'Fraternity' idea needs careful handling

Ken Endo / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

Thoughts of Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi have been brought into the spotlight anew. Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894-1972) was an Austrian politician, geopolitician and philosopher whose idea upholding "bruderlichkeit," or fraternity, inspired former Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama, the grandfather of current Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, so profoundly as to lead the elder Hatoyama to translate into Japanese and publish one of the count's books.

The count, who hailed from an Austrian aristocratic family and whose mother was Japanese, championed a "Pan-European movement" during the period between World War I and II, calling for reconciliation between Germany and France.

In an essay in a monthly magazine last summer, shortly before the House of Representatives election in August, the younger Hatoyama preached his political vision centering on the ideal of fraternity by referring to Coudenhove-Kalergi, seeking support for the idea of forming an East Asia community. The essay drew criticism from the United States, while putting the count's thoughts under the spotlight.

However, what the Austrian aristocrat envisioned should, to say the least, be handled with care.

This is because Coudenhove-Kalergi's line of argument was for the sake of pushing forward a split of the world for the benefit of empires.

What he referred to as a United States of Europe was supposed to be an entity encompassing colonies of the European powers in African and Southeast Asia.

In parallel with spheres of influence envisioned by the count, such as North and South America and the British Commonwealth, was the unification of East Asia under the leadership of Japan.

Needless to say, Coudenhove-Kalergi's vision could never be applied to the present era.

Noteworthy in this connection is the fact that it was only after the end of the Cold War, when the political presence of Europe was on the wane, and not during the period between the two world wars when the count was active, that moves for European unification advanced remarkably.

The post-Cold War moves for unification of Europe evolved in a way distinctly limited to the West European area. The moves after the Cold War occurred in the absence of any room for the erstwhile conceptualized pan-European vision inclusive of the Central and East European regions.

Accordingly, in today's Europe, the count usually is not deemed the father of European integration.

A key factor relevant to the integration of Europe is that it was formulated on the basis of the North Atlantic alliance vying with the communist camp of the East, on the strength of backing by the United States.

That is to say, European integration coincided with U.S. national interests.

Jean Omer Monnet, known as one of the founding fathers of European integration, showed his genius in presenting the integration idea to the United States and convincing Washington to support it.

The way the idea of European integration was brought to fruition, therefore, was markedly different from the paradigm developed by the count that kept in mind imperialistic spheres of influence.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the current task of envisioning an East Asia community, arguments seem predominantly channeled into making a choice between two alternatives: the United States or Asia.

This paradigm reflects a shallow-mindedness and an obliviousness to the importance of learning from historic facts of the actual processes of how European integration evolved.

Efforts such as Monnet's for making the idea of an East Asia community compatible with U.S. national interests--instead of regarding the community idea and the Japanese-U.S. alliance as inherently contradictory--have been exceedingly lacking.

If any of the count's ideas deserves examination, it probably would be his deeds after making an about-face while in exile in the United States in favor of attaching importance to parliamentary systems of government.

However, in this model of governance, it becomes inevitable to give weight to the democratic properties of a given regime.

Even though South Korea and Taiwan exemplify no problem in this respect, it risks alienating China, the most weighty among potential challenges in East Asia.

There can be no knowing whether such a problem is surmountable simply by applying the philosophy of fraternity fashioned by Coudenhove-Kalergi and handed down to Yukio Hatoyama in his bid to structure an East Asia community.

Endo, an expert in international relations, is a professor at Hokkaido University, who currently lives in Italy on the Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowships of the European University Institute in Florence. This is the last installment of his column.