamental critical review of our history and its effects on individual and collective psychology. After this review we would be able to make concrete suggestions and take the necessary steps. Change would result from facts as much as from ideas or perceptions.

In order to exist, all living entities must fulfil three functions: they must find ‘their’ place, learn to survive, and to receive and transmit life. None of these functions encourages a passive attitude: to exist is to fight.

If one of the three functions is denied, the intensity of the fight increases to a level where violence becomes unavoidable. Consequently, we must recognize that fight is a natural instinct, an element of human culture. From the schoolyard, to the football stadium through to war and the battlefield.

The first step towards coexistence is existence itself: an awareness of one’s identity with neither a superiority or inferiority complex, acceptance of the other within a system which guarantees not only one’s equal acceptance, but is considered by all as legitimate and fair to each of its components’ interests. To reach coexistence, channels providing adequate and lasting answers must be developed. Acceptance is only workable if at each level there exists a corresponding institutional and symbolic framework which is mutually accepted. If such a context does not exist, each group will try to prevail according to its own logic. Violence then becomes the ultimate resource. Through the centuries our societies have prepared for such eventualities by awarding war and the warrior a special place and prestige within their organisation, by according them a moral and even religious recognition.

The man of peace encounters great difficulties in competing with the traditional heroic, epic, romantic image of the soldier. The peacemaker must choose his circumstances, project and conditions very carefully if he is not to be perceived as an appeaser, a de facto agent of the enemy, a traitor. If peace is a universal human dream, its quest and implementation are extremely complex and hazardous. It is only if society feels itself to be secure and that its dignity is fully recognized that any peace initiative is workable.

The challenge is therefore to go against instinct and tradition, in order to demonstrate that war does not pay; that many means exist which can help to reach peace. This effort requires not only an individualised psychological approach and a sense of history but a thorough understanding of the influence of context on people’s behaviour, and an ability to change the overall context through social engineering.

Discrimination between victors and defeated breeds future conflicts. Without full, free and equal access to the economic, political and cultural order resulting from victory, the defeated do not feel involved in its preservation. Under a surface appearance of acceptance, revenge awaits its opportunity to bring about change. A new peaceful order cannot prevail if its legitimacy is not as fully recognized by the defeated as by the victor. This poses a difficult challenge which can be met only when the victor offers principles which by their own nature are common to both parties. Sovereignty of the people -democracy- is the only principle which, by its very nature, finds legitimacy equally rooted in both existence and dignity.

The psychological ability to overcome the past, recent or ancient, is of cardinal importance as practically all organized human groups were at one moment of their respective history in a master-victim relation. To ask them to forget or to forgive is asking the impossible. People remember. The past cannot be changed. But it can be placed in a new dynamic process, and even transformed into a driving force for peace if the will to build the future together prevails. In post-War Europe, in freeing ourselves from an obsession with the potential enemy we also freed ourselves from the curse of past history and were able to join forces to discover and manage our new awareness of common interest.

The attraction of realizing this common future became for all of us the driving force for peace manifest in the creation of the European Community. It was and remains the most concrete answer to this challenge.

In one of the early texts of modern political theory, The Federalist issue no. 10, James Madison wrote:

‘The latent causes of faction are....sown in the nature of man. Since the causes of faction cannot be removed....relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.’

We did not share that view and felt that in changing the causes we could find the relief.

So in order to establish the context which was able to change the psychology of individuals and nations alike, we looked for limited but decisive areas where fundamental and competing interests could be objectively recognized as common: coal and steel for Western Europe, (or, one day, water for the Middle East).

Common institutions based on the principle of non-discrimination were established in order to help recognize and manage such potentially divisive interests as common to all.

From this joint awareness and administration, a confidence building process emerged which demonstrated progressively the practical rewards of peace. Gradually the construction of this new context gathered momentum. A feeling of security began to replace the ancestral fear of the other. Through new habits and perceptions and the existence and work of common institutions, the partnership was enlarged to new areas and more and more potential conflicts were put into the category of those which could be prevented by being channelled into a process, which we all recognized as effective, practical, fair and legitimate.

This strand of recent European history shows that institutions can build peace. The more distant past also shows that without effective institutions, no lasting peace is possible.

The Bosnian city of Tuzla managed to preserve its multicultural character. Photo Linda Graham

However, it requires a special kind of institution to fulfil this role. It must be able to make and enforce decisions. It cannot be a coalition created by the victorious side in order to impose their will, because this would provoke a growing feeling of resentment among the defeated and a corresponding desire for revenge. Neither could it be a system where each participant would enjoy equal sovereign power or its effectiveness would be restricted by the constant risk of veto. The possibility of creating an authority which would give its orders to different national entities seemed to be the most efficient answer. But this would also involve ignoring the new and powerful trend which sees all types of human communities fighting for recognition. Coexistence today involves more and more actors. Accordingly, through trial and error, we came to understand that a new type of governance had to be invented. Despite the lack of a precedent, we succeeded. One day the European Union may be recognized not only for its role in solving nineteenth-century problems but also for having helped to create harmony between diversities in need of recognition and the universalist logic of modern technologies in the twenty-first century.

This is now the central issue confronting national bodies of every kind.

Through a process which was in many cases very dramatic and chaotic, national orders prevailed. In order to allow coexistence between them, the European union had the choice between adopting a traditional international method where all governments enjoy an equal veto right or the more effective approach in which an independent authority imposes its ruling over the member States - the supranational method.

The latter alternative was used at the beginning of our unification process. It worked and was accepted because it involved a limited sector with limited functions. But its adoption became more problematic when more and more -and finally all- aspects of economic, social and political life were incorporated in its jurisdiction.

The way out of the dilemma was to create a pragmatic balance between each of the participants’ respective sovereignty and the group representing the common interest of the ‘collective’ sovereignty. The answer was found in adopting a horizontal model of decision making in place of the traditional vertical chain of command. In the vertical model, proposal for action is submitted to a superior authority whose executive authority is exclusive. In the horizontal model there is no hierarchical authority between those making proposals and decisions. Both enjoy equal but different sources of legitimacy, one European, one national.

The European Commission enjoys the exclusive right to make proposals. It represents the common European interest and has no link with any Government or coalition. At the same time, while it is designated through the joint action of the member States, it is confirmed by, answerable to and can be dismissed by the European Parliament which is democratically elected by the people of the Union, on the basis of direct universal suffrage. Thanks to this dual legitimacy and independence, the Commission can consult with all interested parties in the official world and civil society. It can then investigate and submit proposals, which are by definition representative of the common interest. The fate of these proposals then becomes the responsibility of the different national sovereignties as expressed through the deliberations of the Council of Ministers. At this stage the Commission takes on the additional role of facilitator.

For national governments concerned about losing face, it is far easier to accept a proposal elaborated through a process grounded in common-interest-legitimacy, which by definition, also represents part of the national interest, than to bow to the will of other national sovereignties.

I had an opportunity to present this new form of governance in a more systematic form at a workshop chaired by the hon. Harlan Cleveland in Aspen, Colorado, in 1975. I gave it the name: ‘extranational’ to distinguish it from international or supra-national institutions.

The extra-national experience of the European Union might help elaborate a method for the prevention of conflicts.

If a danger of conflict arises or even when the conflict already exists, the first step to be taken should be to find an authority which both sides recognize as legitimate and well intentioned.

Then through its help, to find out what the potential opponents share in common. To make them aware that they share the fact that they are in opposition; that their conflict might escalate; that their joint challenge is to weigh how a peaceful approach might be more productive than war.

To share this recognition is almost impossible without the help of a third party. Arbitration of all kinds is a well known method used on an adhoc basis where the situation is tense, or under the pressure of an outside element or when both sides freely agree to abide by its conditions, hoping, as in war, that they might win.

If a permanent institutional framework or body were to exist, which potential opponents could recognize as legitimate and fair, they might more easily share the same willingness to understand what each party is trying to achieve and finally conclude that peaceful approach might bring about better results.

Then, but only then, as a third stage, negotiation on the contested subject could start with a reasonable chance of success.

In most recent conflicts, in Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Rwanda etc., the mutual interest of the opposing parties did not get a chance to be explained in a manner acceptable to the antagonists because the legitimacy of the so called ‘international community’ was always challengeable and challenged by the main powers. The mandate and legitimacy of the third element which should have been the UN, was in fact the product of the different and even conflicting agendas of the five permanent members of the Security Council. The Secretary General who was trying to resolve the conflict, saw his authority challenged when he was about to become the independent facilitator that the situation required. Finally he ended up as a ping pong ball between opponents and major international actors alike. He was effectively reminded that he was in the final analysis merely the highest ranking civil servant in the organisation. A change in his statutory position is imperative if we intend to prevent or end conflicts worldwide.

This is where the value of the European Union’s example lies. It comes from the fact that almost 50 years of practical experience are available to be studied as a realistic precedent because it managed to establish the conditions of a lasting peace between old sovereign states after centuries of wars and at the end of the most destructive conflict of all. This is a tried answer to conflict prevention for all to emulate.

The new extra-national approach can be used at any level where tensions occur. With proven credibility, this system could be used on global, regional, tribal, or local levels, as a non utopian answer to aspirations for peace common to the human race. It would transform the necessary fight for existence into a civilized process.

Jean Monnet instinctively referred to this institutional solution in the very last sentence of his Memoires:

‘the sovereign nations of the past no longer provide the framework within which today’s problems can find their solutions. And the Community (today the European Union) itself is no more than a step towards the types of organization of tomorrow’s world’.

I would like to conclude with the comment that the world of tomorrow needs peace to survive. We have the means, we need the will.

I hope that among those who happen to read this text somebody somewhere will take up the challenge and make a difference in considering the extranational solution. We all need it. The bottle at sea might not be lost, after all.

*George Berthoin joined the French Resistance in October 1940, aged 15. For his activities, he was awarded the Legion d’honour, Médialle militaire, and Croix de Guerre. He studied at Grenoble and read Sciences Politiques in Paris and Harvard. He was involved at the inception of the European Community as Head of Staff (1952-55) and then acted as personal advisor (up to 1979) of Jean Monnet. In 1956 he was appointed deputy head of EC diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom. He acted as ambassador until the UK joined the EC in 1973. Co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, he acted as its European chairman for 17 years (1975-92). He was international chairman of the European Movement 1978-81 and member of the Wise Men Group in Africa. He presently serves as an Executive member of the International Peace Academy in New York and of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. He is also honorary international chairman of the European Movement, honorary European chairman of the Trilateral Commission.

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