© REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

First it was Chinese goods flooding the world after leader Deng Xiaoping’s sweeping economic reforms at the end of the 1970s. Now it’s Chinese money targeting acquisitions across the globe. This latest trend has raised serious concerns, as governments fear China is making strategic investments that could affect their economies or even jeopardize national security.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a government watchdog organization, has been particularly vigilant as Chinese direct investment in America reached a record $15.3 billion in 2015, according to the Rhodium Group research service.  In early December, President Obama upheld the committee’s recommendation to effectively stop the sale of German semiconductor supplier Aixtron SE to China’s Grand Chip Investment Fund – a deal totaling $714 million.

It was only the third time in more than 25 years that the White House had blocked a corporate acquisition on national security grounds, and it highlights how complex the debate has become – especially as advanced technology and defense are increasingly linked. The Treasury Department said there was “credible evidence that the foreign interest exercising control might take action that threatens to impair national security.”

China’s overall strategy is quite plain: It homes in on advanced technology companies that can enable Beijing to leapfrog ahead in key industries. According to German Ambassador to China Michael Clauß, Chinese investment in Germany in the first half of this year rose 2000 percent the same period in 2015, and most of that investment landed in the high-tech sector. “It seems … they are trying to close the technological gap through acquisitions,” he told Reuters.

A Perfect Fit

That is evident in the Aixtron case. Beijing has launched a program to build up its own production of semiconductors, and Aixtron would undoubtedly fit neatly into this portfolio.  We could then see a scenario where the People’s Republic (PRC) purchases Western technology in key sectors to expand and modernize its own operations, making it more competitive with the very Western countries where it made the acquisition. Essentially, it’s the high-tech equivalent of the way China adapted foreign expertise in manufacturing at much lower costs and surpassed Western producers.

This approach also dovetails with Xi Jinping’s broader, long-term aim of pulling even with the US on the global stage. Beijing plans to pursue this larger world role on various fronts, from the South China Sea to technology. Industrial modernization is one part of the effort. The Chinese leader wants to see his country become a leading innovator by the end of this decade. “Great scientific and technological capacity is a must for China to be strong and for people’s lives to improve,” he was quoted as saying this summer by the Xinhua news agency.

If implemented successfully, the government’s “Made in China 2025” plan to enhance technology and automation is an obvious challenge to Western economies like Germany, that have until now been global leaders in advanced engineering and machinery.

There are significant reasons to believe that progress will not be as smooth as the planners in China hope; for one, the Communist Party state – which Xi is intent on preserving and strengthening – is by nature ill-equipped to implement the necessary structural reforms, while Xi’s campaign of political and intellectual orthodoxy stands in the way of innovation.

Defense applications are relatively easy for governments to identify, but the wider issue of strategic industrial competition is set to become more acute in the years ahead, especially given the rising tide of complaints from developed nations over the lack of reciprocity in China. Western companies have regularly reported obstacles in expanding their operations on the mainland and working with Chinese enterprises on an equal basis, let alone making acquisitions. Ambassador Clauß reported recently that German companies operating in the People’s Republic were feeling a “considerable rise in protectionism.”

A Safeguard Clause

That prospect seems to be prompting at least some European governments to rethink their strategy. Germany did allow China’s domestic appliance manufacturer Midea to buy into robot maker Kuka, but Berlin has reconsidered its initial approval of the Aixtron purchase; Deputy Economy Minister Matthias Machnig said new, security-related information had come to light. In the summer, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel had called for a safeguard clause that would allow European countries to block foreign takeovers of firms specialized in technology strategic to the EU’s economic success. German EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger wants to see a European foreign trade law to protect companies like Kuka from being bought up by non-EU entities.

Aixtron has a subsidiary in California and employs about one hundred people in the US . The company’s technology can be used to produce diodes, lasers, and solar cells, and it’s used by US defense contractors. The White House statement on the proposed acquisition said, “The national security risk posed by the transaction relates, among other things, to the military applications of the overall technical body of knowledge and experience of Aixtron.”

Aixtron responded that the Obama administration’s order applied only to its American business and did not stop the Chinese group from acquiring its shares. Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing responded by saying, “A normal commercial acquisition deal should be considered using commercial standards and market principles. We don’t want the outside world to overinterpret this commercial activity from a political angle nor to add political interference.”

In the initial phase of China’s development, investment flowed chiefly into the People’s Republic. Foreign companies built up their positions in the world’s largest developing market and played a central role in modernizing everything from consumer goods to industrial machinery, followed by high-speed trains and electronics. But then, the Chinese started shopping overseas. It started with raw materials, logically enough given the country’s shortage of vital industrial inputs. China pushed into Africa, Latin America, and Australia in search of iron ore, copper, and other hard commodities. There were also less successful efforts to purchase large tracts of land to grow food for the country’s 1.4 billion people.

But the shopping list now seems limitless, ranging from real estate to cinema chains, luxury yacht makers, and breakfast cereal and meat processing firms. Annual outward investment has soared to more than $100 billion a year. China’s spending in Europe alone has totaled around €50 billion since 2000, with the largest investment in Britain followed by Germany and France. Chinese investors have bought up everything from Volvo cars to Pirelli Tires and the Club Med resort chain.
Now, some fear that Chinese buyers – backed by the government in Beijing and cheap loans from state banks – will purchase whatever they fancy, with an emphasis on acquiring technology China lacks in key fields.

The Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin (MERICS) and the US research company Rhodium Group released a joint study last year predicting that the People’s Republic would be one of the biggest crossborder investors by the end of this decade, with its offshore assets surging from $6.4 trillion to $20 trillion by 2020. Much of that will be in the form of portfolio investments and accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, but its total global stock of outbound foreign direct investment (FDI) was set to almost triple from $744 billion to up to $2 trillion by the end of the decade, with flows to western countries rising fast, according to the study.

Welcome and Fear

This would be a natural development for a country that started late and still lags far behind developed nations when it comes to the FDI share of GDP. In fact, China’s FDI/GDP ratio is still under ten percent, compared to three times as much for the US and almost four times as much for Germany. Investments in raw materials, meanwhile, will fall: the PRC will always need hard commodities, but the shift toward consumption and services and away from manufacturing growth will reduce that demand.

Intense price competition in many non-state sectors means that overseas investments offer a higher rate of return, particularly in utilities. And some companies and countries have actually welcomed Chinese investment because they need the capital and value the connection to Beijing.

The challenge is inescapable for Western countries struggling to cope with China’s impact. World governments and the EU will have to confront the natural repercussions of China’s growing presence in a world that both welcomes and fears the People’s Republic.

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© REUTERS/Alexsey Druginyn/RIA Novosti/Pool

The Russian parliamentary elections of September 18, 2016, despite wide-spread signs of fraud, clearly showed that the protests that threatened President Vladimir Putin in 2011-12 have completely run out of steam. Once again, the same four parties that secured the Duma back in 2007 and 2011 retained control of the parliament, while Putin’s United Russia party won a constitutional majority of 343 deputies out of 450. Today’s Russian party system resembles that of the former East Germany, which Putin watched collapse as the KGB resident in Dresden.

How did Putin hijack Russian politics so completely, and why are there so few signs of any appetite for change in the country he has governed for 15 years? For one thing, the opposition is not trusted – the very people who are now trying to take on Putin prepared Russia’s political system for his rise. In fact, even though Putin likes to contrast Russia today with the country’s experience in the 1990s and early 2000s, there is  much more continuity between these two periods than change.

Putin was deeply rooted in the political elite that emerged in Russia in the “reformist” years: He began his political career alongside Anatoly Sobchak, a democratically elected St. Petersburg mayor. It was Boris Yeltsin who appointed Putin to serve as the director of the FSB, the KGB’s main successor. There were oligarchs, most importantly Boris Berezovsky, who supported his candidacy as Yeltsin’s successor. His enormous presidential powers today are grounded in the super-presidential constitution drafted in 1993 by Sergey Shakhray and Viktor Sheinis, two outspoken pro-democracy politicians.

But beyond that, there were important economic, political, and social reasons for Putin’s ascent as a “natural” leader of the country, and all of them were laid in the 1990s – and those who occupied senior positions in the bureaucratic hierarchy at the time have no reason to complain about the country’s adoption of Putinism as its basic political and economic doctrine today.

Economic Foundations

Those who connect Putin’s success with the economic history of modern Russia emphasize the importance of the devastation wrought by the early market reforms. The main argument is that by the end of the 1990s Russians had become exhausted with the decline in living standards, rapid inflation, constant devaluation of the ruble, growing unemployment, and surging income inequality. Andrey Illarionov, a respected economist who served for several years as Putin’s economic advisor, blames the reformers of the 1990s for neglecting the people’s needs and conducting the reforms in a way that caused a 35 percent economic contraction, pushed close to half of all citizens below the poverty line, and created an oligarchic economic structure. All this produced a desire for a more “organized” economic environment.

This might be true – but there is another trend that stood at the core of the market reforms of the 1990s, and was much more connected to Putin’s takeover: the country’s privatization program.

The privatization of state-owned assets in the 1990s was often called “piratization,” with investors paying extremely low prices for Soviet-built enterprises. Whether or not this process was just, new owners secured enormous competitive advantages vis-à-vis any greenfield investors that might be interested in developing new businesses in Russia. Growth since then has generally come from sectors barely touched by the privatization movement: telecoms and internet providers, financial services and banking, retail trade and logistics, personnel services, etc. – but not from the industrial core of the Russian economy. In the 2000s, the privatized companies were not even able to match Soviet-era levels of natural gas and oil production.

All of this completely distorted the Russian economy: the main initiatives undertaken by the new owners of Russia’s core assets were not aimed at their development, but rather at “restructuring” them into different holdings and selling them off at the heights of stock market fluctuations, only to buy them back during crises. Redistribution rather than development became an obsession of post-privatization Russia and a foundation for the power of the state, which was heavily engaged in buying and selling assets or enforcing their redistribution through nominal legal moves. During the 2000s less than 12 percent of all criminal investigations against entrepreneurs were brought to the courts since the companies either agreed to bribe officials or were overtaken by those who had orchestrated their prosecution. This “redistributive economy” paved the way for the “redistributive state” that came into being in the 2000s when market reforms in general were designed less to overcome the grip of the bureaucracy and more to improve its flexibility and effectiveness.

Therefore, Russia’s economy was and is the ultimate breeding ground for Putin’s authoritarianism: all the major Russian companies are either operating as agents of the state or are entwined in the state-led economy; the population is highly dependent on the state budget, which is turn depends heavily on the primary industries; in a redistributive economy the power of the state apparatus tends to expand; and this structure, first invented on the federal level, has been replicated in the regions. Such a system became the first pillar of Putinism in the 1990s.

Tactics and Ideology

Many Russian democrats (so-called and real ones) and their sympathizers in Western countries attest that a liberal democratic order was nearly complete in Russia in the early 2000s and was later dismantled by Putin and his ex-KGB aides. This is incorrect for several reasons.

The most democratic Russian elections of the past quarter century actually occurred not in Russia, but rather in the Soviet Union. Democracy implies a peaceful transition of power from one person or party to another through a fair election process. Such a transition occurred in Russia only once, in 1990-91, when the Communist elite was defeated in first parliamentary and later presidential elections; since 1992, the ruling party or leader has not been defeated. The parliament has been effectively controlled by a pro-Kremlin party or coalition since 1993, and the presidents have changed only through succession appointments camouflaged by electoral processes.

It was not the autocratic Putin who launched an attack against the elected legislature, but democratic Boris Yeltsin. Likewise, it was not the intelligence services that drafted the 1993 constitution, but liberal-minded lawyers. All of these efforts resulted in a profound neglect of popular representation and legislative power, and – more importantly – a solidification of a sort of “no alternative” principle. Democratic leaders who backed Yeltsin’s bid in 1996 called on people to “vote your heart,” degrading the role of thoughtful choice in politics. There can be no doubt that this election shaped the political culture of Russia well into the 2000s.

Moreover, the ideas actively criticized by Russian liberals today have their roots in the 1990s. Putin’s pursuit of a traditional “national concept” comes from Yeltsin’s efforts to draft a Russian “national ideology” in 1994. The 1990s also saw the revival of the Russian Orthodox church, which the state actively supported. By the mid-1990s cooperation between state and church bureaucracies had become so strong that special permissions were issued by local authorities allowing businesses to funnel money into religious charities in lieu of local tax payments. This kind of policy was designed not only to make people less critical of the divinely rooted state, but also to solidify a sense of historical continuity between a new democratic Russia and its old imperial incarnation.

This sense of continuity became a powerful means of transforming Russian society in the 2000s and was used for at least two different objectives. On the one hand, the very idea of praising the past has turned into a deep negligence for the future – the very idea of stability grows from an assumption that the basic features of Russian society are sound, so there is no need to look for something more contemporary. At the same time, as Russia never was a democratic nation, praise for its history places Putin in a pantheon of similar autocrats. In the 1990s, Peter the Great and Stolypin were honored; in the 2010s it was Ivan the Terrible and Stalin.

Imperial Policies

Putin is often accused of both undermining the Russia’s fragile federalism and expanding its sphere of influence further into the post-Soviet space, using not only economic pressure but also hard military power. But even here, the origins of these developments stretch back to trends that began in the 1990s.

Russia continues to resist local self-determination and aggressively implemented imperial policies in the post-Soviet space. In 1992, a bloody conflict erupted in Moldova, where the Russian military had a strong presence. The conflict resulted in a breakaway puppet state, the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, that Russia never formally recognized but has supported ever since. In 1992-93, an even more violent conflict plagued the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where Russia once again acted formally as a mediator but actually played an active part in the struggle; the result was Tbilisi’s effective loss of control over both territories. The Russian policy vis-à-vis the post-Soviet states was called a “doctrine of managed instability” long before Putin took over.

As early as the 1990s, Russia experimented with cutting natural gas transit from Turkmenistan to Ukraine in an attempt to prevent new oil and gas pipelines from being built in the South Caucasus. And Moscow has been laying the groundwork for a pro-Russian upheaval in Crimea and the Donbass for some time, supporting pro-Russian Crimean activists since 1994. Contrary to its own rules, the Russian government dispersed hundreds of thousands if not millions of Russian passports to the residents of Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and some other parts of Ukraine, building a foundation for hostile action against its neighbors decades before these actions turned into real conflict.

Further afield, two new distinctive features of current Russian foreign policy emerged in the 1990s: the country’s support for various rogue – but presumably friendly – regimes, even at the expense of Russia’s relationships with major partners; and its “pivot to the East,” paying special attention to China as a new strategic ally. Russia openly supported Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia from 1993 onward even as it undertook a bloody war in the Balkans. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov famously turned his plane back to Moscow while en route to Washington when he learned of the impending NATO strikes on Belgrade in March 1999. Russia later ordered its troops to move into the northern regions of Kosovo, coming quite close to open engagement with Western forces in the former Yugoslavia. The same Primakov, also serving as Russia’s foreign minister in the mid-1990s, produced a new strategic doctrine based on supposedly strong historical connections between China, Russia, and India, declaring the “Beijing-Delhi-Moscow axis” to be the principal foundation for a “non-Western dominated world of the 21st century.” In the late 1990s, Beijing became the premier non-European destination for official Russian state visits.

There is thus nothing new in Putin’s unwavering support for autocrats of various stripes, whether old friends of the USSR like the late Fidel Castro of Cuba and Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya or newer friends like Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The Russian leaders of the 2000s were hardly original in their search for allies outside the Western world – they long ago reached the conclusion that democratic nations are bad partners when it comes to strengthening the government’s grip over Russian society.

Historical Deadend

Looking at today’s Russia, it is too easy to believe that the government is shaped by a single personality – that is, that the situation will change when Putin is no longer in charge. This is mistaken; the end of the Putin era may not be the end of Putin’s Russia. What the world faces today is not Putin’s creation, but rather the only kind of Russia that could have arisen from the former Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before that. The rise of an economy based on the absence of competition and innovation was as natural as the imperial revival and “power vertical.” Even the strong pro-democracy movement of the 1980s and 1990s lacked the power to change the nature of Russian society and Russian social attitudes – and Russian elites were able to restore patterns and structures that they had used for decades and centuries.

The dramatic social revolution that ended the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, however unfinished it may seem, was the result of a huge wave of mass protests, which included a majority of the educated and self-made urban class. Since then, the greatest success of economic and social change is that is has become easy for people to join the free world one by one, or, in the words of Zygmunt Bauman, to find an “individual solution to systemic contradictions.” The freedom of movement that was thought of as a guarantee of change actually prevented it – more than six million self-made Russians emigrated, leaving the oligarchs and the bureaucrats to manage each other as well as the unorganized masses. By giving money to the former and power to the latter, Russian reformers led their country into a historical deadend without any recipe for escape.

Today’s Russia is not Putin alone. It is a system that evolved in a single direction since the fall of the Soviet Union and one that will be extremely difficult to transform – especially for Western politicians, who have failed to recognize the path Russia has been on for decades.

The post The Eternal Putin appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

It has become a familiar dynamic: AWD News, a website knowing for disseminating fabricated “news,” quoted Marine Le Pen of France’s right-wing Front National allegedly comparing President François Hollande to Adolf Hitler. Le Pen’s comparison quickly went viral and drew considerable condemnation. A fact-checker at the French daily Le Monde, however, debunked the quote – after all, in democracies, the principle of distinguishing between fact and fake applies to everyone, including political opponents. Le Pen, it turned out, had never made the comparison.

It is a small yet significant example of how public opinion in both the US and Europe is being roiled online. And it is not just extremist fringe groups that are to blame. Politicians and mainstream media have long neglected to address the rise of fake news and conspiracy theories that flourished after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump as the 45th US president have thrust this issue squarely into the spotlight. German parties are only now realizing just how powerful modern digital tools can be in influencing public opinion and destabilizing democracy. After the US elections, it was Chancellor Angela Merkel herself who drew attention to the problem of so-called social media bots – automated software active on platforms like Facebook and Twitter that resembles real users. Merkel was so concerned that she suggested a code of conduct for German parties in this year’s election.

For German lawmakers, the way the US election campaigns were conducted came as a sobering realization. Both Trump’s campaign and, to a lesser extent, Clinton’s employed social bots to artificially pad likes on Facebook, create the illusion of widespread support, or frighten and silence moderate politicians with relentless abuse and harassment online. “Bots contribute to a radicalized tone in debates, overwhelming more measured voices,” warned Peter Tauber, chairman of Merkel’s conservative CDU party.

Now barely a week passes without new information emerging, especially from the US, on how hacks, leaks, and fake news can affect an open, democratic political system. Until recently, German politicians only knew trolls: users who sow discord online, inciting hate and abuse and harassing others, either for money or out of conviction. Now, Germany is waking up to the various other ways that opinion can be manipulated, for example by fabricated news stories targeting certain social networks or accounts. Echo chambers prevent people from being confronted with opinions different to their own. And digital tools morph so quickly that even experts are finding it difficult to identify and assess the impact. When Merkel in 2013 called the Internet “unchartered territory,” she was ridiculed. Nobody is laughing now.

The Populist Advantage

The right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, has created its own team of bloggers and wants to found its own television network as well, just as Austria’s far-right Freedom Party did. The AfD justifies the need for these tools with the argument that mainstream media is controlled by the establishment, including the governing parties.

Merkel has warned that biased media only reinforce echo chambers and give fringe groups and their supporters the illusion that they are many, while in reality they are a minority. The anti-Islam Pegida movement’s slogan, “We are the people,” is a classic example.

Experts have highlighted various tools that are increasingly able to influence ever smaller, customized voter groups. In the US, authorities essentially have free rein to gather metadata on individual voters and their opinions. The Trump campaign took profiling to the next level, creating starkly different, even contradictory, political ads to target voters in Pennsylvania versus Florida. These ads specifically addressed the emotions and desires of the individual recipients and voter groups.

Trump’s data team, Cambridge Analytica (CA), was behind that approach. The company describes its work as using “big data and advanced psychographics to grow audiences, identify key influencers, and move people to action.” Essentially, it targets individual voters based on psychological profiles. An in-depth report on CA by the Swiss news site Das Magazin quickly went viral in the German public and among decision makers.

CA had worked with the pro-Brexit campaign as well, gathering massive stores of data on voters and analyzing them to create psychological dossiers. They mined users’ clicks and likes, their purchase histories, their medical information, their smartphone usage and even information on where they live. All that data helped CA understand voters’ beliefs and desires down to the individual. Now there are fears that parties in Europe will buy up metadata on their own citizens and resort to the same measures. France’s populist Front National has reportedly already contacted the company.

At the same time, the combination of globalization and digitalization has provided external actors with new tools to interfere in national elections. In the US, 17 security agencies concluded that Russia hacked the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. According to The Washington Post, after months of vehemently denying any involvement, the Kremlin actually deferred to the president-elect on the CIA’s assessment.

Europe is now worried that Russian hackers could sway elections in the Netherlands, France, and Germany this year, in favor of populist, anti-immigrant (and anti-European) forces. The head of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the domestic intelligence service – Hans-Georg Maaßen openly warned that aggressive cyberspying and cyberattacks are threatening to destabilize Germany’s democracy. Referring to a high-profile case last year of a German-Russian girl who Russian media said was kidnapped and raped by migrants in Berlin – a claim later refuted by German authorities – he said, “This could happen again next year and we are alarmed. We have the impression that this is part of a hybrid threat that seeks to influence public opinion and decision-making processes.”

Fighting Back

Germany’s security forces are now arming themselves to fight cyberattacks. The government is trying to sharpen legislation on hate speech online and is putting Facebook under increasing pressure to take down blatantly racist, inflammatory, and inappropriate posts the same way traditional media is obliged to do. Social Democrat legislator Lars Klingbeil has proposed a mutual “no-attack” agreement for parties involved in the election campaign, and another parliamentarian, Thomas Jarzombek (CDU), is calling for a press law to hold social media in check – especially as sites like Facebook and Twitter have become primary news sources for many users.

All of Germany’s established parties have agreed not to utilize social media bots in the upcoming campaign. The question remains whether the AfD will go along with the pact. The party originally said it would make bots part of its strategy, but later distanced itself from that statement. These self-regulatory initiatives may help, but the problem is far from solved – third party actors can swoop in and create social media bots in lawmakers’ names without their knowledge, discrediting them. Still, there are key differences with the US and the UK, where societies are far more polarized and data privacy does not carry the same weight it does in Germany.

As Berlin is building up its technical infrastructure in preparation, experts and lawmakers believe education and clarification will be the most effective tools in combating all forms of interference – and they have to be utilized as early as possible. Children, too, have to learn that Facebook and Twitter do not provide objective perspectives on reality, and that algorithms generate bubbles that only reaffirm their own beliefs.

Transparency is considered the best weapon to prevent fake news and conspiracy theories from taking root. Here, too, careful, accurate journalism is paramount, as the example of Le Monde’s fact checking revealed. “The best approach is to talk about it,” said Maaßen. “When people notice that the information they’re receiving isn’t trustworthy, that they are being fed propaganda and misinformation, then the poison of lies loses its effect.”

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© REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl

It was billed as an “art sensation” by Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Instead, it turned into a messy illustration of the potential pitfalls of cultural diplomacy: It became clear just after Christmas that the much-anticipated exhibition of the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art would fail to materialize.

The Tehran collection was assembled under the auspices of the last empress, Farah Pahlavi. It includes paintings by Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, Paul Gauguin, Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, and Robert Motherwell that never been exhibited together in the West before. After Pahlavi and her husband the Shah fled Iran in 1979, museum staff hid the treasures in a basement vault to save them from the revolutionary mob. They lay undisturbed for decades, and have only been shown again in the museum since 1999.

Berlin was among many Western cities vying to be the first to exhibit the collection after the nuclear deal in 2015 and the ensuing lifting of sanctions. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hailed the exhibition agreement as “a signal of a new cultural and social openness that we want to use to broaden our dialogue with Iranian society.” The plan was to show thirty masterpieces by Western painters alongside works by Iranian artists such as Parviz Tanavoli, Farideh Lashai, and Jalil Ziapour – first at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, then at the Maxxi museum in Rome.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to open on December 4, 2016, but it was postponed because of complications after Iranian Culture Minister Ali Jannati resigned in October. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation then set Iran a deadline for the end of December to issue the necessary export permits for the art. A last-ditch mission to Tehran in mid-December by Joachim Jäger, one of the curators, and Andreas Görgen, director-general for culture and communication at the German Foreign Ministry, failed to yield the necessary paperwork. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation regretfully cancelled its agreement with Iran on December 27, saying it couldn’t hold up its exhibition calendar any longer.

Disapproving of Art

The reasons why Tehran withheld approval appear to be varied and numerous. Some Iranian hardliners, disapproving of art in general, were opposed to the exhibition on principle. “This is not a presentation of Iranian culture,” said Bahman Nirumand, an expert on Iran at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. “That is one reason why the conservatives might have a problem.” Others argued that the show risked taking on the appearance of a homage to the ousted imperial regime, despised by Iran’s current rulers.

Iranian newspapers also speculated that if the paintings traveled to Germany, they might never return. What if Pahlavi – who had expressed an interest in visiting the exhibition – tried to seize and claim them, despite the fact that she purchased the art with state money?

“It was of course clear from the beginning that this is a complicated project,” Parzinger said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on December 6 – a comment that now looks like quite an understatement. In a November article for The Art Newspaper, Görgen conceded that “there are some who may question if the time is right to move forward with this type of co-operation.”

The preparations were fraught with difficulties. One of those who questioned the project was German Culture Minister Monika Grütters, according to the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT. An exhibition featuring a competition of cartoons about the Holocaust – many of which entailed Holocaust denial – had opened in Tehran in May 2016. The director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Majid Mollanoroozi, was present at the prize-giving ceremony. In a letter quoted by DIE ZEIT, Grütters warned Parzinger in summer 2016 that the incident might reflect badly on the Berlin exhibition, and she distanced herself from the plans. Mollanoroozi was relieved of his responsibilities for coordinating the show.

Deeper questions were also raised. Should Germany be cooperating on major cultural projects with a regime that frequently imprisons its artists? A recent victim is filmmaker Keywan Karimi, whose production company said he began serving a year-long sentence in November on charges of “insulting sanctities.” Iranian artists also wondered aloud how the exhibition of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s collection would help them, and accused the German government of colluding secretively with the Iranian authorities.

A Setback

The exhibition’s collapse is a setback to German-Iranian relations. Before the revolution and for some years after, Germany was Iran’s biggest trading partner and German businesses are anxious to revitalize economic ties in the wake of the nuclear deal. Companies active in the country include BASF, BMW, and Siemens, which announced a deal to upgrade the country’s aging rail network in October.

The lifting of sanctions unleashed “some euphoria in Germany and lots of companies started to set about securing a foothold in Iran,” whose crumbling industrial infrastructure is of particular interest to German machinery makers, Nirumand said. Now, “that euphoria has subsided,” in part because companies are concerned they may be subject to fines from the United States, which still imposes some sanctions against Iran.

Relations between Berlin and Tehran have already come under strain in recent months. On a visit in October 2016, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel was snubbed by the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, after he warned that friendly ties between the two countries would only be possible once Iran accepted Israel’s right to exist. Larijani cancelled a scheduled meeting with Gabriel without giving a reason.

“Of Existential Significance”

In his article in The Art Newspaper, Görgen wrote that Germany’s rise to prominence on the world stage has led to “a push for a better delineated cultural strategy,” with more funds available and more global cooperation. “Art has to be protected as an open, free space where different views can be expressed… and through which dialogue can be held with all partners, even those who do not share our values and world view,” he wrote.

Those who do not share Germany’s values and world view may feel threatened by such a policy. Paul von Maltzahn, German ambassador in Tehran from 2003 to 2006, points out that cultural policy is “of existential significance” to the Iranian regime as it seeks to shield the country from foreign influences. It also presents a conundrum. “Without opening itself to the West, Iran cannot develop economically,” he said. “If it opens economically, then investors will arrive and bring Western culture with them.”

In the end Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a self-described moderate elected in 2013, withheld the final signature required to let the art travel to Germany. With presidential elections looming in May, he may have decided that the battle over a Berlin exhibition was one he could concede to his more conservative rivals.

The German media was derisive about the art no-show. “What a fiasco!” said Deutschlandradio.  “A political disaster,” commented the Berlin public broadcaster RBB. But Germany is unlikely to give up attempts to nurture cultural links with Iran, despite the negative headlines and current sense of frustration. The potential long-term gains – both economic and political – are too great. As an archaeologist with extensive experience of working in Iran, Parzinger says the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, for one, “remains committed to cultural exchange, even with Iran, and will continue to promote this dialogue with suitable measures.”

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

I’ll admit it. I did not expect to be writing a piece with this title. Like so many on both sides of the Atlantic, I did not expect Donald Trump to win on November 8. But he did. So now committed Atlanticists need to get to work and start sketching out a common transatlantic agenda for the Trump administration. That will not be easy, especially since the term “transatlantic agenda for Trump” sometimes feels like an oxymoron. Can there be a transatlantic agenda for a US president who, during the election campaign, called into question the utility of the NATO alliance, expressed an admiration for President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style, promised to get rid of trade deals like TPP and TTIP, and said he would dismantle the Iran nuclear deal – one of the shining achievements of the transatlantic partners in recent years? Yes, but it probably will not resemble the one we would have pursued had the election gone the other way.

Had Hillary Clinton won, we would have started with the big substantive questions facing the transatlantic partners. What to do with Russia? Do we add more sanctions? Do we replace the Minsk Protocol with something else? How might we collectively save the European project? How do we make the next NATO Summit a roaring success? What do we do with TTIP during 2017 when a number of European countries will be having their own elections? What about Turkey, an increasingly important strategic ally but one that is moving away from the core principles and values the transatlantic partners hold dear?

Those questions remain on the table of course. But – depending on who will be advising Trump on foreign policy – they are likely to be paired with a different set of questions that cast the fundamentals of both US foreign policy and the transatlantic alliance in a new light. Trump and those around him are likely to ask why the United States has invested seventy years in a set of institutions and alliances like NATO. Are those institutions still relevant and do they serve America’s core interests? What is the value of free trade? Why does the US station troops overseas in places like Germany and Italy? Why should the US promote and work to uphold the values it shares with its European allies? Why should the US and its allies support a country like Ukraine?

In addition to answering questions about the overarching value of the transatlantic relationship, Atlanticists also need to prepare to work with a US administration whose day-to-day operations are unlikely to resemble that of past administrations. As many European capitals have already learned during the transition period, current protocol has been tossed out the window. The president-elect has not been issuing statements on foreign calls, not taking daily intelligence briefings. He has not relied on the State Department to help prepare him for foreign calls. He regularly tweets false statements and news. He has included his family in foreign engagements. What this means for Trump’s future engagement with European allies is unclear. But Europeans should at the very least expect the unexpected. Perhaps Trump will not attend the next NATO summit. Maybe he will not do much international travel at all. (Rumors have been swirling about his dislike of traveling overseas). Perhaps he will leave high-level foreign engagements to his vice president or another member of his cabinet. And maybe the entire nature of foreign engagements – even with our closest allies – will change in ways we cannot even imagine.

Preparing for a New Era

How should Atlanticists on both sides of the pond prepare themselves for this new era? They should start by going back to basics. Those that treasure the transatlantic relationship and want to see it thrive will have to convey to Trump himself, members of his administration, and an increasing number of European leaders who are losing faith in the relationship that it still matters. Yes, it is an imperfect relationship, one that regularly fuels frustration on both sides of the Atlantic. Sometimes we disagree with and disappoint one another. But when a crisis erupts such as the Ebola outbreak or the rise of the so-called Islamic State, the first thing Europe and the US do is call their partners on the other side of the Atlantic. Why? Because they know there is no better place in the world to find real capacity, political will, innovation, and economic leverage.

Atlanticists will also need to enlist new allies in the years ahead. That means developing and deepening relationships across the US Congress with members new and old. If, for example, the Trump administration starts to weaken or discredit the NATO alliance, Atlanticists on both sides of the Atlantic will need to work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to push back. But developing new sets of relationships should not stop at Congress. That list should include the private sector, NGOs, and the media as well. And both sides of the Atlantic need to do a far better job of engaging their publics on broad questions of foreign policy and national security.

Furthermore, if Trump’s governing style will be firmly rooted in the “art of the deal” as his book title suggests, Europeans should start thinking about the parameters of their own deal. In other words, where exactly are Europe’s collective and individual red lines? Europeans will no doubt find some of Trump’s policies to be troubling yet tolerable. But which ones will not be tolerable? A Muslim registry? The end of the Paris agreement? A return to waterboarding? And more importantly, what would Europe put on the table either as a concession or threat to prevent such lines from being crossed?

In terms of actual substance, the Trump administration will no doubt want to engage Europeans early on Russia. Europeans would be wise to start sketching out where they would be willing to compromise. If Trump proposes lifting sanctions against Russia, for example, Europeans will want to help shape what the West gets in return. Trump has already indicated that he is seeking more Russian help in Syria. Europe should craft its own list, one that could include Russian cuts in nuclear weapons, no more snap exercises on the edge of NATO territory, no Russian interference in European elections, and a smaller Russian presence in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea. Europe should also state unequivocally (to Russia and the US) where it will not compromise: on support for Ukraine. Leaving President Putin with the impression that the West is turning its back on its friends in Ukraine would set a very dangerous precedent, one we would all surely live to regret.

Atlanticists on both sides of the Atlantic face a daunting task in the months and years ahead. As populism rolls across political landscapes in Europe and the United States, fewer people believe in the transatlantic relationship and its indispensable role in the wider liberal order. Saving and strengthening that relationship now rests with a smaller group of Atlanticists who now must become more vocal, more creative, and more responsive to the very forces challenging it.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2017 issue.

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© REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Viktor Orbán has been in preaching mode recently. Hungary’s prime minister no longer complains about Germany’s “moral imperialism,” as he did at the peak of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015. He now enthusiastically frames 2017 as “a year of revolt” within the EU: He sees the upcoming series of crucial elections in Western European countries as a great opportunity to get rid of their old political elites, hoping for an end to the liberal order in Europe – and for a greater role for a new elite, one in tune with his ideas. This new elite, based on the Visegrád group comprising Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, would theoretically be closer to the voters’ needs, moods, and concerns.

Now, neither a win for far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen in France in May nor the toppling of German Chancellor Angela Merkel next fall is impossible. And even the mostly moderate Czech Republic, which will go to the polls at roughly the same time as Germany in mid-October, might get its own Silvio Berlusconi figure if Finance Minister Andrej Babiš, who also happens to be the country’s top media and business magnate, is elected prime minister.

But take a closer look and the holes in Orbán’s vision become quite apparent. From a distance, all four Visegrád governments can be seen as euroskeptic proponents of an EU with weak institutions and strong member states. In fact, this reading of the situation papers over cracks that have been widening of late.

The coalition governments in Prague and Bratislava, led by Social Democratic parties – at least in name, as far as Robert Fico’s Smer-SD party in Slovakia is concerned – are not interested in the kind of “conservative counterrevolution” promoted by the ruling parties in Budapest and Warsaw. Indeed, Slovakia just completed a surprisingly smooth six-month EU presidency, pursuing pragmatic lines in very difficult times. At the October 2016 GLOBSEC Tatra Summit Forum, one of the main official events of the Slovak presidency, participants discussed how Europe’s open societies can challenge far-right and populist parties. As a eurozone member, Slovakia is also more deeply integrated fiscally and economically with the EU’s core.

Meanwhile, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek opened the Czech-Austrian Dialogue Forum in November 2016 with a call to protect the tolerant soul of Central Europe. Going further still, Petr Kratochvíl, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute of International Relations, recently argued that in the case of a Le Pen win in the French presidential elections, it would be in Prague’s vital interest to keep its close links with Germany rather than side with its partners in the Visegrád group.

This is part of a broader trend: Czech and Slovak diplomats have been quietly distancing their countries from the “illiberal Budapest-Warsaw axis” and Orbán’s hijacking of the Visegrád discourse. Now similar voices are being heard in foreign policy debates in Warsaw. In a recent analysis of Hungary’s ambition to become a regional leader, the Polish Institute of International Affairs called for restoring greater symmetry in Warsaw’s relations with Budapest.

Behind Closed Doors

So far, these growing tensions have been handled behind closed doors. To avoid conflicts spilling into the public domain, the four countries have stuck to a diplomatic formula of coordinating on the EU level and reinforcing regional positions only when they can agree – on issues like the single market, freedom of movement, and a general position vis-à-vis London ahead of the Brexit negotiations. The Visegrád prime ministers and other high-ranking government officials continue to meet regularly and coordinate in Brussels ahead of every EU summit and relevant EU Council meeting. There is a shared concern that open divisions would be exploited by Germany and others to weaken this regional group even further.

But the question has started to dawn on the Visegrád members: What if electoral upheaval in 2017 really leads to an EU that is more variable and looser? In the absence of a common vision and shared understanding of the region’s interests, the result would be a more divergent and fragmented Central Europe.

In fact, what might look like a big opportunity for Hungary is perceived in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia as a big threat. These three countries have been among the main beneficiaries of Europe’s post-1989 liberal order, which is now under pressure from various directions. A potential deal between future US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the expense of Ukraine would be seen as a humiliating “new Yalta” by most Poles, regardless of political ideology. In contrast, Orbán would welcome it – and likely try to win concessions for ethnic Hungarian minorities as part of the whole package. Czech and Slovak leaders, for their part, will ultimately realize that the populist concept of “a Europe of nations” runs against the vital interest of small states at the EU’s eastern periphery. The prospect of being left on their own in the geopolitical turmoil building up in Central and Eastern Europe pushes them to work with Germany in keeping Europe’s liberal order in place.

Thus, key government figures in Prague and Bratislava are keeping their fingers crossed for Merkel to keep her job in the fall, regardless of how much they hate her stand in the refugee and migration crisis. And unlike governments in Warsaw and Budapest, they do not want to participate in a reconstruction of the region as a counterweight to German dominance within the EU.

In 2017, we will likely see more differentiation in the national trajectories of the Visegrád group over Europe’s future order. One consequence could be the rise of bilateralism in relations with Germany, other EU partners, Putin, and Trump. National narratives, domestic considerations – even Hungary is heading for elections in 2018 – and the personalities of the leaders involved will all shape the agenda of the gang of four. But one thing is clear: Orbán will play a smaller role than he likes to think.

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© Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

There is no doubt about it – Geert Wilders is ready to take the next step. “When I become the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, I will clear the decks,” he warned in de Telegraaf, the largest Dutch daily, after he was found guilty of inciting discrimination on December 9, 2016. It wasn’t entirely clear whether “clearing the decks” was a shot at the judges who convicted him, or whether Wilders meant his controversial comments about Moroccans. Either way, the conviction could cost the leader of the right-wing populist Freedom Party (PVV) a seat in government next year. Still, with around twenty percent of the vote, Wilders and the PVV are leading the latest polls.

The Dutch political system has splintered over the last decade; the present coalition partners, Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the Labor Party (PvdA), only hold a paltry 25 percent of the vote. They have been challenged by a dozen political newcomers on the left and the right, not to mention single-issue groups like the 50+ Party for the elderly, the “migrant party” DENK or the Party for the Animals. The coalition carries a majority in the House of Representatives but not the senate.

That has rendered policy making a messy business, involving makeshift coalitions with a rotating cast of parties. A reform on housing, for example, was supported by the social-liberal democrats D66, the Reformed Political Party (SGP), and the Christian Union (CU). In the “labor and social reform coalition,” two more parties joined – the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the Greens. Almost every party cooperated with Rutte in some sort of coalition – every party except for Geert Wilders’ PVV.

In a political system built upon compromise, Wilders remains the uncompromising one-eyed king. And so far, no party has showed any willingness to cooperate with Wilders after the 2017 elections either. This year’s vote will reveal whether the far-right leader can rebrand himself as Wilders 2.0, willing and able to make drastic compromises in order to govern, or whether he will remain glued to the opposition benches for another four years.

Wild, Wilder, Wilders

Geert Wilders was born on September 6, 1963, in the small southeastern city of Venlo, nestled along the German border. He is the youngest in a family of three children and was therefore “a bit spoiled,” as he admitted in a radio documentary in 2006 – the last documentary on his life where he actively cooperated in its making.

His father worked as a manager at the city’s largest firm, Océ, a printing and copying hardware manufacturer. His mother was born in the Dutch East Indies into a colonial Dutch-Indonesian family. A quiet, peaceful childhood was followed by a markedly wilder adolescence. Wilders grew his hair long, donned leather jackets and gold earrings, drank beer, and skipped college classes. After graduating, he took a course in social security insurance and was later drafted into the Dutch army. After he was conscripted, he left for Israel where he worked for two years and travelled around the Middle East, an experience that left a deep impression. Wilders became a self-professed “friend and fan” of the state of Israel, which he called “the only democratic ray of light surrounded by suppressing dictatorial regimes.” For Wilders, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the forefront of a global culture clash between political Islam and Western, Judeo-Christian values, making Israel an important and symbolic ally. His ties to the country have been close ever since.

In 1990 Wilders was hired as the parliamentary assistant and speechwriter of Frits Bolkestein of the VVD, a Dutch lawmaker who would later serve as the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. It was during this phase that Wilders became a fierce critic of multiculturalism, Islam, and the European Union. Bolkestein was one of the first established politicians in the Netherlands who openly criticized Dutch migration policy and multicultural society in the 1990s. It was only natural that Wilders became Bolkestein’s “sorcerer’s apprentice.” He entered parliament as part of the VVD in 1998 and soon became a spokesman for the far-right.

During the rise of conservative Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn (also an outspoken critic of multiculturalism and Islam) and after Fortunyn’s assassination in May 2002 by a radical animal rights activist, Wilders’ criticism of his party’s socially liberal course sharpened. It ultimately led to a showdown in 2004, when Wilders refused to support the VVD’s position on Turkey’s accession to the EU. He left the party but kept his seat in parliament and founded the Group Wilders, which became the Freedom Party (PVV) two years later.

Shifting to the Right

The PVV entered parliament in 2006 with nearly six percent of the vote. In the party’s early years, Wilders positioned himself as both a strict conservative and a market liberal; he was tough on socio-cultural issues like migration and integration, but his free market economic policies were still very much in line with those of his former party. After 2006, though, his position and tone started to radicalize, particularly on the issues of multiculturalism and Islam. In August of 2007 he compared the Koran with Hitler’s Mein Kampf. His apocalyptic short film about Islam, “Fitna,” was released one year later to great controversy. In a 2010 press conference in London, he called the Prophet Mohammed a “barbarian, a mass murderer, and a pedophile.”

It was during this phase that Wilders remade his liberal market views and fashioned himself as something of a gatekeeper for the Dutch welfare system. “Our carefully-built social welfare state is a source of pride, but it has become a magnet for low-educated, non-Western migrants,” he wrote in a 2010 manifesto.

During the height of the European financial crisis, Wilders made a dramatic pivot on the EU, too. Until then, he had supported the concept of the single market and the euro. But by 2012 he wanted out of the EU, out of the euro, out of the visa-free Schengen zone, and out of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Both his anti-EU and socio-economic stance were closely linked to his views on Islam. Wilders often speaks of “EUrabia” when talking about European politics. He holds the “liberal, multicultural elite” in Brussels responsible for what he has referred to as an Islamic asylum “tsunami” across the continent. And he fears that the bloc’s basic social structures at under threat. “Islamization in Europe has enormous consequences for our education, housing policy, social security, and the welfare state,” he was quoted as saying in 2009.

His incendiary comments on Moroccans signaled a new, even more radical turn. During a rally in The Hague in March 2014, Wilders asked his supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in their country. When they called for fewer, he promised to take care of it. Until that point, he had criticized Islam as a religion, not specific groups. Many PVV politicians were disgusted by Wilders’ comments and left the party. For the court in Schiphol, too, singling out Moroccans was one step too far.

But Wilders was quick to flip the story into a battle with the “corrupt political elite” trying to silence him, a group that included media and the judiciary. He deemed the Dutch House of Representatives a “fake parliament” and claimed he was convicted by a “politicized court.” The fact that he fundamentally questioned the validity of basic democratic institutions drove a deeper wedge between Wilders and any possible coalition partners.

Populist 2.0

Wilders is not your usual far-right populist, at least not compared to his European counterparts Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front in France, or Frauke Petry of Alternative for Germany (AfD). He is among the three longest-serving members of the Dutch parliament (18 years) and has been a junior partner in government (2010 – 2012), making him an integral part of the very establishment he claims to detest.

That also makes him one of the most experienced right-wing populists around. Throughout the years, he has succeeded in deftly combining a fairly leftist socio-economic policy and a euroskeptic agenda with far-right views on migration and integration. He has an uncanny sense of timing and dominates the media with his Twitter account and YouTube channel.

Wilders is also quite unique in his claim that he wants to protect the liberal social order. Islam is his primary target, no matter what issue is on the table. He believes the “liberal Netherlands” of old is being threatened by a “culturally backward Islam.” Jews and homosexuals are very much part of Wilders’ “liberal Netherlands” and have to be protected against Muslims.

You will never hear Wilders speak of conservative family values issues, unlike Le Pen or Petry; nor does the PVV express anti-Semitic or homophobic sentiments. That makes the party far more appealing to a broader spectrum of voters, including Jews, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. They, too, might be longing for the illusion of the “open and tolerant Netherlands” of the past.

Still, it seems highly unlikely that Wilders will land a seat in the next Dutch government come March’s elections. Even if the PVV becomes the strongest party, it will probably need more than two partners to form a coalition, and Wilders will be hard pressed to find them. He would find himself in the role of dealmaker, one he has never had and most probably would not like very much. The question also remains whether the PVV will be able to identify suitable ministers and state secretaries from within their ranks. Up until now, Wilders has never allowed any party members to outshine him; the PVV has always been a one-man show.

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© REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello

If Europe’s current refugee and migration crisis has made anything clear over the past two years, it is this: the European Union urgently needs a credible, effective policy on asylum and border management that respects existing international and EU refugee law and controls external land and sea borders. It must treat asylum seekers respectfully while deterring irregular migration and undermining the business model of smugglers; it must save lives and respect the fundamental ethical norm of the rule of rescue, not push individuals in need into danger, which is at the heart of the UN Refugee Convention (and its key article 33 on no pushbacks).

The EU-Turkey agreement on refugees in the Aegean adopted on March 18, 2016, contains the elements of such a policy – but to serve as a good model it has to be fully implemented. The agreement is based on existing EU laws on asylum and on the principles of the UN Refugee Convention. It commits the EU to helping improve conditions for refugees in Turkey (the country in the world hosting the largest number of refugees today) with the most generous contribution the EU has ever made for refugees in any country in the world. It also makes improving the work and quality of the Turkish asylum service a matter of direct interest to the EU: only if Turkey has a functioning asylum system can it be considered a safe third country. Finally and crucially, it foresees substantial resettlement of refugees in an orderly manner from Turkey once flows of irregular arrivals in the Aegean are reduced. The fact that this last provision has not yet been implemented seriously does not make it any less important to the overall logic of the agreement.

Even without full implementation, the agreement has produced a dramatic and immediate impact on refugee movements in the eastern Mediterranean. Crossings in the Aegean Sea fell from 115,000 in the first two months of the year to 3,300 in June and July. The number of people who drowned in the Aegean fell from 366 people in the first three months of the year to seven between May and July. This was achieved without pushing refugees to take other, more dangerous routes (the people arriving in Southern Italy this year were from African countries). And there have not been any mass expulsions from Greece either, something NGOs had feared would happen. In fact, more people had been sent back from Greece to Turkey in the three months preceding the agreement (967) than in the ten months since it was concluded (777).

It is obvious, however, that the EU has no current plan or credible strategy for the central Mediterranean, and this presents a huge risk. The status quo is clearly unacceptable from a humanitarian point of view: in 2016 an unprecedented number of people (more than 4400) drowned there. It is also politically explosive, lending ammunition to those on the far-right across Europe (from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Marine Le Pen in France and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany). They argue that the only way to control migration to Europe is by abolishing the Schengen open borders regime and restoring border controls within the European Union. The lack of a coherent EU strategy has led some to suggest looking to Australia for inspiration, praising a model whereby anyone reaching the EU by sea should be denied the right to even apply for asylum in the EU and be returned to North Africa. This would amount to the EU turning its back on the Refugee Convention, initiating an existential crisis for the UNHCR and global policy on asylum.

A humane and effective border and asylum policy is indeed possible, and it does not involve emulating the Australian model. The first step requires implementing the EU-Turkey agreement in full. The second step would involve applying the right lessons to the central Mediterranean as well. Both would require the EU to set up new structures, including credible EU asylum missions and instruments to resettle refugees, among others. Both depend on Greece and Italy persuading other EU countries that the challenge they face is a European one requiring innovative European solutions.

Following Through

Nearly a year after it was signed into action, the EU-Turkey agreement remains at risk – and that despite its successes so far. This is because of inadequate implementation.

On average, fewer than one hundred people have been returned to Turkey each month; many people who arrived on the Aegean islands have remained struck there in limbo for extended periods of time, while the number of new arrivals has been some one hundred a day on average in recent months.

All this creates a realistic scenario for failure. Greek authorities, under pressure and without an answer for islanders who see Lesbos and Chios becoming a European Nauru (the Pacific island where Australia sends people who arrive by boat), might move larger numbers of people from the Aegean islands to the mainland. That would again lead to rising numbers of people crossing the Aegean. Once larger groups are moved to the Greek mainland, the humanitarian situation for refugees there, which is already bad, will deteriorate further. We would see the populist-led calls to build a stronger wall north of Greece multiply.

Already now, the number one topic of conversation among migrants stranded on the Greek mainland is the cost of getting smuggled across the Balkan route, either via Macedonia or Bulgaria. It is hard to imagine Greece making a major effort to stop people from leaving the country if Greeks feel the EU has abandoned them. The weak Macedonian reception and asylum system might then collapse within weeks, once more people cross the border. The western Balkans would turn into a battleground for migrants, smugglers, border guards, soldiers, and vigilante groups, destabilizing an already fragile region.

If this scenario played out, it would be a serious blow to European leaders like Angela Merkel, who argue that it is possible to have a humane and effective EU policy on border management while respecting the Refugee Convention. It would also be a blow to already tense EU-Turkish relations. What is needed now is the right implementation strategy.

The EU should appoint a special representative for the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement – a former prime minister or former foreign minister with the experience and authority to address urgent implementation issues on the ground. To preserve the agreement, the European Commission and Turkey should address all concerns raised about Turkey as a safe third country for those who should be returned from Greece. Such concerns can be addressed. As the UNHCR noted on March 18, 2016, everything depends on serious implementation:

“People being returned to Turkey and needing international protection must have a fair and proper determination of their claims, and within a reasonable time. Assurances against refoulement, or forced return, must be in place. Reception and other arrangements need to be readied in Turkey before anyone is returned from Greece. People determined to be needing international protection need to be able to enjoy asylum, without discrimination, in accordance with accepted international standards, including effective access to work, health care, education for children, and, as necessary, social assistance.”

Turkey would need to present a concrete proposal on how to ensure – and how to make transparent – that it is fulfilling the conditions set by EU law to be a credible safe third country for refugees of any origin that Greece might return, whether they are Pakistani, Afghan, or Syrian. It would need to guarantee – with more assistance from the EU and UNCHR, if necessary – that there are sufficient asylum case workers, translators, and legal aid in place to provide an efficient asylum process. There would need to be full transparency surrounding what is happening to each and every person returned as well. Given the small number of people concerned, this is all doable.

At the same time, the EU should send a European asylum mission to the Greek islands, including at least two hundred case workers able to make binding decisions on asylum claims (which would require an invitation by the Greek government, changes in Greek law, and assurances that any decision made by such a mission could be suspended by a chief Greek legal officer). Those who are granted protection should then be relocated across the EU immediately; all others would be sent back to Turkey. The principle behind an EU mission would be obvious: In times of crisis, there is a need for a substantial number of case workers, interpreters, and reception officers to ensure quality standards for assessing protection requests with speed where most asylum requests are submitted. It would be unfair to blame Greece or any other country for being unable to deal rapidly with asylum requests of the tens of thousands of people; it would be unreasonable for Greece not to ask for such a European mission. Ultimately it is a matter of political will on the part of the EU and Turkey to deal with the few thousand asylum seekers now on the Aegean islands, in line with international norms and EU directives for their mutual benefit.

Adapting the Agreement

So far it has proven difficult to send a sufficient number of EU asylum caseworkers to Greece. At the same time, there are still no decent reception conditions for the relatively small number of people who have arrived on the islands since April 2016. These challenges cast serious doubt on proposals to slow illegal migration to Italy by setting up reception centers somewhere in North Africa; as some EU politicians have suggested, everyone who reaches Italy would be taken to these centers to have their asylum claims processed. This is sometimes presented as a model inspired by Australia, which puts everyone who arrives by sea in camps on the Pacific island of Nauru or on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. In fact, asylum seekers held in Nauru in recent years have been forced to wait many years for their applications to be decided.

Conditions of detention were and remain intentionally harsh to deter further arrivals. And once asylum is granted, it remains unclear where refugees might go (recently the US offered to help out and promised to accept a large number of people moved to these islands by Australia; it remains unclear whether this will actually happen). It is important to note that Nauru never hosted more than a thousand people at any given time. The notion that the EU might outsource the detention of tens of thousands of asylum seekers to camps across North Africa for long periods and under similar conditions is surely a recipe for failure.

So how might the EU reduce the number of arrivals – and deaths – in the central Mediterranean? The key lies in fast processing of asylum applications for anyone who arrives, and in fast returns of those whose claims are rejected to their countries of origin. Both of these tasks should become European responsibilities. Anyone not granted asylum should be returned to his or her country of origin. Prioritizing such returns should become the central issue of negotiations with African countries of origin. On the other hand, those who are granted asylum should be relocated across the EU to support Italy and Greece and replace the inadequate Dublin system (the notion that Dutch or German case officers would decide which refugees remain in Greece or Italy would obviously not be acceptable to these countries).

What would be the likely impact of such a policy on arrivals? It is very likely that these would fall sharply.

Nigerians were the largest group of arrivals in 2016, and the majority would be unlikely to risk their lives crossing the deadly Sahara, unstable Libya, and the central Mediterranean, and spending thousands of Euros on smugglers when the likelihood of being returned to Nigeria would be upwards of seventy percent (which is the current rate of rejection of Nigerian asylum applications in the EU).

As noted, ensuring that Nigeria, Senegal and other countries take back their nationals arriving in Italy after an agreed date should be the chief priority in talks between the EU and Nigeria – similar to the commitment Turkey made to take back without delay people who arriving in Greece after March 20, 2016. This would require that an EU asylum mission in Italy is able to process all claims within weeks. Rapid readmission would bring down the number of people who stay in the EU after their applications are rejected. In this way, the number of irregular arrivals becomes manageable – with less business for smugglers and far fewer deaths at sea. The aim might be to reduce the number of all irregular arrivals by sea to below 100,000 (for an EU of over 500 million people) in 2017. Such a goal is realistic: It is, after all, the average number of irregular arrivals into the entire EU 2009-13.

European leaders could thus demonstrate to their electorates that it is possible to control external sea borders without undermining the refugee convention or treating those who arrive inhumanely to deter new arrivals. European leaders should simultaneously push forward the global debate on orderly transfers of refugees through resettlement. The only way to do so is to lead by example, building up EU capacity for resettlement as well boosting the UNHCR’s capacity to do more. Coalitions of willing EU states should commit to resettle a significant number of vulnerable refugees each year.

In recent decades, resettlement has never reached more than 100,000 a year across the planet, and of these the US took the lion’s share. Until now European states have not built up the bureaucratic machinery for large-scale resettlement. For this reason, pushing the EU to fully implement the resettlement provisions in the Aegean agreement (point 4) is vital and deserves to be an advocacy priority for human rights NGOs and refugee rights defenders.

In the face of rising anti-refugee sentiment across the world, it will take a strong coalition of countries to protect the Refugee Convention. Such a coalition requires governments that are able to win elections on the platform that a humane asylum policy and effective border control can be combined and can even reinforce each other. Such a policy needs to be based on core principles: no pushbacks; no Nauru; discouraging irregular passage through fast readmission and fast asylum processes; expansion of refugee resettlement programs; and serious financial help to host countries elsewhere. If this happens, lessons from the EU agreement with Turkey – the only plan in recent years that dramatically reduced the numbers of people arriving without changing EU refugee law – might help develop a blueprint for protecting refugee rights in an age of anxiety. For Europe and refugees, the stakes could not be higher.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2017 issue.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Professor Hegelich, what are “social media bots”? Social media bots are fake accounts on social media platforms. They try to mimic the appearance of normal users, but they are actually controlled by underlying software. The first bots were probably for mainly commercial uses – they were very simple, basically just advertisement. But many state agencies, especially in the United States, were very quick in trying to use these types of bots to manipulate public opinion or at least to find out if this were possible. The Guardian reported as early as 2011 that US agencies were developing “sock puppet software.” And there were definitely a lot of social bots active in the Arab Spring movement, where they were applied against dictatorial regimes.

In Germany and Europe, however, they seem to be a new phenomenon. We found bots on Twitter attacking German Chancellor Angela Merkel two years ago. Most of these came from the US and were connected to the so-called “alt-right” movement. This doesn’t necessarily mean someone was trying to manipulate public opinion in Germany. The refugee crisis was a big political topic in the US as well; it was discussed and stoked by social bots there, too.

Last November you briefed Chancellor Merkel on social media bots, trolls, and fake news – basically, the tools that could be used to manipulate this year’s election. What kind of reception did you get? What thrilled me is that Chancellor Merkel is so interested in the topic and very well-informed. It was more like a scientific debate. My impression was that especially Merkel is taking the whole topic of digital manipulation very seriously. And she’s not looking for simple solutions, she really wants to discuss this topic with her CDU party and convince them that something very disruptive is going on in the political sphere.

So how worried were they? How worried should they be? Everyone is getting particularly anxious because of what happened in the US. There’s no need to panic, though. It’s very difficult to influence people’s political opinions, no matter what tool you use. You can’t use a bot army to write “Lock Merkel up” online and actually believe someone will read it and think, “Oh, yes of course, Merkel has to go to prison.” The effects are far more indirect.

What is the effect, then? One danger is that you may see that a certain topic is very successful on social media and deem it very important, but in the real world it isn’t. Journalists and also politicians are taking trends from social media that don’t actually exist and are making poor decisions based on that. For example, do you really think so many people care about a remake of the Ghostbusters movie with an all-female cast? The huge social media controversy it sparked last year felt somewhat overblown. Or – far more serious – did the outrage online during the Arab Spring really reflect the opinions of the majority? Another danger is that bots can lead to polarization in rhetoric and discourse because they are very aggressive in social media debates. That could lead to a situation where bots only engage with other radical users, and more moderate people just exit the discussion entirely.

You have to differentiate. Most bots aren’t even political – they’re driven by economic interests. In the US, some pro-Trump sites didn’t actually want Trump to win, they just found out you got more clicks that way. The same is true with bots. Some studies counted bots in relation to hashtags, and they found there were 400,000 pro-Trump users. But upon closer look, the majority are just spam bots pushing links to Russian video games, for example, without any political message. My point is, you have to differentiate between spam and noise.

At the same time, attribution is really difficult – it’s a worldwide economy. Say you need fake user accounts, and to register a lot of them you have to bypass the captcha code. You might have an office in Pakistan bypassing the captchas, and then you have a fake account generator that might be Dutch. You run your servers through the United Kingdom because they’re cheap there. You use software programs in Russia and manipulate in the US – it’s an international chain of production. This also makes it very hard to say who is behind the manipulation.

German politicians are already discussing countermeasures like fining those who spread fake news or setting up a kind of fact-checking clearing house, which some denounce as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth … There is a lot of activism. The US already has a new law for this. It has been one of the final acts of the Obama administration, so they are actually creating a sort of Ministry of Truth. I’m not sure that this will be particularly helpful, but I think it is very important to discuss the issues and increase the pressure on Facebook especially, making sure they are part of the solution. And if we are just talking about normal people, then all the necessary laws are in place: slander is an offense, be it on Facebook or anywhere else. But in the case of cyberoperations and large scale cyberattacks, it’s not a matter of law, but a matter of counter-measures.

The outgoing Obama administration has enacted some of those, making Russia responsible for the hacking into the Democratic National Committee servers … I’m skeptical as far as the “blame Moscow” narrative is concerned. If, for instance, the e-mails that were published by WikiLeaks had really been taken by a hack, then the National Security Agency (NSA) would be able to say from which IP address they came and where they went. WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange has said that they were leaked. And the fact that Russian malware was used only goes so far. If I wanted to hack something I would use Russian malware as well because you can easily buy it online …

So we should be careful pointing fingers but that shouldn’t stop us from fighting the attacks? Exactly. Then again, we should all be certain that Russia, China, indeed every country in the world is trying to get a handle on this. It’s likely there is this activity in Russia, but I doubt that the WikiLeaks stories came from Russia.

What role is WikiLeaks playing? Can we expect more data dumps with relevance to Germany? WikiLeaks is still doing what they were doing ten years ago. They’re publishing all kind of material they think is relevant and they don’t really care where they get the material from and care even less about political consequences. And we will definitely see more dumps, even though the reporting on them is not always accurate. When WikiLeaks published more than 2,400 documents on the collaboration between German intelligence services and the NSA from a Bundestag investigative committee on December 1, 2016, many people thought this material was taken during the hack of the Bundestag of 2015. But as far as I know the material that was published by WikiLeaks is over 90 gigabytes, while the whole amount of data transferred during the Bundestag attack was 16 gigabytes. If this is correct, then the latest WikiLeaks drop had nothing to do with hacking, it was a leak. Either way, there will be more of it this year – WikiLeaks has said as much, as has the famous German hacker of Megaupload fame, or infamy, Kim Dotcom, who is in New Zealand fighting extradition to the US.

Is the German government committing enough resources? We’ll find out over the next months. There is a lot going on, but I’m not sure it’s going in the right direction. For example, the German army is trying to build up a cybersecurity center and recruiting a lot of experts from various universities for each different aspect of cybersecurity. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is quite busy, too. My impression is that many were very surprised by the US elections and their manipulation. And now they have just started to get active.

How influential is fake news? Fake news is where you really see disruptive change in public opinion. WikiLeaks’ slogan was, “If lies can start wars, the truth can start peace.” Now we have a situation where you have information and counterinformation for everything, and you never know what is true and what isn’t. People who get their information from social media only trust their own networks. This phenomenon isn’t completely new. There have always been political movements or parties that deny facts. But with fake news, it’s easier to be destructive in social media. It’s much easier to spread lies. You can spread more fake news in the time that it would take to understand one real news story. Also, dramatic news, even if it’s fake, gets a lot of interest. Like the story that Pope Francis was supporting Donald Trump.

Why are people so easily manipulated by fake news? I think the problem is we all still have to get used to social media in some ways. We still think quantity and quality are connected. If we read something twice, four times, twenty times, we start to think there must be something behind it, even if it’s nonsense. And the problem with fake news is, even if it’s proven to be false, there always remains a glimmer of doubt. Also, because everything is connected on the internet, we don’t have independent information anymore. Even a journalist trying to verify a story with two independent sources might have the problem that he or she cannot be sure they aren’t somehow digitally connected. During the shopping mall shooting in Munich last year, a well-known terrorism expert spread news of further – it turned out, fictitious – attacks in the city. Apparently, he had two independent sources on this, but they in turn relied not on firsthand information but on Twitter. This is a big problem in everything we do.

Populist parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) are very active on social media and attract high numbers of followers. Does that mean populists are more media-savvy? First, there is a good reason the AfD and its supporters are using social media, because they consider the established media to be biased against them and not reliable. Therefore, they look for different channels. Second, a lot of this social media activity around AfD, Pegida (the anti-Islam, xenophobic movement that first emerged in Dresden in 2015), and the new right movement in Germany is created by very, very few accounts, or by very few people behind many accounts. There is a lot of automation or manipulation of these social media trends, especially when it comes to these parties. Half are fake. I can’t prove it for every user but there are users systematically liking every post on every Pegida page. Suddenly you have users that like 30,000 posts a month.

It doesn’t mean they are all bots. There are also trolls or people who are very engaged, sitting at their computers for hours on end posting and liking. We identified one pensioner in Erfurt who has spent at least eight hours a day for the last one-and-a-half years in front of his computer, writing hate posts against refugees. He’s not even getting paid. He thinks he serves Germany that way.

So the type of election campaign we saw in the US, extremely polarized and targeting individual voter groups on social media and manipulating opinion – are we going to see that in Germany this year too? Society in Germany isn’t as polarized or as segregated as in the US, so it will definitely be different. But our election system would allow for targeting different voter groups. I think 2017 might be the last more or less traditional campaign we’ll see in Germany. And it’s very important to have a real discussion about what’s going on in the public sphere beyond the election of 2017 because I think we’re about to witness a disruptive change in public opinion and democracy. I’m really wondering if the public sphere is changing fundamentally. Will we still have elections that are equal, free, and secret? Because all of this is definitely going to change voting – maybe for the good, but right now it looks a bit frightening.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2017 issue.

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© REUTERS/Yves Herman

Europe is entering 2017 with an acute sense of helplessness. Internal crises and external pressure have driven deep wedges between the European Union’s 28 (or probably soon 27) member states. The rise of populism has stoked new fears, especially with key elections in three major EU countries this year. The era of post-truth politics and the influence of fake news have cast a long shadow, especially over those battling to forge responsible, lasting policies on both sides of the Atlantic. Russia has destabilized the European Union by flexing its muscles at home and abroad. Further crises in Europe and beyond have triggered debates over security and migration, and they are tearing at Europe’s fabric.

Uncertainty and unpredictability have paved the way for new actors who peddle simple solutions: nationalism, a weaker Europe, isolationism. They are threatening to topple the entire Western liberal order – the very foundation of European integration. And their dissent is drowning out the voices of those who dare to defend liberal societies, Western values, and the joint development of European, Western, and global structures. With Donald Trump in the White House, Europe might well lose its most important ally in the democratic liberal order.

Time to Act

Even if President Trump does not carry through all of his campaign promises, Europe will soon have to get used to an America that builds its foreign policy exclusively in its own interest, with little consideration for mutual concerns. The European Union can wait and watch, and run damage control. Or it can take the reins and lead Europe back to a position of strength. Only then might Europe be considered  a valuable counterpart to Washington. But before the EU can begin to forge a cohesive foreign policy, it must first and foremost mend the widening rifts within its own borders.

Without compromising on liberal principles, European policymakers must address the fears and frustration of those citizens who are drawn to populism and extremism. They have little trust in the current system or its elites, and it is crucial that Europe reaches a hand out to them – not least because populists here watched how Trump successfully redefined the boundaries of public discourse by polarizing groups and blurring the truth.

There does not seem to be much that EU countries share in common these days, but they have all witnessed a growing uncertainty, a sense of losing control. Identity has become a bitterly divisive issue in some member states, particularly as migration has taken center stage in the past few years. Other countries are battling deep-seated socioeconomic woes. The two are often intertwined: It is precisely those who struggle to make ends meet that are more likely to feel threatened by foreigners and prefer more borders, not fewer.

Inequality on the Rise

In these uncertain times, the European Union is more often seen as part of the problem than the solution. Brussels is perceived as the shepherd of liberalism, an abstract power that unlatches borders and renders national governments unable to protect their own citizens or economies. The European internal market has been the motor of Germany and the EU’s overall economic success, but it also created systemic inequalities. Germany has exhibited steady and robust growth, but in weaker states, GDP has yet to reach pre-crisis levels. Unemployment has surged in a number of member states, particularly among youth. Millions of young Europeans have no prospect of finding a fair and respectable job. Tax competition within the EU has seen capital and entire labor forces shift from one member state to another. All of these factors only serve to reinforce the sense that Europe is far more a burden to than an advantage for many social groups.

It is no wonder then that a growing number of people are starting to question the social and economic policies of the last few decades. That makes Europe, like the US, prone to protectionism and isolationism; both offer false hope to those who feel left behind. And free trade has become a central target in the debate over Europe’s future. Mass protests hamstrung negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). It is the first time in the postwar era that the exchange of goods and services sparked such hostility.

But the EU failed to look after the growing number of people on the wrong side of Europe’s liberal market policies, and it is now paying the price. There is no longer a consensus that free trade and investment pacts are in the EU’s interest, and the European Commission (Europe’s chief negotiator) is not on equal footing with partners like the US. If this trend continues, Europe will be greatly weakened in its ability to have a say on regulation and global standards on issues from the environment to consumer protection to financial stability.

Some of these problems can be resolved on a national level, but others cannot. If Europe is truly to become more competitive, more balanced, and more resistant to crises, we need a long-term strategy for dealing with debt and deeper reforms on eurozone governance. On social policies, we will need greater participation from some member states to combat rising political and social instability. The complete and utter lack of effective stabilization instruments is yet another argument in favor of overhauling the EU budget. Brexit negotiations provide the perfect opportunity to do so, as the EU will have to recalibrate the budget without Britain’s contribution.

It is not just economy and trade, though: the visa-free Schengen zone and Europe’s liberal asylum policies are also the subject of much debate. Now more than ever, the EU must demonstrate its ability to guarantee strong internal security and effectively fight terrorism, even with open borders. That will mean more systematic cooperation and intelligence sharing. And Brussels will have to demonstrate that it can regain control of immigration, by forging agreements with countries of origin and transit, for example, or by instituting external border controls. The objective formulated at the EU summit in Bratislava of exercising control over external borders is just as important as developing a long-term common immigration policy.

It is neither politically nor legally easy to remedy the weaknesses of an incomplete European system, particularly when it seems near impossible to revisit existing treaties. But that is no excuse not to act.

The EU’s Stress Test  

Issues of economic development and migration have the potential to divide the European Union further. It will be all the harder for Brussels to stem the trend if the US is no longer the force of cohesion in the West that it has been over the last few decades. From Brexit to Russia, the Obama administration worked closely with its European partners (especially Germany) to present a united front over the last eight years, even if Obama’s “pivot to Asia” gave the impression that America was starting to look further afield for new partners.

With a new administration that is at best indifferent to Europe, the task of keeping the European Union together will be left to us and us alone. Washington’s ability to polarize Europe through its foreign policy aims should not be underestimated, either. If the White House chooses to mend ties with Moscow, for example, the consequences for European and German policy on Eastern Europe will be significant. And if Washington decides to drop sanctions, it would completely undermine Brussels’ entire strategy for dealing with Vladimir Putin and Eastern Europe. That would threaten to open up deep chasms within the EU: Some member states would align with Washington while others would not.

The relationship between the US and the UK could prove to be another stress test for the European Union. If Washington and London revive their “special friendship” with a bilateral trade deal or closer defense cooperation, the impact on the EU’s ability to negotiate Brexit would be critical. And it would stoke fears in Brussels that other member states might believe there are far more interesting alternatives to the current union.

It is all the more important that Europe develop its own strategy on how to deal with a changing of the global guard. The transatlantic partnership has been the bedrock of German and European foreign policy since the end of the World War II. Even when there were bitter disagreements over the Iraq war, for example, there was always cooperation in times of crisis. Europe, especially Germany, could always rely on the US’ guarantee of security without contributing much of their own.

Dealing a New Hand

Donald Trump has completely reshuffled the deck, and it is completely unclear how he plans to deal the cards. During the campaign, he vowed to make changes that would threaten to upend global security and global order.

There are two possible scenarios for Europe: in the best case, the Trump administration will continue the current course but pull back from its commitments to the EU and NATO. That means some member countries will have to take on more responsibility, a trend already set in motion after the Wales summit in 2015, where NATO states committed to spending at least two percent of GDP on defense.

The second scenario is far more problematic: The new US government might directly challenge the pillars of international order if it sees a chance for a better deal. That approach could take aim at everything from the World Trade Organization to the United Nations. Trump’s White House might destabilize the nuclear deal with Iran or the Paris Agreement on climate change. If Washington decides to sanction the torture of suspected terrorists, it would demonstrate blatant disregard for international law and seriously undermine its credibility.

If Europe is to gain insight into Trump’s positions and strategies, it must establish as close a connection with his administration as possible in the first few months of his presidency. From the EU’s perspective, Brussels will have to actively work to exert influence on key stakeholders in Washington early on, in order to prevent the global order from breaking down further along the road.

Europe must demonstrate a strong commitment to security and defense policy. Its NATO members have to make clear that they intend to honor their defense obligations, not only by spending more but also by improving cooperation and integration among EU countries. That would serve to remind Washington just how important its alliance with Europe truly is. Above all, Brussels must demand clarity on whether the security guarantees that have existed until now will continue to exist – not least because Russia sees the current political upheaval as a testing ground. At the same time, the EU and Berlin in particular would be wise to remember that military means are only one instrument; stabilization and development policies are also central pillars of foreign policy.

As for the importance of international order and regulation, the Europeans would do well to warn the US against undermining existing structures. If not, regional competition could gain the upper hand. If more organizations like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) begin to crop up, Western-oriented institutions, like the World Bank, begin to lose their effectiveness – and their ability to ensure good governance. The US, too, would stand to lose influence.
Defending Open Societies

As the US considers retreating from its role as a global policeman and regulator, other world powers are already filling the vacuum. As soon as Trump vowed to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), China positioned itself as the engine for trade in the Asia-Pacific region. The concept of spheres of influence, which both China and Russia strongly defend, is on the rise. Europe can only be effective if it creates a common policy for both countries, but efforts to do so have been disrupted by Moscow and Beijing seeking bilateral deals and cooperation with individual member states.

It is up to Europe to stand up for its values and ideals of freedom, and it should continue to uphold them as the basis for transatlantic cooperation. Defending liberal democracy both at home and abroad has become Europe’s most important commitment. In order to maintain its credibility abroad, Europe first of all needs to overcome its own internal struggles. This will require more decisive European policies on issues like economic and social policy for euro area members, and, for other countries, the possibility of looser integration than our current standard. The challenge for the EU will be to master differentiation without allowing it to turn into accelerated disintegration.

Externally, on foreign, security, and defense policy, Europe has to take more responsibility in this increasingly volatile world where Western global structures are being targeted. Germany and France should work closely with Poland and other partners. This should include engaging the UK on this issue parallel to Brexit negotiations.

The current state of the EU is proof that incomplete integration is dangerous. In the beginning, the European Union enjoyed an unprecedented period of expansion and cooperation, but Brussels didn’t keep up the pace on political integration. The temptation to withdraw now is great. If the EU allows that to happen, it will come at a great price.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2017 issue.

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