"A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.", George F. Kennan
9th November 1989. Huge crowds finally put an
end to the Berlin wall. A day to rejoice for all of us who love of freedom but
also the founding stone of many of the current European travails. Like a
pilgrim after successfully arriving to its destination, Europe just sat down
not sure of what to do next. For the last 25 years it just sleepwalked through
decisions and projects long designed before that momentous occasion, namely the
Euro. Little care was given to legitimize far-reaching decisions of sovereignty
pooling neither focus to think strategically on security, in particular on Europe’
southern and eastern borders merely assuming that the Kantian dream of eternal
peace was at just within reach and that the rest of the world would just pause and
look in awe to the never tried European utopia. It did not. And now we have a
very complex set of challenges, each one daunting in its own right. Together
they do represent the gravest threat to the European project: (i) a
civilizational menace from the East led by Russia, (ii) the implosion of the
Southern flank of the European Continent and the (iii) shattering of the
political center that sustained the European integration in many member
countries.
It has been a long road to get to this mess. During
the 90’s, going to the voters to ratify the great leap forward of the European
project (Maastricht treaty plus the Euro project) backfired every time until
the politicians got tired of the whole process and just decided to push ahead
regardless. The currency union was the price exacted from the Germans for the
go ahead to the German reunification and no voters would stand in the away of
the Lilliputian dream of binding Germany and limiting its power. Furthermore,
the currency union was sold (without any vote) differently to different
audiences. In the South, as painless voyage to a new stage in prosperity. A
hard currency finally in people’s pockets. In the North as a risk free
endeavor. Clearly, these two selling arguments were incompatible with one
another. To top it all, to make sure
that the European Governments still had the illusion of not ceding the sovereignty
that the important decision on the currency union implied, in 1995, the treaty
of Nice was negotiated and signed and with that, a mortal blow was struck to
the powers of the European Commission. No elected executive organ would emerge
with legitimacy to speak on Europe’s behalf. Governments would do that but of
course with their national interest in mind. So by 1995 we had a currency union
not legitimized by voters and we had a killed any notion of a federal
government to command it. The leap to the void was complete.
While the Europeans continued to absorb
themselves in the management of this improbable arrangement, little thought was
given to the challenges of the world post-Germany reunification besides the
expansion in autopilot to the East of the European Union. The Balkan crisis
should have been a wakeup call that no the rest of the world was just not going
to stand still while Europeans discussed the details of what would then became
the Maastricht treaty. On 29 June of 1991, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of
Luxembourg (I know but no pun intended) Jacques Poos claimed emphatically on
the Balkans crisis “this is the hour for Europe”. It took eight long years and
the desperate relinquishing of the clock to the Americans for the crisis to
abate. It was clear that the security of the continent could not be taken for
granted. Nevertheless, the great European introspection marched on regardless.
The sole European policy response, the
expansion to the East, faced its own conceptual problems. Having the Berlin
wall for so long had answered by default the long-standing question of where in
the East Europe ended. With the wall gone, the easy reply to that query had
also disappeared. So where did Europe end? In Riga? In Lvov? In Kiev? In Moscow
or in the Urals? Nobody really knows. Contrary to the United States, Europe
does not delimit itself from shining sea to shining sea. There is sea all right
in the West but then just a fuzzy civilizational border in the East that has
advanced and receded during the course of history. Could we then have a
rationale to say no to the aspirations of countries like Ukraine or Georgia to
be in the long-term part of the European Union? Of course not. We said yes to
the Baltic countries so why no to Ukraine? But there is a problem in this
rationale. And that problem is security. There cannot be a mismatch between
NATO expansion and the European Union expansion. And that is what we are
finding out at our own cost with the current Ukrainian crisis.
Before I enter this part of the argument let me
be a hundred percent clear. There are no excuses for Russian behavior. There is
no complot of the whole world bent on Russia’s humiliation. Putin has led the
country to a neo-fascist corner supported by a receptive population whose sense
of victimization has been masterfully exploited by a corrupt and dangerous
regime. As yesterday’s murder of Boris Nemtsov shows, whoever possesses a
civilized conscience in that country is killed, coerced and forced to flee.
That said, there were several errors done in
this process by the Europeans themselves. The first is a serious misreading of
the Russian regime. In the eyes of Moscow the threat is not so much of the
expansion of NATO or the European Union per se and the fear that following that
missiles will rain over Moscow. Therefore, no amount of assurances, words, and
councils will ever satisfy Russia in this regard. It is the possibility that
under these umbrellas, liberal and modern countries might emerge. Moreover,
because Georgia and Ukraine are sufficiently similar to Russia, they might make
the Russian people think, “if that worked over there why don’t we have it here”.
It is a regime change threat that endangers all the ruling kleptocratic elite.
Now this cannot be a reason not to give Ukraine, for example, a deeper
connection with the European Union via the trade agreement that initiated the
Euromaidan revolt, which deposed Yanukovych last February. Like in 2008, when
Russia invaded Georgia as a preemptive move against any further western bias
from that country, unfortunately a Russian reaction was distinct possibility.
What was absent once again was a strategy to dissuade Russia from destabilizing
the country.
In 2003, at the height of the US diplomatic
confrontation with certain European countries over Iraq, Robert Kagan, an American
scholar, published a book called “Of Paradise and Power, America and Europe in
the New World Order”. The basic argument was that European countries were very
reluctant to resort to armed force. They were from Venus while the Hobbesian
Americans were from Mars. The argument is not entirely fair, as the recent
interventions in Mali and Libya show, but the truth is that Europe as a whole has
forgotten about the value of deterrence in the great power game. The
intervention capacity of most European countries is pitiful. With the exception
of France, no country spends more than 2% of its GDP in defense (a long-standing
NATO target). Furthermore, the US commitment to European security is weaker today
than in the past. During the cold war,
the stationing of 300.000 US soldiers in Europe had the objective of generating
enough American victims and hostages in case of Soviet invasion so that a
nuclear retaliation could be credible escalation. No such deployment protects
the Baltic countries today for example. Will the US and Europe risk war with
Russia over these countries? I have my doubts and I believe Putin does too
making it more probable that this scenario is played out. Lack of deterrence
makes the world more dangerous not less as very few European leaders seem to
understand. Lack of punishment makes the world more dangerous not less. The
road to Munich and the summit itself made World War II more likely. Not less. In
that, sense the recent Minsk agreement was a huge and very dangerous victory
for Putin. It made the Crimea annexation a fait accompli. Therefore, crime
pays. It made a mockery of Ukrainian sovereignty of the rest of its territory. Moreover,
its subsequent disrespect by the Russian backed rebels did not even elicit a
full fledge economic support to Ukraine nor further sanctions against Russia.
So no punishment.
Because Putin sees the liberal democracy model
supported by the twin pillars of the European Union and NATO as its most
dangerous threat, its long-term goal is to undermine both of them. A successful
destabilization of the Baltic countries will ensure that Article V (mutual
defense clause) of the NATO charter is debased and thus the entire building of
the alliance. Its support for the
ascending far left and far right parties (assisted by the Euro’s suicidal
politics – more on that later) all over Europe will make the European Union even
more unmanageable and put the transatlantic alliance in peril as well as the
European Union itself. How a Europe with Podemos, UKIP, Front Nationale and
Syriza in power will behave in terms of continental security is anybody’s
guess. Not even in the Soviet wildest dreams at the time of the Pershing II
crisis with all the Soviet support to the peacenik movements all over Europe
did such a political scenario seemed possible.
So yes, the Ukrainian crisis and Russia’s
policy do represent a geopolitical threat with potentially enormous
consequences for the future of Europe. All the gains of post-World War II in
Europe cannot be taken for granted. They will have to be defended. It is a not
matter of arms or war. It is a matter of ideas and values. Ukraine right to freely
choose its future has to be upheld. This means at this stage not so much arming
the Ukrainians with guns (that moment for armed deterrence has long passed unfortunately)
but making sure that their economic plight is secured. This is the only
long-term game Russia cannot win. Armed deterrence, however, can still save the
Baltic countries. It is where Putin will strike next.
No comments:
Post a Comment