Belgium: A Surreal State

[Harold F. Schiffman]

December 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist

A Surreal State

By ROGER COHEN
BRUSSELS

Belgium's favorite Surrealist son, Rene Magritte, is famous for his
painting of an apple on which he wrote: This is not an apple. He did the
same for a pipe. Today he might aptly produce a rendering of his native
land and inscribe on it: This is not a country. It looks like a prosperous
one, with its lace and chocolate stores, and beautiful Bruges, and its
glassy sprawl of European Union institutions, and its very own tennis
champion, Justine Henin. But for more than a half-year Belgium has been
unable to form a government because its 10.4 million citizens cant decide
what the state is for.

In their grumpy way, Belgians a majority Dutch-speaking, many
French-speaking and a few German-speaking have been posing a delicate
question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure,
really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various
communities dislike one another? Moreover, does a country whose economy is
largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need
a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the
country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on
eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the
political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics
suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions,
three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a
smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital
(Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish
nationalism and an uneasy history.

Forming a government against this backdrop of federalism run amok has
proved beyond the powers of good King Albert and an outgoing prime
minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who has redefined outgoing by staying. Magritte
would have painted him and noted: this is not a departing leader.
Surrealism is having a Belgian field day.

In the French-language daily Le Soir, Olivier Mouton opined last week that
On every front, we shoot, detest and accuse each other. Yet the streets
have been quiet since the elections back on June 10. The hour of hyperbole
has sounded.

Behind it lurks the fact that Flanders wants its day. Dutch-speakers, long
underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired
of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful
anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is
the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently
over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised
distrust to a poisonous level. I am pretty sure Belgium will split
eventually, Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the
population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to
unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but
unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a
modern marvel, the E.U.  and theres the nub.

The 27-nation Union has banished war from the Continent and marginalized
danger. Belgium fissures even as E.U. leaders sign the Treaty of Lisbon
that will ultimately yield an E.U. president who can run things for up to
five years (and so become identifiable), a foreign minister and a workable
decision-making process. E.U. security makes Belgian instability harmless.

The best position today is to be a small country within a large economic
entity and trading area, Alex Salmond, Scotlands first minister told me.
Thats why we want an independent Scotland within the E.U.

Flanders? Scotland? Brussels as Singapore-like city state? Wallonia?
Kosovo? The map of Europe is not fixed. But I suspect its overall
stability is. I am attached to Belgium  two of my children were born here
and Id favor its preservation, but I cant say its necessary within an
overarching E.U.

As for a Belgian government, it would be nice to have one, but not
essential. Theres no Belgian franc to go wobbly. Theres no monetary policy
to set. Theres scarcely a country to govern, given how far European
integration on the one hand and national devolution on the other have
gone.

This is the 21st-century world the United States will face: a mysterious
Europe with a more identifiable phone number living its postmodern version
of paradise as its nation states get less meaningful or dissolve; and a
rising Russia and China hurtling the other way, toward 19th-century-style
nationalism, militarism and assertiveness.

Such dissonance will require American flexibility and imagination, enough
to understand that the essence of the Belgian crisis is: this is not a
crisis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/opinion/17cohen.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

***********************************************************************************

N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.

***********************************************************************************