Tag Archive for: European Union

The rise of democracy in Europe

Image courtesy of Flickr user European Parliament

The shock of the British vote to leave the European Union has yet to sink in. Yet European leaders must steel themselves for what’s to come. In fact, Brexit might be the initial tremor that triggers a tsunami of referenda in Europe in the coming years.

Across Europe, there are 47 insurgent parties turning politics on its head. They’re gaining control of the political agenda, shaping it according to their interests—and winning power in the process. In one-third of EU member states, such parties are members of coalition governments, and their success has driven mainstream parties to adopt some of their positions.

Though these parties have very different roots, they all have one thing in common: all are trying to upend the foreign-policy consensus that’s defined Europe for several decades. They’re Euroskeptic; they spurn NATO; they want to close their borders and stop free trade. They’re changing the face of politics, replacing traditional left-right battles with clashes pitting their own angry nativism against the cosmopolitanism of the elites they disdain.

These parties’ weapon of choice is the referendum, with which they can whip up popular support for their pet issues. According to the European Council on Foreign Relations, 32 referenda are being demanded in 18 countries across the EU. Some, such as the Danish People’s Party, want to follow the United Kingdom’s lead and hold a vote on EU membership. Others want to escape from the eurozone, block the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States, or restrict labor mobility.

The EU’s refugee relocation scheme has proved to be particularly divisive. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has declared that he’ll hold a referendum on the proposed quotas. And the Polish opposition party Kukiz ’15 has been collecting signatures for its own referendum on the issue.

Handing power back to the masses through direct democracy may well be these parties’ most revolutionary proposition. Indeed, it reflects an understanding of the frustrations that’ve driven a global wave of popular protests in recent years – protests that, in the Arab world, sparked actual revolutions. The same spirit of protest that drove, say, Spaniards, Greeks, and New Yorkers to take to the streets—with different demands, to be sure—is fueling support for these new referenda and the insurgent parties that are bringing them about.

This is a nightmare not only for established parties, but also for democratic governance. As California’s experience with referenda has shown, the public will often vote for contradictory things—for example, lower taxes and more welfare programs, or environmental protection and cheaper gas.

But for the EU, this dynamic is exponentially more challenging; indeed, it overturns the EU’s foundations. The EU is, after all, the ultimate expression of representative democracy. It’s an enlightened body that places at its core liberal values such as individual rights, the protection of minorities, and a market-based economy.

But the layers of representation on which the EU relies have created the sense that a kind of ‘Über-elite’ is running things, far removed from ordinary citizens. This has given nationalist parties the perfect target for their anti-EU campaigns. Add to that fear mongering about issues like immigration and trade, and their ability to attract frustrated or anxious voters is strong.

Two visions of Europe—the diplomatic and the demotic—are now facing off against each other. The diplomatic Europe, incarnated by EU founding father Jean Monnet, took big, sensitive questions out of the sphere of popular politics and reduced them to manageable technical issues that diplomats could address through bureaucratic compromises behind closed doors. The demotic Europe, exemplified by the UK Independence Party, which helped spearhead Brexit, is like Monnet in reverse, taking diplomatic compromises like the TTIP or the association agreement with Ukraine, and intentionally politicizing them.

Whereas diplomatic Europe is about finding reconciliation, demotic Europe is about polarization. Diplomacy is win-win; direct democracy is zero-sum. Diplomacy tries to lower the temperature; the demotic paradigm raises it. Diplomats can work with one another; referenda are binary and fixed, leaving none of the political wiggle room and scope for creative compromise needed to resolve political problems. In demotic Europe, solidarity is impossible.

Europe’s shift away from diplomacy began more than a decade ago, when the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was rejected in popular referenda in France and the Netherlands. That outcome may have put the EU out of the treaty-making business altogether, meaning that hopes of future integration may well be dashed.

But, in the wake of Brexit, future integration is not Europe’s biggest concern. Instead, it must contend with the increasingly powerful forces undermining the integration that’s been achieved, attempting to push Europe backward. Of course, one need only recall what was there before the EU to realize just how dangerous this path may be.

In this new era of ‘vetocracy’ in Europe, the diplomacy that underpinned the creation of the enlightened and forward-looking European project cannot function, leaving the EU ungovernable. Now that the Euroskeptics have gotten their way in the UK, vetocracy will become stronger than ever. Direct votes on issues like trade rules or immigration policy will gut Europe’s representative democracy, just as direct votes on membership threaten to gut the EU itself.

In a popular novel by the Nobel laureate José Saramago, the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the European mainland and drifts away. With a tsunami of plebiscites bearing down on the continent, this may turn out to be a prescient metaphor.

The meaning of Brexit

Image courtesy of Flickr user threefishsleeping

The Brexit vote was a triple protest: against surging immigration, City of London bankers, and European Union institutions, in that order. It will have major consequences. Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency will receive a huge boost, as will other anti-immigrant populist politicians. Moreover, leaving the EU will wound the British economy, and could well push Scotland to leave the United Kingdom—to say nothing of Brexit’s ramifications for the future of European integration.

Brexit is thus a watershed event that signals the need for a new kind of globalisation, one that could be far superior to the status quo that was rejected at the British polls.

At its core, Brexit reflects a pervasive phenomenon in the high-income world: rising support for populist parties campaigning for a clampdown on immigration. Roughly half the population in Europe and the United States, generally working-class voters, believes that immigration is out of control, posing a threat to public order and cultural norms.

In the middle of the Brexit campaign in May, it was reported that the UK had net immigration of 333,000 persons in 2015, more than triple the government’s previously announced target of 100,000. That news came on top of the Syrian refugee crisis, terrorist attacks by Syrian migrants and disaffected children of earlier immigrants, and highly publicised reports of assaults on women and girls by migrants in Germany and elsewhere.

In the US, Trump backers similarly rail against the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented residents, mainly Hispanic, who overwhelmingly live peaceful and productive lives, but without proper visas or work permits. For many Trump supporters, the crucial fact about the recent attack in Orlando is that the perpetrator was the son of Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan and acted in the name of anti-American sentiment (though committing mass murder with automatic weapons is, alas, all too American).

Warnings that Brexit would lower income levels were either dismissed outright, wrongly, as mere fearmongering, or weighed against the Leavers’ greater interest in border control. A major factor, however, was implicit class warfare. Working-class ‘Leave’ voters reasoned that most or all of the income losses would in any event be borne by the rich, and especially the despised bankers of the City of London.

Americans disdain Wall Street and its greedy and often criminal behavior at least as much as the British working class disdains the City of London. This, too, suggests a campaign advantage for Trump over his opponent in November, Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy is heavily financed by Wall Street. Clinton should take note and distance herself from Wall Street.

In the UK, these two powerful political currents—rejection of immigration and class warfare—were joined by the widespread sentiment that EU institutions are dysfunctional. They surely are. One need only cite the last six years of mismanagement of the Greek crisis by self-serving, shortsighted European politicians. The continuing Eurozone turmoil was, understandably, enough to put off millions of UK voters.

The short-run consequences of Brexit are already clear: the pound has plummeted to a 31-year low. In the near term, the City of London will face major uncertainties, job losses, and a collapse of bonuses. Property values in London will cool. The possible longer-run knock-on effects in Europe—including likely Scottish independence; possible Catalonian independence; a breakdown of free movement of people in the EU; a surge in anti-immigrant politics (including the possible election of Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen)—are enormous. Other countries might hold referendums of their own, and some may choose to leave.

In Europe, the call to punish Britain pour encourager les autres—to warn those contemplating the same—is already rising. This is European politics at its stupidest (also very much on display vis-à-vis Greece). The remaining EU should, instead, reflect on its obvious failings and fix them. Punishing Britain—by, say, denying it access to Europe’s single market—would only lead to the continued unraveling of the EU.

So what should be done? I would suggest several measures, both to reduce the risks of catastrophic feedback loops in the short term and to maximize the benefits of reform in the long term.

First, stop the refugee surge by ending the Syrian war immediately. This can be accomplished by ending the CIA-Saudi alliance to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, thereby enabling Assad (with Russian and Iranian backing) to defeat the Islamic State and stabilize Syria (with a similar approach in neighboring Iraq). America’s addiction to regime change (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria) is the deep cause of Europe’s refugee crisis. End the addiction, and the recent refugees could return home.

Second, stop NATO’s expansion to Ukraine and Georgia. The new Cold War with Russia is another US-contrived blunder with plenty of European naiveté attached. Closing the door on NATO expansion would make it possible to ease tensions and normalise relations with Russia, stabilise Ukraine, and restore focus on the European economy and the European project.

Third, don’t punish Britain. Instead, police national and EU borders to stop illegal migrants. This is not xenophobia, racism, or fanaticism. It’s common sense that countries with the world’s most generous social-welfare provisions (Western Europe) must say no to millions (indeed hundreds of millions) of would-be migrants. The same is true for the US.

Fourth, restore a sense of fairness and opportunity for the disaffected working class and those whose livelihoods have been undermined by financial crises and the outsourcing of jobs. This means following the social-democratic ethos of pursuing ample social spending for health, education, training, apprenticeships, and family support, financed by taxing the rich and closing tax havens, which are gutting public revenues and exacerbating economic injustice. It also means finally giving Greece debt relief, thereby ending the long-running Eurozone crisis.

Fifth, focus resources, including additional aid, on economic development, rather than war, in low-income countries. Uncontrolled migration from today’s poor and conflict-ridden regions will become overwhelming, regardless of migration policies, if climate change, extreme poverty, and lack of skills and education undermine the development potential of Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

All of this underscores the need to shift from a strategy of war to one of sustainable development, especially by the US and Europe. Walls and fences won’t stop millions of migrants fleeing violence, extreme poverty, hunger, disease, droughts, floods, and other ills. Only global cooperation can do that.

Brexit and security—a sleeper issue

The UK is tied into a complex EU security, defence and law enforcement apparatus that might look easy to relinquish, but could be a potential nightmare to re-negotiate. A variety of veteran security and defence experts have weighed in for both the Remain and Brexit campaigns; others have concluded that neither option would really have a drastic impact on the UK’s overall security.

Brexiteers have consistently highlighted EU legislation as an unhelpful constraint (PDF) on Britain’s security, control and, ultimately, sovereignty. This raises concerns for rising nationalism and populism, fuelled by a “little islander” mentality and a desire for increased sovereign control. All of which may serve to undermine the UK in a more globalised world where “togetherness” and trans-nationalism are stronger than isolation.

While counter-terrorism legislation for European countries is primarily a national responsibility, the EU plays a supportive role in responding to trans-national threats. However, EU agencies and mechanisms such as Europol, Prüm convention, European Arrest Warrant and the Schengen Information System have been criticised (PDF) for clunky and bureaucratic processes. Despite this, they function relatively efficiently and have been useful tools for security forces (PDF). The UK’s expertise in intelligence and security sharing has further strengthened these structures. Should the UK withdraw from these arrangements, the EU’s security infrastructure would be significantly weakened, thereby contributing to regional vulnerabilities.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels exposed serious practical problems with EU security and intelligence cooperation. Irregular and incoherent cooperation combined with conflicts of interest between member states may undermine a comprehensive defence and security strategy. Information leakage is also a concern; sharing data between 28 member states means the risk of breaches is high.

On the other hand, Britain’s integration into the EU’s security apparatus should be considered as part of a strategy to maintain regional peace and stability and to strengthen resilience. Lord Carlile, the UK’s former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, argues that existing structures have improved cross-European cooperation significantly in areas of policing, jurisdiction and intelligence, thereby improving regional resilience considerably. Other high-profile security experts agree.

Reservations on increased intelligence sharing among member states should be addressed and dealt with through new procedures to improve information security and mitigate the risk of information falling into the wrong hands. Developing existing EU structures is a more constructive way of fixing problems and mitigating the UK’s concerns while also enhancing regional security.

When it comes to defence and diplomacy, Britain’s membership of the EU hasn’t affected its position as one of the strongest negotiating countries in the region. Nor has it affected diplomatic sovereignty or autonomy to make decisions regarding defence and security policy. British military participation in the Iraq coalition in 2003 wasn’t restricted despite broader EU opposition.

While Britain’s close strategic relationships with NATO, Five Eyes and US may not necessarily be compromised in the event of a Brexit vote, the view that NATO will prop up UK defence and security is problematic. With the US focusing more on relationship building in Asia and the Pacific, NATO may not be as involved in day-to-day European security operations as it has previously. EU agencies and offices might find that they shoulder more responsibility to provide an effective European security network. Britain should be involved to influence and derive benefit from this network.

A post-EU Britain would bear the burden of creating a new stand-alone security apparatus. Scoping out new bilateral agreements with various EU members would be costly, timely and, potentially, unreliable. The Lancaster Treaties signed in 2010 between Britain and France are one example of the type of arrangement that hasn’t substantially improved information sharing between France and the UK.

International security challenges require a coordinated response. NATO’s intervention can only go so far; political engagement is necessary to achieve successful solutions. Reaching agreements and instituting change might be more difficult and even less efficient for the UK outside of the EU. Historically, the Union has been integral to Britain’s international diplomacy, most recently in securing an agreement with President Rouhani in Iran.

The nature of the security threats currently facing the UK and Europe are wide-ranging and varied— some of which, like transnational terrorism, have been a consistent problem for a sustained period of time. Other geopolitical developments—the resurgence of Russia, the rise of China, large-scale migration to Europe, and civil war in the Middle East—will test Europe’s political and economic resilience. Along with the US’s ‘rebalance to Asia’, the EU faces myriad challenges.

The UK’s involvement in Europe’s security is pivotal. Retreating from the Union would fragment and weaken Europe’s defence and resilience capabilities. It also risks a firm response from Europe towards the UK, damaging trusted relationships built over the last 40 years, which would be detrimental for future security and intelligence cooperation. A weakened Europe and an isolated Britain is a dangerous prospect—one not in Britain’s interests.

Brexit: crying wolf isn’t working

Over the past fortnight, the dawning realisation that Brexit could actually happen has sent the British establishment groping for the campaign panic button. Until now, the Remain side has sat comfortably on the sorts of polling numbers that would keep the status quo intact. Last week, however, bookmakers odds on Brexit shortened dramatically. Could disgruntled Brits really be about to upset a tidy international order?

The oddest aspect to this campaign is the sheer uncertainty of the outcome. The referendum is a psephologist’s nightmare. Pollsters struggle to build representative samples, because there are no precedents. The principal issues—immigration, the economy and sovereignty—cut across political divides and socio-economic groups.

With a week to go, however, the fact is that the Remain camp have failed to nail it. To be fair, it isn’t easy for them to craft a strategy, because they aren’t a coherent group. In party political terms, the Remainers are best imagined as the High Tory Conservatives who always winced at ‘Thatcher’, and the Not-so New Labourites who always winced at Socialism. By default, they’ve aligned behind the classic establishment manifesto: ‘Change is Risky and Bad’.

The problem is, they haven’t been able to prove it—at least in economic terms. The government has published exhaustive reports and wheeled out institutional heads to deliver stern lectures on the economic consequences of Brexit. But popular deference to expert opinion is conspicuously absent.

Conversely, Leave campaigners are a more coherent group than anyone imagined. Left alone, the Brexiteers instinctively decry the evils of over-regulation and vested interest, and proselytise global free trade and fair markets. It’s a strange way for Liberal England to resurrect, but Brexiteers are grasping at an ancient political thread. Who knows if they’ll pick it up. Whether the Tory Party reads the portents or not, an ideological divide presages a full-on party split.

Immigration is the UK electorate’s most voluble concern, with arrivals rising to 300,000 in 2015. Following Lynton Crosby’s helpful suggestion, Brexiteers are focussing relentlessly on the impact of immigration on perennially stretched social services led by health and education.

The Remain camp has no answer to this all-too-palpable issue. The free movement of people is a principle of the EU Project and a condition of the Single Market. Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate migrants’ rights in February was so poorly received that his side doesn’t dare mention it. Seemingly, his only achievement was to make crystal clear the limitations of UK influence in Brussels, and provide a concrete example of why sovereignty matters.

For Remain, Brexit’s weak spot is voters’ wallets. It worked on the Scots after all. But painting  Brexiteers as economic luddites has proven a challenge, with ex-Chancellors, heavyweight industrialists and entrepreneurs, and the former London Mayor, Boris Johnson, in their midst. Few people understand UK Treasury’s economic modelling, but they can grasp a burgeoning trade deficit with the EU. They also see UK products like the iconic Land-Rover Defender fall victim to EU emission rules that German car makers choose to flout.

David Cameron’s bid to bolster his case with friendly ‘advice’ from global heavyweights has backfired. Obama doubtless had strategic Washington interests to heart during his April visit. But his ‘back of the queue’ putdown caused visceral offence. Brexit promptly gained a three-point boost, and EU leaders have wisely stayed stumm ever since.

So what’s likely to swing it? If the Remain camp can’t persuade voters that Brexit is economic suicide, what’s left in their arsenal? Possibly the spectre of the final fall of the Westminster Raj. The drums of a second Scottish referendum are already beating, while a ghoulish Major-Blair pairing has warned of renewed violence in Ulster.

But isn’t this just more panic-mongering? Realistically, if the Scots didn’t like the look of England as a separate country, the prospect of England as a separate country plus tariffs is less pleasing still. And that’s what Brexit will mean, because the EU’s Single Market is doing UK trade next to zero favours and the EU leadership will have to play hardball, ‘pour encourager les autres’.

Meanwhile, implying that peaceful Irish co-existence is a bounty that descends from Brussels is both patronising and obtuse: raising eyebrows in Ulster without lowering temperatures in London.

To be fair, both sides have indulged in hyperbole. But therein lies the danger. The key to this referendum is a profound electoral distrust of official advice. The ghost of 2003 and the Iraq war still hovers—a time when the populace accepted official claims at face value. Well, there were no WMD. And since then, officialdom has fought a seven-year, rear-guard action to prevent its mis-pronouncements being dragged into daylight.

The Government’s failure to adjust to a sceptical political climate now puts the result at risk. Crying wolf simply isn’t working. Each dire and un-substantiated warning elicits the response: ‘If that’s the best they can come up with, then….’  Foreign analysts should understand that in the absence of clear facts, much of the UK electorate will vote on gut instinct. And who actually loves the EU? It looks increasingly likely that on June 23, while the world rubs its eyes, Britons will awake to a new freedom.

Brexit, immigration and the Commonwealth factor

It may be the immigration question that brings about a British departure from the European Union. Much publicity has been given to the recent ‘discovery’ of illegal arrivals by small boat across the English Channel. The timing of such a ‘discovery’, given the effective non-existence of air and seaborne surveillance of Britain’s maritime approaches, is a little too convenient to be true, for it’s likely this sort of thing has been going on for years.

The UK’s Border Agency has only a handful of small cutters, while the Royal Navy’s Fishery Protection Squadron is a shadow of its former size. The Royal Air Force won’t have operational maritime patrol aircraft again for several years (buying P-8s was a last minute decision of the recent SDSR) and the Border Agency has given up on most, if not all, of its chartered coastal and offshore air patrols.

Furthermore, illegal arrivals by boat have little to do with the free, legal movement of European Union citizens. An exit vote would do nothing to stop their flow. Fairly or not, however, the ‘illegals’ problem has been tied into more legitimate concerns about the overall rate of immigration into the UK—and some in the ‘exit’ campaign are making the most of it.

There can be no doubt that there’s a racist element to the Brexit debate, notably engendered by the Anglo-Saxon distrust of outsiders which has so often marked the English attitude to the continent (let alone the rest of the world). Nigel Farage and the UK Independent Party are making as much as they can of the prospect of ‘bodies on the beaches’, perhaps disguising their real motives with a concern for the welfare of the would-be immigrants.

Yet UKIP have some unexpected fellow travellers. As has been the experience in Australia, some of the most recently arrived legal immigrants are the most opposed to unregulated or illegal immigration—and those recent arrivals include workers from Eastern Europe. But there’s also what can only be described as a Commonwealth theme to the desire to end the free movement of people from Europe and to create much better border controls.

Part of that is certainly the concern felt by those Anglo-Saxons (and Celts) who see their cousins, the descendants of those who emigrated to Australia, Canada and New Zealand, given less favourable treatment when they visit the United Kingdom than the most recent members of the EU.

Curiously, however, there may a ‘new’ Commonwealth element at work as well. It isn’t just that the descendants of the immigrants from the Caribbean, from South Asia and from Africa have similar concerns to Britain’s longer-term inhabitants about the limits placed on the entry of their extended families. They also feel little connection with much of the ‘European Project’—perhaps even less than those who can at least claim that their ancestors fought at Agincourt and in Flanders.

While these people aren’t prepared to accept the argument that the British Empire was an unalloyed ‘good thing’, there’s a belief that the necessary re-balancing of British history to include recognition of such things of slavery and colonial exploitation is in danger of being neglected in favour of a new narrative which emphasises Britain’s place in Europe at the expense of its global past—and also at the expense of at least some of the positive linguistic and cultural inheritance which the Commonwealth shares and fosters.

There’s also a feeling that, whatever its failings, the British polity may have embraced multiculturalism and rejected racism more successfully and wholeheartedly than countries such as France. In other words, they believe that their chances of living within a successfully integrated society may be greater in a Britain which isn’t caught within a web of European commitments and compromises.

It’s very difficult to assess whether this element will be decisive in the referendum. A voluntary voting system on an issue over which a significant proportion of the population feel either disengaged or have yet to involve themselves at all may result in a limited turn-out on the day.

The campaign to persuade voters away from an exit vote, largely on economic grounds, may well succeed, although its increasingly shrill tone suggests that the ‘remain’ element is becoming fearful of the result. A successful exit may be followed by the departure of Scotland from the United Kingdom, and so on. But…

The making of Euro-jihadism

The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne linked Europe’s birth as a Christian continent in the eighth century to its rupture with Islam. Pirenne probably would never have expected a Muslim ghetto in Brussels to emerge, much less become a hub of jihadism, with marginalized and angry young Muslims revolting against Europe from within its own borders.

Divorce is not an option these days. But nor is the kind of marriage that the Islam scholar Tariq Ramadan advocates. Ramadan, a grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, is a Swiss citizen and a resident of the United Kingdom who argues that Islamic ethics and values should be injected into the European system. Europe would then not just tolerate Islam, but actually embrace it as an integral part of itself.

The problem with Ramadan’s vision is that Europe is an overwhelmingly secular continent, with a profoundly forward-thinking approach to ethics. Islamic societies, by contrast, are both deeply religious and deeply embedded in the past. When Islamists speak of political or social reform, they are typically looking backward, hoping to resurrect a time when core European principles—from gender equality to gay marriage—were repudiated. Even Muslims who support the modernization of Islam would typically stop well short of Europe’s ethical vision.

The flaws in Ramadan’s proposed solution to Euro-jihadism mirror the flaws in his explanation for the phenomenon, which he attributes largely to Europe’s involvement in the wars in the Middle East, its supposed collusion with Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians, and its support of Arab autocrats. ‘We cannot,’ he writes, ‘support dictatorships … be silent when civilians are massacred south of our borders, and hope that we will not receive a response to the injustice and humiliation we have provoked.’

But it is the United States that launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers unconditional support to Israel, and has repeatedly propped up Arab autocrats. And it is Europe that has consistently criticized these policies—often harshly. Yet America is not being subjected to a major surge of jihadist sentiment within its borders.

It might have helped that US President Barack Obama backed away from some of these policies. When the Arab Spring uprisings began, for example, he was quick to cut support for Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, allowing protesters—inspired by the Western model of democracy—to secure regime change. The return to autocracy in Egypt in 2013, via Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s coup d’état, certainly was not aided by the US or Europe, both of which supported the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood.

Europe has offered even more direct help to Arab countries in recent years. If it were not for Europe’s military intervention, Libyans would still be living under the tyrannical Muammar el-Qaddafi. True, Europe could have done more to prevent the ensuing chaos in Libya. But the people of Libya surely must take responsibility for the proliferation of competing militias that refuse to unite to save their state from total collapse.

More broadly, though the West—especially the US—has made grave policy errors in the Arab world over the last 50 years, external powers cannot be blamed entirely for the region’s meltdown. That is the result of a profound civilizational crisis—one that can be redressed only by the people of the Arab world.

If Europe’s foreign policy is not responsible for the Arab world’s current turmoil, it certainly cannot be the reason for the rise of jihadism within its own borders. The real problem lies at home: a disastrous deficit of effective policies related to social justice, education, housing, and employment for young European Muslims. Marginalization generates frustration, which is subsequently fed by growing Islamophobia and the rise of raucous right-wing movements throughout the continent.

This link is apparent in the fact that the majority of European jihadists come from underprivileged backgrounds. Not particularly well versed in the true teachings of Islam, and lacking opportunities to improve their lives, they become easy prey for extremists. Jihadism, with its absolute certainty and grand mission, offers a sense of purpose, pride, and identity—not to mention adventure—and an outlet for their anger against the “home” that has denied them those things.

The story of America’s Muslims is the measure of Europe’s failure. Like most Americans, Muslims in the US maintain a certain amount of faith in the American dream. They are mostly middle class, and, despite all the talk about rising economic inequality, they have not given up on the belief that, in the US, hard work and initiative are rewarded.

America is a country of immigrants, with a dynamic economy that has enabled newcomers, time and again, to achieve great success. In Europe, by contrast, improving one’s social standing has always been very difficult; and, at a time of economic stagnation and staggeringly high unemployment, it is not getting any easier.

Socially, America also offers something to Muslims that Europe does not. Its fundamentally religious culture enables Muslims to retain their identity to a far greater extent than in secular Europe. Indeed, America’s core values—personal responsibility and constitutional patriotism—can be easier for Muslims to swallow than Europe’s more aggressively secular brand of liberalism. As a result, integration and assimilation tend to be easier for Muslims in America.

All of this suggests that Europe must look inward to address homegrown jihadism effectively. This does not mean that it should temper its secularism, much less its liberal values. Rather, Europe must breathe life into its own “European dream,” ensuring that all people have access to real opportunities to improve their lives. Otherwise, it will face a lost generation of millions of young Europeans—Muslim and otherwise.

Europe’s unprecedented border management challenge

According to Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, last year there were over 1.8 million illegal border crossings detected along Europe’s external Schengen borders—six times the detections reported in 2014. Europe’s external border security measures are now under immense pressure, while its internal border controls are all but non-existent.

Despite the magnitude of the European border security problem, Frontex’s release this month of its annual risk analysis (PDF) for 2016 has received little media attention. That’s unsurprising given the report itself offered little in the way of new solutions or hope when it comes to managing Europe’s frontier challenges.

Instead, Frontex told us what we already know. Europe’s experiencing an unprecedented rise in migratory pressure, an increasing terrorist threat and a steady rise in the number of regular travellers. The highest number of illegal border crossers in 2015 were those who declared that they had come from Syria (594,059) and Afghanistan (267,485). Arrivals from West Africa also rose and were over 64,000 last year.

In fairness to Frontex there’s no quick or easy fix to Europe’s border security crisis. No new wall, warships or deployed soldiers are going to be able to secure Europe’s borders in the face of the current migration tsunami.

There are strong economic and political pull factors in Europe for asylum seekers and economic migrants alike. Those, combined with Europe’s close proximity to the Middle East, and associated well-established migration routes, ensured that Schengen’s external borders would be a mass migration frontline. With ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the flow of asylum seekers was always going to rapidly increase. And an offshore processing regime like that used in Australia is unlikely to work given the geography involved and scale of migration flows.

Europe’s internal and external border control measures are unable to deal with the existential nature of the migration crisis as Syrians, Iraqis and Libyans flee from harm. But the crisis is also a threat to the existence of the protections contained within the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. There have been frequent calls to change some of the definitions and rights of asylum seekers contained within the Convention.

Europe’s Schengen Zone was developed to promote ‘the free and unrestricted movement of people, goods, services, and capital’. While the Schengen Agreement was also concerned with harmonising rules for controlling external borders, it wasn’t designed to deal with unplanned mass migration from the Middle East and Africa.

The Schengen Agreement and Frontex are both ill-equipped to cope with the current crisis. The Schengen States need to rethink their approach. Long term strategies focused on promoting peace, stability and economic development in source countries need to be established and integrated with stop gap border security measures.

To be fair the EU has sought to be more innovative and proactive in its use of official development assistance in Africa and the Middle East to address the migration crisis. Unfortunately, aid investments in origin countries are strategies that require time and stability to succeed.

Current initiatives that involve the return of asylum seekers and economic migrants from Europe to Turkey are likely too small in scale to effectively alleviate or discourage the migratory pressure.

The 26 members of the Schengen Area are unlikely to allow the zone to fall apart. Private sector profit margins and public sector budgets across the Area are now reliant on the cost and time savings provided by open internal borders. And during a time of fiscal austerity the permanent reinstatement of border functions could prove unaffordable for many member states.

The conclusion of Frontex’s Risk Analysis 2016 provides an important kernel of hope for a more effective strategy stating that ‘border management will increasingly be risk-based, to ensure that interventions are focused on high-risk movements of people, while low-risk movements are facilitated smoothly.’

The Schengen countries now need to make some hard policy choices. On one hand they can continue to ‘fight’ the irregular migration flow through the creation of stronger border security measures including, as we have already seen, the deployment of military capabilities. But under this scenario the Schengen states would increasingly fail to meet their obligations under the 1951 Convention.

As an alternative, the Schengen States could develop longer term strategies focused on mitigating the migration push factors through human security improvements. The EU has attempted as much. In the short term Frontex could process irregular migrants with a focus on mitigating the potential terrorist and organised risks associated with irregular migration flows as compared to stopping and detaining them en masse.

Frontex’s border management process is focused on assessing the risk of every border crossing by goods or people. But finite resources are increasingly being stretched to failure by the increasing number of travelers and volumes of goods crossing borders. In contrast the Australian approach is focused on a model that seeks to identify high-risk shipments or travelers. In this model most people and goods pass quickly through the border with limited contact with officials.

Australia’s geography means that it isn’t under the same pressures as Europe. And we are better equipped than most nations to deal with migration pressures. In 2015, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection produced its Strategy 2020 with a clear focus on managing risk as a key border security activity, not transactions.

There are two lessons from the Schengen crisis that are particularly relevant for Australia. One, we need to be especially mindful of social, geopolitical and economic changes that impact on migration flows and border security in order to employ early intervention strategies. And two, Australia’s border security policy professionals must also constantly review their risk assumptions. The recent attacks in Paris and Brussels have shown us that a European passport does not assure a lower level of risk.

France’s next President

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In a little more than a year, the French will vote to elect their new president. It is, of course, far too early to make any predictions. If ‘one week is a long time in politics,’ as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is reported to have said, then a year is an eternity. And yet, given the high stakes of the outcome for France and Europe, a first assessment should be attempted.

If opinion polls are to be believed, France’s next president will not be François Hollande or Nicolas Sarkozy, the two most recent holders of the office. Hollande is the incumbent, but his performance has been disappointing on nearly all fronts, especially when it comes to tackling unemployment. Sarkozy’s chances are crippled by his unsavory character.

The French president under the Fifth Republic is, in British terms, both monarch and prime minister. He holds symbolic as well as real powers. Sarkozy failed, above all, to incarnate the Republic with dignity; Hollande has failed in the realms of both incarnation and action. To put it bluntly, a man who was simply ‘too much’ was succeeded by one that was just ‘not enough.’ As a result of this tandem, badly needed structural reforms have been left undone or were implemented only when it was too late.

The impact on Europe has been no less disappointing. Not since the end of François Mitterrand’s term in 1995 has there been a French president that is a match for a German chancellor. The resulting disequilibrium—not enough France, and thus too much Germany—has been one of the major political problems facing the European Union.

It is hard not to attribute the divergence in the two countries’ fortunes to the leadership they have experienced. In Germany, the reform-minded Gerhard Schröder was succeeded by the courageous Angela Merkel. In France, by contrast, Jacques Chirac’s globally passive leadership was followed by Sarkozy’s energetic but ultimately disappointing single term in office and Hollande’s irresolute, lackluster leadership.

The majority of French voters believe that next year’s election will be their last chance to regain control of their country’s destiny, rekindle its influence in Europe, and forge a new sense of direction. The disagreement—as in the United States—is over what form the change should take. A dramatic division has emerged between reformists and radicals, between those who want to make deep changes from within the system and those—

on both the extreme right and the extreme left—who want to change the system from the outside.

The political atmosphere is dominated by two major developments. On one hand, Hollande’s Socialist Party seems on the verge of political annihilation, much like the Republican Party in the US. On the other hand, the far-right National Front and its leader, Marine Le Pen, are enjoying a steady rise; polls give the party one-third popular support, the highest in the country, making it very likely that Le Pen will reach the second round of the presidential election.

Fortunately, there seems to be a limit to the National Front’s level of support. Whatever electoral strengths Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the US may have, they will almost surely fail in their quests for their countries’ highest offices. Populism may be on the rise, and elites may be deeply unpopular. But unless something terrible happens—such as a series of spectacular terrorist attacks—sanity will prevail on both sides of the Atlantic.

So what does sanity look like in today’s France? Aside from Le Pen, the two most popular figures on the right and the left are, respectively, the oldest and youngest potential candidates: Alain Juppé, who served as Prime Minister under Chirac, and Emmanuel Macron, Hollande’s Minister of Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs.

Juppé’s ratings in opinion polls have been remarkably steady, and Macron’s have been surprisingly high. It is easy to conclude that a significant majority of French voters would welcome a ticket with both of them on it—the wise, experienced man with gravitas as President and his much younger colleague as Prime Minister. Indeed, the pair would constitute a formidable cross-generational, cross-party team that might finally be able to implement much-needed reforms.

To be sure, a German-style grand coalition would not be in line with how politics is usually practiced in France, which is accustomed to a rigid left-right divide. Moreover, both men have rejected the idea of joining forces. But in politics, anything is possible.

Macron’s youth is a weakness, and he lacks the support of a party machine. Popularity is not the same thing as real political support, especially if your ambition is to rock the boat.

Juppé’s liabilities are very different. He is more adept at exercising power than he is at obtaining it. His natural shyness makes him seem distant, not unlike Hillary Clinton in the US. But he also has a unique advantage. Given his age—he will be 72 next year—he intends to run for one mandate only and does not have to think about his reelection. France may have already found its next president.

A British bridge for a divided Europe

Image courtesy of Flickr user Oliver O'Neill

The European Union has never been very popular in Britain. It joined late, and its voters will be asked on 23 June whether they want to leave early. The referendum’s outcome will not be legally binding on the government; but it is inconceivable that Britain will stay if the public’s verdict is to quit.

Over the years, the focus of the British debate about Europe has shifted. In the 1960s and 1970s, the question was whether Britain could afford not to join what was then the European Economic Community. The fear was that the United Kingdom would be shut out of the world’s fastest-growing market, and that its partnership with the United States would be at risk as well: The Western alliance would consist of two pillars, and Europe, not a shrunken Britain, would be one of them.

Today, it is the enfeeblement, not power, of Europe, that drives the UK debate. The British perceive themselves as doing rather well, whereas Europe is doing badly. Indeed, ever since the 2008 crash, the EU has been identified with failure. Outside Britain and Germany, there has been almost no economic growth. It cannot defend its frontiers against terrorists (‘Europe is not safe,’ proclaims Donald Trump). Its institutions lack legitimacy. Made up of 28 quasi-sovereign members, it cannot act, but only issue intentions to act. No wonder there is a move afoot to reclaim national sovereignty, where some decision-making power still resides.

The EU’s fate has become hopelessly entangled with that of its most vulnerable feature: the 19-member eurozone, the single-currency heartland of economic stagnation. To officials in Brussels, the eurozone is the EU. Only Britain and Denmark have been allowed to opt out. The other members, including Sweden, are expected to join when they meet the criteria. The eurozone was to be the engine of political union. But the engine has stalled.

To be sure, the 2008 crisis started with the banking collapse in the US. But most of the rest of the world has recovered, whereas most of Europe has not. To assess why, a recent symposium on the subject at Nuffield College, Oxford, focused on the lack of a sovereign authority able to protect the European economy as a whole from contagious crises starting elsewhere. The missing bits of sovereignty include a fiscal transfer system to respond to asymmetric shocks; a risk-free asset (eurobonds) in which to park redundant money; a single system for supervising banks and capital markets; a central bank able to act as lender of last resort; and the ability to organize an EU-wide stabilization/recovery program.

The eurozone has weakened the nation-states comprising it, without creating a supranational state to replace the powers its members have lost. Legitimacy thus still resides at a level of political authority that has lost those attributes of sovereignty (such as the ability to alter exchange rates) from which legitimacy derives.

Meanwhile, promises of action continue to flow. The so-called Five Presidents’ Report calls for ‘completing Europe’s economic and monetary union’ as a prelude to ‘political union.’ But is that the right sequence? Historically, political union precedes economic and monetary union. As Otmar Issing, a former ECB chief economist, never tires of pointing out, without a sovereign, the process of transferring competences—including monetary policy—to ever higher levels will create a huge legitimacy deficit.

The EU has tried to achieve political union incrementally, because it was impossible to start with it. Indeed, barely hidden in the ‘European project’ was the expectation that successive crises would push political integration forward. This was certainly Jean Monnet’s hope. The alternative—that the crises would have the opposite effect, leading to the breakup of the economic and monetary union—was never seriously confronted.

Few people in the UK would welcome a rapid move toward a political union, assuming this means filling in the gaps in sovereignty that have crippled the eurozone. Indeed, in the deal that Prime Minister David Cameron negotiated with European heads of government as a condition of remaining in the EU, Britain is specifically exempted from commitment to ‘ever closer political union.’ Yet, without a political union, it is hard to see how the eurozone can be made to work.

The eurozone is therefore likely to break up into more compatible parts, after further failed efforts to muddle through. One can imagine a northern single-currency area, with enough sovereignty (provided by Germany or, more plausibly, by Germany and France acting together) to make it work, linked by free trade to a southern area that is not subject to the northern bloc’s monetary and fiscal rules. Specifically, members of the southern bloc would have fixed, but adjustable, exchange rates with one another and with the northern union.

The southern bloc, however, would lack a member with the weight and prestige to counterbalance Germany. That member could only be Britain. And this is the main argument against pulling out of the EU: By staying in, Britain would be able to ensure that, if and when the eurozone’s breakup comes, the process is not too messy, and will at any rate preserve something of the spirit of the EU’s founders. Britain has much to fear from an acrimonious divorce, as it will inevitably be swept into its turbulent wake.

It has always been part of Britain’s role to act as a bridge between different worlds. It can play this role in the two Europes of the future, but only by not cutting itself off from the one Europe that currently exists.

Putin’s Russia: domestic disarray, foreign triumphs  

That Putinism is in trouble at home isn’t news. Russian economist and former vice chairman of Russia’s Central Bank, Sergei Aleksashenko, estimates that Russia’s GDP fell by 9% in 2015. In a recent poll by the only independent pollster in Russia, 80% of respondents said the economy was in crisis.

What’s not widely appreciated outside Russia is the severity of the crisis, and the degree to which economic sanctions have reinforced the sharp fall in revenue from energy exports. Members of the establishment elite are voicing alarm and calling for a change of course at home and abroad. In a recent trenchant article, economist Yakov Mirkin argued that as Russia’s global power will depend on the health of its economy, its ‘rash’ foreign policies must be moderated to reflect harsh economic reality.

Mirkin supports his case with an index of sombre indicators. In 2015 Russia’s industrial production fell by 4–5%; retail trade by 8%; and foreign trade, affected by sanctions, by 35–40%. Real wages fell by 10%. The ruble exchange rate halved. Infrastructure is aging but not being replaced: 80% of machine tools and 50% of all industrial machinery are more than 20 years old. As domestic production of metal-cutting tools meets only 10% of demand, 90% must be imported, but imports fell by 50% last year as a result of sanctions.

Mirkin argues that the economy is being re-militarised. Officially the Russian military consumes 4.5% of GDP, and Sergei Aleksashenko asserts that ‘Russia is compelled to spend more than 20% of its budget on maintaining and re-equipping its army.’ If expenditure on ‘security’—defined in broad terms in Russia—were included, the figure would be closer to 30%, possibly more.

In a piece for Russia’s most respected newspaper, Dmitry Trenin, one of Russia’s most influential commentators on national security and foreign policy, goes further than Mirkin:

‘With its existing economic and political system Russian can ultimately only lose in global competition…Russia must re-format its ruling elite, which mainly serves not the national interest but its own narrowly corporate and personal interests…If the political will for such re-formatting is lacking an acute domestic crisis could cause the collapse not only of the system, but of the country itself.’

This is subversive stuff, and suggests that serious doubts about some of Putin’s policies are spreading in the elite. Putin’s popular standing remains high, but Russian history—and the outburst of protest against him in 2011–12—shows that unrest in the elite is cause for disquiet.

But if the picture at home is darkening, things abroad are going swimmingly. Putin’s Syrian gambit, the refugee stampede engulfing Europe (which Russia’s bombing campaign is fueling) and the terrorist attacks in Paris have transformed the geopolitical landscape.

At the recent Security Conference in Munich Russian officials noted jubilantly that within the EU support for economic sanctions is unravelling. Germany’s vice-chancellor Gabriel and France’s president Hollande are leading the charge, which includes the EU’s foreign policy chief Mogherini and the European Commission president Juncker. Russian Prime Minister Medvedev even thanked Hollande publicly for his ‘balanced and constructive views’. A member of the Russian delegation claimed that ‘in the West the crisis in Ukraine is no longer seen as evidence that Russia is unreliable.’

No less encouraging for Putin and his cohort, the Russian peace offensive mounted in the West to coincide with their military campaign in Syria is proving just as effective as Russia’s bombing of the Syrian rebels. Indeed, the more ‘assertive’ Moscow’s behavior has been, the more insistent calls in Western capitals for ‘dialogue’, ‘cooperation’ and ‘engagement’ have become.

A recent Lowy Institute report (PDF) argued that Australia should ‘consider a limited and certain re-engagement with Moscow… potentially nudging Russia towards a more balanced and constructive posture in regional affairs.’

Obviously one has to talk to Russia. But a desire to have a positive dialogue fosters the hope that, if so engaged, Russia will mellow and make concessions. That was presumably more or less the rationale for the ‘reset’, Obama’s policy of constructive engagement. It proved short-lived.

Putin’s strategic planners don’t share the assumption that good relations between countries are an end in themselves, and presumably have their own definition of ‘cooperation’. Assuming that Putin’s Russia would concur in being ‘nudged’, it would certainly have demands in return. So what other benefits would Russia see in fostering closer ties with Australia?

Australia is a formal ally of the country which the Russian state media—and senior Russian officials—identify, in xenophobic terms, as Russia’s enemy. And Australia has a formal relationship with NATO, which Putin has said he wants to see abolished. So for engagement with Russia to be genuinely constructive, Russia would have to agree to quarantine both Australia’s membership of ANZUS and its relationship with NATO.

Putin may well be in power till 2024—under the Russian constitution he has the legal right to serve two six-year terms i.e. from 2012 to 2024. That helps to explain why even Henry Kissinger, who enjoys Putin’s favour and has long argued for another détente, sees no prospects of an improvement in US–Russian relations. And, as the recent arms shipment to Fiji demonstrates, for Putin the Indo-Pacific region is another theatre in which to pursue competition with the US and its allies.

Russia’s concept of a ‘new system of indivisible security for the Asia Pacific’ presupposes the dissolution of existing military alliances, including ANZUS. If one believes that ANZUS is obsolete, because Australia faces no foreseeable threats, or that ANZUS itself is a threat because it makes Australia a potential target, then Russian policy in the region—including giving $41.8 million worth of Russian arms to Fiji—can be seen ipso facto as constructive.