EU summit in Salzburg kicks cans down road

The EU heads of state and government had a summit meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Salzburg. There wasn't much drama. And not much was accomplished.

A Politico EU report on the summit opens with, "That was awkward." (David Herszenhor and Jacopo Barigazzi, Rocky mountain summit 09/21/2018)

Austria's Wunderwuzzi Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz (ÖVP) currently holds the six-month rotating Presidency of the EU Council and so had a lot to do with shaping the agenda. His signature issue is his bitter opposition to immigration and apparently he is apparently equally determined not to address the current issue in Europe in a practical and serious way. So the first day of the summit was devoted to the topic of how the EU can shut out foreigners. Kurz as Council President established that topicfor the summit.

The main solution to the challenge of refugees from the Middle East and Africa coming to Europe to ask for asylum is called Turkey. Angela Merkel came up with that extend-and-pretend solution in 2016: the EU pays Turkey, and makes various other concessions, and Turkey holds what is now around three million refugees and prevents them coming to the EU. It's not a stable solution nor is it one that gives particular attention to what the refugees can do in the future. And if (when) the Syrian government launches its expected military assault on Idlib province, it could send up to 800,000 new refugees into Turkey and quickly destabilize the current arrangement even more.

Herszenhor and Barigazzi also report that Austrian hospitality was not nearly so obsessively-complusively organized as one might expect from Austrian stereotyples:

The media center was far too small for the 1,000 journalists in attendance and, thanks to a glass roof and unseasonably warm September weather, it effectively turned the building into a sauna. Adding to the ambience, butter-fingered catering staff repeatedly dropped glasses and coffee mugs, smashing them on the tiled floor — making the event feel like a Greek wedding.

The breakdowns continued until the very end, when the audio feed failed during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s closing news conference.

Given how Kurz and his coalition partner and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache (FPÖ) are combining anti-EU posturing with their anti-immigrant policies, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out the glitches they report were at least partially intentional.

Thursday was devoted to Brexit.

If anything of substance was accomplished on either issue, it was not very evident.

They all did reiterate their consensus on strenthening Frontex, the EU border control and coast guard agency agency.

Miguel Otero-Iglesias gives this summary of what a real solution might look like - a solution the EU has been unable to deliver, despite the massive freakout about the large wave of refugees arrived in 2015-6 (Europe’s two-faced migration reality Politico EU 09/21/2018):

The most persuasive idea, advocated by the World Bank, is to develop legal channels of migration based on the demand of the job market and better education and retraining systems to cover the displaced local workforce. These programs could be financed by the introduction of progressive fees on working visas. Crucially, these visas would be for time-limited periods, and only those migrants who integrate well would then acquire the nationality of the host country.

But for such a scheme to work, borders would need to be better controlled, repatriation agreements further developed and better implemented, and inspections against hiring of irregular workers would have to be more intrusive and widespread.

It would also have to specifically address the fate of the millions of refugees now retained in limbo in Turkey, Italy, and Greece. And it calls for a reorientation of EU foreign policy to mitigate conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Africa. The NATO intervention in Libya in 2010 was a major contributor to the current situation. I wouldn't venture to say that Libya under Gaddafi had a model immigration policy. But they did provide some economic opportunities for African immigrants and blocked a significant portion of immigrants from going north toward Europe. (Otero-Iglesias's boiler-plate lines about displacement and retraining could use some work, because displacement of current workers is a minor issue at best, although public perceptions may be otherwise thanks to xenophobic propaganda.)

The EU was at least able to come up with a small story on Serbia maybe-sometimes-soon will make an agreement with Frontex to enhance their border controls, but certainly not to accept more of them as immigrants. (Frontex ja - Flüchtlinge nein Wiener Zeitung 21.09.2018)

Kurz has proven himself adept in his first year as Chancellor at making a show of doing something on his pet anti-immigration issue. Coming up with substantive solution hasn't yet shown itself to be a strong point for him. The EU summit continues that pattern.

It's even less surprising that nothing of substance got accomplished on Brexit. The current deadline for Brexit is March 2019. And all sides have an interest in waiting to the last possible moment to close the deal, with the qualification that economic uncertainty will be more pressing as the months roll on. Businesses and banks are making preparations for the split, so the terms of Britain's exit are important.

The main sticking point in the Brexit negotiations now is how to manage the borders between British Northern Ireland and Ireland. (Tom McTague, UK, EU still can’t solve Irish border conundrum Politico EU 09/21/2018)

The peace agreement that finally ended decades of bitter and violent conflict in Northern Island crucially involved free movement between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Once Britain is formally outside the EU, having the current level of free border movement would mean that Britain's border would not be a normal international border between and EU and non-EU countries. Britain in understandably reluctant to establish the regular border security and enforcement at a line inside Britain, at the border to Northern Ireland. In concept, that would be analogous to Texas having an open border with Mexico and the national border controls being enforced only at the Texas borders to other US states. That is not the way inernational borders normally work.

Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence describes that current status of the negotiations in The long Brexit endgame has started 09/20/2018:

What complicates the Brexit process massively is the multitude of triangular games: there are three competing positions in the House of Commons, none of which commands a majority on its own: May’s Chequers’ Plan; a eurosceptic Canada-style Brexit; and Labour’s plan for a customs union. Everybody is playing the same game: as we reported yesterday Labour does not want the spectre of a second referendum to scare eurosceptics in the Tory party into supporting Chequers. The British government is playing the converse game. A treasury minister yesterday upheld the possibility of a second referendum for precisely this reason - to scare the eurosceptics into supporting Chequers.

In another post (EU ponders Irish backstop protocol to help May Eurointelligence 09/17/2018):

The EU‘s technical solution differs in some respects from that of Theresa May, but the technical details are not the critical point at this stage. More important is the legal procedure itself. The EU is offering a protocol to the Irish backstop clause in the withdrawal treaty, which sets out possible technical solutions in case no agreement on a future trading relationship is agreed. As long-standing observers of technically complex EU-level treaty discussions, we are not surprised to witness the grand entry of the protocol, an important legal device in EU diplomacy that often succeeds in overcoming seemingly insolvable problems. Important as it may be, in historical perspective the Irish backstop is not the most difficult obstacle EU diplomats ever had to surmount. [my emphasis]

Monika Graf makes a very appropriate cautionary observative in Krisen machen die EU stark. Derzeit gibt es keine. Salzburger Nachrichten 21.09.2018 (behind subscription). She picks up on the optimistic saying that crises make the EU stronger. That can't be said of the handling of the Greek crisis in 2015, which helped set the stage for the contentious inability of the EU to agree on a Union-wide solution for the refugee inflow of that year that continued into 2016, commonly referred to as the refugee crisis of 2015.

She points out a flip side of that optimistic saying, which is that the EU can only manage to come up with good common solutions on major issues when there is a crisis. And that's not a good thing:

Rational betrachtet müssten die EU-Staaten jenes Zeitfenster nutzen, das sich durch die gut laufende Konjunktur und die Erfolge bei der Eindämmung von Defiziten und Migration geöffnet hat. In allen Staaten der Eurozone wachst die Wirtschaft, sogar um die italienischen Banken ist es wieder ruhig geworden, und an der Südküste Europas sind bis August so wenig Menschen angekommen wie nicht einmal vor 2015.

[Rationally considered, the EU states must use this time window that has been opened by the postive economic cycle and the successes with the limiting of deficits and migration {immigration}. The economy is growing in all state of the eurozone, things have even calmed down with the Italian banks, and since August there were fewer people arriving that even before 2015.]

The Herbert Hooverish conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic continues to be harmful for economic policy. But the point that she's making here is that even taking view of the deficit obsessives, the EU should be making progress on major problems like immigration and presumably on reforming the eurozone before another crisis hits.

And depending on how the military situation in Idlib develops, a new surge in immigration could begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

Turkey, Idlib, Europe, and refugees

German-Turkish relations right now are providing an excellent test case for the "realist" school of foreign policy theory.

I have problems with the Realist approach on a theoretical level, for one thing because it can easily trend toward a amoral approach. And there are examples of foreign policy realists enganging in cynical and destructive behavior. Henry Kissinger is the living poster boy for that dark side of foreign policy realism.

On the other hand, people like Stephen Walt (who I quote here all the time), John Mearsheimer, and Andrew Bacevich. The late George Kennan had a more practical view of US policy toward Russia in the first years of the post-Soviet period than the triumphalist bipartisan view. Former German Minister Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer elaborates a Realist view of the rise of China in his Der Abstieg des Westens: Europa in der neuen Weltornung des 21.Jahrhunders (2018) that looks hopefully toward a peaceful development of that long and continuing process.

Dinah Deckstein et al report in "Freie Bahn für Erdoğan" Der Spiegel 37-2018 (08.Sept.2018) on Germany's currently conciliatory policy toward Turkey under Erdoğan's increasingly authoritarian regime. The article reads like it incorporates a significant amount of "trial balloon" information from the German Foreign Ministry on its current move toward better relations with Turkey. And that's fine. Using such information doesn't prevent the journalists from doing their job in the article.

This is a key element of the story:

Doch die Bundesregierung sorgt sich derzeit wohl mehr um den atemraubenden Verfall der türkischen Lira als um Menschenrechte und Meinungsfreiheit. Würde das Land in den Bankrott stürzen, müsste Europa mit einer neuen Flüchtlingswelle rechnen, die den Zustrom des Jahres 2015 leicht in den Schatten stellen konnte.

Zum anderen will Deutschland verhindern, dass sich Erdoğan vollends vom Westen abwendet. In der Sicherheitspolitik flirtet er bereits seit geraumer Zeit mit Moskau. Nun hat er sich im Streit um die lnhaftierung eines US-amerikanischen Pastors auch noch mit US-Präsident Donald Trump angelegt.

[Instead, the German government right now is much more worried about the breathtaking fall of the Turkish lira than human rights and freedom of opinion {in Turkey}. If the country were to fall into bankruptcy, Europe would have to deal with a new wave of refugees that would easily overshowdow the inflow of the year 2015.

In addition, Germany wants to prevent Erdoğan from completely turning his back on the West. In security policy, he has already been flirting for some time with Moscow. Now, with the arrest of an American pastor, he has also now landed in a conflict with US President Donald Trump.] (my emphasis)

Turkey remains the extend-and-pretend solution to the longterm refugee crisis, as it was to the acute phase of it that occurred in 2015-6. Turkey currently is holding about three million refugees, which the EU is also paying them to do. At the current EU summit in Salzburg, the heads of state and government are taling about dending the "outer borders" of the EU and about fantasy schemes like establishing "asylum centers" in Northern Africa.

But Turkey is presently the main border control for the EU when it comes to refugees. And refugees are what politicians are talking about right now when they talk about border defense or protecting the borders. Not that they are worrying about the Russian Army making a blitzkrieg strike on NATO and EU countries.

Turkey is currently playing that role effectively. Effective in holding the three million refugees and maitaining them, albeit in questionable conditions.

Erdoğan's government is also deeply involved in the Syrian civil war, opposing the establishment of an independent Kurdish state and trying to avoid having a Kurdish support base in Syria for Kurdish secessionists in Turkey itself.

Turkey is currently on generally good terms with Putin's Russia, as are the anti-immigration EU parties like Heinz-Christian Strache's FPÖ in Austria and Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary. Russia is also supporting Bashar Hafez al-Assad's Syrian government, which is poised to take the last major jihadist rebel stronghold, the province of Idlib that neighbors Turkey. An all-out Syrian assault on Idlib could produce as many as 800,000 new refugees into Turkey. Turkey doesn't want this, and neither do the EU governments.

Raimund Löw (Die Katastrophe von Idlib und die Rolle des Westens Falter 37/18; 12.09.2018) writes of the case of a full assault on Idlib at this point, "Die Vereinten Nationen warnen vor der größten humanitären Katastrophe seit Beginn der Kämpfe." ("The United Nations is warning about the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since the beginning of the fighting.")

And he observes, "Europäer und Amerikaner appellieren an Russland, einen verheerenden Showdown zu verhindern. Putin hat die Macht, ein Veto einzulegen. Ohne russische Luftangriffe gegen Idlib würden die Regierungstruppen keine Offensive wagen." ("Europeans and Americans are appealing to Russia to prevent a new disastrous showdown. Putin has the power to exercise a veto. Without Russian air strikes against Idlib, the government troops would not be able to mount and offensive.")

Russia this past weekend came to agreement with Turkey on establishing a buffer zone around Idlib with Turkish and Russian troops. (Angriff auf Idlib vorerst abgesagt: Durchbruch bei Putin und Erdoğan TAZ 18.09.2018; Carsten Luther, In Wahrheit ist es ein Ultimatum Die Zeit 18.09.2018; Ayla Jean Yackley, Turkey, Russia agree to buffer zone in Syria’s Idlib Al-Monitor 09/17/2018) This agreement at least postpones the offensive that Assad's government and his Iranian allies want. If a peaceful resolution, i.e., a peaceful surrender of the jihadists that involves them leaving Idlib, can be negotiated, a new round of carnage can be avoided. But there don't seem to be a lot of signs that such a resolution is likely. Carsten Luther cautions that Russia is not declining to back a Syrian offensive that would involve what he calls Putin's "destruction and explusion strategy." Only to a pause to establish the buffer zone fully controlled by Russian and Turkish troops by October 15.

As Yackley reports, "Idlib is home to between 50,000 and 90,000 armed fighters, according to diplomatic sources. Of these, between 10-20% are thought to be hard-line militants, including Jabhat al-Nusra, with links to al-Qaeda and Islamic State."

The current issue of Der Spiegel (38/2018; 15.09.2018) has a report by Matthias Gebauer and Konstantin von Hammerstein has a report ("Deutsches Delta") about US pressure on Germany to threaten retaliation against Syria if Assad's forces use poison gas. Despite the American President's obvious fondness for Vladimir Putin, US policy is at the moment is against Assad and more-or-less pro-rebel, despite the embarrassing fact that one of the rebel holdout groups, Jabhat al-Nusra, is an Al Qaeda affiliate, whatever that may exactly mean these days. Yet another illustration of the Realist view that recognizes that the arch-enemy of today may be the ally of tomorrow.

Merkel's CDU seems inclined to make some kind of military commitment, while their junior coalition partner the SPD is reluctant. At least that's the public position being played out at the moment according to the Spiegel piece.

Given the fact that the democratic parties in Europe need to resolve the immigration issue that the far-right parties are currently exploiting, EU countries should think very careful about getting involved in escalating Middle East wars any further. As it stands, there is a very good chance during the last half of 2018 that a new acute phase of the immigration crisis could open for Europe.

Left parties and residents of Germany with Turkish backgrounds have concerns about the human rights and democracy deficits in Turkey, justifiably so. But pushing Turkey into deeper ties with Russia and letting the current refugee deal fall apart, or being indifferent to economic dislocations in Turkey, is not the current direction of German foreign policy. Dinah Deckstein et al report that Germany is seriously considering massive assistance to Turkey to modernize and expand their rail system. Even though, as Dinah Deckstein et al remind us, "Der Zustand der Demokratie und des Rechtsstaats in der Türkei hat sich in den vergangenen Monaten nicht verbessert." (The state of democracy and the rule of law in Turkey has not improved in recent months.")

But until the EU can work out a real solution - a comprehensive immigration reform as it was called in America not so long ago - Turkey will continue to have huge leverage on the EU. And Turkey also has the option to develop closer ties with China, which the EU has also to keep very much in mind.

Iran and immigrtion to Europe

The flaws in the eurozone and mass immigration are two major problems of the EU that in some ways reinforce each other. And either of them individually could cause a serious breakdown in the EU or an even moer drastic reduction in its size than Brexit provides.

Christiane Hoffmann highlights the Middle East foreign policy aspects of the immigration crisis in a way that, it seems to me, the major media in Austria and Germany seriously neglect: the connection between American/NATO policies and actions in the Middle East and the immigration pressures on Europe. ("Die kommende Krise", Der Spiegel 33-2018/11.08.2018)

There are two centrally important pieces to the real existing immigration problem in Europe, as opposed to the phony ones created in the minds of xenophobic European politicians. (And the Russian propaganda that sometimes utilizes them for their own purposes.) One is that the world is undergoing a mass movement of people that seems to be more drastic than anything before in human history. This is being driven by climate change and various effects of globalization, like the driving down of wages, and the climate crisis and digitial communication.

Second are the wars in the Middle East. The acute phase of the immigration crisis in 2015 on which the rightwing populists are still surfing politically was driven in major part by the Syrian civil war - which was generated at least in part by a severe draught - as well as by the war in Afghanistan, which is part of what Andrew Bacevich calls the Greater Middle East, though the term hasn't caught on widely yet. The spectacularly ill-advised NATO intervention in Libya which resulted in Libya falling into a failed-state condition also contributed mightily.

I call mass immigration issue as a longterm crisis for Europe, that has acute phases like 2015. (That terminology also seems not to have caught on beyond myself, but I'm sticking with it!) A new acute wave could be activated by a war with Iran or by a decision on Turkey's part to stop holding the nearly 3 million refugees they are now housing and sending some large portion of them to Europe.

What Hoffmann says about EU policy in relation to Iran sounds to me like straighforward realism, which more often than not is a good thing:

Anfang November will Trump eine weitere Sanktionsrunde folgen lassen, dann soll Iran kein Öl mehr exportieren können, die USA wollen die Lebensader der iranischen Wirtschaft kappen. Die EU bemüht sich um das Atomabkommen, sie leistet Widerstand gegen die US-Sanktionen und sucht nach Wegen, um den Iranhandel trotz der amerikanischen Strafmaßnahmen aufrechtzuerhalten. Das ist richtig, aber nicht genug. Die Gefahr geht mittlerweile weit über ein Ende des Atomabkommens hinaus.

Es reicht deshalb nicht mehr, dass sich die Europäer für das Atomabkommen einsetzen. Sie müssen in Washington sehr deutlich sagen, dass die Politik der Destabilisierung Irans und des Nahen Ostens gegen die Sicherheitsinteressen Europas verstößt. Trumps Nahostpolitik muss zu einer Priorität der europäischen Politik werden. Deutschland und Europa brauchen jetzt, anders als in den vorangegangenen Krisen, endlich eine vorausschauende, präventive Außenpolitik.

{At the beginning of November, Trump wants to impose a wider round of sanctions, which are expected to stop Iran from exporting any more oil, because the US wants to cut off the vital lines of the Iranian economy. The EU is trying to stick with the nuclear agreement, it is resisting the US sanctions, and is looking for ways to maintain Iranian trade despite the American punitive measures. That is correct, but not enough. The danger in the meantime reach much further than the end of the nuclear agreement.

It is no longer sufficient for the Europeans to adhere to the nuclear agreement. The must also say very clearly to Washington that the policy of destabilization violates Europe's security interests. Trump's Near East policy needs to become a priority of European politics. Germany and Europe now reallyneed, differently than in the previous crises, a far-sighted, preventive foreign policy.}

Angela Merkel is rightly criticized for her extend-and-pretend solutions to problems of the EU. The classic example was the "bailout" of Greece in 2015, which imposed severe Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austerity policies on a Greek economy already suffering a severe depression. And did so knowing that the measures would fail to fulfill their claimed purpose of restoring the economy - the "pretend" part. But the "extend" part was that it crushed the Greek opposition to the austerity madness and maintained the general neoliberal economic policies dominating the EU and did so without breaking up the eurozone with all the far-reaching consequences that would imply.

It's hard not to admire Merkel's skills as a political leader, however bad her policies may be. And it's true that kicking the can down the road, to use an American expression for extend-and-pretend, is usually an attractive option for politicians. And, in practical terms, sometimes the only feasible course when there is a political deadlock over an issue.

But it's one thing to kick the can down the road on a county zoning regulation. Doing so on the major problems that could wreck the EU is a whole different thing. As Hoffmann notes, Merkel herself has stated that ignoring the immigration issue too much prior to 2015 was a bad idea. And, to be realistic, Merkel during the immigration crisis in 2015 did seriously try to implement an EU-wide rule that actually would have provided a sensible and practical revision of the Dublin Regulations regime that had by then very plainly failed. But it was blocked by Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Also to be realistic, that failure during the acute immigration situation in 2015 was in significant part due to the stunning arrogance Merkel and other EU leaders showed in the Greek crisis that year. But that's a story for another time.

Hoffmann may be over-estimating the chances of Iran becoming a "second Syria," i.e., a country with a full-blown civil war. An external war initiated or encouraged by the Trump Administration is probably the greater danger. But Hoffmann's advice would still be well-taken. And at some point with real crises, the extend-and-pretend possibilties run out.

This is an August 5 English-language documentary on Iran from Deutsche Welle, Iran: from theocracy to regional superpower?

Germany actively explores new international policy options in the face of Trump's erratic foreign policy

Other nations around the world are obviously faced with making significant adjustments in their foreign policy in response to the new orientations and the high level of uncertainty in the Trump Administration's foreign policy.

Christoph Schult writes about German moves in "Allianz der Gleichgesinnten," Der Spiegel 28.07.2018. He takes as a starting point a meeting that German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) had with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe. Haas, writes Schult, proposed to Abe:

... stellt Maas dem japanischen Regierungschef seine Idee eines neuen Staatenbundnisses vor. Sie konnte das weltpolitische Vakuum fallen, das Trump hinterlässt. In den kommenden Monaten soll ein Netzwerk global orientierter Staaten geknüpft werden, das sich in der Außen-, Handels- und Klimapolitik eng abstimmt. »Wir brauchen eine Allianz der Multilateralisten«, sagt Maas, ein Bündnis also, das für jene globalen Regeln und Strukturen der Nachkriegsordnung eintritt, die Trump ablehnt. >»Der Klügere gibt nach< ware in diesen Zeiten die falsche Maxime«, sagt Maas.

{ ... his idea of a new alliances of states. It could fill the political vacuum that Trump has left. In coming months, a network of globally oriented countries that agree with each other in foreign, trade, and climate politicies will be liked together. "We need an alliance of mulitilateralists," say Maas. Meaning an alliance that will engage for the global rules and structures of the postwar [post Second World War] order that Trump rejects. "'The cleverer give in', would be the wrong maxim in these times," says Maas.}

Trump's recent statements represented a turning point, in Schult's reporting:

Spätestens seitdem der US-Präsident den Nato-Partnern beim Brüsseler Gipfel mit dem Rückzug aus der westlichen Verteidigungsallianz gedroht und wenige Tage später die EU als »Gegner« bezeichnet hat, hat sich in Berlin, Brüssel und Paris die Hoffnung zerschlagen, dass Allianzen Trump überhaupt etwas bedeuten. Die USA hatten sich vom »Ordnungsgeber« zum »Ordnungszerstorer« gewandelt, heißt es in der Bundesregierung.

{At least since the US President threatened the NATO partners at the Brussels summit that he would withdraw from the Western defence alliance and a few days later described the EU as an "enemy," hope has been destroyed in Berlin, Brussels, and Paris that alliances mean anything at all to Trump. The US has changed from being a "provider of order" to a "destroyer of order," say people in the German government.} [my emphasis]

This article reads very much like a trial balloon floated intentionally by government officials, not so much like actual investigative reporting. That's how the press works. But it's another public indication that EU and NATO governments are moving to protect themselves from Trump's European policy, which - intentionally or not - is very much in line with the efforts of Vladimir Putin's Russia to undermine both NATO and the EU.

Schult's piece mentions several countries that the German government considers possibly important partners in this effort: Canada, Mexico, France, South Africa, Australia, and Argentina. It's strikes me that Canada and Mexico have a strong national interest in taking some part in this effort. Martin Hesse writes elsewhere in the same Spiegel ("America first, Dollar second") notes that Trump's currency policy (or just blundering actions) could destablize the world financial system. So countries all over the world have reason to be carefully considering options.

Also in the same issue, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen gives a suggestion that a sort of stalling for time is also part of the Merkel government's perspective:

Diese Fixierung begleitet ihn ja schon über Jahrzehnte. Lange bevor er Präsident war, hat er bereits über deutsche Autos und deutsche Exporte gesprochen. Seine oft abfällige Art gegenüber Deutschland ist aber alles andere als typisch amerikanisch. Ich war bei meiner letzten US-Reise im Abgeordnetenhaus und im Senat und habe erfahren, mit welcher Leidenschaft sich die Amerikaner über Parteigrenzen hinweg zur Nato bekennen und wie sehr ihnen an der deutschamerikanischen Freundschaft liegt, die für viele nicht nur schone Erinnerung ist, sondern vor allem ein wichtiges Element der Zukunft unserer freien und toleranten Gesellschaften.

{This fixation [on Germany as an antogonist] is something that [Trump] has held for decades. Long before he was President, he had already spoke about German cars and German exports. But his often disparaging manner toward Germany is anything but typically American. On my last trip to the US, I was in the House of Representative and in the Senate and experienced with what passion the Americans across party lines recognized NATO and how much they valued the German-American friendship, which for many is not only a beautiful memory, but above all an important element of the future of our free and tolerant societies.}

She mentions that in those meeting with the Members of Congress, they made a point of recalling that Germany was the country that took the lead in formally invoking the NATO alliance over the 9/11 attacks and in support of the Afghanistan War.

She also has this to say about Russia's current position toward Europe:

Helsinki hat wieder gezeigt, dass Russlands Präsident Putin eine klare Strategie hat. Seine wirtschaftliche Schwache will er dadurch überspielen, dass er sich als globaler Player positioniert. Ein Mittel dafür ist auch, den Konsens der Atlantischen Demokratien, die Nato und die EU zu spalten. Eine klare Strategie des amerikanischen Präsidenten im Umgang mit Russland ist nach dem Treffen indes nicht zu erkennen.

{Helsinki [the Trump-Putin meeting] showed again that Russia's President Putin has a clear strategy. He wants to gloss over its economic weakness by positioning himself as a global player. One means for that is to try to split the consensus of the Atlantic democracies, the NATO and the EU. A clear strategy on the part of the American President in dealing with Russia, however, is still not apparent after the meeting.}

Von der Leyen also notes that Germany gets 9% of its energy from Russia. Considerably less than the 70% Trump claimed in one of his endless tweets.

Steve's Bannon's new transatlantic project for the Nationalist International

Public discussion about the EU is often accompanied by words like "crisis" or "danger." For instance, "Das Projekt eines liberalen, demokratischen Europas ist in Gefahr." ("The project of a liberal, democratic Europe is in danger.") (Proeuropäische Kräfte im Kampf um Europa Standard 28.07.2018)

Not that's its untrue. The Standard article lists some of the EU's problems, Steve Bannon being one of them:

Austrittswillige Briten, Renationalisierungstendenzen in den Mitgliedstaaten, der erbitterte Streit in der Migrationspolitik. Vor wenigen Tagen nun auch noch die Ankündigung von Donald Trumps früherem, erzkonservativem Chefberater Steve Bannon, Europa kräftig aufmischen zu wollen.

{Britons wanting to leave, re-nationalizing tendencies in member states, the embittered conflict in migration [immigration] policy. Also now the announcement by Donald Trump's archconservative former advisor Steve Bannon that he wants to actively engage in Europe.}

Maïa de la Baume and Larens Cerulus report, though, that some of the more influential far-right players in EU politics are less than enthusiastic about Bannon's project (Europe’s far right doesn’t bear hug Steve Bannon back Politico EU 07/23/2018). Belgium's Gerolf Annemans of the Vlaams Belang party expresses some reservations about Bannon's new project while getting in a dig at George Soros, the favorite Jewish bogeyman of the European far right:

Annemans, who is also president of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom, a pan-European grouping, expressed concern that Bannon’s project could be a way to give jobs to his friends, such as former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Laure Ferrari, a French politician with close links to Farage.

“If it becomes an employment vehicle for Farage and Laure Ferrari, we wish [Bannon] the best of luck but want nothing to do with it,” he said, adding that the project at times appears “poorly organized.” ...

Bannon said his ambition is to play a role in Europe in the same way that he believes liberal Hungarian-American financier George Soros does. But Annemans is skeptical about Bannon’s financial muscle, saying: “We don’t feel that he, like Soros, is coming in with a big wallet.”

Another Bannon contact is Matteo Salvini, leader of the Italy’s League party and the country’s interior minister. They met before and after March’s Italian election. But he looks unlikely to embrace Bannon.

The League, according to a Euroskeptic MEP close to the party who didn’t want to be named, is working on “its own political project, own alliances,” building on partnerships with France’s National Rally, Vlaams Belang and Austria’s Freedom Party, as well as forging new ties with Alternative for Germany and the Sweden Democrats. ...

How an alliance forged by Bannon would fit into the European Parliament isn’t clear.

With the far right, in Europe and in America, it's often hard to tell how much of one of their projects is politics and how much grift.

Bannon has hooked up with an existing far-right organization called The Movement (Alastair Macdonald, Bannon's EU project eyes government allies WHTC/Reuters 07/25/2018):

The founder of a Brussels-based group known as The Movement, which U.S. President Donald Trump's former strategist has chosen as a platform, told Reuters he not only hoped for a big vote in the European Parliament but could also see six or seven leaders, notably from Italy and central Europe, joining forces to sway the European Council of 27 national governments.

Speaking at the suburban mansion home that is also his law office and headquarters of his Belgian populist People's Party, Mischael Modrikamen said the Movement would channel Bannon's campaigning expertise and financing from U.S. donors to help like-minded nationalist, anti-immigration groups across Europe.

Nico Hines also reports on the aspiring unholy alliance in Inside Bannon's Plan to Hijack Europe for the Far-Right Daily Beast 07/20/2018.

This project of Bannon's and his far right European friends is in line with the shared desire of the Trump Administration and the Putin government to weaken and ultimately wreck the European Union. With the qualification that it's hard to say how coherent a policy the Trump Administration has on anything.

NATO and the real interests of the US

All the talk about the 2% spending target for NATO countries, and now Trump's my-4%-is-bigger-than-your-2% nonsense, is beginning to get to me. Ewen MacAskill and Pippa Crerar report (Donald Trump tells Nato allies to spend 4% of GDP on defence Guardian 07/11/2018):

Trump left the assembled presidents and prime ministers [at the NATO summit] floundering, unsure whether he was serious about the 4% target, double the existing Nato target of 2%, which many do not meet, or whether it was just a ploy.

After making the announcement, Trump walked out.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, confirmed the 4% figure. “During the president’s remarks today at the Nato summit he suggested that countries not only meet their commitment of 2% of their GDP on defence spending, but that they increase it to 4%,” she said.

A percentage of GDP target for defense spending is an entirely arbitrary number. What counts is whether the defense budget is appropriate to a foreign policy that takes into account realistic security risks. And also how well the money is spent. A country with a smaller GDP like Greece - and one that has shrunk incredibly due to the EU's austerity policies - may need to spend more than 2%, but countries like Germany and France maybe less. Greece actually is spending more than 2% now.

Markus Becker in Gerade noch mal gut gegangen Spiegel Online 12.07.2018 gives the following percentages for the five NATO countries that currently spend more than 2% of GDP on defense:

Britain: 2.1%
Greece: 2.3%
Estonia: 2,1%
Latvia: 2.1%
United States: 3.5%

This is the total percentage for the US, not a percentage spent only on European defense.

Über-Realist Stephen Walt in The EU and NATO and Trump — Oh My! Foreign Policy 07/02/2018 refers to the painfully obvious point that "Trump’s evident distaste for these institutions [NATO AND G-7] mostly reveals his own ignorance and lack of strategic acumen." That's actually putting it generally.

Walt is actually being generous in putting it that way. A desire to join in Vladimir Putin's foreign policy - for whatever reasons - probably also plays a major role. Even though he likely doesn't really understand that either. Not that he would act differently if he did!

Walt gives his realist-theory view of US interests in Europe, which despite myself I have to admit is persuasive as far as it goes:

The U.S. interest in Europe is fairly straightforward. In addition to their mutually beneficial trade and investment relations, the United States has long sought to preserve an overall balance of power in Europe. ...

There is no potential hegemon in Europe today, however — neither Germany nor Russia has the population, economic strength, and military clout to take over the whole place — and thus there is no serious threat to the regional balance of power. Thus, the United States could (and should) reduce its military role and gradually turn European security back to the Europeans. [my emphasis]

And in line with that view, he thinks that it makes practical sense for the EU nations to maintain cohesion in the Union and take on a bigger role in continental defense. And, "Given that the United States still has an
interest in a tranquil Europe, a strong EU would be even more valuable if the U.S. security role in Europe were to decline."

But he doesn't think Trump is making any kind of realistic evaluation of US interests in his foreign policy: "The national interest is irrelevant; it’s the Nielsen ratings that count."

The politics of fakery on European immigration

Immigration makes some people crazy. And crazy, as a general rule, is a bad basis for policymaking. (Marc Brost et al, Tage des Irrsinns Die Zeit 04-05.07.2018)

With both Putin and Trump eager to weaken the European Union, the EU countries are floundering on the twin dilemma of a "the obscenity of a currency union which imposes a strict system of rules to the benefit of its strongest member states but does not in compensation provide the latitude for joint political action on the European level" (Jürgen Habermas, Die Zeit 06.07.2018) and the inability to set up an effective and fair system for handling refugees and asylum-seekers.

The EU continues to deal with the problems of the eurozone by what amounts to magic conjuring with the holy phrases of Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economics. And with the immigration crisis by staging bad theater. But since we're dealing with major government policies here, the fakery comes with real costs to real people.

In a recent lecture, Jürgen Habermas described how Angela Merkel's nationalistic posturing during the debt crisis fed nationalistic sentiments in the EU, a process that is backfiring on Germany in visible ways (Sind wir noch gute Europäer? Die Zeit 04.07.2018; English: Are We Still Good Europeans? 06.07.2018):

If you listen closely to the German chancellor, it is striking that she makes rather peculiar use of the words "loyalty" and "solidarity." During a recent appearance on a talk show hosted by Anne Will, Merkel demanded joint political action on asylum policy and in the tariff conflict with the United States, and in this context called for the "loyalty" of the EU partners. Generally, it is the boss who expects loyalty from her employees, while joint political action generally requires solidarity rather than loyalty. Depending on the constellation of interests, it is sometimes the one, sometimes the other, who must subordinate their own interests to those of the whole. When it comes to asylum policy, for example, not all countries – because of their geographical locations, for example – are equally affected by migration nor do they all have the same capacity to take people in. To take another example, tariffs on automobile imports threatened by the U.S. would hit some, Germany in this case, harder than others. In such cases, joint political action means that one party takes the interests of others into consideration and takes on its share of responsibility for the jointly approved political resolution. Germany's interest is obvious in these two examples, just as it is in the insistence on a joint European foreign policy.

The fact that the chancellor speaks of "loyalty" in such cases is likely a consequence of her having spent years using the world "solidarity" in a different, strictly economic context. "Solidarity in return for each country's own responsibility" is the euphemistic slogan that became familiar in the course of the [debt] crisis, a reference to the conditions imposed on credit recipients by those granting the credits. What I am getting at is the conditional redefinition of the term solidarity: that is the semantic breaking point where cracks are now showing in the certainty that we Germans are the best Europeans. Contrary to the raving clamor about transfer payments, which have never actually come to pass, what is slowly creeping into the public awareness is both the lack of legitimacy and the dubious effects of investment-hampering budgetary constraints, along with labor market reforms that result in entire generations being jobless. [my emphasis]

Habermas refers to the nationalistic demagogues and policies that are currently threatening the EU's existence as "the Trumpian dissolution of Europe."

There was a political confrontation the last few weeks between German Interior Minister Ernst Seehofer (CSU) over a narrow slice of the current set of immigration and asylum issue in which Austria's Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz intervened in a reckless way that was over an issue whose substance seems almost esoteric. (Wolfgang Münchau, German refugee compromise ignores underlying issues Financial Times 07/05/2018; Andrea Böhm, Europas Flucht vor der Realität Die Zeit 07.07.2018; Max Fisher and Katrin Bennhold, Germany’s Europe-Shaking Political Crisis Over Migrants, Explained New York Times 07/03/2018)

But too much of the immigration debate - far, far too much - depends on symbolic posturing that translates into headlines the xenophobes can exploit for their own demagoguery.

I saw a small example in a local insert for the state/province of Upper Austria from the Austrian Neues Volksblatt ", Hoamatland for July 2018, which is associated with the politics of the Chancellor's conservative People's Party (ÖVP). The second half of page 6 carries three headlines: "Christliche Werte zu OÖ!" ("Christian values appertain to Upper Austria!"), "Zwei Moscheen in OÖ geschlossen" ("Two mosques in Upper Austria closed"), and "Bevölkerung für strikten Kurs" ("Population for a strict course"). Christian values, closing mosques, a strict course against "migration" - all are favorite framing constructs for Austrian xenophobes.

But if the reader bothers to look closely, something odd is happening. The first is a report about a new "integration" policy statement for immigrants by the Upper Austrian state government, featuring the leading government officials of the government coalition, Landeshauptmann (Governor) Thomas Stelzer (ÖVP) and deputy governor Manfred Haimbuchner, together with representatives of the opposition SPÖ and Greens, the same photo featured in this story at Volksblatt.at, „Kompass für das Zusammenleben“ 04.07.2018. It's about the release of a general policy statement called Integration Verbindlich Gestalten - Zusammenhalt Stärken. The "Christliche Werte" article certainly leaves the impression that all parties in the state Landtag were endorsing a policy that specified "Christian values" as government policy, which is understood in the present context as a anti-Islamic framing.

But the Hoamatland article doesn't include the quote cited in the headline. Nor does the longer Volksblatt are includes a statement supporting "Christian values and traditions," in a context which quotes the title of the Integration Verbindlich document and leaves a clear impression that it includes a Bekenntnis ("profession" or "allegiance to") "our Christian values and traditions." Here's the paragraph in German:

Unter dem Titel „Integration verbindlich gestalten — Zusammenhalt stärken“ bringe das neue Leitbild Ziel und Aufgabe der Integrationspolitik zum Ausdruck und stelle einen Handlungsrahmen für die zukünftige Integrationspolitik und Integrationsarbeit einschließlich des Förderwesens im Land auf, heißt es in einer Stellungnahme der Landesregierung. Und, so wird betont: „Wesentliche Grundlagen und Schlüsselfaktoren für ein gelungenes Zusammenleben sind unter anderem das Bekenntnis zur gemeinsamen Sprache Deutsch, das Bemühen um Selbsterhaltung und die Teilhabe am Arbeitsmarkt sowie das Bekenntnis zu unseren christlichen Werten und Traditionen.“

But the thing is, the Integration Verbindlich statement on the Upper Austria official website does not say that. A simple Cntl-F search shows 25 instances of "Werte" (values) in the 20-page document, none of which are identified as "Christian". Or "Islamic" or "Muslim" or "religious". The same combination of Windows keyboard, Adobe Acrobat, and my own eyeballs search combination finds only one reference to "Christian": "Österreich ist ein offenes, christlich geprägtes Land,
das dem Humanismus und der Aufklärung verpflichtet ist." ("Austria is an open country shaped by Christianity and which is committed to humanism and the Enlightenment.") And the document is explicit about what it assumes to be Austrian values in a section called "Central Basic Values":

• Democracy and the rule of law ("Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit")
• Separation of church and state/religious freedom ("Trennung von Staat und Religion/Glaubensfreiheit")
• Integrity of body and spirit ("Körperliche und geistige Unversehrtheit")
• The individual right to shape one's life and freedom of opinion ("Recht auf individuelle Lebensgestaltung und Meinungsfreiheit")
• Equality of the sexes ("Gleichstellung der Geschlechter")
• Educational opportunities and educational responsibilities ("Bildungschancen und Bildungspflicht")

In other words, like any official document passed through endless committees and designed to be acceptable to the entire ideological spectrum of the parties in a state legislature, it's a safely bland statement of general liberal democratic values of tolerance and mutual respect.

So why present the story with a headline that makes the whole thing sound like a defiant declaration of the primacy of Christianity as such in Austrian identity? Even allowing for Austrian journalistic practice of putting quotation marks in headlines around summary statements that aren't exact quotes, it's an odd presentation. I was unable to locate the quote from the Hoamatland headline in a Google search.

Briefly, the other two headlines have similar issues. Two mosques in Upper Austria were closed, it reports, a move announced in a June 8 press conference statement Chancellor Babyface, Vice Chancellor HC Strache, and Interior Minister Herbert Kickl. The article leads with a quote from Landeshauptmann Stelzer to crow about fighting "political Islam," hostile subcultures ("Gegengesellschaften"), radicalization, and violence. All associated with the closed mosques.

In reality, there was much less to the June 8 announcements that the PR hype suggested. The announcement was about withdrawing official recognition from some small Islamic associations. As Austrian specialist on rightwing extremism, Thomas Rammerstorfer, explains in Der große Schmäh mit der bösen Moschee Falter 13.06.2018, not only were the grounds for the closures practically and legally questionable. But also their practical effect on Islamic affairs and "political Islam" in Austria is to strengten the relative prestige and influence of groups friendly to Turkey's authoritarian President Tayyip Erdoğan, which were not touched by the actions. Erdoğan is a favorite bogeyman for the Austrian far right despite the similarities between his autoritarian leanings and theirs. Turks form the largest group of Austrian Muslims, all of whom are regularly trashed by rightwingers. None of that would be conveyed by the Hoamatland piece.

The third article is an uncritical paragraph saying that 83% approve of German classes for children who haven't managed German sufficiently for their grade level in school. This sounds perfectly harmless, a liberal and generous measure. But the current national government has been pushing for a particular kind of German classes in publisc schools for foreign children that would tend to segregate them in schools from their native German-speaking peers, a position means to promote stigmatization of immigrant children and make it even harder for them to integrate successfully into Austrian society. That really is just a filler article. But it fits with the other two in promoting a very superficial picture of current policies on immigration and their practical effects.

There's quite a bit of discussion in American politics right now about whether countering far-right Trumpist with facts is effective, or even counter-productive. But as these Austrian examples illustrate, the left and pro-democracy centrists have to counter these propaganda claims with facts. But they also have to be very mindful of countering the framing of the issues as well. When the right peddles with deceptive framing and appeals to fear and hatred, their opponents also have provide attractive framing and persuasive emotional appeals at the same time as countering false claims with facts. A big part of the advantage of advocates for "reality-based" understandings and advocacy for realistic policies based on facts is that reality has a persistent ability to impose itself on crackpot theories and policies.

Anti-immigration sentiment in Italy and Austria

The European Union is facing a new round of the Greek debt crisis of 2015, only this time with Italy. Anti-immigrant sentiment is also intensifying, with the new Italian government saying they want to expel hundreds of thousands of refugees. There has not been any new upsurge in refugees like that wave of 2015. But mass migration would be a longterm reality for Europe just from the effects of climate change alone. But military conflicts in the Middle East, fed and sometimes initiated by outside powers, including massive arms sales.The US, Russia, and various European countries are in on this ugly and destructive game.

Angela Merkel became known for her extend-and-pretend solutions on the euro crisis, especially with Greece, where the unsuccessful anti-austerity pushback from Greece in 2015 highlighted. Piling on unpayable debt burdens to the eurozone "periphery" countries was the core of her economic extend-and-pretend approach. In immigration, the main extend-and-pretend solution was an agreement with Turkey to house refugees coming their direction. Ironically, they also rely on Greece for the same thing. And Italy to a smaller but significant degree as well..

Meanwhile, there has been no meaningful progress on practical intra-EU arrangements in meaningfully dealing with refugees on a fair burden-sharing basis. (The xenophobic politicians in Germany and Austria prefer to call them all "migrants," to more easily brand them as moochers coming live high on the hog in good white Christian countries.) Meanwhile, Greece has knuckled under to enduring a permanent depression on the orders of the EU establishment, and of Germany more particularly, and is in chronically desperate states. Italy is also fighting the austerity trap. And name-calling and hostile statements against Turkey are popular favorites for conservative politicians in Germany and Austria. Plus, Germany has known for years that BAMF, its own refugee-resettlement agency, had severe management problems and wasn't prepared for the 2015 upsurge. And still isn't prepared. (How Germany's BAMF refugee agency became a 'political scapegoat' Deutsche Welle 30.05.2018)

So this is an inherently unstable situation. And Greece, Italy, and Turkey can threaten to send large groups on their way north.

In Italy, the new Interior Minister, the national official in charge of law-enforcement - not natural resources like the Interior in the US - is Matteo Salvini, a toxic xenophobe from the far-right League party, which is the junior partner in the new national coalition government. Chico Harlan writes (The torchbearer of Italy’s far right is now in power and wants to make good on anti-migrant promises Washington Post 06/04/20118):

With an Italy-first message, Salvini has rocketed into the center of Europe’s battle over migration. He is recasting the cultural debate about how to treat those fleeing the Middle East and Africa, highlighting examples of migrant criminality and describing the influx as an “invasion.” And now, in his first week in control of Italy’s interior ministry, he has power to do what he has pledged: more tightly close the doors of a country that, several years ago, ranked among the most welcoming in Europe.

Salvini has risen to power on a mix of grass-roots anxiety and his own political acumen. He is the leader of Italy’s far-right League, a once-fringe regional secessionist party that polls now show is on the brink of becoming the country’s most popular party. He styles himself as a friend of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and a thorn in the side of Brussels bureaucrats. He is an irrepressible social media user. He has a public profile far larger than that of ­Italy’s new prime minister, an academic with little political experience. ...

Among those who crossed the Mediterranean last year, 64 percent landed in Italy. Some 400,000 have applied for asylum here [Italy] over the past four years ...

What makes Salvini stand apart, though, is that he so unsparingly highlights what he sees as the problems with migration. When a Nigerian immigrant was arrested this year in the killing of an 18-year-old, Salvini wrote on Facebook, “What was this maggot still doing in Italy?” Last week, during negotiations to form a government, Salvini posted video footage of what he said was a supposed migrant plucking the feathers of a pigeon. “In broad daylight in the middle of the street,” he wrote. “Go home!!!”

Michael Brooks gives a good summary of the Italian coalition in the first 12 minutes or so of this video, TMBS - 43 - How Not To Do Identity Politics 06/06/2018 (?):

Italy and the ghost of 2015

Frances Coppola in a piece from last Thursday, The Eurocrisis Is Back And It Could Be Uglier Than The Last One Forbes 05/31/2018, comments on the looming clash between the Italian government coalition of Five Stars and the League, on the one hand, and the EU establishment, on the other.

She judges that the coalition's political program amounts to "a toxic mix of right-wing and left-wing handouts, with a hefty dose of xenophobia and Euroscepticism" that represents "a major attack on the Eurozone’s governance model."

The coalition is demanding that the fiscal and monetary rules that hold the euro together be reformed to suit its own agenda. This is not going to go down well in Brussels. Even more importantly, it is not going to go down well in Germany. The new finance minister, Olaf Scholz, is every bit as committed to fiscal discipline and austerity as his formidable predecessor, Wolfgang Schaueble.

They are right to demand an end to Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austerity policies. But the somewhat vague left policies of Five Star and the nationalist/xenophobia orientation of the League are likely to be an unstable mix. And maybe downright toxic.

And they are likely headed sooner rather than later to a conflict with the EU and Angela Merkel in the lead that will be a lot like the one in Greece in 2015. Like Greece, it has a debt load that it cannot indefinitely support under the current eurozone arrangements. And austerity policies imposed by the Troika have left Italy with a stagnant growth rate for years:

Since 2001, Italy’s GDP growth rate has averaged less than 1% per annum, and it has several times dropped below zero. When GDP growth is very low, debt/GDP does not fall even if the country runs primary surpluses. This is what is happening to Italy. It has a huge historic debt burden that it is unable to reduce, and the Eurozone’s fiscal rules actually make matters worse, since persistent austerity tends to depress GDP growth.

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Italy's new government

After being stymied by the Italian President in their first attempt to form a government, the two coalition parties, the Five Stars Movement (Cinque Stelle) and the League, are making another attempt. (Jason Horowitz, Italy’s Populist Parties Win Approval to Form Government New York Times 05/31/2018) Giuseppe Conte is still their candidate for Prime Minister. Sergio Mattarella accepted the new government and cabinet Thursday evening. (Dominik Straub, Machtwechsel in Italien: Mattarella akzeptiert populistische Regierung Standard 01.06.2018)

Italy's new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte

Unfortunately, the reporting on this one strikes me as a bit lazy (from the Times article):

... the newly constituted government, of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the anti-immigrant League, still left open the question of whether the reaction of financial markets to Italy’s political chaos this week had chastened them, or whether it simply had led them to disguise their hostility as the price of admission into power.

Populist leaders in Europe and across the Atlantic looked on with delight as they gained a powerful ally in the heart of Western Europe. European leaders in Brussels, already worried about Poland and Hungary, now fear a threat to European unity from within its core. [my emphasis]

For good measure, or to conform to superficial reporting conventions, he adds that the coalition parties "also want to lift sanctions against Russia and for Italy to move closer to its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who once said he didn’t need to meddle in the Italian elections because it was all going his way."

That treatment carelessly conflates the Italian coalition with the authoritarian regimes in Poland and Hungary and makes them sound like stooges of Vladimir Putin. It's a sloppy presentation.

And does the "paper of record" now just assume that it's the role of "financial markets" to "chasten democratically elected governments? Any lazy formulation.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made it clear to Italians what the attitude of the EU leadership is, speaking like an English colonial viceroy (Stephanie Kirchgaessner Daniel Boffey, Juncker: Italians need to work harder and be less corrupt Guardian 05/31/2018):

Days after the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, defended Italy’s place in the eurozone against the country’s populist leaders, the president of the European commission said he was in “deep love” with “bella Italia”, but could not accept that all the country’s problems should be blamed on the EU or the commission.

“Italians have to take care of the poor regions of Italy. That means more work; less corruption; seriousness,” Juncker said. “We will help them as we always did. But don’t play this game of loading with responsibility the EU. A country is a country, a nation is a nation. Countries first, Europe second.”

Believe it or not, that actually is diplomatic wording! Translated from EU-speak, it basically means: "Italy will do what the EU Commission, Angela Merkel, and the financial markets order them to do. Everybody knows that Italians (and Greeks and Spaniards and Portuguese and Irish people) are lazy and corrupt. More importantly, if you try to depart one iota from Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economic policies in good times or bad, we will crush your miserable, inferior little country."

Although Italy's not so little.

The new Italian government faces the same basic dilemma that the Syriza government faced in Greece in 2015. To provide Angela Merkel and the EU to release them from stone-conservative neoliberal economic policies, they have to be willing to credibly threaten to leave the eurozone. Which means that if Merkel and the EU refuse to make reasonable concessions, the Italian government really would have to be willing to take Italy out of the eurozone.

But there's definitely a dark side to the new Italian government. They are taking a xenophobic line, like the governments in Hungary and Austria, among others.

So they are supposedly prepared to take a run at forcing a realistic adjustment of one of the EU's two chronic problems, the poor construction of the eurozone, which falls seriously short of being an "optimal currency area." Given the stubborn resistance of Germany and other northern European governments, that's not likely to happen, sad to say.

Bill Mitchell explains why the Financial Markets as such are not the cause of the euro's problems in (The assault on democracy in Italy Billy Blog 05/30/2018). He explains that the EU has a mechanism to save bondholders from taking a bad on their bond holdings, he writes:

The ECB clearly signalled a willingness to buy unlimited quantities of government bonds if there was the risk of insolvency.

But this intervention required that the countries succumb to a fiscal austerity package that ensured their growth prospects were minimal.

And the combination just meant that the next crisis was just around the corner.

The SMP gave way to the more recent asset-buying programs, which have seen huge volumes of government debt (other than Greece) accumulate on the ECB’s balance sheet, which have funded fiscal deficits and kept the Eurozone intact.

The interesting point is that while the ECB eventually dealt the private bond dealers out of the game they waited a time (in each episode) for those dealers to express their market preferences.

Why? It is obvious. They wanted to create a sense of public debt crisis – let the spreads of the Member State bonds rise against the German bund – to make it clear that Germany’s position was sound and the example and the rest were out of control rabble with excessive deficits.

Then they could have it both ways.

But the other chronic EU crisis, mass immigration of refugees, which also had an acute moment in 2015, is still there. The immigration wave isn't stopping. The EU countries badly, badly need an EU-wide plan for processing, housing, and integrating refugees, a plan based on some kind of reasonable burden-sharing among the member states. They also need to have adequate emergency services for refugee waves like the one that came in 2015. Xenophobic governments aren't going to get there.

Recycled prescriptions for the EU

An intriguing headline hinting at an important insight: It’s time for the EU to get real, an article by Jen Spahn, German Health Minister and a leading figure at the moment in Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, in Politico EU 03/22/2018.

His fresh and innovative solution? Double-down on the most misguided macroeconomic policies on which Angela Merkel has insisted in her years as Chancellor, at great cost to millions of people in the eurozone:

The future of our shared currency, the euro, is also central to Europe’s future. Reducing the debt levels of member countries is vital, as is reinforcing the European Economic and Monetary Union and ensuring that actions and liability go hand in hand. Credibly enforcing the EU’s stability and growth pact is the key task. In this way, we can enhance member countries’ financial resilience and our ability to withstand the next crisis.

In order to make the euro-architecture more robust, the European Stability Mechanism should be further developed into a European Monetary Fund, as already proposed by former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Such a monetary fund would have to include better early-warning and prevention mechanisms for crises and credible procedures for debt restructuring in order to protect taxpayers.

Some sort of neutral internal governance — committed to compliance with the treaties, rather than political opportunism — will be vital. That would also enhance the attractiveness of the eurozone for those countries who have not yet introduced the euro. [my emphasis]

He also has this suggestion, "A recent proposal to provide a four-week Interrail pass for all school-leavers in the EU is intriguing, as it would help foster a connection to other Europeans. These are costly projects, yes, but they would allow us to make a positive — and distinctly European — mark on the world."

Easier than creating a common eurozone fiscal policy and budget, I guess. Not to mention creating shared eurozone debt instruments.

Spahn also has the not-exactly-bold suggestion of increasing the staffing of the EU Frontex border-patrol agency. He declares, "The issue that clearly causes the most anxiety with voters is migration. As long as human traffickers, rather than border officers, decide who sets foot on European soil, we put at risk one of the greatest achievements in European integration: the freedom of movement." This is a CDU-ish nod to anti-immigrant rhetoric, i.e., "human traffickers, rather than border officers, decide who sets foot on European soil."

The European immigration problem - a continuing crisis, actually - is not due to enterprising people smugglers, uh, "human traffickers." It's due to wars in the Greater Middle East including Afghanistan, and in North Africa. Along with the increasing and long term effects of climate change. It's a European problem. One whose actual solution will involve, yes, European countries agreeing of accepting a certain number of refugees. And preparation of adequate emergency services for spikes like those of 2015. All of which will require a practical attitude of solidarity, or cooperation, if you prefer. The nationalism and national resentments generated by Merkel's handling of the euro crisis have made that much more difficult.

If vague pronouncements like, "The creeping power grab by the European institutions must end," is all the EU leadership can come up with, that doesn't promise a happy future for the EU. Particularly since the eurozone's Fiscal Pact forces most eurozone countries to adopt procyclical austerity policies during recessions.

Nationalism, xenophobia and the EU

Damir Marusic, the executive editor of The American Interest, has an essay in the journal called The Dangers of Democratic Determinism 02/05/2018, in which he addresses the current state of democracy in Europe in particular. He has a useful observation about the EU, which he reasonably describes as "a largely undemocratic bureaucracy that talks in the lofty language of a post-national political community grounded in a set of universal Enlightenment values."

As Tony Judt remarked, historians and statesmen have invoked several recurring themes in describing those years in Western Europe: “Europe’s recovery was a ‘miracle’. ‘Post-national’ Europe had learned the bitter lessons of recent history. An irenic, pacific continent had risen, ‘Phoenix-like’, from the ashes of its murderous — suicidal — past.” These themes constitute a hopeful and morally redemptive narrative, especially for West Europeans who in large numbers had acquiesced to German occupation and had collaborated with the Nazis right up until liberation. Judt notes that Hitler managed to administer Norway with only 806 German overseers, and that 35 million Frenchmen made little trouble for some 1,500 German officials and 6,000 German civilian and military police. It was humiliating on a grand scale, even before these nations began to grapple with their complicity in the Holocaust.

The way in which these stories were used is also significant. Judt pointed out that a kind of ahistorical determinism related to these redemptive myths was built over time into the project of European unification. To oversimplify a bit, a set of trade treaties had set up an increasingly complex bureaucracy that had started to encroach on national sovereignty. It needed legitimation to continue doing so. “[T]he real or apparent logic of mutual economic advantage not sufficing to account for the complexity of its formal arrangements, there has been invoked a sort of ontological ethic of political community,” Judt wrote. “Projected backward, the latter is then adduced to account for the gains made thus far and to justify further unificatory efforts.” [my emphasis]

This is a broad narrative, of course, with many variations. But such narratives are necessary and often constructive in a larger, normative sense. Every political community has to have them.

Each such narrative privileges some information and values over others, and some historical events over others. Which mean they can have the effect of hiding or distorting historical realities that don't fit in with the broad line of the narrative. In this case, one of the historical realities that the narrative obscures is that the United States put a great deal of pressure on western European nations, West Germany and France in particular, to make some concrete moves toward unification. But recognizing that aspect of the story does not have to diminish the very real accomplishments of European leaders and publics in achieving what they have in the European project.

Marusic also desribes the dominant narrative of the Cold War for the US this way: "the Soviet challenge was quickly understood in Manichean terms, with American foreign policy driven by a form of secularized Protestantism." A reasonable enough broad description, though clearly the intensity of that perception ebbed and flowed with time and events. And, "Where it could, it sought to impose a version of the American Creed onto the world it encountered."

He uses the term "democratic determinism" to cover both the optimistic EU narrative, the Cold War US narrative, and the Western narrative on the post-1989 transformations.

Since the number of countries in Europe falling into the first category increased after 1989, "After 1989 and the fall of global communism, this narrative became turbocharged - triumphalist and self-certain." Presumably here he means "global communism" to refer to the USSR and the allied eastern Communist countries, and Yugoslavia, as well.

It's when he comes to how he understands the dominant narrative in the post-1989 period in eastern Europe that I become more reserved about his framework. He is reacting to xenophobic nationalism as a growing political force, even a currently dominant one in Poland and Hungary. And he argues that in eastern Europe, liberal democratic institutions were always primarily understood as being for the benefit of the dominant ethnic group.

Here he is making a broad judgment based on the history of nationalism in that area. The Russian Empire was known as the "prison house" of nations because of the various kind of national groups contined with in it: Georgian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Ukrainians, Chechens, Poles, to name some of the examples more familiar to Americans. Jews were also a major ethnic/national/religious grouping in the Russian Empire which was often a party to disputes with other such groups, most notoriously in the infamous pogroms . of the late nineteenth century.

The Ottoman Empire was also a large collection of national groupings with Turks, Turkmens, Armenians, Greeks and others, with a variety of languages, religious affiliations and cultural traditions. The Greek revolt against Ottoman rule in the 1820s (???) generated considerable sympathy in the West. The British poet Lord Byron died in Greece fighting on the side of the Greek revolt. It was over the foreign policy position of the United States on the Greek revolt during the Monroe Administration that occasioned the often-quoted remark of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams that the US does not go abroad in search of monnsters to destroy. As the Ottoman Empire weakened in the latter half of the 19th century, Russia and the Habsburgs competed to snatch parts of the declining empire. And movements for national independence gave birth to the Balkans Wars of the early 1900s, a bloody preview of those in the last decade of last century.

The Habsburg Empire, whose last incarnation was the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a "dual monarchy" arrangement (Austrian and Hungarian). The Habsburgs were the dominant dynasty for centuries in the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation," which was declared dissolved in 1806 after Napolean's armies had effectively pummeled it. Winston Churchill's famously grumped that it had been neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Whatever measurements Churchill was applying in that judgment, the Holy Roman Empire successfully adjusted to the new nation-state system set up by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Including Habsburg rulers of Spain that presided over the non-inconsiderable Spanish colonial possessions in the Americas.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire is sometimes cited as a precursor of the European Union as a functioning multicultural, multilingual political unit. And it did survie the end of the Holy Roman Empire by just over a century. But in many ways, it was dysfunctional, with chronic political conflicts and the 1848 upheavals. Frustrated democratic aspirations with intensely mixed with drives for national independence or greater rights for Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenians, Ruthenians, Galicians, Ukrainians (also), Poles (also), Hungarians, and even Austrian Germans, who were lumped in for years with others as part of Cisleithania, essentially the non-Hungarian part of the empire. And it also included a not-inconsiderable population of Jews.

All three of those empires were heavily involved in eastern Europe. The First World War emerged in signficant part from the competing interests of those three empires in the Balkans.

Marusic cites an essay by economist Branko Milanovic on the particular important of the desire for national independence by countries in the Soviet bloc in comparison to the desire for Western-style liberal democracy. I won't go into Milanovic's particular arguments here except to say that I'm not convinced that they are as heterodox as Marusic takes them to be.

Marusic goes farther, though:

The purpose of Milanovic’s essay is narrow: to show how dif??cult it will be to compel these recalcitrant countries to accept migrants anytime soon—maybe ever. But the essay’s deeper implications are striking, and help illuminate one of the blindspots plaguing democratic determinists. The discom??ting truth is that some amount of ethnic nationalism is not just tolerated, but accepted as completely legitimate by many voters throughout Eastern Europe.

Unlike Milanovic, a democratic determinist sees 1989 primarily as an ideological triumph, and understands the values that underpin it as universal and indivisible from the proper functioning of a modern state. If 1989 is thought of as a successful democratic revolution, then much of the politics of the past ten years in Eastern Europe can only be seen as backsliding. Someone like Viktor Orban, who has selfconsciously positioned himself as a kind of soft nationalist, is seen as inherently illegitimate — a symptom of political decay.

But insofar as Milanovic’s model is correct, an “Easterner” listens to the incessant complaining coming from democratic determinists in Brussels and bemusedly scratches his head. His legitimately elected leaders are merely protecting values dear to him and his country from a bunch of messianic foreigners preaching an idealistic universalism he’s never signed up for, and that he doubts exists. He just doesn’t see what the big deal is.

This sounds too much like resignation in the face of xenophobia for me to feel comfortable with this formulation. Extreme nationalism doesn't affect only internal politics. It encourages foreign aggression as well.

Also, EU countries including Hungary and Poland have serious international commitments to NATO and to the European Union. In both western and eastern Europe, leaders of EU countries have tended to treat the EU as a free-trade zone whose political commitments don't need to be taken especially seriously. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a regrettable approach to the EU of using it to maximize short-term national advantages for German and for her own neoliberal doctrine of austerity, even in the face of the Great Recession.

The EU gives Europe its best chance of coping reasonably with immigration challenges that are not going away, though they will have more and less acute phases. And the current EU solutions which rely heavily on dumping the problems onto Turkey and Greece, and to a significant extent on Italy, have practical consequences and serious moral implications, too. And all EU countries are failing their commitments and responsibilities if they don't accept more refugees on a regular basis and reject xenophobic policies and actions.

Our current US President is certainly not going to let xenophobia in other countries deter him from taking whatever policy he finds most convenient for his family business. But a more sensible and pragmatic Administration - I hope we have one sooner than later - may want to undertake a very practical re-evaluation of NATO commitments. And part of that new look would surely include a review of relations with Turkey, both because of its authoritarian trend and its commitment to allies in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war who are on opposite sides of those backed by the US. But a realistic re-evaluation of NATO could also raise the question of whether we should have a major security alliance with countries that reject basic democratic values, human rights, and international law.

Germany and the future of the EU

This Politico EU article by Matthew Karnitschnig provides a succinct statement of a basic problem with the real existing European Union In German GroKo talks, not much love for Europe 02/02/2018:

The dirty little secret of German politics is that the population doesn’t really care that much. Europe has become a rhetorical prop — everyone is for it, at least in the abstract.

In a survey last month of Germans’ views of the most pressing political issues, the question of fixing Europe didn’t even register.

That may be because many Germans don’t think the EU is broken. Germany, with its strong economy and perpetual export surpluses, is the prime beneficiary of European integration.

While most in the country welcome measures to strengthen the EU’s external borders and other efforts aimed at keeping migrants at bay, they have less time for proposals such as one for a Europe-wide bank deposit insurance. Reforms that could put German treasure at risk remain politically difficult, even outside conservative circles.

The repercussions of the euro crisis may have convinced Europe’s elites that closer integration in the eurozone is the only way forward, but the bailouts in Greece and periphery countries have only deepened the German public’s skepticism.

This lack of a sense of European citizenship is one aspect of the "democratic deficit" in the EU. As long as German politicians in both the CDU/CSU and the SPD see the EU as an instrument for narrow German nationalism, the EU will contine to stumble it's way from crisis to crisis, with failure of the Union at the end of the road.

The fate of the euro and the fate of the EU

The euro is plagued by the basic problem that the eurozone does not meet the basic requirements of an "optimal currency area".

Paul Krugman wrote in 2012 (Revenge of the Optimum Currency Area NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2012 Vol. 27) that "right from the beginning" of the euro, economists working with the "theory of optimum currency areas" warned that it "suggested serious concerns about the euro project." He explains:

The disadvantages of a single currency come from loss of flexibility. It’s not just that a currency area is limited to a one-size-fits-all monetary policy; even more important is the loss of a mechanism for adjustment. For it seemed to the creators of optimum currency area (OCA), and continues to seem now, that changes in relative prices and wages are much more easily made via currency depreciation than by renegotiating individual contracts. Iceland achieved a 25 percent fall in wages relative to the European core in one fell swoop, via a fall in the krona. Spain probably needs a comparable adjustment, but that adjustment, if it can happen at all, will require years of grinding wage deflation in the face of high unemployment. [my emphasis]

Recessionary effects hit different regions of a currency zone with disproportionate effects, i.e., "asymmetric shocks." If the currency zone has a common budget, countercyclical measures can be designed that transfer money from the less heavily stricken regions to the ones hardest hit during a recessions. The concept isn't all exotic, though it sometimes sounds so in the economic jargon:

Let’s once again take a not at all hypothetical example: Florida, after the recent housing bust. America may have a small welfare state by European standards, but it is still pretty big, with large spending in particular on Social Security and Medicare — obviously both are a big deal in Florida. These programs are, however, paid for at a national level. What this means is that if Florida suffers an asymmetric adverse shock, it will receive an automatic compensating transfer from the rest of the country: it pays less into the national budget, but this has no impact on the benefits it receives, and may even increase its benefits if they come from programs like unemployment benefits, food stamps, and Medicaid, which expand in the face of economic distress.

This provides not only relief in a humanitarian sense. It also gives harder hit areas additional purchasing power that stimulates the economy in those areas, especially if there is effectively labor mobility. That transfer function makes the dollar currency zone (the US) a "transfer union." The EU is not.

In addition to a transfer union and labor mobility, the ability of the currency zone to borrow money secured by the union as a whole in order to benefit some sections of the currency zone more than others is an important feature to make it workable. In other words, the currency zone needs a lender of last resort. The lack of it in the eurozone was a major factor in the post-2008 euro crisis.

But the EU doesn't have a transfer union, a banking union, a common borrowing capacity (though the ECB has been to partially mitigate that lack), or a common budget. And labor market mobility among EU countries is significantly limited by language as well as different educational systems. Although Krugman notes "lack of labor mobility has not played a major role in euro’s difficulties, at least so far."

(It's worth noting here that a drive through rural states or cities hard hit by de-industrialization will dramatically show that the dollar "transfer union" doesn't entirely eliminate major regional disparities in prosperity.)

Wolfgang Münchau warns in the Financial Times that the unresolved problems of the euro currency zone are more a threat to the survival of the EU than Brexit (Lack of eurozone reform outranks Brexit as the EU’s biggest threat 12/17/2017):

There is a theoretical argument that a fully functioning banking union constitutes a sufficient set of conditions for eurozone stability. It would be a wonderful proposal for a monetary union in a parallel universe. Back on earth, fiscal union is needed precisely because the banking union will always be imperfect.

Therefore, the fundamental problems of the eurozone will remain unaddressed: large and nondecreasing financial imbalances between member states; weak banking systems that are overdependent on EU members; an inbuilt tendency towards pro-cyclical fiscal policies that exacerbate boom and bust; a lack of instruments to deal with asymmetric shocks; and, most important of all, a fundamental lack of trust. The cyclical economic recovery has deflected attention away from these issues, but has not resolved any of them. [my emphasis]

I would add the refugee crisis. It's currently in a less acute phase. But it is both a symptom and the cause of the lack of trust between EU members.

A "geo-cultural" approach to understanding Europe's position in the world

"The superiority she [Europe] has long maintained, has tempted her to plume herself as the mistress of the world, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. ... Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the European: it belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother moderation. Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the Thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connexion between the old and the new world!

Diet Senghaas uses that quotation from Federalist #11 (Publius/Alexander Hamilton) to argue that Europe needs to adopt a kind of city-on-a-hill strategy in world politics of leading by example. (Von Donald Trump bis Xi Jinping: Der neue Kampf innerhalb der Kulturen Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 12/2017)

He does this in the context of considering the current international scene from the viewpoint of "geo-cultural" tendencies. This view understands the Cold War was as defined by the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States encompassing military, economic and cultural aspects, the latter taken as values, broadly speaking. "Europa war in jeder Hinsicht – also geopolitisch, geoökonomisch und geokulturell – im Zentrum eines Weltkonflikts positioniert und extrem exponiert: zweigeteilt auf beide Lager und ohne nennenswerte Grauzone." ("Europe in this respect - that is, geopolitically, geo-economically and geo-culturally - positioned at the center of a world conflict and extremely exposed: split between both camps and without any gray zone to speak of.")

Senghaas argues that conflict within cultures are now far more a defining factor in the international behavior of states and blocs than during the Cold War. His use of "culture" seems to play off the meaning "civilization" in Samuel Huntington's controversial but influential concept of the Clash of Civilizations. The article runs 10 pages, so obviously it can provide only a general sketch for an overview of international politics for the world.

So, to sketch his sketch, he argues like pretty much all foreign policy analysts and scholars that China is seeking a more important world leadership role. And while the current Communist Party leadership seems very focused on maintaining its monopoly of power, it nevertheless faces internal political conflicts, even though they aren't expressed in the way they appear in parliamentary democracies. And while military clashes with the US in places like the South China Sea are a real possibility, Senghaas puts considerable weight on the observation that China's dealings with other countries have a heavily pragmatic orientation without a notable emphasis on spreading their political ideology. (Yanis Varoufakis has made a similar observation about Chinese proposals for business deal with Greece.) He concludes that China is more focused on its internal challenges and conflicts, which he describes as a "clash within civilization" than on foreign expansionism and intervention. Its assertive foreign policy, he argues, is "allerdings nicht der Ausgangspunkt für eine geokulturell verursachte Weltstrukturbildung à la Ost-West-Konflikt, also beispielsweise für einen China-West/USA-Konflikt – zumindest auf absehbare Zeit noch nicht" ("in any case not the springboard for a geo-cultural-based creation of a world structure à la an East-West conflict - like a China-West/US conflict, for instance - at least not for the foreseeable future.")

Senghaas takes the 2013 Chinese Communist Party Document Number Nine is a particularly useful source on the current Chinese policy orientation.

He sees Russia's policy under Putin as being based on Russian ethno-nationalism, though he doesn't use that term. Specifically, he argues that Russia takes a particular interest in relations with states that were part of the former Soviet Union. An obvious but important point. Yet it's nevertheless one that neocons and "humanitarian hawks" tend to regard with sputtering outrage, real or feigned. In Senghaas' terms, Russia's politically and military aggressiveness in neighboring countries like Georgia and Ukraine can be understood as part of a "geo-cultural" posture. (See Nuland, Victoria.) But, he argues, "Die eigene, russische Politik im eurasischen Raum wird als von
„identitärer Toleranz“ motiviert begriffen." ("The actual Russian policy in the Eurasian area should be understood as motivated by 'identitarian tolerance'.")The term "identitarian tolerance" is presumably an allusion to the far-right, xenophobic "identitarian" movement. (See: Identitarian movement - Germany's 'new right' hipsters Deutsche Welle 23.06.2017)

Senghaas doesn't address the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election. As more of the scope of that project is reliably documented in the public record, it could show a more interventionist orientation in Russian policy toward the US. But based on what we know at this writing, it seems to be more likely that the Russians assumed that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency and they wanted to weaken her hand in pursuing policies opposed to Russian actions in those borderlands like Georgia and Ukraine, in particular. That picture is largely what emerges from the Frontline documentary Putin's Revenge (2017), for example.

He sees the conflict with Islamists as a mixture of internal cultural conflicts and "geo-cultural" ones. This makes sense. While Islamist militancy and terrorism can have dramatic impact in Western countries (the 9/11 attacks most notably), the focus of the Islamists is on predominately Islamic countries, where the geo-cultural aspects are more predominate. But in this article, the section on Islamic movements highlights more than any other the weaknesses of viewing Islam as a distinct "culture." The internal vs. geo-cultural distinction seems particularly questionable here.

His short article lumps together the US and Europe as the Western culture. He passes over Latin America altogether, and mentions Africa only in passing. (It is only a 10-page piece!) He views authoritarian tendencies as constituting the major conflict relevant to foreign policy considerations. He singles out the current forms of "illiberal democracy" that are in place and/or under development in Hungary, Poland and Turkey. Senghaas also sees conflict within Western culture as particularly evident in the obvious contemporary examples of Trumpism in the US, Brexit, the AfD getting elected to Parliament in Germany, and the Kurz/Strache alliance in Austria. The latter of which is still trying to form a government.

Like Samuel Huntington's conception, any worldview built around a clash of civilizations (or cultures) viewpoint has serious limitations for understanding international relations. To take an example from his article, it's not at all clear that Putin's actual political strategy is so committed to the ideology of "Eurasionism" identified with Alexander Dugin as Senghaas implies.

His idea of Europe leading by example and influencing the world primarily through its soft power is an appealing one. And I do think that making the European Union a further success is the most powerful thing European countries can do to protect their interest and exert their influence effectively on the international scene. Hopefully more constructively than otherwise!

But to do that, the Union will have to democratize itself. And the individual countries will have to Europeanize themselves enough so that voters and leaders can and do effectively contend over EU policies that effect them in major ways. The EU will have to abandon austerity economics. And even then, the Union will have to play an assertive and active role well beyond their borders. Relations with Russia will be a permanent issue for all of Europe, not just Russia's bordering countries. Obviously, the NATO alliance locks Europe into active engagement with the United States.

And as long as wars keep springing up in the Greater Middle East, there will be a refugee crisis in Europe, which climate change is also making an effectively permanent condition. It's hard to see how that can be effectively managed without some combination of active European peacemaking and development-assistance activities in the Middle East and northern Africa. As well as systematic absorption and integration of refugees as actual permanent immigrants in Europe.

I'm just not sure how much a "geo-cultural" framework helps European voters and policymakers get there.