@jensstoltenberg What’s the most important skill for your job?

@berlinpolicy The ability to build consensus.

@jensstoltenberg Tell us about an unknown unknown you’re thinking about.

@berlinpolicy I have learned to expect the unexpected. New security threats can arise quickly. Readiness is key.

@jensstoltenberg What was your immediate priority when you started the job?

@berlinpolicy Keeping #NATO strong. Must keep bond Europe – North America rock solid & work w partners to build stability.

@jensstoltenberg What’s on your desk that might surprise us?

@berlinpolicy A photo of Anna Lindh. From our teenage years through her tenure as Swedish foreign minister, she was a dear friend. I honor her memory.

@jensstoltenberg What’s the biggest obstacle for you at work?

@berlinpolicy As many #NATO colleagues will agree, just getting to work can sometimes be an adventure – Brussels traffic is famous.

@jensstoltenberg What do you do at lunchtime?

@berlinpolicy In Norway, lunch is @ 11 a.m. By the time of Belgian lunchtime, I am hungry for a good meal & discussion. I rarely eat alone.

@jensstoltenberg How would you increase public enthusiasm for NATO?

@berlinpolicy I  will visit every #NATO country. Everywhere I stress that NATO will defend all allies against any threat.

@jensstoltenberg What’s the most constructive thing #NATO could do about #Ukraine?

@berlinpolicy  Support UKR politically&practically, incl w 5 trust funds. Call on Russia: respect UKR’s sovereignty & territorial integrity.

@jensstoltenberg Is the Red Phone to the #Kremlin still working?

@berlinpolicy #NATO has suspended practical coop w Russia, but we keep political & mil-to-mil channels open.

@jensstoltenberg How do you relax at the end of the day?

@berlinpolicy I love to go cross country skiing, but not really that easy in Brussels. Instead biking in the woods.

@jensstoltenberg What’s the biggest challenge to #NATO that doesn’t start with “R”?

@berlinpolicy Extremism to #NATO’s south. It has inspired attacks in our streets. We must fight terrorism & stand up for our open societies.

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Source: Transatlantic Trends 2014

The rift that has opened up is complicated, reflecting divergences on both sides of the Atlantic. Americans on the political left still see Europe positively and hope to work with the EU on international problems, while those on the political right are looking inward. At the same time, Germany – which has become, for better or worse, Europe’s sine qua non, and which is particularly sensitive when it comes to spying issues – has less and less interest in transatlantic cooperation and greater interest in an EU that operates on its own.

In 2014 the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends survey found that Germans in particular see the US less favorably than they used to. They still want Washington to play a major role in world affairs – a majority virtually unchanged from 2013 confirmed that – but they are not necessarily thrilled with the role Washington is playing at the moment: 40 percent described their opinion of the US as unfavorable, a ten percentage point increase since 2013, and the number who said they did not approve of US President Barack Obama’s international policies doubled from 19 to 38 percent. More than half say the EU should take a more independent approach in international affairs.

The Germans are not alone in their reluctance to work with the US. About half of French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and Swedish respondents surveyed give the EU priority when managing relationships with Russia, China, and the Middle East; only about one in ten wanted to work with Washington. Poland was the only exception: about 20 percent of Poles would prefer to manage these relationships with the US, while slim pluralities would prefer to operate independently.

On the American side, an overwhelming majority of Americans – 73 percent – wanted the EU to play a leading role on the world stage. However, broken down by political alignment, this actually reflects a left wing where support for a larger EU role is nearly universal (85 percent) and a right wing where it is slightly more tepid (67 percent). The same pattern emerges, in fact, whenever the EU comes up: Three-fourths of Americans on the left have a favorable image of the EU, compared to only 61 percent on the right. A plurality on the left (46 percent) thinks the US should work more closely with Brussels; a plurality on the right (40 percent) thinks Washington should take a more independent approach.

The pattern grows even starker when Americans are asked about their preferred partners in different theaters: Nearly seven in ten on the left say the US should work with the EU on Russia and the Middle East, and half say the same about China; meanwhile, over half of American respondents on the right think the US should manage its relationships with Russia and the Middle East on its own, and 60 percent say the same about China.

The US is still, by a wide margin, Europe’s preferred non-European partner – especially in Germany. When our sister publication Internationale Politik asked in October 2014 whether the US was still the countries’ most important ally outside the EU, 68 percent said it was, while a quarter disagreed. (Of the latter, 39 percent preferred China, 27 percent Russia, and six percent India.) While the recent poll “Reliable Allies”– conducted by the Pew Research Center and the Bertelsmann Foundation in spring 2015, before the latest controversy about alleged collaboration between Germany’s foreign intelligence agency (BND) and the NSA – found German-American relations in solid health, there was a noticeable drift in terms of how the debates are framed in the US and Europe. On TTIP, for instance, Americans tend to worry about job losses, while Germans are concerned about lowering food, automotive, and environmental standards.

It is difficult to say how recent BND-NSA revelations will affect opinion of the transatlantic relationship: Will the United States look better if even European agencies are shown to be prone to overreach? Or will this make cooperation look even more corrosive? The transatlantic relationship is still strong, but it shows wear and tear in a few places – and right now, that is something it can hardly afford.

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(c) REUTERS/Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency

What separates the free West can be understood neither through geographical or cultural categorization nor through idealistic abstractions: Western values are valid not only for those in the “Occident,” for citizens of certain countries or members of specific tribes, religions, or schools of philosophy, and their true worth only becomes clear when their mortal enemies threaten to extinguish them.

Yet it was never certain that murderous jihadist campaigns would remind Western societies of their unique inner strengths and the merits of their freedom-based political and social achievements. In France, popular opinion sought the reason for terrorist excesses in deficient domestic social conditions – the French interior minister even spoke of an “apartheid” between French society and Muslim immigrants. And in fellow EU member state Greece, a questionable coalition was formed between leftist and rightist nationalist parties, bound as much by their affinity for Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule as by the anti-American strain of their opposition to Europe’s transatlantic ties.

The ability to criticize and correct oneself is an unquestionable element at the heart of the Western model of democracy. Yet Western self-doubt has its own pitfalls. In the global political power game, the West continues to lose ground, often appearing overrun by growing global threats, with reaction speeds ranging from inert to lethargic.

Reluctant Engagement

The US only recently overcame its long resistance to intervening militarily to stop the spread of the Islamic State (IS) across Iraq and Syria. Yet it soon became clear that while air attacks could slow the spread of this horrorible militia, they could not destroy it. IS was able to establish state-like structures across wide swaths of Syria and Iraq, a half-mythological jihadist terrorist state financed not least by unabashed criminal activity. This once-unthinkable force is a new element in the history of terrorism, as well as in the process of disintegration the Middle East is currently experiencing. Now, successfully squelching the worldwide Islamist terror threat seems further away than ever.

Those profiting most from halfhearted US engagement (not to speak of that of the Europeans) are Iran and Russia. In the shadows cast by IS, their ally and minion Bashar al-Assad has been able to solidify his dictatorial power over Syria – even if only over a portion of the country. There is a kind of unspoken agreement here: in exchange for Assad being left alone by the West to engage unencumbered in his destructive campaign against his own people, the Syrian dictator and his backers in Tehran and Moscow will tolerate US air attacks on Syrian soil without screaming bloody murder over American violation of international law. As a result, reliable sources report that 2,100 people were tortured to death by Assad’s henchmen over the past year, and over the past four years 12,000 prisoners were murdered through a combination of starvation, lack of medical care, and torture in the regime’s cells.

The difference between Assad and ISIS is in fact only in their degree of shamelessness: the latter murders its enemies in public and gloats over its horrific crimes in front of the entire world, while the regime in Damascus, with the support of Russia and Iran, hides its transgressions. For this reason, the Western public rarely takes notice of the latter – otherwise it would show outrage similar to that displayed toward IS’s atrocities. Even worse, a growing number of Western voices argue that it is better to come to terms with the “lesser evil” of Assad, and with the Islamic Republic of Iran as a purported “stabilizing factor.”

In fact, this appears to be the path that Washington and Obama are now following. An atomic agreement with Iran is one of the US president’s highest priorities. The selection of supposed reformer Hassan Rouhani for the office of Iran’s president has nurtured the Western illusion that the Islamic Republic could be rebaptized a reliable partner in the new Middle Eastern security architecture.

In reality, however, the Iranian regime continues to pursue not only its brutal and repressive domestic agenda, but also its aggressive, hegemonic regional policies. Iraqi territories not occupied by IS are now controlled by the pro-Iranian militias that have terrorized the Sunni population for years, and a pro-Iranian militia recently took control of power in Yemen. The Tehran regime continues to lead its atomic negotiations under the premise that it will not relinquish its potential weapons program, instead compromising just enough to have international sanctions lifted.

While the West fails to develop its own groundbreaking future perspective for the Middle East, Iran is wasting no time in forging an anti-Western alliance across the region. Iran and Russia just signed a military agreement under this exact premise – and this at the same time that Tehran threatens Israel openly with attacks carried out by Lebanese Hezbollah. This Iranian-led militia murders in Syria alongside Assad, thereby gaining access to Chinese- and Russian-produced short-range missiles.

At the same time, the West clings to the idea that Russia is, after Iran, an indispensable ally in the restabilization of the region, a premise often introduced as one reason why Putin should not be too harshly rebuked in the Ukraine conflict; the destructive role that Russia actually plays in the Middle East is rarely addressed.

Helpless Western Maneuvering

Western global policy disorientation cannot be attributed entirely to the West’s decreasing importance in relation to other rising powers in the oft-touted multipolar world order. It is also an expression of a deep crisis of Western feelings of self-worth, an ever-growing doubt that the universal values it defends are applicable to “foreign cultures.” After the painful experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan – which led to a hurried and prematurely announced Western retreat – and the dreadful disappointment of euphoric expectations awakened by the Arab Spring, democratization as a strategic aim for the Middle East has nary a Western supporter remaining. At the same time, a simple return to complicity with established despots is also impossible. The regional enemies of the West recognize its paralysis, taking advantage of it to carry out more and more brazen offensive maneuvers.

The degree to which the West is currently being run over by global developments was shown dramatically by the reaction – especially among Europeans – to Russia’s policy of aggression and annexation in Ukraine. While Western nations finally brought themselves to impose economic sanctions in response to Putin’s increasingly militarized hybrid warfare tactics, the unity of the EU’s Russia policy was so clearly fragile that the Kremlin’s leadership remained unfazed in the face of the collapsing Russian economy.

Putin does not lead like a Westerner, putting top priority on increasing the prosperity of his country; instead, he has shown himself willing to sacrifice the well-being of the Russian citizenry to maintain Russian power. This positions him to take advantage of some of the West’s enduring vulnerabilities: Putin was able to massively intensify his secret war in January at the exact moment when Europeans could no longer bring themselves to further increase sanctions. And as for the German government’s contribution, while Berlin took a strong position against Putin in principle when it condemned both the annexation of Crimea and the arming of eastern Ukrainian separatists as running counter to international law, in practice the German government has maintained a language of equidistance from the beginning rather than clearly differentiating between aggressor and victim. The numerous appeals, most notably from Social Democrat (SPD) Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to “both conflict parties” to return to dialogue suggest the meeting of two actors of equal political and moral footing. Berlin’s leadership has taken great pains to avoid stating the simple reality that Russia’s military activities in eastern Ukraine were not only an injury to the sovereignty of its neighbor, but in reality an invasion which Kremlin propaganda has made little effort to disguise.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mantra that there is “no military solution” to the conflict – as if Putin hasn’t been pursuing exactly such a military solution for quite a while – is the result of the staggering illusion that the Kremlin leader can be led back to the path of international law through some persistent expert horse whispering. Merkel’s steadfast stand on this position, resulting in both her categorical refusal to deliver weapons to Ukraine and her public statement that Putin would not be impressed by Ukrainian militarization, has concrete consequences. For one thing, the chancellor is fundamentally incorrect: Putin, who respects no principle other than a hierarchy of power and superpower and who holds the West in contempt for its “decadent” frailty, can be impressed by nothing less than a clear demonstration of strength and decisiveness. His logic is the same as Stalin’s, who once derisively commented, “The Pope? How many divisions does the Pope have?”

Categorical refusal to provide military support for Ukraine from the beginning, thereby reinforcing Putin’s sense of invulnerability in the earliest stages, was a grave diplomatic failure, amounting to the delivery of defenselessness to the aggressor on a silver platter. Former high-level German diplomat and security expert Wolfgang Ischinger’s proposed strategy to use the potential of weapons deliveries to Ukraine as a form of diplomatic pressure on Moscow was entirely on point. Similar to the NATO double-track decision from the late 1970s and early 1980s, the message to Putin must be that we in the West are willing to forgo arming the Ukrainian army if Moscow will grant substantial concessions – otherwise, we will do it. That successful diplomacy requires concrete threats is a lesson from International Security 101. In the case of the conflict with Putin, this basic wisdom appears to have been fundamentally forgotten.

Historical Revisionism as Weapon

Putin has introduced historical revisionism as a weapon in the disinformation war with the West. He hammers away at the Western public with the idea that his regime and his war with Ukraine stand in a long, proud tradition of Red Army victories over Nazi invaders, whereby the Ukrainians take on the role of “fascists.” That the Red Army was not only the Russian army but also the army of all nations of the Soviet Union – including Ukraine – is glossed over entirely, much as the fact that there were a large number of Russians – and Ukrainians – who collaborated with their Nazi occupiers. This creates the impression that Ukraine was once in league with Hitler’s Germany rather than a victim of invasion, a country subjugated by its Nazi occupiers and plundered to the bone.

Putin’s attempt to stylize the Soviet Union as “humanity’s savior from fascism” – thereby reducing the Western allies to at most marginal actors – and to reclaim this inheritance for himself lies in bold contrast to the fact that the Kremlin chief is also a generous supporter of radical rightist parties across Europe, providing financial support for everyone from France’s Front National to openly neo-Nazi Jobbik in Hungary. What is more, Putin has succeeded in unifying the allegedly mortal enemies of European leftist and rightist radicals under the flag of anti-liberalism and anti-Americanism, manifest in the groundbreaking Greek coalition government of leftist and rightist nationalist parties.

Putin’s cynical instrumentalization of anti-Nazi consensus is not without effect in the West, especially in Germany. The Russian president will play this card in a grand display timed to coincide with early May’s Victory Day celebrations, and whoever strays from his glorified representation of the Soviet Union’s unblemished anti-fascism may find themselves the target of Russian propagandists and their amplifiers, criticized for their historical relativism and vilification of the grand sacrifices made by the Soviets in vanquishing national socialism.

There is, however, another source of sympathy for the Kremlin in Germany: the feeling of thankfulness for reunification, the biggest historical gift received by the Germans in the 20th century. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Helmut Kohl, Horst Teltschik, Hans-Jochen Vogel, not to mention Helmut Schmidt – practically every member of the generation of politicians who were architects of German reunification or who promoted the policy of detente – have in the wake of the Ukraine conflict spoken out as empathetic advocates of powerful Russian interests. The elder statesman’s credo is: Only when robust, close relations with Russia are ensured is Germany’s security and prosperity guaranteed. This conviction, the result of successful reunification, is buried deeply in their collective consciousness. In fact, it is now clear that the years 1989-90 carried different significance for Germans and for Eastern Europeans, especially the Balts and Poles: while the latter countries saw the retreat of the Soviet Union as a result of their persistent struggle for freedom, the German sense was rather that the peaceful fall of the USSR was above all a result of Gorbachev’s intuition and magnanimity. Dogged diplomatic trust-building measures, it is believed, led to internal clarification processes in the previously aggressive Soviet Union.

What worked in the case of a totalitarian power long believed unassailable, so goes this faulty German logic, must also succeed with Putin. In order to buttress this narrative, the elder statesmen must indeed gloss over large sections of their own success stories. Schmidt, Genscher, and Kohl were all on the front lines of formulating and enacting the NATO double-track decision, which was in fact the major turning point in Soviet policy. Only when the Soviets understood that Western nations were in fact prepared to arm themselves and it was clear that they could not keep up in another arms race did Gorbachev’s reform ideas finally receive due consideration.

In the end, the policy of detente was only possible in the shadow of a massive deterrence strategy – and it is exactly this element that is missing in response to Putin’s neo-Soviet and greater Russia expansionism. His massive military might and his unabashed support for extremist leftist and rightist parties have yet to convince Europe’s elites that he is a strategic threat for the entire continent that must be met with a similar level of armament. Instead, we hear repeated claims that no one wants to provoke a new Cold War and that it is essential to avoid anything which could escalate the conflict with Moscow further – this despite the fact that Putin has been waging a Cold War for quite a while, and keeps escalating the “hot” conflict in Ukraine. The probability continues to rise that Europe will be forced to abandon its peace strategy sooner or later – with Ukraine and its hopes for democracy paying the heaviest toll.

Is Truth Really Relative?

It is not only open sympathizers of Putinism in Western Europe and apologists for a misunderstood policy of detente who open a gateway for the Kremlin’s propaganda maneuvers in the West. There are also structural changes in the Western public’s state of consciousness that have over the years lain the groundwork for the lackluster defense of Western values. This effect could be called the principle of postmodernity, a school of thought that claims there is neither a singular nor an objective truth, but rather many subjective truths fed by various personal experiences. As a critique of dogmatic world views and closed ideologies, such relativism at first seems to fit with the understanding of freedom in pluralistic democracies, their functioning based on the mutual respect and balancing of contradictory political and cultural views. In liberal democracies, no one final truth can or should be forced upon everyone; rather, we construct partial truths through debate between various differing interest groups and societal positions, truths which are repeatedly questioned.

In its most radical form, postmodernism suggests that there are no objective criteria to identify the differences between reality and fiction, between opinion and rumor, or between truths and lies. Everything, so it is believed, is interpretation, merely a reconstruction of reality – a reality free from subjective bonds simply does not exist. What over time appears either true or false depends only on the power relations between the given actors to anchor their interpretation of reality in the central consciousness of their society.

Driven by criticism of power, this postmodern school of thought ultimately blurs the differences between democratic and authoritarian power. Even the Western promise of freedom appears in this light nothing more than one element of any number of stories of domination serving the justification of existing power structures. The reverse side of this general suspicion of Western values is an implicit sympathy for dictatorial and totalitarian regimes – the criticism Western democracies level at the conditions in authoritarian states is deemed hypocritical and hubristic, a way Western leaders seek to distract from their own questionable applications of power. What began as a libertarian impulse against every form of power resulted in the implicit affirmation of the legitimacy of dictatorships.

The communications revolution fed by the Internet and the growth of social media strongly advanced this leveling of perceptions of democratic and authoritarian power. The Internet is today seen by many as an informal countervailing power, balancing the supposedly prescribed truths of our leaders and their purportedly loyal “official” media outlets. In this view, every piece of “information” distributed over the Internet, however absurd, receives the same weight as traditional sources of news or analysis.

In the most extreme variation of this ultraskepticism, every piece of information supporting the Western view of the Ukraine war appears per se suspicious – a manipulated lie fed to us by our leaders. A powerful Russian manipulation factory systematically fabricating propaganda and feeding it to the media utilizes this shocking inability of the public to evaluate narrative truth to its advantage.

The middle-class milieus that during the Cold War were relatively immune to such propagandistic influences – at that time also widespread – are today dissolving. In their place an ever more divided Western society is developing, floating in an ocean of unavoidable currents of information and disinformation, in which a fundamental skepticism of its own Western values reigns.

This tenor overlaps in significant ways with the authoritarian ideology of Putinism, in which human rights and democratic freedoms are viewed as creations of Western propaganda and in which universal Western values are touted as little more than camouflage for Western imperialist interests. Russia is thus even more justified in forcing its interests upon others with amoral violence, according to the sinister and paradoxical conclusion of the Kremlin’s ideologists, since the West also engages in exactly the same behavior. This false logic resonates not only with leftist and rightist Putin supporters, but also among sections of the political and societal median. Thus, Putin’s regime is carrying the destruction of moral legal standards now underway in his own society into Western societies as well.

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Many, myself included, find these speeches reassuring. They ease the minds of policymakers that feel overwhelmed by world events and breed transatlantic confidence at a time of considerable uncertainty. But are they right? Even if one assumes that the West has the ability to shape today’s complex security environment (which is by no means a foregone conclusion), one has to ask if it possesses the will, innovation, and resources to actually do so. In truth, what Europe and the US are actually doing in response to the changing face of geopolitics makes what they are saying far less inspiring.

Unimaginative “Reforms”

There is no question that the West deserves high praise for the creation of a global network of international institutions, laws, treaties, and norms. From the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank to the OECD, the West has invested decades in building, maintaining, and reforming the bedrock of the international order. With emerging powers, revisionist powers, and non-state actors actively challenging that system, though, how much is the West doing to either counter or adapt to those challenges?

The heads of major international institutions will tell you “a lot,” rattling off a long list of internal reforms over the better part of the last two decades. But such reforms have done little to halt Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bomb attacks against the Syrian people, the rise of Islamic State (IS), or China’s aggression in the East and South China Seas. Why? Many of the oft cited “reforms” are simply too unimaginative and timid. By tinkering on the margins, these reforms do little to get at the heart of the challenge. Bold structural reforms on the scale of revisiting the consensus rule in NATO or the veto on the UN Security Council are considered impossible, counter to our interests, or too high risk.

The West seems to have forgotten, though, that it did not come to be the architect of the global system in the 1940s and 1950s by avoiding risk and relying on conventional approaches. Quite the contrary, the individuals that built that foundation often took considerable political, professional, and strategic risks both at home and abroad. In fact, several of the obstacles that policymakers faced at the time – a disinterested public, resource constraints, and high stakes negotiations with friends and foes alike – resemble some of those we face today.

Take popular support: Similar to the retrenchment instincts present on both sides of the Atlantic today, American and European publics in the late 1940s were skeptical about the value of creating new international institutions that would require making long-term commitments to the economic prosperity and security of Europe. Those that worked to build a new liberal order, therefore, often put their political careers on the line and fought tirelessly to counter the skeptics, who were sometimes inside their own administration. This was particularly true for President Truman who had to persuade members of his own inner circle, the US Congress, and the American public about the value of creating the Marshall Plan in 1947.

Of course, today’s era differs quite significantly from the post-World War II era. In the span of the last two decades, the world has experienced a dramatic diffusion of power, which means that the US and its Western allies can no longer produce and shape the outcomes they once did. Furthermore, the West is living in an era characterized by unprecedented interconnectedness in the shadow of globalization. As a result, both the international system and individual nation states are straining to respond to rising expectations, an array of domestic and economic pressures, and broader questions about the value of international cooperation.

Strengths to Build On

Despite these challenges, the West still benefits from a number of comparative advantages. It can build and run international coalitions like no other; its collective economic strength remains a powerful force in the global economy; its education system continues to attract students from around the globe; its economies have shown a remarkable capacity to repair themselves; and its values, while by no means admired by everyone, still serve as a beacon to many around the world. And for better or worse, the world still relies on the West to solve global problems and underwrite international security.

In order to adequately address today’s complex security environment, though, Europe and the US need to envision and promote change on the scale of what we witnessed at the end of World War II. Small-scale tactical shifts that avoid taking risks and fail to challenge the status quo simply will not suffice. We need leaders willing to buck the system, to get their hands dirty, and not only to think but to do the unthinkable. A bold, ambitious agenda that matches the enormity of today’s complex security challenges should include the following goals:

Launch and lead a global effort to redesign the international system so that it reflects today’s balance of power and is positioned to address today’s challenges, from the rise of non-state actors to asymmetric warfare to the diffusion of technology. If the UN refuses to alter the composition of the Security Council, it is time to consider a more inclusive architecture. In establishing the rules and distribution of power of any new model, however, the founders should consider countries’ past behavior. In other words, countries that act primarily as spoilers or have repeatedly violated global norms should not be rewarded with a leadership role in the creation of future structures.

Lead the world in the establishment of global norms in a number of new areas, including cybersecurity, unmanned and autonomous systems, genome editing, and disruptive technology like 3D printing. The West, particularly the US, prides itself on its ability to innovate, which has brought tremendous economic and technological benefit. Occasionally, though, countries like the US fail to foresee (or prefer to deny) the challenges that such innovation may someday bring to the global system and instead take advantage of the fact that few rules exist around a particular technology’s use. This is shortsighted. While establishing global norms is no small task and inevitably involves trade-offs and often years of tense negotiations, the West needs to reassert its leadership role in this area.

Break down the barriers that prevent international organizations from working together. The EU and NATO, for example, have struggled for years to find ways to establish institutional links. But age-old objections tied to the situation in Cyprus have prevented anything of real substance from taking root. With global challenges such as cyber- and energy security straddling the mandates of both institutions, the West can no longer afford to keep these two institutions on separate planes. The only way to develop innovative policies and tools to cope with a range of cross-cutting issues is to abolish longstanding barriers to cooperation. That should also include the barriers that exist between the public and private sectors, especially in the area of cybersecurity.

Double down on efforts to promote and finalize the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic clearly see value in establishing a new trade agreement that would provide much needed growth, position the two sides of the Atlantic to set global standards in a number of sectors, and send a clear message about the US and EU’s willingness to open markets. But their approach to date has been far too risk-averse and rooted in the hope that the merit of their arguments will ultimately win the day. Just as Truman launched an ambitious campaign to educate the American public about the Marshall Plan, Washington and Brussels need to launch their own engagement plan that would answer tough questions, directly engage stakeholders, and counter the anti-TTIP narrative dominating the debate. This project’s value stretches far beyond creating jobs and boosting exports but one would never know that from the way the two sides are promoting it.

Develop an international home for global forecasting and risk assessment. In 2014 the West was caught completely off guard by not one but three separate international crises – Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the rapid spread of Ebola, and the rise of IS. While it is impossible to predict with certainty where the next crisis might erupt, the West should find or create an international forum for global forecasting where groups of countries can prepare for the unexpected. The West should also dedicate resources to collective risk assessment. One possible starting point would be an examination of the risks involved in the gradual collapse of the international arms control regime. Russia is in direct violation of the INF Treaty and yet the West is still spending most of its time wordsmithing the documents for the next NPT Review conference. What the West should be doing is discussing tectonic shifts that could lead to additional noncompliance, a complete withdrawal, or decreased prospects for future agreements and how the West might prevent such shifts from actually occurring.

Europe and the United States share a truly breathtaking record of achievement, one that remains unmatched by any other two regions of the world. But admirable past achievements simply aren’t enough to lead us into the future. This era of compounding complexity demands leadership, bold ideas, new models of doing business, and unbridled ambition on a scale we haven’t seen in several decades. There are countless reasons, though, why today’s leaders may not rise to the occasion. Our publics are weary, resources are scarce, and the relentless pace of social media makes it difficult to maintain strategic attention. The West has also experienced some sobering lessons in recent years about the limits of US and European power. But one of the lessons of the last seventy years is that when the West marshals the right mix of will and leadership, it does indeed have the ability shape the world order in unimaginable ways, even in less than perfect conditions. The real tragedy, therefore, would be not if the West tried and failed to take on such an ambitious agenda but if it did not try at all.

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(c) REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

While the Bundestag is wrestling with the implications of the most recent spy scandal, the ex-Communist Left Party (Die Linke) has access to the secrets of Germany’s three intelligence agencies: the domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), whose spying on Germans until recently focused also on Left Party parliamentarians; the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD); and the foreign intelligence agency (BND).

Now the Left Party’s André Hahn, chair of the PCC, has been indirectly accused of leaking secret documents to the media. In return, he has hinted that the documents were leaked directly by the agencies themselves and that his oversight committee had not even seen them. Welcome to a country where questions of national security are routinely used as ammunition in political squabbles. Welcome to a political class that still cannot understand why American and British intelligence services might deem it necessary to spy on them now and again, if only to find out who is telling what to whom.

The most disturbing aspect is: the Germans consider NSA spying or the cooperation between it and the BND scandalous, but not the fact that confidential information has been leaked. Nor did anyone cry foul when Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, in fact, used leaked intelligence material to lay a trap for Chancellor Angela Merkel: It appears that back in 2006, America’s National Security Agency (NSA) asked the BND to check out two European companies, EADS (now Airbus) and its subsidiary Eurocopter. Nobody knows what the NSA was looking for – possibly attempts to subvert the sanctions against Iran. But Gabriel – who is also economics minister – lost no time in describing this as “industrial espionage.” He went on to say that Merkel had “assured” him twice that these were the only two “German” companies (they are, in fact, multinational) that had been spied on by the BND.

This seems unlikely. German companies have a sorry record of dealings with unsavory regimes, from the Mullahs’ Tehran to Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad to Putin’s Moscow. If any more companies turn up (and, given the porous nature of the spy agencies, that could happen at any time), Merkel will stand accused of lying.

It was, of course, no accident that Gabriel, a member of the SPD, chose to unleash his revelations a week before elections in Bremen, where his party stood to lose votes to Merkel’s CDU. But German media patted Gabriel on the back for his indiscretion, because he had found a chink in the iron chancellor’s armor. Nobody questioned his use of the term “industrial espionage” or the wisdom of using secret intelligence material to score points.

Admittedly, Merkel was asking for it. When in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations it became clear that the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were spying on German politicians – even tapping Merkel’s cell phone – the chancellor publicly declared that “friends don’t spy on friends.” This was a stupid thing to say, as she must have known better. Shortly afterwards it turned out that the BND had tapped US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s cell phone – but only “inadvertently,” according to the official explanation. Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, Merkel convened a meeting of Germany’s European partners to agree on a “No-Spy Treaty,” under which EU members – “friends” – would not spy on one another. This PR exercise – shortly before the last general election, incidentally – was a dig at the British, who of course were not going to sign any such agreement. All the while, however, the BND was spying on hundreds, possibly thousands of European Union institutions and officials at the behest of their friends at the NSA.

A No-Spy Treaty is an inherently absurd proposition, as is the idea of “friendship” between nations. A husband might swear never to read his wife’s diary, but when jealousy strikes, his wife had better be sure her diary is well hidden. In the harsh world of international relations, you want to be sure that what your “friends” are telling you to your face is what they are saying behind closed doors. Trust, but verify.

Merkel could have said just that. She did not. She could have pointed out that the cooperation between the BND and the NSA is a valued part of our “friendship” with the US. She did not. She could have stated that it is illegal for the BND to spy on German citizens at home, and that there is no evidence that the BND did that – and, in fact, there is a lot of evidence that the BND routinely refused such requests by the NSA. She did not. She could have explained that it is not illegal to spy on European institutions and businesses and why such espionage might be necessary. She did not. Instead, she tried to ride the tiger of German anger at the Americans and the “scandal” of cooperation with them; now, though the tiger will not eat her, it just might bite her. Serves her right.

In discussions with American and British visitors, Germans like to point to the Nazi or Stasi past to explain their sensitivity when it comes to data collection. Nonsense. Every German regularly surrenders more information to the tax authorities and state Registration Office than a British or American person would deem acceptable. The Verfassungsschutz is the only spy agency in a Western democracy dedicated not only to tracking down real and present dangers to the state, but also to documenting “dangerous thoughts,” including those of Parliamentarians.

The problem with Germany is that part of its political class is politically immature. There is no discussion of concepts such as the national interest; the idea that there is not only a duty to control the security agencies but also to protect them is alien to most people. This is, potentially, much more dangerous than the possibility that the BND might have overstepped its remit now and then.

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They appeared late in February 2014, hundreds of heavily armed and well-equipped Russian speakers who suddenly popped up in Crimea. They wore no insignia, nothing to say who they were. And they seemed to have no commander – apart from common decency.

They were all extremely polite to locals, and hardly ever drew their fancy weapons. Their method of taking over Ukrainian military installations was not to storm in; instead, they kindly advised the soldiers to stay inside, and blocked their way out. There were only two “incidents” in which two Ukrainian officers were killed and another wounded.

President Vladimir Putin denied these polite people existed for more than a year. But other Russians had little doubt that the gentlemen soldiers who were busy being so polite in Crimea were their guys. NATO was equally convinced, although less impressed by their good manners. Later Putin admitted that, yes, the well-behaved soldiers were his.

Russian journalists and bloggers were already miles ahead. Boris Rozhin, who blogs as Colonel Cassad on LifeJournal, coined the term “polite people” back in February 2014. The name fit the soldiers’ role in the new hybrid war scenario, sprinkled with a touch of blogger irony.

Either Voentorg JSC missed this irony or doubled down on it. The firm, a leading supplier of nonlethal ammunition to the Russian armed forces, adopted the name “polite people” – even adding a photo of a soldier with a cat to create an all-Russia trademark.

The polite people are a sign of the continuing militarization of Russia’s foreign policy, and the Kremlin’s lack of respect for rules and norms. Political writers are increasingly – politely – accepting the idea that a hybrid war can be waged anywhere without formal announcement. If the troops say “please” and “thank you,” what’s the problem?

The other thing that the polite people demonstrate is how far the Russian armed forces have evolved over the past couple of decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s, nearly every Russian soldier was a conscript. Yet from 2005, the number of professionals in the armed forces increased from around 30,000 to more than 240,000, and the plan is to push this to half a million by 2022. That would be more than half of all men serving in the Russian uniform – that is, assuming they wear it.

All those sent to Crimea a year ago were contracted servicemen: well equipped, well trained, and psychologi-cally prepared to act even in controversial circumstances. Their politeness may have had less to do with their mothers teaching them manners and more to do with the fact they were far better prepared and armed than the Ukrainian soldiers they faced. In a way, they enacted an updated version of Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of speaking softly and carrying a big stick.

Could Putin be a polite person? Moscow is as calm as a judo black belt – it can afford to disrespect the rules and ignore the norms of international behavior because it outguns those it faces. And it can avoid a Western military response as long as it remains polite.

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(c) REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello

On May 13 the European Commission disclosed its new agenda on migration, which contains some innovative ideas, especially on how to reform the so far tragically ineffectual mix of control and protection policies at the EU’s maritime borders to manage the “mixed flows” of refugees and migrants desperately trying to reach the European continent. After months of tensions and tactical positioning, the agenda is certainly better than nothing. But for now it is just a set of coordinated proposals. They will have to be translated into detailed measures and will need to gain wide support from the EU member states and the European Parliament before a new European consensus can be built. Support, especially for refugee resettlement, is far from certain.

It is not the first time that the EU has tried to tackle the extremely sensitive and thorny issue of mixed flows migration at its highest institutional level. In December 2005, when the United Kingdom held the 6-month rotating EU presidency, the European Council launched a “Global approach to migration: Priority actions focusing on Africa and the Mediterranean” in response to some fatal attempts by Sub-Saharan migrants to jump border fences in Ceuta, a Spanish territory located on the African continent. And in the wake of numerous shipwrecks off Lampedusa, a Task Force for the Mediterranean was established in October 2013.

None of these moves have prevented new tragedies, instead death tolls have been climbing. So what is really new in this latest round of proposals, and what are chances of their successful implementation?

At the April 23 European Council meeting the only new commitment was to increase funding for Frontex operations in the Mediterranean. There was no substantial change in strategy. The statement said: “The European Union will mobilize all efforts at its disposal to prevent further loss of life at sea and to tackle the root causes of the human emergency that we face” (italics added). It would seem all efforts at the EU’s disposal stretch to €6 million more for Frontex and pledges of more staff, an unspecified number of places for asylum seekers and refugees (determined by the states), and a vague proposal to destroy traffickers’ boats. Is this really all the effort the European Union can muster?

Strengthening Frontex operations in the Mediterranean is a good step. But Frontex is explicitly restricted to controlling borders and cannot conduct proactive search-and-rescue operations (SAR). Many called for a European SAR operation – but the idea was not even on the table when leaders met. The problem? If you rescue people, you have to put them somewhere. If the EU takes responsibility for SAR (as indeed it should, in order to honor its own charter of fundamental rights) it will have to take responsibility for those it saves. That will necessitate some form of refugee redistribution, which is exactly what states have been resisting.

Ending the Impasse

The Council statement, and the declarations from EU leaders which followed, focused disproportionally on the concept of fighting human trafficking and smuggling as a way to reduce migration across the Mediterranean. This ignores the basic fact that smuggling does not cause migration, but meets a demand caused by the desperate wish of many to escape poverty and conflict in the face of shrinking channels of legal entry into the EU.

Establishing ways for migrants and asylum seekers to enter the EU legally would radically reduce the inducement to turn to smuggling operations and punch a hole in the trafficking business. Yet targeting smugglers the way the Council suggests risks making migration routes even more dangerous and expensive. This has happened before – when, for example, the Bulgarian-Turkish border was reinforced, shifting the migration route to the Aegean, and the islands there. The people who lose in this equation are those already most at risk – the migrants and refugees.

The idea of destroying smugglers’ boats, despite the severe legal and practical challenges, which were recently emphasized by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, is now firmly on the agenda. On May 11, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Affairs, Federica Mogherini, briefed the UN Security Council on Brussels’ intention to submit the draft for a “chapter 7” resolution with a few to gain authorization to “restore international peace and security.”

One should bear in mind, though, the way such a policy would be perceived on the Mediterranean’s southern shores. As one person we talked to in Tunisia recently put it:“They deny us visas and destroy boats. No wonder our youth are tempted by other destinations, equally dangerous but easier to reach, like battlefields in the Middle East.”

If the repressive strand of the EU’s response is fuzzy and on many levels questionable, the humanitarian strand is barely existent. There was no mention of a visa waiver or humanitarian visas for Syrians fleeing the bloodshed and destruction at home. And the crucial question of “burden sharing” – distributing the reception of asylum seekers and the processing of their applications – seemed too controversial to be even discussed by European leaders.

Even when the political discussion touches on resettlement and relocation, as it did at the European Council, member states resist committing themselves to taking a significant number of refugees. As long as these measures are presented as optional, member states will continue to ignore the problem. Even the ridiculously limited concept of resettling 5,000 people across the EU included in the first draft of the Council statement was absent from the final version. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said leaders could not agree on a number, but “felt that 5,000 would not be sufficient.” This resulted in a compromise of nothing at all and left resettlement, as usual, up to the goodwill – subject to domestic pressures – of each member state.

The May 13 agenda addressed this and included more courageous and forward-looking proposals, the most interesting of which is a mandatory scheme for redistributing asylum-seekers among all member states, based on a “redistribution key” taking parameters like the economic strength, population size, unemployment rate, and the numbers of previously accepted asylum-seekers into account. While this proposal was criticized even before it was tabled, with the United Kingdom and Hungary at the forefront, it outlines a way of softening the inner-EU frontline between the countries of first entry (especially Italy) and countries of destination (Germany and Sweden), which so far has caused a political impasse.

In the attempt to overcome resistance, the Commission has advanced a two-step solution. By the end of May, it will propose triggering the emergency response system envisaged by article 78(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which stipulates: “In the event of one or more Member States being confronted by an emergency situation characterized by a sudden inflow of nationals of third countries, the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, may adopt provisional measures for the benefit of the Member State(s) concerned. It shall act after consulting the European Parliament.” The redistribution mechanism will mean that the country where the asylum-seeker is relocated to will be responsible for examining his or her asylum application. The proposal needs a qualified majority vote in the European Council to be adopted, though, which is far from certain. Hence, as a second step, the Commission plans to launch legislation by the end of 2015 to establish “a mandatory and automatically-triggered relocation system to distribute those in clear need of international protection within the EU,” substituting the emergency measures.

Clearly, this would still only be a provisional and partial solution to a problem which calls for sweeping and long-term responses. But it would represent a way around sticky sovereignty questions that so far have brought nothing but political and humanitarian failures.

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Shortly before the visit on April 8, the erstwhile composure yielded to serious threats: Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament, warned Athens against splintering away from Europe’s unanimous response toward Moscow’s behavior in the Ukraine crisis. And even the EU Commission appeared entirely put out just the day before Tsipras’ visit: all member states, they argued, must speak to EU trade partners with one voice. This was not, however, a reference to Greece’s hopes for a natural gas price rebate; instead, Athens desired exceptions for fresh produce under the Russian embargo, Moscow’s retaliation against the EU sanctions. The Kremlin’s game – with its possibility of driving a wedge between EU states – was meant to expose the West’s sore spot to the world.

The Return of Geopolitics

Geopolitics is a concept that was locked up in Germany’s poison cabinet for a long time, certainly since the Berlin Wall came down. Thinking in terms of “political spheres of influence” and “economic spheres of interest” no longer fit into the view of a multipolar, interdependent world in which the United Nations would finally be granted the role long denied it before 1989. Whoever thought in such categories measured Europe as an equal in the coming game between the world (market) powers of the US and China only in combination with Russia in a Eurasian bloc. This explains why the German government’s statement at the start of the Ukraine crisis declared its association agreement was neither about securing geopolitical interests nor about pursuing some new “great game” strategy, but rather about creating a win-win situation for all participants: the EU, Russia, and Ukraine. Greece’s tactics forced the EU to recognize that it could no longer ignore real geopolitical challenges.

Following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Tsipras said something remarkable: “Certain people should stop making comments as if Greece is a debt colony.” Athens would continue to solve its problems within Europe – but as a “sovereign state” with the right to pursue its own foreign policy and to conclude agreements with states outside the EU. What followed were a series of diffuse statements: Tsipras recalled the common spiritual (Orthodox) roots of both countries, called for a new “spring” in Greek-Russian relations, and criticized EU sanction policy (despite Greece’s common responsibility for it). On the topic of the debt crisis, Tsipras’ speech should have validated Merkel’s composure, even if a few traces of doubt remained: This was a European problem that required a European solution, he underlined. Putin did not offer any form of bailout, instead talking of loans for giant infrastructure projects, above all energy projects: If Athens would come on board with the planned Turkish Stream pipeline project – an alternative to the recently shelved Bulgarian South Stream pipeline – then it too could become a “geopolitical actor.”

As a reminder: Turkish Stream (like South Stream before it) is a Russian attempt to deliver Russian gas to the EU bypassing transit through Ukraine. At the same time, it is a perfect opportunity to undermine EU efforts to access Caspian gas reserves via a Transadriatic pipeline while bypassing Russia. Putin’s addendum to Tsipras that Moscow was not attempting to “convince or coerce anyone to do anything” sounded rather unconvincing coming from him. Brussels reacted to Moscow’s offer by pointedly stressing to Athens that such communal projects nevertheless had to meet EU guidelines – which South Stream had failed to do because of the monopoly Gazprom would then have enjoyed.

Even as Tsipras has been careful not to cross out of bounds in his tactical dances in Athens, he is nevertheless playing a dangerous game: Simply hinting at the possibility of somehow circumventing the conditions of “the institutions” (above all the Troika of the EU Commission, IMF, and ECB) by hoping instead for aid funding from the Russian budget is itself a (nearly) singular act of European solidarity erosion at the time of its most significant security policy crisis since the end of the Cold War.

Would direct assistance loans to Athens have meant that Moscow would influence future Greek foreign policy? Especially considering the EU sanctions which required the unanimity of all 28 member states? Especially considering the NATO resolutions requiring the same? These are counterfactual “What if …?” questions, however, since clearly Putin did not have the money to invest in another broken economy. And whether or not the funding perspective for large infrastructure projects has the same effect of positioning Athens within the EU and NATO in the end remains to be seen.

Grexit’s Political Repercussions

Why has the EU been unable to turn this situation on its head? Why could it not signal to Tsipras early enough: Good riddance?

At the start of the year, then Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos told a Greek newspaper about a 2011 conversation he had with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. In a long discussion at a hotel bar in Wrocław, Poland, the latter recommended his colleague consider a “friendly” Greek exit from the eurozone. Venizelos, according to his own version of events, was able to convince the German that even a soft return to the drachma would unleash dangerous consequences for the entire eurozone. Schäuble’s ministry responded to Venizelos’ anecdote relatively cursorily: Private conversations do not warrant public comment.

At that time, it was mostly a matter of the economic repercussions of Grexit on the EU, the eurozone, and on Europe’s leader, Germany. That all changed at the beginning of 2015 as Brussels and Berlin followed the Greek elections in horror. At the start of the year, Grexit scenarios reappeared in German political debate. Given the populist leftist Syriza party’s announcement of its intention to end austerity measures, discussion of the scenario again became matter of fact. In short order, new thoughts appeared: The common currency area was more prepared today than it was in 2011 or 2012 for the Athenian crisis. The eurozone could no longer be extorted. In this way, the impression spread that Berlin was preparing itself for the worst-case scenario. The federal government found itself in a dilemma: It could neither dismantle the factual impression that it prepares for all eventualities, nor could it deny that the eurozone was now fortified with mechanisms minimizing the risk of contagion.

Tsipras won the election, leading to a new round of bets on Grexit. Only shortly before the EU summit in March did the chancellor decide to extinguish the fires; in a policy statement read before the Bundestag in advance of the Brussels meeting, she quoted herself, “I have said repeatedly: if the euro collapses, Europe collapses.” That was the formula tossed around at the apex of the crisis in order to justify contentious rescue measures. Merkel became clearer, if not singular, in her message. Interpretations keeping Athens in the eurozone at any cost, she had determined, simply went too far: Tactically, because the chancellor would otherwise have put Tsipras in an advantageous bargaining position; and strategically, because she otherwise would have decreased her own room for maneuver.

Tsipras’ late March visit to Berlin made clear what was significant to the chancellor on both levels. Tactically, she wanted to dispel the impression that neither Greece’s reform program nor an extension of the rescue measures was being decided in Berlin. It was not Germany, but rather the group of EU finance ministers who would decide about further loans. This message is – as contradictory as it may seem – enormously significant to her both domestically and within her own party. There is both an ever growing number of representatives within her own party that no longer want to bear the costs of euro bailout measures, as well as opinion polls in which a majority of Germans feels the same way. Yet Merkel has long ceased making fundamental political decisions on the basis of daily fluctuating opinions, instead keeping her own political legacy in mind. From that viewpoint, Merkel is chair of the “Europe party” – a “real European” who carries the idea of Europe in her political DNA. Her chancellorship will one day be measured by whether or not she was able to hold the European Union together in the face of its dual crises.

So is 2015 then the same as 2012? If Athens falls, so falls the euro, and so falls Europe? Has the eurozone not come any further than this?

Ballast or Case Study Theories

Of all the theories and scenarios that have been played over repeatedly in Berlin’s finance ministry or Frankfurt’s European Central Bank, one has in the meanwhile been sifted out which three or four years ago would have spread panic: According to domino theory, Greece’s eurozone exit would have immediately led to the financial markets keeping a close eye on other heavily indebted southern European countries. Spain and Portugal would fall like dominoes. Should the chain reach France, the euro would be history. This theory has been shot down by the German government: Today’s ESM bailout fund has created a powerful pool of money to supply governments under pressure with cash – half a trillion euros’ worth. At the same time, the southern flank is nowhere nearly as vulnerable. They also point to bank stress tests.

Without the domino theory, there are only two remaining: the ballast theory and the case study theory. The first is pushed by a handful of economists who argue that the eurozone must rid itself of the Greek exception in order to strengthen itself: Without the weakest link in the chain, the entire chain will become stronger – and the EU institutions will gain trust. It may be possible thereby to slow down both the costs of political repercussions of the crisis and the success of euroskeptic and anti-EU parties. The lender countries would have to accept posting financial losses: Germany alone would be responsible directly and indirectly for approximately €65 billion. A large portion of that money would be gone for good. The German government considers this theory economically risky and overly apolitical: the bankruptcy of a eurozone member would have no historical model and no one could predict the consequences under real conditions. The desire to actually test this theory is low.

Grexit would set a precedent. The case study theory contains multiple layers: a fiscal policy level, a European policy level, and a geopolitical level. Beyond all eurozone consequences, Grexit would have enormous consequences for Greece itself: a new currency, a devaluation in relation to the euro, struggling banks, bankrupt companies, even higher unemployment levels – in short, social unrest and political upheaval. Brussels would have to provide this EU member balance of payments assistance. And it is not as if the eurozone would be problem-free without Greece. As far as the eurozone goes, it would nevertheless be troubled by middle- and long-term concerns, even if the German government no longer had to worry about immediate contagion in the case of Grexit. It would no longer be the cause of an expanding crisis, but would nevertheless have created a precedent. What would happen when, for example, a short while later a Spanish bank goes under, the state steps in to save it, the eurozone intervenes – would the existing bailout mechanisms truly be enough? Grexit would mean that the formula “The eurozone is the eurozone is the eurozone” would no longer add up. What types of wagers would we see on the financial markets then? That Spain becomes the new Greece? That the eurozone will save Spain at any price, just as one said for a long time about Greece? The economic stability provided by the ESM would again be in doubt following the loss of political trust caused by Grexit.

An Athenian exit from the eurozone would set a precedent in another sense as well. For the first time since the Treaty of Rome, the “ever closer union” and the consistent advancement of European integration would be thrown into question. What effect would this have this on the United Kingdom where a referendum on continued EU membership looms? David Cameron is hoping to renegotiate the EU treaties and kill once and for all the narrative of “ever closer union.” The European project would be derailed – and the German government holds no illusions who would be held accountable: within the EU, Berlin would be accused of lacking solidarity; the US, too, would see Germany as the culprit, as Washington from the beginning of the euro crisis held the view that Berlin should put its money where its mouth is and solve the issue once and for all.

Unlike in 2011 or 2012, the dangers of Grexit are not fundamentally of an economic, but rather of a political nature. Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s CDU/CSU party, said back in March that no one could want to see Putin rubbing his hands at the spectacle of a collapsing Europe. This phrase was surely directed at those CDU/CSU MPs who are fed up with Athens. The domestic political calculus of his words, however, does not undercut the foreign policy analysis. “The world is watching us,” Merkel said in her introduction of the “If the euro collapses, Europe collapses” formula. Earlier many would have considered this phrase too dramatic, but she has stuck with it. Next to the EU institutions, the euro is the strongest expression of the European will to unite its peoples in peace. Following Tsipras’ Moscow trip, this phrase harbors an alarming timeliness.

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(c) PICTURE-ALLIANCE/Mary Evans Picture Library

This in fact refers to Greece’s situation in 1991 – and the déjà-vu today has spectators rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Giant mountains of debt? Crushing state deficits? Warnings from the European Commission? IMF? Since 1991, nine prime ministers have promised to reform, restructure, and modernize a state that at the time of its EU accession in 1981 was still pre-modern, and that even today at its structural core is ruled by feudal Ottoman tendencies. More than €100 billion in development funds have flowed from Brussels to Athens since 1981, and yet the country is still built on sand, living from olive oil, citrus fruits, sunshine, and beaches alone.

Rather than investing in competitive technologies, real incomes rose 40 percent in the first eight years following the introduction of the euro. The bankrupt country has been saved from bankruptcy since 2010 only through the extension of lines of billions of euros in credit. How is it possible that Greek politicians have promised reforms of the health care and tax systems, of government bureaucracy, of social security, of the labor market, and of the public sector, and yet not one single thing has changed? And why does Greek society not demand these reforms itself? In order to better understand the phenomenon, let us examine some of the basics, using Euboea, Greece’s second largest island, as an example.

House-Building, an Odyssean Adventure

When Rena Voria, 44, looks out of her windows, she feels gratitude and joy. Mountains, fields of wildflowers, and knotty olive trees surround her. On foot, she can reach Krieza in just five minutes – a typical village, tiny and sleepy, with just 250 residents, a handful of streets, one plumber, two butchers, a town hall, and a church with a steeple full of nesting storks. The residents make a living selling handicrafts, the elderly keep chickens and sheep. Voria has taught high school English in the neighboring city of Aliveri for the past 13 years. Shortly before the economic crisis began, she and her husband built a house on the outskirts of Krieza.

“It was an odyssey of a thousand adventures,” she says. “The property rights were totally unclear. This piece of land had never been assessed by the land office.” Even today the state still has no exact overview of its own territory, its coastlines, mountains, lakes, or forests. It does not know where its own land holdings begin and where they end. The size, location, use, type, and ownership titles of properties get lost in approximations – and with them an exact measure of the property taxes that should be leveed. Ever since gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830, Greece has been cobbling together a land registry, one that is still unfinished. “Deeds are created out of thin air,” explains Voria. The only things necessary are a notary and an entry in the land registry. Whoever would like to own a piece of land, perhaps for their grandchildren or for a vacation home, clears the space and plants olive trees, puts up a fence, and magically produces witnesses who will testify to a notary that the land has been private property since Adam and Eve – and with its subsequent entry in the land registry, the piece of land legally becomes private property. An estimated 450,000 acres of land are thus illegally under private ownership. Until just a few years ago, land was transferred exclusively via dia logou, another way of saying inherited and sold.

The Vorias, however, were careful to buy the property only after it had been entered into the land registry.

Three years later their house was finished. Their ownership odyssey took them through shadowy worlds, past topographers, lawyers, and notaries, to the forestry agency, the archaeological and tax authorities, through the world of building permits, straight to the heart of a legion of stamp-wielding civil servants. Some wanted bribes under the table, some took an entire year to do a task that should only have taken a day, many said they were not responsible for the applications in question or their processing. Rarely was an application complete – they were forced to return with ever more additional paperwork requiring additional stamps from additional offices.

A Paradise for Tax Fraud

Further, every contractor supplied invoices far below the actual price paid by the Vorias. Not even the official receipt for the purchase of the land itself was accurate, despite the fact that two lawyers were present at the signing of the deed as required by law. This is a nationwide practice, and a situation well known to everyone involved: the land registry office, the judiciary, the tax authorities. Buying property is the most effective means of laundering money. “Even the building contractor didn’t think twice,” says Voria. He failed to account for the down payment of €2,000 in his final invoice. The couple is still waiting for him to return their money. Suing him for the amount makes little sense. “The building contractor is betting on that fact,” she says. The judicial system is simply inefficient. The administrative courts have a backlog of over 800,000 cases. To appeal a case from the lowest to the highest level takes almost 13 years; three years will pass before a case of tax evasion can even appear on the court docket.

Despite all of these difficulties, the Vorias are content with village life, untroubled by noise pollution, traffic, or frequent strikes. Yet the idyll is misleading. Since the euro’s introduction, the island has become an easy getaway for Athenians. Through 2010 Euboea was riddled with construction. Coastlines and mountains fell victim to unrestrained development. Next to Aliveri, on a bare hillside with an ocean view, a new development with 500 houses – mostly weekend homes – appeared within just eight years.

Water supply is a huge issue. Nearly every month in Krieza or the surrounding villages, a water main breaks or the pumps stop working. The dilapidated infrastructure is from the 1960s when the Regime of the Colonels delivered electricity and running water to Greek villages. Today’s crisis is the result of decades of patchwork.

“The water quality is catastrophic!” says Kostas Lathouras, 51, a painter, plasterer, and handyman. “At the coffeehouse they serve bottled water with your coffee. That’s how bad the tap water is.” It makes stainless steel rust – village residents blame lime levels, Lathouras blames other aggressive substances. He tried to view the results of the last water quality analysis at the communal water supplier in Aliveri. Two tests per year are mandated by law. The office clerk gave him the mobile number of a supervisor. Lathouras called the number, but the person he spoke to claimed that he was not in charge; Lathouras was transferred again and again until he landed back at the office clerk. For the past three years, the city has performed no tests on its drinking water quality, claiming there was no funding for it. Such an analysis costs just €200.

Vote for the Mayor, Get a Paved Driveway

Lathouras was born in Sydney, returning to his parents’ village at 21. He is proud of his Greek heritage. But the fact that the city chooses to invest its money in projects like a cobblestone square featuring a bust honoring a hero of the revolution against the Ottomans rather than in overdue maintenance of the water supply network makes him seethe with anger. Standing on the new square in Krieza, he estimates the construction costs to be around €30,000. “The actual costs, however, are almost certainly 50 percent higher,” he believes.

For such projects, the city invites tenders and collects bids. In the end, whomever the contract goes to has to negotiate two sums: the paper sum and the real one. The difference is divided by ratio and pocketed. This nationwide practice is well known by citizens, the tax authorities, and the state.

In order to maintain their offices, the mayor of Aliveri, his six vice mayors, and the 48 local superintendents start sprucing everything up shortly before the local elections. Suddenly, sidewalks are repaired, squares are renovated, and whoever votes for the mayor is rewarded with a paved driveway to his barn.

The state follows a similar, if grander pattern. How is it possible that Greece’s most powerful construction company appears to have a renewable subscription for large governmental projects? The three kilometer-long Rio-Antirrio Bridge, the Attika tollway, the new Acropolis Museum, the Olympic sporting facilities – all projects of the enterprising Bobolas family. And preceding every parliamentary election the number of state employees rises and tax revenues fall. Shortly before the European elections in 2014, Charlis Theocharis, head of the Greek tax authority and Troika-mandated chair of an independent special commission for tax revenue, announced firmer controls on and harsher punishments for tax evaders. After that, Theocharis was quickly removed from office. So long as the political caste continues to limit both the diligence and the efficiency of the tax authorities in order to guarantee its own power, fortunes, and continued political existence, Greece will continue to rack up budgetary deficits. Over €70 billion in outstanding taxes are missing from the state’s coffers.

Close behind the square in Krieza stands the town’s three-story town hall, complete with underground parking and conference rooms, built in 2006 with EU structural funds. The building is large and modern, much larger than that of neighboring Aliveri, which is counting twenty times more inhabitants than Krieza. It houses eight employees who provide birth, death, and marriage certificates and maintain the water supply. If a pipe breaks, one of the employees sends the village plumber and a bucket excavator to the site. If a water meter is broken, a repairman is sent. Or not. For years, many homes have not had functioning water meters. It does not matter whether their usage is one or one thousand cubic liters per month, the bill is always exactly the same – a kind of water flat rate in a country selling off its national fleet of limousines in order to make a show of saving money. If the issue is raised, town hall officials simply nod – but nothing ever changes. Everyone in the village waves it off. “They’re being paid to do nothing,” is a widely shared view.

Getting Ahead the Greek Way

Since Greece’s founding, the state has traditionally been the largest employer. While the salaries are not always ample, the positions themselves are rock solid, and liberal working hours and lax monitoring make it possible for many to hold down second jobs – tax free, naturally. To score a job at city hall is not difficult. Qualifications are beside the point. What is needed to get employment – or a permit, or some other benefit – is connections, pure and simple. The politician Vyron Polydoras serves as a perfect example. In May 2012 he was elected president of the parliament for a single day, preceding the parliament’s near-immediate dissolution. Without hesitation, he assumed his duties and hired his daughter to work in the president’s office.

Receiving state employment income without ever going to work, raking in money on faked health insurance invoices, paying taxes on an income twenty times smaller than the real wage, building houses how and where one likes despite strict building laws, claiming a disability pension despite perfect health, falsifying invoices and cooking the books on the side, paying bribes at the tax office, the building authority, the hospital, customs, the public health office –these large and small deceits cannot be pinned on the delinquency of any one specific group. It is a lived culture. There is no scandal that could spark true societal debate on the issue. Everyone always assumes the largest racket imaginable. Cheating is a national sport. Everyone practices it. And everyone has the same apology: “Everyone else is helping themselves. Why shouldn’t I?”

Everyone complains about the state and everyone dreams of a civil servant’s desk chair. Greeks love their nation, Hellenic culture, the Orthodox Church. But they distrust state institutions. The state is an enemy. It holds its hand out at every opportunity. It is corrupt and corrupted, it fights corruption and creates it, it often makes its citizens’ lives difficult, but sometimes also sweeter. Its bureaucracy is a nightmare, a labyrinth of long corridors filled with dusty files. Its civil servants refuse to take responsibility, are incompetent, and take anyone needing their signature hostage. At the same time, the state is a resource-rich land of milk and honey. Every accountant, mayor, and minister enters this paradise as a conqueror. The plundered booty is shared in the safe harbor of the family. This is a world view that has been passed on from generation to generation for generations. Why support reform when it results in a loss of personal gain? Especially reforms that are, in the eyes of many, imposed from outside. Reforms that require a cultural and mental shift, and therefore both understanding and consent. The responsibility for delayed, impeded, and sabotaged reforms lies not only in the hands of the politicians: the votes of citizens contributed to the country’s economic decline. And the European Union looks on without intervention.

“People are tired of reforms and demoralized by saving. The word reform doesn’t stand for making necessary improvements, but rather for digging deeper in their pocketbooks,” explains Panagiotis Karkatsoulis. He sits in his Athens office and talks himself into a fury. Karkatsoulis, 57, selected by an American organization as the best civil servant in the world, is a lawyer and reform expert. He is a policy adviser in the Ministry for Administrative Reform and e-Governance and now a member of parliament for the leftist-liberal To Potami party. Rather than first analyze the finer details of the governance jungle and then prepare the information necessary for reform, the state continuously cut salaries and fired personnel. “A short-term fiscal gain that will lead to long-term catastrophe,” he says.

The problems preventing reform of the country are enormous. “The state apparatus is antiquated, overregulated, and hypercentralized.” The administration suffers from overlapping structures. Public service positions have no clearly defined duties or responsibilities. Competencies are divided across various agencies that sometimes contradict one another. The central administration has amassed 23,142 regulatory competencies that are constantly changing. A diagram illustrating how a single competency travels between myriad state structures would look like a drunken game of connect the dots.

Greece desperately needs transparency and control. The newest set of taxation reforms had hardly been passed by the Samara government at the behest of the Troika before they were watered down and torpedoed by ad hoc minister resolutions granting exceptions, loopholes, and benefits to certain interest groups. Reforms that took months to negotiate are being undone through the back door.

The reforms which actually trickle down to the offices of the tax authorities and city halls often have no application in reality. “The biggest stumbling block in implementing reform is clientelism,” says Karkatsoulis. Clientelism is like a climbing plant that has evolved over decades into a jungle. It proliferates in laws, climbs up regulations, sets roots in city hall, in parliament, in political parties, and has anchored itself in everyone’s minds. It has them all in a choke hold. It controls them. A society built an entire state on clientelism. State administration and political parties have been eaten away by it.

“Only a big bang reform can put this ship back on course,” argues Karkatsoulis. But this would require external political pressure. The reform delays of thirty years cannot be undone so quickly, despite Syriza’s robust promises. No single government will be able to renew the entire state administration. Karkatsoulis’ call for a big bang reform will remain unheard; the political costs are simply too high. Too many profit from the system of dependency. He understands why the majority of the population supports the government in their hard tack against the creditors. “The citizens don’t want reforms, but they want to keep the euro. That isn’t a contradiction. Greeks have many identities. We are flexible. We are Europeans, and we are not Europeans.”

As long as the Greeks receive nothing in return for their taxes, as long as there is inequality in taxation and a lack of socially balanced policy, as long as politicians avoid principles of transparency and merit like the plague, as long as clientelism continues to be fed by streams of money, as long as anything and everything except the common good can find its own selfish lobby, as long as an entire society insists on its benefits, privileges, bonuses, and perks – the retirees and the state employees, the politicians, the self-employed, the union members, the farmers, the truck drivers and kiosk owners, the church, the soccer clubs, even the Panhellenic Union of Rabbit Hunters – people will continue to expend all of their energy and creativity in finding new ways to avoid reform.

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(c) REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

That was the broad thinking behind NATO increasing its presence in Eastern Europe and adopting its Readiness Action Plan at the Wales Summit of September 2014. Yet this focus on military means neglects the central role played by civilian tools in hybrid warfare, which include cyberattacks, propaganda, and irregular troops sabotaging infrastructure. Neither the annexation of Crimea nor the invasion of eastern Ukraine was initiated by an armored division; instead, the conflict was kept below the level regarded by the West as a military attack to which the EU and NATO would have to respond. Though conventional weapons may seem to be the first option at hand, they are often ineffective against these unconventional threats.

Hectic activism risks a two-pronged security policy miscalculation: first, overemphasizing the military dimension, both in the analysis of threats and the choice of instruments; and, second, planning to fight the last war all over again. Already, too many Western actors are talking themselves into a conflict scenario with Russia as the expected adversary and assuming it will follow the script of the Ukraine invasions. Yet this thinking is far too narrow.

The abiding lesson from Ukraine for Western security policy is: Europe remains exposed to existential threats and risks in too many areas, especially those that have been discussed since 9/11 as “vulnerabilities” and which constitute a core element of “hybrid” threats. These include home grown terrorism and the dependence on international networks, be they energy or data.

A new hybrid security policy needs to rethink deterrence. The military must remain an element – the primary objective of any deterrence policy is still the prevention of a potential attack – but since early escalation would seem likely to be aimed at non-military vulnerabilities, these weaknesses must be carefully considered.

Yet to deter hybrid threats, military means and logic are not enough – they must be supplemented. Answering like for like, however, retaliating with symmetric non-military means like counter-propaganda or the incitement of minorities would be highly inappropriate for EU and NATO countries: It would be illegal and certainly contested by domestic societies.

Instead, the response should focus on avoiding such an escalation by rendering the civilian structures of Western societies more resilient and thus more able to withstand attempts to exploit inherent weaknesses, while proactively addressing threats to Western infrastructure before they are allowed to escalate. Should deterrence and resilience not be able to prevent an attack, defense remains the necessary response. This triad – deterrence, resilience, and defense – should guide the hybrid security policy of EU and NATO states in the future.

War by Civilian Means

The distinguishing feature of hybrid tactics is the use of civilian tools to influence violent conflicts. That is not new: It is a basic principle of strategy to employ all means to assert one’s interests, something that is most effective if done in an orchestrated fashion.

In hybrid conflicts, armed forces are not primarily a tool to exert military force: the 40,000 soldiers Russia temporarily deployed at the Ukrainian border were primarily used to create a scenario of intimidation, acting both as a shield and a logistical hub for the unconventional forces fighting in Ukraine.

The objective of using irregular tools is to exploit the weaknesses of the target community in order to destabilize a state and polarize its society. It expands the gray area between peace and conflict – force can still play a part, but is not directly attributable to any party to the conflict, nor does it have a clear military character. This undermines the internationally recognized prohibition on the use of force by making it difficult to define – and makes it difficult for the international community to develop a coordinated reaction. Russia’s recent behavior has exposed Europe’s difficulties in responding to such hybrid approaches.

Beyond Russia: European Vulnerabilities

However, Russia does not have a monopoly on hybrid tactics – other actors can also use this kind of approach. NATO and the EU should break away from their stark focus on Russia and start thinking beyond the current crisis by making Europe’s general vulnerabilities the center of a hybrid security policy. These vulnerabilities exist in four areas.

The first remains Europe’s territorial integrity. The likelihood of a military conflict between EU/NATO and other actors has increased because, among other things, the region is militarily weak. NATO itself has admitted it is not prepared for a large interstate conflict. Other actors may be tempted to make use of this weakness to advance their own interests militarily. Such a scenario is of particular concern in the Baltics. Europeans would not be able to simply withdraw from a conflict on their borders – neither in the East, nor the South. This is one of the reasons for European states involving themselves in fighting the Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East and northern Africa; it cannot countenance IS entering the continent.

Second, political disunity could make Europe vulnerable: The Ukraine crisis has shown that Europe can only wield influence when united. Bilateral negotiations and national measures against Russia would be ineffective. Yet, in view of the different priorities of its members, European unity cannot be taken for granted: the Baltic States (where annexation by Russia still runs deep through collective memory) and other eastern states feel directly threatened by Moscow, yet other countries in the south and west do not see Russia as their main problem – France, for example, is concerned with instability in the Sahel. The difficulty of clearly attributing hybrid hostilities can also widen differences in interpreting the Ukraine conflict. These factors can drive wedges between European states.

Third, Europe is vulnerable due to the dependence of its societies on global infrastructure and free flow of goods, services, people, and capital. Russian energy supplies are a perfect example of this, as is Internet communication and other modern infrastructure, as well as more traditional trade. The openness from which Europe profits makes it susceptible to disruptions of its global interdependencies.

Fourth, the pluralism of Western societies can be exploited. One significant lesson from Ukraine is that a conflict can emerge from internal destabilization. Many European countries are worried about how to deal with people who return home after fighting for IS abroad. Add to this the vulnerability of infrastructure such as water and power supplies, as well as transport, finance, and economic systems. Many are now privately owned and may not stand up to conflict conditions.

A Hybrid Security Policy

The Ukraine crisis can and should influence the strategic direction of Western security policy – it has exposed significant European vulnerabilities and should provide a stark warning that other actors could apply hybrid tactics in the future. Europe’s security policy needs to take on hybrid threats using a three-pronged approach of deterrence, resilience, and defense.

Deterrence: Military conflict – as a conventional war or as part of hybrid warfare – remains a risk for which Europeans must prepare. Cold War deterrence was primarily military and nuclear. The Ukraine crisis prompted NATO to strengthen its conventional forces to transmit a clear signal, anchored in the Readiness Action Plan, which is to be implemented by the 2016 Warsaw Summit.

Yet this begs the question of the future of nuclear deterrence. Over the past months, Russia has nuclearized the confrontation by demonstrating the operational capability of its nuclear forces, such as increasing the numbers of sorties flown by strategic bombers. The overall Russian goal seems to be to intimidate its neighbors and NATO. Eastern European countries in particular fear that Moscow’s nuclear saber rattling could become a permanent feature – and that Russia could seriously contemplate using its atomic weapons. NATO needs to consider if and how it should adjust its nuclear strategy.

Another dimension of deterrence is civilian. The prevention of an escalation brought about by hybrid means requires fast and direct civilian tools to fend off attempts to exploit dependencies and weaknesses. Governments must work out responses to such things as restricted energy supply and cyber attacks. Internal security is crucial ­– functional and robust police, border security, and civilian administration structures.

Resilience: The interconnectedness and openness of Western societies bestow them with great strength, but also leave them vulnerable to attack. Societies have to be empowered to better resist and quickly recover from attacks on their values and everyday life. Better early warning systems and risk management will be essential. Weak spots that could be taken advantage of range from economic dependence to unhappy minorities and must be covered by protective measures, from infrastructure up to the freedom of the press and opinion.

The first task is to strengthen social unity. This demands managed migration and integration policies that regard diverse societies as worth safeguarding. These aspects must in turn be supported by economic, social, and education policies. It is necessary to enable minorities to integrate in such a way that they are less susceptible to sedition and radicalization. In the Baltics, for example, this could be achieved among other methods through improved youth outreach programs and Russian-language television programming. It is also imperative to better protect necessary infrastructure. The technical foundations of societies have to be resilient, and this requires the establishment of redundancies, networked structures, and alternative supply routes –in the field of energy, for example, through the diversification of sources.

Defense: Should deterrence fail, the defense of territory and national institutions against military attack remains crucial. But crisis management cannot be neglected, because EU and NATO states cannot guarantee their security by territorial defense alone. And in light of global interdependences they will be required to defend their security outside of Europe as well. Here, the military remains an instrument of last resort in acute emergencies. The use of political and economic tools to defend and support a stable international order has to be the highest priority, because such an order supports the openness and interconnectedness from which Europe benefits so tremendously.

Next Steps

Most opportunities to take action on hybrid security are at the national and regional levels, putting particular responsibility for such policies on states. However, states often do not possess the necessary instruments or possess them only to an insufficient degree. Therefore, they should develop a European action plan on hybrid security policy, bringing in EU and NATO resources. NATO can cover military aspects, but the EU is in the best position to take on civilian issues. It can most effectively assess where social, legal, and economic situations might be fragile within member and neighbor states. And it has the tools, such as in social policies and infrastructural support, to address such vulnerabilities.

The first step of a European action plan would be to identify where and how Europe’s unity is vulnerable and what the consequences might be should one state not receive enough support. The findings could increase the willingness of states to agree on mutual support and prepare for future crises with practical measures – before the next real crisis strikes. In a second step, the Europeans must better combine the existing instruments of security policy, risk management, and prevention – namely deterrence, resilience, and defense – and readjust the mix of civilian and military elements in this triad. Both require a reasonable division of labor and better cooperation between the EU and NATO.

Deterrence has been firmly anchored in Western security policy thinking since the 1967 Harmel Report. This now must be adapted to meet the challenges of hybrid aggression. Yet, this very report promoted a dual track policy and called for political détente while maintaining adequate defense. Thus, when creating and implementing a hybrid security policy, Europeans should also seek for de-escalation, in order to shape a common and cooperative European security order.

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