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Meanwhile, in the Disunited States of Europe …
I get bored sometimes when the only topic of conversation around here is the race for the presidency in 2016. (We have three branches of government, remember? And a culture. And then there’s the rest of the world.) But that focus has been entirely warranted in the past few days. Super Tuesday’s genuinely a big deal — for the whole world. Everyone, everywhere, has been riveted to the drama.
And everyone, everywhere, seems a bit perplexed: “The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president,” writes a baffled Financial Times, which has been so stressed out by everything else that this is only now beginning to dawn on them. Anyway, it’s hangover Thursday, so come with me as I catch up with the news over here. Let’s take a whirlwind tour ’round the Stressed-Out and Disunited States Europe.
Seems this morning the French Minister for the Economy, Emmanuel Macron, told Britain that if they Brexit, France will stop keeping all those migrants from Calais from racing across the Channel into Britain. (That camp is built, by the way, literally, I kid you not, on top of a former toxic waste dump. It’s heartwarming to see how quickly these human beings have been politically weaponized by every modern European nation-state! Enlightened.) Macron pointed out that a Brexit could annul the 2003 Treaty of Le Touquet, which is what allows Britain to patrol its border on the French side of the Channel. Basically, he said, “Jerk us around and we’ll flood you with the wretched of the earth.” (And here we thought only the Gaddafis of this world could sink to that. How wrong we were.)
He also threatened to “roll out the red carpet” in France for all the bankers fleeing London — which they would, because they’d no longer be able to trade in Europe from the City. Macron, who’s usually pretty sensible, seems to have been studying Trumponomics, too: He wants Britain to stay in and pay up, but he wants Brussels to protect European industries and jobs. “We ask our companies to restructure, we ask employees to work more for less money because there is overproduction but then we’re unable to defend them from cheaper Chinese imports. We are insane,” he said. (He didn’t sound insane to me until the last sentence.)
Smoot-Hawley Global Economy 2.0, here we come.
Coming up on March 7: The EU convenes in Brussels for Emergency Summit No-One-Can-Even-Remember-How-Many anymore to fight over the refugee crisis. Merkel has her hopes pinned on warehousing them in Turkey. But countries along the Balkan Route, led by Austria, staged a revolt. Now Vienna is only accepting 80 asylum applications per day at the Spielfeld crossing with Slovenia. So Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia restricted the influx in response. “Shifting responsibility from one border to the next is clearly not the solution,” said the Macedonian Foreign Minister Nicola Poposki, as Macedonia shifted responsibility from one border to the next and tear-gassed them back into Greece.
Austria meanwhile held its own swanky, exclusive refugee emergency summit to which it didn’t invite Greece. Or anyone else in Europe, except the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Greece was furious and reacted by recalling its ambassador from Vienna, which was, as Der Spiegel put it, “a gesture that in the diplomatic world is akin to giving Austria the middle finger.” The European Migration Commissioner responded with a “harshly worded letter” to the Austrian interior minister. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister said that Europe no longer has a plan: “We are heading into anarchy.” Austria’s defense minister started screaming that Merkel should take in everyone now stranded in Greece, and basically it’s the diplomatic version of hell week at the Phi Delts. You know it’s out of control because somehow Turkey’s sounding like the only sane one of the lot. (The stress seems to have particularly gotten to Volker Beck, a popular Green party member of the Bundestag, who was just arrested with what media claims was crystal meth. Good governance in Europe takes yet another hit.)
But Europe’s come up with a new plan: Since the refugees are piling up in Greece, the rest of Europe is trying to bribe Greece to just keep them. Our opening bid is €700 million. Cash. We won’t ever hassle you about austerity and all that stuff again. Greece isn’t so sure, especially because the last time the EU made them a promise it promised to take 66,400 refugees from Greece, and so far they’ve only actually taken 325. “We have come to the time when Greece is likely to be sacrificed for the good of the EU,” said the Slovak prime minister Robert Fico. (Doesn’t he realize he’s next? Slovakia’s easy to sacrifice.) So Greece is now sending 308 “irregular migrants” back to Turkey.
A confused Greek media has decided Turkey must be to blame; Turkey’s always to blame. They’re now reporting that Turkey’s blocking NATO from intercepting human traffickers:
NATO warships located in the Aegean under German command are to monitor the movements of smugglers. However, according to an AFP report citing diplomatic sources from Brussels, Ankara said “no” to the demands of the German command of the NATO naval mission. This claim was confirmed by a second diplomat.
The first diplomatic source commented that this problem was known from “the beginning” and further revealed that Turkey wants the German commander, Rear Admiral Jörg Klein, to travel to Ankara and outline the area where the NATO vessels will be deployed.
Furthermore, the same source pointed out that despite the assurances of Greek and German officials, Turkey appears to have little to no interest in receiving refugees rescued by NATO during the operations.
As for the conflict giving rise to this crisis, everyone’s out of ideas. “The key to solving Europe’s refugee crisis lies in Syria, not Brussels,” the Telegraph correctly notes. “An important first step would be to try to make the Russians understand that a ceasefire is not a ceasefire when you carry on bombing your foes.” That’s right. It’s just a language problem. Maybe we can explain it in interpretive dance?
NATO’s top General Philip Breedlove has accused Russia and Syria of weaponising the massive influx of people fleeing the Syrian conflict to destabilise the West:
“Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve,” Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Speaking of Russia’s six-month air campaign in support of Assad, and the Syrian leader’s use of barrel bombs in civilian areas, Breedlove said Moscow and Damascus are deliberately fueling the mass displacement of Syrians.
“These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can’t find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else’s problem,” Breedlove said.
This is obviously true, but the uncharitable thought comes to mind that if this is all it takes to destabilize the West, the West must have been more of a basket case to begin with than we realized, don’t you think?
Published in Foreign Policy, General
Wow, that is depressing.
Who in Europe is going to be the first one to chuck the whole open borders thing and go back to full immigration control? (Basically give the EU the middle finger) What will the EU do in response? Is Merkel crazy? (She sure seems to be to me.) Why in G_d’s name would Britain want to stay in any sort of political union with these loons, much less an ever closer one?
Maybe an outside-the-box (i.e., loon?) POTUS is what is needed. Instead of just “taking their oil”, it might be cheaper in the long run to seize territory in Syria and Iraq, establish a UN / NATO / League of Nations That Don’t Suck/Anglosphere-led Protectorate. Ruthless enforcement of Westernized norms and economic rules and ruthless defense of the protectorate’s borders. If more refugees enter, the borders expand at the expense of neighboring countries that can’t get it together.
Europeans would have a place to dump the refugees they don’t want and can’t really accept without committing cultural suicide.
Muslims have voted overwhelmingly with their feet to accept the premise that Western culture is better. They should be made to expressly acknowledge that fact. In the new Protectorate, Muslims would be required to renounce jihad, accept an Attaturk-like secular state and adopt other Western political and social presumptions or be pushed out into the receding ISIS/Hezbollah-infested wilderness.
The Bush Administration hoped that maintaining a successful, pluralistic, democratic Iraq would, by its mere existence, undermine both autocratic regimes and Islamofascist fantasies. Obama pissed away that opportunity so the establishment of a successful, humane state in that region would now require considerably more effort, investment and will.
We could house all the unicorns and fairies there as well. :)
Living in London now, recent move, and seeing all of this first-hand. What amazes me is to see how the Brexit campaign headed by Boris Johnson looks and smells a lot like the Trump phenomenon. Populism is converging.
By the way, the City will protect itself on an exit. If we know anything, its that the powers-that-be never really feel the results of all of these changes. Britain will cut a deal on exit that replicates the market access that both sides need today.
Also, makes me angry that the U.S. did not step in to Syria. I hate foreign wars as much as the next guy, but abdicating the role of World Police does not make anything better in the end. It’s a burden we just have to live with.
I find it decidedly ironic that I’m hearing about a wall around Europe to preserve the Schengen zone from the threats of migration.
This isn’t exactly surprising. I keep hearing that Germany is Europe’s economic engine and it’s hit 2.0% growth twice in the last ten years. That’s like depending on an AMC Gremlin to carry you through the 2016 Daytona 500.
If you don’t have kids, don’t have money, don’t have a military and depend on an ethnic identity to bind your populace together then you’re not exactly going to be able to absorb millions of new migrant workers from a foreign culture.
I’ve heard people talk about healthcare and other jobs taking care of an aging European population but why would a Syrian want to spend their life taking care of an aging European exactly?
Basket case is a harsh word, but I admit that I am [also?] bored with the West’s freak out over [brown] refugees. (Including Australia’s thing with boat people.)
Turkey [in addition to other issues] is far from pleased about hosting more than two and half million Syrian refugees, but they aren’t running around having vapours and falling apart. Even Lebanon (Lebanese population 4.5 million, refugees from Palestine 500,000, refugees from Syria 1.25 million) seems to be coping with more grace.
What is this about?
Well they have, already, pretty much. Or eight out of 26 have reinstated border controls. The problem is that this is hugely expensive: There’s a reason people wanted them lifted in the first place. Imagine the cost of having border controls around every state in the union.
Hard to say, because Europe’s really caught between two superpowers having meltdowns and the Middle East exploding — so much of this will depend on contingent, external events. Basically, I think it will muddle through. I don’t see much choice.
She seems the only sane one to me. She truly seems to be the only one who grasps that there’s a true emergency, that European states just cannot just shunt these human beings around, and that of course Europe can and must cope with it. If you click through to the interview, you can listen to her — she sounds sane. I don’t understand German well enough to understand all the nuances, but I was impressed by her calm. She spoke again and again of her duty or obligation (pflicht); and she spoke at great length about Europe’s obligations. She also refused to say how many refugees Germany was prepared to accept; refused to back down on the issue of Germany’s borders, other than to ridicule the very idea that they could be patrolled, observing — correctly, of course — that given a crisis of this magnitude, those stopped at formal border controls would find a way to slip in through the countryside. She refused to truckle, even for a minute, to politicians eager to throw up their hands and declare assimilation impossible; but she did draw a careful distinction between assimilation without limit and repatriation for those who needed and wished to return home once it became possible. She said that she was the leader of a Christian party. Good for her for saying it. She also admitted that Germany could have done a better job of organizing things, and that it would do better in the future. The contrast between Merkel and the rest of Europe’s politicians is painful. German dominance over this continent would be an excellent thing if she truly represents what Germany’s become. I’m all for it.
It’s an economic union. They want access to a free trade zone, and they got the language of “ever-closer union” out of the deal. Obviously, among the reasons they’d want it is, for example, to be able to patrol their border on the French side of the Channel. I find it disgusting — the refugees must be allowed to stay; the economic migrants must be sent back, and human beings shouldn’t be bargaining chips, period. We all know this. But this is the problem with insufficiently centralized power. Federalism has pros and cons; this scenario is the con.
The same reason younger Europeans do it now – a salary.
Great post Claire
Of course, compared to what’s happening in Greece, Calais is a sideshow. The numbers of migrants don’t even begin to compare.
However, Macron’s threat looks pretty empty to me. He seems to have forgotten that the only legal way to get across the Channel is by privately-operated boat, airplane or undersea tunnel train service. It’s a long way to swim otherwise or you take your chances stowing away on a lorry. (Thank you again last ice age for that strip of water).
So how on Earth is France going to “let them all through” en masse if the migrants don’t have valid passports, visa etc. Buy them all Eurostar tickets and insist that the operators allow them on without a valid travel document? We could deal with the trickle who manage to stow away on trains, trucks or ferries pretty easily; UK border controls on the French side or not.
Plus the Brits always react so well to being told what to do by the French…
As to the City not being able to trade in Europe. The City already trades in the US markets, South America, Hong Kong, Africa and China without being in a political union with any of these counterparties. That is precisely why the likes of Deutsche Bank, BNP, Soc-Gen etc have such large operations in London. If the EU were foolish enough to try to shut themselves out of the UK’s financial markets, the loss would be pretty one-sided.
In fact one of the big plus points for the “out” campaign is that the City would no longer be subject to EU financial services regulation (it being a long-held and not-too-subtly-concealed goal of the French and the Germans to have the City supplanted by Frankfurt and Paris) and therefore more, not less, globally competitive.
The way the Schengen area is supposed to work is that those countries with external borders actually protect them, so that the internal borders can be relaxed. Whether this could ever work with an archipelagous and broke country like Greece being one of the front-line states is arguable – but it’s certainly not working. An essential component of the scheme having failed, there seems no alternative but to scrap (or redraw) it.
That is, Europe is supposed to have open borders the way a submarine can have open hatches. It only works for as long as the hull remains unbreached.
In a forest if there are not regular burn offs there must be a conflagration. The other thing about dense old forests is that they reach a balance of almost no change or new growth. All the symbiotic relationships are stable. Conflagrations start it all over again and there is robust growth and change. The founders had figured out how to have both growth, human flourishing and the absence of conflagration. We’re now in the stagnant no flourish stage awaiting the conflagration.
I truly don’t know. You’re right to point out how bizarre it is.
Plus it’s just so disgusting. So lacking in decency. France may not have a robust growth rate, but it’s a prosperous, First World country. It shouldn’t be using a camp full of refugees as political blackmail.
Agree on all.
Plus it’s illegal. The Dublin II Regulation makes “the first safe country” solely responsible for refugees. If that is France, then it’s up to the French to process them, (just as the UK does with asylum seekers – dwarfing the numbers in Calais – who arrive in Heathrow). If that was not France, then the French have a legitimate beef with Italy, etc but not with the UK. It’s not our job to do the French government’s work for it.
As opposed to all the other vacant jobs they could take?
There are enough refugees to, theoreticaly, plug a lot of this alleged looming labour shortage.
The point is, European economies will need labour – in Healthcare and elsewhere. Can refugees from Syria meet this need? I think that they could well, at least in part. Don’t you think so?
There are only two real solutions if the EU wants to stop the flow of refugees from Greece into the rest of Europe (i) establish massive EU- funded refugee camps in Greece (and be prepared to sustain them indefinitely) or (ii) put together an EU coalition to intervene with ground forces in Syria and run the place as a mandate until the Syrians get back on their feet or the country splits up Yugoslavia style. Option 2 will never happen, so unless they go with option 1, all the current shouting and finger-pointing by the EU nation states is getting them no-where.
You’ve done your fair share of kvetching on it lately. ;) *I say that with a playful smile, not a Trumpian scowl.*
Maybe. Things are never as bad as they seem and never as good as they seem. The destabilization is speculation. Europe will still be Europe with its shared history for better or worse. They will work toward their self interests, but there self interests involve working together, European Union or not. And even if Trump gets elected, I doubt he will get one quarter of his worst proposals through Congress. Things are not great, but they are not as bad as everyone projects.
Given what I’ve read about education levels no.
Accepting refugees is not a pleasant or cost-free thing. That other people are in a much less pleasant and more costly situation doesn’t change that. If my neighbour’s house is burning down I’m still allowed to hope my laundry won’t be singed.
Turkey is wrestling with autocracy (of the real, not Trump fever-dream, type) and civil war. Lebanon has had decades of civil war driven in large part by refugees and Syria’s abuse thereof. It seems rational to me to freak out about steps towards becoming the next Turkey or Lebanon, however small.
Austin – I don’t think that the West can resolve the world’s issues by accepting refugees – not at all – but we all live on one planet, and we need to get that oppression and poverty anywhere is a threat to peace and prosperity everywhere. It is in our enlightened self interest to deal with that – preferably at ground zero, and with some recognition that the last few approaches we tried (in the Middle East starting from Sykes-Picot) were profoundly flawed in some crucial ways.
Why should we? As I said, enlightened self interest, some sense of historical responsibility and most importantly: because we can. Noblesse oblige. Jmho.
Who cares what color their skin is? Do you really think that is the issue? The issue is they come from cultures with radically different and incompatible ideas compared to western culture.
I don’t think anyone would object to an orderly intake of Syrian Christians (who really are political refugees) regardless of their skin color.
I’ve long felt that those yearning for the end of American power would not like a world bereft of American power. We are getting only the first glimpse of such a future.
David, I’m glad to hear of your welcome for Syriacs, but are Syrian Christians culturally not Syrian?
And I do think that there’s an overlap between perceptions of cultural difference and ethnicity. The second, perhaps unfairly, often serves as a proxy for the first.
They got the “ever closer union” words removed. Do you really think that makes any difference? Do you think the EU bureaucrats are thinking to themselves, “Well, our goal has been a United States of Europe with federal control from Brussels, but I guess that is off now.”? You can have a Common Market, but you can’t have a half way EU.
And we pay for this burden how?
They may be culturally Syrian, but while more conservative than European Christians, adaption to western culture doesn’t require a wholesale challenge to their religious beliefs.
No clue and a fair point. But my guess is that a war in Syria would cost us a lot less than either the EU disintegrating or Europe being overrun by illiberal refugees in the long run.