EU needs "good laws and good armies"
The European Union must step up efforts to spread its version of law and order around the world if it is to avoid a September 11 of its own, says a top adviser to Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief.
In a tribute to sixteenth-century Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, Robert Cooper, formerly chief foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair, said that "good laws and good armies" are the best weapons with which to defeat tyranny in the world. He explained by saying that laws are meaningless unless they can be enforced.
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Mr Cooper, who has been described by one commentator as "a warrior espousing the rhetoric of 'enlightened' colonialism" was speaking in London at the launch of his new book, "The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century".
In his book, Mr Cooper divides countries into three types - the pre-modern nation, defined by chaos and lack of state control (such as pre-war Afghanistan), the modern nation state, and the post-modern world, into which the nation state is collapsing into a bigger order.
The European Union fits into this last category, whereas Mr Cooper sees the US as a modern state - which is why the Americans have less time for the United Nations than does Europe.
For the post-modern world to work, argues Mr Cooper, emerging entities such as the EU must realise that pre-modern countries are dangerous not because they are strong but because they are so weak that they can become ciphers for people such as Osama bin Laden.
Mr Cooper stressed that the key to world peace is making sure that war-torn countries do not become "failed states", like Somalia and the Congo in Africa. Such nations breed terrorism, he said.
He added that the struggle to prevent three countries on Europe's doorstep from becoming "failed states" - Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia - would be won, not through force, but because these nations wanted to become part of a greater European structure.
Mr Cooper, like his former boss Tony Blair, believes that the United States has nothing to fear from a more effective European defence force. He argues that the EU should support, rather than rival, NATO in its peace-keeping efforts.
Mr Cooper also said that he did not think that the EU would ever be in a position to compete militarily with the heavily-financed armed forces of the United States, and nor should they want to.
We are all friends with the US, noted Mr Cooper, and it is unthinkable to suggest that a strong EU military force would ever act against American foreign interests.