Europe’s Lack of Military Transport Aircraft; sources: IISS, EDA

The German Defense Minister’s proposal for a protection zone in Northeast Syria, voiced just after Turkey and Russia reached an agreement in Sochi that allowed Turkey to invade the north of the country, met with a lot of criticism within Germany and abroad. Indeed, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer left out the details. How did she imagine such a mission playing out?

On top of that, it was too late for the mission: now that Turkey and Russia already have forces on the ground in northeast Syria, the situation has become quite difficult. On the one hand, the Europeans cannot push them out because doing so would require threatening the use of force against Moscow or Ankara. Europe is unlikely to do that. Yet running the mission jointly with Russia or Turkey would only provide a fig leaf of de facto recognition for Turkey’s plan for ethnic cleansing in northern Syria and Russia’s support for Assad’s reign of terror. This needs to be avoided both for moral and political reasons. If the proposal had been in 2018, after Trump expressed his desire to leave Syria and abandon the theater, the proposal would have been more interesting—and perhaps more feasible.

But how practicable is such a proposal really? It is worth digging a bit deeper into what such a mission would have meant for Europe, whether in 2018 or 2019. Could the Union’s member states have replaced the US in Syria as guardian of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)? What would it have meant for European capabilities? The Syrian civil war has raged since 2011. While the refugee crisis in 2015 shook the political landscape in Europe, the war continued another 5 years without the Europeans coming to terms with what to do and how to do it. Although the war now might end with the victory of the Assad regime (and more refugees fleeing repression), Syria is not be the only unstable country in the Middle East and North Africa. Iraqis are protesting en masse. Algeria has to manage a transition of power. Egypt is only stable due to severe repression. Before 2015, the rationale of the German elite was that the traumatic experiences of World War II, in other words the prevailing pacifist and anti-interventionist political environment, would make it easier for Germany to accept one million refugees than to send 1,000 soldiers abroad into a risky combat operation. After the sharp rise of the AfD and the political turmoil the crisis caused in other European states, this rationale may no longer be valid. Thus the “what if” game is a useful exercise to remind us what could be done and what could not.

Shape and Ambition

Before one can determine whether the Europeans could have pulled out such a mission, one needs to think about what would the force have to look like and what the determining parameters would have been. The protection force would have to have multiple aims: to ensure the survival of the SDF and a non-Assad governed Northeast Syria, to deter both Turkey and Russia from an armed incursion, and to provide security assistance to fight Islamic State fighters and other insurgent groups.

The American military footprint in Northeastern Syria was relatively small—1,000 to 2,000 special forces that trained and advised local SDF fighters. However, in order to take over this mission, the Europeans would have had to deploy substantially more forces on the ground to perform the same function. Why? First, because American firepower is outsourced to the US Air Force—which has bases in Kuwait, Turkey (although no strikes are launched from there), United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—and the US Navy, which has a carrier presence in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. It can call in heavy strategic bombers from overseas bases—an asset Europeans don’t have. And more importantly, it conducts continual (electronic) reconnaissance flights from these bases, using both unmanned and manned aircraft to gain as much situation awareness as possible. Europeans do not have these assets, or only in very limited numbers. They would then have to rely on physical presence on the ground to be aware of new developments and threats, and they need conventional ground-based fire support to make a punch (tanks, artillery). Increased physical presence also means more logistics on the ground, and in a counter-insurgency theater, such logistical movements need to be protected against mines and ambushes, again expanding the number of ground forces needed to do the same job.

What’s more, the United States is an offshore balancer that can draw in sizable forces from beyond the horizon if necessary. Russia would ultimately risk nuclear escalation if it engaged US forces in serious manner. Hence even a very limited number of US troops would be able to deter any Russian-Turkish military incursion into Syria. By their mere presence, they create “no-go” zones for Moscow and Ankara. With European powers, things are not that clear. They might considerably hurt Turkey in the case of confrontation, but not at least because of the refugee issue, Erdogan believes he has as much leverage over the Europeans as they have over him. Russia could out-escalate any conflict with minor nuclear powers in Europe, although it is still be doubtful whether Moscow would really want to risk such an escalation over Syria (probably not). Still, the Europeans would have to field heavy forces, including a sizable number of armored maneuver forces into the theater to successfully deter an armed incursion by one of the neighboring states. This force could not just be the usual peacekeeping force. It would have to be able to stand its ground in major fights, such as those between US Special Forces and Russian-mercenary led Syrian forces in May 2018.

What Would the Mandate Be?

The mandate would have been another issue. Since Russia and China have continuously blocked any UN presence in Syria (including fact-finding missions on chemical weapons), such a mission would have to be carried out without a UN mandate. One way to legitimize a military presence in Syria without an UN mandate would be to recognize the SDF leadership as legitimate government and seek its consent. However, that would probably spark a Turkish full-scale invasion to start with, as preventing exactly this is Erdogan overall war aim. The third option would be to cite Europe’s responsibility to protect, as the extension of the rule of both Assad’s regime or Erdogan’s Turkey over the region would have dramatic consequences for the civilian population. While it is possible to make this, one should not believe that all European member states would follow this line and contribute troops. Even in Germany, where the idea originated, the political establishment would have to fight an uphill battle. And most smaller states would probably decline to send troops under any circumstances (their contributions usually are only symbolic, so in the end it would hardly matter).

Logically, the European force could not deploy and supply itself via the shortest and most convenient route, through Turkey. Doing so would create a logistical Achilles heel and make Europe politically dependent on Ankara—think of how the West has had to go through Pakistan to supply forces in Afghanistan. If Israel and Jordan granted the Europeans the right to fly over their territory (which is likely as neither Tel Aviv nor Amman has much interest in strengthening Assad in Syria) and conduct air operations from Jordan, there would be an air-bridge close to the theater of operation. But the bulk of the mission would need to be deployed and supplied via Iraq. The theater of operations in North-Eastern Syria does not have a large operational airport (Dei es Zur is on the other river-bank). Therefore, due to the lack of transport aircraft, the heavy equipment would have to be shipped to Kuwait via the Suez Channel and then transported via the land route. And those transport ships would have to be leased from the private sector or the US Sealift Command because Europeans do not have capacities on their own.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

Do the Europeans have enough forces to mount the mission? Well in theory yes, but it would still be tricky. According to the European Defense Agency, EU member states have 405,000 deployable land force soldiers. On paper only of course! Unfortunately, the most recent data set compiled by the EDA does not list the troops per country. The 2013/2014 booklet was the last to cite numbers for each country and hence provides an opportunity to check the numbers.

Overall, 276,395 land forces soldiers were deemed deployable in 2014, but due to reorganization in their armed forces, Italy and Germany at the time did not provide numbers. Both are professional armies, and assuming they would declare the bulk of their land forces deployable, the figure could well end up at 400,000. But that also illustrates how useless this number is, as no country would be willing or able to commit its entire army to one mission. Still, one should also look at the Eastern-Flank armies like Poland, Romania, or Sweden: their number of deployable troops plummeted in 2014, because most—even high readiness troops—got re-assigned to tasks of national deterrence and defense. This is a limited factor that needs to be taken into account: these states will keep the bulk of their forces, and particularly heavy, mechanized forces in their own country and not send them abroad – they simply fear a Russian incursion into their own country more than a Russian incursion into Eastern Syria.

Another, more useful number is that of sustainably deployable land forces. As there needs to be an alternation between training/formation, recreation, and deployment, only a limited number of soldiers can be deployed at the same time. This number should indicate how many forces a country could deploy over longer periods of time in a theater. In 2016, the 94,000 soldiers were earmarked as sustainably deployable. In fact, for many countries (like France, Germany, or the United Kingdom) this number represents the maximum number of personnel they could possibly deploy. During the heyday of Western interventionism in 2008, when most European soldiers were deployed, the EU member states mustered roughly 80,000 deployed soldiers, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2011, 71,000 soldiers from EU member states were still deployed abroad. But since then, defense budgets have plummeted due to financial difficulties, and in 2014 additional tasks of deterrence, reassurance and national defense against Russia were added. So while the number cited above looks fine on paper, the actual number of deployable troops will be considerably lower.

Again, a look into the 2014 data set provides an overview over the national distributions. Assuming roughly 20 percent of German and Italian forces are sustainably deployable, adding them would give us approximately the numbers of 2016. Hence one may assume that between 2014 and 2016 (and most likely now), there was very little change as armed forces are quite large bureaucratic apparatuses.

This has to be measured against existing commitments. In 2016, EU member-states had 35,000 soldiers deployed in missions. Existing missions could hardly be abandoned, so any new mission would have to come on top.  Again, comparing this to 2014 figures (if the German deployments were added, it would add up to roughly the same number), one can see the heavy commitment of France in particular to missions in Africa. The drawdown of troops in Afghanistan has, though, likely made more UK troops available.

Another problem would be the composition of these forces. Most deployable forces of smaller nations are light infantry units best suited for peacekeeping. They would be rather ornamental contributions in this scenario, without much practical value. Special forces would still be useful to fight ISIS, paratroopers, marines, and other elite-infantry units good at training and advising local SDF fighters. But then there is the issue of who would commit heavy armored forces to deter Russian and Turkish incursions. This would not only be the most expensive deployments; these forces would also face the greatest danger.

Here, only France, Germany, the UK, Italy, and Spain have heavy mechanized forces that are not immediately committed to national defense tasks. But given the dire state of real readiness (in contrast to strength on paper) of the Bundeswehr and the Spanish and Italian armed forces, as well as the already high commitment of French forces, it would to a large extent come down to London’s willingness to commit forces.

When it comes to the air war, the situation is similar. On paper, the EU has enough fighters. But in practice, the air forces of smaller nations are only capable of domestic air-policing. They are not meant to be deployed. Those air-forces who do have the capabilities to fight and be an effective air-support force in Syria already have existing commitments in many overseas territories. And aircraft and their crews need to rotate too.

Lacking Air Power

Nevertheless, judging purely theoretically, on the basis of readiness, roughly 180 tactical fighters (Eurofighters, F-16, Mirage 2000, Rafale, Tornados, F35) could probably be scrambled across the entire continent for an air campaign. Here the availability of airbases would be the most restraining factor. Only France has an aircraft carrier with full strike capability; all other planes would need to be based in Cyprus (extensively air-refueled), Jordan, Iraq, and with air-refueling, in the Gulf. So in fact there would be fewer fighters used, but Europe could provide them.

But the status of other key enabling factors is weaker. Only the UK has (a handful of) C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, which can carry a battle tank. With 50 percent readiness assumed for the A-400, 57 of them could transport other armored vehicles. The various C-130s have a lower payload and would only be suitable for light vehicles and follow-on supplies. Hence the bulk of the force would have to deploy by ship. This would take time and would give Russia and Turkey the opportunity to preempt such a mission.

Air refueling is an even bigger bottleneck. Assuming that heavy-loaded transports and fighters from distant bases need mid-air-refueling to transit to the theatre of operations, and assuming 60% readiness for its tankers, Europe could muster 15 A-330 MRTTs, and 2 KC-767s, and if France’s deterrence forces can spare it, then a single KC-135. Most of these aircraft would be British. Europe is even more reliant on London in terms of electronic reconnaissance aircraft and drones, where the UK either has unique capabilities or French counterparts are already committed. Still, even if London did weight in, it could only muster a tiny fraction of what the United States currently fields in the Middle East.

Now while this is just an approximation based on available data (EDA defense data and the IISS Military Balance 2019), the exercise is worth doing just to remind Europeans how precarious the situation regarding power projection and deployment is. Europe’s shortfalls on intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, air-transport, mid-air refueling, drones, etc. have been known for decades. But grand speeches about European strategic autonomy, a European Defense Identity, and a Defense Cooperation do not provide these assets—only hard money in procurement budgets does. Given the continuous unrest in the Middle East, the unreliability of the commander in chief in the White House, and the specter of Brexit, one should look twice at this theoretical game-play and ask oneself whether Europe can still afford to just muddle through in defense matters.

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“As the only vegetarian … we’ll have a damned tough time of it in a carnivore’s world.” Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s Foreign Minister at the time, reached for a metaphor from the jungle at the 2018 Munich Security Conference to describe the EU’s future in the world. He then called on the Europeans to develop a common understanding of their foreign policy interests and to more vigorously project the EU’s power in the world—including by military means, if necessary. Otherwise, Gabriel hinted ominously, the EU would not be able to safeguard a free, secure, prosperous, and socially just Europe. It would struggle in a world of growing rivalry between major powers.

Gabriel was right. The conditions for European foreign policy have changed rapidly in recent years. The EU currently finds itself in a world of great power rivalry and zero-sum thinking, with a rising and ever more vigorous China, a revisionist Russia, and a United States whose president sees the EU as a “foe” rather than a partner. In their tussle for international influence and supremacy, those great power “carnivores” resort to methods and instruments that put the EU under tremendous pressure. They also challenge European thinking about the very nature of international cooperation. Because the EU has always perceived other powers as—at least potential—“strategic partners,” it now struggles to get used to also having adversaries.

Europe Encroached

Take China. Only a few years ago there was great hope in the EU that China would continue to open up and ultimately become a more democratic, Western-style market economy. With this expectation upended, Europeans are now slowly waking up to the pitfalls of their huge dependence on China. Beijing actively seeks to influence European politics through initiatives like the 17+1 format (a group of EU and non-EU Eastern European countries from Estonia to Greece plus China) and the acquisition of critical infrastructure in EU member states. On several occasions, it has successfully applied a strategy of “divide and conquer,” splitting the Europeans on issues like human rights in the United Nations. Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and economic investments in the Western Balkans as well as a “no strings attached” development policy in Africa, it has gained a much bigger footprint in the EU’s neighborhood.

The EU has also had to change its view of Russia. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Kremlin’s ongoing political, economic, and military support of the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine ended all illusions about an EU-Russia “modernization partnership.” What is more, Russia’s leaders have deployed instruments of hybrid warfare on a scale completely unexpected by the West. These instruments include not only propaganda and putting “little green men” or GRU assassination teams on the ground in Europe, but also supporting euroskeptic parties and politicians within EU member states.

Swamped by a New Reality

But the biggest shock of all for the Europeans was the change in the White House. Since Donald Trump took office, the EU has been getting very different signals from Europe’s closest partner and protective power, the United States of America. While other US presidents have previously taken European allies to task for underinvesting in their security or have been wary of the EU as an institution, Trump is the first one to see the EU as a hostile project set up to take advantage of the US. He values American allies only to the extent that they “deliver” for the US in a simplistic transactional sense, and he does not shy away from bullying or threatening them.

Add to this mix Turkey’s alienation from the EU and European values as well as its increased focus on Turkish nationalism, and it becomes obvious that the EU no longer serves as a role model for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As Turkey launches its military offensive in northeast Syria against Kurdish forces, the EU remains a helpless bystander, calling “upon Turkey to immediately stop its unilateral military action,” without any leverage or political will to play a meaningful role. The recent initiative for a UN protection zone put forward by German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has shown that even within the German government, there is no consensus. Europeans have to face the erosion of multilateralism, democracy, and the rules-based international order—in other words the very foundations of their foreign policy.

The EU is swamped by this new reality. It is indeed a herbivore among meat eaters, reluctant to use military means. Instead, it is emphasizing soft power, international cooperation, and legal solutions. It was never designed to pursue great power politics, quite the contrary. It now must adapt to things it thought would never happen. Therefore, it urgently needs to develop a strategy to defend its interests more robustly. Also, it needs to become more resilient if it wants to avoid turning into an anachronism.

Not in Its Nature

However, becoming a fully-fledged carnivore is simply not an option. The EU lacks not only the mindset, but also the necessary tools and instruments—first and foremost, military capabilities. It is true that the Europeans have made progress in common defense policy lately, with initiatives such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the European Defense Fund (EDF), and the Coordinated Annual Review on Defense (CARD)—big steps when compared to the snail-like advances of previous decades. But given the actual challenges and the existing gaps in capabilities, this is still much too little and too late.

In fact, Europeans must admit to themselves that because they have comfortably outsourced most of their security and defense policy to the US, they are now hugely dependent on American security guarantees, at least in the short to medium term. This dependency hampers their readiness to rally around the European flag in order to counter Trump’s foreign policy since they often don’t want to endanger their bilateral relationship with the US. But even in cases where the Europeans have the necessary capabilities, they often lack political will and consensus, as the recent fruitless discussion about a European military mission in the Strait of Hormuz has demonstrated.

The lack of military capabilities is one thing. More crucial is the fact that in order to turn into a fully-fledged carnivore, the EU would have to change its very nature. The EU was built as a counter-model to the great power politics that plunged the European continent into two devastating world wars. The EU’s founding concept is the idea that the results of international cooperation are divisible, that international politics is not about who benefits the most, but about cooperation making everyone better off. In other words, its founding idea is the exact opposite of zero-sum thinking. The EU builds its foreign policy on the concept of liberal norms and values, not on increasing its military, economic, and political power at the cost of its adversaries. That is why the EU must succeed in the art of surviving in a world of carnivores without losing its very identity by starting to become one itself.

Difficult to Devour and Digest

Of course, this does not mean it should stop pushing for the further development of European military capabilities and greater convergence of strategic cultures in order to enhance the Europeans’ ability to defend themselves. The EU can no longer afford to be a civilian power only. With America pulling back and expecting more from its allies, a more militarily capable EU is no longer “nice to have,” but a question of survival. Surely Europeans must adapt to the circumstances and change their mindsets. This means they have to become better at pursuing their interests in a more competitive world and at projecting the power they have, including making better use of their heavy economic weapons and their regulatory power. The EU needs to understand how to better leverage this power by linking up internal policies and assets to external instruments and objectives. Above all, the EU must stop seeing the aggressive meat eaters around it only as “liberal democracies in the making” and recognize their power political calculations in order to become more resilient against them.

But adaptation to the carnivores’ world has its limits. The Europeans can neither start bullying their allies nor annex foreign territory; nor can they simply bribe African and Middle Eastern dictators. If the EU gets involved in a transactional approach to difficult partners, as with the EU-Turkey deal on migration, this has severe consequences for its credibility, especially at home. For if the EU betrays its core values and abandons its basic principles, nothing much will remain of it—its very foundation will evaporate. To stay with Gabriel’s prehistoric analogy, the EU cannot allow itself to become the meat eaters’ fast food of choice. Instead, it must focus on becoming difficult to devour and digest. It must turn itself into the most resilient herbivore possible.

An Anticyclical Approach

Therefore, the EU and its member states have to find their own way to play the power game and shape international developments rather than being shaped by them. One attempt to do this is Ursula von der Leyen’s attempt to form a “geopolitical” European Commission, one that seeks to reinforce Europe’s international footprint in those areas where the EU is strongest and has a real edge: trade, competition, and regulation. In her mission letter to Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, von der Leyen explicitly tasked him with making Europe more resilient to extraterritorial sanctions by third countries and to ensure that sanctions imposed by the EU are properly enforced, notably throughout its financial system. It is too early to assess whether this reorientation of the commission will actually have the desired effect or what role Europe’s common foreign and security policy and the EU’s diplomatic service will play in this. But it is a sign that awareness of the new international challenges is growing in the EU institutions.

As unsettling and threatening as the global shift toward nationalism and unilateralism is, the EU needs to turn its supposed weakness into a strength and adopt an anticyclical approach. The US turning toward protectionism has made the EU an even more attractive partner for like-minded states including Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Korea, as well as others who feel the need to maintain the multilateral system and seek predictable and stable cooperation. The recent trade agreements between the EU and Japan and between the EU and Mercosur are proof of this. In meetings at multilateral institutions, Europeans should push for more cooperation that is in the interest of many other countries—for example, the free use of the global commons, trade, and climate. The EU’s core strength is its regulatory power. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU’s third energy package illustrate the writ of the EU’s regulatory authority. In the future, the EU needs to understand how to better leverage this power by linking internal policies and assets to external instruments and objectives.

Speak with One Voice

The EU’s power of attraction stems from the freedom and democracy as well as peace and prosperity it has provided for its citizens. If the EU is no longer able to guarantee those, citizens will turn their backs on it—as some are already doing. The quest for more resilience vis-à-vis external threats begins at home. In order to credibly support democracy and a rules-based order, the EU has to ensure its domestic continuity. This includes finding more effective ways to sanction violations of the rule of law and democratic principles by member states. And if Europeans want to strengthen the international role of their currency to reduce their dependency on the dollar and to become more independent, they would do well to complete the institutional architecture of the eurozone and to maintain its credibility as a currency union.

Most importantly, Europeans should speak with one voice and stand together. This reads like a platitude, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The greatest threat to the EU comes from the Europeans themselves. At a time when—more than ever—the EU needs to act as a united international player if it does not want to become a pawn in the hands of major powers, its member states are struggling to find the determination and political will to set aside their disagreements and focus on the European common interest. After the plethora of crises for more than a decade, Europeans are deeply divided on essential political questions. There is little agreement about which goals they want to pursue through European integration.

As a consequence, the EU has often had no adequate answers to foreign policy crises, and its influence on the international system as a whole has declined. Europe’s common foreign and security policy was rarely more than an expression of the “lowest common denominator” of diverging interests. Europeans can no longer afford this. If they continue to speak with 27 (or 28) individual voices in foreign policy, they will soon find that no one hears them.

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Policy-making is often like the dreaded writing of to-do lists: one tedious problem after another needs to be sorted, tackled, and—rarely—crossed off. This is particularly true when it comes to foreign policy: crisis management is its heart and soul. Most of the time, foreign policy has to deal with urgent developments ranging from armed conflicts to diplomatic incidents, and forward planning rarely goes beyond the horizon of one year. It is very much a “firefighting and avoiding the worst” portfolio.

The foreign policy to-do list of Ursula von der Leyen’s “geopolitical” commission is no different: relations with Russia and the United States need to be improved one way or other, but as fast as possible; those with China need to be redefined; an entire continent (Africa) has to be lifted out of poverty to prevent mass migration, and wars in the Middle East and North Africa need to be ended before new ones break out, in that region or elsewhere.

In short, one rarely gets the chance to write a foreign policy bucket list filled with positive things to be achieved as one races from problem to problem. But let’s try it here.

Take the Middle East and North Africa, a region that carries “bad news” as its byword. The nine ongoing, frozen, ending, or emerging conflicts in the region are all playing out against a dirty background of raging youth unemployment, militarization, and human rights violations. Discouragingly, efforts to improve the situation have not led to the desired results of forging a more prosperous and peaceful region.

A Solar Powerhouse at Europe’s Doorstep

But this does not mean that the new European Commission should simply continue as the old one has done, or worse, give up on the region altogether. In fact, beyond the rubble and the drama lies an opportunity that should be on the foreign policy bucket list: turning the region into a solar energy powerhouse.

Granted, this will involve an effort that goes beyond the commission’s five-year term, but the transition needs to start now. By 2035 at the latest, the region could be waving goodbye to rentierism and celebrate having become climate-neutral; it then could help Europe do the same, cooperate in a trans-continental electricity grid, create jobs, and meet exploding energy needs.

Turning to green energy on a massive scale would also help mitigate instability in states that are not ready for the end of oil, such as Iraq, Yemen, and Algeria. This in turn would save the EU from more trouble down the line. It would require climate financing for those states that have already requested it (Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia), but also some climate diplomacy—reaching out to those states that do not require financing but a political nudge in the right direction, such as Saudi Arabia or Iraq. If all goes well, lessons learned here can very well be applied to sub-Saharan Africa, too.

Another cluster of issues on the EU’s foreign policy to-do list involve the United States and China. Beyond the troubled bilateral status of affairs lurks a populist new world order in which, or so it seems, Europe and the multilateral, liberal old world have evaporated.

Take the Lead on Climate Change

Here, too, the EU’s usual foreign policy tools have failed to deliver: diplomacy and sticking to European values have not stopped Donald Trump’s US from breaking diplomatic norms, or China from becoming the first digital dictatorship. With a bit of luck, some say, a new American president will take us straight back to 2009, but this is wishful thinking: Obama did not care that much more about us Europeans than his successor; he just spoke more elegantly.

Instead, Europe has to come up with a plan for what it wants to be in 2030, and the basis for it needs to be created now. And if the future is to be European, we need to take the lead on climate change and related technology.

In the future, carbon neutrality and related technologies will not be merely environmental assets— they will be strategic assets, too. The vacuum the US has left by disengaging from the fight against climate change is one that Europe can easily fill—and be greatly rewarded for doing so. States that lead in this field will have more allies and friends, sell their technology, and be aspirational leaders. The Chinese leadership has understood this, which is why China is leading in this field, not us. Being a climate leader will also mean relying on renewable energy (also coming from the Middle East and North Africa) and therefore being less energy dependent (hint: from Russia).

Develop a Strategic Capacity to Act

Speaking of Russia: no matter what one thinks of Moscow, it knows how to talk “military”—a language the EU is still learning to speak as a collective. But while some of us still think that this is a language made up of neat and snappy acronyms and abbreviations, its most important component is the will to act. As the annexation of Crimea and the Syrian war have shown, Russia will not be deterred by diplomatic or economic language only. Indeed, in the past five years Russia only changed track when it had to fear a military confrontation, with Turkey and with the United States.

Make no mistake, though: the case made here is for a robust posture, not for military action. But this is precisely where Europe struggles the most: with addressing violence and conflict generally, and specifically dealing with military matters. Most EU missions abroad are civilian in nature.

What is needed on the bucket list in this connection is therefore not to create a Europe-only NATO, or to push more energetically for PESCO, CARD, or EDF. Rather, the EU needs to develop the strategic capacity to act. The current debate about Europe achieving strategic sovereignty is far too focused on assets. It misses the point of what sovereignty is: a mind-set, a self-awareness, an attitude that uses these assets.

Therefore, achieving European strategic sovereignty is not about purchases or procedures; it is a process whereby European states understand what they want to achieve in the world, and by what means. For the EU, this means less bureaucracy and more inner-European diplomacy. The exchange on foreign policy needs to be revitalized, common ground needs to be found, the different bodies need to be integrated, and honest conversations need to be had.

Speak an Authentic Language

Last but not least, a revolution in foreign policy communication, perhaps not in itself a foreign policy objective, is key to all of the above. European—and international—audiences today understand our bureaucratic and anodyne language even less than before; emotion, authenticity, and humanity will have to become part and parcel of how we Europeans speak about what we do in the world, or we will continue to lose credibility very quickly.

With these key points, the EU’s foreign policy bucket list is short yet aspirational. It will never replace short-term to-do lists, but it would help us maintain a positive momentum as we manage one crisis after the next—and lead to concrete achievements by 2024.

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Since the summer, Emmanuel Macron has made a sudden reappearance on the front lines of international politics. In August, he invited Vladimir Putin to Fort de Brégançon, the French presidential retreat, where the two leaders discussed the conflict in Ukraine and the possibility of Russia’s readmission to the G7 economic summit. Later that month, as G7 host, Macron welcomed leaders of the world’s largest industrial nations, but also brought along a surprise guest, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

At the United Nations in September, the French president called on his fellow world leaders to show “the courage of responsibility.” This prompts the question: is Macron is speaking here on behalf of France or of the European Union as a whole, and can the two positions be reconciled?

A Sense of Urgency

Political observers in the French capital agree on this: Europe’s security architecture is under threat to a degree not seen in three or even four decades. In Macron’s own words: “The international order is being disrupted in an unprecedented way…for the first time in our history, in almost all areas and on a historic scale. Above all, there is a transformation, a geopolitical and strategic reconfiguration.” The French president was referring to the challenge to multilateralism from great powers like the United States and China, but also to intensifying armed conflicts close to Europe’s frontiers. Yet another worry for Macron is the distance the Trump administration has taken from questions of European security.

Macron believes the world now emerging will have a bipolar structure, with the United States on one side and China on the other. All other states will play a subordinate role; this includes Russia, which faces marginalization within this new bipolar order. For Europe, the outlook is little better: “We will have to choose between the two dominant powers,” he told the conference of French ambassadors in August. In other words, the choice open to a future Europe will be whom to serve as junior partner.

But Macron would not be Macron if he gave up in the face of adversity. Having made his bleak assessment, he concluded by demanding that Europe turn itself into an autonomous international actor. As outlined in his famous 2017 Sorbonne speech, Macron wants to see the construction of a sovereign Europe. This Europe would be able to live according to its own values (by no means identical to American values), safeguard its own political and economic interests, and, not least, defend itself militarily. For Macron, this is a matter of urgency.

A Common Front with Russia

France’s desire to improve relations with Russia should be seen against this backdrop. Macron is well aware of Moscow’s hostile stance toward the EU, but he continues to push for constructive cooperation in the relatively near future, for example on arms control and in space. The aim is to prevent Russia from further destabilizing the EU and its surrounding regions. Macron also has another goal in mind: he ultimately sees Russia as a possible ally for Europe in the emerging bipolar world system.

At the conference of ambassadors, Macron was explicit: “To rebuild a real European project in a world that is at risk of bipolarization, [we must] succeed at forming a common front between the EU and Russia.” The statement provoked anger, and not only among EU member states in Eastern Europe, where many fear that closer ties to Moscow inevitably spell danger. There is also a distinct air of skepticism among French political and diplomatic elites. Macron is well aware of this, hence his insistence that French ambassadors adopt a new and different mentality.

This is Macron’s vision of the future. But present-day realities look somewhat different. For a number of years, Islamist terror attacks have been a pressing, immediate danger to France. It is clear that the French government can only win out in the battle against terrorism through cooperation with partners and allies. The same goes for overseas military operations, where France rapidly comes up against the limits of its own power.

This explains French pragmatism on the question of allies. “We need to find support everywhere we can,” Defense Minister Florence Parly told a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in 2017. In this respect, the US remains indispensable to France. Particularly in the Sahel region of West Africa, France relies on Washington for logistical support and intelligence sharing. Considerable flexibility is needed to combine that sort of dependency with France’s aspirations to autonomy. All the more so when dealing with an unpredictable interlocutor like Donald Trump.

Disappointed with Berlin

Macron’s new foreign policy may seek to invoke the independent French position of previous presidents Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac. However, the current president has added a new element to traditional Fifth Republic foreign policy. No president prior to Macron has ever made such a clear push for European integration, including foreign and security policy. This has particular relevance to the question of autonomy, something Macron desires both for France and for Europe. French policy elites still regard the EU as a force multiplier, useful for a country now without the capacities to match its ambition, despite its nuclear weapons and its permanent UN Security Council seat. But France also regards the EU as a community of interests that must present a united front in an increasingly turbulent world. For this reason, goes the argument, the EU must develop its capacities to operate autonomously in the long term, if necessary without its traditional American partner.

Immediately after his election, Macron attempted to achieve this through close cooperation on fiscal and monetary policy with Germany. However, it rapidly became clear that Berlin had no intention of supporting his ambitious projects for the eurozone. For Paris, this German reluctance increased the importance of another aspect of bilateral relations: defense and arms industry cooperation. The Aachen Treaty, signed by the two countries in January 2019, committed them to “continue to intensify the cooperation between their armed forces with a view to the establishment of a common culture and joint deployments.”

Paris has now distinctly lowered its expectations of a grand alliance with Berlin. In any case, an arrangement like that can only be a project for the very long term. One recent move can been seen as a small first step. The Franco-German agreement at the countries’ most recent bilateral talks in Toulouse makes important changes to arms export regulation. Crucially, Germany will no longer claim the right to block exports of jointly-manufactured weapons systems if German components make up less than 20 percent of the arms in question.

In practice, however, Franco-German cooperation continues to occupy precarious political ground, not least because of stark differences in foreign policy traditions. This is why Paris has sought British participation in European security policy instruments, including the recently established European Intervention Initiative, a 13-nation military project outside both the EU and NATO. Brexit or no Brexit, the United Kingdom and France share a particular strategic outlook, as well as a long tradition of overseas military intervention. In this context, Britain will remain an important partner for France.

A Change of Strategy

Growing frustrations, above all the disappointment with Berlin, led Macron to change his European strategy ahead of May’s European elections. First, Paris now no longer shied away from confrontation with Berlin. Second, the French government intensified its involvement in EU institutional politics and wants to use this more strongly as leverage. Macron supported the formation of Renew Europe, a new liberal grouping in the European parliament, in which French parliamentarians are the biggest delegation (21 out of 74).

Macron also robustly intervened in the struggle over key EU leadership posts. He actively opposed the so-called Spitzenkandidat (“lead candidate”) system, by which the winning party in European parliamentary elections could claim the presidency of the European Commission. Instead, Macron backed Ursula von der Leyen for president. He was gratified that her Europe Agenda 2019–2024 borrowed key ideas from his Sorbonne speech, including ambitious climate goals, a European minimum wage, and the creation of an EU defense union. The French president also pushed for the appointment of Charles Michel as European Council president and Josep Borrell as the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In Paris, both men are regarded as close to French positions.

Macron’s final tactical maneuver would have seen Sylvie Goulard appointed as a commissioner in charge of a beefed-up portfolio including internal market affairs, as well as industry, aerospace, digitization and culture. Goulard would have overseen the implementation of Macron’s preferred EU projects. But the European parliament rejected Goulard’s nomination, a severe blow to Macron.

In picking Thierry Breton, a businessman and one-time French Minister for Economy, Finance and Industry, as a substitute for Goulard, Macron signaled that knowledge of Germany and therefore the ability to explain his project to the Germans (which Goulard had) was no longer a requirement for the job. The top priority is now to maintain the portfolio that Paris had negotiated and which is in line with its European agenda. A top-level partnership between Goulard and von der Leyen could have been a dynamic driving force for Franco-German cooperation at the EU level. This is now a more difficult proposition, particularly since von der Leyen’s own position has turned out to be more fragile than expected, while the European Parliament seems set to remain riven by political tensions.

Difficult Road to Europeanization

In Paris, the unexpected obstacles in Brussels have been the cause of even more frustration. This French impatience is prompted by the general sense of urgency, along with the country’s aspirations to leadership. In response, the Macron administration has sought room for maneuver elsewhere, going beyond EU frameworks and other traditional diplomatic formats.

The recent rapprochement with Russia is a case in point. Paris will do what it regards as right for both itself and the EU, although where interests actually overlap is a matter for debate. France also hopes its actions will persuade other partners to get on board: French foreign policy is meant to be inclusive. The talks with Putin, for example, were regarded in Paris as a first step, to be followed by the continuation of the “Normandy format” Ukrainian peace talks, which also involved Germany and Ukraine. However, such solo activism may run the risk of offending France’s EU partners, fomenting unnecessary trouble.

One example of this was France’s recent veto of Albania’s and North Macedonia’s application to join the EU, in what would have been a further expansion, this time into south-eastern Europe. Macron’s arguments on the subject are actually entirely legitimate. He is quite right to suggest that the EU’s accession process is problematic: the prospective new members gave inadequate assurances on the rule of law, where improvements are clearly required. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the EU, already embroiled in a painful Brexit saga, would be prepared to admit new members before it has reformed its own institutions and internal processes.

Macron’s veto was meant to signal that expansion would endanger integration, risking the EU’s cohesion and unity. Here, he continued a long-standing tradition in France’s European policy that regards deepening and enlargement as mutually contradictory. Opponents of Macron’s position argue that the EU’s borders should be stabilized, demanding a more pragmatic approach. The French president understands this objection. However, he has maintained his veto, which has come at a high price. The issue has seen him isolated, and has weakened his pro-European credibility.

Be Patient, Be Polite

For all his pro-European convictions, Macron has no intention of silencing France’s voice on the world stage. Like all French politicians, he is not prepared to hand over the country’s permanent UN Security Council seat to an EU representative. At best, Macron may coordinate policy with other European members of the Security Council, thus fulfilling the Aachen Treaty’s stipulation that France and Germany should act “in accordance with the positions and interests of the European Union.”

Given this logic, it is unsurprising that Macron welcomed Borrell’s appointment as High Representative. Borrell is familiar with France’s strategic culture, but also with the sensitivities of member states that are jealous of their prerogatives, the result of many years serving as Spanish foreign minister. He realizes it would be an error to seek the limelight. Of course, he will set the tone for his own department, but his main focus will be on internal coordination processes. All foreign affairs issues will probably be discussed in the Council of Ministers, where larger states tend to have greater visibility. Nonetheless, the EU needs unity in order, for example, to impose economic sanctions as a foreign policy instrument. The voices of the larger states only dominate if the entire EU goes along with them and implements their decisions. This interplay of forces will determine what happens.

For Macron this means that he must constantly strike a balance between national self-assertion and integration within EU structures. If he wants to exert influence within the EU, he cannot go it alone. That’s no easy task for a man of Macron’s impatience. Here, he runs a twofold risk: first, he may offend his partners and come across as arrogant, especially to smaller EU states, who feel he patronizes them. The second risk is that Macron will lose credibility if his well-publicized plans end up going nowhere. In both cases, it is a question of reliability and trust, a basic requirement if the project of European autonomy is to gain sustainable momentum.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

On the morning Phil Hogan was nominated as the EU’s next trade commissioner, he told Ireland’s public broadcaster RTÉ his priority was “to get Mr. Trump to see the error of his ways.” The US president should abandon his “reckless behavior” when it came to China and the EU.

His remarks did not go unnoticed. EU diplomats in Washington reported back immediately that there was outrage in the White House. “We were told it was fortunate that John Bolton [the hawkish former National Security Adviser] had just been fired the same day,” recalls a close aide, “or that the president himself might have tweeted his reaction.”

Trump didn’t tweet, but his ambassador Gordon Sondland delivered the message to Politico, accusing Hogan of a “belligerence” that would lead to an impasse between the EU and US. “Then people start to do things that you don’t want them to do.”

It was a combative start, confirming Hogan’s reputation as a political bruiser with a sharp tongue. However, many in Brussels felt Hogan was right. The US was waiting for the new EU executive to take office, and Hogan was reminding the world who the new interlocutor would be.

His timing, however, may have been unfortunate. The next day, the WTO ruled in a decades-old dispute with Boeing that Europe had granted illegal subsidies to Airbus. As a result, Trump was expected to announce up to $10 billion in tariffs on European products.
Making the Strategic Case for Trade

All told, the 59-year-old, hailed by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as a “brilliant” and “firm” negotiator, could not have taken up his post at a more turbulent time. The United States and China are locked in a trade war, China is accused of wholesale technology theft, Trump is threatening more tariffs on European goods, and Brexit is sapping the EU’s energy.

European efforts to sail above the turbulence as the self-identified defender of the rules-based global order are limited. “So far, the EU has benefitted from the turmoil created by Trump’s trade war,” says Sam Lowe, a research fellow with the Center for European Reform (CER), “which provided the political impetus to conclude trade agreements with Japan, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, and Vietnam; but the waters ahead look choppy.

“Phil Hogan will need to make the strategic case for a resilient trade policy. But he will face a European Parliament looking for greater reassurance that the EU’s trade policy complements its environmental ambitions, and an inwardly focused European agriculture lobby.”

That lobby has been up in arms over Hogan’s role in negotiating the EU-Mercosur trade agreement as agriculture commissioner. South American farmers will enjoy increased access to the EU, but the access for beef―an annual quota of 99,000 tonnes―has enraged farmers, not least in Hogan’s home country.

The Irish Farmers Association claims Mercosur beef will cost European farmers €5 billion annually, compounded by a lack of traceability, food safety, animal health, and environmental controls. Hogan hit back: “There will be no product that will arrive in the EU from the Mercosur countries without complying with existing EU food safety standards.”

The Road from Kilkenny

Hogan was born just outside Kilkenny in south-east Ireland to a small-holder farming family. He followed his father into politics and won the parliamentary seat for the center-right Fine Gael party that had always eluded his father.

He was a junior finance minister in 1994 in the Fine Gael-Labour coalition, but was forced to resign when a staff member accidentally leaked details of the annual budget. Observers say Hogan nursed a longstanding grievance at his premature fall and was determined to make a return to ministerial politics.

It started by being appointed party chairman. “This put him in a position of extraordinary influence,” says a longstanding associate. “He got to know the organization intimately. He became director of elections, selecting candidates, placing candidates.”

Hogan honed his skills as a ruthless political operator. When in 2010 a minister attempted a coup against Enda Kenny, the party leader turned to his longtime friend Hogan for advice. Hogan told him to sack the entire shadow front bench.

Kenny promptly did so the next morning. While 15 rebel MPs assembled in front of the Irish Parliament to declare the revolt, Hogan rounded up 40 loyalists and sent them to the same spot. The coup was over as soon as it had begun.

Happily Unpopular

But Hogan soon made a bigger impact on Irish politics. In 2011, Fine Gael swept to power following the collapse of the Irish economy due to the banking and sovereign debt crisis. Hogan was appointed environment minister.

Under the advice of the EU-IMF troika administering the bailout, the government established a new state utility, under Hogan’s direction, which would introduce water charges in Ireland for the first time.

Hogan insisted the new charges would cost as little as €2 per week, but there was a backlash when he warned that those who did not pay would see their water supply “turned down to a trickle for basic human health reasons.” To many reeling from the austerity of the bailout years, this was callous in the extreme.

The theory is that Hogan took on the poisoned chalice of water charges because he knew Kenny would appoint him Ireland’s Commissioner three years later. “There was a neat choreography,” says one source close to Hogan. “Kenny needed someone with balls to do the job, and who was also happy to be unpopular because they weren’t going to be around.”

Journalist Michael Brennan, who has just published a book on the affair, In Deep Water, says, “It was one thing to take a bullet for other people. It’s another when you’re casual about doing it, knowing you have the job in Brussels sown up. He had to convince people this was a charge worth paying and he failed to do that. Within months of his going to Brussels, they had torn up the Hogan plan and came up with a very different approach.”

Negotiating Brexit

But Hogan had other things on his mind when he arrived in Brussels. Within two years the United Kingdom launched its Brexit referendum. Hogan was the only senior EU official given a license to make the case to remain, travelling to farm meetings and agricultural shows around the UK.

“He spoke very well about the importance of the EU for farmers,” recalls a senior European Commission official, “both in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and in trading opportunities. But he spoke as an Irishman as well, in terms of keeping the UK and Ireland together in the EU. He made a real contribution. He might even have swung quite a number of votes.”

That Hogan, a searing critic of Brexit, will be Brussels’ top negotiator when the future EU-UK trade talks start has not been lost on Boris Johnson’s government.

Going the Extra Mile

He is described as a tough negotiator. Despite the hostility of the farming lobby, Hogan’s supporters say he went the extra mile to limit the access of South American beef, holding up the Mercosur talks and irritating member states keen to get the deal over the line.

“Mercosur would not have been done without him,” says one EU source. “He doesn’t hold back in protecting Europe’s defensive interests. Farming often ends up as one of the final issues, and depending on your desire to close a deal for the sake of it, people can be more amenable at the last minute. He would step in and say, we won’t give on that.”

Hogan will have his work cut out for him. He is said to have a reasonable relationship with US Trade Secretary Robert Lighthizer dating back to when they negotiated the EU-US hormone-free beef deal. But he will have to tread carefully when it comes to the problem of how to resolve disputes between WTO members. The US has declined to appoint judges to the Appellate Court until the matter is resolved, but has been slow to suggest solutions.
The EU and Canada are working on a mechanism that would bypass the WTO, but a broader framework will be needed to uphold the multilateral rules-based order the EU wants to spearhead.

Lads, Give Us Five Minutes

“Bridge building will be the immediate challenge for Hogan,” says Peter Ungphakorn, a former senior WTO official. “If WTO members feel the US is undermining multilateralism, some kind of alliance could be forged between the EU and China to break this. That is definitely a possibility.”

That will require the ability not just to reconcile the interests of the US and China power giants, but to understand the nuances of diplomacy.

Hogan, who enjoys life in Brussels and can often be seen in one or two of the city’s fabled Irish pubs to watch rugby or Gaelic football, has, say his aides, the skills needed, including for one-on-one encounters.

“I’ve seen him in various places where there are two delegations,” says one aide, “and he’ll say, ‘You might give us five minutes, lads,’ and we’d leave. You’d be amazed at what can happen between two politicians in five minutes.”

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© REUTERS/Luke MacGregor

Every day brings new twists and turns in the Brexit saga that make predictions difficult. But whatever the exact date and form of the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, Brexit will have major geostrategic implications for the EU.

Any analysis of the longer-term impact has to go beyond the UK-EU relationship itself and address the broader implications for both the EU and the UK in itself, not only in economic terms, but also with regard to geostrategy and security. It is true that there can also be positive aspects to Brexit, especially if the EU reacts by building strategic capability and enhancing policy cohesion. But, in the end, Brexit mainly creates risks, which need to be handled and prepared for.

It is worth recalling that the embittered, tortuous Brexit negotiations so far have only been the beginning of the exit process: the talks have focused only on the exit modalities (Northern Ireland border, financial obligations, citizens rights, and transition). The more substantive negotiations on the long-term relationship, including the economic relationship, are still to come. These will be even more difficult than the exit talks, and chances are high that no deal can be reached. Even though some companies or regions could benefit if competitors for market share or investment are weakened, the economic impact will be negative for the EU overall.

The Dangers of “UK First”

Failing to reach a deal on the framework for UK-EU trade would inflict significant economic costs, making integrated, cross-border value chains impossible unless the UK (or parts of it) remains tied to the Single Market, as Northern Ireland now looks likely to. These economic costs are probably higher for the UK in both relative and absolute terms. But the impact on the EU and its member states is far from negligible, especially for countries with close economic ties to the UK, such as Belgium and the Netherlands. No deal would hit Ireland particularly hard, potentially necessitating special assistance from the EU.

But the long-term effect could be even more significant. The EU-27 could be faced with a competitor posing far more fundamental challenges than a UK still closely integrated and conforming to EU rules. The UK could pursue a far more aggressive industrial strategy in an effort to support domestic industries: a “UK First” approach. There could be mercantilistic competition and conflict, including for contested resources and markets in areas such as fishing and energy.

With no deal, the level-playing-field provisions included in the Withdrawal Agreement would not come into force, opening up the possibility of the UK adopting lower standards. It is premature to presume that the UK would not go down this route, given the economic necessities that will arise after Brexit. For example, driven by a necessity to quickly establish new economic relationships, the UK could pursue trade deals around the globe by undercutting the EU. If the UK drives down standards for environmental protection, labor rights, tax and competition, and consumer and data protection to gain a competitive advantage, some EU member states would push for the bloc to follow suit, potentially undermining the EU’s regulatory ambitions.

Risks for the Financial Sector

With Brexit, the EU is losing a significant part of its economic capability across a wide range of sectors. The strength of some of these sectors is geo-strategically important to the EU. Simply put, the EU must be a significant player in these sectors in order to play a role at the global level. Achieving strategic autonomy in related policy areas will become much more difficult.

The sectors where the UK makes a disproportionately large contribution to the EU economy include defense, aviation/space, research/academia, and business and legal services, as well as parts of the new technologies sector. Thus Brexit will have an impact on the EU’s ability to, for example, maintain industrial competitiveness, expand its services exports, provide security hardware, and boost innovation and technological sovereignty. A particular case in point are financial services and capital markets, where a breaking-away of the UK could well result in the loss of an EU global financial center, with implications for the availability and cost of financial services and capital.

The impact will depend on how close the economic ties between the UK and the EU will be after Brexit. If the UK were to remain part of the Single Market, these capabilities would stay within the economic structure of the European Economic Area. Conversely, a no deal outcome would severely impair the economic ties between the UK and the EU. While it is undoubtedly true that the UK would lose significant parts of these industries, this does not necessarily imply that the economic activity would simply shift to the EU, given the global opportunities that exist for example for the financial services sector.

One particular concern is the instability a chaotic Brexit might trigger in the financial sector, for example, if there is significant capital flight or speculative attacks on sterling in the aftermath of an (unexpected) no deal Brexit. This could affect the stability of UK-based financial institutions and have knock-on effects on the global financial system. At the very least, stabilizing the situation might require a concerted effort of the Bank of England, together with the European Central Bank and other international financial actors.

Neighbors, Allies, and Rivals

The UK leaving will also profoundly change the EU’s relationship with other countries. The political geography of Europe would change, affecting, for example, Gibraltar and the Channel Islands. The EU’s relationship with countries such as Switzerland, Norway, and Turkey would also be altered, in part depending on the model chosen for the EU-UK relationship. The EU will most likely have to define much more concretely what kind of relationship it wants to have with European countries that have no intention of becoming member states. The current models, such as integration within the Single Market or countries being within the accession process, are unlikely to be applicable, so Brussels will have to develop new models, such as, for example, a permanent strategic partnership or associate membership.

Post Brexit, there is also a good chance that the UK could become a pawn in global great power rivalries. The UK would need to seek new and separate strategic relationships with key countries around the world, including the United States, Russia, and China—but it would be vulnerable given post Brexit economic pressures and political instability. Other powers would have an opening to employ divide-and-conquer tactics, to try to push the UK and EU to take divergent positions on crucial global policy issues such as the global multilateral trade system or openness to investment in strategic sectors. The UK could be seen as a Trojan horse to undermine the EU and/or Western liberal democracy, which would in turn have consequences for the possible level of ambition in the UK-EU relationship, including in terms of openness for trade and investment.

There are no guarantees that the UK would remain aligned to EU policy priorities after Brexit; indeed, over time, it is likely that the UK will start diverging. The continuation of cooperation on issues such as climate change, development or combatting tax havens cannot be taken for granted. Non-alignment on global issues, for example on pursuing the sustainable development goals, would reduce the effectiveness of EU action and undermine the possibility of achieving global progress on these issues, not least since it would strengthen divergent standpoints. However, Brexit could also have a positive effect if it increases pressure on the EU27 to act jointly, removing the possibility of hiding behind British opposition to further integration in the foreign policy field.

Less Influence, More Risks

Losing the UK will have certainly a negative impact on the EU’s strategic culture. The UK has—together with France—been the only big power in the EU that has had a more strategic approach to external affairs and a more global strategic culture than that of other member states. In addition, a lack of policy alignment would be a particular challenge in the field of international policy and internal and external security, where UK capacities remain critically important for the EU27, including within the NATO context. If, for example, there was a significant divergence in views on issues such as the Iran nuclear agreement, or if the UK’s departure were to weaken the resolve of the remaining member states, e.g. on Russian sanctions, it would (further) reduce the likelihood that the EU could affect such global policy issues and hinder the ability of the EU to develop further capacity in future.

One area where cooperation will become significantly more difficult, even given good will on both sides, is internal security, the fight against organized crime and counterterrorism in particular. European arrest warrants will no longer be available to the UK, implying that extradition will revert back to being a lengthy and uncertain process. This is likely to benefit internationally mobile criminals and terrorists, including UK nationals who might seek refuge from British jurisdiction elsewhere in Europe, reducing security for the UK and for the rest of the EU.

Limitations on cooperation will also affect the ability to share data, again reducing the ability to combat terrorism and crime. The EU will lose the member state that probably still has the greatest access to covert intelligence information, leaving a gap in its capabilities. In the online world, cooperation on cybersecurity is likely to be reduced, mirroring international cooperation on such issues rather than the more closely integrated cooperation within the EU, again reducing effectiveness.

It is not just that the UK’s departure will take one of Europe’s main hard security providers out of the EU—there are also real questions about whether the UK’s capability can be maintained beyond Brexit. Potential territorial fragmentation, fiscal pressures, and overstretch could force the UK to scale back its commitments, for example in relation to peace-keeping, including in Cyprus. And in the longer term, the stress of Brexit might create challenges to the UK’s nuclear capabilities and its seat on the UN security council, reducing European influence as a whole. This might hasten the need for the EU to become a more significant actor in its own right. But in the meantime, it would reduce its capacity to deal with international challenges.

An Era of Conflict?

Hindering cooperation is one thing, but a no-deal Brexit could also bring about direct EU-UK conflict, for example when it comes to Gibraltar, fishing grounds, resources such as energy, migrants crossing EU territories to get to the UK, or Northern Ireland. Conflict does not necessarily mean physical confrontation, although it might come to that in some instances, similar for example to the “cod wars” between the UK and Iceland. But even in the absence of such an escalation, it will be necessary to find dispute resolution mechanisms for such issues.

Whichever way the Brexit process ends, there is likely to be a significant community in Northern Ireland dissatisfied with the outcome. Re-instituting border controls would be unacceptable to large parts of the population in Northern Ireland, putting into question the constitutional status quo. In fact, a referendum about the reunification of the island could well be back on the agenda. The unionists would resist this. But the republicans would challenge a hard border. The potential for violence is high under both scenarios.

A re-eruption of violence would also draw the EU27 into the conflict, not only because of the role the Republic of Ireland would have to play but also because a significant part of the Northern Ireland population now has EU passports, making them EU citizens who can demand support. If it becomes necessary to patrol the border in Northern Ireland to keep the peace, the Northern Ireland police service is unlikely to be able to do it alone (if at all). But the involvement of UK armed forces would be highly contentious, raising the question of what role the EU would need to play.

Disintegration and Discord

In addition to potential changes to Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, there is a significant chance of territorial disintegration, with Scotland separating from the United Kingdom. No deal would make a second independence referendum in Scotland almost certain. Current opinion polls indicate that a chaotic exit might well be enough to lead to Scottish independence, which would almost certainly be followed by an EU membership application. There are positive aspects of such a possibility, with the EU potentially gaining a committed member, demonstrating the desirability of EU membership, but so far there is little thinking in the EU about how to react to such a scenario.

The dissolution of the UK would, among other impacts, change its capacity as a global actor, for example with regard to its role in NATO and its capacity to maintain a nuclear deterrent, given that the UK’s nuclear submarines are berthed in Scotland with no obvious facilities available elsewhere in the UK.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Brexit process has been the unity displayed by the EU27. But unity might well fray in a no-deal scenario. In the countries hit hardest by a disorderly Brexit, there will be strong domestic pressure to find quick-fix solutions, even if these go against common EU positions. If the UK reneges on its commitments made in the first phase of the negotiations (on EU citizens’ rights, financial obligations, and the Northern Ireland border), the potential of conflict between member states increases further. Indeed, the hole Brexit is leaving in the EU budget is already creating discord.

Address the Strategic Issues

But as difficult as no deal would be, the EU doesn’t have to sacrifice its principles simply to ensure an orderly Brexit. It is in the EU’s economic and political interest to remain united on its red lines, which also limits what can be offered to the UK at this point; caving in to British cherry-picking would, in the end, pose an existential threat to the EU itself.

However, the EU needs to tackle the hard strategic questions Brexit poses. It has to address the multifaceted and long-term impact, including questions that an acrimonious divorce would raise, including how to best to mitigate the negative impacts of Brexit and how to manage future conflict with the UK; and perhaps most importantly how to increase the EU’s capacity and capability in areas that are weakened by Brexit.

The EU27 will need to redefine not only its relationship with the UK, but also with other neighbors and the rest of the world. Crucially, the EU member states need to maintain unity and agree a common strategic negotiation position in case it comes to no deal. If the worst-case scenario cannot be averted, the EU27 must be fully prepared.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Maybe it’s a sign I’ve lived in Finland too long that I’m pleasantly puzzled by the reactions of visitors to encountering a society that’s putting its best foot forward in terms of gender representation.

A newly arrived EU diplomat told me over lunch recently that they were surprised at how gender-equal Finland seemed. And last month a senior Council of Europe official said they’d been taken aback—in the nicest possible way—that most of the interlocutors at ministries and NGOs were women.

So it barely caused a ripple in Finland’s fairly small political pond in September when Katri Kulmuni, a member of parliament representing Lapland, was elected leader of the Center Party.

With Kulmuni, four out of the five parties in Finland’s red-green coalition government are headed by women. The Swedish People’s Party has Anna-Maja Henriksson; the Left Alliance is led by Li Andersson; and the Greens by Maria Ohisalo. That leaves the Social Democrats as the only government party headed by a man—Prime Minister Antti Rinne.

On the opposition benches, the Christian Democrats also have a female leader, Sari Essayah, and only two other parties in parliament are led by men: the center-right National Coalition Party, and the nationalist Finns Party (perhaps not coincidentally, they’re also the only two parties never to have had female leaders).

Standing on Tall Shoulders

The only gender-related news that got the political classes talking this summer was the nomination of former Social Democrat leader, Jutta Urpilainen, as Finland’s next EU Commissioner—and then, only because it seemed almost inconceivable there had never before been a female commissioner from the progressive Nordic nation.

So when searching for the perfect Finnish word to describe the phenomenon of having so many female political leaders, I realized there wasn’t one.

Because, in Finland at least, it’s not a phenomenon.

In fact, it’s politics as usual—or normipolitiikkaa—as the Finns might say.
It’s normipolitiikka now thanks to a generation of female politicians who came before the current crop. For twelve years, Finland had a female president in Tarja Halonen—she had previously served as foreign minister; the world’s first female defense minister in Elisabeth Rehn; and two previous female prime ministers as well.

If anything, there’s a gender imbalance in favor of women in the current government, with eleven female ministers—including Kulmuni who does double duty as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Affairs—and only eight men.

Maybe it’s just that Finland broke through its gender glass ceiling before other countries did, which makes it seem remarkable to some that there are so many female party leaders. After all, there were long decades in the 1970s and 1980s without much meaningful female representation in senior government at all. Either way, in 2019, it just seems par for the course.

Where Men Still Rule

However, Finland’s picture perfect postcard image starts to fray at the edges when you look at representation beyond front line politics.

Yes, there are plenty of women involved in city and municipal politics, and there are an equal number of female and male Finnish ambassadors representing the country overseas. But when it comes to the world of business, Finland falls far behind.

A new anthology out this month by Anu Kuistiala, a former senior journalist and manager at Finland’s MTV3 commercial television channel, compiles stories of female leadership. Kuistiala notes that women account for only around 7 percent of CEOs at Finnish listed companies, and fewer than one in three of all business executives in Finland are female.

Then there’s the gender pay gap. The average annual income of Finnish men is 17.4 percent higher than that for women—due, Kuistiala says, to girls still choosing stereotypically “female” career paths and not having too many visible Finnish role models in the world of business or STEM to inspire them.

The examples are definitely there—the head of public broadcaster Yle is a woman; the new CEO of Finnish-Swedish paper giant Stora Enso is a woman; the incoming head of Helsinki-headquartered Nordea Bank is a woman—and plenty more besides.

It’s just that they’re outnumbered and less visible to the public than men.

No Ethnic Mix in the Public Service

The other really obvious area where Finland fails at balance is when it comes to the representation of its immigrant, minority, or ethnic-background population.

Look around the capital city region in particular and you’ll see an increasingly diverse population. In Finland’s second largest city Espoo, an estimated 70 percent of newcomers are non-Finns.

But if you look at the police, fire departments, newsrooms, civil service, diplomatic service, or politics, you won’t find much representation of those with different ethnic backgrounds at all.

The staff who respond to 112 emergency calls, who process the tax returns, who work in the ministries, who are the face of Finland in parliament or embassies do not look like the population they are supposed to serve.
Some good efforts are being made: the Helsinki Rescue Department has worked hard to recruit people from immigrant backgrounds; and in local politics, Helsinki City Council has been increasing minority diversity.

And there are some trailblazers like Helsinki Deputy Mayor Nasima Razmyar or Espoo City Councillor Habiba Ali, two very visible women involved in the capital region’s local government.

One Step Done, Two to Go

But more work needs to be done not only to encourage immigrant-background candidates to get involved in politics, but also for the public to vote for them.

At Finland’s spring general election there were more candidates with minority backgrounds than ever before running for parliament, mostly from parties on the center and left of the political spectrum.

Unfortunately, the two sitting lawmakers with immigrant backgrounds didn’t make it back into parliament, although the Green party’s Bella Forsberg from the Central Finland city of Jyväskylä and Social Democrat Hussein al-Taee from the southern Uusimaa region both got elected.

So two out, two in, and only a slight advance in overall minority numbers as an indigenous Sámi lawmaker was also elected.

As far as politics is concerned, it is mission accomplished on gender equality. But there’s still a long way to go to get meaningful representation of minorities at national level.

And excepting some bright highlights in the world of business, Finland must do more to encourage female and immigrant-background participation in the boardroom as well, or the very real successes for political gender equality—normipolitiikkaa—will start to sound a little hollow.

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

© REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

Given the economic environment and prevailing uncertainty, there is a growing debate in Europe and in Germany about fiscal rules, or more precisely: the insistence on balanced budgets and avoiding debt.

Given the economic environment and prevailing uncertainty, there is a growing debate in Europe and in Germany about fiscal rules, or more precisely: the insistence on balanced budgets and avoiding debt.

The European Fiscal Board, an independent advisory board of the Commission, for example, has made a number of recommendations to European finance ministers for reforming the Stability and Growth Pact and promoting investment. However, these recommendations have fallen on deaf ears, mostly because Germany both in Europe and at home refuses to have this sensitive discussion, and because many prefer the constructive ambiguity of the current framework. There is therefore a strange alliance of all parties who either support or disagree with the rules in principle, but who both coalesce as a matter of fact on their “flexible” application because they share the fear that reform could make things worse.

But this ambiguously constructive compromise is at odds with the legal and political weight that these rules have carried in Germany since the 2009 constitutional reform that elevated the Schuldenbremse (“debt brake”) into the German constitution. And it deters policymakers from considering ways to amend the rules in order to make them more suited to the challenges of our times.

Four Objectives

Indeed, a modern and effective fiscal rule should achieve, at the very least, the four following objectives:

First, while it should foster the stability and sustainability of public finances, it should allow sufficient stabilization during downturns and recognize that this may require discretionary expansion over and above the simple use of automatic stabilization.

Second, it should be robust enough to meet the investment needs that are required to achieve energy and climate transition. Indeed, fiscal sustainability cannot take precedence over environmental sustainability. There is not much sense in having low debt for the future if there is no future on the planet to start with.

Third, in a federal (or quasi-federal) system, it should allow for sufficient allocation and transfers between different parts of the federation so as to ensure its economic and political integration.

Fourth, it should be transparent and democratic so as to guarantee appropriate parliamentary checks and balances on the fiscal policy of the government, both at the federal and state level. In other words, in the case of Germany, the budgetary rights of the Bundestag constitute an eternal clause in the constitution and therefore take precedence over abiding by the fiscal rules.

The reality is that Germany’s Schuldenbremse performs very poorly against these four sensible objectives. Limiting the maximum structural deficit to no more than 0.35 percent of GDP only works in a world of great moderation where economic cycles are small and automatic stabilizers are sufficient to counteract a slowing economy. In the real world, where trade and currency wars, financial crises, and technological disruptions can create large swings in economic activity, a more active fiscal policy is required.

In today’s world, where Germany needs to prepare for a profound transition of its economic model, these rules are potentially preventing the country from undertaking the appropriate fiscal and economic policy.

Climate Protection

The Schuldenbremse also treats all fiscal expenditure the same and as such is blind to public investment needs in general and in particular to the immense investments required to achieve the necessary energy transition. For example, the cost of moving away from coal alone is estimated to be in the range of €40 billion by 2038. But when the German government put together its “climate package” in September, it showed no sign of reconsidering either its political commitment to a balanced budget or the debt rule.

It is shocking that politicians would choose the appearance of fiscal sustainability over the very possibility of sustainable life on earth. At a minimum, fiscal policy should introduce a golden rule to protect public sector investments and, even more importantly, a green rule to ensure that climate mitigation and energy transition policies never get abandoned for an elusive debt reduction objective.

What is more, it is striking that in Germany fiscal rules are not only applicable to the federal government in Berlin, but also to the 16 federal states (the laender). Indeed, the Schuldenbremse was as much a reform of German federalism―with the explicit objective of centralizing more economic and political powers in the hands of the federal government―as it was a fiscal rule. One motivation for the centralization was to reduce the transfers from the federal government to the states. But more fundamentally, centralization was an effort to reduce the tensions between “rich” and “poor” states regarding transfers. The illusion persist that each state could stand on its own feet provided it kept its house in order.

This illusion ignores the fundamental workings of economic agglomeration: without transfers economic regions will diverge, provoking political disruption. Indeed, the very foundation of Germany’s unity is the solidarity between its more dynamic and less advanced regions. A federation that attempts to operate in violation of this fundamental solidarity principle is doomed to fail. This is the central reason why the Schuldenbremse in its current form will have to go.

In fact, lawmakers have already started discretely rewriting the Schuldenbremse, for example with the Constitutional reform of 2017 which (i) basically renewed the Laenderfinanzausgleich by allowing transfers (potentially permanent) to Saarland, Bremen, and Berlin implicitly acknowledging that they won’t be capable of meeting the balanced balance budget rule in 2020 and thereafter; (ii) extending the outsourcing of autobahn and other infrastructure (from 2020 onward the domain of the government in Berlin) to public-private partnerships so as to optically limit the debt of the federal government and the laender. Another example of such a work-around would be Economy Minister Peter Altmaier’s proposal to set up a Citizens’ Climate Foundation to finance green initiative without breaking federal debt rules. Each of these amount to stealthily undermining the “debt break” rules rather than opening a debate about its reform.

Time for an Honest Debate

This is not the economic and political debate that the German and indeed the European public deserves. The current approach of preaching the status quo and reforming by stealth risks obfuscating much-needed changes in economic policy and obscuring an essential aspect of it from oversight by the Bundestag. This is endangering both Germany’s prosperity and democracy.

Living the “debt brake” lie is also holding back a critical debate about fiscal rules and governance in the eurozone. Indeed, so long as a proper discussion about fiscal federalism in Germany is lacking, we are unlikely to have an informed debate about fiscal union in Europe. If Germany cannot accept the principles of stabilization and transfers inside its own federation, it won’t accept them in the European monetary union. For Europe to go forward, this has to change.

The post Living a Lie appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Eastern Europe is a region more internally divided than any other part of the continent. It is homogeneous only in ethnic terms—its population is almost entirely white (apart from some Roma populations in some countries), which makes it rather exceptional and ill-suited to the realities of a globalized world.

When modern national identities were emerging, most of today’s Eastern European countries were not even on the map. Their most prominent nationals were citizens of other countries, and their broader populations were generally poorly educated and politically disenfranchised. The common experience that ultimately united Czechs, Poles, Romanians, and Hungarians was communism.

The 19th-century experience of struggles for independence has made Eastern European countries more nationalistic and more sensitive to issues of sovereignty, while the experience of communism (which was often more nationalist than leftist) has discredited the political left. The legacy of communism is that the region is poorer, more backward, more corrupt, and cut off from immigration.

Eastern European countries also differ from their Western neighbors in terms of their economic model. They lack the experience of the postwar welfare state. Meanwhile, the fall of communism came at the height of faith in neoliberalism, which is why the capitalism that was introduced in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (as well as Russia) is far more neoliberal that its equivalent in Germany, France, or Italy.

The Narcissism of Small Differences

All of these factors serve to differentiate Eastern Europe from the West and underlie its classification as one cultural-political region. But this is a region dominated by the narcissism of small differences, where no country wants to be compared to the others because they all aspire to join the West. Every country in the region suffers from the complexes of backward and aspiring countries, meaning that they are all constantly competing with each other in an attempt to prove they are better than their neighbors.

For example, the Poles look down on the Czechs for not having fought hard enough for their country, while the Czechs disdain the Poles for constantly engaging in battles that cannot be won. The Poles see their country as the region’s natural leader because it is larger and more populous. But no one else sees Poland in that role. The Czechs see themselves as the most modern and most Western nation in the region. Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltics are in the eurozone. The Hungarians, meanwhile, are the only ones in the region who have international ambitions: Viktor Orbán wants to be the leader of Europe’s populist right. Jarosław Kaczyński wants Europe to leave him alone, but he joins Orbán in his campaigns from time to time.

Eastern European societies know much less about each other than they do about Germany or Austria. Language, religion, culture—there is much more that divides us than unites us. This is true even for the historic incorporation into empires. The territories of today’s Poland belonged to three empires at various times, which is still evident in railway and road infrastructure, and even in voting patterns.

Monastery, Mob, or Madhouse

The common experiences of 19th-century nationalism and 20th-century communism make the region far more populist than Western Europe. But the region’s internal differences also mean that it is home to entirely different brands of populism.

Poland’s populism is ideological, while the Czech Republic’s resembles the iconic Czech literary character Josef Švejk in that it is half-witted and bumbling, and therefore less threatening. Hungary, meanwhile, has gangster populism. Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), is like a monastery, Hungary’s Fidesz is like the mob, and Andrej Babiš’s ANO is like a madhouse. The populism of Slovakia’s former prime minister, Robert Fico, does not resemble anything—it is an invisible populism, although it involves the rather surreal element of cooperation with the Italian mafia. Fico’s invisible populism has proven the least populist, and fostered economic growth in Slovakia. On the other hand, it has also proved the most murderous—only Slovakia has experienced the killing of a journalist, most likely with the involvement of businessmen cooperating with government authorities.

As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Gultchin of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have shown, only in Europe’s post-communist east do populists routinely beat traditional parties in elections. Of 15 Eastern European countries, populist parties currently hold power in seven, are part of a ruling coalition in two more, and are the main opposition force in three.

Eiermann, Mounk, and Gultchin also point out that whereas populist parties captured 20 percent or more of the vote in only two Eastern European countries in 2000, today they have done so in 10 countries. In Poland, populist parties have gone from winning a mere 0.1 percent of the vote in 2000 to the current PiS government winning two consecutive parliamentary majorities. And in Hungary, support for Prime Minister Orbán’s Fidesz party has at times exceeded 70 percent.

Liberalism Is a Western Import

Hard data aside, we need to consider the underlying social and political factors that have made populism so much stronger in Eastern Europe. For starters, Eastern Europe lacks the tradition of checks and balances that has long safeguarded Western democracy. Unlike Poland’s de facto ruler, PiS chairman Kaczyński, Donald Trump does not ignore judicial decisions (so far, at least).

Or consider Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mueller was appointed by US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a government official who is subordinate to Trump within the executive branch. But while Trump has the authority to fire Mueller or Rosenstein, he didn’t dare to do so. The same cannot be said for Kaczyński.

Another major difference is that Eastern Europeans tend to hold more materialist attitudes than Westerners, who have moved beyond concerns about physical security to embrace what sociologist Ronald Inglehart calls post-materialist values. One aspect of this difference is that Eastern European societies are more vulnerable to attacks on abstract liberal institutions such as freedom of speech and judicial independence.

This shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, liberalism in Eastern Europe is a Western import. Notwithstanding the Trump and Brexit phenomena, the United States and the United Kingdom have deeply embedded cultures of political and social liberalism. In Eastern Europe, civil society is not just weaker; it is also more focused on areas such as charity, religion, and leisure, rather than political issues.

Attractive for Losers and Winners

Moreover, in the vastly different political landscapes of Europe’s post-communist states, the left is either very weak or completely absent from the political mainstream. The political dividing line, then, is not between left and right, but between right and wrong. As a result, Eastern Europe is much more prone to the “friend or foe” dichotomy conceived by the anti-liberal German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Each side conceives of itself as the only real representative of the nation and treats its opponents as illegitimate alternatives who should be disenfranchised, not merely defeated.

Another major difference between Eastern and Western European populists is that the former can count on support not only from the working class, but also from the middle class. According to research conducted by Maciej Gdula published in Krytyka Polityczna, political attitudes in Poland do not align with whether one benefited or lost out during the country’s post-communist economic transformation. The ruling party’s electorate includes many who are generally satisfied with their lives, and are benefitting from the country’s development.

For such voters, the appeal of the populist message lies in its provision of an overarching narrative in which to organize positive and negative experiences. This creates a sense of purpose, as it ties voters more strongly to the party. Voters do not develop their own opinions about the courts, refugees, or the opposition based on their own experiences. Instead, they listen to the leader, adjusting their views according to their political choices.

The success of the PiS, therefore, is rooted not in frustrated voters’ economic interests. For the working class, the desire for a sense of community is the major consideration. For their middle-class counterparts, it is the satisfaction that arises not from material wealth, but from pointing to someone who is perceived as inferior, from refugees to depraved elites to cliquish judges. Orbán and Kaczyński are experts in capitalizing on this longing.

Dissimilar Twins

Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he was creating “illiberalism in one country.” Now, Orbán and Kaczyński have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an illiberal project.

After a day of grinning, backslapping bonhomie at the 2018 Krynica conference, which styles itself a regional Davos (Orbán was named its Man of the Year), Kaczyński and Orbán announced that they would lead 100 million Europeans in a bid to remake the EU along nationalist/religious lines. One might imagine Václav Havel, a previous honoree, turning in his grave at the pronouncement. And former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, another previous winner, must be aghast: her country is being ravaged by Russia under President Vladimir Putin, the pope of illiberalism and role model for Kaczyński and Orbán.

The two men intend to seize the opportunity presented by the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, which demonstrated that, in today’s EU, illiberal democrats’ preferred mode of discourse—lies and smears—can be politically and professionally rewarding. The fusion of the two men’s skills could make them a more potent threat than many Europeans may realize.

What Orbán brings to the partnership is clear: a strain of “pragmatic” populism. He has aligned his Fidesz party with the European People’s Party (the group in the European Parliament that brings together conventional, center-right parties including Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU), which keeps him formally within the political mainstream and makes the German chancellor an ally who provides political protection, despite Orbán’s illiberal governance. Kaczyński, however, chose to ally the PiS with the marginal Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, and he quarrels almost ceaselessly with Germany and the European Commission.

Cynic vs. Fanatic

Moreover, Orbán has more of the common touch than his Polish partner. Like Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who has served as President of the European Council since 2014 (and whose tenure is about to end), he plays soccer with other politicians. Kaczyński, by contrast, is something of a hermit, who lives alone and spends his evenings watching Spanish rodeo on TV. He seems to live outside of society, whereas his supporters seem to place him above it—the ascetic messiah of a Poland reborn.

It is this mystical fervor that Kaczyński brings to his partnership with the opportunistic Orbán. It is a messianism forged from Polish history—a sense that the nation has a special mission for which God has chosen it, with the proof to be found in Poland’s especially tragic history. Uprisings, war, partitions: these are the things a Pole should think about every day.

A messianic identity favors a certain type of leader—one who, like Putin, appears to be animated by a sense of mission (in Putin’s case, it is the same mission proclaimed by the czars: orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality). So, whereas Orbán is a cynic, Kaczyński is a fanatic for whom pragmatism is a sign of weakness. Orbán would never act against his own interests; Kaczyński has done so many times. By attacking members of his own coalition government, for example, Kaczyński lost power in 2007, only two years after he had won it. He seems to have no plans. Instead, he has visions—not of fiscal reform or economic restructuring, but of a new type of Poland.

Orbán seeks nothing of the kind. He doesn’t want to create a new-model Hungary; his only aim is to remain, like Putin, in power for the rest of his life. Having governed as a liberal in the 1990s (paving the way for Hungary to join both NATO and the EU) and lost, Orbán regards illiberalism as the means to win until he takes his last breath.

Different Motives, Identical Methods

Kaczyński’s illiberalism is of the soul. He calls those outside his camp “the worst sort of Poles.” Homo Kaczynskius is a Pole preoccupied with his country’s fate, and who bares his teeth at critics and dissenters, particularly foreign ones. Gays and lesbians cannot be true Poles. All non-Polish elements within Poland are viewed as a threat. The PiS government has not accepted a single refugee of the tiny number—just 7,500—that Poland, a country of nearly 40 million, agreed with the EU to take in.

Despite having different motivations for embracing illiberalism, Kaczyński and Orbán agree that, in practical terms, it means building a new national culture. State-funded media are no longer public, but rather “national.” By eliminating civil-service exams, offices can be filled with loyalists and party hacks. The education system is being turned into a vehicle for fostering identification with a glorious and tragic past. Only cultural enterprises that praise the nation should receive public funding.

For Kaczyński, foreign policy is a function of historical policy. Here, the two men do differ: whereas Orbán’s pragmatism keeps him from antagonizing his European and US partners excessively, Kaczyński is uninterested in geopolitical calculation. After all, a messiah does not trim his beliefs or kowtow; he lives to proclaim the truth.

So, for the most part, Kaczyński’s foreign policy is a tendentious history seminar. Poland was betrayed by the West. Its strength—today and always—comes from pride, dignity, courage, and absolute self-reliance. Its defeats are moral victories that prove the nation’s strength and courage, enabling it, like Christ, to return from the dead after 123 years of absence from the map of Europe.

The Four Lessons of Populist Rule

The conventional view of populism posits that an erratic ruler will enact contradictory policies that primarily benefit the rich. The poor will lose, because populists have no hope of restoring manufacturing jobs, despite their promises. And massive inflows of migrants and refugees will continue, because populists have no plan to address the problem’s root causes. In the end, populist governments, incapable of effective rule, will crumble and their leaders will either face impeachment or fail to win re-election.

Kaczyński faced similar expectations. Liberal Poles thought that he would work for the benefit of the rich, create chaos, and quickly trip himself up—which is exactly what happened between 2005 and 2007, when PiS last governed Poland. But the liberals were wrong: PiS has transformed itself from an ideological nullity into a party that has managed to introduce shocking changes with record speed and efficiency. In fact, recent years have brought us four lessons about what makes populist rule more durable.

First, no neoliberalism. Between 2005 and 2007, PiS implemented neoliberal economic policies (for example, eliminating the highest income-tax bracket and the estate tax). But since returning to power in 2015, it has enacted the largest social transfers in Poland’s contemporary history. Parents now receive a 500 złoty ($120) monthly benefit for every child. As a direct result, the poverty rate has declined by 20 to 40 percent, and by 70 to 90 percent among children. And that’s just the most discussed example. In 2016, the government introduced free medication for people over the age of 75. The retirement age has been reduced from 67 for both men and women to 60 for women and 65 for men. The government is also planning tax relief for low-income taxpayers.

The 500 złoty child subsidy has changed the political paradigm in Poland. Now, no electoral promise that is not formulated as a direct offer of cash can have any hope of appealing to voters. PiS won big in the European elections in May 2019 thanks to its promise of paying out a 13th month of retirement benefits, which was enacted a week before voters went to the polls. In the campaign ahead of the Polish parliamentary elections in October 2019 the party ran on a promise of almost doubling the minimum salary (from 2250 złoty in 2019 to 3000 złoty in 2020 and 4000 złoty in 2023).

Second, the restoration of “order.” Independent institutions are the most important enemy of populism. Populist leaders are control freaks. For populists, it is liberal democracy that leads to chaos, which must be “put in order” by a “responsible government.” Media pluralism leads to informational chaos. An independent judiciary means legal chaos. Independent public administration creates institutional chaos. And a robust civil society is a recipe for chronic bickering and conflict.

But populists believe that such chaos does not emerge by itself. It is the work of perfidious foreign powers and their domestic puppets. To “make Poland great again,” the nation’s heroes must defeat its traitors, who are not equal contenders for power. Populist leaders are thus obliged to limit their opponents’ rights. Indeed, their political ideal is not order, but rather the subordination of all independent bases of power that could challenge them: courts, media, business, cultural institutions, NGOs, and so forth.

Third, electoral dictatorship. Populists know how to win elections, but their conception of democracy extends no further. On the contrary, populists view the separation of government powers, minority rights, and independent media—all staples of liberalism—as an attack on majority rule, and therefore on democracy itself.

The political ideal that a populist government strives for is essentially an elected dictatorship. And recent US experience suggests that this can be a sustainable model. After all, everything depends on how those in power decide to organize elections, which can include redrawing voting districts or altering the rules governing campaign finance or political advertisements. Elections can be falsified imperceptibly.

Fourth, might makes right. Populists have benefited from disseminating fake news, slandering their opponents, and promising miracles that mainstream media treat as normal campaign claims. But it is a mistake to think that truth is an effective weapon against post-truth. In a post-truth world, it is power, not fact-checking, that is decisive. Whoever is most ruthless and has the fewest scruples wins.

To Defeat Populism, Be Ruthless

Populists are both unseemly and ascendant. Trump’s supporters, for example, have come to view tawdriness as evidence of credibility, whereas comity, truth, and reason are evidence of elitism. Those who would resist populism must come to terms with the fact that truth is not enough. They must also display determination and ruthlessness, though without becoming the mirror image of their opponents.

In postmodernity, nationalism does not disappear into thin air. Unfortunately, in Poland and elsewhere, the only ideology that has survived in the post-ideological era is nationalism. By appealing to nationalist sentiment, populists have gained support everywhere, regardless of the economic system or situation, because this sentiment is being fueled externally, namely by the influx of migrants and refugees. It does not have to be real; imagined dangers also work well. Polish anti-Semitism does not need Jews, anti-communism works without communists. Another good example are anti-migration feelings, which can be whipped up without a single migrant or refugee around.

Mainstream politicians, especially on the left, have no effective message on the issue. Opposing migration contradicts their ideals, while supporting it means electoral defeat.

But the choice should be clear. Either populism’s opponents drastically change their rhetoric regarding migrants and refugees, or the populists will continue to rule in Eastern Europe. Migrants and refugees lose in either scenario, but in the second, liberal democracy does as well. Such calculations are ugly—and, yes, corrosive of liberal values—but the populists, as we have seen, are capable of far nastier trade-offs.

Kaczyński had succeeded in establishing control over two issues near and dear to voters: social transfers and nationalism. As long as he controls these two bastions of voter sentiment, he is safe.

The post Eastern Differences appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Following the European Central Bank’s announcement in September that it will restart its bond-buying program, several national central bank governors voiced unprecedented public criticism of the decision. “In my view, [outgoing ECB president Mario Draghi] has gone too far,” Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann told German tabloid BILD. A group of former central bankers quickly followed with similar complaints.

All this comes on the back of strong condemnation in recent years of the eurozone central bank’s monetary policy from parliamentarians and other officials, particularly in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.

The issue is not just that this damages public trust in the independence of the ECB. Such objections also tend to ignore the source of the current low-rate environment. For example, the ECB is constantly under fire in Germany, even though the German government’s unwillingness to spend and invest more has played a role in forcing Europe’s central bank to intervene and in keeping interest rates low. Criticism of the ECB coming from those in charge of fiscal policy is particularly galling because, over the last decade, the eurozone has relied almost completely on support from the ECB to stimulate its economy.

Too Much Saving

The ECB’s critics complain that it keeps interest rates artificially low, causing savers to lose out, distorting markets, reducing pressure on governments to reform, and putting pressure on banks’ business models and on pension funds’ funding positions. However, they tend to ignore the causes of the low interest rate environment and overstate the power of the ECB to control financial conditions. This critique also disregards the fact that interest rates have been on a downward trend since the 1980s. In fact, this trend in rates continued largely unchanged after the start of the ECB’s bond-buying program in 2015. Nevertheless, critics tend to blame this practice, which they often incorrectly describe as “money printing,” for the current state of financial conditions.

The bottom line is that too many people, and countries, are trying to save more than they invest. And as the demand for borrowing is lower than the supply, the price of borrowing, i.e. the interest rate, is falling. This is clearly visible in the eurozone, which as a whole consumes and invests significantly less than it produces, with the gap at about 3 percent of its gross domestic product. Ageing populations are often assumed to be a driving factor of this; a relatively larger group has to save more for their retirement. The fact that so many investors are searching for safe assets, often government bonds, pushes up their prices and thereby reduces their yields. On top of these private sector savings, many European governments are now running fiscal surpluses, further decreasing the supply of safe assets and pushing up their prices.

Counterproductive Fiscal Policy

While the ECB will never acknowledge that it has run out of tools to stimulate the eurozone economy, its repeated calls for government spending highlight that it cannot do the job alone. For several years now the ECB has been pointing out to governments that it needs support from fiscal policy to boost economic growth in the eurozone. But many governments have responded by doing the opposite: tightening fiscal policy, and in many cases running large fiscal surpluses for several years, often by increasing tax burdens and cutting back on public investment.

In spite of repeated calls for Germany to loosen the purse strings, including from the IMF, both governing German parties remain committed to the so-called “schwarze Null policy” of making no new debt. Olaf Scholz, the finance minister, recently indicated that Germany would be willing to increase spending in the event of a crisis comparable to that in 2008, but this sets an absurdly high bar—that was, we hope, a once-in-a-generation global economic crisis.

Germany did engage in fiscal stimulus during the global financial crisis in 2009-10, but this turned out to be a short-lived experiment. By 2011, it was already tightening again. That fiscal stimulus helped the German industrial sector through the slump, and Berlin might repeat the trick now to cushion the impact of the current industrial downturn, for instance through state support for reduced working hours. This would be welcome in the short term, but it runs the risk of crowding out the types of spending and investment needed for the medium to long term. Under the schwarze Null, every euro spent paying factory workers to stay at home is a euro not spent renovating schools, or improving low-carbon transport.

How to Kick the ECB Habit

Unemployment may be approaching historically low levels in the eurozone, but the persistence of low inflation points to a continued demand deficit. The ECB under Draghi has responded to this, but governments have barely contributed to these efforts. Through increasing spending, particularly investment, they could help create the conditions that would allow interest rates to be increased. Instead, some are calling on the ECB to tighten policy now in the same disastrous way it did in the past, unnecessarily cutting short economic recoveries.

There have been some tentative calls even from influential voices within Germany to increase spending, with the idea usually being to invest more in areas such as green technology. While this would be a good step, Germany and other countries in comfortable fiscal positions need a change in thinking, need to increase investment on a wider scale. Due to the current healthy state of its public finances, for Germany this would not even necessarily mean going beyond the headline budget targets set out in the European rules or violating its constitutional debt brake, which—unlike the schwarze Null—allows limited debt spending.

Beyond the modest positive economic spillovers to the rest of the eurozone, doing so could also encourage the bloc to rethink its fiscal rules. These could be made more accommodating to public investment in order to avoid situations in which governments cut down on this to reach headline budget targets. Such a shift in attitudes towards fiscal policy would be difficult to achieve, not least because the opposition to spending is not just driven by ideological considerations but also simply resonates well with many electorates. However, taking a new approach could help ease relations between the member states and could be achieved without letting go of prudent fiscal management altogether.

Europe needs investment in infrastructure, education, digital technology, and research to get it ready for the future and to boost the competitiveness of some economies, particularly peripheral ones. Public investment fell from 3.3 percent of eurozone GDP in 2008 to 2.7 percent in 2018. This is partly the result of secular spending pressures, as ageing populations pushed up healthcare and pension spending, but also of deliberate prioritization by policymakers.

In pursuit of these targets, European governments ignored investment in the long-term strength of their economies. Now that government bonds carry negative interest rates, and governments are thus effectively being paid to borrow, there is no excuse to continue to do so. Only by letting go of the arbitrary fiscal targets and stimulating investment and consumption demand in the eurozone can governments get Europe’s economies to a position where the ECB is able to withdraw its monetary policy support over time.

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