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.

The US and Europe before the G-20 Summit

In a stunning historical twist, some 241 years after Declaration of Independence, US has its own mad king.

— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt) July 4, 2017

And he's on his way to Europe this week for the G-20 Summit in Hamburg on Thursday. There will be the usual supply of protesters, including an "autonomous and anticapitalist" alliance calling themselves Welcome to Hell. which is advocting for militant disruptions: "With mass blockades and further actions we will sabotage the summit. We will hinder logistics in the port and make it clear that we can intervene in the capitalist flow of goods." (Hamburg City Strike)

But the biggest disrupter could be our current mad king, who has adopted a relatively hostile stance against the EU. And they aren't really in a mood to take it passively. Spiegel International reports on a recent broadcast made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Angela Merkel and one of the business groups whose interests she and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party serve (Merkel Concerned G-20 Summit Could End in Fiasco 06/30/2017):

Standing next to an American flag, he read out a speech that was being transmitted to Berlin via video link. Specifically, it was being broadcast into the ballroom of a luxury hotel where German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several hundred guests of the Economic Council, a German business association that is closely linked to Merkel's political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), were listening.

Ross had initially wanted to travel in person to the German capital, but he canceled at the last minute because, he said in the video, "urgent unexpected matters required that I remain in Washington." The commerce secretary then straightened his glasses and monotonously recited what his president expected of the Germans.

He demanded that Germany buy raw materials from the United States instead of from Russia, lower tariffs on automobile imports from the U.S. and ensure that America "obtain a larger share" of the European market. Otherwise, he added, the government in Washington, D.C., would have no alternative but to "engage in self-help."


Ross had been allotted a speaking time of 10 minutes, but when he still hadn't finished after 30 minutes, the event participants had heard enough. They turned down the sound and switched off the video link. The U.S. commerce secretary disappeared from the screen, silenced like a political gadfly. Some in the audience laughed.

And the differences are likely to show up at the G-20 Summit: "Environment, refugees, trade: On a long list of issues, Trump and his America-first administration are sabotaging the search for joint positions among the world's industrialized and emerging economies. The discrepancies are 'obvious,' Merkel said during a speech before German parliament on Tuesday, the discussions 'will be difficult.'"

Given Trump's obvious goal of weakening if not destroying the European Union, it is very much in the interest of the EU nations to stand more united than ever and to cooperate more closely.

But we say in the Iraq War crisis that the Cheney-Bush Administration was able to exploit different national perspectives to split off not only eastern European countries but Britain, Spain, Portugal and Italy away from the the antiwar position taking by Germany and France and supported broadly by the European publics.

The EU survived that crisis, as did NATO, the alliance more immediately affected by that controversy.

The post-Second World War US leadership was certainly focused on securing power and economic advantages to the United States. Within the framework of the bipolar world division that became the Cold War, the US leadership did pursue a visionary and bold approach to building international alliances, from the Marshall Plan to Bretton Woods to NATO to the grudging acceptance of decolonization in Asia and Africa. (Though obviously in some places like Indochina, that acceptance was very grudging.) The possible alternatives to the Cold War are always worth revisiting, especially now when much of the US foreign policy establishment embraces a New Cold War seemingly without much serious reflection. But within the context of the Cold War and the nuclear confrontation between the US and the USSR, the Western alliance did achieve the not inconsiderable accomplishment of preventing any new major war in Europe.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact, the US under Old Man Bush's Administration and under Clinton's favored the formation of the EU and its expansion. But the US also favored a broadly expanded but relatively weaker EU, as opposed to a smaller and more unified version. The bipartisan approach was to prevent the EU from becoming a "peer competitor" to the US in world affairs.

While it's possible to see the policy of the US toward the EU as a pragmatic but cautious internationalism, the post-Cold War policy on NATO was considerably less visionary. The purpose of NATO was to defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion. Once the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union had fallen, NATO became an alliance in search of a mission. And each new step in eastward NATO expansion added to the risk with diminishing returns. Adding the Balkan states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia incorporated areas that had previously been parts of the Soviet Union and effectively placed the credibility (foreign policy mavens consider Credibility the holy of holies) and effectiveness of NATO on the line for countries that would be physically a big challenge to defend if Russia should decide on some kind of military aggression against them. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the decision to incorporate them into NATO was done with a lack of real seriousness.

Now in times of increased tensions with Russia - in part clearly a result of the NATO expansion itself - it would be much harder to redefine or replace NATO. And it would take a far more visionary and capable President than the current resident of the White House to do that. It would also take an Administration that understood the importance of diplomacy and the State Department whose job it is to conduct it.

The Trump Family Business Administration's so-called America First approach is raising a number of areas of potential confrontation between the US and the EU: tariff on steel, beef and other products; international enforcement against money laundering; Germany's trad deficit; environmental regulation.

But there is a basic problem with European unity: the austerity economics on which Germany and its currency Chancellor have insisted, a true triumph of hardcore rightwing dogma over pragmatism and moderation. In the economic crisis and most dramatically with the unending Greek debt crisis, insistence of austerity dogma has encouraged some genuinely bitter nationalist hatreds, the very thing the EU was founded to dissipate. That nationalism and lack of genuine cooperation and solidarity spilled over into the also unending refugee crisis. Europe can't end the movement of refugees in its direction on its own. One obvious immediate source of the refugee influx has been the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi as ruler of Libya with the active military intervention of NATO and the US, Britain and France in particular opened an additional stream of refugees from Africa. And for the EU countries to effectively oppose such wars, they will require a unity in foreign policy even in opposition to the United States beyond what they have shown so far. And they will also have to make decisions to oppose such wars, which certainly wasn't the case in the Libyan intervention.

In a longer term, the increasing effects of climate change are also driving immigration to Europa. Europe is more united on constructive climate policy than on Middle Eastern wars. But the need for a decently human response to immigration and improving the integration of immigrants is also a long term one. And, as it turns out, EU countries like Greece and Italy that were particular targets of nationalist contempt in the debt crisis from their richer EU partners have to bear much of the immediate brunt of the influx of refugees.

With Trump and Putin agreed at the moment on the need to weaken the EU, the EU badly needs to ditch austerity economics and bring their economic policies at least into the 20th century (Keynesianism) and to come up with a genuinely cooperative solution to immigration to replace Merkel's chronic extend-and-pretend approach.

Brexit Updates

The Real News has the following video reports on the aftermath of Brexit.

Brexit sends Europe into Political and Economic Crises (1/2) 06/28/2016:

Brexit sends Europe into Political and Economic Crises (2/2):

The Corbyn No-Confidence Vote and the Bleeding of the Labor Party 06/28/2016:

More Brexit

Brexit will get a lot of attention in the American press, at least for a few days. It affected the stock market, so the news will pay attention.

This is probably a nonviolent instance of the famous cynical comment commonly attributed to Ambrose Beirce, " "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

Australian economist Bill Mitchell gives some historical perspective of the internal British politics of European unity in Britain should exit the European Union Billy Blog 06/22/2016.

Paul Krugman isn't too worried over the economic consequences (Brexit: The Morning After 06/24/2016):

Yes, Brexit will make Britain poorer. It’s hard to put a number on the trade effects of leaving the EU, but it will be substantial. True, normal WTO tariffs (the tariffs members of the World Trade Organization, like Britain, the US, and the EU levy on each others’ exports) are low and other traditional restraints on trade relatively mild. But everything we’ve seen in both Europe and North America suggests that the assurance of market access has a big effect in encouraging long-term investments aimed at selling across borders; revoking that assurance will, over time, erode trade even if there isn’t any kind of trade war. And Britain will become less productive as a result.

But right now all the talk is about financial repercussions – plunging markets, recession in Britain and maybe around the world, and so on. I still don’t see it.

But he rightly focuses on the significance of political decisions to follow:

It seems clear that the European project – the whole effort to promote peace and growing political union through economic integration – is in deep, deep trouble. Brexit is probably just the beginning, as populist/separatist/xenophobic movements gain influence across the continent. Add to this the underlying weakness of the European economy, which is a prime candidate for “secular stagnation” – persistent low-grade depression driven by things like demographic decline that deters investment. Lots of people are now very pessimistic about Europe’s future, and I share their worries.

But those worries wouldn’t have gone away even if Remain had won. The big mistakes were the adoption of the euro without careful thought about how a single currency would work without a unified government; the disastrous framing of the euro crisis as a morality play brought on by irresponsible southerners; the establishment of free labor mobility among culturally diverse countries with very different income levels, without careful thought about how that would work. Brexit is mainly a symptom of those problems, and the loss of official credibility that came with them. (That credibility loss is why the euro disaster played a role in Brexit even though Britain itself had the good sense to stay out.)

At the European level, in other words, I would argue that Brexit just brings to a head an abscess that would have burst fairly soon in any case. [my emphasis]

This is a good discussion featuring Ivo Daalder, Richard Haass and Margaret Warner of what Brexit implies for US foreign policy, Foreign policy experts anticipate Brexit’s global impact PBS Newshour 06/24/2016:

Britain is still a NATO member. And for ties to the US, that one that binds stronger than the EU. But ever since the Clinton 1 Administration - when the European Community had just become the European Union, Britain has been the US voice within the EU. The US policy has been to push to have the EU expand its membership as a way to incorporate eastern European nations into the West. But it also kept the EU weaker because the more countries they had, the harder it was in practice to achieve the famous "ever closer union." Because it's still American policy that the US should keep overwhelming dominance in all parts of the world and therefore forestall the rise of any potential "peer competitor," which the EU could have been before the 2008 crisis and Angela Merkel went to work on it. So from the current US policy viewpoint, it's a positive that the EU is now weakened and the "ever closer union" looks like it will be postponed indefinitely. But we also lost Britain the main advocate for American foreign policy in the EU.

Clinton I and Obama weren't quite as crass in the way they expressed it as Shrub Bush was. Actually, to the extent that Europeans have an interest in not having unending chaos in the Middle East that encourages terrorist attacks inside Europe and generates massive numbers of refugees that the EU is obviously failing to handle well, a more coherent EU foreign policy would be in practice a beneficial restraint on American Presidents doing dumb stuff in foreign policy. But with neoliberal economics the dominant economic policy approach in the EU, it's hard to see how they are ever going to achieve enough unity to actually solve the snowballing problems they have. But in Britain, their political leadership of both Labour and the Tories pretty much decided after the Suez Crisis of 1956 that they would never be on the opposite sides of the US on a major foreign policy issue. The pitiful Tony Blair was following that approach in facilitating Dick Cheney's invasion of Iraq. If the EU could ever develop a genuinely independent foreign policy in the foreseeable future, it would have to be without Britain. Or, as I guess we'll be calling it when Scotland and Wales declare independence, Little Britain.

Timothy Garton Ash on Polish authoritarianism

Timothy Garton Ash provides a comment on the seriousness of the authoritarian turn in Poland, The pillars of Poland’s democracy are being destroyed Guardian 01/02/2016. He sees the current Law and Justice (PiS) government as rushing to get it's program in place.

Garton Ash writes:

Poland, the pivotal power in post-communist central Europe, is in danger of being reduced by its recently elected ruling party to an illiberal democracy. Basic pillars of its still youthful liberal democracy, such as the constitutional court, public service broadcasters and a professional civil service, are suddenly under threat. ...

And this needs to happen soon. For the political blitzkrieg of the past two months suggests that the strategy of the Law and Justice party (known by its Polish acronym as PiS), and specifically of its one true leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, is to do the dirty work of transforming the political system rapidly, even brutally, and then to show a kinder, softer, more pragmatic face. He has the parliamentary majority to do this (although not the two thirds needed to change the constitution), still considerable popular support – and, shockingly, the president of the country is behaving like his glove puppet.

For at least 20 years Kaczyński has dreamed of what he sees as completing the anti-communist revolution of 1989, but he also knows, recalling his experience in power from 2005 to 2007, that the window of opportunity may not long be open. So he says to himself, like Macbeth, “If it were done … then ’twere well it were done quickly.” [my emphasis]

He also notes the hodgepodge ideology of the PiS, noting that its "proclaimed conservative, Catholic, Eurosceptic policies, [are] cleverly combined with an almost leftwing set of economic and welfare promises."

Garton Ash doesn't mention Angela Merkel specifically. But he notes, "The EU has also responded more sharply than it did to similar (and worse) changes in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Tellingly, Kaczyński and Orbán met privately for five hours this week, coordinating their positions."

As I mentioned in an earlier post, expressed EU concerns over democracy in Poland may have more to do with national considerations by Merkel's government than any newfound concern on Merkel's part for the defense of democracy in the EU. Challenges to economic austerity policies, though, Merkel takes those very seriously.

It strikes me that there are similarities in timing with the authoritarian measures of the Polish government and the aggressive neoliberal economic policies being applied by Mauricio Macri's government that took office in Argentina in December.

How long can the euro farce go on?

This euro crisis is one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed in real-time. On top of the fact that Germany's Princess Angie von Merkel split the European Union, probably irreparably, with Britain's leaving the summit negotiating table last week and doing so on behalf of a plan that won't help save the euro but instead will intensify the debt crisis, now her own appointee as head of the Bundesbank threatens to shoot the plan down!

Jens Weidmann, Germany's top central banker, doesn't like the strategy agreed upon by which eurozone countries would give money to the IMF, which would then lend it back to eurozone states under heavy pressure from the bond markets. Little Jens is stamping his feet and saying that unless countries outside the eurozone contribute money to that effort, he won't pony up the 45 billion or so euros discussed as Germany's contribution. (Euro-Krise.Bundesbank-Chef droht mit Blockade des Rettungsplans Spiegel Online 14.12.2011)

Kiss the euro goodbye.

How did Europe come to be run by a bunch of dweebs? Here's a hint: Dealing with the Debt Crisis: German Business Leaders Give Merkel Top Marks Spiegel International 12/14/2011. The headline writer obviously has a sense of humor. The mark (Deutschmark) is Germany's once and future national currency. It's good to know what kind of wisdom the one-percenter Lords of Business in Germany share:

A new survey of an "elite panel" of 500 German executives, politicians and administrators, taken by pollster the Allensbach Institute and published in this week's issue of financial magazine Capital, has found that 70 percent consider Merkel to be a strong chancellor, almost twice the score she received in June. And 69 percent said they believed Merkel is doing a good job with her crisis management. Seventy percent also said they believed Germany was succeeding in pushing through its interests at the European Union level. Indeed, the chancellor's image appears to have been burnished as a result of her persistence, the magazine wrote.

This isn't like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It's like the crew of the Titanic saying, "Hey, let's go check out that iceberg a little closer!"

Aufwidersehen zum Euro. Oder wahrscheinlicher und genauer, Niewiedersehen zum Euro.

Tags: eu, euro, european union, jens weidmann