Tag Archive for: European Union

Europe for itself

Donald Trump is the first US president to think that the US-led world order is undermining US interests. Though the current order obviously benefits the United States, Trump is convinced that it benefits China even more. Fearing China’s ascendance as another pole of global power, Trump has launched a project of creative destruction to demolish the old order and establish a new one that is more favourable for the US.

Trump wants to pursue this objective by engaging with countries bilaterally, thereby always negotiating from a position of strength. He has shown particular disdain for traditional US allies, whom he accuses of free riding, while also standing in the way of his demolition derby. Likewise, Trump cannot stand multilateral organisations that strengthen smaller and weaker countries vis-à-vis the US.

Given his ‘America First’ strategy, Trump has spent his presidency undermining institutions such as the World Trade Organization and abandoning multilateral agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. And because Trump has been able to pick new fights so fast, other countries have struggled to keep up, let alone form effective alliances against him.

In recent weeks, Trump has set his sights squarely on the European Union. As Ivan Krastev of the Institute for Human Sciences observed, the EU now faces the possibility of becoming ‘the guardian of a status quo that has ceased to exist’. As a committed Atlanticist and multilateralist, it pains me to admit that he is right. The time has come for Europe to redefine its interests, and to develop a new strategy for defending them.

First and foremost, Europeans will have to start thinking for themselves, rather than deferring to the US foreign policy establishment. The EU clearly has an interest in preserving the rules-based order that Trump hopes to tear down, and its interests with respect to the Middle East—particularly Turkey—and even Russia have increasingly diverged from those of the US. Europeans should of course try to work with the US whenever possible; but not if it means subordinating their own interests.

Europeans must also start investing in military and economic autonomy—not to break away from the US, but to hedge against America’s abandonment of its commitments. Fortunately, there is already a healthy debate in European capitals about increasing national defence spending to 2% of GDP; and both the EU Permanent Structured Cooperation framework and French President Emmanuel Macron’s new European Intervention Initiative (EI2) represent steps in the right direction. The question now is whether France’s Force de Frappe (military and nuclear strike force) can be extended to provide a credible deterrent for the rest of the EU.

On the economic front, Europe is facing a dilemma as it weighs its values against its business interests. Former Belgian foreign minister Mark Eyskens once described Europe as ‘an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm’. But Europe is now in danger of becoming an economic dwarf, too. The fact that the US can threaten secondary sanctions on European companies for doing business with Iran is deeply worrying. Though the EU is standing up for international law, it remains captive to the tyranny of the dollar system.

Looking ahead, the EU needs to gain more leverage for dealing with other great powers such as China and the US. If Trump wants to make the transatlantic relationship more transactional, then the EU needs to be ready to trade across different policy areas to make deals. Consider the US Department of Defense’s recent request that the United Kingdom send more troops to Afghanistan. If the EU were taking a muscular approach, it would deny any reinforcements until the US drops its threats of secondary sanctions on European companies.

Moreover, Europe needs to develop a strategy for political outreach to others. The G7 is supposed to be the cockpit of the West, but at its recent summit in Quebec, it seemed to be short-circuiting. So shocking was Trump’s behaviour that some senior European officials now wonder if US allies should form an independent middle-power alliance, lest they be crushed between the rocks of a rising China and a declining America. In an increasingly deal-based world, a new G6 might offer a defence of the rules-based system.

Still, one wonders if the EU is capable of putting up a united front. With the bloc splintering into distinct political tribes, it is becoming easier for other powers to pursue a divide-and-conquer strategy. This has long been Russia’s approach, and it is now being adopted by China and the US, too. For example, in 2016, southern and eastern EU member states that rely on Chinese investment managed to water down a joint EU statement on China’s territorial encroachments in the South China Sea.

Similarly, Trump routinely reaches out to eastern and southern EU member states in order to sow divisions within the bloc. US Department of State officials reportedly made it clear to Romania that the US would not press it on rule-of-law violations if it breaks ranks with the EU and moves its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. With US–EU relations already fraught, the Trump administration will be all the more tempted to engage in such tactics.

It is unclear how the EU should respond. It could impose heavier costs on countries that break ranks on foreign policy, or it could invest more in security so that even countries on the periphery feel as though they have something to lose by undermining EU cohesion. Alternatively, the EU itself could strike a deal with member states, whereby it would go easy on internal political matters in exchange for foreign policy cooperation.

Whatever is decided, the EU urgently needs to chart a new course. Rather than being perpetually surprised and outraged by Trump’s affronts, Europeans must develop their own foreign policy with which to confront his behaviour.

Rewriting Europe’s narrative

When the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union, was established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the narrative that defined it was that economic integration would encourage growth, strengthen democracy and bury the ghosts of Europe’s violent past. In other words, the objective of inoculating Europe from the maladies of nationalism, populism and authoritarianism was written into the DNA of the post–World War II project of European integration.

But the disarray produced by the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and the austerity measures that followed, undermined the EU’s foundational promises and paved the way for the return of toxic ideologies. If European solidarity is to survive its latest challenge, a new narrative is urgently needed.

Populism’s resurgence has no doubt been aided by the anonymity of EU bodies, in contrast to the traditional welfare-providing institutions of the nation-state. For this reason, EU policymakers should embrace more socially responsible initiatives that promote wealth distribution, welfare and workers’ rights.

But, by itself, a better socioeconomic deal for EU citizens will not prevent the European project from fracturing. Communal bonds can withstand economic strain; they dissolve when shared values are trampled and a sense of belonging is lost. Today’s failures have less to do with economic hardship than with the collective inability to create what Winston Churchill once called ‘the European family’ linked by shared ‘patriotism and common citizenship’.

If the United States somehow remains united after the ravages of Donald Trump’s predatory presidency, it will be thanks to the emotional resonance of the so-called American dream and shared allegiance to the promise, enshrined in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, of equal enjoyment of individual liberty. Europeans have no such bond, and creating one will not be easy, especially as regional nationalist movements, like that in Catalonia, push in the other direction.

The EU’s post–Cold War enlargement was meant to cement the bloc’s shared values for future generations. Instead, with populist politicians gaining strength in Central and Eastern Europe, enlargement has become a threat to the bloc itself. Today’s East–West divide has raised a troubling question: are Europe’s common borders based on anything more profound than geography?

Multilateral organisations are always free to change course when changing realities dictate. For example, NATO has tweaked its mandate twice in the last three decades—first at the end of the Cold War, when its founding strategic doctrine became irrelevant, and more recently, to hedge against Russian revisionism.

But the meek response by major European powers to the illiberal trend in Central and Eastern Europe does not constitute a course correction; it embodies, instead, unprincipled pragmatism. Unless the status quo changes, the EU’s easternmost states—particularly Poland, where the idea of ‘Polexit’ has been gaining ground—could withdraw from the EU to form a more autocratic alliance with Eurasia.

Authoritarian populism is not a deviation from the democratic process; it has always been its unavoidable concomitant. Now that the EU seems incapable of stemming its rise among the bloc’s own founding members, maintaining cohesion would require a new pan-European narrative, one that incorporates diverse national histories and political idiosyncrasies.

This means listening to, and conducting a continuous dialogue about, the illiberal policies championed by Poland’s de facto leader, Law and Justice party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. So long as the democratic pendulum is allowed to work, policies can be reversed. Not even Donald Trump is eternal, as French President Emmanuel Macron has remarked.

If the EU’s ‘imagined community’ of a predominantly Roman Catholic collectivity shaped by the history of Charlemagne’s medieval western empire can still accommodate its illiberal Eastern European members, albeit with some difficulty, it can do the same for Muslim-majority Turkey, where a sizeable opposition resiliently pursues a Kemalist, secular vision for the country. Moreover, despite President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s tightened grip on power, which has given European leaders a pretext to suspend Turkey’s accession bid, he continues to advocate EU membership.

Europe’s inability to forge a common narrative has hurt its ‘soft power’ advantage over non-democratic states like China and Russia. Rendered complacent by America’s security guarantees, Europe has been too quick to embrace the fantasy of a ‘post-historical’ world, where conflicts are always resolved peacefully, and where military power is unnecessary.

To be sure, the EU’s greatest strength remains its ability to defend democratic ideals and to project progressive values around the world. And with much of Europe surrounded by illiberal forces, and with the US in retreat from its global responsibilities, the EU has been left alone to defend what remains of the old order.

But to be able to inspire, Europe must also have the ability to intimidate. If the EU could stand up to Russian aggression, for example, the bloc would have more leverage over Eastern European states, especially those with governments that appear happy to gravitate towards Russia’s sphere of influence. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long used history to suit his own political narrative. The EU needs to be equally adept.

Trump tramples Europe

After a week of hosting US President Donald Trump for a variety of visits and summits, Europe’s leaders may be excused for paraphrasing Charles Dickens’s summary of another tumultuous time in their continent’s history: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness’.

On the positive side of the ledger, the NATO alliance survived Trump’s antics last week. But as the Europeans know only too well, this may well be a lull in a bigger transatlantic storm. One thing is clear: wisdom is most certainly not what will decide Trump’s relations with Europe.

Following the disarray at the recent G7 summit in Canada, all European governments steeled themselves for a showdown at the NATO gathering in Brussels last week. And nobody was in any doubt about the main source of contention: Trump’s fury with the failure of many European nations to boost their defence budgets.

The US president has a point. Since NATO agreed three years ago that all its members would boost their defence expenditure to at least 2% of their gross domestic product, only five countries—the US, Britain and the relatively small nations of Estonia, Latvia and Greece—have hit the target. More egregiously still, Germany devotes only 1.2% of its GDP to defence and has no serious plans to lift spending substantially in the coming years—not because it lacks the money (the country is enjoying the highest budget surpluses in decades), but simply because there are no German votes in advocating higher defence spending.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tried hard to avoid a showdown, by pointing out that although the Europeans have a long way to go, they increased their defence spending from US$272 billion a year in 2014 to US$312 billion last year, a trend which Stoltenberg hastened to attribute (inaccurately but with an eye to political expediency) to Trump’s valiant efforts. But the US president refused to take the elegant way out of trouble, and insisted on a public bust-up, dismissing alliance members as ‘delinquent’.

Trump also appeared to be changing the goalposts. According to the original NATO commitment, the deadline for reaching 2% is 2024. But Trump insisted that member states should meet the target ‘immediately’, something that would require all of them to rip up their national budgets.

Trump also invited ridicule with his idea that the target should be doubled to 4% of GDP. Not only is this absurd (no European military could spend such funds efficiently even if they were allocated), but the US itself doesn’t spend that much. This year’s the Pentagon’s budget is around 3.5% of America’s GDP.

European leaders ended up being used as props in Trump’s efforts to portray himself as triumphant. ‘I let them know that I was extremely unhappy with what was happening, and they have substantially upped their commitment’, he claimed at the end of the summit. ‘The additional money that they’re willing to put up has been really amazing’, he added.

Amazing indeed, for there were no new commitments, and no new money. Trump merely presented as an ‘achievement’ increases in defence expenditure that had already been secured, mostly under Barack Obama’s presidency.

The episode may come across as comical, but its implications for Europe are deadly serious. Far from strengthening the case for further defence expenditure, Trump’s back-handed approach only made it more difficult to achieve. German Chancellor Angela Merkel would find it almost impossible to persuade her socialist coalition partners to boost the military budget just because the US president banged the conference table. And an alliance which should have concentrated on charting its future course, defining its value as a deterrence against Russian aggression and, in particular, developing its mobility and deployability capabilities instead wasted an entire summit in vacuous disputes about corporate account ledgers. So, what Trump probably considered a cost-free publicity stunt may end up costing NATO dearly.

Undaunted, Trump also applied his shock-and-awe diplomacy to Britain, his next port of call on his European tour. Yet again, his British hosts tried to avoid any offence or controversy. The president’s schedule was kept deliberately sparse, and he was confined largely to Windsor Castle and a variety of other grand country houses—the sort of places which are easily sealed off from noisy demonstrators or prurient journalists.

Nevertheless, Trump still contrived to give a newspaper interview in which he suggested that Boris Johnson, who recently resigned as foreign secretary and is widely regarded as a key opponent to Prime Minister Theresa May, ‘would make a great prime minister’, a coarse example of political mischief-making.

More importantly, Trump also implied that he disagreed with the British government’s conduct of the ongoing separation negotiations from the European Union. It later transpired that Trump advised May to ‘sue’ the EU, rather than negotiate with it. How, where and on what basis was never explained.

The best that can be said about the president’s trip to Britain is that it was largely devoid of substance, and mercifully short; he spent much of the weekend playing golf on his Scottish properties.

It’s been obvious for some time that the current US president has no understanding of what NATO is for, and no feeling for or interest in the historical framework of his country’s security relations with Europe. But what became clearer after this trip is that his opposition to multinational alliances isn’t driven merely by ignorance. He seems to believe that, far from being force-multipliers, alliances are an encumbrance on the US, and America’s interests are best served by either subjecting them to total US control or breaking them up.

The president’s threat to ‘walk away’ from Europe if his views aren’t accepted and his remarks that he could pull the US out of NATO without congressional approval are bad enough; worse still is his off-the-cuff remark calling the EU a ‘foe’ to his country—an extraordinary statement which upends more than half a century of US policy supporting European integration.

The world will have to get used to Trump the Wrecker, and the Europeans, who have benefited most from established cooperative structures with the US, are the first to be confronted with this new fact. As Dickens aptly put it, ‘it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity’.

ASPI suggests

The world

Mexico voted, and The New Yorker has an in-depth profile of newly elected president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. AMLO, as he’s referred to, has a plateful of work in front of him now, from tackling domestic issues to establishing a working relationship with the man in the north.

While Donald Trump is in the headlines every day, his predecessor Barack Obama is a rare sight, even when former presidents and first ladies weigh in on recent events in the US. New York magazine put together a long overview of what Obama is up to now, and why he abstains from commenting on Trump’s latest doings.

With the NATO summit coming up next week, new CSIS research [PDF] dives into the debate of burden-sharing and whether it should be all about measuring actual troop contributions rather than adding up the $$ spent.

On the use of cyberspace as a battlefield, Steven Feldstein and David Sullivan argue in Just Security that international efforts to protect civilians in conflicts offline can teach vital lessons to help ‘protect human rights, democratic norms, and broader security of civilians online’ in potential future cyberattacks.

Social networks have started fighting on a new front: extremist and terrorism propaganda. The Sydney Morning Herald shows how Dr Erin Marie Saltman, who is responsible for counterterrorism and counterextremism policies at Facebook, attempts to do that. As most radicalisation starts online, it’s an important topic. Vice discusses the circumstances under which neo-Nazis and racists can be deradicalised and rehabilitated. Rehabilitation is also part of this read in the Washington Post about a Chechen woman whose husband was an Islamic State fighter. She was captured in Syria, but Chechen authorities returned her through their repatriation program, saying that it was ‘their duty’ to take back and rehabilitate women and children stranded in Syria or Iraq.

Another kind of battle is being fought in Poland: disputed law reforms came into effect on Tuesday, forcing retirement on Supreme Court judges. The move is causing another stand-off between Warsaw and the EU. The Guardian has the details on the legislation and the concerns of its critics, while the BBC tracks how the court’s president, Małgorzata Gersdorf, defied the law and arrived for work, dedicated to protecting the constitution. The EU Observer and Politico focus on Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s remarks in the European Parliament defending the judicial purges as necessary to fully overcome communism.

And the EU has more to worry about: this Handelsblatt analysis shows how close Germany was to losing its government coalition earlier this week, which could have paralysed European politics for months. With the EU’s full agenda, that’s a worrisome thought.

A group of lecturers from the University of Kent write on citizen preferences on the Irish border issue in The Conversation, and the Financial Times explores the difficulties to come for the UK’s civil service.

Tech geek

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Boeing are developing the Phantom Express space plane, which takes off like a rocket, releases an expendable upper stage with a small satellite, and then lands like the Space Shuttle. The program is aiming for 10 launches in 10 days by 2020. The space plane should drop launch costs to $5 million or less per launch.

China is developing the Long March 9 heavy booster that can deliver up to 140 tons to low-earth orbit. That’s more than NASA’s Space Launch System (130 tons) and challenges SpaceX’s proposed ‘BFR’ (150 tons). The rocket is designed to support China’s ambitions for a manned lunar landing and, interestingly, space-based solar-power satellites.

Google surprisingly withdrew from the Pentagon’s Project Maven, which aims to use AI to analyse massive amounts of imagery and data to better interpret highly dynamic battlefield situations. Google’s rationale for withdrawing is ethical, but former US deputy secretary of defence Robert Work argues that the company is at the same time indirectly assisting China in exploiting military-relevant AI.

The Cipher Brief looks at how Russia is trying to use cyberwarfare to sow division in strategically targeted societies to boost Moscow’s power and influence across the world. But the opportunities presented by cyberwar sit alongside a growing emphasis on nuclear capabilities, with Moscow expanding nuclear forces in Kaliningrad. Russia’s cyber, space and nuclear prowess contrasts with a patchy modernisation record for other forces, as War Is Boring explains.

Multimedia

The Atlantic features a photo series capturing the mission to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach in Thailand.

This DW documentary looks at the dark side of the growing interest in tea. Tea plantation workers in India don’t benefit from increasing profits and fair trade certifications; instead, pesticides and poverty dominate their lives. [28:25]

Al-Jazeera’s The Listening Post shows how coverage of anti-government demonstrations in the Democratic Republic of Congo depends on political ownership of the media outlet. [10:17]

Podcasts

The European Council on Foreign Relations’ ‘Mark Leonard’s World in 30 Minutes’ looks at Libya, the migration streams towards Europe originating from there, and what the future may hold based on recent domestic developments. [29:10]

A new discovery: The Popular Front Podcast focusing on modern warfare. The latest episode is about the Nagorno–Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. [1:03:27]

On the National Security Podcast, Bruce Hoffman and Sidney Jones share their insight and knowledge on jihadism with a special focus on the evolution of ISIS’s caliphate, al-Qaeda’s latest strategies and ISIS in Southeast Asia following the Marawi siege. [32:06]

Events

Canberra, 9 July, 5–8 pm. National Archives of Australia: ‘Constitution Day Speakers’ Forum: Parliament and Citizenship’. Free registration.

Perth, 10 July, 6.30–7.30 pm. UWA Publishing and South Perth Libraries: ‘Living Green: David Ritter “The Coal Truth”’. Info and registration here.

Canberra, 12 July, 12.30–1.30 pm. School of Regulation and Global Governance: ‘Cosmopolitan Pluralism, Authoritarian Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Governance’. More information here.

Germany: a brittle truce

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government haven’t had a good couple of weeks.

After a tortuous, deeply divisive and increasingly acrimonious debate, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU)—conservative coalition partners for almost 70 years—announced on 2 July that they had reached a compromise on how to deal with the flow of asylum seekers wanting to enter Germany.

At one stage, this political dispute looked like it might split the longstanding CDU/CSU partnership and, as a result, topple the grand coalition (GroKo) government between the CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD). Such an outcome would also almost certainly have meant the end of Merkel’s 13-year chancellorship of Germany.

Given the significant disarray within Europe and the parlous state of the transatlantic relationship, Merkel’s fall would have been a serious blow for Germany, the European project and the West.

Merkel had insisted—as she has for years now—that the only genuine solution to the asylum seeker influx was to be found at a Europe-wide level. This also underlined her unwavering opposition to anything that will weaken the EU and its institutions. She believes, wholeheartedly, in more European unity, not less.

Arrayed against her in Germany have been critics from within her own party (the CDU) and from the Bavarian-based CSU, both (but especially the CSU) driven by their alarm at the success of anti-immigrant parties on the far right, led by the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The CSU lives in mortal fear that, unless tough steps are taken to stem the inflow of asylum seekers, it will be outflanked on the right by the AfD and lose its dominant position in Bavarian politics when state elections are held there in October.

The irony is that, in fact, the number of asylum seekers wanting to enter Germany (often across Bavaria’s borders) have fallen dramatically. In the first four months of 2018, asylum seeker numbers entering Germany fell by 20%, although Germany remains the ultimate preferred destination within the EU.

Also hostile to Merkel’s strong push for a European solution have been other EU governments wanting to take a much tougher line on asylum seekers, particularly populist/nationalist governments in Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and now Italy. Hungary has built a border fence; the new Italian government has recently refused entry to asylum seeker vessels crossing the Mediterranean.

Merkel’s view has been that closing borders to asylum seekers in Europe deeply undermines the EU’s free travel arrangements, especially the Schengen accord involving 26 European states which have abolished passport and border controls between them. This, in turn, severely damages a European institution that is one of the main building blocks of greater European unity. She also argues that problems will be exacerbated elsewhere if Germany (and others) block the entry of asylum seekers and return them to the countries where they first entered the European Union—the ‘Dublin rule’, which provides that asylum seekers are processed in their first country of entry.

Merkel thus rejected the ultimatum put to her by the new interior minister, Horst Seehofer from the CSU, that she agree to such a border closure and the automatic return of any asylum seeker already registered as first having entered another EU country. Seehofer indicated that, if she did not agree, he would implement it unilaterally, by decree. If Seehofer had gone ahead with his threat, Merkel would have had no choice but to sack him, most likely precipitating the end of the CDU/CSU alliance, the loss of the GroKo’s Bundestag majority and new elections.

In the end she persuaded Seehofer, her own critics and the CSU to let her first pursue a European solution at the 28–29 June EU summit. After a huge effort—and despite the intransigence of Giuseppe Conte, the new Italian prime minister—the EU leaders reached an agreement.

Back home, Merkel, faced with the threatened resignation of her interior minister, has since had to agree to most of what Seehofer and her party critics have demanded: so-called ‘transit camps’ on the German–Austrian border, stepped-up controls on that border and the return (albeit under administrative agreements yet to be negotiated) to their countries of first entry to the EU of asylum seekers already registered there.

Merkel has bought some time and reduced the tensions between the CDU and the CSU with the 2 July agreement, but there are still some serious challenges ahead. For a start, the SPD is deeply unhappy with the outcome and might not accept it. No SPD, no GroKo. And then countries like Austria—despite their anti-immigrant stance—could well be unhappy if Germany introduces even stricter entry controls on its border, thereby just shifting asylum seeker flows back to Austria (and others).

Negotiating the ‘administrative agreements’ on the return of asylum seekers to EU countries of first entry will also be extremely difficult. And it would be courageous to suggest that CDU/CSU tensions, let loose in the past couple of weeks, have gone away.

Most importantly, however, the Seehofer/CSU challenge itself and the outcome announced on Monday have underlined Angela Merkel’s growing weakness. However, she remains popular with Germans: a recent Emnid poll found that 47% of voters see her as the second-most-trustworthy German politician and her CDU/CSU bloc is still the most popular political grouping on 32%—close to the result it achieved in the 2017 Bundestag election.

A weaker Merkel isn’t good news for Germany, or for a divided Europe, when her leadership is needed more than ever—or for the world. She has had a political near-death experience. Let’s hope that things now settle down.

Germany and Italy: one step forward, four steps back

In the past week we’ve seen two important developments that will materially shape the new (post-Brexit) Europe.

On 4 March the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) announced that about two out of every three of its members had supported, in an internal poll, another ‘grand coalition’ (GroKo) with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). This means that on 14 March, 171 days after the September 2017 elections, Germany will at last have a new government, with Merkel as chancellor.

Also on 4 March, Italian voters delivered what many would see as a typically chaotic result, with one of the most populist, Euroskeptic and anti-establishment of Italy’s parties—comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S)—easily becoming the strongest individual party. But neither M5S nor the other party blocs, including the so-called Centre-Right (Centrodestra) coalition engineered by Silvio Berlusconi, was able to deliver a majority. So Italy, the Eurozone’s third-largest economy, is effectively in a political stalemate.

What are we to make of these major outcomes?

On the face of it, the fact that Merkel is back as chancellor, at the head of a sensible GroKo made up of established parties, is a huge relief, especially after the more than five months that it has taken to achieve this. Europe needs a strong, stable and prosperous Germany to help deal with the many challenges it faces.

But the German outcome is not all good news. For a start, Merkel has emerged damaged from the many months of bruising coalition negotiations; from the unusually open criticism levelled at her from within her party about her approach and style; and for the concessions she has had to make to entice the SPD back on board. So this will almost certainly be her last term as chancellor.

Typically, though, she has set the first steps in the succession in train in an orderly way, through her choice of a new Secretary-General for the CDU (the premier of the state of Saarland, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer) and the renewal of CDU members in her new cabinet. And she is back at work already, highlighting European reform and global issues like Syria.

And anyone who saw the photos of the SPD’s leadership announcing their party’s support for another GroKo with the CDU/CSU will have noticed, as German commentators have, that no one was smiling. This has been a very tough decision for the SPD and a lot of reputations and careers were put on the line in bringing about this outcome.

The SPD is in free-fall: from the party that produced chancellors and governments, it has declined to the point where the latest opinion polls show that it has its lowest support since 1878 (16%). SPD members’ support for the GroKo was more the result of the need, for Germany’s sake, for good and responsible government, not enthusiasm for a GroKo.

These two problems—the succession to Merkel and the deep unhappiness and restiveness of her coalition partner—will certainly shape the next four years in German (and therefore European) politics and in German (and European) approaches to the huge problems Europe is confronting.

And a further problem has been added in the form of Italy. Given the Byzantine nature of Italy’s electoral system, it’s still too early to predict the government that will emerge from the (no doubt) lengthy coalition negotiations ahead. But the facts as we now know them are worrying enough.  M5S currently looks like having about 221 seats in the new Chamber of Deputies, with the Centrodestra coalition holding about 260 seats.

For the sake of completeness it’s worth mentioning that former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Centre-Left coalition (Centrosinistra—including the Italian version of the social democrats, the Democratic Party (PD)) currently has about 112 seats.

An absolute majority is 315 seats, which no one grouping has achieved. Under normal circumstances, Italian President Sergio Mattarella would call on the largest party, M5S, to have a go at forming government. The leader of M5S, Luigi di Maio, has been quick to abandon, publicly, his party’s absolute commitment not to enter into coalition talks with any of the others. M5S wants to govern.

The most likely coalition partner would be the PD. But Renzi, for one, has been urging his party not even to think about it. An M5S coalition with the Centrodestra (or part of it) is also hard to imagine, but you never know. It would scare markets but there are policy similarities between them, on immigration and Europe for example.

And there are also big problems within the Centrodestra, which is made up of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI), the League (which used to be a rightist and anti-immigrant party demanding independence for Italy’s north but has expanded its remit) and the extreme right Brothers of Italy.

There was apparently agreement that whichever of FI or the League won the most seats would supply the prime minister if called upon to form government. The League, under Matteo Salvini, has more seats than FI, but this is something Berlusconi is already dismissing. He’s claiming the prime ministership for his own nominee.

The key point is that Italy seems to be yet another country—and a major one in European and even global terms—captured by populists and nationalists as a result of voters’ extreme disillusionment with existing parties, politicians and policy approaches on issues such as immigration and the future of Europe. It’s no coincidence that M5S won almost all of Italy’s impoverished south.

The government that eventually forms in Rome will make Chancellor Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron’s jobs just that much harder in the years ahead.

Yet another threat to the EU

Yet another election poses problems for the European Union (EU). Whatever the outcome in the Italian poll on 4 March, the eurozone will be weakened, EU unity tested and Russia’s influence in Europe enhanced. The geopolitical position of the US in Europe will suffer.

More than other recent European elections except that of Germany, Italy’s election will be significant because of the size of its population and economy. At 65.5 million, Italy’s population is currently the fourth largest in the EU. In 2016 Italy accounted for 11.3% of EU GDP, or 14.5% if the UK is excluded.

Reform of the EU fiscal compact—a key provision of the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union—is a key Italian election issue. The treaty’s purpose was ‘to strengthen the economic pillar of the economic and monetary union’. The compact provides a set of rules to ‘foster budgetary discipline’ and to achieve greater coordination in the governance of ‘economic policies’ in the euro area.

The compact requires governments to enact legislation ensuring that their budgets are balanced or in surplus. An EU Commission timeframe to meet this requirement is imposed on non-compliant member states. The compact also sets 60% as an acceptable ratio of debt to GDP. Member states are required to ‘put in place a budgetary and economic partnership programme’ if they exceed this ratio. This is Italy’s situation.

Recovery in the Italian economy has been slow and fragile. Italy’s economic growth rate is the lowest in the EU. The IMF forecasts that ‘the gap between Italy and its partners will widen in 2018’. Unemployment in Italy fell to 10.8% in December 2017. But youth unemployment (those aged 15 to 24) remains over 30%. At 58%, Italy’s overall labour participation rate is one of the lowest in the euro area. Italy’s public debt—131% of GDP—is ‘the world’s fourth largest in absolute terms’. The end of quantitative easing in Europe and rising interest rates will probably diminish Italy’s ability to service government debt even further.

Italian politicians need fiscal discipline to be relaxed if they’re to fund their election promises to lower retirement ages, increase pensions and reform taxation. They also argue that regaining sovereign control over monetary and fiscal policy will make debt management and economic stimulus easier. Amid growing Euroscepticism, Italian voters are likely to support these policies.

Partito Democratico (PD) leader Matteo Renzi and anti-EU Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio both support renegotiating the compact. M5S and PD are leading in the polls. The coalition around Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, which includes right-wing parties Lega Nord (LN) and Fratelli d’Italia – Centrodestra Nazionale, opposes the fiscal compact and advocates a dual currency arrangement for Italy. Collectively, the FI coalition is expected to gain the largest number of seats.

As a consequence, any new Italian government is certain to be at serious odds with the plans of Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron for the eurozone. Italian attempts to renegotiate the fiscal compact will clash with Macron’s proposed ‘shoring up the 19-member Eurozone with a finance minister, budget and parliament’.

Russian use of military force in Eastern Europe and the Middle East has been accompanied by a nuanced and low-key strategy of seducing and recruiting like-minded European political parties in the hope that this investment would pay off for Russia in the longer term. This approach has been quite successful and now promises to bear more fruit in Italy.

The Atlantic Council’s November 2017 report, The Kremlin’s Trojan horses, concluded that if either M5S or LN entered government, they’d ‘create obstacles for the country’s participation in NATO missions and for NATO’s use of military bases in the country, thus undermining the Alliance’s cohesion’. In any event, they’d ‘continue to spread the Kremlin’s anti-Western and anti-US strategic narratives among the Italian public’.

M5S favours pulling Italy out of NATO, ending sanctions against Russia and removing all US nuclear weapons from Italian territory. Berlusconi has long had warm relations with Putin and has urged lifting EU sanctions against Russia. He has declared that FI will veto any extension of the sanctions.

Doubts about Italy’s commitment to NATO and the possibility of an EU internecine struggle over Russian sanctions would add yet more divisive issues to those of immigration, the euro and Brexit. Such developments will alarm Eastern European nations on Russia’s border. An Italian veto of renewed sanctions against Russia wouldn’t improve already rocky transatlantic relations with the US.

The EU has demonstrated resilience and adaptability under an avalanche of recent woes. It won’t immediately fall apart because of the Italian election. But Europe almost certainly will be further stressed, and tested, by additional fissiparous economic, strategic and foreign policy challenges. The erosion of European unity and the potential weakening of Europe’s political commitment to the shared set of values and objectives that traditionally have underpinned the transatlantic strategic alliance are already underway.

President Donald Trump’s national security strategy states, ‘A strong and free Europe is of vital importance to the United States.’ The strategy acknowledges that Russia aims to ‘weaken U.S. influence in the world’ and that Russia views NATO and the EU ‘as threats’, a position reemphasised in the US national defense strategy. However, it’s difficult to see what tools a Trump administration that’s aggressively pursuing a blunt and militaristic ‘America First’ foreign policy has at its disposal to counter Russia’s nuanced and patient destabilisation of NATO and the EU.

The EU and the Sahel’s shifting sands

The deaths of US servicemen in Niger and the UN Security Council’s consideration of the regional G5 force have given prominence to the Sahel states—Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Solutions to their deep structural and governance problems are elusive and the general prospects for the region are grim. The strategic implications of the Sahel situation for Europe are momentous.

At the Security Council on 30 October, the EU special representative for the Sahel warned that ‘the security of the Sahel was critical for the entire globe’. The French foreign minister agreed that ‘terrorist groups in the Sahel represented a global threat, which was financed by drug trafficking and human trafficking’. The Italian representative noted that ‘the security threats of terrorism and illegal trafficking had a devastating impact on an already fragile political situation and were a threat to the entire world’.

The US seems to see the Sahel as a European problem. While supportive of the G5 initiative, the US opposed European efforts to bring it under the auspices of the UN and no UN funds were committed. The Security Council resolution just urged the G5 to work cooperatively with the MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali and the French forces on Operation Barkhane.

Current funding pledges for the 5,000-strong force fall well short of the estimated US$400 million required in the first year of operations alone. The bulk of the funds so far committed have come from the EU. The US will also provide US$60 million directly to support the new force.

Sahel is derived from the Arabic for coastal, a figurative reference to the ‘shore’ of the Sahara Desert that runs through these states. The Sahel states cover 5 million square kilometres. The northern portions comprise vast tracts of desert that are largely ungoverned and sparsely populated. Since the early 2000s, extremists, drug smugglers and people traffickers have increasingly taken advantage of this situation to move around freely.

These states are among the poorest and least developed globally. Of the 188 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso were placed at 187, 186 and 185, respectively, with Mali finishing at 175 and Mauritania at 155. Transparency International’s 2016 report highlights corrupt governance in all the Sahel states, but especially in Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad.

The Sahel states’ prospects for economic development and social reform will be adversely affected by population growth. Their combined population is projected to grow from the current 78.5 million to 117 million in 2030 and 198 million by 2050. It is anticipated that climate change will have a highly variable and unpredictable impact on the region, creating yet another obstacle to development.

Apart from sharing contiguity with the Sahara, a French colonial past and some common security challenges, the Sahel states are dissimilar and confront different domestic and external challenges.

Religious diversity is highest in Chad (52% Muslim and 44% Christian) and Burkina Faso (62% Muslim and 30% Christian). Muslims predominate in Mauritania (100%), Mali (95%) and Niger (80%). French and Arabic are commonly spoken across the region, although significant ethnic minorities speak dialects or native African languages. Each state borders with a different collection of more or less unstable neighbours that bring their own distinctive security and law enforcement issues.

These five states sit in the middle of a volatile region. All African countries north of an imaginary line drawn from the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Aden are at ‘high warning’, ‘alert’ or ‘high alert’ on the 2017 Fragile States Index. By 2030, just 12 years away, the population of states above that line will grow from 680 million to 938 million. In that period, the total population of the current EU countries is expected to increase by just 4.3 million.

The disparity between the European and US views of the strategic significance of the Sahel derives from their contrasting short-term national interests. The mounting numbers of sub-Saharan African immigrants arriving through western and central Mediterranean routes to Europe primarily transition through the Sahel states. This accounts for the European agitation and consternation over the Sahel and Europe’s strong support for the G5.

The US remains overwhelmingly focused on violent extremist organisations (VEOs). Africa Command (AFRICOM) provides relatively limited material and planning support to the Sahel states. AFRICOM concentrates on the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya), West Africa/Lake Chad and Somalia and on opposing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram, ISIS–West Africa, and al-Shabaab.

The US’s African priorities are clear. AFRICOM regards the ‘instability in Libya and North Africa’ as ‘the most significant, near-term threat to US and allies’ interests on the continent’. The 2017 Posture Statement states that ‘VEOs not only constitute the most direct security threat to the US emanating from Africa but are also the most dangerous threat to stability in East, North, and West Africa’.

However, population pressures, poor governance, poverty and food insecurity are not short-term problems. The G5 initiative, and French and US military operations, might temporarily curtail illegal immigrant flows to Europe, interrupt drug smugglers and human traffickers, and supress extremist activity. But those are tactical not strategic responses. Competition for resources might well see regional conflicts intensify, and the root causes of sectarian extremism and violence will persist. It’s hard to imagine mass illegal immigration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe doing anything other than growing.

The EU has to assume that Sahel-related problems will get worse. The EU must prepare for this eventuality given the fissiparous effect the migration issue already has among member states. How ‘fragile’ the EU might prove to be in the future with a doubling, tripling or quadrupling of the African migration numbers can only be guessed.

That is a global problem.

Why Catalonia’s independence bid is failing

In the confusing aftermath of Catalonia’s messy independence referendum, the Catalan regional government’s president, Carles Puigdemont, has wanted to have his cake and eat it. His long-awaited speech to the regional parliament, in which he had promised to declare independence from Spain, ended up being a muddled effort to placate his radical nationalist allies, the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), without further alienating the central government in Madrid. He achieved neither objective.

Puigdemont did declare a Catalan state ‘in the form of a republic’. But he immediately ‘suspended’ the declaration to allow for negotiations with the Spanish government. To the Spanish government, Puigdemont’s address was an implicit declaration of independence, and to the impatient CUP, it was a moment of inadmissible betrayal. It is now highly probable that the central government will invoke Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which allows it to take direct control of Catalonia, a step that would undoubtedly provoke more civil unrest throughout the region.

Historically, national independence has usually been achieved through violent, even cataclysmic processes of decolonisation. New states have almost invariably been born in blood, sacrifice and deprivation. In the case of the former Yugoslavia, independent states emerged out of civil war and even genocide. Enslaved nations have also recovered sovereignty through state failure and imperial collapse. Amicable breakups, like that of Czechoslovakia, or of Norway and Sweden, are a historical rarity, however laudable.

Catalonia’s bid for independence, as Puigdemont probably knows, lacks the compelling revolutionary élan that has characterised struggling national movements throughout history. Real, and sometimes imagined, grievances can explain the recent nationalist tide in Catalonia. But the independence project mainly reflects Catalan elites’ extravagant dreams of grandeur and condescension towards the supposedly inferior Spaniards. Those elites should now ask themselves whether their middle-class constituency is capable of enduring blockades, massive capital flight (which is already happening), a collapsing standard of living, and the enmity of both Spain and Europe.

In Iraq, the Kurds base their demand for independence on the claim that the Iraqi state is oppressive and failing. But Catalonia is not an oppressed nation, and Spain is not a failed state. Invoking Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s long dictatorship—now four decades in the past—is a feeble attempt to disguise the separatists’ economic pretensions and overblown sense of cultural superiority.

The West does not support Kurdish independence for the same reason it would not support Catalan independence. Just as Spain is not an occupying power in Catalonia, the West does not regard the countries seeking to prevent Kurdish independence—Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran—as true colonial powers. Conversely, the cause of Palestinian independence is supported worldwide precisely because Israel is perceived as the last Western colonial power in Arab lands.

Such perceptions matter, because what frequently seals the fate of independence movements is the response of third countries. And it is all but unimaginable that any European country would see any political advantage in facilitating Catalonia’s independence, which would alienate a key member of the European Union and boost myriad nationalist movements across the EU and in nearby states.

Catalonia does have a legitimate dispute with the Spanish government over finances and the attributes of autonomy. But while the government in Madrid could have managed the Catalan conflict more wisely by addressing it politically, not just legally, the dispute comes nowhere near the threshold of justifying independence.

The ‘Catalan differential fact’ is a historical reality; and it deserves to be addressed properly. Yet the persistent move towards independence appears to be driven mostly by the excitement and kneejerk responses of some of Catalonia’s leaders. At no point before or since the independence referendum have any of them offered an articulate explanation of why a separate Catalan state is necessary or what it would look like.

Would the Republic of Catalonia have its own armed forces? Would its own national currency replace the euro? How could it possibly persuade Spain and other EU member states not to veto its accession to the bloc? Which countries would risk alienating Spain by recognising an isolated Catalan state?

Invariably, unless nations march virtually united to independence, they don’t get there. Catalonia is now almost evenly divided over the question, in a manner unseen since the Spanish Civil War. Only 43% of Catalonia’s population voted in the referendum, which even Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, a supporter of statehood, has questioned as a foundation for a unilateral declaration of independence. Any vote not cast can legitimately be construed as a protest against the referendum—and a vote for unity with Spain.

Colau is right. To say that the referendum produced a clear winner, and to base a declaration of independence on that vote, is a travesty of common sense and of democratic norms that would tarnish the nascent state as a grossly illegitimate enterprise. Similar deep internal divisions doomed Quebec’s bid for independence—and Scotland’s as well. Even the Confederate leaders at the time of the American Civil War understood that without a unified people fully behind their bid for independence, their slave-owner’s republic was doomed.

A shakeup of Spain’s political and constitutional status quo is long overdue, and the entire country could emerge stronger if the reforms enacted in response to the Catalonia crisis help unleash the energies of one of Europe’s most diverse nations. But this is no time for petty minds and narrow visions. The malignant effects of today’s identity politics should not be allowed to tear Spanish society apart in the way that ideological politics did 80 years ago.

Mr Trump goes to Warsaw

Image courtesy of Pixabay user jackmac34.

On Wednesday evening, US President Donald Trump will arrive in Poland, where he will meet with Central and Eastern European leaders on Thursday at a summit of the Three Seas Initiative. Also on Thursday, before heading to the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump will address the Polish people.

Trump’s decision to visit Warsaw is no accident, and it could have far-reaching consequences for the European Union, and for Poland’s place in it. Polish foreign policy today is torn between two competing visions. One is based on a right-wing fantasy about resurrecting the pre-World War II Intermarium project, which would give Poland an important leadership role in the region. The other, affirmed by the opposition, envisions closer cooperation within the Weimar Triangle (France, Germany, and Poland).

Still, both sides are united in their belief that Poland should have a strong alliance with the United States, and should support Ukrainian independence (though the right does harbor some grievances against Ukraine for various historical transgressions).

The Three Seas Initiative encompasses 12 countries from Estonia to Croatia, in an effort to improve regional energy and communications cooperation. By creating a counterweight to the German–Russian Nord Stream project, which bolsters Russia’s energy monopoly in Europe at the expense of European solidarity, Poland’s initiative also represents the country’s own bid for regional leadership. And, of course, the Three Seas participants constitute NATO’s eastern flank, where the US is deploying forces in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

So, what is the impetus for Trump’s visit? For starters, he and Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński both want to demonstrate that they are beloved leaders with many allies, and not isolated, deeply unpopular figures. It is telling that Trump has postponed indefinitely his initial plan to visit the United Kingdom, where he would have drawn large protests. In Poland, he can expect to be met by cheering crowds.

That, too, is no accident. Kaczyński is providing buses for the PiS’s nearly 300 MPs, who will shuttle in supporters from their various constituencies. Kaczyński clearly sees an opportunity to put on a show for domestic consumption, by using Trump’s visit to demonstrate that Poland is a regional leader, rather than a black sheep.

As for Trump, who still fancies himself more of a businessman than a politician, natural gas provides opportunities for deal making and job creation. But, for Europe, gas is much more than that. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, it’s a political weapon; for Poland, it’s a means of security; and for Germany, it’s all of these.

Germany is regarded by the Trump administration as an economic rival, and by Poland as a potential security threat, owing to its energy alliance with Russia. If the US Congress approves new sanctions prohibiting cooperation with companies involved with Russian energy suppliers, the future of Nord Stream will be called into question. That would undermine German economic interests and create an opportunity for the US to sell gas to Europe.

As it happens, the first delivery of American liquefied natural gas recently arrived at a new gas terminal in Świnoujście. To achieve economic and political autonomy from Russia, and to establish a North–South axis as an alternative to the dominant East–West axis, it is crucial for Poland that such deliveries continue.

A third factor in Trump’s visit is his longstanding disdain for the EU. By visiting Poland before Germany, Trump may be trying to create a split within the EU, similar to when newly admitted member states drew criticism from ‘Old Europe’ for supporting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Still, it would be naive for Poland to trust Trump. The American president is not known for keeping his promises, and he is clearly fascinated with Putin.

Indeed, one final motivation for Trump’s Poland trip is to defuse the ongoing investigations at home of the ties between his election campaign and Russia. By speaking in Poland, which has traditionally been seen as a vocal critic of Russia in the region, Trump may be hoping to remove suspicion. Early indications suggest that his speech in Warsaw will laud Poland’s historical contributions to Europe and the world. And he may endorse the principle of collective defence under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, or announce a large arms deal with Poland, as he did when he visited Saudi Arabia.

Either way, the Polish government will tout Trump’s visit as a great success, and a sign that Poland is ‘rising from its knees’. Never mind that the visit could threaten Poland’s relationships with its closest allies: France and Germany. Moreover, Trump’s visit could even undermine the Three Seas Initiative, given that the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary have no wish to confront such an important economic partner as Germany.

At the same time, it is extremely unlikely that Russian–German cooperation on the Nord Stream project would collapse. The European Commission, once a strong proponent of Poland in its bid for energy independence, has no interest in opposing Germany, and is now at odds with the PiS government on many issues. Poland does not use the euro, and it is currently violating the rule of law and other EU norms, while refusing to participate in the EU’s refugee response.

At this point, the last chance of integrating Poland into a European defence framework may have been lost already. Trump and Kaczyński have prepared quite a show. But fictions can have very real consequences.