© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

What do you see as the greatest international political challenge of 2019? It’s not a single issue but a general problem: the world lacks an anchor of stability. Rules are being broken, institutions ignored or maligned. That creates instability and unpredictability, and it’s dangerous. I’m not sure whether we would really be capable of keeping a real crisis in check. On what–and on who–could we rely on in an emergency?

Do you agree that we live in a time of great upheaval? And what is driving this development? Yes, one day people will look back on this time as an epochal watershed. Many foreign policy certainties are all of a sudden in question. That has partly to do with global, strategic power-political shifts, but partly also with domestic political developments in important countries.

In an ever more complex world, should every country reflect on itself, or is more cooperation the future? Do we need new institutions? Efforts to find our salvation in a new nationalism will lead to a dead end. I hope that we don’t have to learn this lesson over again. But unfortunately, at present, the principle of multilateralism is well and truly under pressure. New institutions won’t solve this problem, though. We need to make better use of existing institutions.

Which three issues are a special focus for the 2019 conference? The future of transatlantic relations, the self-assertion of the EU, and the danger of escalating great power rivalries.

Do you have a favorite memory from a Munich Security Conference, a greatest moment? Joe Biden’s 2009 appearance at the first security conference where I was chairman is a special memory for me. Biden gave the first important foreign policy speech of the new Obama administration and generated a feeling of optimism about a reset–not just with Russia but also in the transatlantic relationship. One result of that was the New START treaty.

What have you found especially unpleasant? The increasing tendency of top politicians from the EU to refuse to sit on the same stage as certain colleagues. In the past that only happened when countries had been enemies for decades. That massively upsets me¾and makes me sad.

Which result of a conference were you particularly pleased about? One of the principles of the MSC is that we don’t produce any communiqués. We try to offer the best possible platform for an exchange, thereby creating or keeping open possible courses of political action. That frequently works, but it often takes years before we see the results. The American-Russian disarmament negotiations or the rapprochement between Kosovo and Serbia are good examples. If it all culminates in something years later, it makes me really happy.

When the world is doing badly, it’s good for the MSC, right? The attention over the past few years has certainly increased even further. But we would love to be able to have a conference totally dedicated to long-term challenges rather than dominated by the many crises roiling daily politics.

What’s the one thing an MSC can’t go without? The big names!

What is never allowed to happen there? If we are in danger of stirring up tensions around an issue rather than having a positive influence, then our sense of responsibility demands that we don’t even spark such a debate.

Is there a guest still missing from your “collection”? The Pope! So far, though, we haven’t had a US or Chinese president as a guest. I’m really pleased about the huge interest we get from every part of the world–from Australia to Iceland, from Rwanda to Mongolia.

John McCain will really be missed at the MSC–do you see anyone as a potential successor? John McCain was the best friend the MSC had in the US Congress. He leaves a big gap behind. But Senators Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse have been coming for many years. They will–and I’m very confident about this–continue to bring a strong “co-delegation” to Munich in the coming years, fully in the spirit of John McCain!

This year’s MSC will take place on February 15-17. Berlin Policy Journal and its sister publication Internationale Politik are again the MSC’s media partners.

Click here for an overview of our reporting from the MSC.

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© REUTERS/US Navy/Handout

“It would be wonderful if we had good relationships with Russia so that we don’t have to go through all of the drama,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in July. In principle, many Europeans would agree – but with some important caveats: as desirable as a new joint US-Russian effort at detente may be, it must not come at the expense of NATO allies and other US partners in Europe, including Ukraine and Georgia.

Still, better relations are highly desirable. The conflicts in Ukraine and Syria will only be resolved if Washington and Moscow manage to see eye to eye, at least on the basics. How to make progress on these conflicts will play a role on any future US-Russian agenda.

But there is an additional, less obvious issue that should also have a prominent place on the agenda: conventional and nuclear arms control.

The Euro-Atlantic security architecture, its arms control components included, has been slowly unravelling. During the last few years, serious Euro-Atlantic tensions and mutual mistrust have surged. Risks of miscalculation and military accidents, and thus escalation, have become unacceptably high. From the skies over Syria and northeastern Europe to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, Western and Russian ships and airplanes operate in tight quarters, and there have already been a number of close calls. All it takes for a full-blown crisis to materialize is one wrong push of a button, one airplane shot down. Rhetoric would escalate quickly, exacerbated by poor or non-existent crisis communication, and national security decision-making would be put under enormous pressure. Such a crisis could even make the risk of escalation to the nuclear level – unthinkable, we used to believe – something to reckon with.

In addition to these short-term military risks, important arms control agreements – including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – may be falling apart. After the earlier US decision to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) treaty, and with serious disagreements over missile defense, such trends are extremely worrisome.

The current situation is more dangerous than at any time since the end of the Cold War. This is why there is great urgency to enhance transparency and reduce the risk of accidents and miscalculations. That is what arms control is meant to do. In the 2016 NATO Warsaw summit declaration, NATO members were right to stress that “Allies are determined to preserve, strengthen, and modernize conventional arms control in Europe.”

Steps to Take

So what steps should be taken, considering the current climate?

First, irresponsible nuclear rhetoric needs to be curbed. Bandying about the possibility of deploying nukes is reckless, nothing else.

Second, in addition to renewed political dialogue, it is essential for military-to-military contacts to resume on all levels. This should include exchanges on doctrine and strategy. The NATO-Russia Council, for example, has been reconvened and could offer significant additional opportunities for a far deeper exchange.

Third, immediate steps should be taken to prevent accidents and confrontations involving aircraft or naval vessels. As work by the Nuclear Threat Initiative shows,  requiring all military aircraft to fly with transponders turned on and establishing a distance limitation on US and Russian aircraft and ships in international airspace and waters would make a significant difference. Such steps could also serve as useful confidence and security building measures in the current climate of mutual mistrust.

Fourth, there is an urgent need to strengthen and update existing multilateral agreements. Russia suspended implementation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty in 2007. More recently, questions have arisen regarding the effective application of the Open Skies Treaty and the Vienna Document – regimes that increase transparency in military capabilities and exercises conducted in the Euro-Atlantic space. The Russian government could, for example, send a clear signal by committing to the resolution of compliance issues and engaging in the current modernization process of the Vienna Document – and lowering the notification and observation thresholds for military exercises in particular would go a long way.

Fifth, we should relaunch a broader dialogue on ways to improve arms control, with the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as a key forum. Such a dialogue might include discussions of regional ceilings, minimum distances, new weapons systems (drones, for example) and better verification. We need to make arms control fit for the future.

To promote such ideas, a group of like-minded countries from the Euro-Atlantic area has come together to initiate a structured dialogue on conventional arms control. Hopefully others, including the US, will join.

Missing the Point

Critics or skeptics will find many reasons to disagree with an arms control initiative. Aren’t there far more pressing priorities, they will ask. It would not lead to meaningful results in the current climate, they will argue, and Moscow could not be trusted to honor new agreements anyway as they are violating existing ones. It would wrongly reward bad Russian behavior with offers of renewed cooperation, they will say, and argue that the Russian government would just drag its feet while pretending to cooperate constructively for the sake of influencing Western public opinion.

These arguments are not unreasonable, but they still miss the point. In the Cold War, would we have gotten anywhere on such a basis? It’s important to remember that even during the worst period of the Cold War, political and military leaders from NATO and the Warsaw Pact actively discussed and agreed on proposals to promote security, stability, and arms reductions.

Moreover, reviving the arms control debate would not relieve any party of its responsibilities to honor and implement existing agreements, including Russia.

But the US and Europe should not conclude that this isn’t the right time for new initiatives. Arms control has never been a fair-weather instrument; it has always been at the core of Euro-Atlantic security. Given the current level of uncertainties and risks, it is high time to revive a proven security-building instrument.

The post A Call to Arms Control appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

The Bundeswehr operation is being undertaken in the framework of an alliance against terror, an alliance that is meant to fight and diminish the so-called Islamic State (IS), but not really to end the civil war. Combatting IS, however, should be only one element – albeit an important one – of a comprehensive strategy to end the war and to establish a post-war order in Syria. And the latter must be approached in steps: it is important that Bashar al-Assad will no longer be the head of a future Syrian government. When that is accomplished, a strategy for the reconstruction and stabilization of Syria must be implemented – otherwise any anti-terror strategy will only be tilting at windmills, as Islamic fundamentalism will continue to feed off ongoing conflicts in the region’s several failed states.

The current military activity is not entirely without logic; but unless this anti-terror operation is paired with a regional peace and rehabilitation strategy, it will not pacify the region or contain terror in the medium- or long-term.

That said, rebuilding Syria will cost a great deal of money. Syria is a devastated country. But we don’t have the luxury to decide if we want to take on another nation-building project post-Afghanistan; there is simply no alternative here. Along with the problems created by Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the war in Syria is yet another fundamental, perhaps even historic threat to the European Unionʼs cohesion and existence.

In the first EU security strategy paper released in 2003, it was stressed that the EU should strive to establish a “ring of well-governed states” to the East and to the South. We have such a ring – but only as long as we are talking about current or near-future EU member states. Even there, we have not yet exactly achieved our goal.

The reality is that the vision of the European Union established 12 years ago – a union that would be surrounded by a cordon of stability, growing prosperity, and cooperation, both with the Mediterranean countries in the South and South East and the post-Soviet countries in the East – has broken down completely. Thus the question of Syria must be tied into a broader review of European security planning. It is time to revise the previous strategy, and to ask what went wrong and why.

If the EU wants to claim and show that it has a common foreign policy, it must do more than provide a selective response to a terrorist attack in Paris. This will be the great task of the EU over the coming years – developing a long-term strategy, for which a great deal of resources and engagement will be required aside from funds needed for military engagements.

Because of the relative withdrawal of the United States, there is a certain vacuum in the MENA region that is being filled by Russia and Iran, whose position have grown even stronger. That may lead to new rivalries in the region, rather than greater stability. Since other actors are not in a position to play the role of regional stabilizers, the EU should help establish a security architecture for the Middle East. We are now dealing with problems that touch on our own security interests rendering a comprehensive European strategy – one that encompasses European financial and development resources, along with military cooperation – absolutely necessary. The EU will also have to be able to act (with others) in certain areas to establish a deterrent capacity, and through it to establish stability.

Which elements might such an approach entail? One, though perhaps not the most decisive, is greater concentration of national security competencies at the EU level.

The December 2013 European Council focused on EU security and defense policy; the resulting paper was titled “Defense Matters”. One does not need to read the rest; it contained very few real commitments to undergird this proclamation. The EU has thus far not considered it necessary to actually pursue its objectives in this area, including the development and completion of a common foreign policy. The Lisbon Treaty, which in theory laid the groundwork for this, can serve as the basis for further integration steps – and for strengthening the role and visibility of the pertinent European institutions. This refers to, in particular, the role of the Council President and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

What we have experienced – and not just in the financial and Euro crises, but also in foreign policy disputes with Russia and the various crises in the MENA region – is not a common policy, but intergovernmental approaches. And one only rarely sees any inclination to transfer these jobs to EU bodies.

If Berlin is to take on a leading role – a desire expressed both within and outside Germany – it cannot and should not simply provide a direction for the rest of Europe to follow. There are better ways for Germany to play the role of a leader: the Federal Republic could put its foreign policy weight behind strengthening the visibility, credibility, and capability of the European Union as a whole. It is regrettable that, despite four years of failure in the Middle East and several hundred thousand casualties, it required a decision by the United States and Russia to convene the peace conference in Vienna – why were the EU Council President and the President of the Commission not empowered months ago to invite the concerned parties themselves, in the name of 500 million Europeans?

After all, the population of the entire Russian Federation is not even a third that of the European Union – Russia only remains a great power due to its military capacities in certain limited areas.

Germany should therefore throw its weight and its credibility as a non-nuclear weapons power and its credibility of not being a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council behind an effort to achieve an EU foreign policy that is more than intergovernmental. This could be Germanyʼs great potential contribution to the future of Europe – and German citizens should also recognize that this is one area in which “more Europe” will not simply mean greater budgetary contribution. Quite the opposite: through a more unified European foreign policy, crises can be managed more effectively, even saving money, as the member states could avoid duplicating expenditures in areas like defense and equipment, among many others.

This does not yet mean taking the leap and forming a European army; it makes more sense to keep more feasible steps in mind, such as more comprehensive pooling and sharing and the avoidance of doubling capacities. The budgetary contributions of the 28 EU members amount to almost half of US defense expenditures – but the EU produces only about 10 percent of the United States’ combat power. What a waste of resources, year after year!

Coming back to Syria, the approach adopted by the Vienna Conference is sound: but the EU should play the leading role in this process, instead of a supporting one.

For the EU, regional stability needs to be one of its key goals – including a balancing arrangement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Russia obviously has its own interests in the process. Regarding this last point, criticism should not be aimed at Russia for defining and defending its own interests, but rather at the means it uses to achieve them. The fact that Russia wants to be directly involved in establishing a post-war order in Syria, rather than being locked out like in the cases of Iraq or Libya, is not unacceptable.

This Vienna Process offers a chance to not just lay the groundwork for peace in Syria specifically, but to go further and develop a shared understanding of how the various actors in the region should deal with one another in the future.

In the long term, this region needs something like a Helsinki Process. The Helsinki principles were controversial in Europe, yet it was possible to codify them in 1975. There is of course no guarantee that such rules will always be observed. In Europe, they were openly violated in the recent Ukrainian crisis. Yet rules of conduct are useful, even if they are occasionally bent or broken.

The development of a rule book in the MENA region should be one of our strategic long-term goals. In light of the continuing wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and other countries, that may seem like a pipe dream at the moment; yet this vision should not be ignored or forgotten as the Vienna process is driven forward.

Read more articles in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2016 issue.

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