Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

If Brexit means Brexit, as we have heard from London for nearly two years, then a hard Brexit means a hard Brexit. And, by extension, a hard Brexit means a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which has been part of the United Kingdom since Irish partition in 1921.

This could mean political and economic disaster for the Republic, which will remain part of the 27-member European Union after the UK’s departure in March. Dublin has flagged the closely interlinked all-Ireland economy, and the North’s fragile peace process, to secure a guarantee—a so-called backstop—that would keep Northern Ireland in closer alignment with the EU than the rest of the UK, unless some other solution is found to keep the border open.

So much for the political aspiration. But what of the reality? Brexiteers determined to cut loose cleanly from the EU and the European customs union insist that trade can continue to flow, and borders will be invisible. Ask for clarification, though, and things get hazy.

(Not so in Spike Milligan’s satirical novel Puckoon, written in 1963 but set four decades previously. With startling prescience of today’s Brexit stand-off, his novel pokes fun at how clueless officials send the border through an Irish village. Because a tiny corner of the pub is now in Northern Ireland, locals gather there to drink because the beer is cheaper. When a local man dies in bed, his body is dragged to a local photographer: he’ll need snaps for a passport if the coffin is to pass from the church, on one side of the border, to the grave waiting on the other side.)

The post-Brexit hard border farce in London has been no surprise to anyone on the divided Irish island. Before the referendum, border concerns got more of an airing in the German newspapers than the British broadsheets. That blind spot confirmed a long-held Irish suspicion that Westminster has never really understood, nor cared about, the tragedy of the Northern Ireland troubles: nearly 3,500 people killed over 30 years.

That Irish resentment spikes further when Brexiteers claim that hard border fears have been thrown down as an artificial roadblock to a clean British getaway. That ignores—through ignorance or apathy—the very real concern that Brexit uncertainties could cause a serious slide in Northern Ireland’s economy, potentially driving young men without jobs or prospects into the arms of waiting splinter terror organizations.

The End of Magical Thinking

Hardliner Brexiteers insist the present, seamless management of the border for things like sales tax, excise, and security can be extended after Brexit. But this regime, developed through EU membership, will come to an end as Britain’s membership does. And even in the case of a new EU-UK free trade agreement, some kind of border controls will still be required to avoid smuggling.

No problem, say the Brexiteers: technology can prevent border queues. With hopes fading for a soft, Scandinavian solution, like that between Sweden and Norway, a less appetizing reality arises on the horizon: the hardest of borders, like that between Poland and Ukraine.

Poland is in the EU, the Ukraine is not—nor is it in the customs union or the EEA free-travel club of which Norway and Switzerland are members. And the border crossing at Dorohusk, 2000 kilometers east of London, is where Brexit magical thinking goes to die.

They use every kind of technology imaginable here to speed up the flow of cargo traffic: e-manifestos; in-road weighing scales; license-plate-reading cameras; automatic cross-checks with Europol databases; even stowaway scanners that can detect both carbon dioxide and heartbeats inside a sealed truck.

And yet, because the border is still hard, cargo-carrying trucks face a 24 hour wait to cross, while new EU security rules means all private cars are now stopped too.
All the technology you can buy, and infrastructure covering 12 hectares or almost 17 soccer pitches, cannot prevent the EU’s hard eastern border from being a depressing bottleneck.

Dorohusk is a memory of how things once were in Europe, and how things could be again if Britain crashes out of the EU and the backstop arrangement falls apart.
A hard border, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is a border that is “strongly controlled and protected … rather than one where people are allowed to pass through easily with few controls”.

No-deal Brexit means no-deal borders of the hard kind: in Northern Ireland, at Dover, and all other key trading points. With clogged ports and hard-border approach roads, Britain’s new chapter as a free-trading colossus may be over before it even begins.

The post Words Don’t Come Easy: “Hard Border” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Source: European Trade Union Institute of Research (ETUI)

Ten years after the onset of the eurocrisis, how does the eurozone look today? It has survived as an entity, and weathered most—if not all—of the crises that cropped up over the last decade. But even as shaky debt holdings and threats of national default recede from the headlines, is the eurozone any more secure financially than it was? Here’s a demand side view of the situation.

Overall, the union has recovered, albeit in fits and starts. GDP growth has bounced back from its 2009 low of -4.34 percent, hitting a high of 2.44 percent in 2017; but within that time period, there have been several worrisome dips, with the eurozone experiencing a fresh recession in 2012 as Europe’s GDP shrank by 0.43 percent. With new worries arising about the stability of several of the member states—especially Italy, where a new populist government has clashed with Brussels over budgetary policy—growth projections for 2018 have been cut to 2.1 percent, a slowdown from the previous year.

But as is often the case when it comes to the European economy, results have varied significantly between member states. Many countries are still treading water: In Greece, for example, GDP growth was only 1.4 percent in 2017, and Italian GDP growth only 1.5 percent. Meanwhile, some of the EU’s newest member states are dramatically outpacing the eurozone as a whole: Latvia, for example, experienced a contraction of 14.4 percent in 2009, but growth of 4.5 percent in 2017; Lithuania’s GDP shrank by 14.8 percent in 2009, but grew 3.8 percent in 2017; and Estonia’s GDP dipped by 14.7 percent in 2009, but grew at 4.9 percent in 2017.

On a per capita basis—and accounting for inflation—many of the member states have hardly experienced growth at all, and some of those who were hit the hardest a decade ago have yet to even recover to pre-crisis levels. In constant 2010-dollar terms, EU-wide GDP per capita has grown from 34,663 in 2008 to 36,593 between 2008 and 2017, an increase of only 5.5 percent over a decade. In Greece and Italy, GDP per capita is still below pre-crisis levels (23,074.40 vs. 29,874.70 and 34,877.80 vs. 37,585.3, respectively), and in Spain GDP per capita has barely shifted at all (32,405.80 vs. 32,303.20). France isn’t doing so well either: French GDP per capita has barely budged since 2008, and stagnant or deteriorating standards of living can easily translate into unstable politics.

A Longer-Term Demand Crisis

Part of the reason is that the broader economic recovery has done little to lift wages in many countries. According to a paper published in March 2018 by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), real wages actually declined in nine countries in the decade following the crisis. In Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Croatia, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Finland, workers still make less than they did in 2009—19.1 percent less in the case of Greece. ETUI lists several factors that have contributed to these drops, the most important being the reforms imposed by creditors in exchange for financial support measures: In many of the hardest hit countries, labor market reforms undermined collective bargaining in the name of competitiveness, rendering it more difficult for employees to push for higher wages as national economies recovered.

The crisis also slowed, and in some cases stopped, the process of economic convergence between countries. In 2000, Greek workers were paid a little over 50 percent of the EU average. That percentage had increased to almost 70 percent in 2008, then dropped to 60 percent in 2012 and had returned to roughly 50 percent by 2017. In Portugal, wages were roughly 50 percent the EU average in 2000, then climbed to 55 percent by 2008 before dropping back to 50 percent in 2012 and remaining there.

One of the problems here is domestic investment spending. The crisis decimated national budgets, and the austerity measures implemented to address it encouraged countries to slash yet further. Ten years on, that trend has yet to reverse. According to the Financial Times, Greece spends about 13 percent less of its GDP on domestic investments than it did in 2007, and Spain about 11 percent less. The only countries to have actually increased domestic spending are Sweden, Austria, Norway, and Germany—some of the countries least affected by the crisis, contributing further to intra-European disparities.

For the euro-skittish, enthusiasm for the European project often hinges on the prosperity European integration is meant to bring; and as the European debt crisis morphs into a longer-term demand crisis, that prosperity could reach fewer and fewer.

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© US Navy/Handout via REUTERS

It was a long and winding road to get there, but in late October 2018, Europe and its allies sent one of the strongest signals yet to the Kremlin since its 2014 annexation of Crimea. More than 50,000 troops, hundreds of aircraft, and dozens of warships converged in Norway for NATO’s Trident Juncture exercise, a clear display of military might and political unity. It was the alliance’s largest live exercise since the end of the Cold War and, alongside the mobilization of 29 NATO countries, the participation of non-members Finland and Sweden highlighted how Moscow’s threatening behavior has driven its non-aligned neighbors closer to the alliance.

But while Trident Juncture was a much-needed showcase by NATO that the alliance is resilient amid the disruptions—both internal and external—of recent years, the aftermath of the exercise, in particular the Kerch Strait incident, points to a troubling new normal in the West’s relationship with Russia: while its actions since 2014 have largely eroded any soft power or goodwill that Moscow had in the West, the Kremlin is willing to pay the price for its bad behavior. That is the heart of the current standoff.

Calculated Risks

Moscow is aware of the fact that it is militarily, technologically, and economically inferior, but it still manages to largely hold its own. This is because the Kremlin has made opportunism a cornerstone of its behavior and compensated for its relative weakness by relying on disinformation, political meddling, and subterfuge. This strategy is based on taking calculated risks on incidents that come with a low cost, but still have the desired impact of signaling Moscow’s displeasure. For instance, Russia conducted missile tests near the Norwegian coast in the middle of Trident Juncture, and both Finland and Norway said Moscow jammed GPS signals on their territory during the exercise. And in bringing about the Kerch Strait incident in late November, where Russia seized three Ukrainian vessels and captured their crews, Moscow was operating on a similar expectation of a passive and muddled response from the West that would give it room to push its goals.

This is troubling for two reasons: it’s a dangerous recipe for miscalculation and misinterpretation that could see a small incident escalate into something bigger, and it’s a new normal for Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue to go after low-hanging fruit and aggressively use new tools to do so. In order to manage this unpredictable situation, the collective West needs to come up with a better strategy. Now that Europe has mostly woken up to Putin’s tactics and NATO has flexed its muscles through Trident Juncture, the West needs to figure out how to make the the new standoff with Russia more manageable.

Not Quite a New Cold War

At the heart of today’s confrontation is Russia’s quest to return to the stature and respect that it lost following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Under Putin, Moscow has been projecting power around the world, deploying troops to Syria and Ukraine, using its formidable cyber capabilities to target adversaries, and searching for new allies in the process. While Moscow’s efforts have not always been successful—and sometimes even backfired—this approach forms the backbone of a strategy designed to reshape the international order around Russia’s own interests.

Russia is not the Soviet Union, but it is still a major power on the global stage and cannot simply be defeated or contained. Moscow still has sufficient power to define the security environment in Europe and has already done so. Moreover, it’s important to note that the Russian elites—not simply Putin—want the country to pursue this ambitious global strategy and have supported their president’s foreign policy adventures despite the economic sting brought by sanctions. In the end, those at the top share the geopolitical vision that is fueling Moscow’s maneuvers.

Russia’s actions in recent years have motivated and mobilized NATO in ways not seen since the Cold War. Defense spending is rising, the alliance is exercising on a larger scale, and NATO has bolstered its eastern border amid growing tensions with Moscow. But underneath these successes lies a more concerning reality. Policy disagreements between the United States and Europe, in fields from arms control and the Paris Climate Accords to the Iranian nuclear deal, are mounting, and the rift in the transatlantic alliance is growing. This is made worse by US President Donald Trump’s own troubling behavior: insulting allied leaders, imposing tariffs, and even labelling the European Union a foe.

The Trump Effect

However, amid these strains, transatlantic ties have proved quite durable. Despite the foreign policy chaos created by Trump, the US still has plenty of allies to call on for support. In contrast, Russia has no such allies to rely on. Beijing and Moscow have moved closer together since the fallout of the Ukraine crisis, but the Sino-Russian relationship is still defined by behind-the-scenes competition and riddled with mistrust. Similarly, while Belarus and Kazakhstan are Moscow’s closest partners, they are deeply suspicious of Russia’s intentions and seek to balance their relationship with ties to the West and China.

Still, the growing tensions within the EU and the US should not be minimized. They highlight that the greatest threats are largely from within. This is concerning for the wider security picture, not only because it provides deeper divisions for Moscow to meddle in and exploit for the information war that it is waging against the West, but because it is blood in the water for the Kremlin. The world order was already in the midst of a shift, but from Moscow’s perspective, Trump has put this process into overdrive. Russia is no doubt expecting this to continue and therefore has little appetite to end the confrontation while it thinks its hand will strengthen over time.

In this atmosphere of a near-total lack of trust, the risks of miscalculation and escalation are very real. Cyberattacks are difficult to attribute and have the potential of taking out infrastructure in major cities or even across entire countries. Meanwhile, much of the architecture used during the Cold War to manage the confrontation between Moscow and the West is set to expire or already gone. The US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, Trump has threatened to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and New START will expire in 2021, unless it is extended for another five years. A new arms race in Europe is not out of the question.

Strengthen NATO And Keep Talking

Against this backdrop, the West needs to shore up its lines and devise a more consistent approach to Russia. A key part of this is finding ways to pressure Russia to comply with the INF and prevent the US from leaving the arms control agreement. Sanctions, which have become the go-to policy response since the current standoff began, also need to be applied more holistically by European members. But most importantly, Western allies need to keep investing in defense and maintaining the integrity of NATO as the guarantor of European security. Trump’s criticisms of the unequal balance within the alliance have been condescending and needlessly combative, but he is not necessarily wrong in calling for stronger defense commitments from many European members.

In addition to strengthening NATO’s position and working to prevent an arms race, Western nations need to agree on a shared approach to engage in various trust-building measures and conflict-prevention mechanisms. Opening military-to-military hotlines could reduce the chances of miscalculation, and putting new energy into the hobbled NATO-Russia Council could also reduce some tensions. Dialogue at the highest levels will also be required. Meetings such as Trump and Putin’s summit in Helsinki or bilateral talks on the sidelines of other international gatherings are unlikely to lead to any kind of formal agreements or major breakthroughs, but can still help lower the possibility for misunderstanding and escalation by clarifying each other’s intentions.

America First, Then What?

The greatest difficulties toward actually being able to limit the potential for escalation will be domestic forces. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a stable hand in international affairs, has entered her twilight years in power, probably stepping down in 2020. French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has dropped, and the United Kingdom is distracted by the Brexit turmoil. In the US, Trump is consumed by Robert Mueller’s investigation, which overshadows and impedes any kind of diplomatic talks with Russia. On top of that, the disruption brought by two years of Trump’s America First foreign policy has already given the impression to European allies that they are witnessing Washington put an end to the American-led world order. A second term for Trump cannot be ruled out, and there’s also no guarantee that any new administration coming into office in 2024 will be able to significantly rebuild the international destruction they would inherit.

This has major implications for the security of Europe. The Kremlin will continue to exploit any opportunities that this chaos will produce, but the Kremlin has low expectations for Trump and is aware that US domestic politics will prevent any kind of serious conversation or policy breakthrough. This in turn fuels Russia’s own domestic forces that drive its behavior abroad. Russian policy-makers have done a good job of navigating a tough economic situation, but the barricades built to limit the fallout from sanctions have slowed economic growth.

Putin is resilient at home but not immune to a serious drop in popularity—something that is already underway. In the past, Putin has boosted falling ratings by provoking an incident abroad. Combined with Moscow’s geopolitical ambitions, this points to a deepening standoff that won’t be going away and will define the security situation in Europe for years to come. The best plan for now is to focus on better managing the current confrontation with Russia, and avoid backing into something even more dangerous.

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© US Marine Corps/Handout via REUTERS

If one is trying to think of events or actors that could shake up the world in the coming year or two, then Russia does not necessarily make it to the top of the list. In a world growing ever more disorderly, Russia suddenly seems a comparatively predictable actor. Its propensity to create chaos does not compete with that of some other regions and phenomena—think, for instance, of the failing state system in the Middle East or of migration from Africa.

In the world where―to use senior Brookings fellow Robert Kagan’s catchy phrase―the jungle is growing back, Russia remains an aging, though experienced “beast” among others that are younger, fitter, and hotter-headed. Aware of its vulnerabilities, it is trying to insulate itself from global threats, to guard its self-identified backyard and maximize its leverage, so as to have a voice on questions it considers essential or existential.

One can say that Russia’s loud rebellion happened in and against yesterday’s world: the world of the post-Cold war liberal Western-led order. This is the normative arrangement that Russia first tried to join. In a second phase, it imitated its form while ignoring its essence, before finally openly rebelling against it in words as well as deeds.

But the fact that Russia’s crimes—the annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbass—took place in yesterday’s world does not make them unimportant or unnecessary to address. For one, this history is now an acute part of Russia’s relationship with the West and cannot simply be ignored. Its repercussions keep manifesting and demanding diplomatic attention―think of the question of maritime traffic in the Azov Sea and Kerch strait. Left unattended, tensions can escalate and spill over into different theaters. If the West hopes to cultivate “the jungle” and ultimately resurrect an adapted version of the rules-based order, then it is important to address past transgressions—Russia’s as well as others.

The West’s Normative Disunity

Western-Russian relations in the four years since 2014 make for a very interesting case study, not least because in the middle of that period the Western approach toward Russia changed fundamentally. In 2014, Europe and America were by and large united in their normative assessment of the situation, and they closely coordinated their policies. Since the start of the Donald Trump presidency, though, not only has coordination grown shakier, but more importantly, European and American policies toward Russia have become based on entirely different philosophical foundations. Whereas Europe is still guided by and trying to defend the principles of the post-Cold War liberal order, America’s Russia policy is now fashioned on a volatile brew of hard-nosed, unsentimental great power calculations, unrelenting domestic political combat, and President Trump’s whims.

That loss of normative unity and coordination has resulted in a fascinating interplay of the European and American approaches to Russia: sometimes their policies have reinforced one another; sometimes they have cancelled one another out, often in paradoxical, non-linear ways. While common wisdom says that in order to influence Russia, the West needs to be bold, united, and apply coordinated pressure, a close examination of the recent developments suggests that on some occasions, uncoordinated pressure may in fact work better.

Sanctions may be the most vivid case in point. While the influence these punitive measures have had on Russia’s economy is usually not disputed (though estimates of its extent may vary), the question of political influence has always been trickier—are the sanctions affecting political decision-making, and how?

At the beginning, they seemed not to have much influence. In the tense days of 2014, the Russian elites, instead of turning against Putin, rallied to the flag. But by 2017, dissenting voices started to speak out. “If we want our economy to grow, and grow smartly, then we need to improve relations with the West, and for that, also Russia has to take steps,” proclaimed the “intra-system liberal” and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin at the Primakov Readings conference in Moscow in June 2017. Many more liberal voices echoed the same line.

Turning to Europe

Paradoxically, what made that change possible was not the impact of coordinated Western sanctions itself, but their combination with the Trump presidency. President Vladimir Putin hates bowing to pressure, and for as long as he viewed the normatively united West as an existential threat, he could not possibly compromise. But the advent of the Trump presidency removed the hard ideological standoff, relaxed the political climate, and allowed pro-Western minds in Russia to speak out without fearing for their political future.

What also helped was the fact that, though he was nominally pro-Moscow, Trump was unable to resolve the Ukraine situation on Russia’s terms—even if he had really wanted to do so. Moscow certainly had some hopes on this account. “In Ukraine, Russia did not clash with the US, but it clashed with the US-led international order,” said Russian analyst Dmitry Suslov in late 2016, describing the Moscow establishment’s hopes that under President Trump’s priorities—America first, order last—a great-power deal between the US and Russia would become possible, and Europe, with its normative agenda, would be sidelined.

Instead, Trump’s Russia policy remained hostage to domestic political infighting, and this prompted Russia to turn to Europe. In September 2017, President Putin suggested deploying UN peacekeepers in the Donbass in a move that many in Moscow interpreted as a nod to Europe. At that point in time, relations with Washington were paralyzed, but Europe seemed to be in the ascendancy: it had not fallen apart after the Brexit vote; instead it had been strengthened by the Macron presidency. “It seems that in the Kremlin, a re-evaluation of Europe is happening,” said a Russian analyst in October 2017. “We need Europe’s help to manage the dangerously unpredictable America, and settlement in the Donbass would be a key to improved relations with the EU.”

A Drop in the Ocean

It is hard to say whether the peacekeeping proposal ever had a true potential to solve the Donbass issue. It might be that positions were too far apart. “Putin views the Donbass as an investment, which he is willing to sell for something tangible,” a Russian analyst told me at the time. But all that the West was willing to offer was a face-saving way out. Any accompanying perks remained either uncertain (such as a better relationship with the EU and/or US) or impossible (such as an agreement over Ukraine’s political future).

Moreover, any settlement for the Donbass would have involved a major diplomatic investment: sketching a way to resolution, with built-in guarantees for Kyiv as well as Moscow, and then steering the process toward conclusion. It could be that neither Europe nor the US had steady enough leadership for that. At least, that seems to have been the conclusion in Moscow: after some months of discussions on whether it should “sell the Donbass” to Trump or Merkel, Moscow has instead withdrawn it from the market.

And the reason for that is also clear: the new US sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections. Today, talk of Donbass peacekeeping has all but died out. Russia knows that in the conditions of the new sanctions, Donbass is not a game-changer. As said by a Kremlin adviser: “A year ago we thought that regulation in the Donbass would be a breakthrough in our relations with the West. Today we see that this would have no effect, be a drop in the ocean, hence pointless.” The US is seen to have moved the goalposts.

The conclusion from the above seems to be that while uncoordinated Western policy toward Russia may have created some openings, the West has so far failed to turn them into a decisive breakthrough. But it is questionable whether things would have been any better had the West stayed normatively united. Rather, one is inclined to assume that, in that case, Russia in President Obama’s words would have continued to be “a bored kid in the back of the classroom”―a contemptuous power happily using its disruptive potential to subvert the world order that it views as not just hostile to its interests, but also generally unviable.

On Virtues of Diversity

The Trump-era divergence between Europe and America has made the world more complicated for Moscow, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Moscow has had to reassess many of its earlier assumptions: it did not expect Europe to stick to sanctions, but Europe did; it expected Ukraine to “collapse,” but Ukraine did not; it expected Hillary Clinton to win the election and become a fiercely anti-Russian president, but she did not; it expected Trump to become a soft pro-Russian president―and that has not happened either. These reality checks should logically lead Moscow to critically question some of its own strategies. For instance, it could ask what it has won and what it has lost by interfering in the US’s (and other countries’) elections. Is the balance sheet really positive?

Or it could question whether its whole strategy in Ukraine—using the Donbass as leverage to control Ukraine’s geopolitical future—is in the end realistic at all. As Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center said, “the Minsk Agreement was a major diplomatic victory by Moscow which could not be cashed in for the simple reason that it was Moscow’s victory to which Kiev could never reconcile itself—and its Western backers were unwilling to make it accept.”

Paradoxically, the Kremlin’s reassessments vis-à-vis the Ukrainian situation would not have been possible under the conditions of the normatively united West. Only the more complex world of a West in dissolution has made this possible. By compromising now, Moscow would not be surrendering to a strong, united antagonist, but rather to the laws of nature—and acting in accordance to a realistic assessment of its own leverage.

Furthermore, the question is not just about Russia. One must not forget that there is also “the jungle,” and the West, in its Russia discussions, should remain aware of it. Not all of us are. In early 2018, the European Council on Foreign Relations organized a Russia discussion in Washington, with the intention of comparing European and American views on Russia and finding out whether there is a transatlantic rift in our approaches. And indeed there was a rift, but it was not transatlantic. Instead, it ran between participants, European as well as American, who said that Russia must to be pressured into accepting the rules-based world order, and others who asked, “What rules-based order? Where do you see it?”

A Future Full of Unknown Unknowns

It is unclear if the world has ever undergone changes as profound and multifaceted as the present ones.Not only is the global power balance changing, but globalization, migration, information technology, and gene technology are upsetting peoples’ long-held understandings of what it means to be a citizen of a country, or even a human being. This means that we are faced with years, if not decades of volatility. It also means that those in the West who want to save the liberal international order need to focus on adapting it to the emerging circumstances. Attempts to cling to the past, to recreate the international system as it existed in the 1990s, will be futile; they could even be downright counterproductive.

The chief reason why there has been no breakthrough with Russia is that Russia will not take Western rules and norms seriously until it realizes that the norms, and the West as a norm-setter, will be there to stay in the new, changed world. Getting to that point will take years, if not decades, and this work needs to start at home. The European Union can best support a rules-based order by ensuring its continuity at home. Likewise, the US―to be a global leader (not to mention the leader), it needs to first cater to its citizens and overcome domestic polarization.

To navigate through this period of chaos and volatility, the West can hardly have a strategy, as strategy implies a somewhat charted landscape, problems that are in most part known, and a notional way through. Our future, however, is full of unknown unknowns. And in such a situation, it is not actually necessarily so bad that Europe and America handle the world—and Russia—in different ways. If strategy is not possible, one relies on instincts—and a normative approach is Europe’s instinct in the same way that hard-nosed great-power calculations are Trump’s instinct, and up to a point America’s. Each approach has its flaws, but in their diversity and heterogeneity they could become a Western strength.

Or to put it another way: A chaotic jungle should be easier to navigate with a seemingly disorderly, motley crew of hobbits, elves, dwarfs, and wizards—as opposed to a uniform army under a single command.

The post Into the Jungle appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool

Let’s begin by looking at the bigger picture: who is in charge of foreign policy in the United States, and is there a development that worries you the most? Donald Trump very much drives American foreign policy. The US president is outside of both the Republican or Democratic party’s foreign policy communities. Europeans and others have tried to find other interlocutors on specific issues, but the big decisions ultimately reflect Donald Trump and his incredibly disruptive world view. What is interesting to me about him is that there has not been a single mistake as significant as the Iraq War or a single development as damaging as the financial crisis. Yet the very fact of Trump’s election and the nature of his presidency have profoundly shaken the ability of the US to play the role that it had over the last seventy-plus years. Other nations and their citizens simply do not have the same confidence in America as they had before.

And with regard to your concerns? What worries me is the absence of a US commitment to the international order. There is no other nation that can replace this void. I would argue that there was always going to be an evolution of that international order, and Barack Obama in many ways helped drive it. But this was supposed to play out over the next 20 or 30 years, as China emerged, as Europe balanced its relationship with the US against its own diverging interests, and as other nations of the Global South came forward. Instead we see these changes now playing out within two or three years. That is potentially very destabilizing. Ultimately, Trump’s abandonment of the international order puts us back into pre-World War I geopolitics.

Meaning that everything is merely a test of strength? Yes. Foreign policy is no longer informed by values. Trade interests are pursued through tariff wars, and strategic interests are pursued through alliances of political convenience rather than alliances based on shared democratic values and long-term interests. The international order can survive four years of Trump, even if it is never going to be quite the same. But eight years of Trump would completely upend everything from US alliances to international institutions. So, I think whether this a four-year aberration or an eight-year change of direction matters a lot. I also worry that a lot of the negative consequences of what Trump is doing around the world are not immediately apparent. In foreign policy and in global economic policy it takes some time for negative consequences to sink in. I worry that the bill for Trump’s actions is going to come due after he leaves office. Or in his second term, if he gets reelected.

Trump has always been hostile to alliances. Yes, indeed. He never felt that the US should essentially “pay” into an international system of rules, agreements, and institutions. That should not surprise people. For decades, he has been consistent in his hostility to alliances and the US-led international order. His only vision as to what replaces that is the US acting belligerently in its own business interests.

Doesn’t every US president have an element of domestic politics that informs his foreign policy? True, but I’ve never seen a president so clearly having domestic politics front and center in his foreign policy decision-making. The movement of the Embassy to Jerusalem, leaving the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), the recklessness with which he pursues these trade wars—I think a lot of this is based on where he sees political interest at home or interest of his political base. That is quite disruptive to US foreign policy because you need to be able to make and keep long-term commitments. If we are shifting like a weather vane based on which constituency is loudest in the current moment, the already difficult task of maintaining consistency in US foreign policy is going to basically become impossible.

Simply being anti-Trump is not a viable option for states or governments. What would you recommend to the European Union: more or less opposition, more cooperation or less—or just patiently waiting for a quick ending of his presidency? Throughout the first two years of the Trump administration, we have basically seen Europeans try all the different approaches available to them. You had Chancellor Angela Merkel essentially writing off Trump from the beginning, you had French President Emmanuel Macron trying the all-out charm offensive, making friends with Trump, you had British Prime Minister Theresa May veer between reaching out to Trump and having to stand up to him when he would insult London and the United Kingdom. All those approaches led to the same result; none of them was any better than the other. And that gets at the point that Trump really does have a world view or orientation, one that I think is hostile to Europe and hostile to alliances.

Having a personal relationship with him or not did not really change that. No. The end-result remained the same: Trump ended up being in direct conflict with each and every one of those leaders and continued his adversarial posture toward Europe. So how do you deal with that? I do think Europe has to figure out the means to an independent foreign policy while also standing up to Trump on certain issues. Not every issue, but those issues that are particularly important. The JCPOA is an interesting example. Can Europe keep the Iranians from taking a provocative step in the nuclear program while also taking a stand against the enforcement of US sanctions, thereby demonstrating that there are issues on which Europe can have a position that differs from a significant geo-strategic US decision?

What are your thoughts about a common European defense force? Contrary to what Trump says, these debates are constructive. Even with a normal US administration, there are going to be certain issues that are of greater interest to Europe than to other NATO member states, and Europe having its own military capacity I think is wise. There is no reason for Europe not to have that capacity if the US military carries out all kinds of missions beyond NATO. I also like the fact that Europe is, in some respects, taking a firmer stance on human rights issues. The Saudi case being the most recent example, but given the absence of an American voice on democracy and human rights in the world, it is actually very important that Europe steps up to that role of being the global spokesperson.

That’s not an easy task for Europe. Of course not, but worthwhile in a world in which China is seeking to press an alternative, authoritarian model. I do not think that Europe should try to break with the United States wholesale. Europe should hold out the possibility that this is a profound aberration in American politics and that there could be a different kind of president in two years. But over time, it is somewhat inevitable that Europe will need at least a slightly more independent set of policies. So now Europe needs to ask itself: what are those issues where we really do differ from Trump. What would it look like if we not so much opposed the US, but formulated European approaches? I recognize that this is difficult, as Europe itself is under a lot of strain, but I still think it is worth doing.

Many commentators say that Trump has only continued what Obama had started. Meaning a new conception of US foreign politics, which no longer sees its role as the world’s policeman, withdraws from the Middle East etc. How do you respond to that? I have heard that a fair amount, particularly in Europe—and I think it is kind of crazy. I do understand the premise though. Obama and Trump made similar criticisms of aspects of US foreign policy: they both criticized open-ended, extensive wars in the Middle East and they both talked about the need for greater burden-sharing, for example the two-percent defense spending goal in NATO. They diagnosed some similar challenges, but their treatments are diametrically opposed. Obama’s answer is yes, the US cannot do all these things alone, and we got over-extended after 9/11 with the Iraq War. So, now we have to channel US influence into new agreements, new global accords, new trade agreements. The world order that Obama sought was manifest most clearly in the Paris climate agreement, the TPP trade agreement, and the Iran Nuclear Deal. He used US influence to build new coalitions to solve new problems.
And Trump? His is the absolute opposite approach. If Obama’s approach was to channel American influence into new modes of international cooperation, Trump’s approach is to withdraw entirely from international agreements, abandon everything—not only Obama’s agreements, but long-standing treaties as well—and turn each foreign policy issue into a bilateral test of strength. I think it is true that they both spoke to a certain frustration with post-9/11 US foreign policy, but the answers they came up with are radically different. I think we underappreciated the extent to which it appeared like we were pivoting away from Europe and toward Asia. In our minds, we only talked about pivoting out of the wars in the Middle East, but I think we sent an unintended message.

What are your thoughts on the role of Chancellor Merkel and her role for the West? Do you think she will be replaced easily, or will things fall apart after she leaves office? Only recently, I was talking to Obama about Merkel. One reason why they got along so well was personal chemistry and history. Yet the important point about her is that she was one of the rare leaders in our time who was willing to do things that were either politically difficult or politically dissident and not advantageous to her, if she felt like a core Western principle was at stake. This was not only the case with the refugee crisis, but also with the eurozone crisis. Even if she did not do as much on Greece as Obama would have wanted at certain times, she did enough, despite encountering resistance domestically and on the European level. We have seen her do this in a number of different circumstances. The Russia sanctions following the Crimean crisis were not an easy step for her to take either, but she wanted to send a clear signal that there need to be consequences for the invasion of the Ukraine. If you look at these decisions on refugees, Russia, the eurozone, and other EU issues, you see her being a leader who understands her role first and foremost as Chancellor of Germany, but also as someone who needs to take difficult stances in defense of issues and principles important to the future of the West.

So, losing that will be difficult? Yes, it will. Equally, the reason many Germans are ready to move on, her very long time in office, is of incredible importance to the West, as it means she has enormous institutional memory. She has seen it all, and a lot of these issues that are in the world today, from migration to European integration to terrorism, have developed during the more than a decade that she has been around. Losing the Western leader with the deepest institutional memory is a significant blow. You will not be able to replace that quickly and you do need a German chancellor, whoever it is, who is at least inclined to see part of their job as defending Europe and European values. That does not mean we need a second Angela Merkel, but I do hope that the next German chancellor is someone committed to being a European leader and shepherding the EU through this difficult moment. I recognize that as Americans who did not manage to do that, we do not get to choose here.

What about other leaders? It’s heartening to have somebody in Macron who, more so than his predecessor François Hollande, sees part of his role in energizing the EU and pushing back on right-wing nationalism. You also have a charismatic leader in Justin Trudeau who can speak on democratic values with more experience on the world stage than he had a few years ago. And you have some other people invested in making the case for liberalism on the world stage. Still, Merkel will leave a big vacuum, which puts even more focus on the outcome of the next US presidential election and Brexit. If she indeed sees out her fourth term and we get what I would hope to be a better result in the next presidential election, she may have helped create a bridge over the Trump years in a way that is interesting. I say that recognizing that America will not get back its credibility overnight, but the timing may prove to be interesting nevertheless.

Do you know whether President Obama and Chancellor Merkel are still in contact and do you have an anecdote from the two of them? Occasionally, they are in contact. He calls her. He reached out to her on her birthday and called her after her election. His constant refrain is to be supportive of her and what she is doing, to offer any help he can, in any way, and just stay in touch. While also respecting that she is currently dealing with Trump and does not really have to have a very high-profile relationship with Barack Obama right now. It has been a quiet, but ongoing relationship.

The interview was conducted by Martin Bialecki.

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© REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, it banned all American and Soviet (and later Russian) land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, and resulted in the destruction of nearly 2,700 missiles.

In 2014, the United States charged that Russia had violated the INF Treaty by testing a ground-launched intermediate-range cruise missile (later identified as the 9M729, also called Iskander), and in 2017, US officials said that Russia had actually deployed the 9M729. Russian officials deny that charge and assert that it’s the US that is not in compliance.

On October 20, 2018, President Trump declared that the United States would withdraw from the treaty, and in early December, US officials announced that, if Russia did not return to full compliance within 60 days, the United States would suspend its obligations under the treaty (which would relieve Russia of observing its commitments as well).

If we take the US accusation to be true—that Russia has been violating the INF Treaty for many years—then it is indeed logical that Washington withdraws from the treaty or suspends its obligations. The US cannot be expected to remain in the treaty forever if Russia does not correct its violation. However, the timing and manner of President Trump’s decision—announced at a campaign rally in the western state of Nevada—amounts to a major blunder.

A Series of Missteps

First, his announcement was immediately divisive among NATO allies. Senior officials in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and other European capitals have expressed regret and even strong criticism. Amazingly, Washington apparently did not consult with allies about the decision before Trump’s announcement. That stands in stark contrast to when the treaty was negotiated and US officials consulted frequently with NATO allies, aware of the agreement’s impact on member states’ security: Russian intermediate-range missiles can strike targets in Europe (and Asia), but they cannot reach the US. While the treaty was global in scope, it focused on enhancing European security. NATO foreign ministers backed the US position at their December 4 meeting, but there is no agreement yet on how NATO should respond.

Second, by the time that Trump made his announcement, the White House had provided little substance publicly to back up its charge that the 9M729 missile violates the treaty. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats provided more detail on November 30, but the Russians continue to deny the charge and assert that the US has overstepped the treaty rules. This looks like it will degenerate into a war of words between Washington and Moscow. US withdrawal from the treaty will also ensure that it gets most of the blame for the treaty’s demise.

Third, once the treaty’s limits are abandoned, the Russian military will no longer have to pretend that it is observing those limits. It will be free to deploy the Iskander as well as other intermediate-range missiles. The US military currently has no land-based counterpart. As a result, an arms race in intermediate-range missiles may begin in Europe, but it will be one-sided: only Russia will be racing.

The United States ends up the loser on all three counts. And European security loses out as well.

A Better Approach

The Trump administration could have taken other measures that would have had a greater chance of changing the Kremlin’s policy. As part of a strategy to bring Russia back into compliance in December 2017, US officials said that the Pentagon would begin research and development on a ground-launched intermediate-range missile. But that was hardly cause for concern in the Kremlin.

Actually fielding a new missile would take a number of years. Moreover, Russian officials likely calculated that NATO would not find consensus to deploy a new US missile in Europe—and they undoubtedly would be right. An intermediate-range missile based in the US would not bother Moscow much, since it could not reach Russia.

What else could Washington have done? The US military could have increased the number of conventionally-armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles deployed in the European region. That could have been done quickly, it would have been compliant with US treaty obligations, and most importantly, it would have caught the attention of the Russian military.

Moreover, Washington could have sought to raise political pressure on Moscow. US officials could have consulted with allies and urged them to crank up the political heat on the Kremlin, including at the highest level: Vladimir Putin would have received an earful from Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron, and other European leaders who want to keep the treaty and don’t like being targeted by new Russian missiles.

True, these steps might not have been enough to persuade Moscow to alter its course, but even if they did not succeed in bringing it back into compliance, Washington would have at least prepared the ground for withdrawal.

An Illusory Asia Bonus

For Trump, the end to the INF treaty means his country can deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles to counter China, which has hundreds of those kinds of missiles.
But the US military has to build the missiles first, and that will take time and cost billions of dollars from the Pentagon’s already severely stressed budget. And it makes little sense to build the missiles if they cannot be deployed within range of Chinese targets. But which Asian ally will agree to have new US missiles based on its territory and within range of China?

It’s doubtful Japan would: Tokyo has shown no enthusiasm for hosting US missiles that could strike China (or Russia), and even if the Japanese central government agreed, local governments could prove problematic.

South Korea would also prove to be a struggle. The decision to host a US missile defense system there in 2017 triggered huge domestic controversy; the prospect of a US surface-to-surface missile threatening China would be highly problematic, to say the least.

With no ally near to China that is ready to put out the welcome mat for new US missiles, the fallback option will be Guam, a small American territory already stuffed with US military hardware. This, however, means there will be no early solution to the hosting issue. The fastest way the US could develop a ground-based intermediate-range missile would be to take Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles and modify them to be deployed on land-based launchers. But Guam lies 3,000 kilometers from the Chinese coast, and the Tomahawk has a range of just 2,500 kilometers.

It is problems like this—where to put a ground-launched intermediate-range missile—that make the Asian “bonus” of ending the INF Treaty illusory. That is why senior US military leaders have consistently said that they will counter Chinese ground-launched missiles with air- and sea-based weapons.

This Time, It’s Not Gorbachev

Regardless of the challenges, some have posited the theory that a renewed arms race would give the US a significant lever to bring Russia to its knees, economically speaking—that did, after all, work for Reagan.

But while the US economy and defense budget could afford to run an arms race in the 1980s, that may not be so easy today. Washington’s budget deficit is alarmingly high. Trump has already told the Department of Defense that its budget will be slashed next year, and they will have a difficult time finding money to fund existing Pentagon priorities.

Moreover, the Soviet economy in the mid-1980s was a basket case, particularly as the price of oil, a key Soviet export, fell. The Russian economy today can hardly be called robust—stagnant is a more apt description—but it may be better able to sustain an arms race, particularly as Russia today has hot production lines running for new ballistic missile submarines, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and cruise missiles of various kinds.

It’s also important to remember that Reagan dealt with Gorbachev, who recognized that the Soviet Union could not run an arms race and also meet the needs of its people. Trump, on the other hand, must deal with Putin, whose outlook is vastly different. The Russian leader is prepared, if necessary, to engage in an arms race. He appears to believe that stockpiling nuclear weapons is a good thing, and seems more than willing to sacrifice the Russian people’s well-being if necessary.

An arms race is a recipe for more nuclear weapons. That would make no contribution to European or global security, and it would make for poorer economies.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

The mayoral election in Warsaw on October 21, 2018, was really between two candidates: Rafał Trzaskowski and PiS’s candidate Patryk Jaki, a bold 33-year-old deputy minister of justice. Despite Jaki’s energetic campaign, Trzaskowski won with over 56 percent of the vote, compared to Jaki’s 28 percent. That Warsaw chose the more liberal candidate is itself not surprising. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the city’s mayor since 2006 who decided not to run for a fourth term, was also a member of the liberal Civic Platform (PO) party. Yet the scope of Trzaskowski’s victory was unexpected; earlier, polls had suggested that he would need a second round two weeks later to beat Jaki.

His victory was greeted as a sign that PiS has reached a limit, at least in urban areas. PiS came first in the country’s sixteen regional assemblies, ahead of the PO-led centrist coalition. Yet it did poorly in the major cities, including Warsaw.

“A certain type was stopped,” Trzaskowski told Berlin Policy Journal in an interview, speaking English (one of his many languages) with an American accent. “People thought that PiS is indestructible, so this gave people a sense of empowerment, a sense that their vote counts. There was an incredible mobilization.”

Indeed, the voter turnout in Warsaw was almost 67 percent, compared to 47 percent in the previous local elections in 2014, and 54.8 percent of voters in Poland overall. That means that 250,000 more people voted this time. This record turnout reflects the sharp polarization between PiS and PO and the high stakes in Warsaw, both practical and symbolic. After the president, the post is the most high-profile directly elected post in Poland. Indeed, Lech Kaczyński—the late twin brother of PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński—served as mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005 before being elected president of Poland.

A Warsaw native, Trzaskowski grew up in an intellectual household in the city’s Old Town. His father, Andrzej Trzaskowski, was a jazz composer, and his great-grandfather Bronisław a 19th century linguist. The young Trzaskowski studied English and International Relations at Warsaw University. After a Masters at the College of Europe’s branch in Natolin, Warsaw, he worked as a lecturer and wrote his PhD on the European Union. In the run-up to Poland’s EU accession in 2004, he was an adviser to the secretary of the European Integration Committee’s Office and then to PO’s delegation to the European Parliament.

High Achiever

His political debut came in 2009, when he was elected as an MEP. He stepped down in 2013 to become a minister in Tusk’s government, responsible for administration and digitization. When Tusk left for Brussels in 2014, Trzaskowski became deputy foreign minister for European affairs. But one year later, PiS won the parliamentary elections, forcing Trzaskowski and PO into opposition. While PiS busied itself overhauling the Polish public media and judiciary, Trzaskowski found that he could now do relatively little as an MP.

“My decision to run for mayor of Warsaw was simple. I was in parliament for three years. It was incredibly frustrating, with the government just disregarding the opposition,” he says. “I am in politics because I want to change the reality. I’m not there just to wander around the corridors or be on TV. So, I decided that if you want to change reality, you’ve got to be where the fight is.”

As mayor, Trzaskowski plans to focus on twelve areas, from free nurseries for all children in the Polish capital to fighting smog via better public transport and more greenery. “My program is about quality of life in Warsaw, focusing on the disabled, senior citizens, education, and sustainable growth. There is so much to be achieved,” he says.

For Trzaskowski, this represents a shift away from Gronkiewicz-Waltz’s emphasis on large infrastructure projects, toward smaller tweaks that make the city more liveable and inclusive. In 2019, Warsaw will have a budget of over 18 billion złoty (€4.2 billion), including a record 4.4 billion for education―though Trzaskowski is hoping for EU funds to help expand the city’s metro network. He also plans to appoint a representative for women’s affairs and to work with the local LGBT community.

“Islands of Freedom”

“With PiS governing Poland, there are these islands of freedom that you can develop against the prevailing trend,” he adds, referring to how urban voters have pushed back against PiS’s social conservatism and disregard for judicial independence.

As an expert on EU politics in both theory and practice, Trzaskowski is critical of how the Polish government has handled its dispute with the European Commission over its reform of the Supreme Court, which officials in Brussels warn undermines the rule of law.

“The problem with them is that they are so unprofessional. They are losing battle after battle because there is no sense of ownership. The prime minister is not the one making the final decision, it’s Kaczyński,” he explains, referring to PiS’s chairman, who is considered Poland’s real leader. “If you want to be effective in the EU, sometimes you have to build coalitions, propose things, cooperate with others. They still think in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.”

Although PiS figures, including Kaczyński, say they oppose a “Polexit,” Trzaskowski warns that the government’s behavior will marginalize Poland in the EU. “They do not understand that unless you build a community together, sooner or later you will be out of it, either formally or in reality,” he explains.

Cheer to the Opposition

As Poland gears up for parliamentary elections in late 2019, Trzaskowski’s victory has cheered up the opposition, though PiS continues to lead in country-wide polls. At a PO gathering with journalists at a restaurant in Warsaw in late November, the mood was optimistic. In 2015, winning the presidential election helped PiS win the parliamentary elections that autumn. Similarly, if PO does well in the European elections in May 2019, it could pick up the momentum needed to win the parliamentary elections that autumn, senior party figures suggested. After that, they hope that Tusk will run for president in 2020 and defeat the PiS-allied incumbent, Andrzej Duda. Tusk’s term as president of the European Council ends in late 2019, but he has so far not said whether he plans to return to Polish politics.

Ahead of its next confrontations with PiS, what has PO learned from the Warsaw mayoral elections? “Above all, that it’s very important to work a lot and mobilize,” Trzaskowski replies, referring to the high turnout in Warsaw and more generally. “You must focus on what you really want to achieve and not be distracted by the media or the Twitter bubble.”

Long branded an expert in politics rather than a politician, has Trzaskowski emerged from the Warsaw mayoral race now as the real thing? “I became a politician a long, long time ago, when I found that it is impossible to be an expert in politics,” he shrugs. “Even as an MEP, I found out that you cannot be half-pregnant. If you are a politician, you have to fully be a politician.”

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© REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

As soon as an extremely relieved Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had ascended the conference stage in Hamburg on December 7 and accepted the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), it was obvious what Germany’s right-wing political establishment made of her. Old men, their yearning for simpler times written in little veins across their pink cheeks, were elbowing each other aside to find a TV camera into which they could bluster and denounce the failure of nerve among the great Christian conservatives.
The attack lines were foreshadowed, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), to which the CDU has been bleeding votes, was getting ready for a field day. In fact, AfD Bundestag member Gottfried Curio had already come up with an appropriate gag: “AKK,” he told the chamber just over a week earlier, could only be short for “absolut konstante Katastrophe” (“an absolutely constant catastrophe”).

Not another Angela Merkel! Not another aloof, careful, centrist prevaricating compromiser. Not another woman! By shying away from Friedrich Merz, the political embodiment of the alpha-male DAX boardroom, the party of Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl had missed the chance to carve out a clear new path (or at least re-carve a weed-ridden old path).

But there are more complex interpretations. Those struggling to spot the differences between Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and her predecessor might want to go on YouTube and watch one of AKK’s annual performances as “Cleaning Lady Gretel” in the carnival in Saarland, the state she governed for seven years.

They might find it more painful than funny (the forced mirth of western Germany’s Karneval might be the tradition that forever calcified the country’s comedy reputation). Still, watching the sight of a top conservative in an apron and broom delivering a solid half-hour of slapstick gags might also help one understand why a majority of CDU delegates picked her in Hamburg, and why many may even have thought of her as a more amenable leader than Merkel herself.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Winner

Kramp-Karrenbauer is more “approachable” than the chancellor, according to Eva Quadbeck, journalist and co-author of a rather well-timed biography published in October. “She’s the kind of woman you could have a chat with if you saw her in the supermarket,” she said.

More than this, this Catholic mother-of-three holds all the right values for the CDU: she expressed her opposition to gay marriage in 2015, and is against abolishing the infamous Paragraph 219a from Germany’s criminal code, which forbids advertising abortion. This has already been a source of tension with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the government coalition.

In fact, suggested Olaf Boehnke, political analyst at Rasmussen Global, Merkel and AKK may already have agreed to play out a “good-cop, bad-cop” routine. While Merkel concentrates on her international duties and maintains a relatively liberal course to keep her coalition together, Kramp-Karrenbauer, with no seat either in the cabinet or the Bundestag to actually affect government policy, will make all the right conservative noises on domestic issues to keep the party on her side while she awaits her turn.

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s record also suggests she has “more courage to take risks than Merkel,” Quadbeck argued. In 2012, the then newly-appointed Saarland state premier, impatient with infighting in the allied Free Democratic Party (FDP), dissolved her coalition and called an early election, even though polls had the CDU neck-and-neck with the SPD. “Merkel advised her against this, quite vehemently in fact,” Quadbeck said. “But she did it anyway, and won the election.”

To show the boss that this was no fluke, Kramp-Karrenbauer repeated the trick at the next Saarland election in March 2017, trouncing the SPD with a full 40 percent of the vote, a victory that was credited with bringing the campaign train of SPD chancellor-candidate Martin Schulz to a grinding halt. Merkel once again took note, before securing her own victory over the Social Democrats in September.

What Now?

If AKK can help pull the same results off in next autumn’s state elections in eastern Germany, even the CDU’s old-school traditionalists will surely revere her. The AfD is currently claiming close to a quarter of the electorate in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia. According to Boehnke, that means that Kramp-Karrenbauer will have to prioritize the issues of migration and border controls and look significantly tougher than Merkel.

“She has to shape the profile of the CDU as the one party that is looking for regulation of migration,” said Boehnke. “From a CDU perspective, it’s about limiting the damage of [the refugee influx in] 2015, and trying to win back the supporters who left for the AfD.” For Europe, “that would mean taking all the immigrant quota issues off the agenda.”
“She pretty much backs what Merkel is already doing at a European level,” Boehnke added. “She is definitely a European by passion, but she has to favor the national interest over European interest.”

Kramp-Karrenbauer is already hardening her rhetoric on immigration. She said in November that she would like to see Germany’s rules on dual nationality re-examined—in other words, she would potentially force the grandchildren of immigrants to choose to own one passport only.

Nor is AKK above a bit of the kind of right-wing populism that Merkel has conspicuously avoided: on the campaign trail in November, Kramp-Karrenbauer criticized the fact that some kindergartens had taken to calling traditional children’s St. Martin’s Day processions simply “lantern processions” rather than using the Christian term. “That’s not tolerance, that’s self-diminishment!” she told a local CDU gathering in Berlin, and “no part of her speech got more applause,” DER SPIEGEL reported.

These aren’t necessarily just populist gestures. Indeed, all of Kramp-Karrenbauer’s public statements suggest that, as chancellor, she would steer Germany back onto the pre-Merkel paths that those old CDU conservatives prefer. According to Quadbeck, AKK is “very much in the tradition of Helmut Kohl and his west-orientated world view, while Merkel had adopted a much more multilateral world.”

Ultimately, all this is about securing the future of the CDU, which is currently polling nationally at just under 30 percent. As Boehnke put it: “If Kramp-Karrenbauer can guide the CDU back to 36 percent, she’ll be good to go for the chancellery.”

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Any Western policymaker working in the field of national security over the past decade has had to grapple with the same disheartening reality: the structures and processes that governments created decades ago to analyze threats and coordinate policy responses are ill-equipped to cope with today’s fast changing geostrategic landscape. These days governments must play what international relations scholar Joe Nye calls “three-dimensional chess,” requiring policymakers to address military, economic, and transnational challenges simultaneously. Whether it is Chinese anti-access/area-denial strategies and capabilities in the South China Sea or the Russian use of energy and cyber-attacks as instruments of coercion, asymmetric warfare is presenting unique challenges not only to national security professionals but also to government ministries, which were designed for a different era.

National governments have responded to these changes by developing new strategies, policies, and tools. The homepages of Western foreign offices and ministries of defense are awash in white papers and national security strategies that outline how the world of foreign policy is evolving and why a pan-governmental approach that draws from the respective strengths of multiple government agencies is needed. Less has been done, however, in regards to statecraft. National security professionals know full well that even the best, most innovative strategies and policies will fail if they aren’t accompanied by a process that enables them to be realized. Yet statecraft—the machinery that ensures that national governments can efficiently and effectively execute policy—rarely garners as much attention.

Statecraft often takes a back seat to strategy for a simple reason. Reforming existing national security structures while governing is daunting to say the least. The only real opportunity for change comes at the start of an incoming administration when a new leader has a brief window to reshape how his or her national security team operates.

What’s Wrong With the Current System

With Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent announcement that she is leaving the world of politics by 2021, Germany will soon be granted a rare opportunity to update its aging national security structures. Among the many changes a new chancellor might consider is the question of whether Germany needs a National Security Council (NSC). That’s an idea that German think tanks and policymakers have been debating for decades, with strong views on all sides. But as one high-ranking German official told me, “the fact that we have yet to create one also underscores the substantial obstacles we face in doing so.”

Due to a constitutional mandate that explicitly calls for and protects the autonomy of federal ministers, German foreign policy is almost exclusively left in the hands of the foreign minister and the Auswärtiges Amt, or Foreign Office. However, in today’s complex world where threats lurch between domestic and foreign policies, many across Berlin’s national security community feel that system has become inadequate or insufficient and lacks the agility to craft innovative and swift policy responses across multiple agencies.

The most common critique of the current national security architecture is the lack of coordination. Germany’s 2006 White Paper from the Ministry of Defense already put a heavy emphasis on the need for a networked approach that would allow ministries to share situational awareness and jointly shape policy options. The 2016 White Paper made the same argument, swapping “networked approach” for a “whole-of-government approach.” In an effort to create such an approach, German policymakers have made some important changes in recent years, including the creation of a Crisis Response Center in the Foreign Office. But policy coordination remains an issue.

Critics of the current system also complain about the inefficiency of ad hoc task forces, difficulties in translating lofty rhetoric into policy, the lack of transparency among agencies, the failure to develop grand strategy, and the gaps between strategic and operational goals. The struggle to pair policy decisions with actual resources has also been a recurring theme.

A More Holistic Approach

Such arguments have led at least some experts to conclude that Germany needs a centralized National Security Council inside the Bundeskanzleramt, or Chancellery. At a minimum, the NSC could possess the authority to chair regular meetings among principals (minister level) with the goal of coordinating policy responses across the government. In more ambitious forms, the NSC could house a larger staff of foreign policy advisors, include the appointment of a National Security Advisor, conduct strategic planning and reviews, set broad policy priorities, or play a more operational role more generally.

There are barriers to change, of course: first, the aforementioned legal issues with the constitution leaving the chancellor with little executive control over foreign policy; second, in Germany’s multi-party system, the junior coalition partner is often granted control of the Foreign Office and has every reason not to cede power to the chancellor; third, government ministries are often vying for attention and power, and the idea of creating an NSC bumps up against strategic turf battles. But those hurdles can be assessed and overcome, particularly by drawing lessons from abroad.

Germany isn’t the only country that has spent the last two decades debating the idea of a National Security Council. The United Kingdom and Japan were home to similar debates, eventually reaching the decision to create a National Security Council in 2010 and 2013 respectively. The two governments saw the need for a more holistic approach to policymaking, particularly in the areas of foreign policy, defense, development, energy, and homeland security.

Britain’s Mixed Record

In the UK, the creation of a National Security Council (which meets weekly) was paired with two other developments: a new Secretariat with a staff of roughly 200 people and the appointment of a National Security Advisor (usually a career civil servant). This new post combines the roles of the prime minister’s adviser on foreign policy and intelligence coordinator, among others.

Reviews of the new National Security Council in the UK have been mixed. On the positive side, the external Institute for Government and the Libra Advisory Group concluded that the NSC has improved coordination across the government, strengthened collective decision-making, and enhanced transparency.

On the negative side, however, UK policymakers continue to lament the lack of strategic thinking and worry that the NSC focuses too heavily on operational decisions. But every leader gets the NSC he or she wants. For former Prime Minister David Cameron, it was an NSC that would execute policy. “Of course in the NSC we discuss strategy,” Cameron said, “But I want us to determine policy, I want us to agree action, and I want us to check that we have done what we said we were going to do.” Nevertheless critics point to the NSC’s failure to discuss President Barack Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” or the national security implications of the eurozone crisis as two examples where the UK’s NSC could have played a more constructive role.

Perhaps most interesting for Germany is the feedback from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Like its German counterpart in Berlin, the FCO was initially skeptical of or outright opposed to the idea of creating an NSC for fear of diluting its preeminent role in crafting policy. Surprisingly, though, some policymakers at the FCO now claim that the new process has actually enhanced the role of their ministry. It is the FCO that prepares the briefing memos for NSC meetings and helps set the agenda, and it also gets tasked more than any other agency.

Three Lessons from Japan

Japan’s experience with a National Security Council has been shorter but here, too, one finds some interesting lessons. In 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe worked to pass legislation (similar to America’s National Security Act of 1947) that led to the permanent establishment of a National Security Council. And external and internal assessments of Japan’s NSC have been extraordinarily positive. Japanese officials feel that the National Security Council has provided much-needed centralization and coordination of Japan’s foreign policy. But Japan has three additional lessons that are particularly relevant for Germany.

First, as its strategic culture has evolved, Japan has found it preferable to allow its new National Security Council to handle the country’s most sensitive political issues when it comes to Japan’s role in the world. For example, Abe decided to revise Article 9, the war-renouncing clause in Japan’s constitution and asked the new National Security Advisor to take the lead on this particular issue. Abe believes that the relatively smooth global reaction to this constitutional change was a direct result of the National Security Advisor’s close coordination with his counterparts in many other countries.

Second, like Germany, the Japanese Ministry of Defense used to issue a five-year defense plan that only agitated the all-too-familiar turf battles between the foreign and defense ministries. Once Japan established a National Security Council in 2013, it was able to issue its first National Security Strategy from the top that helped frame defense planning guidance coming out of the Ministry of Defense.

Lastly, the development of an NSC has also led to the centralization of Japan’s intelligence system. Like the United States, Japan created a Director for National Intelligence (DNI), and intelligence officials have been integrated into NSC meetings, regularly providing intelligence briefings at the top. An added benefit of these new arrangements has been stronger US-Japanese intelligence sharing, partly due to the fact that Japan has gotten better at protecting US information.

Washington‘s Need for Reform

As for the US, German policymakers tend to be less interested in America’s experience with its exceedingly large and powerful National Security Council. No German I’ve met could imagine replicating the US model, nor would they want to. That doesn’t mean Germans can’t learn from it, though. Over the past decade, American scholars and practitioners have undertaken a series of in-depth reviews of the NSC. Understanding how the NSC went from a small group of foreign service officers and military officers in the late 1950s to just under 400 people in the Obama administration is instructive. As Americans continue to debate how they might reform this aging structure, Germans may want to tune in.

The biggest lesson from the US is the danger of excess. America’s National Security Advisor and the NSC Directors simply wear too many hats. The legally mandated meetings that the president chairs are now but one small part of the NSC daily rhythm, along with a long list of coordinating and operational tasks. The NSC needs to return power to other agencies and focus on two core missions: managing the process of presidential decision-making on national security and ensuring implementation of those decisions.

The NSC also has too many staff members in too many directorates. Each time a new challenge arises, administrations like to add a new directorate without ever removing any of the former ones. Of course, the United States plays a global role and maintains a global presence, which requires simultaneously tracking multiple continents and issues. But Germany would be wise to follow’s Japan’s example; it only created NSC directorates for its top priority areas.

Despite the weaknesses of America’s NSC, it would be tough to find a former or current policymaker that could imagine eliminating that body altogether. The “DCs” (deputies committees) I attended when I worked in the Vice President’s office were some of the most informative and consequential meetings I attended in government. Yes, I often wished there were fewer meetings, and my colleagues and I often lamented the lack of connective tissue with the budget process. But the level of interagency coordination, especially during a crisis, was critical in shaping US policy responses.

Start Planning Now

Germany is approaching a unique opportunity to change its strategic culture and develop new structures that will help it respond to today’s transformative security environment. Well before a new chancellor arrives in office, Germany should commission a small, outside team of experts to undertake a rigorous review of the experiences of other countries and examine the following questions: are there existing structures in the German government that could be expanded or altered to serve as a National Security Council of sorts? How might Germany make structural changes without adding unnecessary bureaucracy? What kind of constitutional changes would the creation of an NSC body require? Who might lead such an effort in the next administration (a technocrat or senior statesman)? And are there consequences for Germany in not having an NSC, which so many other regional powers have recently created?

The short list of candidates that stand the best chance at becoming the next chancellor of Germany are no doubt already thinking through a variety of new policy ideas. But those good ideas must be matched with good governance. Taking the time now to return to the question of a National Security Council would be a good place to start the conversation about German statecraft.

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© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

On the streets of Paris and cities across France over the holidays, it seemed that the country’s yellow vest movement had lost steam—until another eruption of violent protests on January 5. It is already clear, however, that the protests have left lasting scars on President Emmanuel Macron’s image, at home and abroad. That looks set to have a significant impact the 2019 European elections.

What started as a protest against a planned increase in fuel and diesel taxes—Macron has since cancelled those plans—turned into a revolt against the political elite, the distribution of wealth, and government policy. It was sparked in large part by people in rural areas who need their car to go to work. For them, the additional fuel tax would have made it even harder to make ends meet. They are among a growing group of French people who feel politicians in the capital have forgotten their needs.

Their anger has put Macron in a difficult position, grasping for answers to the most severe crisis he has had to face in office. Stéphane Wahnich, head of the Paris-based survey institute SCP communication, thinks Macron’s ways and style of communication will now have to change, and quickly.

“The French like their president to be a monarch—on condition that he doesn’t look down on them,” he said. “Macron will have to become a more classical president like the center-right Jacques Chirac, smoother and less populist. The times of his controversial comments are finished.”

Wahnich calls this a second term within the presidential term and predicts a reversal of Macron’s policies. “He will be obliged to implement more socially acceptable policies that are in favor of the poor,” he estimated.

A New Playbook

That will be necessary if Macron wants to right the ship. Since the beginning of the crisis in November 2018, the president’s popularity—already low—has plummeted. Only between 20 and 30 percent of the French have a positive opinion of him, according to a survey done by polling institute Ipsos on behalf of the magazine Le Point in late December; that’s compared to around 60 percent at the beginning of his term.

Meanwhile, Macron made significant concessions to the yellow vest protestors in a televised address, cancelling the planned taxes and announcing measures to boost workers’ income. However, right after his speech, more than 50 percent of those polled said they supported the demonstrators. More recent polls are showing that at least 60 percent of the French are still supporting the protesters.

“He waited until two seconds before the crash to take action. The fact that all this violence had to happen for him to respond is very damaging for his image,” said Bruno Cautrès from the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po University in Paris. He believes Macron won’t be able to regain his lost popularity.

The president has indeed come across as patronizing to many. He once told an unemployed person that it was easy to find a job—he just had to cross the street. And he called the French “Gauls who are resistant to change” and “lazy.”

Macron’s recent efforts to change his image and his policies probably won’t be enough to help him score high in European elections scheduled for May. A poll by IFOP on behalf of the newspaper L’Opinion shows that Macron’s party La République En Marche has lost ground since the protests began. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen and her far-right Rassemblement National—formerly known as Front National—and the far-left Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NDA) have climbed in the polls.

“Macron has lost large parts of his aura,” said Philippe Marlière , a professor for French and European Politics at University College London. “He used to be seen as a modern, dynamic president who could reform France while having a balanced approach of left- and right-wing policies. But more and more, people realize that he’s less balanced than they thought and they doubt his ability to bring about change—in France and within the European Union.”

Running Out of Steam?

Macron’s EU reform plans could now indeed become even more difficult to push through. He has been pledging to establish a post for an EU finance minister, a sizable eurozone budget, and a separate eurozone Parliament to oversee economic policy.

But Germany’s Angela Merkel has so far agreed only to a rather small eurozone budget as part of the overall EU budget. And, with Macron’s struggles at home, she may have even more reason to be reluctant. Macron’s main argument had always been that he deserved support for EU reform in exchange for his success in reforming France. That success is now no longer assured. What’s more, Macron’s concessions to the yellow vest protestors are likely to push the French deficit above 3 percent of GDP, the Maastricht fiscal criterion. That sends the wrong signal to European partners, especially Germany.

Looking even further ahead to the next presidential elections in 2022, a rethink seems to be taking place among rival mainstream parties. “Up until now, the center-right Republicans had been on Macron’s side, but over the past few weeks, they have been harshly criticizing him. It looks like they have decided to go it alone and are already gearing up for their own election campaign,“ said political analyst Cautrès. Similar things are happening on the left, although the Socialist Party still needs more clarity on its exact strategy, he added.

Indeed, many analysts in France and Europe seem to largely agree that Macron’s leadership has taken a lasting hit. The president himself, though, seems to believe a relaunch of his presidency is still possible. During his recent announcements, he called the protesters’ anger a “chance” and the current times an “historic moment for the country.” The government has started national debates with protesters, trade unionists, and local politicians in the hope that doing so will help Macron regain his sheen and push through his plans for next year. Indeed, the president confirmed his determination to implement them in his New Year’s speech.

Yet these include reforms to housing benefits, the pension system, and unemployment insurance—benefits that many of the protestors have enjoyed until now. For example, people whose income has increased over the past year could lose state support for their rent. Macron intends to simplify the country’s pension system, aligning private and public pensions but still keeping the retirement age at 62; he also plans to reduce unemployment benefit payments and pension rights for the unemployed.

Those left out of pocket may not support the larger vision behind the reforms, and some are likely to head back to the barricades. The gilets jaunes movement is winding down, but the simmering anger at Macron could erupt again at any time, blocking any efforts to see through his agenda.

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