Sicherheit und Risiko

ESPRIT St.Gallen Business Review
Risk and Security in a
Continent of
So-Called Peace
Patrick Hamm
Phd Fellow at the Institute of Sociology at Harvard University
The European Union’s recent acquisition of
the Nobel Peace Prize makes for an appropriate
occasion to examine what European
peace actually consists of, and whether and
how this “peace” reflects fluctuating definitions of risk
and security in the Western world. On October 12,
2012, the Nobel Committee announced that this year‘s
award will go to the European Union for its ongoing efforts
to transform Europe “from a continent of war to
a continent of peace.” At first glance, the Committee’s
decision seems utterly baffling, since Europe appears
to be everything but internally at peace: growing income
inequality and threats of austerity measures
provoke millions of under- and unemployed workers
to take to the streets, open and vitriolic disagreement
exists between Europe’s governments and peoples,
budgets continuously fail to pass, and as the viability
of the Euro and the future of the Eurozone are being
publicly debated, businesses flee Athens and police
beat and gas protesters at the foot of the Acropolis.
While it is ultimately pointless to debate the
merits of this year’s award winner, it is important to
note a special irony in the Nobel Committee’s choice
to award the Peace Prize to the EU. Leading up to the
Committee‘s decision, deadlocked European leaders,
unable and unwilling to reconcile their states’ respective
financial interests with those of the EU and
their neighbors, engaged in bitter disputes that spilled
from posh negotiating chambers to the airwaves. And
within days of the official announcement of the prize,
widespread protests and general strikes erupted across
Europe, from London to Athens, as dispirited, frustrated,
and increasingly venomous voices demanded
an end to austerity, social dislocation, and the institutional
structures that sustain them. Indeed, perhaps
the Committee’s decision makes sense only if, like the
New York Times, one views it as “a plea to support the
endangered institution at a difficult hour.” In reality,
the EU is at peace only insofar as its member states
have not yet attacked each other with actual weapons
and artillery. It is marked by discontent on three levels:
between governments, between governments
and their citizens, and between citizens of different
European states. It is, in short, characterized by internecine
strife.
And yet these manifestations of economic and political
risk – mass protests, social polarization, uneven
economic growth, and so forth – are not temporary byproducts
of the economic crisis or the post-recession
economic adjustments undertaken by European policymakers.
To the contrary, these risks are hardwired
into the structure of the EU – that is, the institutional
architecture of the common market and common currency
–, and they are amplified by the disproportionate
power and influence of key economic players within it.
Herein lies the true irony of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize
recognition.
In selecting this year‘s recipient, the Nobel Committee
chose to “focus on what it sees as the EU‘s most
important result: the successful struggle for peace and
reconciliation and for democracy and human rights.”
The European Commission, the union’s executive
governance body, on the other hand, emphasizes a
different set of accomplishments centered on Europe‘s
economic integration: “The Single Market is one of the
EU’s main achievements. 50 years after its inception,
it has not only fuelled economic growth; it has also become
a part of Europeans’ everyday lives.” Indeed, the
European Union was not formed with the objective of
promoting peace per se but rather aimed at pacifying
Europe by economic means. It is this unsteady “peace”
– brokered in the form of economic competition in a
common market framework – that is today responsible
for the growing salience of “risk” and “security” concerns
in Europe, as the phenomena underlying their
emergence are an inevitable consequence of (uneven)
market competition.
36
Winter 2012