Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

It could be the title of the latest blockbuster action movie, but instead it has become the rallying cry of Russia hawks across the West. What is the latest fiendishly complex, ruthlessly cunning threat we face from the Kremlin? Why, of course it’s the “Gerasimov Doctrine.”

Named for Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, this is a supposed plan for combined psychological, political, subversive, and military operations to destabilize the West. Or perhaps just covert operations and disinformation, without the shooting. Or maybe the aim is to destroy the whole architecture of the global order. The very confusion about what exactly this “doctrine” entails betrays the basic point: it doesn’t exist.

A Foolish Indulgence

I really ought to know, as I was the one who incautiously and unintentionally launched the “Gerasimov Doctrine.” Back in 2013, a speech Gerasimov delivered to a Russian military conference was published in the obscure journal called the Military-Industrial Courier. It made some interesting points, and so I published a translation by Robert Coulson of RFE/RL on my blog, In Moscow’s Shadows, along with my own thoughts and annotations.

In a bid to make it eye-catching, I gave the article the tongue-in-cheek title “The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War.” It was a mistake I will regret forevermore, because even though in the text I explicitly stated that it wasn’t a doctrine and wasn’t even necessarily Gerasimov’s thinking, it turned out that a snappy headline is much more influential that the actual detail written beneath it.

Before I knew it, the “Gerasimov Doctrine” was being hailed as the Russian blueprint for future war. For the Financial Times, Gerasimov was “the general with a doctrine for Russia,” while Politico warned that “Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare” was “probably being used on you.” It was even cropping up in official Western military documents.

Yet the text was in no way framed as a new Russian war plan. Instead, when Gerasimov talked of a “blurring of the lines between the states of war and peace” in which “the role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness,” he was explicitly addressing what he felt was a new Western way of war. To the Russians, the risings of the Arab Spring and the post-Soviet Eurasia’s Color Revolutions were not simply popular responses to corrupt and authoritarian regimes, but the result of cunning Western—American—campaigns of covert destabilization.

A Tempting Meme

So why did an article in an obscure defense magazine shape Western perspectives on Russian military thinking and, by extension, political ambitions?

The first answer is Crimea. The seizure of the peninsula in February 2014 by the so-called “little green men” was efficient in its execution but not especially novel in its means. Deploying troops without clearly identifiable insignia? Breaking the enemy’s lines of command and communications? Lying about what you’re doing? None of these were really ground-breaking.

Nonetheless, coupled with the subsequent incursion into Ukraine’s Donbass region (a more plausible case of unusual, asymmetric tactics, with its reliance on thugs, gangsters, mercenaries, and nationalists as proxies), it crystallized the notion that somehow Moscow had imagined and adopted a brand-new style of warfare.

More than anything else, this mythical doctrine was the sum of all fears held in the West about a modern world that once had seemed so comfortable—history had ended, remember? —and now was chaotic and threatening. The transatlantic relationship was under pressure, first as Barack Obama “pivoted to Asia” and then when Trump introduced a confrontational new transactionalism. Challengers from Beijing to Tehran were questioning the international order. Even the foundations of Western democracy and the European project were coming under pressure.

Such Perfect Villains

In such a climate, how comforting to have someone to blame. From Trump to Brexit, the rise of ultra-right anti-migrant movements to ultra-left climate activists, the West could affect to spy the sinister hand of Moscow—or its trolls and tweets—at work. How convenient to be able to portray these processes as the products of foreign interference rather than of domestic shortcomings.

And the Russians made such good villains. Consider Putin’s triumphalism over his Crimean land-grab and the stone-faced and cold-hearted denials of any blame for the shooting down of the MH17 airliner over the Donbass by Russian-backed forces using a Russian-supplied missile. Consider the string of Russian-linked assassination plots. Gerasimov himself even looks like a stock figure from Hollywood, the habitually-impassive, slab-faced Russian heavy.

The irony is, that even while railing against the “Gerasimov Doctrine” meme, Moscow itself helped it spread. A second-rank power trying to present itself as a global player—and given that politics are about perceptions, this means scaring or seducing other countries to treat it as such—Putin’s Russia actively seeks to look more formidable and threatening than it is. Hence the bomber patrols willfully straying into NATO airspace, the inflammatory rhetoric, the adventures in Syria and Libya.

A Dangerous Myth

Gerasimov is a decorated tank commander and a tough and competent manager of the Russian high command. His career has shown no evidence that he is a ground-breaking military theorist—or even that interested in the scholarship of war. He probably didn’t even write that famous speech himself. Nor is what people claim to see a “doctrine” in the Russian sense, which is a foundational notion of the wars Russia expects to fight and how it plans to win, driving everything from what weapons to buy to how many soldiers to recruit.

So what, though? Given that it is hard to deny that Russia is deploying propaganda, covert influence operations, threats, and “black cash” (untraceable, corrupt money) to divide, distract, and demoralize the West, and given that it has shown a willingness to back its political ambitions with military force, what’s in a name?

The academic pedant in me replies that it matters in its own right. Yet from a wider policy perspective, this myth also has several serious dangers. First, it mistakenly makes Russian policy somehow new and distinctive, whereas actually it simply reflects how inter-state conflict is changing in a modern age characterized by deep interconnections of our economic, information, and cultural spaces—and by the increasingly prohibitive cost of military conflict.

Second, by allowing the West to blame Russia for everything from political disaffection to football hooliganism, we get distracted us from addressing their root causes. Groups and individuals who have their own motivations are disenfranchised. Labelling them Moscow’s “useful idiots” only pushes them further into opposition.

Third, it misrepresents Russia’s approach in such a way as to distort Western policy. Central to the “Gerasimov Doctrine” notion is that there is a single Russian strategy, and—as in Crimea and the Donbass—all the political and social disruption is simply a prelude to war. In fact, the Kremlin is fundamentally risk-averse, with no signs of further territorial ambition, and a keen awareness of its relative weaknesses compared with the West. A European focus on when and where the “little green men” will appear next is a distraction, at best.

More to the point, Moscow’s approach is opportunistic, fragmented, and often contradictory. There is a broad vision from the Kremlin, but most of its interference in the West is driven by the interests and imaginations of individual actors and agents. If we truly want to resist Putin’s “political war,” we need to address the weaknesses they exploit in Europe, not look for some sinister grand plan in Moscow.

The post “The Gerasimov Doctrine” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

It should have been a done deal, or so most people thought in the recently renamed country of North Macedonia. After all, the country had finally settled a long-running dispute with Greece over its name, meeting Brussel’s key condition for EU accession.

But then Emmanuel Macron said “No.”

Disbelief, frustration, anger, even rage screamed off the pages of media outlets for weeks following what was widely viewed as the French president’s historic mistake. EU Council President Donald Tusk even told his “Albanian and Macedonian friends” that “you did your share and we haven’t.”

Beyond the initial response, what lingers is a sense of betrayal. “I am breaking inside,” Prime Minister Zoran Zaev told the New York Times on November 19, 2019. “This destroyed me personally, psychologically,” Zaev added, underlining his concern about the future stability of the Balkans. “Nationalism and radicalism can rise again,” he said. “There is a risk to open conflicts inside of the countries again. Also to open conflicts between countries again.”

Stuck in the Waiting Room

Macedonia had been waiting for a “Yes” from the EU for a long time. It’s actually been waiting longer than anyone in the Balkans, given it was the first country in the region to start the bid for EU membership, in 2001, before Croatia. Yet the country has been stuck in the EU waiting room.
In 2009, when the European Commission first gave its recommendation that accession talks should start with the then Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, the proposal was shut down by Greece.

Over the following years, Athens repeatedly ensured that the European Commission’s proposal remained just a piece of paper, blocking any attempt by Skopje to launch talks. Every time, Athens raised the same objection: “FYROM” had to settle the name issue first. Greece played the same blocking role at NATO: the alliance told Skopje in 2008 that it was welcome to join once it settled the name issue.

The fact that Athens was allowed to keep Skopje in limbo was seen as unfair and unjust by many Macedonians. Why should the country change its name only because Greece demanded it? And why are other countries allowing such behavior? This sense of betrayal played into the hands of the former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, now a convicted fugitive residing in Budapest.

The Troubled Gruevski Era

Gruevski stoked tensions at home and abroad, fueled narratives about domestic and international enemies, started a massive revamp of the capital in neoclassical style that ended up costing over €600 million of taxpayers’ money, erected a huge monument of Alexander the Great in the main square, clamped down on critical media and civil society, and packed state institutions with party members. As the EU put it in 2016, he carried out “state capture.”

Following dramatic opposition press conferences that revealed the illegal wiretapping of 20,000 people over many years—and sizable, sustained protests—the country got a change of power in 2017. The new government was eager to resolve the name issue and unblock EU integration. A year later, in mid-2018, a deal was signed with Greece to rename the country to North Macedonia. The agreement was praised all over the world as a success story for conflict resolution.

Yet for North Macedonia’s government, the political cost was high. Already in 2017, they had barely escaped alive when an angry nationalist mob stormed parliament and attacked them. One year later, they had to make political concessions and—to the public’s dismay—grant amnesty to the same MPs (the VMRO DPMNE nationalist opposition) who had opened the doors for the violent mob. This was the price to pay for getting a two-thirds majority to approve the name-change deal with Greece.

Once the law was passed, NATO immediately started procedures to invite Skopje to take its seat as the 30th member of the Alliance. The EU was set to deliver a decision to start talks in October 2018, but that decision was first moved to March 2019 and then delayed again to October, when Macron said no, arguing that the Union had to sort out internal issues before expanding any further.

What Comes After Predavstvo?

So where are we now? The political establishment led by the Social Democrats has been betrayed by its foreign partners, who had repeatedly assured them that Macedonia would start negotiation talks. The government had no other option but to call early elections for April 2020.
These are the same leaders that pledged to uphold EU values and restore rule of law, freedom of the press and liberate state institutions from party influence. They have now been forced by the EU to face new elections and bear responsibility for the broken promises. Their approval ratings have fallen since Macron’s “No,” which reinforced perceptions that the government wasted its two-and-a-half years in power by banking heavily on the EU integration process instead of focusing on reforms at home.

The EU is saying that it will have another discussion on enlargement in March, following French proposals for changes in accession methodology. If the EU decides again not to open accession talks, it would further fuel narratives of nationalism and reignite attempts by North Macedonian politicians to replicate the “successes” of leaders like Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or Vladimir Putin.

Whether this government can stay in power or not, the end of the EU accession process would increase the temptation for any political leader to seek authoritarian rule—and arguably make this easier to achieve. Without incentives and pressure from Brussels, the weak internal system of checks and balances would not have the power to stop state capture.

If the EU carrots disappear, all that remains are the local sticks, and that cannot lead to anything other than a malfunctioning system, one thriving on corruption and nationalism and resistant to any kind of reform. Predavstvo could be followed by something worse.

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

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.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Just a few years ago, Portugal was mired in its deepest economic recession since 1975. When I moved to Lisbon in 2011, the country was down on its knees, its people drowning in unemployment and suffering tax hikes in exchange for a €78 billion bailout.

But in 2015 an unlikely parliament-only alliance between the Socialist Party (PS) and left wing-parties, referred to as a geringonça (which translates to something like a “contraption”) turned the country into a success story. Socialist Prime Minister António Costa became the poster boy of the European left and opinion polls indicate that it is likely he will be re-elected in October.

While countries like Italy shift toward far-right populism, it doesn’t seem to stand a chance in Portugal. The new Basta! (“Enough!”) party, whose leader once opted to skip a debate with other candidates on national television to comment on football on another channel, has no seats in parliament. A conference of far-right groups held in Lisbon earlier this month saw only 65 people attend and instead sparked a protest that attracted hundreds of people who marched down streets in the city center slamming the government for allowing such an event to take place.

The government has benefitted from improved economic indicators and falling unemployment. Also, the country’s political landscape is different from most of Europe. “Euroskepticism, immigration, and sovereignty are themes that are not present in Portugal,” António Costa Pinto, a political analyst, pointed out to Berlin Policy Journal.

Despite widespread initial skepticism, the Socialist government has been praised by Brussels for turning around the economy, cutting the deficit, halving unemployment to 6.4 percent, reversing cuts to wages, and offering businesses incentives. Portugal’s economic recovery and the rise of the left has been portrayed as a success story, with the Standard & Poor rating agency lifting the country’s status from junk to investment grade.

Too Little to Live On

But might Portugal’s success story be overrated? The International Labor Organization said in a recent report that while Portugal had “demonstrated that taking steps to foster employment-oriented policies and safeguard social cohesion helped to speed up its recovery, it was too soon for it to ‘rest on its laurels.’” The report went on: “There are still a significantly higher number of precarious workers than prior to the crisis, and the young and the long-term unemployed continue to face particular challenges in their integration into the labor market. The country’s external debt remains high.”

Costa’s Socialist Party had come to power in November 2015 after an inconclusive general election, by forging an unexpected “anti-austerity alliance” with the far-left Left Bloc and Communist Party. They ousted the center-right bloc led by Passos Coelho, which had been in power since 2011 and had imposed harsh austerity in exchange for a three-year €78 billion bailout program. The geringonça operated by vowing to overturn austerity, which Costa referred to as “tearing down the last remains of a Berlin Wall,” while promising to comply with EU rules.

After seeing her salary frozen over several years, Paula Fernandes, 50, initially had high hopes in the new government. She was among state workers demanding a retroactive salary hike to recover the income she had lost. Today, her living standards have improved, but not as much as she had hoped. “My salary has increased a little bit, but so have my taxes and the cost of living,” Fernandes explained.

Portugal’s minimum wage currently is €600 per month, up from €530 euros in 2016. According to a study by Lisbon’s ISEG university, €1,000 a month is the minimum amount one needs to pay for housing, food, and other basic living expenses.

“Propagandistic Vision”

“That idea [that the economy is growing] is a propagandistic vision of the government,” Raquel Varela, a historian, researcher, and university professor at Nova University Lisbon, said. “There was a drop in the real value of wages and an increase in taxes. There is less unemployment, but the number of people earning the national minimum wage tripled,” Varela added.

Fuel-tanker drivers are among workers fighting to have their salaries raised, from €650 per month to €1,000 by 2025. They recently held a strike that led the government to declare a state of crisis and to issue a decree ensuring they would deliver enough fuel during the peak of its tourism season. This followed the country’s worst labor unrest in years in April when 40 percent of petrol stations were left without fuel.

“A responsible government has to be ready for the worst,” Prime Minister Costa said at the end of an emergency meeting over the strike, which took place just two months before the general elections on October 6. The government’s move to issue a civil order divided the government’s parliamentary base, with Left Bloc leader Catarina Martins complaining that “issuing a civil requisition at the request of employers is a mistake and a restriction of the right to strike.”

Portugal has undoubtedly made headway since having to seek the bailout back in 2011, when it was forced to commit to a set of measures. Yet some of those measures are contributing to the rise in inequality. One of those was a new rental law that liberalized the housing market and led to a rapid escalation of house prices, which soared by 18 percent in 2017 alone. Now previous residents are being evicted in droves.

Lisbon’s Alfama neighborhood, where I live, and which is featured in Wim Wenders’ movie Lisbon Story is bustling with tuk-tuks, and the nearby new port terminal is bringing in a record number of tourists. It has gone from being a “slum by the sea,” or a “ghetto with a view” as it was described by the New York Times in 1988, to a tourism hot spot. My next door neighbor recently mentioned that there were just a handful of long-term residents still living on our street.

The geringonça is now taking steps to curb social inequality and discontent, with a new law aiming to treat housing as a citizen’s right amid complaints that tourism has become unsustainable. So not all is rosy in Portugal, despite Lisbon’s gleaming, newly renovated historical buildings and a city center, once abandoned, now bustling with life. And not everyone is benefiting from the country’s newfound success.  •

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Zack, zack, zack—three short, harsh-sounding words that have suddenly taken on a completely new meaning in Austria. Usually, the three Z-words uttered together in quick succession would not have had any negative connotations. On the contrary, the expression described a particularly eager, speedy way of working. If you had done something zack, zack, zack then it meant that it had been achieved pretty easily, quickly, and without coercion.

But since May 17, 2019, this saying has gained an added layer of meaning. On that day, a secretly filmed video emerged in which Heinz-Christian Strache, Austria’s Vice-Chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), explained the power mechanisms in the country to a woman posing as the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch.

In a duet with his party colleague Johann Gudenus, he boasted about how easy it was to buy influential newspapers in Austria and award highly valuable state contracts to large companies. If one could gain control the Kronen-Zeitung, the biggest tabloid newspaper in the country, then it would be easy to bring in new journalists—“zack, zack, zack,” Strache said, while lounging comfortably on the sofa of the Ibiza villa and wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt.

Throw out the unpleasant reporters and replace them with docile writers. Zack, zack, zack—that’s how quickly it could be done. The oligarch’s niece turned out to be a skillful actress, the night in the Ibiza villa a trap that had far-reaching consequences for the two right-wing populist politicians and for Austria itself.

A Symbol of Complacency

This triple zack has been on everyone’s lips ever since. It has become a linguistic memorial—a symbol of the complacent willingness of members of the government to abuse their power. The three words have been emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers, quoted in just about every comment online and used ironically by the Austrians to describe what has happened in Austria since “Ibizagate.”

First, the main protagonists in the video, Strache and Gudenus, resigned from their offices. On the same day, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, leader of the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), ended the coalition government with the FPÖ and called new elections. Shortly afterwards, the opposition parties Liste Jetzt and the center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) tabled a parliamentary motion of no confidence in Kurz, which was adopted by a majority with the votes of the FPÖ.

And so, for the first time in its history the Republic of Austria has a transitional government of experts appointed by the president, led by a new chancellor, Brigitte Bierlein, who was previously president of the Constitutional Court. New elections will be held at the end of September. All this happened in less than 14 days. Zack, zack, zack.

Events have moved so fast that by now, the Ibiza video has been pushed into the background. Now, only two years after the last general election in October 2017, all the parties are facing another summer of campaigning. The Greens, who lost all their seats last time round, have a good chance of reentering parliament; the Liste Jetzt, a spin-off of the Greens, will probably lose their seats.

Astonishingly Little Damage

The SPÖ is deeply divided and has been unable to react with enough skill to profit from the chaos caused by the outgoing ÖVP-FPÖ government. The New Austria and Liberal Forum (NEOS), which only entered parliament in 2013, is doing a bit better, thanks to its resolute party leader Beate Meinl-Reisinger, and is seriously considering entering government after the election. The FPÖ under its new leader Norbert Hofer, who was the party’s presidential candidate in 2016, is presenting itself as the real victim of “Ibizagate” and is trying to pretend that it is relaxed about the departure of its leading figure Heinz-Christian Strache. Internally, that is far from the case.

Nevertheless, it is astonishing how little damage the scandal seems to have inflicted on the FPÖ: only nine days after the video was released, the party still achieved 17.2 percent in the European elections—in 2014 it was 20.5 percent. And Sebastian Kurz? Having done even better in the European elections than at the last national poll in 2017, the head of the ÖVP is confident of victory and eager to take back the Chancellery. The forced end of his government after less than 17 months has hugely annoyed Kurz, the youngest ever head of government in Europe. He strictly rejects the argument, made by many commentators and the opposition parties, that he made the right-wing populists of the FPÖ acceptable and thus contributed to the current chaos.

Austria’s deeply divided parliament is currently and quickly overturning various laws that were passed under ÖVP-FPÖ. For instance, it reintroduced the total smoking ban in restaurants, which Kurz’ government had lifted in the spring of 2018 despite strong criticism by doctors, labor lawyers, and others. But the issues that were raised by the Ibiza video and that should urgently be addressed, such as illegal party financing, the fight against corruption, or the sometimes far too close relations between the media and politics, are being simply ignored.

On the contrary. Strache may have resigned from his party office, and he may have not accepted his mandate as an MEP, despite attracting 44,750 direct votes in the European elections. But his family still has a lot of influence. Zack, zack, zack, and his wife Philippa Strache will be running for the FPÖ in the September national election. Zack, zack, zack, and Strache himself plans to become the party’s top candidate in the Vienna local elections in 2020. It seems Austria won’t be rid of those three Zs any time soon.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

In an atmosphere of crisis such as the one we’re currently enduring, there’s no easier way to dismiss your political opponents—especially if you’re in a rush and you need to find the killer stroke in an internet-based brawl—than to call them a “populist.”

It makes things so easy because everyone knows what the word implies, if not what it actually means. It suggests a sort of childish disposition: a populist insists on their moral rightness, they’re not able to have a rational argument, they have no patience for liberal compromise, and—here’s the main thing—they are easily seduced by an “elites” versus “people” view of the world.

That last point is the key element of what has become the textbook definition of the term “populism,” developed by Dutch academic Cas Mudde. In his 2004 paper, the “Populist Zeitgeist,” he defined populism as “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” This sharpened the focus of the academic understanding of populism, and though it was apparently little read on publication, it hit its moment emphatically a few years ago.

Mudde’s description of populism chimed particularly well with the global political upheaval that began circa 2014: new parties were suddenly undermining institutions that held the world together, winning elections by exploiting a lack of trust in the mainstream. These insurgents broke the grip of old parties, and they did it by pitting an indivisible “will of the people” against a rich urban elite.

Mudde’s definition proved even more useful because it talked about populism as something more than a strategy but less than a proper ideology. He explained that populism isn’t just rabble-rousing demagoguery—it is a kind of parasite, a simple set of ideas that can feed off either left or right-wing politics. This incidentally turned out to a good explanation for why the term has proved so difficult to define: populism is a boneless, shape-shifting creature, clinging onto other ideologies.

The theory proved a handy intellectual way of explaining the old “horseshoe” cliché about how left and right-wing extremists end up resembling each other. As a result, the doors were opened to countless alarming parallels with the rise of fascism and communism in the early 20th century, which brought with them the sense that a century-long cycle had come round again, and the would-be dictators were on the rise.

Creeping In From the Edges

To bring the point home, Mudde’s definition was adopted by The Guardian in its “new populism” section, which has been tracking the growing success of populist politics all over the world. In the past few months, the United Kingdom’s leading liberal newspaper published two major studies it had commissioned from a team of political scientists across dozens of countries, which came to two conclusions: firstly, that populist parties had tripled their support in Europe in the last twenty years, and secondly, that in the same period there had been a corresponding surge in populist rhetoric from political leaders.

This second survey showed “empirically,” Mudde wrote in the same newspaper in March, “what many have asserted and felt”: that populism was creeping from the edges into the middle. Political leaders from nominally centrist old parties were getting spooked by populist successes, and so “more and more mainstream politicians are using ‘pro-people’ and/or ‘anti-elite’ rhetoric to win voters—in part to fight off electoral challenges from true populist actors.”

The consequence is that populism appears to be a threat to democracy itself: the people’s gateway opiate to full-blown authoritarianism. That is a story told by many new popular politics books, such as How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

It’s hard to argue against this reading, given the developments of the last few years across Europe. That populism is a direct threat to the democratic order of the European Union was shown by the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, when the Leave campaign shamelessly employed anti-elite rhetoric to make its case.

And for evidence that populists attack democratic institutions as soon as they gain power, one need only look as far as Poland, where the European Court of Justice has had to intervene to stop the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) loading the supreme court with friendly judges. Or one could point at Hungary, whose right-wing Fidesz-led government has been sanctioned by the EU for undermining media plurality and suppressing civil society.

Populism Is Just Politics

But there’s a danger that this narrative widens the definition of populism so far it becomes meaningless: simply conflating populism with the ideologies it might enable doesn’t really help us to understand much. It certainly doesn’t help understand the more profound reasons why our democracy is under threat.

As political scientist Jason Frank of Cornell University wrote in the Boston Review last year, crying populist only perpetuates confusion over the nature of new movements. “Authoritarian attempts to centralize and expand the state’s executive power and wield it against ‘enemies of the people’—however defined by Trump, Erdoğan, Orbán, and others—should never be equated with the radically democratic institutional experimentalism of Podemos (in Spain) or the Farmers’ Alliance (in 1880s USA),” Frank argued.

Not only that, making populism the preserve of the radicals obscures the fact that apparently rational centrist politicians are just as capable of making blatantly populist moves—like Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) regularly announcing tax cuts just before elections.

The Mudde definition of populism has been questioned by other academics too. Chantal Mouffe of the University of Westminster in London is among those to argue that what gets dismissed as populism is actually just a necessary correction to a system that has seized up. As center-right and center-left government parties fused into a kind of management board whose main job is to oversee a neoliberal debt-based economy, Mouffe argued in The Guardian, something had to give when evidence mounted that that system was failing. No status quo lasts forever.

For Mouffe and others, the rise of populism is actually the sight of politics being reacquainted with its life-blood: a basic conflict about how society should be organized. In fact, one could conclude that the sooner the old centrist politicians start joining that debate, rather than desperately painting the new parties on the right and left as extremist threats, the more likely they will be to survive.

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It’s a trigger word for many Germans. “Tempolimit”, or “speed limit,” can cause even quite reasonable people to see red. This, after all, is the land of the free, at least when it comes to speeding down the motorway. “Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger!” or “Freedom to drive for free citizens.” is the rallying cry for those who would defend that right.

Of course there are speed limits on many German roads and even on some motorways, but on 60 percent of autobahns, there are none. That makes Germany an exception among industrial nations. While it’s rare for most cars to actually reach their full speed potential, there is a fast lane where many drivers will try to push it to the max. As a result, motorists can find driving on a German autobahn a singularly terrifying or exhilarating experience, depending on what makes them tick.

The latest outbreak of Tempolimit fever was triggered by leaks from a working group on carbon emissions in transport, which account for 12 percent of the country’s total. The committee came up with a range of proposals, from a quota for e-cars to a hike in fuel taxes. But it was the inclusion of the speed limit that really raised hackles. The proposal was immediately pounced upon by politicians, interest groups, and the concerned citizenry. Talk shows and current affairs programs were devoted to it, as were countless column inches and gigabytes of online commentary.

How Fast Can You Go?

The most vociferous of those up in arms and to the barricades to defend the status quo was Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, the man who had commissioned the working group. He exclaimed that talk of a speed limit was “contrary to all common sense.” Scheuer, it should be noted, is a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, which is a party based in Bavaria, home to BMW and many fine kilometers of autobahn. He was soon joined by Christian Lindner, the leader of the liberal Free Democrats, who tweeted that a Tempolimit would be just a symbol and an uncreative means to tackle climate change. “We need innovation, not re-education,” he said.

On the other side of the debate, the Green and the non-profit Deutsche Umwelthilfe—which has lobbied for a limit, estimating that it could cut an estimated 5 million tons of CO2 per year—welcomed the news of the speed limit proposal. Transport, the Umwelthilfe stated, was the only area in which emissions of greenhouse gases have continued to increase since 1990.

The police saw the potential for making roads safer. “We could save lives and prevent serious injuries,” Michael Mertens, deputy head of the police officers’ trade union, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “Here in this country, some people drive completely legally at 200 or even 250 kilometers per hour,” he said. “Let’s be clear: this is madness. At this speed, nobody can control their car in stressful situations.”

An Issue of Freedom

Predictably, the car industry was quick to step in and pour cold water on the suggestion of a speed limit. Bernhard Mattes, the head of the powerful German Automotive Industry Association (VDA), cited the heated debate as an example of hysterical populism. Of course it makes sense that the car industry, a vital part of the German economy, would want to defend the “need for speed.”

Many Germans like fast cars, and the most powerful cars are usually pretty expensive. In 2017, according to Transport Ministry figures, 29 percent of cars registered in Germany had a maximum speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour. It’s also a useful marketing tool for selling abroad, as drivers can at least aspire to those full-throttle experiences when sitting behind the wheel of a car “made in Germany.”

But the debate also touches on a lot of other issues. In a highly regulated society, driving as fast as you can is seen as one of the last remaining free spaces. And many argue that it is even intrinsic to German identity, comparing it to the right to bear arms in the US—which would make a speed limit the equivalent of gun control. And while there actually is a slight majority in favor of a speed limit, the minority is committed and highly vocal. A recent poll showed that 51 percent of Germans are in favor of a limit of 130 km, while 47 percent were firmly against.

Fear of Populism

It is this sizeable minority that worries the political class. The leader of the Christian Democrats, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, quickly dismissed the talk of a Tempolimit as a “phantom debate.” Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman said there were more intelligent ways to reduce CO2 emissions.

Behind such statements is the very real fear that the far-right Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) could use the issue to increase their support base. After all, the AfD has already jumped on the bandwagon over the imposition of a ban on older diesel cars in several cities in a bid to tackle air pollution. The party was out in force at a recent protest in Stuttgart, where hundreds of people, many wearing yellow vests, gathered holding banners saying “Pro-diesel” and “Diesel drivers mobilize.” The protestors are furious that the diesel car ban has hit the resale value of their cars, which means they can’t afford to buy a new one.

The bans come on the heels of the Dieselgate emissions scandal over auto companies hiding illegal pollution levels from regulators, and the reaction shows just how fraught issues surrounding mobility and cars can become.

Yet the fact remains that Germany does need to tackle issues like air pollution in cities and find ways to meet its climate targets. Without the speed limit, the working group will have to come up with some real alternatives when it releases its report in March. Yet if those include something like higher taxes on fuel, then that could also provoke protests. After all, in France it was just such a hike that triggered the gilets jaunes movement.

So while the Tempolimit is parked for now, it’s an issue that will undoubtedly come vrooming back onto the political agenda in the not too distant future. 

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End of Magical Thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

When Europe’s heads of government staggered bleary-eyed out of a Council meeting on the morning of June 29th, it looked as if they had broken the migration policy deadlock. Angela Merkel had the result she needed to keep her government together and calm her sister party, the Bavarian CSU. The new Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was also pleased– he had gotten promises of support from the rest of Europe with the migrants landing on his country’s Mediterranean coastline, and Italy was now “no longer alone.” With the ostensible breakthrough emerged a new term: “regional disembarkation platforms.” But what exactly was Brussels’ new baby?

The objective of these platforms, later called regional disembarkation “arrangements,” is to “provide quick and safe disembarkation on both sides of the Mediterranean of rescued people in line with international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, and a responsible post-disembarkation process.” According to various official EU documents, key elements of the concept are: having “clear rules for all,” support from the UN Refugee Agency, “partnerships on equal footing,” “no pull factors,” and “no detention, no camps.”

Emphatically Not Camps

Got it? OK, there’s more detail to come. But it’s notable that the EU fact sheet does not contain a sentence that plainly states what the disembarkation platforms are. No subject and predicate linked by a copula, not even an “appear” or “will become.” But remember, they are emphatically not camps.

This, though, is not just an example of obfuscatory bureaucrat speak, of which the EU is a master in English, run as it is by highly educated officials who often speak excellent English as a second or third or fourth language, peppering their statements with words like “informations” and “feedbacks” that are foreign to a native. The problem is that it’s very difficult to be clear about a concept that must be all things to all people.

Some parts about disembarkation platforms are somewhat clear. The core idea is to set up safe centers for processing asylum claims outside of EU borders, probably in safe countries in North Africa. This would “eliminate the incentive to embark on perilous journeys” across the sea in order to have the right to file an asylum claim. It would also help stop people smugglers, a noble goal. If a migrant at sea is rescued by a third-country vessel or by an EU vessel in international waters, he or she could be brought to one of the platforms. Those people not entitled to international protection should “be returned,” while those in need of protection could be resettled, though not all of them would get to go to Europe. In order to entice African countries to sign up, the EU will offer money, training, administrative support, and legal resettlement places.   

Kurz’ Idea

This is not a new concept. European leaders have long floated similar plans. At the restrictive end of the spectrum, Sebastian Kurz of Austria has pushed for “safe zones” in refugees’ countries of origin, which the EU would support “militarily.” Indeed, the 2016 EU agreement with Turkey is based on the principle of a third country processing migrants and preventing so-called irregular migration in exchange for EU aid and concessions. All such ideas are part of the EU’s push to externalize the migration problem by getting other countries to take more responsibility for people crossing their borders, which also defuses the issue politically and minimizes the EU’s legal responsibility by reducing contact with migrants.

Europe’s partners, though, quickly made clear how difficult it would be to implement “disembarkation platforms.” The UN Refugee Agency reportedly wrote a confidential letter insisting that any centers in third countries be “safe and dignified,” a tall order in, for example, key transit country Libya given the deplorable conditions and slave markets there. African heads of state responded by agreeing to reject Europe’s “easy, counterproductive solution,” as Morocco described it. According to recent reports, there is still no African country prepared to operate a platform.  No government is eager to be fully responsible for the centers, or risk having rejected asylum-seekers disappear into its territory.

Migration experts agreed that the idea was fanciful. Catherine Woollard of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles accused the EU of living in “externalization fantasyland,” of relying on countries taking back their citizens when they are unwilling or unable to do so. To a developing country, remittances from citizens working in Europe are often more valuable than extra foreign aid; and sometimes these countries are wary of reaccepting emigrants for whom they couldn’t provide jobs or services in the first place.

Too Few Legal Ways

Europe also offers too few legal resettlement places to really discourage illegal migration, as Elizabeth Collett and Susan Fratzke of the Migration Policy Institute point out. In March 2018, the UN had to temporarily suspend a program whereby refugees were flown from Libya to Niger for processing because the EU had only resettled a fraction of the already small number promised. The EU’s first scheme to force member states to take in refugees from Italy and Greece already collapsed when the Visegrad countries revolted. And cooperation has hardly improved since the June summit: in August, the Italian government refused for six days to allow a boat of Eritrean migrants to disembark in Sicily until Ireland finally agreed to take some in.

It’s easy to snipe from the sidelines. Illegal migration to Europe is an intractable problem that is only likely to get bigger, at least from the perspective of Europe’s politicians. And the announcement from Brussels that the EU had agreed on a migration solution was certainly a boon to Merkel and Conte. Just don’t expect “disembarkation platforms” to be the breakthrough for European migration policy, or the next new name for refugee centers to be much more than window dressing. Unless North Africa has a change of heart, the only relevant platforms will be the piers where people get off boats.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

When in Hungary, you cannot escape pálinka. It starts and end meals, mends broken hearts, and soaks up a variety of sorrows. The New York Times called it a drink that tastes like a “slap in the face.” It’s made of fruit, and its alcohol content must be between 37.5 percent and 86 percent. Pálinka is recognized by the EU as unique to Hungary and covered by its “protected designation of origin” laws.

True to his populist leadership style, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán put the brandy on his patriotic flag early on. After his return to power in 2010, the Hungarian premier championed a law allowing citizens to distill 50 liters of their own pálinka tax-free if they used approved equipment and did not sell it to others. The liquor industry and the EU were not impressed, but Hungarians, whose rate of alcohol consumption is, by the way, among the highest in Europe, were happy. They downed a shot with the cheer: “Egészségedre!” (“To your health!”)

Yet for all the battles Orbán fought with the EU, on pálinka, he chose to give way to Brussels. In fact, when it comes to pálinka, he’s even stood down twice. There have been two infringement procedures against Hungary over the government’s efforts to institute ultra-low taxes on brewing of the national drink. In the first case, the European Court of Justice struck down Budapest’s attempt to allow tax-free home brewing in 2014. So the following year, Hungary complied and began to tax home-brewed pálinka. But in new proposals published in early June this year, the government introduced a so-called health tax that applied to soft drinks but excluded spirits like pálinka–causing a second infringement procedure. This time the government did not wait for the court decision: it introduced an increased tax rate on the fruit brandy right away.

Choose your Fight

Orbán likely wanted to avoid a protracted battle with Europe when so many other issues are looming. Still, pálinka is no small matter in Hungary. It is consumed in a particular glass with a round belly to bring out the fruity flavors. Unlike vodka, it is not supposed to be served cold. Indeed, people who keep their pálinka in the refrigerator draw scornful looks across Hungary. Serving it cold kills the fruity aroma, everyone knows that! Hungarians are also known to boast about their own home-made pálinka.

The national drink, much like its home country, has had an impressive run over the last few decades. Even though home-brewing was illegal under communist rule, many defied the rule. Quality, however, often suffered. That was true, too, for commercially produced pálinka. Socialism meant that there shouldn’t be high quality drinks at prices suited only to an affluent bourgeoisie.

Since Hungary’s democratic transition, pálinka has built a reputation as a fine liquor, with tasting festivals popping up across the country and half-liter bottles costing as much as €50. There are about 600 distilleries in the country, and the number of commercial brewers jumped from 72 to 138 between 2010 and 2017, according to the agriculture ministry.

Pálinka Politics

Like many of Orbán’s battles with Brussels, the fight for the right to a tax-free, homemade pálinka is more than just a levy issue. It plays into the perception that Orbán is a self-made man from the countryside who takes on the high-minded urban intelligentsia and truly understands the Hungarian psyche. He protects Hungary’s national identity in the face of foreign pressure and is at the same time down-to-earth—someone you could throw back a pálinka with anytime. He’s known to say “Isten-isten,” another toast meaning “God-God,” before knocking back a shot.

Orbán, though not a heavy drinker, likes to pose with a shot of pálinka, especially during campaigns. In a 2013 photo album of his family’s Christmas celebrations, the paterfamilias posed with a glass in the company of his son-in-law, István Tiborcz. According to media reports, the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF found “serious irregularities” in EU-funded projects carried out by a company once controlled by Tiborcz. OLAF recommended that Hungary’s public persecutors pursue charges, and that the European Commission should recover more than €40 million spent on the projects.

Hungarian authorities did launch a follow-up investigation, but they are unlikely to be tough on the prime minister’s family. One more reason to drink! And when you reach for that glass, remember that in 2012 Orbán likened Europe to alcohol. “Europe will slowly become like alcohol: it inspires us to achieve great goals but also prevents us from reaching them,” he told a crowd at one of his state-of-the-nation speeches.
If Europe is alcohol, Orbán is sure to stay sober.

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