The Council of the European Union had decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova in December 2023. On June 25, 2024, the EU held the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Conference at ministerial level to officially open accession negotiations with both Ukraine and Moldova. In many ways, this accession negotiation process was different from others. A brief look at the EU’s previous enlargements is needed to understand this difference.

A Brief History of EU Enlargement

Enlargement policy is the EU’s most important foreign policy instrument. The reason for this is the transformative power of the EU, the power to transform the countries that will become members of the EU by means of conditionality. By spreading its values through enlargement, the EU is able to ensure its stability, security and prosperity. Moreover, by enlarging with new member states, the EU becomes a much stronger Union economically, politically and geopolitically, and increases its effectiveness in the international system.

Since its first enlargement in 1973, the EU has gone through several rounds of enlargement, bringing the number of member states up to 28. Following Brexit and the UK’s withdrawal from the Union, the EU now has 27 Member States. Each enlargement has been assessed in the context of the needs of the time and has taken place when the conditions have been met. For example, the UK, Ireland and Denmark applied to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961, but were rejected twice, first in 1963 and again in 1967, because of French President Charles De Gaulle’s concerns over Britain’s close ties with the United States that would be detrimental to the Union. The first wave of enlargement, which included the UK, did not take place until after De Gaulle’s resignation.

The second wave of enlargement was also dealt with assessing in the context of the needs of the time. The EEC had suspended the Association Agreement with Greece after the Greek junta seized power in 1967 and installed the regime of the colonels. After the military junta had handed over power to civilians and a democratic government had been restored, Greece applied for membership again. After six years of negotiations, the Member States, instead of excluding Greece, arguing that its democratization could be achieved more effectively within the EEC, acted with the idea that we would admit Greece as a member in 1981 and democratize it.

Under the regime of General Francisco Franco, Spain’s application to join the EEC in 1962 was rejected. Following political reforms and democratic elections, Spain submitted its formal application in 1977, which led to the EEC’s decision to open accession negotiations in 1978. Similarly, after the resignation of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in 1968 and the replacement of the regime established by the military coup of 1974 with a democratic regime following the 1975 elections, Portugal formally applied to the EEC in 1977 and began negotiations in 1978. The 1981 enlargement to include Greece and the 1986 southern enlargement to include Spain and Portugal changed the EU from a “club of democracies” into a “school of democracy”.

In addition to political issues, obstacles to Iberian enlargement included the fact that these two countries produced similar agricultural products to France. In addition, the fact that Spain and Portugal, which had been ruled by dictatorships for many years, were economically lagging the other members caused concern among other EEC member states because of the possible influx of workers from these two countries.

Although Bulgaria and Romania failed to meet the EU’s criteria on corruption and an impartial judiciary, they were granted membership in 2007, albeit belatedly. Rather than leaving Bulgaria and Romania outside the EU, as was the case with Greece, they were helped to continue their transformation and development within the EU.

The most recent enlargement of the EU was the accession of Croatia. Croatia, which gained independence after the break-up of Yugoslavia, was able to join the EU after resolving its border issue with Slovenia. The growing strategic importance of the Balkans for the EU paved the way for Croatia’s accession process and the prospect of future Balkan enlargement.

For Turkey, which started accession negotiations to the EU at the same year with Croatia in 2005, the EU negotiation process was de facto frozen. When Balkan enlargement on the agenda and accession negotiations officially opened with Ukraine and Moldova, the question arises as to what will happen to the accession negotiations with Turkey. Although Turkey has recently expressed its willingness to take steps to revive its EU membership process it has not been included in these new enlargement perspectives of the EU.

Ukraine and Moldova’s EU Accession Process

We are witnessing that the EU, long suffering from enlargement fatigue, has begun taking important steps in the enlargement process. In a changing world and in the new European security environment, the EU has put aside its longstanding anti-enlargement approach. The war in Ukraine and its aftermath, as well as the changing conjuncture, have given a new impetus to EU enlargement, with both Ukraine and Moldova and the Western Balkans on the EU agenda.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signaled this change in her State of the Union speech on 13 September. In her speech, von der Leyen said that a new group of states, including the Western Balkans, would be admitted as new member states of the EU. The date for this enlargement scheduled to 2030. On 7 May 2024, the EU member states took a decision to support the Western Balkan countries with 6 billion euros, 4 billion euros in loans and 2 billion euros in grants to make them economically ready to join the Union. The fulfillment of this support based on two conditions: achieving political reforms and foreign and security policy alignment with the EU against Russia.

Ukraine and Moldova, previously part of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership (EaP), began to be considered in new enlargement policy. The relationship between Ukraine and the EU evolved into a different process with the Association Agreement, negotiated between 2007 and 2011 and signed in 2014, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA).

The pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych’s reluctance to sign the DCFTA led to pro-EU protests in November 2013, the so-called Euromaidan uprisings, and Yanukovych’s removal from power, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, which is called as “special military operation” by Russian government, became the factor that accelerated Ukraine’s accession process. On 28 February 2024, 4 days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine applied for EU membership and on 23 June Ukraine was granted candidate status by the EU.

Although relations between Moldova and the EU began in 1994, when Moldova signed the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, the main obstacle to Moldova’s membership in the EaP under the ENP was the fact that the country’s economy did not meet EU standards and, most importantly, the situation in the Russian-backed Transnistria region.

Moldova, like Ukraine, applied for EU membership on 3 March following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Together with Ukraine, it was granted candidate status on 23 June 2022. Ukraine is currently at war with Russia, while Moldova is concerned about a possible war situation due to Russia’s support for the Transnistria region.

The start of negotiations with Ukraine on 25 June was only possible after convincing Hungary, which was opposed both because of the war in Ukraine and because of the treatment of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova were officially launched before Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency on 1 July, thus avoiding a potential stumbling block. But there are many other features of this wave of enlargement that make it different from the others.

The European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) is the latest step taken against the spiral of mistrust that emerged with the Russia-Ukraine war. The project was launched under the leadership of Germany, whose defense weaknesses have been on the agenda since the start of war in February 2022, drawing attention to its poor combat readiness and lack of basic military equipment.

Despite frequent warnings since the beginning of the war to increase ammunition production in European countries and to invest more in air and missile defense, European defense industry production has fallen further behind Russia. Meanwhile, as Russia shifted to a form of war economy, it significantly increased its production rate, further exacerbating insecurity in Europe.

Moreover, increased drone and missile strikes behind the front lines, intense attacks on critical infrastructure, and Russian missiles falling within NATO’s borders have put the need for air and missile defense in Europe back on the agenda. The ESSI is therefore expected not only to reduce vulnerability in this area, but also to encourage an overall increase in military spending on the continent and the development of a common understanding of defense.

The project aims to establish a layered air and missile defense network through the joint procurement and operation of the German Iris-T, American Patriot and Israeli Arrow-3 defense systems, thereby creating a cost-effective and interoperable network.

Why ISSI Is Needed for European Security?

Two fundamental challenges have played a driving role in the emergence of ESSI. The first is the fact that the development of missile and unmanned systems technology, as seen in recent conflicts and the war in Ukraine, could extend warfare behind the front lines.

The increasing use of large numbers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which can be quickly and inexpensively produced and act as “missiles” with a saturation effect on air defense systems (neutralizing technologically superior enemy systems through numerical superiority), has reemphasized the importance of a multi-layered air and missile defense architecture.

Can ESSI Succeed?

The project is unlikely to succeed for a number of reasons. So far, the continent has failed to adopt a common position on security, defense and foreign policy. Although the project has been on the agenda for about a year and a half, no serious progress has been made except for the recruitment of new members due to the high cost of the systems to be procured. In addition, Germany and France have different approaches to war and common defense. All this inevitably puts the future of ESSI in a stalemate.

In the aftermath of the Ukraine war, France has become more emphatic about European strategic autonomy and the development of the European defense industrial ecosystem. However, it is noteworthy that the delays in the new generation aircraft and tank projects with Germany cannot be overcome.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s contradictory statements since the beginning of the war and his inability to find common ground with German Chancellor Scholz make it even more difficult to develop common policies, a situation that was recently repeated during the debate on the possible deployment of troops in Ukraine.

France’s refusal to participate in the ESSI, and even its frequent open criticism of the initiative, is one of the incompatibilities demonstrated by these differences. France considers the ESSI to be a project that will damage the Union’s defense industrial ecosystem, as it provides for the procurement of weapons systems from outside the EU.

It is worth recalling that France, along with Greece and Southern Cyprus, vetoed the delivery of urgently needed 155mm ammunition and unmanned systems to Ukraine from outside the EU.

We know that the ESSI is not a new concept, dating back to August 2022. The lack of a tangible outcome of the initiative, despite the long time that has passed and the rapid expansion of Russia’s capabilities, indicates that Europe has not overcome its traditional sluggishness when it comes to defense projects.

Despite the announcement of large defense budgets by many European countries, especially Germany, the extent to which these will be translated into reality and military modernization is a big question mark.

While the launch and success of an initiative like ESSI would be highly desirable for European security, the current picture suggests that it will not be easy to achieve. Even if successful, ESSI will only address a small part of Europe’s defense vulnerabilities, as most countries lack sufficient offensive capabilities to provide a deterrent.

While ESSI is an attractive idea, Europe must make a fundamental shift in its defense policy which is abandoning free riding under American security guarantees and developing its own defense. While France and the United Kingdom have the self-confidence that comes with having nuclear weapons, it will not be easy for other countries on the continent to undertake serious defense projects unless their dependence on the United States changes. This has also been the main criticism of Donald Trump, who is running for re-election in the US presidential elections.

Turkey, on the other hand, has signaled that it wants to maintain its participation in the European defense and security architecture by joining this initiative alongside Greece, just as it did with its NATO membership. Turkey does not currently have a procurement agenda for an external missile defense system. However, the goal is to increase the interoperability of Turkish systems with their European counterparts and, in the long term, to include Turkish defense industry products among the systems to be procured under the ESSI project although the latter goal is likely to face significant obstacles.

The Russia-Ukraine war marked a watershed moment in relations between the European Union (EU) and Russia, which had previously been strained by the Georgian war and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Post-Cold War efforts to improve EU-Russia relations through trade and dialogue have not succeeded in transforming Russia politically into the democratic regime the EU desired. On the contrary, the Russian political regime has embarked on an expansionist policy of violating the independence and sovereignty of countries in the former Soviet geography and sphere of influence by military force. This has led key EU countries such as Germany and France to reassess their approach to Russia.

The EU countries, which somehow maintained relations with Russia after the war in Georgia (2008) and the annexation of Crimea (2014), realized that Russia’s expansionist policy would not stop with the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which Russia announced as a “special military operation”. We have begun to observe that a new approach to the EU’s relations with Russia has been adopted in this process.

The swift imposition of EU sanctions against Russia was the first step in this new approach. Against the possibility that this coercive measure would fail to convince Russia to make peace and that this war would spread to other parts of Europe, Germany’s decision to increase its military capacity with a fund of 100 billion euros, announced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on February 27, 2022 as a turning point (Zeitenwende), signaled a serious transformation.

The EU’s strategic autonomy in the field of defense, which gained momentum with the adoption of the Strategic Compass in March 2022 when France held the rotating presidency of the European Union, was accelerated by the two-year Russia-Ukraine war and the growing needs in the field of defense. Steps have been taken to support this with new policies, programs, and funding.

Another step in this direction was the decision to establish the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), led by Germany and including Turkey, to create a defense shield with missile defense systems against Russian aggression from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The reasons behind this move are the increased importance of missile defense systems based on the lessons learned from Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and Russia’s deployment of Russian hypersonic missiles in Kaliningrad, between Lithuania and Poland, in August 2022.

However, this law does not change the fact that the European defense industry does not have sufficient stocks to meet Ukraine’s demand for ammunition in a short period of time. In other words, the Russia-Ukraine war has left EU defense production unable to replenish depleted military stocks and meet the pace needed to support Ukraine. The main reason for this ammunition problem is that EU defense industry production is based on a peacetime economy, not a wartime economy. Shifting to a wartime economy means shifting a significant portion of the budget from other areas to defense.

At this point, the EU adopted the European Defense Industry Strategy (EDIS) to address these concerns. Based on the results of the defense investment gap analysis and an extensive consultation process, the first European Defense Industrial Strategy, entitled “First ever Defense Industrial Strategy and a New Defense Industry Program to Enhance Europe’s Readiness and Security”, was presented by the European Commission and the EU’s High Representative on March 5, 2024.

Keeping production going and building industrial confidence through ambitious targets is an important part of this strategy. The strategy also calls for EU countries to work together to purchase at least 40 percent of defense equipment by 2030, to spend at least half of their defense procurement budgets on products made in Europe, and to trade at least 35 percent of defense goods between EU countries instead of with other countries. The strategy is intended to help make the EU more secure and resilient and would also benefit key allies such as Ukraine.

The Cost of Energy Security

Besides providing ammunition to Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron recently mentioned direct military support and readiness for a major war in Europe. All these discourses should also be read in the context of Russia’s moves in Africa and the price it is paying for France’s energy security. France, which gets a significant part of its energy from nuclear power, also gets a significant part of its uranium, the fuel for nuclear power, from Africa. After the coup in Niger, pro-Russian Niger’s decision to suspend uranium exports to France increased France’s discomfort with growing Russian influence in the region.

Moreover, the search for an alternative natural gas supplier to Russian gas and to reduce energy dependence on Russia was further intensified by the Russia-Ukraine war. As a result, the search for natural gas from Africa gained momentum. The planned Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, which would transport Nigerian natural gas through Niger and Algeria to Europe, appears to have been blocked by Russia. As France is squeezed by Russia’s strategic moves in Africa, we observe President Macron’s assertive statements, the steps taken to strengthen the defense industry, and finally, as an alternative to endangered energy supplies in Africa, France is turning to one of the world’s largest uranium producers such as Kazakhstan.

Some EU members, led by France, want nuclear energy to be widely used in Europe to combat climate change, and nuclear energy is seen as the main alternative to eliminate energy dependence on Russia. Against this backdrop, the first Nuclear Energy Summit was held in Brussels on March 21, 2024, and proposals were made to promote the use of nuclear energy.

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srael has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza for almost five months now, and it seems that no one in the world has enough power to prevent it from taking place in front of the eyes of all. The number of countries that oppose the Israeli attacks is undoubtedly much greater than the number of countries that support them, but it seems that the determination and courage of those who oppose the attacks lag behind the sentiments of those who support them. The European Union appears to be the second most important actor, after the United States, in supporting and enabling Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.

The extent of this support can be seen in the economic and military aid given to Israel, the pro-Israel votes in the UN, and the statements of support for the attacks on Gaza. However, the EU’s Gaza policy is not a monolithic pro-Israel one. The leaders of certain EU countries, such as Spain, Ireland, and Belgium, have issued statements criticizing Israel’s massacres, and some EU officials, such as the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell have also been increasingly vocal in condemning Israel’s massacre policy and calling for a ceasefire. On the other hand, names such as Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission,  have followed a policy based on the principle that the “EU is on Israel’s side” and have supported the Israeli aggression from the very beginning.

Even in the first days of the Israeli aggression, Borrell stated that Israel’s total blockade of Gaza was against international law and opposed the statements of European politicians about cutting off aid to Palestine. In the same statement, Borrell declared that Israel has the right to defend itself, but that it must do so in accordance with international law, and that some decisions by the Israeli government were contrary to this. About two weeks later, Borrell emphasized that a “humanitarian pause” in the Israeli attacks was the most important issue for the delivery of aid to people in the besieged areas. At a time when many European politicians, including von der Leyen, do not dare to talk about a humanitarian pause or a ceasefire, continuously repeating the refrain of “Israel’s right to defend itself” and shying away from criticizing the massacres Israel is committing, Borrell’s statements criticize the Israeli administration, shaking the Western world behind it and seriously disturbing the Zionist network.

In the later stages of the ongoing massacre, Borrell warned that the West should not apply double standards with regard to Gaza, saying, “While we apply international law in Ukraine, we cannot ignore it in Gaza.” He warned that the international community has failed to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and this failure has been expressed by the Security Council. Borrell also stated that UN Security Council could make up for it with a unanimous decision on the two-state solution. In recent weeks, as the scale of Israel’s genocide has grown, Borrell has stepped up his criticism of both Israel and the U.S., which supports Israel heavily. In a statement on February 12, when U.S. President Joe Biden expressed discomfort at the deaths of so many people in Gaza, Borrell responded, “If you think too many people have been killed, maybe you should provide fewer weapons to prevent so many people from being killed.”

In contrast to Borrell, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen made unconditional statements of support for Israel, offering no criticism of Israel’s massacres neither during nor after her support visit there. More sensible circles in Europe, including EU staff, have criticized her for this. In a letter to von der Leyen, more than 800 EU staff and diplomats wrote, “We call on you to join the leaders of the entire Union in calling for a ceasefire and the protection of civilian life.” The letter went on to say, “This is the essence of the EU’s existence,” and warned that the “EU is in danger of losing all its credibility.” Clare Daly, an independent socialist member of the European Parliament from Ireland, called von der Leyen “Ms Genocide” for her extreme pro-Israel stance and accused her of putting pressure on EU members to defend Israel.

Borrell’s pro-human rights stance despite the Zionist lobby

Von der Leyen’s European identity also leads to the same observations. The EU’s policy towards Israel and Palestine is also in the grips of the Zionist lobby. If we were to look at how this relationship was established and developed, we encounter four types of actors. First, we see that politicians, bureaucrats, and members of the media who directly belong to the Zionist lobby have built a pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian discourse in Europe. Second, actors who are in close contact with these lobbyists and who have reached or maintained certain positions with their support repeat the pro-Israel discourse.

The third group includes the politicians and members of the media who believe that they have no choice but to support Israel because they know that criticizing Israeli aggression will lead to the wrath of the Zionist lobby and they are afraid of the consequences. The fourth group are politicians and members of the media who stand up for human rights and justice, whatever the cost, and oppose the genocide in Gaza and Israeli aggression in general. Borrell, for example, belongs to the fourth group; the scale and uniqueness of the atrocities committed by Israel have forced him to abandon his “cautious” position and make statements against the ongoing genocide.

Borrell is a politician from Spain where the influence of the Zionist lobby is much more limited than in Germany, and belongs to the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, which has a successful record of standing up to the pressure of both the Zionist lobby and the United States. These facts have prevented him from being swayed like von der Leyen on issues such as respect for human rights and international law. The fact that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who is also a member of the PSOE, is among the European leaders who oppose Israeli aggression and call for a ceasefire is evidence that the PSOE has a generally consistent approach to human rights and international law. However, the small number of politicians like Borrell in Europe and the strong influence of politicians like von der Leyen have meant that the EU has so far remained a spectator to the Gaza massacre.

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lovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico expressed his support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s veto on a €50 billion European Union financial aid package for Ukraine. During a joint press conference in Budapest, Fico criticized Brussels for attempting to “punish” Hungary over its stance on funds for Ukraine.

Fico firmly stated that as long as he leads the Slovak government, he will not agree to a country being punished for defending its sovereignty.

Orbán, who has been in a standoff with other EU leaders, including a clash at the December European Council summit, argued against allocating funds from the EU budget for Ukraine.

He proposed a separate budget for aid to Ukraine to prevent any negative impact on the EU budget. Orbán reiterated that he does not want to jointly take up a loan and stressed the importance of aiding Ukraine in a way that does not harm the EU’s budget.

50 billion financial support plan

The €50 billion financial support plan for Ukraine, requiring unanimity, faced opposition from Hungary due to concerns about corruption in Ukraine, the effectiveness of Western support in the conflict, and the principle of EU budget support for member countries. Despite pressure from other EU leaders, Orbán remained steadfast in his position.

The EU leaders are set to discuss the issue at a summit on February 1, and Brussels is exploring ways to overcome Orbán’s veto. Last week, 120 Members of the European Parliament signed a petition urging actions to limit Hungary’s voting rights.

However, Fico supported Orbán’s proposal to find alternative sources for aid to Ukraine and criticized the EU for attempting to curtail Hungary’s voting rights. The upcoming summit will likely play a crucial role in shaping the EU’s approach to financial support for Ukraine and its long-term budget revisions.

EU budget

“If we aim to provide assistance to Ukraine, a necessity that I strongly advocate, we must ensure it doesn’t adversely impact the EU budget,” stated Orbán on Tuesday.

EU leaders are scheduled for another meeting on Feb. 1 to negotiate a deal on the financial package, with Orbán’s influential veto power remaining a significant factor.

Fico, expressing his support for Orbán’s stance, endorsed the idea of splitting the funding into four installments, subject to annual reassessment and potential blocking.

“I eagerly anticipate our gathering on Feb. 1 in Brussels, where we will observe and fully understand your rightful advocacy, as initiated during the last European Council meeting,” Fico conveyed to Orbán.

Sources: Anadolu, Politico, and Reuters

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n a significant display of dissent, Italy, Spain, and France refrained from participating in the U.S. and British strikes against the Houthi group in Yemen, underscoring divisions within the Western alliance. The divergence became apparent as these nations also declined to sign a joint statement issued by 10 countries justifying the military actions.

The disagreement highlights the complexity of addressing the Houthi rebels, who have been targeting civilian ships in the Red Sea, citing opposition to Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. and British warplanes, ships, and submarines conducted numerous airstrikes in Yemen in response to the Houthi attacks on one of the world’s busiest commercial shipping routes.

Support from Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and Bahrain

The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and Bahrain supported the operation logistically and provided intelligence. Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, and South Korea joined in signing a joint statement with the six participating nations, defending the overnight attacks and warning of potential further actions to protect Red Sea trade if the Houthi provocations persisted.

Sources from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office disclosed that Italy opted not to sign the statement and was consequently not invited to participate in the military strikes. The decision was attributed to the need for parliamentary approval, which would have incurred a time delay, and Italy’s preference for a diplomatic approach to deescalate tensions in the Red Sea.

However, a later government statement clarified that “Italy supports the operations of allied countries, who have the right to defend their vessels, in the interest of global trade flows and humanitarian assistance.”

Spain and France

A French official, speaking anonymously, expressed concern that participating in the U.S.-led strikes would diminish France’s leverage in talks aimed at defusing tensions between Hezbollah and Israel. France has actively sought to prevent an escalation of conflicts in Lebanon in recent weeks.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby avoided providing specific details on France’s participation, stating, “You’ve seen the list of people that participated. Internationally, even those who weren’t actively involved in the dropping of bombs – many of our coalition partners had signed up to the support, non-operational support.” The French foreign affairs ministry issued a statement placing responsibility for the escalation on the Houthis, signaling potential tacit support for the U.S. action.

Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles justified Madrid’s non-participation, emphasizing a commitment to peace and dialogue. She stated, “Every country has to give explanations for its actions. Spain will always be committed to peace and dialogue.”

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, expressing reluctance earlier in the week, emphasized the need to curb Houthi aggression without triggering a new war in the region.

The divergence in Western opinions on addressing the Houthi threat emerged last month during Operation Prosperity Guardian, where Italy, Spain, and France opted not to participate, citing reluctance to place their naval vessels under U.S. command.

All three nations currently contribute to an EU anti-piracy operation off the Horn of Africa. The Spanish defence minister suggested that the European Union might consider a new naval mission in the coming days, reflecting a sense of responsibility and commitment to peace by abstaining from intervention in the Red Sea for the time being.

Source: Reuters

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rtificial Intelligence (AI) has seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, from personalized recommendations on our smartphones for music, movies, and books, to interactions with virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, and even the AI-driven personalization of our social media feeds. These AI applications have become so ingrained in our routine that we often use them without a second thought about the AI algorithms at work. However, the narrative around AI shifted notably post-November 2022 with the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.

This shift in discourse can be attributed to ChatGPT-3’s role in “democratizing AI,” i.e., making it accessible to everyone, including those without technical backgrounds. This broke the mold of AI being a tool solely for experts and engineers.

In fact, ChatGPT-3 has mirrored the impact of Google Search’s transformation of internet searching in the early 2000s. By making advanced AI technology more universally accessible, ChatGPT-3 has sparked a revolutionary shift, opening up the realm of AI to a broader audience.

Before these advancements, the discourse around AI primarily centered on its potential effects on economic growth and its strategic value in military contexts. Numerous experts, including leaders from major tech companies like Elon Musk, constantly raised concerns about the possible dangers of this burgeoning technology, particularly in relation to human rights. The introduction of ChatGPT-3 intensified these discussions, spotlighting potential risks.

The use of AI in various domains has demonstrated on occasion AI’s propensity for bias against certain groups. In June 2023, another incident that highlighted the threats of AI occurred when ChatGPT-3 experienced its first significant data breach. The breach involved the privacy of ChatGPT Plus subscribers, revealing their prompts and details to other users. Such events highlight the need for a careful examination of AI’s impact on privacy and ethical standards.

In this rapidly evolving technological landscape, more than 150 states and organizations have tried to respond to these threats by announcing their ethical principles, yet, few states have been able to transform these principles into enforceable laws. Against this backdrop, the EU is trying to take the lead in terms of AI regulations by approving its EU AI Act in late 2023. While not the first AI regulation, the EU AI Act is arguably the most all-encompassing, positioning it as a potential global standard for AI governance. This journey began in 2021 and the EU AI Act has undergone significant revisions to adapt to evolving technology, especially with the launch of ChatGPT-3.

What Is the EU AI Act?

The EU AI Act was initially introduced by the European Commission on April 21, 2021, with the primary objective of overseeing the deployment of AI in Europe. Originally crafted to address particular high-risk AI applications, such as its usage in critical sectors like healthcare and finance—examples being medical equipment and loan approval processes or hiring decisions—its scope expanded in response to shifting perceptions. As mentioned earlier, the introduction of Chat GPT-3 brought about a reevaluation of how AI was accessed and perceived. Consequently, the European Parliament introduced additional regulations to cover widely utilized AI systems with broad, general applications that extended beyond the initial target areas. After several discussions, on December 8, 2021 an agreement was reached among the three main bodies of the EU and the AI Act was finalized.

First, the EU AI Act contains a definition of AI which is important as not only have many states failed to do so, but most importantly an exact definition of AI makes the application of this regulation easier. Second, it’s crucial to recognize that the EU AI Act embodies a comprehensive and risk-focused framework, placing human rights at its core. From this vantage point, the regulation prohibits various AI applications, including: (i) biometric classification systems processing sensitive traits such as political, religious, or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, or racial attributes; (ii) indiscriminate harvesting of facial images from the internet or CCTV for facial recognition databases; (iii) the use of emotion detection technologies in workplaces and educational settings; (iv) social credit systems that assess individuals based on social conduct or personal traits; (v) AI tools designed to alter human behavior, undermining free will; and (vi) AI solutions targeting the vulnerabilities of specific groups, including those defined by age, disability, or socio-economic status.

Furthermore, the EU AI Act categorizes AI applications into four risk levels: (1) Minimal or No Risk, like video games or spam filters, subject to market monitoring and reporting of incidents; (2) Limited Risk, requiring transparency, such as chatbots making their nature known to users; (3) High Risk, including remote biometric identification and AI used in critical sectors, subject to stringent compliance, bias minimization, and security measures;  and (4) Unacceptable Risk, where AI poses threats to safety and rights, such as social scoring by governments, which are banned.

At the same time, the regulation focuses on the General Purpose AI (GPAI), influenced by the emergence of technologies like ChatGPT-3. Specifically, Generative AI, a model used by Chat GPT, falls within this category. The EU AI Act introduces two levels of obligations for GPAI overseen by a new—to be created—AI Office: “Level One,” which applies to all GPAI providers, includes maintaining documentation, adhering to copyright rules, and disclosing training data; and  “Level Two”, which applies to high-risk GPAI, entails additional measures like model evaluation and incident reporting. Under this regulation, companies developing GPAI models, like OpenAI and Google, are partly responsible for their AI systems’ usage, irrespective of their control over specific applications. Additionally, tech companies must disclose summaries of copyrighted data used in training their AI models, potentially allowing content creators to seek compensation for the use of their material.

Effectiveness of EU AI Act

The effectiveness of the EU AI Act relies heavily on two critical factors. First, it must find the delicate equilibrium between safeguarding the rights of civilians and tech users, on the one hand, and nurturing innovation and investment, on the other. Second, the act must contend with the rapidly evolving and ever-changing nature of AI and potential risks.

In terms of the first factor, the EU AI Act has received criticism from major U.S. tech firms, alleging a lack the balance and potential harm to innovation. For instance, OpenAI’s Sam Altman mentioned their intention to comply, but suggested a withdrawal from the EU if compliance becomes impractical. Additionally, the absence of Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, in the EU underscores the challenges tech companies face in aligning global tech progress with regional regulations. If more companies opt for a cautious approach, it could potentially leave the EU at a disadvantage in the ongoing AI race, with potential repercussions for economic development and the region’s competitive position in the global AI landscape.

In terms of the second factor, the EU AI Act faces a significant challenge due to the evolving nature of AI. AI’s potential applications and capabilities are still emerging, as demonstrated by the impact of ChatGPT-3 during the regulation’s drafting. While the act is commended as the first extensive AI law, it adopts a horizontal regulatory approach covering a wide range of AI applications under one framework. To put this in perspective, in contrast, China employs a vertical regulatory strategy tailored to specific AI applications. This flexibility allows China to adapt more swiftly to new technological developments. In essence, our rapidly changing world, driven by technological advancements, may soon render the current EU AI Act outdated, requiring updates or new frameworks to keep pace with emerging technologies.

Will the EU Become the Global Leader in AI Regulation?

The European Union has garnered widespread acclaim for its leadership in data regulation, exemplified by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforced in 2018. The GDPR not only set a precedent for data regulation within the EU, but also influenced global data governance, known as the “Brussels effect.” However, whether a similar phenomenon will occur with AI regulations remains uncertain. The dynamics are different and the EU’s key ally, the United States, may pose challenges to the EU’s pursuit of global leadership in AI regulation.

While the U.S. embraced EU policies regarding the GDPR, a similar alignment may not occur with the EU AI Act. Fundamentally, the EU and the U.S. have divergent approaches to AI regulation: the EU places a stronger emphasis on protecting the rights of technology users, while the U.S. prioritizes fostering innovation. A significant factor contributing to this divergence is the intense AI competition between the U.S. and China, with the outcome impacting their global superpower status. Given that AI has broad applications, including civil and military domains, the U.S. is less inclined to stifle innovation at this critical juncture. Consequently, the U.S. is likely to craft regulations that align more closely with its approach, leaving greater flexibility for major tech companies compared to the EU’s stance.

The contrasting perspectives and expectations of the EU and the U.S. regarding AI and its regulations will likely result in a subtle competition between these two actors in establishing AI standards and regulations. However, the U.S. cannot afford to rely on the Brussels effect to shape AI development within its borders, as many entities seek to define the future of AI governance and, therefore, have a first-mover advantage.

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Birleşmiş Milletler Dünya Ekonomik Durumu ve Beklentileri (WESP) 2024 raporu, Avrupa’nın önümüzdeki yıl ılımlı bir ekonomik toparlanmaya hazır olduğunu gösteriyor. Ancak bölge, yüksek faiz oranları, sıkı maliye politikaları ve jeopolitik çatışmalar nedeniyle olumsuzluklarla karşı karşıya. Rapor, temkinli bir küresel ekonomik görünüm sunuyor ve küresel ekonomik büyümenin 2023’teki %2,7’den 2024’te pandemi öncesi %3,0 büyüme oranının altında %2,4’e yavaşlamasını öngörüyor.

Avrupa’nın ekonomik gidişatı parasal sıkılaştırmadan, geçmişteki faiz artışlarından ve reel ekonomiyi etkileyen azalan likiditeden etkilenmeye devam ediyor. Avrupa Birliği’nin (AB) 2024’te ortalama %1,2’lik bir büyüme yaşaması bekleniyor; bu, 2023’teki %0,5’ten mütevazı bir iyileşme ancak pandemi öncesi yaklaşık %2’lik büyüme hızının çok altında.

İyileşmenin tüketici harcamalarındaki artış, yavaşlayan enflasyon, artan reel ücretler ve güçlü işgücü piyasaları ile desteklenmesi bekleniyor. Ancak tüketici ve iş dünyası güveni düşük olmaya devam ediyor ve mali politikaların daha kısıtlayıcı hale gelmesi bekleniyor.

Citizenship, a pivotal determinant influencing various facets of our lives, dictates our rights, travel privileges, and, fundamentally, our life prospects. While the process of obtaining a new citizenship poses a formidable challenge for many, for the affluent, including numerous anonymous multimillionaires, the pursuit is often reduced to a matter of price. With sufficient financial resources and the right connections, one can navigate negotiations for citizenship in various places.

In her comprehensive work, The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires, Kristin Surak, Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, delves into the expanding global market for citizenship, conducting an exhaustive examination of the dynamics surrounding the acquisition and sale of passports and citizenship. Her meticulous on-the-ground investigation sheds light on the intricate network involving wealthy elites, states, and brokers, revealing the transformation of a once clandestine practice into a prevalent and significant phenomenon.

Beyond exploring the less scrupulous practices of the affluent, Surak delves into Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programs. These programs offer a transparent and expeditious route to citizenship, requiring a defined financial investment that is within reach of anyone who can afford it. Notably, these programs adhere to legal processes that undergo thorough scrutiny and due diligence procedures. But is this too good to be true?

Drawing from six years of extensive fieldwork across four continents, Surak unveils the evolution of passport sales from a dubious enterprise to a thriving citizenship industry concentrated in over a dozen countries, particularly small islands in regions like the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and South Pacific. She systematically breaks down the diverse motivations behind these investments and identifies trends within the industry.

The annual issuance of citizenship to 50,000 individuals underscores the magnitude of this global phenomenon. Individuals opt for these schemes for various reasons, including:

Global Mobility: Seeking increased visa-free travel options for business, leisure, or personal reasons.

Business Opportunities: Opening new avenues for international trade and investment.

Political and Economic Stability: Mitigating risks associated with political or economic instability.

Education and Healthcare: Accessing superior education and healthcare systems.

Tax Planning: Exploring more favorable tax environments and managing tax liabilities.

Personal Security: Ensuring personal safety amid security concerns in the home country.

Diversification of Assets: Viewing a second citizenship as a strategy to diversify personal and financial assets.

Quality of Life: Enhancing overall quality of life through better living standards and improved social services.

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he European Union, in a groundbreaking policy overhaul, has reached a consensus to revise its waste shipment regulations, curbing the export of specific waste types to countries outside of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that are ill-equipped to process it safely. The EU Parliament announced this resolution on Friday, November 17, 2023 marking a pivotal shift towards enhancing global environmental protection and public health standards.

The EU’s decision aims to restrict the export of non-hazardous waste to non-OECD countries unless these nations explicitly consent and prove their ability to handle the waste responsibly. This move is expected to reduce the longstanding practice of offloading pollution onto less affluent nations and ensure adherence to international labor rights.

The reform aligns with the European Commission’s 2021 proposal, which sought to impede EU states from offloading their waste onto poorer countries, signaling a significant stride in assuming accountability for waste, particularly plastic waste. Danish lawmaker Pernille Weiss has highlighted this as a crucial step towards the EU finally assuming responsibility for the environmental impact of its waste.

Steering towards a circular economy

Under the provisional political agreement, which awaits formal ratification, the EU intends to update shipment procedures to reflect the principles of the circular economy and improve enforcement mechanisms. The regulation sets stringent guidelines to guarantee that waste shipments do not threaten human health and the environment, thus endorsing waste as a resource within the EU’s circular economic model.

The new regulation extends its objectives to encompass the EU’s ambitions for climate neutrality and achieving a zero-pollution, circular economy. It governs waste shipments within the EU, as well as imports and exports involving third countries, and notably prohibits all waste shipments intended for disposal within the EU, barring exceptional circumstances that meet strict criteria.

Notably, the agreement introduces tougher restrictions on the export of plastic waste. It prohibits the export of non-hazardous plastic waste to non-OECD countries and outlines conditions under which these countries may request to import EU plastic waste, provided they meet rigorous waste management standards.

Next steps and international impact

To reinforce the new policies, the EU will impose stringent penalties for breaches of the regulation, which may include fines and the revocation or suspension of waste management authorizations. The establishment of a waste shipment enforcement group will further strengthen compliance, ensuring effective coordination among member states to curb illegal waste shipments.

The provisional agreement will be presented to member states’ representatives within the Council and to the Parliament’s environmental committee for endorsement. Following approval and legal-linguistic revision, the agreement will be formally adopted and published in the EU’s Official Journal before coming into force.

The EU’s reform of its waste shipment regulation heralds a new era in the bloc’s environmental policy, with far-reaching implications for global waste management practices. It underscores the EU’s dedication to mitigating its ecological footprint and championing sustainable development.

For more information, inquiries can be directed to the European Parliament press office or Reuters correspondents covering the story.

Sources: Reuters and the European Parliament

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group of EU countries, known as the ‘Friends of Western Balkans’, is advocating for increased cooperation between the European Union and the Western Balkan states in the realm of foreign policy. Spearheaded by Austria, the coalition includes Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Slovakia, and Slovenia, all of whom are pushing for the Western Balkans representatives to have more regular meetings with their EU counterparts.

The initiative, which was outlined in a non-paper seen by Euractiv, calls on EU institutions to establish a clear agenda for accelerated integration with definitive steps leading up to 2024 and beyond. The document was circulated in preparation for a joint ministerial meeting in Brussels with the six Western Balkan nations: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, who launched the ‘Friends of Western Balkans’ group, has been a vocal proponent of EU enlargement. The paper he initiated emphasizes the need for enhanced cooperation to effectively counter external pressures and harmful narratives from countries like Russia that are incompatible with EU values.

Proposals for deeper integration and security

The non-paper proposes a more structured exchange following established EU procedures and policies, including invitations to Western Balkan ministers to participate in EU Foreign Affairs Council meetings at least semiannually. It also suggests that Western Balkan ambassadors attend informal Political and Security Committee meetings on topics of common interest.

One of the prerequisites for joining the EU is alignment with the bloc’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which the document seeks to advance. The proposal includes providing Western Balkan ministers with Lines to Take (LTTs) to ensure their positions are in harmony with the EU during meetings with third countries.

Countering external influences and enhancing diplomatic ties

The initiative comes at a time when the EU is dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. Some Western Balkan countries, like Serbia, have so far hesitated to fully align with the EU’s policy. The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, has emphasized the importance of following the EU foreign policy more closely, especially for countries with a record of non-alignment.

The push for integration also includes more coordinated visits to the Western Balkans by EU diplomats, regular workshops on human rights to support the justice chapters in EU accession negotiations, and increased cooperation on cybersecurity issues.

Regional response and next steps

The ideas proposed have reportedly received substantial support from the Western Balkans, with some leaders from the region having raised the issue both publicly and privately over the past year. The ministers from the region have previously expressed frustration with the moving goalposts in the EU’s enlargement process and have advocated for progressive integration before full accession.

The EU-Western Balkans ministerial meeting will precede a significant EU-Western Balkans summit in mid-December, where leaders are expected to further discuss integration and alignment with the EU’s foreign and security policy.

Sources: Anadolu and Euractiv

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n Eurowhiteness, Hans Kundnani, Associate Fellow in the Europe Programme at Chatham House, challenges a sanitized and linear history of the EU, prompting the reader to rethink Europe’s peaceful image against its imperial past. He goes on to tackle myopic assumptions about the European project throughout the book.

Kundnani argues that pro-Europeans, who cradled cosmopolitanism and renounced nationalism, have failed to perceive the reality of European regionalism. This provocative critique dissects both the civic and ethnic elements that shape European identity by highlighting Europe’s interaction with the “Other” and linking “Europeanness” and “whiteness.” 

Eurowhiteness may come off as unpalatable to many pro-Europeans, but it raises valuable questions against a backdrop of a rising far-right in Europe. Especially in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, the complex relationship between European identity and race demands urgent reflection.

Q. What are some of the myths that cause blind spots in understanding the European identity?

I would mention two in particular. The first is the idea that the EU is a cosmopolitan project. Cosmopolitanism usually has something to do with the whole world, and Europe is not the whole world. There’s a tendency by pro-Europeans and the EU to mistake Europe for the world. For example, when they talk about European integration, they sometimes seem to think that they’re talking about global integration, but they’re not.

Similarly, when they say “I’m a European or I’m a European citizen,” they seem to think they’re saying I’m a citizen of the world, but they’re not; They’re saying I’m a citizen of this particular region that has a very particular history and relationship with the rest of the world.

This is what I call in Eurowhiteness “the of myth of cosmopolitanism in Europe”, and related to that is the idea to think European integration is good for the whole of the world, but that may not necessarily be the case; It may be good for Europeans or may not be good for Europeans, arguably. But even if it is good for Europeans, it’s not clear if it’s good for the whole world.

The second myth would be that the EU is a peace project, and that is not entirely wrong. However, the way that pro-Europeans talk about it is sometimes simplistic; that after 1945 Europeans rejected war, and since then Europeans stand for peace. In reality, Europeans did not reject war in general in 1945. They only rejected war with each other.

In 1950 as the Schuman Declaration, which can be seen as the beginning of the idea of the EU as a peace project, is made by France’s then-foreign minister Robert Schumann, France is simultaneously fighting a brutal colonial war in Indochina.

Similarly, seven years later, when the Treaty of Rome is signed, France fought a brutal colonial war in Algeria. This demonstrates that Europeans are continuing to fight colonial wars until they’re defeated or exhausted.

Europeans like to think of themselves as being uniquely peaceful. The real story is more complicated, and in particular, as I say, to the extent that Europeans have rejected military force, it is military force within what has become the European Union, not even within Europe at large, that is being rejected.

Q. Has the EU’s focus shifted from peace to power?

I wouldn’t say it has shifted from being about peace to being about power. I think it was always about power as well as peace. In particular, it gets to what I was just saying about the idea of the EU as a peace project.

If you go back to the interwar period pan-European movement, which is the inspiration for the post-War European integration project, it is very clear that at that time already that the European integration project is about power and the perception of European decline accelerated by fighting one other.

The idea is: If we want to maintain our position in the world – and at that time this is a position of colonial domination- we have to stop fighting with each other. Not so that we can end European colonialism, but so that we can continue it. So in other words, European integration would take the competitive element out of European colonialism, allowing its practice collectively.

Part of the point of European integration in 1950s was for France and Belgium to consolidate their colonies in Central and West Africa at a time when they were no longer able to on their own. In particular, they needed an injection of West German capital.

The idea of geopolitical Europe goes back to the 1920s. It only seems new because pro-Europeans like to tell a story of Europe through the aforementioned myths. It only seems like a shift because we’ve forgotten the real history of how European integration began.

Q. Does the EU still export the European social model and the general welfare state?

Social market economy and the welfare state are no longer what the EU can to claim export anymore. It may have done once, but even in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War we observe that this is not the case. In fact, the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe had much more generous welfare states when they were communist countries.

What happened as they joined the EU during the enlargement process is that those welfare states were dismantled as part of their transition to democracy. There are obviously lots of things that you can criticize about the communist systems in those countries, such as the lack of political freedom and so on, but they did have welfare states.

What has happened now is a further stage in which the EU is putting pressure on member states to dismantle the welfare state. For example, during the euro crisis, the austerity Germany imposed on Greece dismantled what was left of the Greek welfare state.

Q. Your book suggests that civic ideas of Europe are being replaced by ethnic-cultural ones. What is the connection of the neoliberalization of Europe to identity politics?

What I try to show in the book is that there have always been both of the elements of civic and ethnic-cultural idea in the history of what I call European regionalism- which is similar to nationalism on a larger continental scale. I’m suggesting that we can think of the history of ideas of Europe in the way we think about the history of nations. Therefore, regionalism is like nationalism.

The earliest ideas of Europe are predominantly ethnic-cultural. For example, in the medieval period, Europeanness is synonymous with Christianity. From the modern period onwards, you begin to get civic ideas of Europe. Then, in the post war period is when the EU came closest to evolving into a purely civic regionalism. Particularly, in the period from the 60s to the 90s-2000s, there was an idea of Europe centered on the social market economy, the welfare state and depoliticized mode of governance which European integration had produced.

I think what’s happened is that the social market economy and the welfare state have been hollowed out by neoliberalism in the EU. Meanwhile, there has been a backlash against the depoliticised mode of governance where the older civic idea of Europe is no longer persuasive in the same way it was before.

The way I understand neoliberalism is not just financialization, but it’s also the depoliticization of economic policy. In other words, it’s taking economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation. Although, to some extent, this has happened in the whole world in the last 30-40 years through things like the World Trade Organisation rules, the EU has taken it further through the creation of the single market, and also the Eurozone and the fiscal rules. Therefore, it’s very difficult now to pursue a left wing economic policy in the Eurozone because the fiscal rules don’t allow you to do it.

My argument is basically that when you take economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation and no longer have big fights between left and right about economic policy, your democratic politics shifts to cultural questions.

The point of democratic politics is to reconcile different interests and to have fights about questions where people in your society have different ideas or different interests. I think a healthy democratic politics is one where you do that about economic issues because there are real differences between the interests and different ideas as well.

What has happened now is that the center left parties and the center right parties converged in the center around neoliberal economic policy, which the EU has constitutionalized. Therefore, the way parties can differentiate themselves from each other now is around cultural questions.

In terms of what Europe says to the rest of the world, there was a time it would say it stood for the social market economy and the welfare state and now it says it stands for European civilisation.

A good example of this is the phrase “the European way of life,” which used to be used by French socialists, specifically, to refer to the social market economy and the welfare state and the idea of solidarity that it was meant to embody, saying “that’s what we in Europe stand for as opposed to the United States.”

Now when you look at the way that the phrase is used, it is in more civilizational terms. In the current European Commission, the Commission of Ursula Von Der Leyen since 2019, a European Commissioner for promoting the European way of life and his job is to keep migrants out, which makes it very explicit that migrants- only migrants from the South, not migrants from the east- are a threat to the European way of life. That is a very explicit expression of civilizationalism where the European way of life is defined in terms of culture and civilisation, not in terms of the social market economy and the welfare state.

Q. In your book you imply that the center right is increasingly mimicking the far right. Is there a pro-European version of the great replacement theory, if so, what is it?

There is an idea that the EU represents a European civilisation which is being increasingly threatened. This is basically a far right idea that has now been taken on by the center right in Europe.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, Eric Zemmour was doing a rally in the South of France with the young far right leader Marion Maréchal, and the slogan on the lectern at which he was speaking was ‘Defend our civilization.’  The way the far right is thinking about Europe is there’s a European civilisation that is threatened right now. The far right tends to talk about this in the context of migration. That is, it’s the migration of non-white and non-Christian people that is threatening European civilisation.

For example, Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate in the French Presidential election in 2022, was talking about white replacement theory or alluding to it in terms of migration. However, in addition, what the centre right tends to do is not talk so much about migration as a racial threat, but more in foreign policy terms as a threat to European civilisation. Macron has given speeches where he’s quite explicit about this.

In other words, international politics is a clash of civilizations, like how Samuel Huntington argues, and Europe is a distinct civilization. Moreover, for someone like Macron, the West is not one civilization, which is what Huntington thought but that Europe is a distinct civilisation, separate from the United States as well.

Where I see a connection with great replacement theory is that this is almost the international political equivalent of the great replacement theory. It’s not about migration but it’s that if Europe does not unite and defend itself, it will be also replaced by other civilizations. Macron has basically said that.

Q. What are some key takeaways from history regarding Europe’s interaction with those who it sees as the “Other”?

I try to show in Eurowhiteness that there’s a long history of defining Europe against various different “Others” at various different times and it’s constantly shifting. But roughly, I would say, in the medieval period when Europe is pretty much synonymous with Christianity, Jews are defined as the primary internal other and Muslims as the primary external other, excluding the divide between Western Christendom and Eastern Christendom.

Then, in the modern period, I try to show how there is a new complex modern idea of Europe, which is partly to do with the European enlightenment and the scientific revolution. It is a rationalist, secular idea of Europe rather than a religious one. At the same time, the idea of Europe also emerges in the context of the encounter of Europeans with the populations of Africa and Asia, and especially the Americas, and that’s the context in which the idea of whiteness emerges.

So, the modern idea of Europe is not just a rationalist one as opposed to a religious one, it’s also a more racialized idea of Europe that is closely connected to the idea of whiteness. What I think happens in that context is that non-white people around the world are the “Others” against which Europeans define themselves.

In the 20th century and particularly after World War I, you have the new idea of Europe as a geopolitical bloc, which I mentioned earlier. European civilisation or the European spirit, as they talked about it at that time, is being threatened by the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other hand. In that context, Russia and also the United States are respectively an “Other.” What I think we’re seeing today is a mixture of all of those “Others.”

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n a statement, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared that the European Union must not initiate membership discussions with Ukraine, marking a clear stance from Hungary on the burgeoning issue. This announcement comes ahead of the EU leaders’ meeting slated for mid-December, 2023, where they are expected to consider the European Commission’s recommendation for Ukraine to commence membership talks contingent upon meeting the requisite conditions.

Orban, holding power since 2010, emphasized that the ongoing financial dispute with Brussels—stemming from billions of euros in EU funds suspended over Hungary’s rule-of-law infractions—should not be conflated with Hungary’s position on Ukraine’s prospective EU accession talks. The Prime Minister vehemently stated that this matter is not a transactional issue and insisted that Hungary is entitled to the funds in question.

Amidst economic challenges, including stagnation and the highest inflation rates in Europe, peaking above 25% in the first quarter, Hungary’s financial dealings with the EU are under intense scrutiny. Orban’s government has had a history of conflicts with the European Union and its executive arm, particularly over tightening state control over various institutions and a controversial law impacting the LGBT community.

Status of Ukraine’s territory

Addressing the broader questions about Ukraine’s candidacy, Orban pointed to the complexities of considering EU membership for a country currently engaged in conflict, raising practical concerns over the indeterminate status of Ukraine’s territory and population due to the ongoing war.

As discussions continue, Orban has been vocal about the EU’s strategy towards the war in Ukraine, labeling it a failure and advocating for a secondary plan, given his belief that Ukraine will not triumph in the frontline battle against Russia. His remarks come at a critical time as the European Commission is pushing for unanimous member state support to bolster the long-term EU budget, particularly to maintain financial assistance to Ukraine.

Orban’s resistance to increased aid for Ukraine stands in stark contrast to other EU states’ positions, potentially positioning him as an opponent to further support for Kyiv. Other EU leaders have criticized Orban’s stance, urging that the EU should not be held “hostage” over financial support for Ukraine.

Disapproval of Orban’s approach

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, among others, has expressed disapproval of Orban’s approach, especially in light of his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orban, however, defends his dialogue with Moscow, asserting the importance of open communication channels.

As the EU summit in December approaches, member states are gearing up for decisive talks on the budget revision, with divergent views on how to effectively support Ukraine and enhance EU defense capabilities. A conclusive decision is anticipated at the summit, setting the stage for the EU’s fiscal and foreign policy trajectory in the coming year.

Sources: Reuters, Radio Free Europe, and Politico Europe

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mid the continuously shifting geopolitics of the Balkans, an unprecedented call has been sounded by the leaders of Germany, France, and Italy, urging Serbia to “deliver on de-facto recognition” of Kosovo. This unified front presents a profound shift in the EU’s stance on the Kosovo issue and may have profound implications for the future of the region.

Kosovo proclaimed its independence from Serbia in 2008. However, Serbia has refused to recognize this claim, viewing Kosovo as an integral part of its territory. The international community has remained divided on this issue.

While a significant number of countries have acknowledged Kosovo’s sovereignty, several others, including Russia and China, have sided with Serbia in not recognizing the Balkan state.

Unprecedented move by the European Power Trio

This latest development is underlined by a joint statement from French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The trio’s call pushes Serbia towards recognizing Kosovo’s independence and is set against the backdrop of recent violent skirmishes, further aggravating concerns of renewed conflict in the Balkans.

The spotlight, for now, seems to be focused predominantly on northern Kosovo, where ethnic Serbs are in the majority. Tensions have escalated to alarming proportions, leading to a series of violent confrontations in recent months. The gravity of the situation is further highlighted by reports suggesting that the UK has dispatched troops to the region as part of a NATO peacekeeping initiative.

A call for mutual progress and reciprocity

While the call for recognition is paramount, the European leaders also emphasized the significance of swift execution of the Path to Normalization Agreement. Initiated in Brussels, this agreement envisages a framework for enhancing relations between the two Balkan states. The emphasis on ‘something for something’ – a principle suggesting mutual benefits and obligations – was clear in their message.

For President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, this puts him squarely in a dilemma. Historically, Vucic has been vocal about Serbia neither formally nor informally recognizing Kosovo. However, the renewed international pressure may force a reconsideration.

On the other side, Kosovo, under Prime Minister Albin Kurti, is expected to advance the creation of the Association of Serb Majority Municipalities, enhancing self-governance for local Serbs. This has been a long-standing demand and will be a significant step toward appeasing concerns and initiating reconciliation.

Future prospects for the Balkans and the EU

Both Serbia and Kosovo harbor aspirations of joining the European Union. The normalization of their bilateral ties is crucial to this objective. The EU has always stipulated that the two Balkan countries must amicably resolve their differences before they are considered for membership.

Europe has always been watchful of the Balkans, primarily due to the volatile history of the region. The EU’s role in mediating discussions between Serbia and Kosovo has spanned several years. However, with recent tensions threatening to spiral out of control, there has been a noticeable increase in engagement from major European nations.

Economic and political advantages await Serbia and Kosovo should they decide to heed the call from the European trio. EU integration promises not just political stability, but also a plethora of economic benefits. The message from the leaders hints at these potential windfalls, emphasizing the opportunities both nations stand to lose if the normalization process derails.

The statement from the leaders of France, Germany, and Italy can be seen as a watershed moment in the EU’s handling of the Serbia-Kosovo conundrum. Their unified call for recognition and mutual progress signals a clear direction for both nations. As both Serbia and Kosovo ponder their next moves, the international community awaits with bated breath, hoping for a peaceful and constructive outcome in this long-standing geopolitical puzzle.

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n a move that took many European leaders by surprise, Slovakia’s newly sworn-in Prime Minister, Robert Fico, announced on October 26, 2023, his government’s decision to discontinue military aid to Ukraine, marking a stark shift in the country’s stance. This announcement comes amidst growing tensions in Eastern Europe and as nations across the continent grapple with the evolving geopolitical landscape.

Robert Fico, leading Slovakia for the fourth time, communicated this change in policy during a session in parliament earlier this week. In the run-up to his recent election, Fico had openly campaigned on the promise of halting military aid to Ukraine, advocating for a more independent foreign policy and stronger border protection against illegal migration.

Fico conveyed to Members of Parliament (MPs) that while Slovakia would cease supplying weapons to Ukraine, the nation would continue to provide humanitarian aid to the war-affected country. The underlying tone of the Prime Minister’s message seemed to pivot towards transforming the European Union from an arms supplier to a mediator, championing the cause of peace in the region.

Slovakia’s new approach, the EU and NATO

Fico’s ascendancy to power has not only redefined Slovakia’s approach towards Ukraine but also towards larger European matters. His administration has expressed opposition to the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow, emphasizing that any such sanctions should only be backed after a thorough analysis of their impact on Slovakia. Fico was quoted saying, “If there are to be such sanctions that will harm us, like most sanctions have, I can see no reason to support them.”

Beyond the pressing matter of military aid, the new Slovakian government’s foreign policy is being keenly observed. Many see Fico’s rise as a potential disruptor to the European Union’s and NATO’s collective strategies, especially in the context of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Slovakia, a nation of 5.5 million, had been a staunch supporter of Kyiv, particularly since Russia’s invasion in February of the previous year. The country had not only donated arms but had also opened its borders to refugees escaping the conflict.

This pivot in policy direction also highlights the changing political dynamics within Slovakia. The Smer party, chaired by Fico, is part of a three-party coalition government, which also comprises the Hlas party and the Slovak National Party. While Fico is often viewed as a “pro-Russian populist” – especially given his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – many within Slovakia believe he is merely prioritizing the nation’s interests over external pressures.

Russia’s allies?

Backing this stance, the coalition partner Slovak National Party (SNS) is no stranger to making headlines. Its chairman and former parliamentary speaker, Andrej Danko, has made controversial remarks in the past, suggesting that the Russian-occupied territories were not “historically Ukrainian.” Danko’s close interactions with Russian dignitaries, including a handshake with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a selfie with Russian State Duma Chair Vyacheslav Volodin, have raised eyebrows in international circles.

While the immediate repercussions of Slovakia’s decision are yet to be fully understood, early reactions from the international community have been a mix of concern and anticipation. Many view this development as a sign of the growing divisions within the European Union, with member states prioritizing national interests over collective decisions. This change is expected to be a prominent topic of discussion at the upcoming EU summit in Brussels, where leaders from across the continent will converge.

On the ground in Ukraine, the halt in military aid from Slovakia adds another layer to the multifaceted challenges the nation faces. Despite this setback, Ukrainian officials remain hopeful that other European nations will continue their support, both in terms of military aid and diplomatic efforts to bring peace to the region.

As Slovakia navigates its new foreign policy direction, Europe and the world will be watching closely. With the balance of power and alliances constantly shifting, Slovakia’s decisions could have ripple effects far beyond its borders.

In conclusion, as the European landscape continues to evolve, nations like Slovakia play a pivotal role in shaping the narrative. The choice to halt military aid to Ukraine may be just one decision, but it underscores the complexities and intricacies of international diplomacy in these tumultuous times. Only time will tell if this decision stands as a beacon of nationalistic prioritization or as a harbinger of a more fragmented European Union.

Sources: Euronews, AFP, Le Monde

Rather than a “New Cold War,” we are now witnessing the culmination of an economic war with Russia, where the financial, energy, and capital markets are the battlegrounds. In his timely book, Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West, political risk analyst and consultant Maximilian Hess takes the reader through the period in which the seeds of economic warfare are sprouting into full bloom: from the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and beyond.  

The book skillfully delves into various economic fronts around the world, demonstrating the weaponization of economic tools such as pipelines, mining, credit, and cryptocurrencies. Each chapter unfolds like a chess game between Russia and the West, allowing the reader to map the moves of the contestants both chronologically and regionally, including Russia’s response to Western sanctions and what is at stake for each party.

There were a number of disputes in the early and mid-2000s between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies and the terms thereof that led Russia to cut off deliveries and precipitated gas supply crunches in the wider European market. What I think people forget is that Nordstream 2 and Nordstream 1 were never intended to increase the total amount of Russian gas that could be pumped to Central Europe.

Instead, they were designed to ensure that Russia didn’t have to do it through Eastern Europe, in particular through Ukraine, so that Russia could then increase the leverage of its gas policy over Ukraine. We should have understood this risk at the time of Nordstream 2, because it was essentially designed to give Russia the same kind of leverage over other Eastern European states that it had gained over Ukraine.

Q. Why do you think Putin choose to invade Ukraine specifically in February 2022?

I think he thought it was an important time economically, when the West was weak and divided. He hoped that the sanctions response and the economic response would be less intense than it might have been at another time. Thinking in terms of change in 2020 and 2021, the end of the Trump administration and then the Biden administration that follows made it clear that there would be a concerted sanctions strategy.

He hoped that European unity would be weak and insufficient to resist him. Inflationary pressures from COVID-19 had already increased, and Russia had already begun to cut off its gas supplies to Europe. At the same time, he was preparing his troops to invade Ukraine and saw it as a moment when the West would be relatively weak economically and relatively vulnerable. Therefore, less likely to act against him and less likely to act in support of Ukraine. Which, of course, turned out to be a very big strategic miscalculation on his part.

Q. Has Russia’s strategy of crippling Europe with gas cuts failed?

Largely, I think it has failed. Not because of any failure within the strategy itself but because of collaborative actions on the part of the West. Intelligence was shared by the United States, by officials who had spoken on the record and had reached the assessment that there was a small chance that Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine in October 2021, simply the brutal nature of Russia’s onslaught in February, and the fact that the Europeans saw an army of the largest form that had taken this action in Europe since World War II, made it clear to many European leaders that they had no other choice.

Putin was preparing, and did prepare, for a scenario in which Europe was fully on board with the sanctions regime through Russia’s fortress balance sheet strategy, the Kremlin’s process of building up large reserves of ‘hard currencies’ and gold. But now that the initial pain of that gas strategy is being felt, and inflation has been at such high levels for a year and a half. There are obviously still many politicians, particularly in Europe, such as former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who are calling for a softer approach to Russia on these issues. That’s why Putin’s strategy is not one that is over; by threatening more economic pain, he can also undermine support for Ukraine in the long term. Global gas markets are much more fragile, and we could still see a new spike in gas prices this winter as a result of the Kremlin’s actions.

Q. Did Putin pull out of the Black Sea grain deal in an attempt to revive the inflation weapon?

I believe very strongly that this is what he is trying to do. It also gives him the tool of offering grain to African countries to gain more support there. I think we should be prepared for more actions by the Kremlin to deliberately try to stir up inflationary pressures, possibly trying to find a way to drive up prices, as well. The Kremlin really has only one major option, which is to threaten an export embargo and actually take action to make it look credible. That option is difficult because Russia’s budget is now so skewed toward the military.

I

n today’s age of ubiquitous social media influence, The Social Dilemma remains a chilling reminder of the strong impact of big social media companies on society. It paints a simultaneous picture of dystopia and utopia. The documentary adeptly highlights the addictive nature of social media and the profit-driven motives of giants like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, even at the expense of promoting questionable content. This raises significant ethical concerns, especially for vulnerable young users.

Through interviews with tech industry insiders, engineers, ethicists, and psychologists, the documentary exposes the algorithms and design choices responsible for turning social media into an addictive and polarizing force. These insiders provide firsthand accounts of how tech giants prioritize engagement and profit over user well-being and societal harmony.

The Social Dilemma raises vital ethical questions about tech companies’ power and responsibility. It underscores how the race for user attention and ad revenue has fueled the spread of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and divisive content on these platforms. Now, the burden falls on individuals, companies, and governments to chart a path forward.

Greatest Risk of Social Media: Imperceptible Change

There is an ironic transition from the information age to the disinformation age, even though we have greater access now to information than ever before, we still find it difficult to reach the truth. “Imperceptible change” is planted within us, obstructing our intellectual defense as to whether an information that we get is true or not.

In The Social Dilemma, “imperceptible change” refers to the gradual and often subtle ways in which social media platforms and their algorithms manipulate and influence user behavior without the users themselves being fully aware of it. This concept highlights how these platforms are designed to keep users engaged and addicted by making subtle, unnoticeable adjustments to what content is shown and when it’s shown to maximize user interaction and time spent on the platform.

For example, the algorithms might show you certain posts or ads at specific times when they predict you are most likely to engage with them, or they might prioritize content that aligns with your existing beliefs and interests. Over time, these imperceptible changes can have a significant impact on how users perceive the world, reinforcing their existing beliefs and preferences and keeping them hooked on the platform.

The documentary introduces the concept of “imperceptible change,” illustrating how social media subtly manipulates user behavior through algorithmic adjustments. These alterations, like showing content at specific times or prioritizing like-minded content, shape users’ perceptions over time. It serves as a warning about these platforms’ power and the need for users to be more aware of their online experiences.

Social media companies will soon have to go further 

For a really long time, the users’ only real weapon against the detrimental effects of social media was their willpower and media literacy. Basically, they were on their own.

In 2018, when Mark Zuckerberg testified in the congress over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he stated, “It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.” Has anything changed since then?

Succumbing to pressure, platforms are beginning to pay attention to their users’ experience. Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have introduced various tools that alert users of their extended usage and even put parental controls. YouTube and Instagram remind teens to take breaks since 2021. Meanwhile, TikTok announced a passcode entry regulation for minors after an hour on the app.

The documentary’s interviews with experts and industry insiders emphasize the urgent need for more substantial regulation and responsible use of technology. The exploration of the addictive pull of social media, akin to the stimulating effects of slot machines on our brains, mirrors the concerns that various countries are now addressing.

China’s has taken measures to limit screen time for children under eight and Utah’s imposition of a digital curfew for minors are just two examples of this growing trend. France’s requirement for manufacturers to install parental control systems also underscores the global recognition that action is needed. In June, France passed a law that prohibits the promotion of certain practices – such as cosmetic surgery and smoking. The penalties for non-compliance can go up to two years in prison and a fine of €300,000.

However, the most recent and thorough move yet comes from the European Union. The EU is leading the charge with its Digital Services Act —overseen by the European Commission. The EU’s Digital Services Act, which became effective on August 25, imposes new rules on platforms, including assessments of societal impact and measures to prevent addictive behavior and targeting of vulnerable groups. The Act aims to make platforms more responsible and protect minors.

The new EU rules will allow researchers to access data inside company servers. The platforms will undergo a yearly assessment of the impact of their design, algorithms, advertising and terms of services on a range of societal issues. Then, according to the findings of the assessment, propose and implement measures inspected by the European Commission, researchers and an audit company.

The EU is actively teaming up with tech firms, industry groups, and organizations focused on children to figure out how to create platforms that better protect minors. They’re working towards a set of guidelines by 2024 called the Code of Conduct on Age-Appropriate Design. This code would lay out a list of steps that the European Commission wants big social media companies to take in line with the new laws.

However, as The Social Dilemma suggests, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the complex problems posed by social media. A nuanced approach is crucial, focusing on specific people, platforms, and features that are most risky. Additionally, the call for more data and a precautionary principle when it comes to minors is both reasonable and responsible.

Only time will reveal the effectiveness of these measures and potential loopholes, but the Act open a chapter of thorough examination of social media companies’ practices.

Reviewed by Batuhan Aça, Şeymanur Melayim, Muhammet Ali Oruç, Shahd Qaid, and Ezgi Yaramanoğlu.

Written by Dilara Özer

From the War on Terror to the far-right conspiracies, Islamophobia manifests in various forms. In today’s world, systemic Islamophobia continues to cast a long and dark shadow over the lives of Muslims across continents. Rooted in historical and contemporary contexts, this pervasive form of discrimination and prejudice has significant implications for individuals, communities, and societies at large.

Systemic Islamophobia operates within power structures, institutions, and cultural biases, perpetuating inequality, marginalization, and the violation of human rights. Implicitly and explicitly, Islamophobia is reinforced by various layers of society, including governments around the world.

While its manifestations may differ from one region to another, systemic Islamophobia shares commonalities across countries and societies. It operates as a product of historical legacies, geopolitical dynamics, cultural narratives, and power imbalances. It thrives in contexts where Muslims are viewed as the “Other,” perpetuating stereotypes, prejudices, and negative portrayals that undermine their rights, dignity, and societal inclusion.

The impact of systemic Islamophobia is far-reaching. Muslim individuals and communities face challenges in various domains of life, as the titles included in this Bundle will show. They experience heightened surveillance, racial profiling, and discriminatory legislation, hindering the realization of fundamental human rights and the pursuit of justice and equality. Furthermore, the interconnetedness of discrimination makes the issue even more pressing for all.

Recognizing and understanding systemic Islamophobia is essential for dismantling its deeply entrenched structures. It requires comprehensive analysis, dialogue, and collective action which this collection hopes to envoke.

The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, Race, and Islam delves into the complex and far-reaching consequences of the ‘War on Terror’ on global perceptions of Muslims. The book examines the intersection between Islamophobia, and various social, economic, and political factors that have shaped its prevalence.

The authors convincingly argue that the ‘War on Terror’ has not only intensified anti-Muslim racism but has also provided a framework that perpetuates a global Islamophobic narrative. By framing Muslims a perpetual enemy, this conflict has fostered a climate of fear and suspicion, fueling the growth of nativist and populist movements worldwide.

One of the book’s strengths lies in its comprehensive analysis of the different forms and manifestations of Islamophobia. Through an examination of localized histories, conflicts, and contemporary geopolitical realities, the authors map out the intricate ways in which Islamophobia has taken shape across the global North and South. This approach adds depth to the understanding of the diverse factors contributing to the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The book offers a nuanced and comprehensive analysis of the connections between interpersonal and institutional racism. While highlighting the deeply rooted nature of Islamophobia, the book also sheds light on the activism and resistance that have emerged to confront this issue. By featuring narratives of individuals and groups challenging Islamophobia, the authors provide hope and inspiration for those seeking to combat this pervasive form of discrimination.

Naved Bakali and Farid Hafez, The rise of global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, race, and Islam (Manchester University Press 2022) ISBN: 978-1-5261-6175-8, 264 pages

Islamophobia in France: The Construction of the “Muslim Problem” presents a groundbreaking examination of the multifaceted nature of Islamophobia in the country. Authored by Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed, the book challenges the prevailing notion that Islamophobia arises solely from individual bias but rather that Islamophobia in France is deeply entrenched within existing structures of power and control.

The book sheds light on pivotal moments in French history that have contributed to the marginalization of Muslim communities. It highlights the 2004 ban on veils in schools, followed by the 2010 legislation that prohibited face-covering clothing in public spaces, primarily targeting women who wear burqas. President Emmanuel Macron’s public statements regarding the hijab’s compatibility with French ideals further illustrate the pervasive Islamophobia within the country. These cultural biases not only perpetuate discriminatory practices but also position the Muslim population as scapegoats for broader issues surrounding immigration in France.

Hajjat and Mohammed go beyond surface-level analysis to uncover the structural dimensions of Islamophobia in France. They argue that French elites strategically employ Islamophobia as a state technology to exert control and contest the presence of specific groups of postcolonial immigrants and their descendants. By exploring the data on Islamophobia and examining its functioning in contemporary French society, the authors paint a comprehensive portrait of the mechanisms through which Islamophobia operates.

Islamophobia in France is an English translation of Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed’s Islamophobie: Comment les e´lites franc¸aises fabriquent le “proble`me musulman.” and an essential contribution to the field, providing a nuanced and insightful examination of the systemic nature of Islamophobia and its consequences on Muslim communities in France.

Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed, Islamophobia in France: The Construction of the “Muslim Problem” (University of Georgia Press, 2023) ISBN-10 0820363251, 306 pages

In The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims Khaled A. Beydoun presents an essential examination of Islamophobia from a legal and ground-up perspective. Drawing on his intellectual prowess and moral imperative, Beydoun presents a compelling analysis of the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding worldwide and offers a comprehensive analysis of how Islamophobia is utilized by both democratic and authoritarian regimes to persecute Muslim populations.

The New Crusades does not shy away from challenging the established narratives. It delves into the role of the War on Terror in fueling and intensifying anti-Muslim campaigns around the world. Beydoun skillfully illustrates how Islamophobia operates as a unifying thread, perpetuating state and social bigotry and igniting hate-mongering from both liberal and right-wing factions. Through trenchant analysis and firsthand accounts from Muslims on the ground, the author brings to light the various manifestations of Islamophobia in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and beyond.

The book’s global perspective sets it apart, as Beydoun incorporates on-site experiences, interviews, and a diverse range of contexts. This approach enhances the authority of the narrative and makes it accessible and engaging for scholars, students, and the general public.

The New Crusades unravels the distinct systems of demonization and oppression that have emerged across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Whether it is the imposition of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the existence of concentration camps in China, Beydoun examines how Islamophobia operates as a global phenomenon, perpetuating discrimination on multiple fronts.

The book powerfully reveals the unsettling reality that Islamophobia remains one of the few acceptable forms of hate in the world today. By exposing this truth, Beydoun calls attention to the urgent need for collective action against Islamophobia and its far-reaching consequences. By weaving together social science, law, and captivating narratives, the author highlights the pervasive impact of Islamophobia on Muslims across the globe.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims (University of California Press, 2023) ISBN: 9780520356306, 390 pages

In Fear of a Muslim Planet: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order Arsalan Iftikhar, a renowned American Muslim human rights lawyer, offers a comprehensive exploration of global Islamophobia. The book refers to the chilling reminder of the Christchurch massacre, where a white supremacist perpetrated a horrific act of violence against Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. Iftikhar draws attention to the manifesto left by the attacker, titled “The Great Replacement,” which espoused the belief that Muslims posed a threat and sought to replace white people. This incident serves as a starting point for exploring the dangerous legacy of this theory and its influence on extremist acts.

Iftikhar goes on to emphasize that the victims of the “Great Replacement” theory extend beyond Muslims alone. The tragic attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which targeted Jewish congregants, exemplifies the broader impact of this ideology including the infamous actions of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik.. The perpetrator’s anti-Semitic and Islamophobic motivations, fueled by anti-immigration sentiments, underline the interconnected nature of discrimination.

Throughout the book, Iftikhar critiques the presidency of Donald Trump, which he argues has contributed to the exacerbation of Islamophobia in America. He dissects Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, including his claim that “Islam hates us” and his call for a complete ban on Muslims entering the US. Iftikhar contends that Trump’s leadership has fueled the growth of Islamophobia.

The book goes beyond the United States and the Western world to shed light on global Islamophobia. Iftikhar highlights the genocidal levels of Islamophobia in countries like China and Myanmar, where Muslim communities face severe oppression. Additionally, he addresses the European focus on policing Muslim women’s hijab, exposing discriminatory policies that curtail religious freedom.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order (Skyhorse Publishing, 2021) ISBN-13 978-1510761872, 288 pages

The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State offers a captivating and deeply personal exploration of the impact that two decades of policing and counterterrorism have had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain. Drawing from his own experiences, author Rizwaan Sabir takes readers on a compelling journey through British counterterrorism practices and the pervasive policing of Muslims.

Sabir’s narrative describes his wrongful arrest and detention on suspicion of terrorism. He recounts the distressing process of being unjustly made a target in the “war on terror.” With candor and vivid detail, he outlines the events leading up to his arrest, including being found in possession of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual, which he had downloaded for legitimate postgraduate research purposes. Sabir sheds light on the excruciating experience of being subjected to suspicion and surveillance solely based on his Muslim identity.

Throughout the book, Sabir recounts the harrowing aftermath of his arrest. He vividly describes the relentless monitoring and scrutiny he faced upon release from custody. This included frequent stop-and-search encounters, detentions at the border, surveillance by police and government departments, and an attempt by the UK military to recruit him into their psychological warfare unit. The author’s firsthand account provides a chilling insight into the intrusive and discriminatory practices endured by Muslims in the name of national security.

Sabir argues that the profound harm inflicted on individuals like him is not merely the result of government planning errors but rather a deliberate consequence of employing a counterinsurgency warfare approach to combat terrorism and police Muslim communities. Through his writing, Sabir advocates for and building networks of solidarity and support to challenge the injustices perpetuated by these policies and practices.

The Suspect serves as a powerful call to action, urging readers to recognize and resist the profound injustice faced by Muslims. By sharing his story, Sabir empowers readers to challenge the harmful narratives and practices that perpetuate the policing of Muslims.

Rizwaan Sabir, The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State (Pluto Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780745338484, 256 pages

Georgia Meloni’s accession to power in Italy is seen as a remarkable turning point that has redefined Euro-Mediterranean relations in general and Euro-Tunisian relations in particular. Meloni was sworn in as president of the Council of Ministers on October 22, 2022. Her inauguration caused an uproar and raised questions about the future of the region, particularly in relation to the Italian state’s migration policy. In fact, an important factor to consider is that Meloni is the leader of Brothers of Italy, a direct descendant of Benito Mussolini’s fascist legacy, but she is also one of the iconic figures of the new right in Europe, propagating a strong sense of xenophobia and advancing a sterile populist discourse.

Why Italy? Demystifying the fundamental factors behind the unusual dispute

Geographical proximity

It is no secret that geopolitics is the fundamental parameter defining Italian efforts in the European-Tunisian equation. Separated by only 140 kilometers, Italy’s geographical proximity to Tunisia has a significant impact on the bilateral dynamics between the two strategically important countries. In fact, the implications go beyond the borders of Italy, as they directly affect the European continent. The answer to the question “Why Italy?” is therefore multifaceted and fraught with complications and interpretations. From a strategic point of view, the shared Mediterranean Sea serves as an important route not only for the promotion of trade but also for the movement of people, making migration a key issue in the Italian (and European) approach to Tunisia. It is important to stress that Tunisia has a significant position both as a home for illegal migrants and as a transit country for migrants from beyond the Sahara.

The main reasons for intercountry migration are often human capital-related, but also include asylum seekers fleeing the intense political instability in North African countries. Statistics confirm that more than 5.3% of the total population of the EU comprise migrants of non-European origin, amounting to 23.7 million people from Third World countries. In this context, Tunisia’s influence on the European Union depends more on the uncontrollable influx of immigrants than on trade and economic dynamics.

The number of Tunisian citizens arriving by sea on the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy has fluctuated over the years. In 2019, the number stood at 2,654 and in 2018 at 5,181. In 2021, it peaked with 15,671 arrivals, followed by 2020 with 12,883 arrivals. The statistics prove that the problems caused by the sea are a major incentive for the Italian authorities to work with Tunisia to find a solution.

Tunisia: A route for an alternative energy source for Europe

In conjunction with the previous section, we can conclude that the geographical factor has implications for energy reasons, namely, the dependency between Europe and the southern Mediterranean. It is worth noting that Italy is one of Europe’s largest energy consumers and its proximity to Tunisia, a potential producer of renewable energy (especially solar energy), could be beneficial for the country and for Europe at large.

It is useful for reasons of perspective to compare this approach with the trends in the global power struggle that have taken place since 2021. In this context, the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian military confrontation is seen as the origin of a number of flaws in the concept of the “balance of power” between the continents.

The European Union is currently facing the direct consequences of its transcontinental policies. Many observers believe that the fighting between the two parties has led to a reshaping of the traditional relationship between the EU and its southern Mediterranean neighbors. In particular, the military hostilities has to some extent broken the archaic “asymmetry of interdependence” that the EU has maintained at a steady pace since the signing of the Barcelona Process with Tunisia in 1995. The Russia-Ukraine war has created logistical difficulties for Europe, and given that Tunisia is a strategic partner, facilitating the transit of gas to Europe across the maritime border with Italy, the “Meloni factor” can be justified in the ongoing unrest over the past month.

The Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline and economic cooperation

Known colloquially as “TransMed,” the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline is a 2,475 km natural gas pipeline “allowing the transport of large quantities of high-quality energy” through Tunisia and Sicily. Although Tunisia’s share is comparatively small, it is nevertheless considered to occupy an important position that can solve the energy problem in terms of the European Union’s external interests, as well as securing potential containment solutions to prevent Tunisia’s economic decline. It is crucial to highlight that the European Union is still considered the country’s first economic partner, accounting for 73.8% of total exports, while maintaining rates of 45.5% of Tunisia’s total imports. Moreover, Italy’s role in Tunisia’s foreign policy has increased in economic terms in the post-Jasmine Revolution era. With the introduction of democratic elements, Italy became Tunisia’s leading supplier in 2017, ahead of France.

Italian-Tunisian relations are often seen as a projection of Euro-Tunisian relations, due to the sum of all the factors mentioned above. Put simply, the inter(in)dependence between Tunisia and Italy and/or the European Union is governed by multiple parameters, of which the economy and migration work together to define this web of complexities.

Migration at the heart of European diplomacy: the role of “Meloni” Italy

The strategy of bilateral cooperation is underpinned by a series of diplomatic all-round dialogues and coordination, mediated mainly by Italy, and has witnessed an urgent upsurge that comes to fulfil the legacy of the “shared history, geographical proximity and strong relationship” (Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, 2023) between the European Union and Tunisia. From a European perspective, the problem of migratory flows is seen as a predator lurking behind the bushes and imposes a multitude of complexities on the Euro-Tunisian platform, exemplified by economic, political, and ethnographic difficulties.

The Italian perception of the situation has been translated on two different occasions by Meloni’s courageous efforts. Georgia Meloni first landed on Tunisian soil on June 6 and returned on June 11 to reaffirm the positive European perception of Tunisia, accompanied by European Union President Ursula von der Leyen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The two parties worked out “a memorandum of understanding on the comprehensive partnership package to be approved by Tunisia and the European Union before the end of June 2023” in order to integrate the country into the European efforts to regulate migration. On the other side of the of the coin, President von der Leyen insisted that “against the backdrop of global uncertainties, it is in our common interest to strengthen our relations and invest in stability and prosperity.”

Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, the scope of support for Ukraine has been diverse and constantly expanding. Supporting Ukraine has now become a trend with weapons and platforms of strategic value being provided to the country. The support has been effective, especially in Ukraine’s newly launched operation. Yet, this effect is only visible in certain areas and the military support is not enough to ensure Russia’s withdrawal from all regions it occupied. The main reason for this is that such support could deepen the war or escalate the conflict by provoking unpredictable responses from Russia.

Military support in the absence of air superiority—as is currently the case of Ukraine against Russia—prevents Ukraine from achieving the capability to drive Russia completely out of the region and regain some of its territory. There may be different and more rapid developments once the F-16s are delivered and deployed to the battlefield after the training period. But for now, military support is not enough to ensure Russia’s defeat or to force Moscow to negotiate peace.

Can Ukraine become a NATO member? It seems unlikely that NATO will support this. Yes, at least 21 NATO members support Ukraine’s membership, but the continued occupation is one of the biggest obstacles to membership. NATO is unlikely to take such a risk.

Security guarantees could be considered in this context, but they are not very possible without agreement and foresight on how the future of the war will develop. Even now, security guarantees are unlikely within NATO. Even with the support of countries at the level of bilateral relations, it seems that member countries will not be able to provide Ukraine with a security guarantee that could end the conflict with Russia.

In the meantime, NATO’s strategy document, the new Strategic Concept, published last year, does not address the China issue in detail. However, this is the first time that China has been identified as a strategic challenge, given NATO’s post-Cold War history and transformation. At this stage, China poses more of a political and economic challenge than a military threat to NATO, the Alliance’s member countries, and the region they shape. It appears that NATO is not yet ready to portray China as a threat.

The U.S. perspective in the Sino-American rivalry is to transform NATO into a global organization, but not all NATO members share this view. For the time being, it does not seem possible for NATO as a whole to act against China. However, depending on how the dimensions of the Washington-Beijing rivalry evolve in the coming period, NATO may renew its position internally. That said, in the short term, it is not possible to define China as a threat.

Military assistance to Ukraine and its NATO membership are two separate matters. In fact, there is almost complete consensus among Alliance members to provide military assistance to Ukraine. Although some NATO members, such as Germany, were initially reluctant, they have come around to Washington’s line under pressure from their domestic public opinion, Europe, and the United States.

In the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine war, Berlin was only prepared to provide Ukraine with troops, but it has now supplied the country with Leopard 2 tanks and advanced air defence missiles. From this point of view, NATO, which has organized itself very quickly and decisively to support Ukraine militarily, will continue this support until it achieves its goals with regard to Russia.

There are already problems with the production of ammunition for certain weapons due to their intensive use on the Ukrainian front, yet, one of the most important factors determining the course of the struggle between NATO and Russia will be the production of weapons and ammunition, given that Russia is experiencing similar problems to a much greater extent.

The issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership, which is expected to be one of the main items on the agenda at the Vilnius summit, has caused serious disagreement between member states. Some, particularly the Baltic and several Eastern European countries, argue that Ukraine should become a member of NATO quickly, while others, such as the United States and Germany, where there is intense internal debate on the issue, oppose such a quick decision.

Those in favor of a more cautious approach suggest to wait until the end of the war to decide on the issue, fearing that Ukraine’s possible NATO membership during the war would draw them into direct armed conflict with Russia and would also complicate peace negotiations with Russia. They are considering postponing a decision in the hope that, at the end of the war, there will be a weakened Russia unable to oppose Ukraine’s NATO membership. Therefore, it seems unlikely that a decision on Ukraine’s NATO membership will be taken at the Vilnius summit.

However, given the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine Council and the strong likelihood that Ukraine will not be required to meet the preconditions of the Membership Action Plan for the accession of new members, such as the fight against corruption, which was previously included in the Membership Action Plan adopted at the Bucharest Summit, the door will be left open for Ukraine’s membership in the medium term. This issue will be closely linked to the development of NATO’s Russia policy and the outcome of the war. Moreover, Russia’s policy towards the West will be crucial to Ukraine’s NATO membership.

For NATO members, such as Italy and Spain, which have not yet resolved their economic problems caused by the Euro debt crisis, increasing their military spending from 1.5% to more than 2% would mean additional problems for their budget balances. In addition, the military spending of NATO members such as Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Ireland remains well below the Alliance’s target. It should be recalled that NATO has set the 2% limit as a minimum target, and Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has persistently called for more than 2% military spending in the member states he has visited.

While Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has created a strong motivation for NATO to increase military spending, the disruptions it has caused to energy and food supplies, and prices, and the resulting economic challenges have left many members struggling to find the financial resources to increase their military spending. It is worth noting that NATO members, especially those with growing economic problems, will find it difficult to meet the Alliance’s targets for increasing military spending.

Meanwhile, the U.S. administration wants to see its NATO allies on its side in the fight against China, just as it has done with Russia. Yet, it is no secret that there are members who have reservations about this; Germany, France, and Turkey are among such countries, albeit for different reasons.

In the aftermath of the Trump era, European NATO members are struggling to trust the United States, making it difficult for them to follow Washington’s lead, especially when it comes to a policy towards China. The same reluctance was also present about a policy towards Russia; however, the Russia-Ukraine war helped to remove this reluctance and align countries behind the U.S. Now Washington wants to capitalize on this shock momentum and rally its European allies behind its line against China.

In addition to the shock effect of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, the U.S. has another advantage in rallying the Europeans behind it: “American friends” in Europe. These “American friends,” commonly known as Atlanticists, are everywhere in Europe. They are in power in countries like Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, and are partners in coalition governments in countries like Germany.

Given that China has not made a mistake similar to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but instead is trying to create a sphere of influence for itself through economic cooperation, and given its close economic ties with some European countries, it will not be as easy for Washington to rally NATO members behind its fight against Beijing as it has been to rally them against Moscow.

W

estern analysts acknowledge that Turkey’s May 14 elections are among the most important elections of 2023. Europeans follow the polls almost as eagerly as Turks because for the first time in two decades, there is hope in Europe that the Erdoğan administration can change. Many European- and U.S.-centered media outlets publish opinion pieces on Turkish elections on a daily basis. Roughly half of these articles predict that President Erdoğan will win the election again, while the other half speculate that Erdoğan will not accept the election results, if he loses.

The reason why European actors closely follow Turkey’s elections and are in favor of a government change is that under President Erdoğan’s leadership, Turkey has become an international actor capable of establishing a sphere of influence in the Middle East, the Balkans, the Turkic world, South Asia, and many countries in Africa.

President Erdoğan has taken Turkey out of the Western political orbit and turned it into a more independent player, adopting more autonomous and indigenous policies. This approach finds a response beyond Turkey’s borders. European political circles are equally disturbed by Turkey’s influence on Muslim minorities in Europe, including those of Turkish origin, which have become intensely sympathetic to Turkey under Erdoğan.

Europe’s Expectations and its “ideal” Turkey

Europe’s main expectation from Turkey’s May 14 elections is to see a weaker political profile come to power and for the country to follow a more inward-looking and less assertive regional foreign policy. There appears no plan in sight for Europe to revive membership negotiations with Turkey for the European Union. Even if Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the Nation Alliance win the elections, there is no easy and fresh start with Turkey, which will continue to be pushed back. In fact, Kılıçdaroğlu’s promise to “lift visas to Europe” if elected was already denied by German officials.

A vision of a Turkey which follows EU foreign policy and integrates into the European economy as much as EU member states allow, but that remains outside of the union, is the ideal relationship between the EU and Turkey for European politicians. Against this backdrop, President Erdoğan’s vision of the “Axis of Turkey” with an expanded strategic autonomy and a balanced foreign policy is at odds with the European vision of Turkey.

European experts do not shy away from saying that Kılıçdaroğlu’s Nation Alliance would be more in line with their “ideal” Turkey. At the same time, the opposition’s possible election victory also worries them. As there is no plan in Europe’s short-term agenda to initiate a new phase in its relations with Turkey, it is easier and more convenient to maintain the status quo if Erdoğan remains in power. Europe seems to have no road map for how it will redefine relations with Turkey if the opposition wins. Although some European politicians are giving Turkish opposition figures pats on the back, this may not have immediate positive repercussions.

European Media’s Approach to Turkey

Dreaming of a Turkey without Erdoğan, many European think tanks, politicians, and media outlets have taken a firm stance on Turkey’s May 14 elections. Even though, they cannot foresee what the consequences of a possible government change would be for the European Union, they are aware that their capacity to influence Turkish politics will be extremely limited if Erdoğan is reelected. As a result, they have persistently avoided taking any political steps that could set a constructive agenda with Turkey, as they believe that revitalizing Turkey-EU relations could strengthen Erdoğan’s hand.

The EU’s short-term foreign policy expectations from Turkey are the following: Sweden’s admission to NATO, and Turkey’s abandoning a balanced position in the Ukraine War and taking a clear stance against Russia. However, European political actors are uncertain about the Turkish opposition’s possible approach to the migration issue and view the opposition’s discourse on the deportation of Syrian refugees in Turkey with hesitation. Europe is not prepared for a wave of migration through Turkey. That is why, there is also a narrow group of politicians who advocate in favor of the continuation of the current administration in Turkey. While there are opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation between Turkey and the EU in many areas such as energy, agriculture, transportation, industry, and technology, there is no political will to mobilize this potential.

While European analysts recognize that the Nation Alliance is an ideologically fragmented and fragile political entity, they agree that it is a preferable alternative to a strong Erdoğan administration. They believe that they can get along more easily with some members of the Nation Alliance. Moreover, possible cracks in the alliance can create a framework in which they can exert their own influence. In fact, many articles in German, French, and British media outlets argue that that the Turkish economy will decline further if the current government remains in power.

Nobody knows whether there will be a renewed mobilization in potential areas of cooperation, if Kılıçdaroğlu becomes Turkey’s new president. Some even suggest that if Erdoğan is reelected, Turkey-EU relations could regain a positive momentum through a gradual progress based on mutual interests. Moreover, the Erdoğan administration’s expectations from the EU are more modest than those of the opposition.

The Two Portrayals of Turkey in Europe

There are two different portrayals of Turkey’s May 14 elections being presented to Europeans. European politicians and journalists often interact with Turkish citizens living in Europe who are white-collar migrants, media journalists, and members of academic elites. These individuals are largely politically pro-opposition, are ideologically motivated, or adhere to certain ethnocentric factions. Consequently, European media understand the developments in Turkey through the biased perspective of such actors, who publish partisan articles in media outlets on contemporary Turkish politics.

Turkey is also portrayed by a secularist European elite, whose perspective largely overlaps with the Turkish opposition, depicting Turkish politics one-sidedly. Articles produced by prejudiced actors are then translated into Turkish, generating another impact layer in Turkey. This offshore opposition, supported by Europe, aims to influence Turkish politics from abroad, and forms a biased political enclave that despises a conservative and nationalist government with Islamic moral codes in Turkey represented by a strong leader personified in Erdoğan. Having invested all their hope for change in the Nation Alliance, this enclave has the potential to influence its elite interlocutors in Europe.

However, citizens of Turkish origin across Europe draw a completely different picture. Almost two-thirds of those of Turkish origin in Europe voted for President Erdoğan in the 2018 presidential elections. This rate is on average 10 points higher than the support Erdoğan received in Turkey. In the 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections, the picture is not expected to change dramatically. There is a silent majority of people of Turkish origin in Europe supporting Erdoğan. European politicians and bureaucrats are aware of this silent majority, whose views are not reflected or represented in the press or in academic circles.

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eports about the death of the state amongst international relations scholars seem premature just yet. In this century, the world will conduct an extraordinary experiment in government. By 2050, forty percent of the planet’s population will live in just four places: India, China, the European Union, and the United States. These are superstates: polities that are distinguished from normal countries by expansiveness, population, diversity, and complexity.

Modern statecraft has attempted to adapt to the challenges of globalization, interdependency, and population increase, bringing piling responsibilities to the states. How can superstates manage the burden of their growing scale? Can such states be effectively governed at all? Looking at other model modern states offers only an incomplete picture; however, while there is not much experience to be drawn from today, empires may offer a guide.

Alasdair Roberts, professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, likens these superstates to the empires of the past. After all, it was the age of empires that gave way to the age of states, and later the hybrid polity superstates. In the coming decades, the least populous superstate, the U.S., will contain as many people as the vast British Empire did at its peak in 1914.

Roberts first attempts to decipher the nature of this ongoing experimentin light of new dilemmas of governance. He argues that, for the most part, superstates wrestle with the same problems of leadership, control, and creed that plagued empires for centuries. Yet, there are no simple solutions.

Could superstates be more durable? What are the pros and cons of a superstate in comparison to an empire? A postulate of empires is the assumption of their eventual death. Size and complexity led to fragility, and imperial rulers improvised constantly to put off the day of reckoning—leaders of superstates are doing the same today.

However, superstates now differ from traditional empires in the responsibilities that they bear, and most importantly in the obligation to improve life for ordinary citizens. They pursue radically different strategies for governing at scale that have profound implications for democracy and human rights. While technology provides more ease to superstates for surveillance and many other tasks, their populations are more restless and demanding, they need to govern more intensively and provide more services.

Roberts takes the reader through each superstate one by one to understand their unique challenges and complementing strategies, and reveals common themes amongst these giants in the process. He, then, takes the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to analyze how these superstates reacted to a common problem in a different way and how they bared during a shock at the global level.

How should superstates be governed? What must their leaders do to hold these immense polities together? How can these superstates withstand the extraordinary strains and shocks of the contemporary world? If they survive, will they thrive? Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century attempts to answer these and other questions by looking into history for ways to govern these sprawling and diverse polities.

With a groundbreaking twist in thinking about the art and methods of statecraft, Roberts considers the decisions leaders must make to devise and redevise strategies for governance at such a grand scale. Pragmatism, a little bit of reservation, and sometimes unorthodox policies may be necessary.

Alasdair Roberts, Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century (Polity Press, 2022) ISBN: 978-1-509-54449-3, 224 pages

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t a time when norms are increasingly pushed aside in the international arena, one great quagmire stands to impact us all: climate change. Humanity seems to be gambling its present and future, while corporations aim to delay transition for profits. It is not just an issue that effects those of us alive today, but also the distant strangers of the next generation.

Who bears the responsibility? How can we deal with climate change fairly? Should one resent the “burden” or embrace the “challenge”?  In The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, political philosopher Prof. Henry Shue helps the reader dissolve the separateness between the past, present, and future, and oversee their responsibility towards climate change. Shue encourages the reader to face the historic challenge of our generation, like past generations have with the complex challenges they faced.

Q. Why are we “the pivotal generation”? Why is it a privilege to be us?

We’re the pivotal generation because we just happen to live at the time when either we do enough to prevent climate change from getting out of hand or we don’t – and this is going to be decided in the next 10 or 20 years.

We know from the science that greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide emissions, have to reach net zero by 2050 if climate change is not to be even more severe than it’s already going to be.

It’s just common sense that if we have to go all that way by 2050, then we need to get halfway by about 2030 since reducing emissions by the second half is going to be much harder than the first half.

We have a chance to make an enormous difference and really deeply influence the course of human history. That’s the privilege – and almost an honor: to be an absolutely crucial generation. In some ways, those of us alive now are the most important people in human history, because we’re going to determine whether climate change stays relatively moderate or it becomes even more severe.

One can also think of this as a burden as we have to carry on a lot of tasks. But I find it sort of exhilarating to think that we’re in the position to accomplish as much as we can accomplish, if we get serious about the problem of climate change.

We have a chance to make an enormous difference and really deeply influence the course of human history. That’s the privilege – and almost an honor: to be an absolutely crucial generation.

Q. What makes climate change stand out as the main challenge of our generation?

It’s because so much of a difference will be made in the short time. It’s not that there are no other very important problems, we need to prevent nuclear war, xenophobia etc. But as far as we know, we don’t have to deal with those problems in the next 10 or 20 years, but in the case of climate we really do have to bring about a revolution in our energy system in the next 10 or 20 years.

Since World War II, there has never been a year when carbon dioxide emissions weren’t more than they were in the previous year, except for the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Every year, except for 2020, emissions are going up. That’s a deep, built-in trend, and it has to be reversed very quickly. We need to turn things around, use much less fossil fuel, and do it right away.

There are other problems that are also very important, though dealing with climate change will help with a number of other problems. For example, it will help with health. A lot of people have lung and heart disease because of the particulate matter that burning coal puts into the air.

If we burn less fossil fuel, we won’t only deal with the climate; we will greatly improve health and also save a lot of money. One of the really hopeful things already is that it’s cheaper to build a new solar energy farm and then use it than it is to keep using a coal-burning plant that’s already there. The prices of some alternatives, particularly solar, have already gone below the price of fossil fuels.

Q. Nowadays, with limited time and energy, we are made aware of an incomprehensible number of topics and are often left feeling overwhelmed. Your book highlights responsibility. How can we take responsibility for climate change in our lives?

I do, as you say, talk about responsibility. That’s partly because this is what I work on as a political philosopher, but it’s also very much in our interest to deal with climate change.

However, the thing I wanted to emphasize especially is our responsibility toward future generations. I think we picture future generations as strangers, people who we’ve never met or who we don’t know and don’t have anything much to do with us in our daily life.

In fact, in our daily life, we are shaping the world that future generations are going to live in, and so they’re not distant at all. We are shaping their world, and we have a very tight, intimate connection with them. And so, I think we do have responsibility for the problems that we leave them with. They may be able to solve some of the problems, but we’ll see to it that they have less of them.

For example, there’s going to be sea level rise, and this is going to cause problems for coastal cities. They can move or try to build sea walls or all sorts of things, so they won’t be entirely helpless, but it is true that they will inherit problems like sea level rise from us. The less we do about climate change, the more problems that they are going to inherit.

Q. What are the developed nations’ historical responsibilities?

They’re huge. It’s countries like the one I was born in, the United States, and the one I live in, the United Kingdom, which are mainly responsible. I believe the way to think about responsibility is to look at total cumulative emissions over history and the country with the greatest total cumulative emissions is the United States.

China currently has the most emissions per year, but their cumulative emissions are still quite a bit less than the U.S. I think a reasonable way to look at this is to the extent that you’ve emitted the gases that cause climate change, you are to that extent responsible for the problem. Therefore, this means most of the responsibility goes to the most industrialized countries.

There are complications to this. Saudi Arabia, for example, sells enormous amounts of fossil fuel, and they haven’t generated a lot of greenhouse gas emissions because they’re not a heavily industrialized country. But for the most part it’s the industrialized countries in North America and Western Europe, and Japan which have done the most to cause the problem. I think, the common sense principle is, if you’ve made the mess, then you should clean it up.

And one thing this means is that to get to zero emissions all countries have to stop using fossil fuel, but poorer countries can’t just find a lot of money all of a sudden, and install renewable energy everywhere. However, it’ll be bad for the climate if they follow the same route to development that countries like mine did. So, one of the ways in which a country like the U.S. or the UK can exercise its responsibility is to finance, to some extent, and, at least, invest in sustainable development in poorer countries. In this case, this means leapfrogging over the fossil fuel and going straight to non-fossil fuels like solar, wind, even nuclear. There are problems about nuclear, as everybody knows, but it doesn’t generate greenhouse gas.

Q. In your book, you talk about the fossil fuel interest having entrenched allies within the U.S. government and banking sector. Can we break up that cycle?

We’ll see. That’s the crucial battle, because even the richest countries which talked the most about doing something about climate change are all still subsidizing fossil fuels. In the U.S., there is accelerated depreciation for companies that drill new oil wells. That’s absolutely absurd! We don’t need new oil wells, and we certainly don’t need to give tax breaks to companies that drill new oil wells. This shows that a big section of our politicians is basically captured by fossil fuel interests.

I think the only hope is essentially democracy and social change brought about by people. Many fossil fuel companies say they are committed to the Paris Agreement and to net zero by 2050, but they are not doing anything to get there.

If they wanted to, they could develop plans that would change them from being oil companies to being energy companies, which is what they say they’re doing but it’s not what they’re actually doing. Since they’re not voluntarily making the transition, the only way to get them to do it is to have a political action.

There are a lot of different possible kinds of political action, like carbon taxes or border taxes. There are also many complicated questions about what exactly to do. I think we need our governments to take forceful actions that will require the transition away from fossil fuel, and that will, for a start, put a stop to additional extraction.

New oil wells are drilled using loans from the major banks, and, once again, the worst banks in the world are all American: JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America. It’s hard to put pressure on banks, but we can try, and you can.

This spring, for example, there’s going to be a day when people cut up their credit cards if they have a credit card from these banks. By the way, there’s a report that anybody can access on the web called “Banking on climate chaos.” It’s revised every year, and it shows exactly which banks are making how many loans for the extraction of fossil fuel. And so, you can find out who the main offenders are and not give them your business.

Q. How can activists and decision-makers approach the sociopolitical implications of climate change, such as climate refugees who are projected to reach one billion by 2050?

The best thing to do is to prevent flows getting worse than they are. As I mentioned before, this means enabling countries which have a lot of poverty and quite rightly want to eradicate the poverty to do it by a path that doesn’t mean more use of fossil fuel, and, therefore, more emissions.

The countries that are wealthier should invest and assist with this. For example, India has a huge amount of coal, and it happens to be particularly dirty coal. We really need India not to burn that coal. The way to do it is to invest in their solar power. The more quickly we can bring down the amount of fossil fuel that’s burned and the amount of emissions that are released, the less the sea level will rise, and for example, the fewer people will have to flee from coastal cities.

The important thing to do is try to take actions that prevent people having to flee. People don’t want to leave their own country. It’s not only in the interest of the potential receiving countries, but if we don’t act fast, movements of refugees are going to be really very serious.

Q. In the broader global context, we see an era of international relations drifting away from norms. However, actors cooperate in certain areas while having relatively hostile relations. As far as interests are involved, it’s a kind of double standard. Should we expect states to act morally?

States do tend to pursue their own national interest, but one thing about climate change is that it is in everyone’s interest to deal with it. I think the best that any given nation can do is to carry out its own responsibilities and hope that others will respond.

Now, for exactly the reasons you gave, people worry that others will be so-called free riders. The U.S., in particular, has worried endlessly about whether if it spends a lot of money on climate change, it’ll end up having to carry the burden for everybody. If everyone holds back waiting for other people to do things, nothing will happen, and that’s where we are right now.

People have been holding back and worrying about whether they’re going to get stuck with the bill. I think the only hope is to stop worrying about whether other people are going to take advantage of you and start showing some leadership to what needs to be done and hope that others will respond by doing something similar.

They may not, and if they don’t, then one can take tougher action. For example, the EU now is going to introduce border tariffs on products that are made in ways that generate more emissions than the products would have generated if they had been made inside the EU. This is a way of putting pressure on other countries to reduce their emissions.

The hope is that rather than paying the border taxes, other countries will crack down on their own emissions. That’s a way of pressuring others: it’s not violent, but it’s pressure, and it’s not just waiting for other people to do the right thing. It is, however, tricky. We don’t want to start wars, and even trade wars if we can help it. At the same time, this is very important and we need to take measures that will be effective. Actually, the EU has been showing some leadership, and, on the whole, has been the most effective set of countries on climate change. So, there are some countries trying to do the right thing.

Q. Do you think that climate technology investments could be used as a foreign policy tool in global competition. Are we seeing such developments?

I think the best thing any country can do for its own national interest is to be leading the world in non-fossil fuel technology. A country like the U.S. or countries in the EU need to develop alternative technology in order to deal with climate change since these are going to be the technologies that the world is going to be using for the next century, or many centuries. It is also in their interest to be the ones who develop it.

If other nations are smart, they’ll be developing the technology too. The last thing you want to do is end up being a country that’s still burning coal and oil when everybody else has the alternatives. This is actually a very clear case where doing the right thing is also very much in your long-term self-interest, and can enhance your competitive position economically.

I think the best thing any country can do for its own national interest is to be leading the world in non-fossil fuel technology.

We are on the brink of irreversibility in some cases when it comes to climate change, which can squelch all hope. Do you have any optimistic concluding words for our readers?

The truth is, we’re in a real battle. We could win or we could lose, but there are some good things happening. The youth movement, the Greta Thunbergs of the world, is the most hopeful thing. Just in the last few years, young people across the world have gotten really angry at the old goats like me, who’ve been here for decades and have not dealt with the problem. And they’re getting really fired up – that’s good!

Another very good thing that I mentioned already is that the prices of alternative energy are way down, and so it’s much cheaper to install and use solar than it is to just keep using coal, for example. But as you mentioned, we know that there are so-called tipping points, cases where something in the climate passes a point of no return, and you can’t go back.

Particularly with ice sheets, which means with sea level rise, it is possible that we’ve passed at least one tipping point for West Antarctica, and we know that Greenland and East Antarctica are not too far away, especially Greenland.

This is another reason why the next decade or so is really crucial. We’ve got to turn around the emissions and the speed of the rise before we pass any more tipping points. But people are finally getting fired up and so I have some hope. We’re not doomed – there are things we can do and things we’re beginning to do. We have to keep doing them and do more of them.

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en months after the Ukraine war broke out, Western countries led by the U.S., the EU, and the UK decided to limit Russian oil and gas revenues to weaken its war machine. On December 2, the G7 and Australia agreed on a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil. And on December 19, the EU energy ministers enacted a gas price cap. The decisions were argued hard as the former directly targeted Russia while the latter did not explicitly do so. What is a price cap, and what do the G7 and the EU aim to achieve through it? What are the prospects of the EU’s objectives, and will they be successful?

The price cap is a mechanism that sets a maximum price that oil and gas suppliers are able to charge their consumers. The aim here is to regulate suppliers, not hydrocarbon producers, the EU argues. Yet, in the Russian case, it is the Kremlin acting as the producer and the supplier of oil and gas. Thus, Russia’s hydrocarbon revenues are the target. The price cap applied by the G7 and Australia allows operators from participant countries to transport Russian oil to third countries if the price remains below the $60 per barrel cap. Although the EU previously banned the maritime transport of Russian crude oil as of December 5, 2022 and oil products as of February 5, 2023 to third countries, the new decision permits shipowners and insurance companies to continue to earn money from shipping Russian oil. Undoubtedly, Greek shipowners benefit the most in this case since they conduct more than 50 percent of Russian oil shipments, while Russians and Chinese follow the Greeks with lesser shares, 20 percent and 6 percent respectively.

The energy ministers of EU member states agreed on a gas price cap on December 19. The cap will be triggered when gas prices on the Dutch TTF exceed €180 per megawatt hour for three consecutive working days and if they are higher than global gas prices by more than €35 per megawatt hour for the same period. Their aim was to control prices while ensuring the security of the gas supply. Undoubtedly, harming the Russian budget via gas revenues to stop the Ukraine war is also an unspoken desire since the EU is also importing LNG from Russia. Starting on February 15, 2023, the mechanism will be valid for a year. The Czech presidency led the process, and Poland, from the very beginning of the war, pushed hard to convince other EU members to take measures against the Russian aggression.

Yet, whether the price cap mechanism fully prevents the imports of Russian oil in Europe or elsewhere in the West remains a big question. As Moscow started to discount the Urals and its other benchmarks, Asian countries’ appetite for oil began to be fed by cheaper Russian crude, and they became the leading beneficiaries of Western sanctions. Before the Ukraine war broke out, from January 2021 to February 2022, China, for instance, imported about 590,000 barrels of Russian crude oil per day – between March and December 2022, the imports increased to 857,000 barrels per day.

India, another example, has been importing Russian crude at record levels and then processing it in refineries to procure petroleum products. These products are not only sold to the domestic market, but there are also buyers from Western countries. According to the data from market insiders, after the beginning of the Ukraine war, India began to import higher amounts of Russian crude. Although the imports were zero in February 2022, they reached almost one million barrels a day in June and continued so.

In December 2022, about 25 percent of India’s crude oil imports were from Russia, and in January 2023, India’s imports of Russian crude reached more than 1.5 million barrels a day. No one thinks that all the imported oil is marketed at the national level. This is similar to what Iran and Malaysia do. The U.S.-sanctioned Iranian oil is marketed through Malaysian refineries: they buy Iranian crude and then sell it as petroleum products to the world markets after refining.

Moreover, the Kremlin’s decision to limit gas flows to Europe in response to the EU’s ban on Russian coal and crude has pushed European importers to buy more Russian LNG. In 2022, European countries imported around 17 million tons of Russian LNG, which was 20 percent more than the 2021 volumes.

Still, indicators show that Russian oil revenues are going down, especially since June 2022. Although Russian oil is still flowing through the global market, the Kremlin is making less money from its oil due to its compulsive discounts. The Russian oil export revenues hit the highest for 2022 at $21.5 billion in March and then recorded the lowest in December at $12.6 billion. The most marketed Russian benchmark, Urals, was traded at around $50 per barrel when Brent was above $75.

Meanwhile, revenues are predicted to decrease more as the G7 and the EU have been discussing another price cap for Russian petroleum products compatible with the bloc’s ban starting on February 5. Yet, it is commonly believed that neither Europe nor Russia would be the real victims of the energy war between the West and Russia. Rather, the import-dependent and less-developed countries are expected to hurt the most as prices fluctuate more. Meanwhile, Russia continues to sell its oil to non-European markets, and Western countries began importing their oil needs from the Middle East and the Americas.

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he year 2022 witnessed several tensions in EU–China relations, mostly due to COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions, the Russia-Ukraine War, and Taiwan. The question here is to what extent these crises could affect relations between the EU and China in the long run.

Diplomatic relations between the European Union and China go back to 1975. Following the signing of a trade agreement in 1978, bilateral trade increased significantly. The door to a new cooperation opened after the Trade and Cooperation Agreement was signed in 1985 thanks to China’s opening up and the regular visits between European and Chinese diplomats and businesspeople.

The EU-China relationship keeps evolving in the 21st century with intensifying commercial ties, especially as a result of the worldwide economic crisis. Today, the EU-China relations have become more complex.

Growing economic partnership

Trade is the main factor motivating EU-China relations with commercial partnerships and mutual investments creating mutual dependency over time.

The EU has been China’s largest trade partner since 2004, and China was the EU’s second-largest trade partner. Today, China surpassed the United States to become the EU’s largest trade partner mostly thanks to the high demand during the pandemic.

In 2021, bilateral EU-China trade in goods reached €1.9 billion a day.

According to statistics, between January and August 2022, trade between China and the EU increased by 8.8%, and the EU investment in China increased by 123.7%.

Three EU member states had a trade surplus with China, according to the goods trade balance with Germany accounting for the biggest surplus.

“China and the EU are indispensable trade partners. The EU was China’s biggest trade partner for 16 years (until 2019), and China has been the biggest trade partner for the EU since 2020. Even as the pandemic rages around the world, trade between China and the EU has continued to grow.

This reciprocal trade relationship plays a fundamental role in the respective economic development and social prosperity, especially in this era with an increasing risk of geopolitical conflict,” Dr. Zang Shumei, a research fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University, told Politics Today.

Who needs whom more – China or the EU?

Commercial activities and economic interests generally foster diplomatic ties. However, the fact that the EU member states do not act as a single block makes relations more complicated. For example, Greece blocked an EU statement at the UNHRC in June 2017 criticizing China’s human rights records. Another significant host of Chinese investment, Hungary, has repeatedly blocked EU statements criticizing China’s record on human rights under President Xi Jinping.

Despite efforts by EU policymakers to diversify the bloc’s trade and investments, commercial ties with China are strongly established and resist alternations, and Europe is still one of Chinese investors’ most preferred destinations.

Nevertheless, after decades of China feeling it is just a financial gamble for European firms, market conditions have become far more challenging due to restrictive COVID-19 policies, slowing economic growth and rising geopolitical tensions.

Additionally, the insufficiency of investment reciprocity is detrimental to European interests. In terms of labor and manufacturing costs, logistics systems, and industrial parks, China continues to be a competitive manufacturing hub. Twenty-four EU member states had a trade deficit with China. The Netherlands had the largest deficit, followed by Poland and Italy. “We find that the trade deficit has been growing between the two partners. But we should not simply conclude that one needs the other one more. China and the EU will continue to need each other, not only in trade but also in various global issues,” stated Dr. Zang.

The United States as third actor in the EU-China relations

There is a third factor affecting EU-China relations: the United States. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and the European Union are two major forces of multilateralism. Upholding multilateralism has been one of their most important common understandings and shared responsibilities.

There are diverging opinions in the European Union about the limits of acting in accord on foreign and domestic policies. Countries from the former Eastern European bloc tend to seek U.S. protection through NATO and favor the U.S. presence and policies.

Moreover, these countries still need to make urgent infrastructural investments as their economies develop slowly. This is the same reason why, conversely, some countries of the former Eastern European bloc have approached China’s Belt and Road Initiative positively.

Cultivating its relations further with the 16+1 states in Eastern Europe, China is aware of this internal difference. Meanwhile, China’s presence in Eastern Europe makes an anti-China stance at the EU level less likely.

Relations between Lithuania, an EU member state, and China stopped in July 2021 after Lithuania decided to allow the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania to be opened in Vilnius under the name “Taiwan.”

Overall, it is clear that member states’ political stances on China will not be the same, but some EU members have a bigger impact on the decision-making process. Dr. Zang argues that “Macron’s insistence on Europe’s strategic autonomy shows traces of Gaullism, even though this autonomy is severely threatened by the current crisis in Ukraine. Such an insistence on French and European autonomy has been an important positive element for constructing good Sino-French and Sino-Europe relations.”

On July 20, the European Union Commission announced its plan to provide 1.2 billion Euros for the long inactive European Defense Fund (EDP) to support 61 joint defense research and development projects.

The step was taken after the EU declared that it would increase its defense expenditure. This move raised questions about whether the EU states are now more willing to form a European military identity given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What then does the EU’s decision to raise its defense budget mean?

Europe’s Solutions to Europe’s Problems?

The idea of creating a European army has a long and contentious history in Europe, dating back to the 1950s when it was conceived as a mechanism to boost the defense against the Communist threat without straightforwardly rearming Germany after World War II.

Along with political and economic integration policies, EU member states worked to develop a joint defense understanding to address the security challenges Europe may face. One significant attempt along this line was the Western European Union (WEU), which was founded in 1954 and dissolved in 2011. The reason behind the dissolution was that the WEU did not provide security to all EU members and was limited to only 10 states, namely Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

In 2004, following the lessons learned from Kosovo, the European Defence Agency was founded, and over time special EU military bodies were established. In addition, the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) provides a common EU defense strategy. Notwithstanding, the treaty still specified the significance of a national defense strategy, including NATO membership and/or neutrality.

The Berlin Plus agreement signed between NATO and the EU on March 17, 2003, allows the union to use NATO facilities and capabilities. A good example is Operation ALTHEA, formally known as EUFOR (European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina), a military deployment succeeding NATO’s former SFOR (Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and IFOR (Implementation Force), and established as multinational peacekeeping forces to carry out and implement the Dayton Peace Accords.

The EU’s Recent Defense and Security Initiatives

In recent years, the European Union started paying more attention to security and defense cooperation. The year 2017 witnessed the establishment of the following defense organizations: the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), which, as of June 2019, has 25 participating EU countries; the Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC); the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD); and the European Defence Fund (EDF).

Moreover, the European Parliament took steps toward a resolution in December 2018 on a plan to facilitate military mobility within and across the EU. This step is significant for enhancing the response time of military personnel and access to equipment in response to crises.

With the Strategic Compass published in March 2022, the EU announced that it aims for a stronger and more capable EU in security and defense. The Strategic Compass aims to give the “European Union an ambitious plan of action for strengthening the EU’s security and defense policy by 2030.” The Compass states the EU’s intention to respond quickly to crises by establishing a force of 5,000 troops with a rapid deployment capacity.

Highlighting the complementary function to NATO, Strategic Compass emphasizes a “stronger and more capable EU,” while NATO remains the foundation of collective defense for global and transatlantic matters for the EU member states.

How Far Does the EU Need NATO?

Some EU countries such as France, Germany, and Italy prioritize the EU’s own defense and promote the idea of an EU army. French President Emmanuel Macron has been a strong proponent of this idea; back in 2019, he had directed harsh criticism against NATO claiming that it was “brain-dead.” But the Russian military invasion of Ukraine fortified NATO’s international position, leading EU member states to rethink their security and defense.

Today, there is considerable support among other EU member states for the EU maintaining its own security. Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi argued for the need to enhance European security. At the end-of-year news conference in Rome in December 2021, Draghi told reporters,  “Do we have missiles, ships, cannons, armies? At the moment, no.” Draghi highlighted that NATO’s real focus is not the Russian threat, but China and the Indo-Pacific region.

Tensions between the U.S. and some EU countries, too, fuel debates on Europe becoming a self-sufficient and self-reliant power. In NATO-EU security relations, the distrust felt by some EU member states—especially evident during the Trump administration—has a potential to resurge in the future. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, said in a statement in 2021 that the EU should seek to beef up its military capabilities to confront security threats and global crises.

There is also a counter-approach among some EU member states on the issue of a European army. The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and Poland believe that NATO can be more effective against the Russian threat with Poland and Latvia being at the forefront of this opinion.

Finland and Sweden have long remained neutral in international politics, but recently changed their opinions on joining NATO, proving once again the importance of the North Atlantic Alliance. Furthermore, countries such as Belgium, Sweden, and Germany started to increase their military spending in order to reach the 2% defense investment NATO guideline—something the U.S. has been complaining about for years. It is remarkable that Germany, which kept its defense budget the same for years, has finally increased it to €100 billion.

The European Union is in a tight corner. This is both due to the climate change and its effects, and to the security of energy supply. At a time when the world was struggling with agreeing on measures to tackle climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the following outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War severely impacted global energy markets and supply chains.

Energy prices, led by oil, decreased to record-low levels as the pandemic pushed states to lockdown. But in the second half of 2021 with the increase in economic activities following the weakening of the pandemic, demand and prices began to go up. And the Russia-Ukraine war made everything even harder.

The EU’s Ambitious Task: Being a “Pioneer” in Global Climate Action

The EU has a complicated relationship with fossil fuels. The union owes its establishment to one of the mostly used and dirtiest fossil fuels: coal. At the same time, debates on how to reduce the use of fossil fuels have been going on since the 1960s. As climate change was brought to the global political agenda, the European Union positioned itself as one of the major actors encouraging the international community to take measures.

The executive arm of the union, the European Commission, tried hard to form a union-level climate policy after the signing of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In fact, the union’s effort was more tangible when the Bush administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. The U.S. pullback created an opportunity for the EU and it redefined itself by setting a super ambitious goal: being a “pioneer” in global climate action.

In 2009, the EU made its first ever ambitious move, namely the European Union Climate Change and Energy Package directive, which is famous for its 20-20-20 targets, passed by the EU. The directive sets out to (1) reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from the 1990 levels; (2) improve energy efficiency by 20 percent; and (3) raise the share of renewable energy resources in total energy consumption by 20 percent. The package was followed by a number of climate and energy policy proposals prepared by the commission, and now the EU has the “European Green Deal,” which ambitiously sets the target for Europe to be the first net-zero emission continent.

The Russia-Ukraine War: A Wake-up Call for the EU

The Russia-Ukraine war just entered its sixth month. Since the beginning of the war, the EU, as the largest market of Russian energy, has been trying to spin its Russian energy imports around. However, a first-time global energy crisis faces the union. The policymakers already passed six sanction packages and only the last two could cover energy embargoes, which will be in force for coal imports as of August and seaborne oil starting from the end of the year, while no gas embargo has yet to be agreed upon. The EU’s greatest weakness is its supply of natural gas.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the EU has aimed to reduce its dependency on Russia, especially for natural gas imports. Yet, it has become even more dependent on Russian gas supplies due to Russia’s geographical proximity and rich energy resources, as well as the union’s views of natural gas as a “transition fuel” to a low-carbon economy. Many European governments planned to increase the use of gas to compensate for phasing out their dirtier coal usage. Nevertheless, Putin’s Russia is no longer a reliable energy supplier for the EU.

Time for an Immediate Climate Act, But How?

The effects of climate change are getting worse, and the Mediterranean region is suffering more and more. The average temperatures in the summer season have risen to record-high levels all around Europe. From London to Paris, most weather forecast bodies have announced the temperature will hit above 40 degrees Celsius for the first time ever. Not surprisingly, the extreme heat waves pose a real threat. Hundreds of heat-related deaths and many wildfires have already been reported in recent months. As one of the leading polluters and victims of climate change, the EU now has to take immediate action. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the global energy crisis have shackled the union, and its recent effort to greenwash fossil gas seems unlikely to succeed.

Natural gas, or fossil gas as some Europeans call it, is used to heat homes, generate electricity, run factories, and produce fertilizer. It is also a transition fuel for economies to become low-carbonized, but at the end of the day, it is a fossil fuel and emits greenhouse gasses. The EU has to reduce its gas consumption to slash its emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to the 1990 levels and become the first carbon-neutral continent in the world by 2050.

Moreover, coal and natural gas are not the only energy resources that the Europeans plan to rid themselves of. Many EU members led by Germany and Austria set to phase out nuclear power as well. Although nuclear power provides zero-emission electricity and a sustainable power supply, the environmental and safety concerns of the Europeans affect their positions. Yet, the union needs gas and nuclear power more than ever, and the Russian gas disruptions are pushing the EU to take measures.

 Labeling Fossil Gas and Nuclear Power as “Green”

On June 6, 2022, the EU made a historical decision: members of the European Parliament voted on a controversial plan to label fossil gas and nuclear power under the “green taxonomy,” which is a classification system establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. The system is planned to create security for investors and help companies become more climate friendly. By adding natural gas and nuclear power to the green taxonomy, the MEPs agreed to call them “green,” thus considering gas and nuclear powers as eligible for sustainable investment funding from 2023. The act is now waiting for the council’s backing, and if this happens, member states should quickly provide their approval.

 EU Member States’ Reaction

Germany, which is heavily dependent on gas, and France, which benefits most from nuclear power, are expected to accept the act first to make their transition to a low-carbon economy smoother by taking advantage of green finance. States that use more coal, like Poland, also support the act since it foresees investing billions of euros into the new gas-fired power plants that would replace the coal-fired ones.

Yet, the decision is controversial. Eight member states are against it, and they have diverse motivations for doing so. States like Luxemburg and Austria do not support the act and argue that only a few member states have environmentally secure nuclear reactors and only they would develop new ones. Others, such as Denmark and Spain, claim that this move would violate the union’s position on global climate action since it will pave the way for increasing its emissions over the tolerable limits. Ultimately, more Europeans are thinking that the EU’s aim to be the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050 is once again hampered by national interests.

With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the safety of the Ukrainian people has been endangered. As a result, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) estimates that more than 7.7 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced in their country. Moreover, as of May 23, more than 7.5 million Ukrainians have had to take refuge in neighboring countries—including Russia—for international protection in order to secure their lives.

If the war continues, the number of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers in Europe—including those in Russia—, which currently exceeds 7.5 million, is expected to reach 8 million by the end of June. This indicates that Europe as a whole is facing a much bigger crisis than the irregular mass migration crisis it experienced in 2015.

Europe’s Open-Door Policy for Ukrainians

Following the onset of the Ukraine war on February 24, European countries have been following an open-door policy towards Ukrainian asylum seekers fleeing the war. As a matter of fact, Ukrainian asylum seekers have been placed under international protection in Europe, and officially become refugees.

According to the UNHCR data, as of May 23, the countries receiving the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees are Poland (3.5 million), Romania (966,000), Hungary (650,000), Moldova (470,000), and Slovakia (445,000) respectively. Additionally, approximately 930,000 Ukrainians have taken refuge in Russia so far.

It should be noted that since Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia are EU members, nearly two million Ukrainians have moved to other member states on their own will or within the scope of temporary protection programs announced by the EU. According to the official statements made by some EU member states on different occasions, Germany has received 715,000 Ukrainian refugees, the Czech Republic 330,000, Bulgaria 270,000, and Italy 120,000.

Another indicator that shows that European countries have been embracing Ukrainian refugees is the official protection programs. This includes temporary protection mechanisms that the EU has started to implement. This mechanism in progress is based on the Temporary Protection Directive adopted by the EU in 2001.

With this mechanism, which offers a temporary solution in the periods of irregular mass migration, Ukrainians are allowed to obtain a residence permit in the EU countries, to benefit from education and health services, and to work in various ways according to the national legislation of the member countries. Moreover, the EU has accepted to pay €3.5 billion as part of the Recovery Assistance for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe (REACT-EU), and €4 billion credit line as part of the Ukraine Solidarity Package in advance to member states to help them welcome and accommodate Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.

The EU’s temporary protection application, which has been used for the first time since 2001, is actually a significant step towards a more humane protection regime and fairer responsibility-sharing among the EU member states. It is also a move away from the strict Dublin Regulation which puts an official pressure of hosting refugees on the first entrance countries.

The mechanism will remain in force for one year at the first stage, but may be extended for a total of one additional year. In addition, since there is a visa exemption between the EU and Ukraine since 2017, Ukrainian citizens have the opportunity to stay in EU countries up to 90 days upon arrival.

Europe’s Double Standards on Refugee Policies

Despite the positive perception of Ukrainian refugees by European countries, there is the paradox that those very same countries followed a closed-door policy during the 2015 refuge crisis. It bears repeating that a strict securitization policy was followed against the irregular mass migration of 1.3 million from the Middle East and North African to Europe due to civil wars, conflicts, or poor economic conditions. As a result, most European countries dealt with the issue of irregular migration from a pure security perspective and tried to keep asylum seekers outside their borders.

Today, it is not possible to say that there is a similar reception towards Ukrainian refugees. On the contrary, acting quickly and decisively, European countries have opened their borders in unprecedented solidarity towards Ukrainians. While the EU did not previously implement the Temporary Protection Directive, it decided to implement it immediately upon the start of irregular migration from Ukraine.

Regarding Europe’s double standards on refugees, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov’s following statement is quite noteworthy: “These [Ukrainian refugees] are not the refugees we are used to. As the Austrian chancellor said, these are our relatives, family. These are Europeans, intelligent, educated people, some of them are programmers. We, like everyone else, are ready to welcome them. This is not the usual refugee wave of people with an unclear past. None of the European countries is worried about them.”

Likewise, Greek Minister of Immigration, Notis Mitarachi, who drew the reaction of international organizations for his harsh and cruel practices against refugees, used the word “real refugees” to describe Ukrainians in his speech in the Greek Parliament. Such statements, whose number is way greater, reveal that European countries act on cultural and religious motives while determining their policies on refugees.

What is more, it is widely believed that Ukraine’s historical and political ties with European countries play an important role in this process. In other words, since European countries have stronger ties with Ukraine, a more tolerant attitude has been displayed towards Ukrainians.

However, none of these reasons change the fact that European countries avoided the humanitarian responsibility they should have undertaken in the crisis in 2015 and today are acting in an ambivalent manner. The warm welcome by Europeans to Ukrainians needs to be extended unequivocally to all asylum seekers.

China-Lithuania relations reached a breaking point in July 2021 over Lithuania’s decision to allow a Taiwanese representative office to open under the name of “Taiwan” in Vilnius. The de facto embassy officially opened in November of the same year.

This move was received by China as an attack on the “One China” policy. Only 15 nations have formal ties with Taiwan, while most others have informal relations with the country through trade offices under the name of “Taipei” to avoid conflict with China.

As a result, Lithuania was hit by sanctions like never before by China. These Chinese sanctions were “unconventional” and included Lithuanian exports, EU products containing Lithuanian parts, as well as raw material imports from China.

China downgraded its diplomatic ties with Lithuania and recalled its ambassador in August 2021, and three months later, its consular services were suspended until further notice. Last December, the Lithuanian embassy in China was shut down.

Earlier this year, Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda stated on news radio Ziniu Radijas that the name of the office was a “mistake” and that the nation is now dealing with its consequences as both Lithuanian companies and European companies that procure parts from Lithuania express concern.

Tit for tat?

High-tech and infrastructure are issues of repeated dispute between China and Lithuania. In September, Lithuania’s Defense Ministry had urged consumers to dispose of their Chinese phones. The statement came after its National Cyber Security Centre prepared a report assessing the security of 5G technology mobile phones sold in Lithuania. It found that Xiaomi mobiles had a built-in censorship feature that could be activated remotely, and that Huawei’s devices had cybersecurity issues including data leakage.

Both companies have denied these claims. In 2019, Lithuanian intelligence made allegations that a Chinese company had been spying on Lithuanian individuals, with the Chinese Embassy considering these allegations “totally unacceptable.” In May of the same year, the Lithuanian Parliament had voted to ban “unreliable” manufacturers from the electronic communications market including China’s Huawei.

The legislation required high-technology companies to act in compliance with national security interests. In Huawei’s case, Lithuania’s military intelligence stated that Chinese law required companies to share information with the government. The decision came after a suggestion from the chairman of Lithuania’s Parliamentary Committee, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, who stated that manufacturers from “non-democratic” countries should be identified and that Lithuania would not be part of the “China-controlled technosphere.”

China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Lithuania

As an ex-Soviet nation, communist regimes have a negative connotation for Lithuania. Therefore, it advocates a tougher stance against Russia and China. Especially with Russia being its next-door neighbor, the invasion of Ukraine has put Lithuania and former Soviet nations at unease.

China’s relationship with Russia and its unwillingness to condemn Russia over Ukraine paints an even more tainted image for Lithuania. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed on Monday, March 7, 2022, China’s position on the issue and emphasized that China’s relationship with Russia was “rock-solid.”

In accordance with its value-based foreign policy, Lithuania distanced itself from China. The approach takes principles in the constitution such as democracy, independence, and rule of law as its basis. China has been criticized over the years by Lithuania on different occasions.

Last year, Lithuania signed a joint statement with 13 countries criticizing China over the lack of transparency in the WHO’s COVID19 report. A few months later, the Seimas, the parliament of Lithuania, passed a motion condemning China for committing genocide against the Uyghurs, calling on the UN to start an investigation into the issue.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views Western values as “hostile and harmful,” and associates them with China’s competition with the U.S. Following the tensions resulting from the de facto embassy of Taiwan in Lithuania, the Chinese media claimed that it is the U.S. influence on Lithuania that shapes Lithuania’s foreign policy attitudes towards China.

The article describes the Baltic nation’s strategy as “to woo and follow the U.S. and be a ‘loyal puppet’ that barks the fiercest at the U.S.’ strategic rivals in exchange for protection.”

In light of ongoing tensions between the West and Russia, China’s ally in the region, the ties between the Baltic nation of Lithuania and China are likely to remain uneasy for now.

Many policy-makers had warned of the potential Russian aggression against Ukraine, but with few exceptions nobody had expected Putin’s war jets to bomb the capital of Ukraine or the Russian army to invade Ukrainian territory. Vladimir Putin shocked the world and expectedly, this created turbulence in international politics as countries are economically interdependent. Meanwhile, Europe was faced with the tough reality of its dependency on Russian energy, slowing down its reaction time with sanctions.

For days now Russia has been bombing and trying to invade Ukrainian cities. Not only soldiers but also hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured, while hundreds of thousands have been displaced. The initial American and European reaction to the Russian invasion was weak and limited, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainians felt abandoned by their allies. European allies had hoped to deter Putin with sanctions.

Even though Biden and European leaders bragged about severe economic sanctions, this didn’t stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Energy export is the backbone of the Russian economy and sanctions against this sector would perhaps be the most devastating tool. However, it is unrealistic to expect the West to sanction the Russian energy trade, meaning oil and gas. Here is why.

Russian dominance over Western energy markets

In the 1960s, when Western Europe had begun to import gas from the Soviet Union, it was Western Germany that imported Soviet gas first. Over the years, as European demand for gas increased, European gas imports from the USSR increased as well. Things changed in the 1990s as states in Europe started diversifying their gas supplies and the Russian share in gas imports declined.

During that time, domestic gas production also increased in countries producing gas in Europe, notably the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK. But the amount they produced did not entirely replace Russian gas supplies; European countries’ dependence just decreased from about 90 percent to 75 percent in the late 1990s.

In the 2000s, liquified natural gas (LNG) became an alternative way to import gas. Europe started to construct regasification terminals. Today, led by Spain, more than 10 European countries have a total of about 210 billion cubic meters of LNG import capacity. This, however, does not mean that the EU does not import Russian gas anymore. In the first half of 2021, Russia was the main natural gas supplier of the EU with a share of 47 percent, followed by Norway with 20.5 percent.

The degree of the EU’s dependency on Russian gas differs from country to country. Eastern Europe is the most dependent on Russian gas, whereas Germany imports the most Russian gas by far. Overall, more than one third of the total of imported gas in Europe comes from Russia.

Most people confuse energy security with the security of natural gas supplies. This is a common mistake by the EU policy-makers, who focus exclusively on the gas supplies. Energy security means more: it is also about oil and coal imports. Both crude oil and petroleum products as well as coal imports by the EU are also dominated by Russia – 25 percent and 46 percent respectively.

Moreover, Europe is not the sole market that imports Russian energy products. China, along with other major Asian economies, and even the U.S., import oil and gas from Russia. Asian countries’ limited indigenous hydrocarbon resources have pushed them to turn to their energy-rich neighbor, Russia.

But due to infrastructure constraints caused by the rough geography of the U.S. that does not facilitate the construction of pipelines, the United States, the world’s number one oil and gas producer, is forced to buy both oil and gas from its ultimate rival, Russia.

Can sanctions deter Russia?

Russia is now facing critical sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine. The EU, the UK, the U.S., and Canada with many of their allies limited the Central Bank of Russia’s access to its $630 billion reserve. They also froze Putin’s and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s assets in their respective countries. But putting sanctions has its limits.

The circumstances were different when the U.S. led the international community-imposed sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, or Libya – all three are members of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), and Iran is the second-largest producer of crude oil in the organization. But Russia is not Iran. Russia is the second-biggest producer of global oil and gas, and its supply is desperately needed to heat homes, run factories, and generate electricity in Europe.

Since the last quarter of 2021, the world has been facing severe energy shortages which pushed the gas and electricity prices to levels that have never been seen before. As part of the sanctions against Russia, the EU just targeted the oil refineries of the Russian energy sector aiming to prevent their modernization. On February 27, the EU, the UK, Canada, and the U.S. decided to remove a number of Russian banks from the SWIFT system in order to restrict their ability to do business across borders.

This is expected to bring tremendous damage to the Russian economy. But then, European capitals began to import more Russian gas via Ukraine since the sanctions still do not target energy payments.

Time to rethink energy security in Europe

The Russian aggression in Ukraine once again has shown that the European Union deeply needs alternative energy suppliers. The fact that LNG is not a substitute for pipeline gas ties the hands of European states.

Neither Qatar, the second-biggest LNG exporter, nor the U.S., the number one natural gas producer, can replace Russian gas. It is not just about the capacity that they can supply, it is also about the European gas market structure. Many energy analysts seem unaware that the EU does not have a continent-wide natural gas transmission system. This means that we cannot talk about a single European gas market.

For instance, Spain, Europe’s largest gas liquefaction capacity holder, cannot transmit its gas to Germany or to Poland since it is disconnected from the rest of European gas infrastructure. Therefore, at the moment, LNG cannot offset the Russian pipelines’ gas. Most states with LNG facilities also import Russian LNG because it is cost-efficient.

What did France’s President think he was doing by visiting Putin in Moscow? On the anniversary of the EU adopting the Maastricht Treaty – heavily backed by France – a lot has changed in the world. But Macron hasn’t changed his own vision of France and is still living in the 90s where the Republic had more clout on the world’s stage and Russia was just rebuilding itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The long table stunt was pure genius by Putin, who knows a good media opportunity when it walks in the room. The ruse, to make Macron look pathetic, servile and very much a servant at the master’s table paid off as Macron was blindsided by the media arrangements, too obsessed with his moment in the global media spotlight.

Compared to other world leaders who visited Putin – Merkel, Trump and just recently Erdogan – Macron was certainly treated with a certain contempt, which reflects exactly how the  Russian leader regards the EU project and Macron himself. Lightweights.

Macron paid a heavy price consequently to agree to the long table photo shoot which served as an example of how out of touch he is and how desperate he is to promote himself as a world leader, weeks ahead of the Presidential elections in France which will probably reinstall him as the country’s premier.

He believes in a European pillar within NATO and that France should lead such a farcical vanguard, which is really what the visit to Putin was about. He undermined NATO entirely and even went as far as to support Russia’s presence in Eastern Ukraine all in exchange for the meeting itself which he really believed would make him shine at home with the voters and embolden his banal ideas of an EU army, led by France which supposedly would deter Putin.

The Russian leader’s threats are very real and Macron’s visit and the hilarious memes which followed gave Putin even more kudos.

All nonsense and wildly deluded. In reality what we saw by the move was that it merely enshrined Putin even more and affirmed him as a powerful leader of a mighty super power which, unlike the West, does not have a reputation of talking big but then retreating when someone calls its bluff. Putin is not Obama. The Russian leader’s threats are very real and Macron’s visit and the hilarious memes which followed gave Putin even more kudos and placed Russia where it has wanted to be but failed for twenty years – in a superior position where the West is actually listening to its security concerns. Macron just walked straight into a media trap and gave Putin exactly what he wanted: a snapshot of the West on its knees with cavernous, weak, ambitious leaders begging for sympathy.

Macron is part of a political elite which since Maastricht has treated Russia with contempt. In particular, the EU’s role in pushing Kiev to mull NATO membership was foolish and has led to the present crisis. The photo itself of the long table will be logged in the annals of history as the key moment where Russia no longer takes the EU and the West seriously as the tipping point now is in Russia’s favor.

Putin will be delighted by how the meeting went. Macron really got nothing accept mockery on the internet, while the EU and NATO had to just look on as puerile spectators while he made everyone look like second rate players.

Aside from the memes on the internet which just made Macron look stupid, there are some important messages there which Putin’s media people manipulated. The main message is that Russia has the advantage however the Ukraine debacle turns out. It is the lion, surrounded by mice.

The winner takes it all. And Putin is winning even more now after Macron gave him this latest media coup.

Macron’s embarrassing charade merely supported this. A French president who has delusional views about his own status in the world organizing himself a personal visit to see the Russian president doesn’t make France look like the super power that it would like to project of itself, more like a corrupt, minor EU member state which allows its president to manipulate its own media, led by a man who clearly doesn’t have any respect for the fourth estate.

France today is struggling to come to terms with its new demise and Macron’s visit just underlined this as he walked away a loser. The winner takes it all. And Putin is winning even more now after Macron gave him this latest media coup.

Another message from Putin is that he is neither scared nor bothered by the threat of sanctions from the West, which is really what the whole row is about. Sanctions alone will be difficult on Putin and in particular his close circle of tycoons who have huge investments in London. But as Biden has proved, secondary sanctions imposed on a handful of countries which buy oil from Iran, are very hard these days to implement and Putin has made it clear that, if necessary, he will trade sanctions for an invasion of some sort, if the West doesn’t engineer a way of Ukraine talking down NATO membership.

Of course, if Putin sent his own troops into those regions, Macron may well be delighted as this would give even more gravitas to his idea of an EU army. The problem of course is that the French leader doesn’t want to send French troops to a war zone with Russia, as he has proved by speeding up his own withdrawal of troops in Mali, once the presence of Russian mercenaries just recently emerged. But it will be that iconic picture of the long table which will haunt Macron as the Russian media machine will be the victor. As Churchill once said, history is written by winners. And that snapshop of the long table makes it quite clear who the winners and losers are.

Sweden prides and projects itself as being a very modern and liberal society, and an integral and active member of the international community. It is a country that seeks “to punch above its weight.” In practical terms this refers to its desire to have an effect on shaping global developments that is above and beyond its tangible resource availability.

Branding and reputation management play a key role in Swedish foreign policy as an attempted perception force multiplier and with special attention given to curating the impression of Sweden as a value entrepreneur in 21^st-century international relations. This begs the logical and critical question: does the communication hype match the substance of the practical implementation of Sweden’s foreign policy?

Ideological Basis of Swedish Foreign Policy

One of the central components of Swedish foreign policy is its international brand, used as a means to legitimize its actions and ideologically informed by politically central-based norms and values. There are four key profile areas in the “Brand Sweden” strategy that has been active since 2013: society, creativity, innovation, and sustainability. This is about how Sweden has officially defined Swedes, and how they desire to project Sweden and Swedishness to the world in its foreign policy as a template for others to follow. For example, “Brand Sweden” defines Swedish society in the following idealistic picture:

The Swedish social model inspires interest from around the world. The “Swedish model” is built on a core of economic growth, social responsibility and trust expressed through a universal welfare system and strong institutions. This profile area also includes values such as gender equality, respect for human rights, sustainable development, low corruption, and use of new technologies, and it can therefore be used in different ways to create trust in international contexts.

There is a palpable level of idealism and arrogance in the manner “official” Sweden views itself in relation to other countries and other peoples, which it pursues with a messianic zeal in spite of the obvious flaws and physical realm realities that paint a very different picture. The “unofficial” accounts of a system, such as the work of Masoud Kamali on the effects of neo-liberalism in and on Sweden, do not follow what it is preaching to the rest of the world.

The four profile areas noted above from the Brand Sweden campaign are in turn used to inform key Swedish foreign policy programs and approaches. This is where Sweden tries to project itself on the world stage as a progressive and forward-looking norm and value entrepreneur, and a “responsible” member of the international community.

Swedish Foreign Policy in Practice in the 21st Century

There are concrete practical and pragmatic reasons for Sweden’s efforts to cultivate a strong international brand image, which is used as the basis for realizing political objectives; encouraging scientific and cultural exchanges; attracting tourism, investment, and human talent; and promoting trade. It also serves the basis for what are considered as being negative rumors and disinformation.

Recently, institutional mechanisms have been created that are intended to uphold the official narrative in Sweden and abroad, such as the Department for Psychological Defense. These act as gatekeepers and defenders of the country’s idealized and curated image. The cracks are becoming more numerous and obvious in the utopian promises of Swedish foreign policy, and the dysfunctional reality is coming through.

Sweden intends to be an international actor serving for the good in the world. However, the country exports weapons to states involved in armed conflicts.

The notions and practices of Sweden’s humanitarian superpower brand and feminist foreign policy are coming under increasing critical scrutiny owing to obvious discrepancies and contradictions between word and practice. For example, the promise of Swedish feminist foreign policy is for Sweden to be an international actor and a force for good in the world. However, Sweden exports weapons to belligerent states involved in armed conflicts, such as the Gulf states and their war of attrition against Yemen.

The fact that Sweden is willing to arm non-democracies involved in a protracted bloody conflict such as that in Yemen and other conflicts, defies the rhetorical promises and gives a very hollow ring to the idea of Sweden as a responsible international actor bringing enlightenment, innovation, and sustainability to marginalized and dispossessed global peoples.

In contradiction to the idea of Sweden’s positive and peaceful contribution to international relations, encapsulated in such norms as neutrality or non-alignment with international brands, discrepancies are obvious. Thus, the Swedish political establishment elite is increasingly integrating into Euro-Atlantic structures and hosting NATO military exercises on Swedish soil. This suggests a general idea to build up hard power, not as an independent actor, but within the context of an existing military alliance.

Perhaps one of the major reasons for the failure of Sweden’s ideologically informed foreign policy is that this is better suited to a Western-centric global order, where the United States is the unipolar hegemonic power. In the global information and cognitive realm where liberalism was the ideological lens, the Swedish approach made sense. This is no longer the case as a non-Western-centric and multipolar order is gradually gaining power and influence, where pragmatic and non-ideological approaches and styles of communication are more effective.

Sweden is not detached from the mainstream, but rather is integrated into the global mainstream and the liberal politics establishment. It rarely ventures too far from the strategic priorities of mainstream liberal politics, and, on occasion, can engage with some leeway in foreign politics of lesser importance. In spite of all of the talk and rhetoric, Sweden does not follow an independent and innovative path of foreign policy – it follows the lead of such institutions as the European Union and the United Nations. At this point in time, the distinction between the promises of the ideological façade and the resulting dysfunctional reality cannot be more obvious.

People have migrated throughout history in search of basic resources and better living conditions. According to Francis Fukuyama, after the catastrophic world wars and the collapse of communism, the liberal democratic bloc declared itself victorious and idealism was born prophesizing that state boundaries would disappear and economies would be integrated.

Alas, no great war was in sight! However, this peaceful world vision developed a boil and a new wave of unprecedented global immigration emerged. As liberalism offered a perpetual peace, Europe, the most important representative of this theory in practice, became a top destination for emigrants who are in search of a better life. The EU has become one of the largest recipients of emigrants starting from the nearby Balkans.

Indeed, it is very difficult to account for a single reason that triggers migration from the Balkans. Reasons vary and combine economic, environmental, political, and social factors. However, generally, the academic literature on emigration studies underlines the economic reason as the primary and dominant push factor.

Migration comes along with a brain drain as the skilled labor force of poor countries gets poorer due to economic and political conditions and emigrates to richer countries for higher pay. Currently, Western Balkan countries and specifically Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia are losing their well-educated youth.

According to Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Youth Studies, in 2018, one third of young people from the Western Balkans expressed a “strong” or a “very strong” desire to emigrate from their countries, ranging from 26% in Montenegro, 27% in Bosnia, 30% in Serbia, 34% in Kosovo, 35% in North Macedonia, and 43% in Albania. These figures are even higher in some other studies.

A population loss

The emigration from the Balkans is considered a permanent one. Balkan countries are now in jeopardy of losing a substantial portion of their population density and their demographic characteristics.

Migration has a very general effect on the Balkans. Economically, if the shortage of qualified workers continues, it will discourage foreign investments and directly affecting the GDPs of Balkan countries. Critical industries may not be able to find qualified staff, especially the health sector. Politically, emigrants are mostly young and educated, and don’t give credit to the old-fashioned political clichés and the incapable political leaderships, which hide behind nationalist rhetoric.

Migration from the Balkans in numbers

According to the Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) of Albania, there have been  around 400,000 emigrants between 2011 and 2020. According to Hurriyet Daily, about 1.7 million, roughly 37% of the population, has left the country in the past 30 years.

Currently, the Albanian population is 2,837,740 and the primary destinations of emigration are Italy and Greece. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Albania ranks 4th globally in the emigration of a skilled labor force and most youth dream of a future abroad.

Additionally, some officials and researchers don’t trust KAS numbers. According to them, KAS estimates are lower and the real numbers are higher. Also, interestingly, between 2014 and 2015, around 100,000 Kosovars emigrated to the EU, a massive emigration wave that was dismissed by the government of Kosovo at that time. The number of emigrants in 2019 was 34,911, and the chief destinations were Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria.

It is hard to find an accurate data on Montenegrin emigration. According to data by the United Nations, in 2015 the population of Montenegro was 625,781. Additionally, based on UN statistics, the overall number of Montenegrin immigrants worldwide increased from 148,982 in 2010 to 153,009 in 2019. Germany receives the highest number of Montenegrin immigrants, and Italy and Luxemburg were among the most popular countries. However, in recent years, preferences have changed and intraregional migration has become more popular, especially to former Yugoslav states such as Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia due to the proximity and cultural similarities.

Lastly, the current population of Serbia is around 6,908,220. The UN estimated that emigrants from Serbia in 2017 reached nearly one million at a rate of between 30,000 and 60,000 a year since the breakup of Yugoslavia. The main destinations of Serbs are Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Urgent need to end brain drain

Can a common solution be found for the continuous emigration waves from the Balkans? First of all, the European Union should seriously step in and provide financial support in finding an applicable policy. Since the EU opened up for skilled labor from non-EU countries, it is partly responsible and should take responsibility for the brain drain in the Western Balkans.

Especially Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland should share the burden as they have benefitted the most. If the necessary precautions are not taken, Balkan countries will lose their youth and enthusiasm, and will end up empty villages within the so-called global village.

What is more, Western Balkan countries need to improve their databases on emigration. This is crucial to understanding the situation on the ground in order to formulate and recommend proper policies. Regular assessment is a must in line with accurate data and monitoring mechanisms.

The Western Balkan governments have to reverse this brain drain and encourage the sustainable return and placement of skilled emigrants in developing sectors such as IT, digitalization, robotics, design, etc. Countries could follow the example of Croatia.

The situation in Ukraine is becoming more and more dangerous each day with additional Russian troops and military equipment heading towards the border. Some reports and analyses predict that Russia may initiate a full-blown military conflict any time although a large-scale ground invasion is unlikely given the consequences Russia would face for such a move. Despite the unprecedented troop movement towards Ukraine, Russia’s strategy seems to be headed towards a grand bargaining with the U.S. at a time when the West is visibly fragmented.

The lack of sufficient European security assurances and military aid to Ukraine demonstrates that there are limits to how much help the country can receive against Russia. Russia’s smart foreign policy strategy that targets the West’s unity and the shifting focus of the U.S. from Eastern Europe to the Pacific are two of the most important parameters that limit the West’s ability to counter Russia.

Russia’s foreign policy strategy is aimed at further weakening the West’s cohesion and thus depleting impairing the position of the latter against it. To regain its lost power and status with the dissolution of the USSR, Russia strove to become a strong economic and military power while targeting the unity of the West through developing bilateral economic and energy relations with European countries.

Having become Europe’s largest energy supplier, Russia managed to carve out a form of coexistence with Europe. Despite being aware of such a threat and the existence of common platforms such as the EU and NATO, European nations have not been able to meet on common ground against Russia.

The shift of the U.S. foreign policy priority from Eastern Europe to the Pacific limited Western efforts to counterbalance Russia.

The shift of the U.S. foreign policy priority from Eastern Europe to the Pacific has also played a significant role in limiting Western efforts against Russia. Within the framework of China’s rapid economic growth that has acquired momentum since the early 2000s and in order to balance China, the U.S. diminished its security commitments in the Middle East and pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. moved thousands of its troops overseas from NATO bases in Europe to its bases in the Pacific.

According to the budget of the United States Department of Defense, China is the country’s  number one target. With the U.S. giving more emphasis on China, its European allies are looking to manage their security with diminished U.S. involvement. Having made a habit of outsourcing their security to the U.S. throughout the Cold War and beyond due to the lack of appropriate mechanisms under the EU roof, the Europeans were caught off guard by the type of challenge Russia created in Eastern Europe.

It should be noted that Turkey is in a precarious situation since it is developing relations with Russia within the framework of Turkey’s pursuit of an independent foreign policy strategy. Turkey’s sale of Bayraktar TB2 drones to Ukraine is being cautiously observed by Russia. Putin described the sale as “destructive behavior” in a phone conversation with Erdoğan. Turkey also proposed to act as a mediator in the crisis between Ukraine and Russia, a call both countries received favorably.

Germany and France, the EU’s strongest economies, remained hesitant when it came to providing military aid to Ukraine.

Germany and France, the EU’s strongest economies, remained hesitant when it came to providing military aid to Ukraine. In her visit to Kyiv, German Foreign Minister Baerbock refused to promise military aid to Ukraine citing the restrictive nature of Germany’s arms control policy. However, such hand-wringing may also have to do with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which will transport Russian natural gas directly to Europe circumventing Ukraine when it is completed.

In August 2021, during Merkel’s visit to Ukraine after the completion of Nord Stream 2, Ukraine’s President Zelensky and Merkel revealed their differences regarding the issue. Ukraine also protested Germany’s blocking of British arms in its airspace. Critics point out the double-standards of Germany’s arms sales citing its record-breaking arms exports to Egypt last year.

Following the footsteps of Germany, France, on top of not providing any concrete military assistance to Ukraine protested Ukraine’s use of Turkish-made drones in the battlefield – a  stance that angered Ukraine. At the end of the day, Ukraine was not able to receive support from leading European Union members.

The latest reports suggest that more anti-tank missiles might be coming to Ukraine as multiple Baltic nations received approval from the U.S. to send American-made anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, along with Poland, are the most sensitive NATO member states vis-à-vis the Russian threat. Rising tensions in Ukraine stirred fear in the Baltic nations which fear that they might be Russia’s next target.

In the late 2000s, a plan for the placement of U.S. missiles in Poland created an outrage in Russia, which considered the move as a provocative one. Baltic nations, however, will be unable to send any German-made weapons to Ukraine as Germany blocks arms exports from third countries as well.

The supply of military weapons in the form of anti-tank missiles is intended to be used in the event of a ground invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Such an invasion may never materialize, but Russia’s threat to European security and the unity of NATO will persist. A long-term solution to the regional crisis could come only through concerted efforts to strengthen the Ukrainian armed forces.

As the crisis escalates, the limits of Germany’s and France’s readiness to protect European security emerges. The security challenge Russia created for Europe in Ukraine will continue to haunt it until Russia is either reassured or deterred. Europe’s apparent failure to deter Russia through providing sufficient military support to Ukraine may encourage future Russian provocations and endanger European security and unity.

With hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to enter Europe since 2015, a common European Union policy on refugees has become an undeniable necessity. However, the EU has failed in dealing with the refugee crisis particularly in terms of carrying the burden equally among all member states. The crisis continues to this day and is dividing Europe above all other issues.

As no solution has been found by the EU countries, the crisis leaves thousands of refugees trapped at borders. The most recent example is the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe at the border between Belarus and Poland, where thousands of refugees are waiting to cross into Europe.

In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to enter Europe through Italy and Greece, and refugees have been searching for alternative routes into Europe. Poland, a member of the European Union, has become the new doorway to the EU, a route to build a better future.

Refugees are using this comparatively new migration route by way of Belarus. Refugees sell all their property in their home countries in order to afford the journey expenses to the Belarus border, while others are allegedly encouraged by the government of Belarus and given tourist visas and plane tickets to Minsk. As a result, in the last few months, nearly 2,000 refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, have been trapped between Belarus and Poland.

Desperate refugees have tried to breach the Polish border with Belarus, and Polish troops have used water cannons and tear gas to stop them. Meanwhile, Poland has significantly increased its border security. Even though some managed to make it into Europe, most refugees tried to survive in these dire conditions until November 17, 2021, when they were moved into a refugee camp provided by the Belarusian government at the Kuznica-Bruzgi border crossing, only a kilometer from Poland.

The conditions in the shelters are very harsh with limited access to water, food, and medicine. The weather is freezing: below -10 degrees Celsius. There is no social distancing in light of the COVID19 pandemic and people claim to get one meal a day. Toilets and showers are housed separately from the shelters, and around 1,200 refugees live and sleep on blankets. Some have even lost their lives in these freezing conditions. At the same time, since Poland has strengthened its border fence, it seems nearly impossible to enter Europe.

Yet another political game is being played between Russia and the EU via Belarus. While Russia supports Belarus in the migrant crisis, it denies the involvement of Belarus in the migration cirsis and blames European countries for imposing sanctions on Belarus.

Even though by inviting migrants to enter the EU, Belarus is using them as a political tool, these desperate people flee their countries not because of Lukashenko’s invitation but because they have no other option. If they did not flee to Belarus, they would flee somewhere else. Rather than focusing on the humanitarian crises and on possible solutions, countries are blaming one another for political gains while the EU continues not to accept migrants.

At this very moment, there is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding at the EU border and a critical question remains unanswered: what is going to happen to the migrants on the Belarus and Poland border? What will happen to them if they refuse to return to their home countries?

Europe as a whole is not ready to normalize relations with Damascus, but some countries are exploring their options with their eyes closed.

A few European Union member states have mixed opinions about normalization with Bashar Alassad and their policies reflect that.

Denmark and Germany started sending refugees with criminal records back to Syria declaring that Damascus is a safe place to live.

But that may not be enough to meet the requirements of the Dublin Accords which protect refugees from being sent back to their home countries if they face possible detention or revenge attacks because of their political views.

Even though discussion about normalization with Alassad has become a geopolitical trend, the reality is that the situation in Syria is unstable and unpredictable.

European countries, along with the United States, and a long list of Arab countries, are unable to solve the huge humanitarian crisis in Syria, and some would rather revert to the pre 2011 revolution status quo.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians amassed on European borders.

The most prominent example of this policy was the European migration deal struck with Turkey in 2016. Europe offered Turkey monetary incentives to prevent the massive flow of migrants across land and sea towards Europe. At the time, hundreds of thousands of Syrians amassed on European borders and lined back roads and footpaths across the European continent with hopes of starting new lives.

They were escaping a Syria that was in decline but already unlivable in many ways.

Even before the revolution individual rights were heavily restricted, free market conditions were abhorrent, opportunities for youth were limited, long droughts negatively impacted agricultural production, intelligence agencies were loyal to the Alassad family, and the dictatorial tendencies of Bashar Alassad were no mystery to Syrians inside and outside the country.

Many countries conveniently ignored the fact that the Daesh terror group was coordinating directly with Bashar Alassad’s intelligence agencies and many of the members, including mid to top level leaders, were released from Syrian prisons only to directly join the terror group. This was a major turning point in the progression of the revolution, since the regime was able to convince European countries that the revolution was actually a threat to them because Daesh represented the kinds of ideas that the antigovernment protesters carried.

It was Alassad’s intention to force Europe’s hand using the fear card from the very beginning of the revolution. Recently forced into retirement, then Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmed Bedreddin Hassoun, threatened to send suicide bombers to Europe in 2011 if western countries intervened in Syria.

Years later, multiple Daesh inspired terror attacks took place across Europe. Then in 2018, German parliament members of the far-right political party, Alternative for Germany, visited Damascus, and met with many people including Hassoun. They wanted to find a way to send Syrians back and they needed to declare the country safe.

Despite mounting evidence of human rights violations going back decades, some European countries are more comfortable looking the other way.

The most recent evidence of Europe turning a blind eye to the horrors of Alassad family is the return of Bashar’s estranged uncle Rifaat.

Rifaat was exiled from Syria by his brother Hafez, Bashar’s father, in 1984. While in Europe, Rifaat embezzled money and was investigated in both Spain and France for related violations. But his criminal record began years before he went to Europe.

Rifaat Alassad worked hand in hand with his brother Hafez to conduct the coup that put Alassad family in power and according to most informed sources directly oversaw what is now known as the “Hama massacre”.

In 1982, Rifaat Alassad, or the “Butcher of Hama”, was the commanding General who carried out the siege of Hama where according to some estimates up to 40,000 people were killed. The military operation put to an end a religiously motivated political uprising that started in 1976 by the Muslim Brotherhood.  Two years later, Rifaat failed to overthrow his brother Hafez and went into exile, settling in France.

Rifaat Alassad recently escaped France on a private jet avoiding a four-year jail sentence for embezzlement but more importantly he was also able to escape possible prosecution resulting from an ongoing investigation in Switzerland about his role in committing possible war crimes in Hama.

Some European countries are using normalization with Alassad to put pressure on Turkey, especially Greek Cyprus and Greece.

It remains a mystery how Rifaat was able to flee France unhindered and why Swiss authorities were unable to impress upon the French the severity of the allegations against him. For Rifaat, Bashar, and Europe – the uncle’s return to Syria carries significant implications.

Bashar allowed his uncle to return to build comradery with the Alawite community which holds Rifaat in high regard and have grown frustrated with Bashar. Using his uncle as a counterbalance to his cousin Rami Makhlouf who spent the past two years pleading with Bashar via social media to stop expropriating his personal assets.

But more importantly for Bashar, he wanted to prevent his uncle from cooperating with European authorities revealing family secrets implicating Bashar, his narco-trafficking kingpin brother Maher Alassad, or others, in a long list of crimes, both past and present.

While some European countries are happy to see Alassad family consolidate its criminal enterprises and reign in the vast network of beneficiaries relieving Europe from having to face off with the mafia-like family in European court rooms; other European countries are using normalization with Alassad to put pressure on Turkey, especially Greek Cyprus and Greece.

The Netherlands listed a Dutch pacifist activist on a terrorism list and shared his data with Europol, the European police agency, and Interpol, the international police agency. Here are the risks the activist is now facing.

Surveillance society 

The threat of terrorism and organized crime has led countries around the world to develop surveillance systems meant to prevent attacks and crimes. Large scale databases have been set up to inform law enforcement authorities about the activities, movements, and statements of suspected persons.

Because of the movement of suspects across borders, police authorities cooperate and exchange information about their identity and whereabouts.

Interpol and Europol store information on persons in the form of alerts sent by national police authorities. Those alerts request for a particular action to be taken such as the surveillance, arrest, detention or the deportation of the person.

A Dutch pacifist activist on a terrorism list

For years, Frank van der Linde has been advocating for social justice. He has demonstrated and publicly defended anti-racism causes and the rights of the Palestinians.

In 2014, the Dutch police and the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) started surveying van der Linde, including by recording his statements on Twitter. From 2017 to 2019, they added his personal data to a terror list alongside terrorist suspects and shared this information with Europol and Interpol. Since then, the police referred to Frank activities with a CTER-code (Counter Terrorism Extremism and Radicalization).

In October 2018, for the first time, van der Linde requested the police provide him with the information they stored about him, and he learned about being surveilled. In February 2019, police agencies including the NCTV recognized Frank’s activism as non-violent and removed him from the terrorism list.

Black Boxes of Information 

Interpol’s constitution, adopted in 1956 after the police agency had briefly fallen into Nazi hands, states neutrality as one of the main principles guiding its actions. The organization is strictly forbidden to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character (Article 3, Interpol Constitution).

Interpol’s red notices have been used by states to track and imprison political opponents who have fled their home countries.

Similarly, Europol as a European agency adheres to the key principles of good governance promoted by the Ombudsman’s European Code of Good Administrative Behaviour, including impartiality.

Interpol’s red notices have been used by states to track and imprison political opponents who have fled their home countries. Recognized refugees fleeing persecution have been targeted with alerts asking for their detention and return.

Vivid criticism from members of civil society led to the reform of Interpol and to the creation of the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) that reviews whether alerts are in line with Interpol’s rules. In practice, however, plenty needs to be done, and the vetting system remains inconsistent and secretive.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), the supervisory authority for Europol, admonished the European police agency last year for collecting information outside of its mandate. Large scale databases were sent by member states to Europol’s big data case for analysis. Due to the number and complexity of the information, the police agency stored them all before reviewing them.

Vivid criticism from members of civil society led to the reform of Interpol and to the creation of the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) that reviews whether alerts are in line with Interpol’s rules

The decision to transfer personal data to a police agency should not be taken lightly. To protect the principle of impartiality and individual rights, police agencies should review all data shared by states before making them available in their system.

Who polices the police?

Van der Linde’s information has been removed from the Dutch terror list.

However, there is no automatic deletion from Interpol and Europol systems after the data has been deleted from the national database.

Europol has decided in this case to keep the data in its database. The EDPS is currently reviewing Europol’s decision to refuse van der Linde’s request for information. The supervisory authority has nonetheless no enforcing power on Europol. Indeed, Europol’s big data case has not been followed by corrective measures from the police agency. On the contrary, the recent reform proposal by the commission regarding Europol regulation will legalize the unlawful practices of the police agency.

In May, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided on the case of a German citizen who after suspicion of fraud had his personal information recorded in a red notice by Interpol. After settling the case in Germany with the payment of a fine, he complained that his data continued to be stored by Interpol due to an alert based on the same fraud in the United States.

Earlier this month, the Polish Constitutional Court ruled that several provisions contained by the Treaty on European Union were incompatible with the Polish Constitution, at least under a certain interpretation. According to the judges, the phrases setting out “an ever-closer union” and the principle of “sincere cooperation” violate the Polish Constitution, but only insofar as they serve to create “an ever-closer union” and allow the EU authorities to “act outside the scope of the competences conferred upon them.”

The Polish Constitutional Court also ruled that if the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) or European Court of Justice (ECJ) were to “grant domestic courts … the competence to … review the legality of the procedure for appointing a judge” in Poland, this would constitute a violation of the Polish Constitution.

In sum, quite a few conditions need to be fulfilled before the top Polish court would consider an action by the EU as unconstitutional. Still, this is probably the most radical stance taken by a national top court when it comes to the age-old debate of whether and under what conditions EU law is superior to national law.

In an interview, the president of the ECJ, Belgian professor Koen Lenaerts, stated that “when [Hungarian PM] Orban says that primacy of EU law is only valid for competences attributed to the EU, he is absolutely right. However, then, there is the question whether something is within or outside the scope of the EU’s competences, and who should rule on this. The ECJ has the monopoly to supervise respect for the distribution of competences between the EU and member states.”

Quite a few conditions need to be fulfilled before the top Polish court would consider an action by the EU as unconstitutional.

The dispute however is that many top courts of member states have in the past openly distanced themselves from the interpretation taken by the ECJ on this.

Speaking at the European Parliament, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated,

We have no doubt about the primacy of European law over national laws in all areas where competence has been delegated to the Union by member states. However, like the courts in many other countries, Polish Tribunal raises the question as to whether the monopoly of the Court of Justice to define the actual limits of entrusting these competences is the proper solution.

Solutions 

In the end, the key problem is that the ECJ is part and parcel of the EU system and therefore it is not neutral in the discussion on whether a competence belongs at the national or at the EU level. This is often up for interpretation.

Therefore, I have suggested the creation of a so-called subsidiarity court, a new intergovernmental institution superior to the EU legal order and comprised of representatives of the judicial branches of EU member states, exclusively tasked to stop the European Court of Justice from adopting unacceptably extensive interpretations.

Meanwhile, the dispute between Poland and the EU will need to be sorted out. In effect, the Polish ruling followed a question of clarification coming from the Polish government on when precisely EU law is superior. Supposedly, the Polish government may try to use this as justification for not complying with ECJ rulings, for example on the ECJ ordering it to shut down a coal mine near the Czech border or with regards to fines that have resulted from this. Here, compromises are possible, even if it may not be obvious.

Several EU member states, including Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are pushing to cut EU funds to Poland as a punishment for violating the EU’s rule of law. This may sound appealing to some, but it is a tricky path. There is a serious danger of double standards: why would Poland need to be punished and not Romania, which was condemned  by the European Court of Human Rights over the firing of the chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate? That’s not to say that there is no problem with the rule of law in Poland, of course, but to let other democracies be the judge of that is a risky game.

Fundamentally, the main action the EU can take is to stop fueling cronyism in member states by indulging them with a lot of EU funds. A lot of those EU funds all too often support local oligarchs, who often acquire large amounts of political power on that basis as well. In Southern Europe, organized crime groups have skimmed off a lot such money.

In that sense, to cut EU funds is a great idea. After all, a 2016 Centre for Economic Policy Research report concluded that “EU structural funds [are] negatively correlated with regional growth.” However, it should happen equally and for everyone.

In his interview with the Financial Times on 14 October 2021, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted that the increased power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the world stage necessitated an update to NATO’s geostrategic contingency planning. Stoltenberg envisaged inclusion of the implications of China’s rise as part of the agenda for NATO’s forthcoming Strategic Concept.

Inasmuch as the latter marks the grouping’ formal identification of its agenda of geostrategic concerns, inclusion of China underscores the transatlantic alliance’s apprehensions over the implications of the increasingly assertive foreign policy behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Beijing’s superpower ambitions.

Although Stoltenberg did not explicitly refer to China as a prospective adversary for NATO, the overall geostrategic context outlined by the Secretary-General reflected the unease with which the transatlantic alliance views the rise of China. Stoltenberg’s statement underscores the multifarious instruments of power that give Beijing enhanced capacity to undertake strategic coercion against the transatlantic alliance. Apart from the rapid growth in China’s nuclear and conventional military capabilities, China has also invested in a range of unconventional instruments of statecraft that, even whilst ostensibly civilian in nature, grant Beijing enhanced leverage and influence.

For instance, it is notable that Chinese infrastructure funding is granted with the expectation that recipients of such investment reciprocate through the adoption of pro-Beijing quid pro quos. European countries have not been spared from the growing impact of Chinese economics-based influence operations; for instance, China’s establishment of a factory in Germany for the production of batteries for electrical cars is aimed at ensuring market-share dominance in Europe, whilst simultaneously underscoring Beijing’s ability to put European jobs at risk.

Countries that have dared to defy China, such as Australia, Canada and the ROK, have found themselves on the receiving end of Chinese economic retaliation.

Concurrently, countries that have dared to defy China, such as Australia, Canada and the ROK, have found themselves on the receiving end of Chinese economic retaliation. Although China has pitched its ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative as an opportunity for enhancing commerce between Europe and Asia, the underlying reality is that the OBOR enables China to tighten its economic leverage over much of Europe and Asia.

Elsewhere, the PRC has exploited the anonymous nature of cyberspace and the transatlantic community’s commitment to democratic values and freedom of speech. Beijing has invested in its cyberwarfare capabilities for a range of tasks that include espionage, election meddling, and the development of AI and facial recognition facilitate political persecution in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

Recent years have seen increasing numbers of NATO members joining US-led Freedom of Navigation (FONOPs) air and naval activity in the South China Sea and in the vicinity of Taiwan. Such developments, in conjunction with stepped-up joint military exercises between NATO members and regional states in the Indo-Pacific – including the members of the U.S.-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or ‘Quad’), portend the prospective scenario of European NATO members contributing combat assets to a U.S.-led coalition against China in an Indo-Pacific security flashpoint.

Recent years have seen increasing numbers of NATO members joining US-led Freedom of Navigation (FONOPs) air and naval activity in the South China Sea and in the vicinity of Taiwan.

The Quad brings together the U.S., India, Japan and Australia – the most powerful democracies in the Indo-Pacific region, all of whom have strained relations with China. The expanded ‘Quad-Plus’ brings on board the ROK, New Zealand and Vietnam as additional security partners. Combined with the extent of Chinese dependence on its export markets to Europe, the CCP is wary of the possibility of China becoming diplomatically, economically and geostrategically outflanked by a U.S.-led partnership that combines the U.S.’s NATO partners, the Quad-Plus, and pro-U.S. members of ASEAN (in particular, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, all of whom have increased the extent of their security cooperation with the U.S.).

Under such circumstances, China is attempting to develop non-military tools of coercion – in particular, economic influence and cyberwarfare – through which Beijing can subvert the democratic values of NATO members, sow discord in the transatlantic alliance, and thus neutralize any prospective scenario of a U.S.-led global effort that combines NATO’s assets with the existing U.S. security infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific.

Within the broader geostrategic context, NATO has further reason to affirm its alignment with the U.S. against China. The decades of European NATO members’ under-investment in their defense capabilities has resulted in a situation wherein NATO is dependent on the U.S. for their own security. Such dependence was highlighted by the abrupt nature of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, with European NATO members reduced to the status of helpless bystanders in the face of the Biden Administration’s pullout.

This development comes amidst the unease that European NATO members – in particular, the former Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe – of the prospective scenario of a resurgent Russia that has increased its investment in conventional force modernization, cyberwarfare, and hybrid warfare capabilities. Set against this threat, European NATO members are all too aware of their dependence on the U.S. in the event that the new ‘Cold War’ with Russia were to turn ‘hot’.

Under such circumstances, it is logical that NATO members align themselves with the U.S.-led efforts to contain China, in order to affirm the standing of NATO as allies of the U.S. that Washington is treaty-bound to protect in an East European security contingency.

Inasmuch as Stoltenberg’s statement reflects NATO’s concerns over the rise of China as a potential threat to the transatlantic alliance, it will be necessary for the latter to adopt a deft balancing act. On the one hand, China’s increasing assertiveness marks a direct challenge to the democratic principles that underpin the transatlantic alliance; on the other hand, critical global issues, in particular the threat posed by climate change, are too complex for the U.S. and its partners to ‘go it alone’, given the ability of China to act as a ‘spoiler’ to block international cooperation on issues of shared global concern.

Whilst it may be necessary for the NATO’s forthcoming agenda to acknowledge the geostrategic implications of the rise of China, it will be concurrently necessary for the U.S. and its partners to simultaneously keep the door open for cooperation with the PRC on such areas of common global interest.