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The horrific Russian attack on Ukraine should be a wake-up call for the elites of NATO’s Central European members and the rest of the alliance. Without excusing Russia’s aggression, we must admit that decades of political division and institutional decay contributed to the relative weakness of the Ukrainian state—weaknesses that Russian President Vladimir Putin is now ruthlessly exploiting. While helping the victim and punishing the attacker, other countries in the region should also heed the tough lessons of Ukraine’s tragedy.

When Ukraine emerged from the collapsing Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it was among the economically more prosperous post-communist states. Adjusted for purchasing power, its per capita GDP was roughly 20% higher than that of Poland. If that were still true in 2020, and if Ukraine’s population had not decreased by a staggering 15%, the country’s economy (again, in purchasing power terms) would be almost two-thirds the size of Russia’s. A successful, democratic Ukraine with a powerful military arguably could have had a chance of being admitted to NATO during the window of opportunity used by its neighbours from Central Europe and the former Soviet Baltic republics.

Instead, Ukraine’s three decades of independence were marked by economic stagnation, deep internal divisions and repeated flirtation with authoritarianism, punctuated by impressive but turbulent uprisings by pro-Western parts of society. Meanwhile, Central European countries such as Poland, Hungary and Romania forged a broad domestic consensus about their desire to join the democratic West. That bet paid off handsomely: In one generation, Poland’s economy grew nearly threefold.

Unfortunately, since 2010, the former democratic frontrunners have been sliding down a path eerily similar to that which arrested Ukraine’s post-Soviet growth. In Hungary and Poland, authoritarian leaders have methodically eroded democratic institutions with the sole objective of creating insurmountable barriers for opposition parties to challenge them.

While Hungary and Poland do not have the ethnic or religious fault lines faced by Ukraine, the countries’ strongmen—Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, respectively—have been busy exploiting and deepening the ideological divides between their country’s more progressive urban populations and more conservative rural citizens. Liberal politicians and intellectuals as well as the dwindling number of independent journalists are routinely derided as traitors, foreign agents or even animals.

In place of the pro-Western foreign policy consensus of the post-communist decades, Orban and Kaczynski have ratcheted up anti-Western rhetoric. In Hungary, cities are routinely plastered with billboards warning against malevolent ‘Brussels’ imposing its will on the Hungarian nation. Kaczynski, for his part, routinely weaponises nationalist hysteria aimed at Germany, Poland’s main ally and trading partner. In their contemplative moments, both leaders ruminate about ‘alternatives to liberal democracy’, which often strikingly resemble the system instituted by Putin. At a time when a truly united European Union is essential, both countries are under partial EU sanctions for their rule-of-law violations.

Instead of investing in non-political, professional homeland security, the Polish government has cynically used the military and security services for domestic intrigue. The security forces have suffered numerous purges aimed at weeding out supposed opposition sympathisers. Multiple reports now confirm that the government used Israeli Pegasus software to spy on leading opposition figures. Just a few months ago, Kaczynski committed the country’s military, and hundreds of millions of euros, to a heavy-handed pushback against desperate Middle Eastern refugees deposited at the Polish border by Putin’s ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The resulting humanitarian crisis, which involved several refugee deaths, elicited the justified outrage of many Poles, weakening the national consensus around yet another critical state institution, the armed forces.

Like Ukraine’s former strongmen, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych, Kaczynski and Orban are creating ‘mafia states’ of dependent businesses, rigging the economy and undermining the prospects of further convergence with the West. And yet the Western response to Poland and Hungary’s democratic backsliding has focused mainly on rule-of-law issues and their influence on the disbursement of the EU’s sizeable development aid.

That response is essential but insufficient. The West’s formal commitment to defend Central Europe through NATO gives it a vital stake in national reconciliation in countries ravaged by polarisation and populism. It is especially important that these countries recover the elite consensus needed for institutional stability in key fields like foreign policy and security.

Concretely, that means pragmatic power-sharing arrangements, such as carefully targeted decentralisation and unity governments during periods of national emergency. Other ideas should be explored and successful practices in other divided countries in precarious geopolitical positions should be consulted.

Deep ideological and identity divisions exploited by regressive populists are, of course, not only a Central European specialty. But what can be a serious problem for rich, established democracies far from the frontlines of Cold War II constitutes no less than an existential threat to Central European countries.

Czech voters delivered an upset in their country’s parliamentary election in October, choosing a coalition of mainly centre-right opposition parties over the movement led by the populist former prime minister, Andrej Babis. With the new coalition naming Petr Fiala as the new prime minister, the outcome adds to a growing playbook of strategies for competing against illiberal populists in Central Europe and Turkey.

During Babis’s tenure as prime minister, he presided over a decline in democracy in the Czech Republic and was embroiled in several corruption scandals. Though Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have fuelled more significant democratic declines in their respective countries, Babis relied on some of their methods, including efforts to take over the state administration and undermine the independence of news media.

Anti-democratic leaders learn from one another to refine their approach to dismantling democracy. To defeat them, democratic opposition parties should draw five lessons from recent elections in the Czech Republic and elsewhere.

First, unity is crucial. In the Czech election, the opposition parties that comprise the new government formed two ideologically broad electoral blocs. Hungary, where a fragmented opposition has failed to mount an effective challenge to Orban and his ruling Fidesz party since 2010, has long offered a cautionary counterpoint. But six opposition parties have joined forces in their bid to oust Fidesz in next year’s parliamentary election, and recently nominated provincial mayor Peter Marki-Zay as their candidate to challenge Orban.

A second priority is to address local issues. For example, some analysts attribute Hillary Clinton’s 2016 US presidential election defeat by Donald Trump in part to the Democratic Party’s failure to nurture grassroots support in key states such as Wisconsin.

Contrast that with Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski’s unexpectedly strong showing in Poland’s 2020 presidential election. Although Trzaskowski narrowly lost to the incumbent Andrzej Duda of the illiberal ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, he showed how a supposed ‘urban elite’ politician can connect with rural voters. Trzaskowski campaigned across Poland, including in the PiS’s village and rural strongholds, often with a well-tailored local message. In Skierniewice, a small city in central Poland that had recently been struck by drought, Trzaskowski focused on local water issues, which he linked to his broader climate agenda.

Trzaskowski acknowledged in a 2019 interview that PiS had a stronger ground game in previous elections, and that its ‘Poland in ruins’ message resonated with voters outside major cities who felt that former Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s 2007–2014 Civic Platform (PO) government had not listened to their concerns. In an attempt to win back their support, Trzaskowski distanced himself from some of the PO’s previous unpopular measures and strove to show small-town and rural voters that he was not selling a return to the previous status quo. Although Trzaskowski’s campaign fell narrowly short of victory, it made progress rallying a beleaguered opposition and winning a broader base of voters.

Third, anti-populists should provide an affirmative vision, as opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu did in defeating the candidate of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election. Imamoglu’s positive and upbeat campaign—with its clarion call of ‘radical love’, a direct response to the AKP’s divide-and-rule strategy—was essential to his success.

Another affirmative opposition tactic is to ‘own’ issues. The Greens, for example, used this strategy in the 2019 European Parliament elections to secure a record number of seats. They largely owned environmental, social-justice and rule-of-law issues, and advanced a policy agenda that reflected a positive vision of green leadership in Europe.

Fourth, opposition candidates should avoid culture wars. Populist attitudes are activated by political context: linking identity and partisanship can make cultural issues more salient and create fertile conditions for populist views to flourish. Throughout his 2020 campaign, for example, Duda sought to roll back LGBTQ rights, touted anti-Semitic views and fuelled anti-German feeling in an attempt to stoke populist sentiment.

Importantly, Trzaskowski did not adopt the language of the right. Research shows that when liberal candidates use their populist opponents’ framing, they allow the populist to shape, and likely win, the debate. Likewise, mainstream candidates who mimic populist rhetoric are more likely to lose.

Instead of taking Duda’s bait, Trzaskowski stayed on message with a vision for Poland that could appeal to a wide spectrum of voters. His response even led Duda to modify his nativist agenda in order to court moderate voters. Particularly in rural areas, where Duda had expected cultural issues to be most potent, Trzaskowski’s focus on local concerns helped him avoid divisive culture clashes.

Lastly, democratic opponents of illiberalism need to appeal to fundamental values in order to build public understanding and support. In the recent Czech election, the opposition coalitions referred to themselves primarily as ‘democratic’, reflecting many voters’ concerns that the Babis government had moved the country in a decidedly undemocratic direction.

Similarly, in the 2019 Slovak presidential election, Zuzana Caputova defeated her populist opponents by emphasising inclusivity. When the far-right candidate Marian Kotleba claimed that homosexuality threatened Christian values, Caputova appealed in response to fundamental Christian tenets of compassion and love. In general, a message about defending democracy and basic rights can often be more appealing than a slate of nuts-and-bolts reforms.

The populist surge is far from over. Illiberal incumbents in many countries are scrambling to cement their grips on power, while populist movements elsewhere continue to gain ground. But liberal democratic forces have shown that they can reverse this backwards march. By learning from each other, opposition parties will stand a much better chance of defeating demagogues and safeguarding democracy.

In recent weeks, as Europe has again become the global epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic, the surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalisations and deaths has highlighted the continued vaccine hesitancy of one group of Europeans in particular: those in the formerly communist east. While 75.6% of European Union citizens are fully vaccinated, the share in Bulgaria is 26.2% and it’s 39.6% in Romania. In countries outside the EU, the numbers are even bleaker. Only 20.2% of Ukraine’s population, and 36.3% of Russia’s, are fully vaccinated.

What is wrong with Eastern Europe? In short, mis- and disinformation. The region is awash in it, a legacy of the breakdown of public trust in governmental institutions after communism. Feverish conspiracy theories have gripped these countries like the coronavirus’s shadow.

A Ukrainian doctor recently summed up the situation in her country: ‘Fake stories have spread widely, making people believe in microchips and genetic mutations … Some Orthodox priests have openly and aggressively urged people not to get vaccinated, and social networks have been filled with the most absurd rumors. Ukrainians have learned to distrust any authorities’ initiatives, and vaccination isn’t an [exception].’

Now, as death rates surpass previous peaks and fear grows, vaccination rates are rising. But in many countries, fake vaccine certificates and PCR test results are widespread—in Bulgaria, for example, vaccine certificates and test results can be bought for €150–300—and no one knows how many of these documents are circulating. Even those who have seen multiple friends die still insist that vaccines are dangerous because they contain nanobots or will rewrite your DNA, or because the global pharmaceutical corporations that produce them can’t be trusted with public safety.

Of course, rumours and misinformation are rife in the West as well. Fox News, the most-watched cable news channel in the United States, has spread vaccine disinformation for years. But 70% of American adults are now fully vaccinated. Why are so many East Europeans more susceptible?

The low level of public trust that distinguishes Eastern Europe is a legacy of the collapse of communism, the deep transitional recessions in many countries, and the failure of post-communist governments to mitigate the effects. While a much-shared Reuters article reports the opinion of unnamed ‘experts’ who blame ‘decades of Communist rule that eroded public trust in state institutions’, public trust was actually much higher under communism.

In the course of writing our recent book, Taking stock of shock: social consequences of the 1989 revolutions, we explored Eastern Europeans’ lack of public trust using data from the World Values Survey and the Life in Transition Survey produced by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

With few exceptions, the World Values Survey shows a steady decline in the former communist countries in the percentage of people who agree with the statement, ‘Most people can be trusted.’ The decline was more pronounced in countries that suffered a deeper post-communist recession, and it didn’t reverse when economic growth finally returned. Instead, public trust continued to slide. In Bulgaria, between 1995 and 1998, some of the worst years of the transition recession, 23.7% of respondents had faith in their fellow citizens, compared with only 17.1% in 2017–2020. In Romania, social trust fell from 17.9% to 12.1% in the same period.

Even in the relatively successful cases of Poland and the Czech Republic, for which the World Values Survey has more complete data, trust fell during the post-communist transition. In 1989–1992, 31.3% of Poles and 30.2% of Czechs believed that most people could be trusted. In 2017–2020, that share was significantly lower—just 24.1% and 21.1%, respectively. Revealingly, while social trust declined across Eastern Europe between 1991 and 2007, it increased in Western Europe.

The EBRD launched its massive Life in Transition Survey in 2006 using 1,000 face-to-face interviews in each of the 28 post-communist countries. It found that whereas two-thirds of respondents believed that, before 1989, most people could be trusted, only about a third agreed that most people could be trusted 17 years later. This result was consistent across all regions and countries, with majorities of respondents in all age groups and income categories agreeing that people were generally ‘more trustworthy’ under communism.

Not surprisingly, disappointment with the results of transition also drove down average trust in public institutions (including governments, parliaments, courts, armed forces and police) across the post-communist region from the 1990s through the 2010s. From 1990 to 2013, trust in political institutions in Central and Eastern Europe fell by half.

Reflecting on these data, Erik Berglöf, the EBRD’s chief economist at the time, concluded, ‘It is important to keep in mind that the damage done during the hard times, not only to material well-being but also to general levels of trust and subjective well-being, should not be underestimated.’

In fact, the survey data highlight a little-known fact: the post-communist recessions were the worst in modern history, far worse than the Great Depression. But not all countries suffered equally. While some, particularly the Central European countries, recovered relatively quickly and progressed towards EU norms, many others suffered unimaginable losses. The average post-communist country returned to pre-1989 levels of economic output only after 17 years, nurturing a deep legacy of distrust and a sense of abandonment in countries that, under communism, fostered a culture of mutual assistance against the state.

Eastern Europe’s experience with the pandemic shows that many countries have not yet reversed the profound erosion of public trust that began after 1989. Well before the crisis erupted, these countries had become fertile ground for disinformation campaigns—often of Russian origin—that seek to turn public opinion against the EU, against the West and against successful experts in their own countries. The region’s high degree of vaccine scepticism and surging death rates are a visible result—one that reflects not decades of communist rule, but rather the decades-long social consequences of its collapse.

The AUKUS defence and security pact among Australia, the United Kingdom and United States has clearly sunk French, and associated European Union, sentiment towards Indo-Pacific integration. Resurfacing relations won’t be easy, but it should be prioritised to help deliver the optimal 21st-century strategic environment for all concerned.

The arrangement has already produced considerable symbolic fallout. Most notable was France’s decision to recall its Australian and US ambassadors in response to the AUKUS announcement of a nuclear-powered submarine program that spelled the end of French shipbuilder Naval Group’s multibillion-dollar contract with Australia. There are signs that this could lead to tangible setbacks for Europe’s cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. Paris has, for example, looked to frustrate progress on free-trade negotiations between the EU and Australia.

What’s most striking about these events is how they interrupted a years-long trend of intensifying engagement by Paris, Brussels and other continental capitals with the Indo-Pacific as both a region and a geopolitical construct. This interruption should be treated as a serious concern at both ends of the relationship, even if AUKUS might help alternatively bind a non-EU European country, the UK, and a global superpower, the US, to the very same region and construct.

The Indo-Pacific is an area of both vast and increasing opportunities and challenges, most of which are influenced by the continuing rise of China. Responding to regional dynamics is inevitably improved through burden-sharing, particularly when it engages largely like-minded partners and can leverage shared membership of institutional arrangements such as the US alliance system.

The release last week of a key document in this process of engagement, the EU strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, was largely lost in the wake of the AUKUS announcement. It establishes the bloc’s priorities and intended mechanisms for engaging on critical regional issues. Its priorities include promoting economic development and integration, maintaining regional security, protecting international supply chains, and mitigating and adapting to climate change—all of which have resonance with Indo-Pacific governments to varying degrees.

The EU and its member states are actively pursuing partnerships with Indo-Pacific countries to advance common commercial and strategic interests. Though incipient, their engagement is well founded. France has a direct national interest through several of its overseas territories; 1.5 million of its citizens and most of its large exclusive economic zone are found in the Indo-Pacific. Others, such as Germany, and the EU as a whole, are acting with more generalised but still genuine concern for the health of their deeply connected economies and the international rules-based order.

European–Indo-Pacific partnerships have already advanced past the rhetorical stage. The German frigate Bayern, for example, is currently participating in joint military exercises in the region 20 years after Berlin last had an Asian naval presence. Diplomatic partnerships such as the France–India–Australia trilateral have also been formed. EU–ASEAN ties have advanced through several channels, laying the groundwork for potential game-changers such as a region-to-region free trade agreement.

As a multi-author report from the Perth USAsia Centre and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung published this week notes, Indo-Pacific governments have broadly welcomed and sought to deepen these increasing European interests.

Tokyo, for example, has already formed key economic and strategic partnership agreements with Brussels. It is also overcoming challenges with EU military coordination by advancing nation-to-nation security ties with individual member states. Southeast Asian leaders see Europe as able to play an important role in dampening the effect of US–China contestation. Canberra envisages working with Europe on providing neighbouring countries with development and security alternatives to Beijing.

AUKUS will inevitably threaten these promising partnerships so long as the perception persists that the Anglosphere is set to dominate future Indo-Pacific relations. Such perceptions can, however, be managed through the same processes of adroit diplomacy that will be necessary to return Australian, UK and US relations with Europe to the status quo ante of a little over a week ago.

Despite the current contretemps, hopes for a relatively quick rebound are encouraged by two factors in particular. The first is that some key Indo-Pacific countries, including Japan and India, with which European countries have also formed important regional relationships, have already welcomed AUKUS to some degree. This is because the arrangement aligns with the very same goals of engaging more partners in responding to complex regional affairs that have driven continental European ties.

The second encouraging factor is that, as French officials and observers have been quick to note in the past week, motivations for European integration in the Indo-Pacific—and the source of Paris’s opprobrium at the AUKUS announcement—go far beyond the commercial imperative of protecting a single submarine deal, no matter how valuable. They constitute a much deeper and wholly genuine commitment by Europe to help shape the region’s future in ways that can benefit all.

These realities should quickly be recognised and acted on by policymakers in Canberra, London and Washington, as well as Paris, Brussels and other European capitals. If managed correctly, the new AUKUS arrangement could still provide an avenue for encouraging, rather than impeding, the impressive integration of Europe into the Indo-Pacific in the 21st century.

US President Joe Biden has found his mission: to secure the West by strengthening its liberal democracies against authoritarian temptations, both foreign and domestic. Having witnessed both an attempted coup and steeply rising socioeconomic inequalities in his own country, Biden knows that democracies won’t find support abroad until they have fulfilled their promises of fairness, justice and security at home.

If Europe wants to be a partner in this democratic revival, it can start by recognising the realism behind the US administration’s rhetoric. Biden isn’t pining for some mythical lost era of American greatness, as his predecessor did. He is focusing on the future, and he’s concerned with questions that animate democratic liberals and conservatives alike.

For example, how do we create opportunities for those left behind by global capitalism, so that they don’t fall prey to populists’ false promises? How do we restore other developed democratic countries’ commitment to democratic values? How do we rein in overpowered financial and tech industries, or forge a more dynamic global order?

The idea of ‘the West’ was always meant to be universal, offering a normative framework for peaceful, prosperous coexistence among all people. Human rights, freedom of expression, democratic self-determination and the rule of law are not exclusive to any region or group of countries.

But if you are a Chinese leader, you will ask why your country should follow the ‘West’, especially now that most Chinese regard the Western-designed international order as hostile to their own aspirations. From this perspective, the European–American era is over. Signs of Western decadence are ubiquitous—from the Iraq War debacle and the Trump presidency to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union.

While Americans and Europeans argue for the importance of individual human rights, the self-confident Chinese rebuttal is that there are also social human rights: to education, nutrition, adequate housing, and so forth. Here, China has undeniably achieved great things, lifting more than 800 million people out of abject poverty over the past four decades.

The lines, then, have been drawn. For Europe to make a meaningful contribution to Biden’s mission, it must become stronger. And because its common foreign and security policy tends to evolve only very slowly, Europe must also continue to press ahead with the expansion of the single market, which will remain Europe’s main attraction and source of strength.

But the single market can retain its attractiveness only if it allows for greater dynamism. To become a technological leader with less dependence on China and the United States, Europe must invest more in research and development, digitalisation and artificial intelligence. It should be pursuing a joint climate policy with the US. And while the G7 recently agreed on a Build Back Better World Partnership to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia, Africa and Latin America, the EU must do more to support this program, while also bolstering NATO’s deterrent power.

With federal elections coming in September, Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, should be debating how it intends to strengthen the bloc in the coming years. Yet all the main German parties and politicians have been silent on this issue, presumably because they’re still waiting to see how the pandemic will evolve. Many fear that richer northern member states will regain their economic strength quickly while others—namely, Italy and France—fall further behind.

The EU’s €750 billion recovery fund won’t be enough to achieve anything close to a convergence between southern and northern member states; indeed, it won’t even be enough to prevent them from drifting further apart. Since the EU’s poorer member states are already over-indebted, they can’t borrow much more, particularly if interest rates rise. Whenever inflation begins to increase again, the European Central Bank’s implicit policy of monetising member-state debt (through the unlimited purchase of government bonds from poorer countries) will have to end.

Under these conditions, the only remaining way out would be a ‘transfer union’, with richer countries like Germany increasing their own financial investments in poorer member states. Greater investments in infrastructure, digitalisation and R&D are needed not only to boost efficiency and productivity in the economically weaker member states, but also to hold the eurozone and the EU together. The road is long, however, and longer still because Europe currently lacks the instruments needed to see the journey through.

From the perspective of German fiscal policy, investing in a more economically and socially stable Europe would offer enormous returns. Yes, the prevailing view in Germany is that the country already puts more into Europe than it ‘gets out’. But that is nonsense. As an export champion with a massive, persistent trade surplus, Germany, by definition, receives more than it pays out.

Instead of creating the impression that Germany is dependent on the Chinese export market, German leaders should make clear that the country’s real dependence is on the European market. Germany’s exports to other EU member states account for over 50% of its total exports, whereas China and the US each account for only about 10%.

In the long run, Germany will do only as well as its European neighbours. The sooner we recognise that, the better off we’ll be. Biden’s credo about fixing things at home applies to us, too. We must show that our own democratically constituted societies are better than the autocratic alternatives. Otherwise, the normative idea of the West will continue to lose its lustre.