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Le groupe aéronaval (GAN) rassemblé autour du porte-avions Charles de Gaulle et formant la Task Force 473 (TF) a franchi le canal de Suez le 12 mai. L’arrivée du GAN en mer Méditerranée, quatre mois après avoir quitté son port base, marque le début de la dernière phase du déploiement Arromanches.

The European Policy Centre, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, is pleased to invite you to this Policy Dialogue on 12 May, with :
Ulrike Lunacek
Vice President of the European Parliament
Haki Abazi
Program Director for the Western Balkans, Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Jeta Xharra
Kosovo Director, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Kosovo
Valerie Hopkins
Journalist, Author of BIG DEAL
EEAS representative (name to be confirmed)
Rasa Nedeljkov (...)

/ Belgique et Luxembourg, Kosovo, Serbie

The European Policy Centre, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, is pleased to invite you to this Policy Dialogue on 12 May, with :
Ulrike Lunacek
Vice President of the European Parliament
Haki Abazi
Program Director for the Western Balkans, Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Jeta Xharra
Kosovo Director, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Kosovo
Valerie Hopkins
Journalist, Author of BIG DEAL
EEAS representative (name to be confirmed)
Rasa Nedeljkov (...)

/ Belgique et Luxembourg, Kosovo, Serbie

In the Athens of 450 B.C.E., Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles wrote plays in which the devastating outcomes were the consequence of the very character of its protagonists. Today, Greece is living a similar tragedy, because the people have inflicted it on themselves. The drama may seem endless — a succession of similar and recurrent meetings and market jitters — but the noose is tightening on the Greek government: It managed to make Tuesday’s $840 million debt payment only by forcing hospitals, universities, and local governments to deposit their cash with the central bank. The government may not have the money to pay salaries and pensions this month; meanwhile, another $1.2 billion debt comes due next month.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is hinting that the kind of austerity creditors demand would require a referendum. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble encourages that approach, since it would force Greeks to make an up-or-down choice about whether they are willing to make the changes necessary to remain in the Eurozone.

The Greek people don’t want to ditch the euro, but they also don’t want to continue the painful austerity that is necessary for Greece to remain part of the currency union. The narrative is taking hold that Greeks are uniquely irresponsible: tax cheats and budget cookers who deserve their suffering. The recklessness of Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis seems to personify the critique. But what is surprising about the Greek default drama is actually not that their politics have turned populist, but that the society has held up so well in the extreme circumstances it has endured the past five years: GDP has contracted by more than 25 percent since 2010 and unemployment is higher than in the United States during the Great Depression.

The economics for Greece are daunting. The government is indebted to the tune of $376 billion. That’s nearly twice the country’s gross domestic product. They’ve already been bailed out twice by the European Union; preventing a market rout required the head of the European Central Bank (ECB) to commit the EU to do “anything necessary” to preserve the currency. In the longer term, the Greek government will almost surely require a fresh infusion of up to $50 billion. And Greece owes another $1.5 billion in June. Athens is hoping that the ECB will hand over the profits made from the Greek debt it holds — in essence, asking bond holders to have taken risk for no gain. That the ECB is even considering this option demonstrates how much Europeans want to keep the currency union intact.

The problem is that no one wants to trade with Athens. The Greek government was only able to lure $2.2 million in securities purchases this month. The European Central Bank will no longer accept Greek government bonds as collateral in lending. Neither the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nor the EU will unlock further assistance without the Greek government committing to reforms it was elected to repudiate. Absent a policy reversal that creditors have adamantly ruled out, Greece will be in default.

Default is looming less for economic than political reasons. Greece’s government was elected making promises on which it cannot deliver, and Tsipras seems to lack the political skill to bring along the public for what is necessary. As economist Thomas Sowell wrote of the sub-prime housing crisis in the United States, it’s not economics that created the problem, but politics. Money has been rushing out of Greece because of political uncertainty about whether the government can pay its debts and whether it will find accommodation with its creditors. But it’s not about economic fundamentals at this point. It’s the antics of the Syriza politicians that have so aggravated its creditors (who are now almost exclusively the IMF, the ECB, and other European governments) and market makers (analysts and potential investors).

Syriza mistakenly believed it could extort better terms from other European governments by loudly proclaiming itself to be tribunes of the people. But other EU governments got elected, too, and they are likewise accountable to voters who are unmoved by Greece’s problems. Syriza also wrongly thought it could foster debtor country solidarity — an uprising by Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus (and maybe even France) against Teutonic austerity. That failed miserably: there might not be warm, fuzzy feelings toward Berlin these days, but many Europeans have endured stringent austerity measures since the 2008 financial crisis and believe Greeks have been living beyond their means. The governments of those countries, and the German keystone of the EU, are in no mood to be lectured to by Syriza’s left-wing academics who’ve never had to put together a budget.

Greece had a primary surplus when Syriza took office — that is, tax receipts were sufficient to operate the government if debt were excused; now even outright default wouldn’t make Greece solvent. The government would still need to borrow money to pay salaries and pensions. And if Athens defaults, who would lend it the money to get back on its feet? Either Greece will be bailed out again by the EU or it will have to return to markets for financing — at even more prohibitive rates. Default would also further constrict revenues due to general economic disruption and reduced tax payments. So even if the Greek government defaults in the next few months, Greece’s troubles won’t end.

The tragedy of all this is that Greece had been through the worst of its austerity and realignment. Economic growth was turning up at the end of 2014. Bond issuances were selling at manageable long-term interest rates. And the European Central Bank had effectively deterred markets’ predatory instinct to pick apart a common currency with uncommon risk ratios. If only Greeks had been a little more patient; if only their establishment politicians had a little more credibility with the public to argue that the worst was over. Perhaps then Syriza wouldn’t have been elected and the Greek tragedy we are likely to see play out would have been averted.

TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images

Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Sochi Tuesday with tensions between Russia and the United States at their highest levels in decades because of Washington’s anger over Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine and Moscow’s anger at perceived Western meddling in its affairs.

Lavrov decided the best way to break the ice was with potatoes.

To open the meeting, the first time Kerry has visited Russia since the start of the Ukraine conflict last year, Lavrov presented Kerry with sacks of potatoes and tomatoes, mimicking Kerry’s gesture in 2014, when the secretary presented Lavrov with two Idaho potatoes during a meeting in Paris. A spokesman for Putin called their meeting, and the presentation of the spuds, a “positive step” in U.S-Russian relations.

But it’s also an ironic choice of a gift that didn’t come cheap, given that Western sanctions have caused the price of potatoes in Russia, a staple of its diet, to rise by 25 percent in the past year. The gift is also a not-too-subtle reminder that Russia has banned produce from Europe and the United States in response to the sanctions.

Whether Lavrov’s gift leads to a thaw in relations between Washington and Moscow remains to be seen, but diplomacy — even of the potato variety — is better than the alternative.

Photo Credit: Jim Watson/AFP

The formation of a narrow right-wing government in Israel has triggered a tsunami of speculation that the cold war brewing between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama is bound to get a lot colder.

Supporters of Israel, primarily in the pro-Israeli Jewish community in the United States, worry greatly that a second-term U.S. president freed from the constraints of reelection pressures, and already angry and frustrated with Netanyahu’s behavior, will take him to the woodshed and pressure Netanyahu on settlements, and, if necessary, add America’s support to the growing campaign for Palestinian statehood at the U.N. Critics eagerly anticipate and hope for the whipping. After all, given the history of tensions in the relationship, isn’t a worsening of ties inevitable? In the last 20 months of the Obama administration aren’t we going to see a collision between a willful U.S. president and a tough-talking prime minister playing games on Palestinian statehood and presiding over a coalition of Haredis and right-wing Zionists?

Not so fast. I don’t doubt the mistrust and animus on each side. Nor do I trivialize the divide that separates Obama and Netanyahu on a variety of issues. At the same time, I’m not all that sure that the expected confrontation is as inevitable as it might appear — at least for much of 2015. And here’s why.

Selling the Iran deal and the double whammy

Governing is about choosing. And right now the Obama administration’s main priority is negotiating, selling and implementing the Iran deal. The last thing the president wants or needs now is to open a second front with Israel on either Iran or the Palestinian issue. What’s more is that once the deal is concluded we’ll be entering a fairly prolonged period where implementation of the deal will be key. Congress and every 2016 presidential candidate will be watching like hawks to see if the administration has been snookered by Iran. And so will the Saudis and Israelis. The process of reassuring the Gulf Arabs will ramp up into high gear at this week’s Camp David summit. So there will have to be an Israeli piece of the reassurance package as well. The actual conclusion of a U.S.-Iran deal will be huge news, create piles of broken crockery in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, and to secure formal Congressional buy-in will require more than just a set of “just get over it” talking points for Israel. This is likely to take the form of more military hardware and intelligence cooperation. Nor should we rule out — even with the White House’s recent cold-shoulder policy — an Obama-Netanyahu meeting.

Then there’s the separate but very much related question of selling more military hardware to the Gulf States. It’s the cruelest of ironies for the prime minister that not only is he getting an Iran deal he hates; he’s also going to be faced with the prospects of more arms for the Arabs. And this is the double whammy that will likely require the administration to use more honey on the Israelis and less vinegar, most likely in the form of enhanced military cooperation, intelligence sharing, and the transfer of sophisticated aircraft like the F35 (which the United States has already authorized). It really will be tough for the president to shower the Arabs with hugs, kisses, sophisticated weapons and presidential summits and leave the Israelis out in the cold. Politically it creates a terrible optic and really does impose limits on the White House’s cold war with Netanyahu – ultimately setting up constraints on how far and fast this White House will be able to push the Israelis on any number of issues from settlement activity to pressuring Jerusalem at the U.N., and ultimately on a two state solution. In going for the Iran deal, the Obama administration may well have hung a closed for the season sign on any prospects of a Palestinian one, already a long shot.

A national unity government?

Hope springs eternal. And the Obama administration will react very carefully to the new Israeli government until it’s unmistakably clear that it won’t evolve into one that offers the prospects of a better relationship with Israel, some movement on the peace process, or the prime minister takes some action that Washington feels warrants a blast.

The reaction to last week’s announcement of additional housing units in a Jerusalem neighborhood that has previously drawn a severe reaction from the administration, this time only elicited a ho-hum expression of concern and disappointment. A national unity government with Isaac Herzog on balance doesn’t seem likely. But neither Obama nor Netanyahu has any stake in intensifying their food fight until that idea either is put to rest or comes to fruition.

If it’s the latter, then much of the tension will diffuse from the U.S.-Israeli relationship as Israel puts on a kinder and gentler face. If as is more likely, Netanyahu manages to expand his government by getting Avigdor Lieberman or others to join, Washington will have to calibrate how it wants to react based on what might be more provocative Israeli actions, for example on settlements.

Why fight without a purpose?

I’ve argued many times that American presidents face two kinds of fights with Israeli prime ministers: productive ones and unproductive ones. The former means that pressure, tension, and political capital expended is worthwhile because you actually get a result — a peace agreement or Israeli cooperation on some big issue like a peace conference at Madrid in 1991 that justifies the political pain at home.

The other kind of fight is one in which you try to make a point rather than a difference; in the end, you get all the downsides and none of the benefits. And the Obama administration has become a master of the unproductive fight. Whether it’s over settlements or Netanyahu’s comments about Palestinian statehood, the administration makes statements that alienate the Israelis and the pro-Israeli community in the United States without achieving anything of consequence. The president is unwilling or unable to apply real pressure, so he uses words. And that only undermines U.S. credibility in the Middle East and internationally without any sustainable gains.

It may well be that for any number of reasons — including the need to sell the Iranian deal, and pressure from Democrats and the pro-Israeli community — that the administration has begun to dial down its public fight. There appears to be more adult supervision in handling the U.S.-Israeli relationship in the White House. And it makes sense, particularly in the aftermath of Netanyahu’s reelection. The president may be frustrated. But he can’t afford to create the impression that he doesn’t accept the results of a democratic election. Pressure with purpose at a time when it might actually achieve something makes sense. A policy based on frustration, disappointment, and anger doesn’t.

The peace process

Assuming the Iran deal gets done and is actually implemented, the remaining area of prospective tension between Washington and Jerusalem is the Palestinian issue. The administration has intimated that it may find it difficult to defend Israel in international fora without an Israeli commitment to a two state solution. There almost certainly be continuing tension over settlement construction as there has been in the past. But a major confrontation over a non-existent peace process? Or a big row over a peace plan that’s just a thought experiment or fantasy in someone’s mind? What would be the point? The Palestinians are headed for more activity designed to pressure Israel in the international community, including the International Criminal Court. But it seems highly unlikely that the Obama administration will ride that train. Even Democrats who don’t like Netanyahu’s policies toward the Palestinians won’t buy on to that.

There is the possibility — and the administration has intimated it now several times — of trying to get a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution to embody the elements of Palestinian statehood. The French are seized with this idea, as are the Arabs. But is this worth a fight? What will it achieve? Could the Americans even buy on to a draft that the Arabs and Palestinians would support. Even if they could, what’s the point?

Far better, though still flawed, from an American negotiator’s perspective, would be a possible scenario where an effort is made on the part of Obama to outline a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, much in the way President Bill Clinton did in December 2000 shortly before he left office. This way Secretary Kerry or some future Secretary of State  wouldn’t compromise U.S. bridging proposals, make them radioactive by embodying them in a UNSC resolution, and create the impression that the United States was no longer the key mediator. The other downside of a UNSC resolution is that  would bind its successor with an internationalized negotiating framework that might strip a future U.S. negotiator of flexibility. Netanyahu would object to this kind of action too. But it wouldn’t expose the administration to critics inside Congress who will argue that the president was endorsing an imposed solution and shifting the focus from bilateral or even trilateral negotiations to negotiations to international arena. Since neither a UNSC resolution of the Obama parameters will have much of an effect on the ground, the administration should choose a route that best protects it credibility at home.

The next 20 months will not be easy ones in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. But they won’t necessarily lead to an escalation or a qualitatively different level of dysfunction than we’ve seen in the Netanyahu-Obama soap opera so far. Netanyahu’s goal is to outlast this president and wait for a friendlier one — any Republican would fit that bill; and so would the election of Hillary Clinton whose street cred with the Israeli public and the pro-Israeli community in the US is better than Obama’s and who has already made clear in her memoir Hard Choices that she believes unproductive fights with the Israelis get you nowhere. Netanyahu has no desire for a major fight now; he’ll have his hands full managing his government. If Netanyahu again intervenes in U.S. politics and makes a concerted effort to sink the Iran agreement or engages in a frenzy of settlement activity that goes beyond anything we’ve seen, relations could worsen.

But even if they do, how bad could things realy get? The administration isn’t going to sanction Israel, cut off aid, or unilaterally impose Palestinian statehood. Despite Obama’s frustration (and even anger) with Netanyahu, Israel will remain a close ally in a region where America has few stable friends and where even America’s partners and certainly its enemies are behaving far worse than Israel.

Anyone pining for a major meltdown in U.S.-Israeli relations ought to take a deep breath and lie down until the longing passes. And that goes as well for anyone looking for a much-improved U.S.-Israeli partnership. Indeed, the latter is unlikely to come only when you have a different Israeli prime minister in Jerusalem and another president in the White House.

Marc Israel Sellem-Pool/Getty Images

Un peu d’humour (trouvé sur Twitter)

Alors que l’avenir de la Grèce au sein de l’Union et de l’euro n’est toujours pas réglé, celui de la Grande-Bretagne s’invite dans le débat européen, David Cameron ayant promis d’organiser un référendum sur le maintien de son pays dans l’UE d’ici 2017. Cette perspective affole une partie des dirigeants européens qui redoutent qu’une sortie de Londres ne marque le début de la « déconstruction communautaire »…

En fait, c’est la seconde fois, en quarante ans, que la question du « Brexit » (« British exit ») va se poser : en octobre 1974, les travaillistes avaient, en effet, emporté les élections en promettant d’organiser un référendum sur le maintien de la Grande-Bretagne dans la Communauté économique européenne (CEE)… Ce qui fut fait et le 5 juin 1975 et le « oui » la triomphalement emporté par 67 % de voix. La différence est qu’à l’époque, Londres venait tout juste d’adhérer (le 1er janvier 1973) et, surtout, que la CEE était alors très loin du degré d’intégration qu’elle a depuis atteint : elle se limitait pour l’essentiel à un tarif douanier extérieur commun et à la Politique agricole commune. Autant dire qu’un départ n’aurait pas alors bouleversé la construction communautaire.

Mais dans le monde post-guerre froide et globalisé d’aujourd’hui, il en irait différemment : l’Union est devenue une puissance économique, commerciale et monétaire et le départ de l’un de ses membres serait perçu comme un affaiblissement du projet européen présenté jusque-là comme irréversible et toujours plus fédéral. Comment, dès lors, faire confiance à cet ensemble dont on ne sait plus si tel ou tel État sera demain encore membre ? De fait, un « Brexit » pourrait donner des idées à des pays très eurosceptiques comme la Suède ou la Hongrie. Mais pas seulement : en France, par exemple, le Front national trouverait dans un là un formidable argument de vente...

Autant dire que personne ne souhaite un tel saut dans l’inconnu, même si l’OTAN a parfaitement survécu au départ de la France en 1966. Le problème est que les partenaires de Londres sont totalement désarmés face à l’hystérie anti-européenne qui règne outre-Manche. Que faire pour aider David Cameron à gagner son référendum ? Certes, le Premier ministre veut rester dans l’Union, mais à condition qu’elle change et que ce changement soit acté par un nouveau traité européen. Le problème, outre le fait qu’un pays comme la France refuse de se lancer dans une telle renégociation par crainte d’un rejet des Français, est que les rares demandes précises qu’il formule sont inacceptables par ses partenaires, comme la limitation de la libre circulation des ressortissants communautaires, l’une des quatre libertés fondamentales du marché intérieur (avec les marchandises, les services et les capitaux). « Elles ne sont pas négociables, car elles sont l’essence de l’Union », a d’ailleurs averti dès hier le porte-parole de la Commission Margaritis Schinas. « En réalité, Cameron veut d’une Europe à la carte dans laquelle il ne prendrait que ce qui l’intéresse tout en restant dans les institutions pour pouvoir bloquer ce que voudraient ses partenaires », ironise un diplomate français. C’est l’exact contraire de ce que prônait Tony Blair : « du moment que le train européen est en marche, l’intérêt de la Grande-Bretagne est d’être dans la locomotive, au lieu de rester dans le wagon de queue debout sur les freins ».

D’autant que Londres a déjà obtenu une Europe à géométrie variable que rejetaient les « pères fondateurs » : opt out sur l’euro, Schengen et la charte des droits fondamentaux, création des « coopérations renforcées », possibilité de ne prendre que ce qui l’intéresse dans les domaines de la justice et des affaires intérieures… Que donner de plus, sans détricoter l’ensemble de la construction communautaire, à un Royaume-Uni déjà en grande partie à la périphérie de l’Union ? Pour ajouter à la complexité de l’équation, celui-ci change souvent d’avis : ainsi, après avoir obtenu un opt out sur la partie sociale du traité de Maastricht, en 1992, il s’y est finalement rallié en 1997. Ou encore, alors qu’il avait la possibilité de rejeter tous les textes européens relatifs à la justice et à la sécurité intérieure qui ne lui convenait pas, David Cameron a accepté, à l’automne 2014, de les appliquer en quasi-totalité : Londres est donc toujours membre d’Europol et d’Eurojust ou encore applique le mandat d’arrêt européen !

Le malaise britannique est ailleurs, en réalité : Londres, en obtenant un opt out sur la monnaie unique, s’est interdit de peser sur l’avenir de la zone euro devenu le cœur du projet européen. Or, depuis la crise de 2010-2012, celle-ci s’est fortement intégrée (création du Mécanisme européen de stabilité, de l’Union bancaire, du gouvernement économique et budgétaire, etc.) : désormais, le risque est que le fédéralisme monétaire mène au fédéralisme politique (création d’un budget de la zone euro, d’un parlement de la zone euro, etc.) sur lequel la Grande-Bretagne n’aurait aucune prise. Surtout, elle craint que les dix-neuf États de la monnaie unique se mettent d’accord entre eux pour imposer leurs vues dans le domaine du marché unique (qui touche aussi aux sacro-saints domaines bancaire et fiscal). D’où sa volonté d’instaurer une double majorité pour les prises de décision les plus sensibles : une majorité au sein de la zone euro, une majorité au sein des pays non euro. Mais cela n’aura qu’un temps, tous les Etats, en dehors de la Grande-Bretagne, de la Suède et du Danemark, ayant la ferme volonté de rejoindre la monnaie unique. Et là, il n’existe aucun mécanisme institutionnel propre à rassurer Londres, sauf à lui donner un droit de véto sur des politiques auxquelles elle ne participe pas…

À défaut de pouvoir lui faire des concessions significatives, l’Union risque d’entrer dans une ère glaciaire jusqu’au référendum : tout ce qui pourrait déplaire, y compris l’approfondissement de la zone euro, risque d’être renvoyé à des jours meilleurs. Des Etats comme les Pays-Bas ou l’Allemagne, profondément attachés à la présence de la Grande-Bretagne, vont tout faire pour ralentir le processus de décision, comme le craint Vivien Pertusot, directeur du bureau de l’IFRI à Bruxelles. Jean-Claude Juncker, le président de la Commission, a pris les devants en en retirant près de 80 propositions législatives. Bref, rien qu’en agitant la menace d’un référendum, Londres a réussi à ralentir la marche de l’Europe. De Gaulle, le 27 novembre 1967, avait-il vu juste lorsqu’il avertissait que « faire entrer l’Angleterre », ce serait pour les Européens « donner d’avance leur consentement à tous les artifices, délais et faux-semblants qui tendraient à dissimuler la destruction d’un édifice qui a été bâti au prix de tant de peine et au milieu de tant d’espoirs » ?

N.B.: version longue de mon analyse parue dans Libération du 9 mai.

REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

L’Eurogroupe de ce 11 mai devait être décisif pour la Grèce. C’est loupé : «les négociations progressent enfin, mais pas assez pour que l’on formalise un accord dès cette réunion des ministres des Finances de la zone euro», m’expliquait dès ce week-end une source proche des négociations. «Mais nous sommes en bonne voie». «Un accord est très proche et sera conclu prochainement», veut aussi croire Euclide Tsakalatos, le ministre des Affaires étrangères adjoint chargé des négociations avec les créanciers de la Grèce. Bruxelles ne désespère pas d’arriver à un compromis avec le gouvernement d’Alexis Tsipras avant la fin du mois.

Le problème est que chaque jour qui passe rapproche le pays du défaut de paiement. Les quelques euros qui restent dans les caisses de l’État, après que le gouvernement grec a réquisitionné les réserves des collectivités locales et des entreprises publiques, devraient permettre à Athènes de rembourser, mardi, 750 millions au Fonds monétaire international (FMI). Mais la Grèce ne pourra en aucun cas payer les salaires des fonctionnaires et les retraites à la fin du mois. «Les Grecs sont à l’os», prévient-on à Bruxelles. Yanis Varoufakis, le ministre grec des Finances, l’a reconnu hier: «la question des liquidités est terriblement urgente. Tout le monde le sait, ce n’est pas la peine de tourner autour du pot. En termes de calendrier, nous parlons des deux prochaines semaines». «Les expériences ailleurs dans le monde nous ont montré qu’un pays peut soudainement être précipité vers la faillite», a d’ailleurs mis en garde, samedi, Wolfgang Schäuble, le ministre allemand des Finances.

«Il faut au moins qu’à l’issue de l’Eurogroupe de ce jour, on donne un signal fort pour que la Banque centrale européenne (BCE) puisse augmenter le plafond de 15 milliards d’euros de bons du Trésor à court terme que la Grèce a l’autorisation d’émettre», m’affirmait avant l’Eurogroupe d’hier, la source déjà citée. «Cela devrait permettre à la Grèce de tenir jusqu’à l’accord définitif sur les réformes structurelles, accord qui permettra le versement des 7,2 milliards d’euros promis. Mais il faudra que le communiqué final soit très ferme pour que la BCE consente à ouvrir les vannes du financement. Du style : «l’Eurogroupe se réjouit des progrès significatifs accomplis»». Les ministres n’ont finalement pas été jusque-là en se contentant de «saluer les progrès» et «l’intention des autorités grecques d’accélérer leur travail avec les institutions»… Ce qui risque d’être un peu juste pour rassurer la BCE.

Athènes a déjà fait des efforts importants sur des sujets emblématiques. Ainsi, il a été acté que le marché de l’énergie sera bien ouvert à la concurrence et que l’autorité de régulation qui fixe les prix sera indépendante, que les taux réduits de TVA seront largement abrogés et que les privatisations seront poursuivies. Les créanciers de la Grèce ont accepté, en échange, que la hausse de la TVA ne soit pas uniforme (les îles pauvres en seront exclues) et que les privatisations soient laissées à la discrétion de la Grèce (abandon de la liste nominative) et poursuivi jusqu’en 2020 afin d’éviter que le pays brade ses bijoux de famille.

Sur d’autres points, en revanche, il reste des différents, comme sur l’augmentation du salaire minimum qu’Athènes n’a pas les moyens de financer ou encore la réduction de l’affolante bureaucratie locale. «Mais on n’est pas loin d’un accord», affirme une source proche des négociateurs européens. «Il faut dire que désormais, nos points de vue sur l’analyse macroéconomique, que ce soit les hypothèses de croissance ou le surplus budgétaire primaire (avant service de la dette) nécessaire pour rembourser la dette, se sont rapprochés. Or, cette analyse fonde le besoin de réformes. Ça aide énormément à rationaliser les discussions».

Le problème est que le verre n’est qu’à moitié plein, ce qui pourrait ne pas être suffisant pour les plus durs, au premier rang desquels l’Allemagne et le FMI. Ainsi, pour le gouvernement Tsipras, la réforme des retraites et l’assouplissement du marché du travail restent deux «lignes rouges». Or, pour le FMI, le régime des retraites grec est insoutenable, ce qui risque de déséquilibrer à nouveau les finances publiques. Celui-ci exige donc un recul de l’âge de la retraite, alors que le gouvernement Tsipras a promis de l’abaisser à 60 ans, la fin des préretraites entre 50 et 55 ans et le non-rétablissement du 13e mois pour les retraités… Pour le marché du travail, l’organisation sise à Washington estime qu’un assouplissement des règles de licenciement est nécessaire pour assurer la compétitivité à long terme de l’économie grecque. Mais les créanciers d’Athènes sont divisés, en dépit de leurs dénégations : la Commission, notamment, milite pour que le dossier des retraites soit renvoyé à un troisième plan d’aide qui devrait, en juillet, prendre le relais du programme actuel. De même, l’exécutif européen fait valoir que l’assouplissement du marché du travail n’est pas une urgence dans un pays qui compte 25 % de chômeurs.

«Tsipras n’exclut pas de bouger sur ces deux dossiers, mais à condition que l’on acte dès maintenant le lancement d’un troisième programme d’aide et que l’on fasse un geste sur la dette», explique un diplomate européen. Sur ce dernier point, le plus difficile, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, le président de l’Eurogroupe, estime que «la discussion sur l’allégement de la dette n’est pas taboue. La seule chose impossible politiquement, c’est un effacement de sa valeur nominale (320 milliards d’euros)» (dans Le Monde daté de dimanche-lundi). En revanche, une extension des maturités (de 30 à 50 ans par exemple) ou un échange de titres seraient envisageables, ce qui reviendrait de fait à une restructuration.

N.B.: mise à jour de mon article paru dans Libération du 11 mai.

via Twitter (World Bank)

Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission’s vice president in charge of energy, has been hitting the old Silk Road in search of new gas supply contracts that would break Gazprom’s hold on the European market. Emerging from a meeting held in the Turkmen capital with representatives from Turkmenistan, Turkey and Azerbaijan, Šefčovič confidently said that the union would start importing Caspian natural gas through its long-touted Southern Gas Corridor network of pipelines by 2019. The fact that the officials also discussed the prospect of building pipeline through Iran “since diplomatic relations with Iran are developing positively” is yet another startling reminder of just how badly Europe wants to break free from Russia’s natural gas supplies.

But can the EU’s gamble pay off?

On paper, Turkmenistan would be a great match for Europe’s energy woes. To begin with, the Central Asian country sits on the world’s fourth largest gas reserve and owns the world’s second largest gas field. Historically, thanks to some perverse pipeline politics that forced the country to export the bulk of its natural gas to Russia, Turkmenistan had been one of Gazprom’s largest suppliers of gas. That is, until 2009, when the Russians unilaterally announced that they will gradually phase out gas imports from Central Asian countries (in 2015, Gazprom will buy only 4 billion cubic meters, down from 45 bcm six years ago). As a result, Ashgabat turned to China and the EU to offset the lost revenues. After Turkmen officials revealed their desire to supply Europe with 10 to 30 bcm per year, Brussels listened and quickly dispatched Šefčovič to Ashgabat.

What’s more, sealing a deal with Turkmenistan to send part of its gas to Europe would be a boon not only for the Union’s energy security but also for Ukraine’s own trials and tribulations with Russia. In late March, Poroshenko signaled his interest in resuming inexpensive gas imports from Turkmenistan, as a way to sidestep Gazprom’s whimsical pricing policy.

Kyiv’s energy policy used to be prescribed by the gas prices demanded by Gazprom, a price curve that ebbed and flowed in lockstep with Ukraine’s falling in and out of Moscow’s grace. Up until 2009, thanks to a contract signed by RosUkrEnergo’s Dmitry Firtash, Kyiv enjoyed the lowest gas prices in its history by relying on a mix of cheaper Turkmen and Russian gas. The agreement, revolutionary at the time because it was the first time Turkmen gas would make its way directly to Europe, was shredded when Firtash’s political opponent and former gas trader, Yulia Tymoshenko cut out RosUkrEnergo from the equation and signed instead a 10-year agreement with Gazprom. Because of its variable pricing technique that saw prices rise four-fold in the span of a few years, the 2009 deal proved to be a complete mess for Kyiv. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk announced that his government is now seeking a hair-raising $16 billion in damages from Gazprom before an arbitration court in Stockholm.

Today, the prospect of importing Turkmen gas to Ukraine is trickier than it is for the EU, mostly because Kyiv needs Gazprom’s pipeline network for its transport. However, Ukraine’s rightfully combative stance with Russia makes the prospect of negotiating a deal with Gazprom a tough sell. Firtash, riding high after being cleared of graft charges by an Austrian court, in what the judge deemed to be a politically motivated trial mounted at Washington’s behest, could however end the deadlock given his long-standing business connection in both Moscow and Ashgabat.

With both Brussels and Kyiv courting Ashgabat, we are now witnessing the birth of a new energy architecture in Europe that will have long lasting impacts on Russia’s capacity to use its energy weapon for political games. Unlike its ho-hum predecessor, Jean Claude Juncker’s Commission has deftly navigated the testy waters laid at its doorstep by Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager leveled a €10 billion anti-trust case against Gazprom for unfair pricing in several Central and Eastern European countries. The move is part of the Union’s Third Energy Package that wants to bolster competition in EU energy markets through a process of unbundling, or separating pipeline ownership from gas producing companies. A win for the Commission’s litigators would deal a mortal blow to Gazprom’s bottom line and would force the company to rethink its business plan. Even if the company reached an agreement with Ankara on May 7 for the building of a pipeline across the Black Sea to Turkey, the feasibility of the project has been severely questioned.

Against this backdrop, Šefčovič’s and Poroshenko’s forays in Turkmenistan seem to indicate that the tide is turning against Gazprom’s old ways of doing business. The unprecedented fall in oil prices (Gazprom’s gas prices are pegged to the barrel) and the tumble of the ruble have shaved 86 percent off the company’s net profits in 2014, a trend that will continue unless the gas company adapts its European business model in order to respect European laws. In the medium term, the message is clear: Gazprom’s can no longer claim to be indispensable in Europe.

A subsidiary of the Russian state technologies corporation Rostec is developing a universal tracked robotic platform that could be used in both combat and rescue operations, the company's deputy CEO said Tuesday.

The picture of President George W. Bush leading an aged Saudi King Abdullah by the hand through the gardens of his Texas ranch in 2005 has become both iconic and symbolic of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. For over 40 years, the United States has walked hand-in-hand with Saudi Arabia through the thicket of Middle Eastern crises.

On May 14, at Camp David, another bucolic presidential setting, President Barack Obama is convening a special summit with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners to begin a new phase in their relationship. But, for the first time, it appears there will be less hand-holding and more tough talk. The United States will use the summit to hear the GCC’s concerns about Iran, but will likely explain frankly to the Arab monarchies that there will be no new U.S.-GCC defense pact or blanket security assurances from the United States. If the president delivers the right messages to whomever shows up at the summit, the U.S.-GCC relationship has the potential to become more productive than ever before.

The Saudis are clearly angry about this approach. On Sunday, they announced that King Salman, the new Saudi king who took power in January, will remain in Riyadh, sending the crown prince to Camp David in his stead. (In the end, only two GCC heads of state — from Kuwait and Qatar — will attend.) Such petulance is a common negotiating tactic in these circumstances. It often produces the desired ripples in the American media to the effect that U.S. influence in the region is waning and the Saudi-American relationship is in trouble.

In part, the media’s focus is warranted. President Obama has implied that the purpose of this summit is to assuage the concerns of those countries most worried about the Iranian nuclear deal. Reassuring partners under such circumstances is a natural and normal reaction. It is certainly the traditional U.S. response to placating irritated and frightened allies. There is pressure within the government to cook up “deliverables” for the summit that might make the Saudis and their GCC partners feel loved by the United States.

But as the decision of most GCC leaders not to attend indicates, there is not much on the table that will reassure them. And that’s fine. It would be wrong to make reassurance the centerpiece of this summit — for three fundamental reasons.

First, Saudi Arabia and its GCC partners are not formal treaty allies of the United States and, moreover, they often do not act as friends. The United States is a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy committed to universal human rights. Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian monarchy committed to maintaining a society based on harsh political repression, religious intolerance, and a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam at odds with universally recognized human rights. Some GCC countries are in fact often the source of both the ideology and the money that supports Islamist terrorism around the world. And GCC interests and U.S. interests increasingly diverge over issues such as Iran, Syria, the need for internal reforms in the Gulf states, and how to deal with the regional threat of political Islam. The United States, Saudi Arabia, and its GCC partners can and do cooperate on a selective basis, but their relationship with the United States will necessarily remain transactional — more a long series of one-night stands than a committed relationship.

Second, America’s commitment to Saudi and GCC security is not and should not be absolute. Since the mid-1970s, the United States and the Gulf Arab countries have been allies on a variety of security issues. But this has been based on a hard-nosed bargain: “The United States will protect you against external threats to your security and you will support America’s goals and interests in the region and help stabilize global energy markets.” Over time, this bargain has allowed the Arab states to foist their regional security responsibilities onto the United States — and then blame America when things go wrong. Regardless of the rhetoric from both sides, the Arab states get the better end of the bargain. And they need it more than the United States does. This is particularly true now that the global energy market has diversified and is less subject to volatile price spikes. Yet paradoxically, even though Gulf states’ dependence on the U.S. security guarantee and changes in energy markets should increase Washington’s leverage, American officials often convince themselves that they need to change U.S. policy more than Persian Gulf partners need to change theirs. To paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, every now and then we have to remind ourselves who the superpower is in the relationship.

Third, Washington’s never-ending reassurances over the years have created an unhealthy dependence on the United States, instead of encouraging the Gulf countries to become more independent, capable, and to stand up on their own feet when it comes to providing for their own security from external aggression. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the United States government. The collective weakness of the GCC states has created a security deficit in the region. It is long past time for the GCC states to produce more security than they consume. As Obama has noted, “the biggest threats that [Sunni Arab States] face may not be coming from Iran invading. It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” U.S. reassurances to protect these countries against external attack distract from their problems at home that include a growing population of disaffected youth, chronically high levels of unemployment, and poor human rights records. Instead, the United States should be leaning on them more heavily to enact domestic reforms.

As the GCC states become more independent, the United States will not always like the solutions they come up with to deal with regional security issues, such as the ongoing civil war in Yemen or whatever crisis might arise next. At times, U.S. officials will need to seek difficult compromises. But in most circumstances Gulf state ownership of their problems — and the solutions — will lead to better outcomes than American-led efforts, particularly military intervention.

Iran will continue to harbor ambitions for regional domination and pursue policies that pose a serious threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East. The Iran nuclear deal, if successful, will nonetheless allow the United States to begin to recast its bargain with the GCC countries, because it will remove the principal direct threat to U.S. interests from Iran. The United States will be able to insist that the GCC states assume greater responsibility for their own security — and that means the United States will be able to avoid direct military interventions in messy Middle Eastern civil wars. The willingness of Saudi Arabia to seek its own solution to instability in Yemen and the Arab League’s decision to form a joint Arab military force are positive signs of increased burden-sharing from the Gulf.

The long-term goal is not to get into bed with Iran. Rather, it is to use the relationship with Iran to get out of bed with Saudi Arabia. The United States will increase its diplomatic leverage with the GCC states if they know that Washington is playing the field. The GCC needs to understand that the U.S. goal in the Persian Gulf is to maintain a regional balance, not to allow them to emerge victorious in their struggle with Iran.

This week’s GCC summit is the perfect venue to deliver these messages. It is an opportunity for the president to demand more responsible behavior and greater cooperation from Gulf leaders instead of again reassuring them of an undying American commitment to their security. In the end, this will make for a scratchier summit, but a much more realistic, and therefore more productive, relationship between the United States and the GCC states. Hand-holding is nice, but in international relations at least, promiscuity also has its advantages.

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

L’hélicoptère d’Eulex (un Puma) de la compagnie Starlite aviation en 2014 (Archives B2 / Crédit : EULEX)

(BRUXELLES2) Un hélicoptère de la mission européenne « Etat de droit au Kosovo (EULEX Kosovo) a eu un accident, lors d’un « atterrissage d’urgence », sur l’aéroport de Pristina, ce mardi (12 mai) dans l’après-midi (15h). Accident confirmé officiellement par la mission.

Un blessé

Un seul blessé est à déplorer, selon EULEX Kosovo (et non deux comme précédemment annoncé). Celui-ci a été « immédiatement transporté à l’hôpital universitaire de Pristina ». Les autres personnes sont sorties toutes seules de l’appareil. Il y avait 4 personnes à bord : pilote, copilote et deux membres de l’équipe médicale d’urgence héliportée (HEMS) – un médecin et un infirmer. C’est un des membres de cette équipe qui a été blessé. « Aucun (autre) membre du personnel d’EULEX n’a été blessé » précise le communiqué de la mission (*) Si on se fie aux premiers éléments connus, on ne peut pas parler de crash au sens propre mais plutôt d’un atterrissage (bien) brutal).

Cet hélicoptère (privé) est normalement dédié aux opérations de secours (Medevac). Il est fourni par une société privée (actuellement Starlite aviation) qui a passé contrat avec l’Union européenne.

(NGV)

(*) Fidèle à la politique B2, nous considérons comme « membres » d’une mission européenne de la PSDC, tous les personnels, quel que soit leur statut (contracté, détaché, membre d’une société extérieure) du moment qu’il participe à l’opération et est sous l’autorité hiérarchique du chef de mission/opération ou du Haut représentant de l’UE. Lire memoriam

Általános : Az internetnek köszönhetően ma már könnyedén megszervezzük utazásainkat online és sokszor nem vesszük igénybe az utazási irodák által kínált csomagokat. A Parlament és a Tanács május 5-én fogadta el a szervezett utazásokra vonatkozó jogszabály módosító szövegét, amely a jövőben ugyanolyan védelmet biztosít az online vásárlóknak, mint az utazási irodán keresztül foglalóknak. Birgit Collin-Langen néppárti, német képviselőt kérdeztük az új szabályokról.

Forrás : © Európai Unió, 2015 - EP

An improper separation of the Progress M-27M space freighter from a carrier rocket following leaks in fuel tanks on the booster caused the failure of the Progress cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in April, Russia's space agency Roscosmos said Tuesday.

Former baseball player (and eminent public intellectual) Yogi Berra famously warned, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yet trying to anticipate the future is a big part of foreign policymaking: leaders (and pundits) must try to interpret trends and anticipate events, so that they can devise policies that will avert disaster and maybe even make things better.

But Berra is still right: predicting the future ain’t easy. In a recent class at the Kennedy School, I reminded my first year students about some key features of the world of 1978, which was my first year in grad school. In 1978, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were still intact and formidable. The white apartheid government ruled South Africa and the Shah of Iran still sat on the Peacock Throne. People could smoke on airplanes, in restaurants, and in most public places. There was no Euro, no worldwide web, no email, no cellphones, no digital streaming services, and even the compact disc was still unknown. Japan’s economy was going like gangbusters, and China’s per capita income was a mere $165 per annum. How many of us could have foreseen that each of these conditions — and many others — would be dramatically transformed over the next few decades?

But to say that predicting the future is hard is not to say it is impossible. In fact, we can anticipate some features of the future with a high degree of confidence.

If asked to describe the world of 2050, for example, I’d argue that there are some important elements that are easy to forecast — with a suitable margin for error — and other areas where it is nearly impossible.

At the “more certain” end of the spectrum is population. Although fertility and death rates do fluctuate over time (and not always predictably), demographic models can take these shifts into account and we can be pretty confident about the size of world’s population in 2050 and the populations of individual countries. Barring unlikely “black swan” events (a huge pandemic, large-scale nuclear war, etc.), we know that China and India will have at least a billion people apiece, and we know the U.S. population will be around 400 million. We also know the populations in Germany, Russia, and Japan are going to be smaller, and that the median ages of these populations will rise significantly. Pronatalist policies could alter these numbers a bit, but population growth is hard to change quickly and this is one area where our beliefs about 2050 are likely to be pretty accurate.

What else can we know with high confidence? Well, in 2050 the world will still be divided into territorial states and the number of states will be higher than it is today. We’ve gone from roughly 50 states in 1945 to nearly 200 today, and pressures for self-determination show little sign of decreasing. By contrast, there doesn’t seem to be much pressure for merging or combining states or constructing new multi-national empires, and occasional steps in that direction (such as the union of North and South Yemen) haven’t fared well in recent years. The EU is probably the most important example of a nascent political union, but it is still largely an association of proud national states and is experiencing serious centrifugal forces these days.

To say that states will remain central and that their number is likely to rise is not to say that every one of these states will be around in 2050. It’s easy to imagine a different set of states emerging from the current turmoil in the Middle East, for example, my point is simply that we aren’t likely to see a significant reduction in the overall number.

The economic weight of different countries is pretty predictable too, at least over a span of a few decades. China’s dramatic rise is a partial exception to this rule, but most of the major economic powers in today’s world are the same countries that have been major economic players for a long time. GNP is not as easy to predict as demography, because some states do take off and others run into trouble, but we still know an awful lot about the international economic landscape of 2050.

To be specific, it is highly likely (if not quite certain) that the United States, China, Japan, India, Brazil, Russia, and the EU will be major economic players in 2050, and the states that have high per capita incomes at present will almost certainly have high per capita incomes 35 years from now. Similarly, although a few emerging economies will do well in the decades ahead, most of today’s poorer countries will still be relatively poor in 2050 (even if they are a lot better off than they are today). We know that Outer Mongolia or Burundi are going to become Singapore by 2050, and Singapore isn’t going to turn into Somalia. States whose wealth is based entirely on natural resources such as oil and gas are something of a special case (i.e., their fortunes could decline rapidly if their particular commodity falls in price), but we still know a lot about who the key economic players are likely to be in the middle of this century. Short answer: the same states that are key players today.

Other features of 2050 are much harder to forecast, however, because they reflect explicit policy decisions and could shift quickly in response to events. For example, the alliances forged during the long Cold War have been around a long time and have proven to be remarkably durable, but can we really be confident NATO or America’s Asian alliances will still be around and still be meaningful thirty-five years down the road? If Russian power continues to decline and the United States focuses more and more attention on Asia, NATO will be increasingly irrelevant. And I’ve suggested before, it’s hard to imagine NATO playing an active role in a future U.S. effort to balance China.

Alliance dynamics in Asia will be increasingly complicated and hard to predict, so one can hardly rule out some pretty dramatic shifts there too. I’d bet on a balancing coalition to address China’s rising power, but its emergence and cohesion are far from certain. And if Chinese power continues to rise, can one entirely rule out the formation of closer security ties between Beijing and some countries in the — dare we say it? — Western hemisphere? I don’t think so. Nor is hard to imagine significant realignments in the Middle East, especially if Iran eventually gets out of the penalty box and becomes a more active and accepted player. I’m not saying that any or all of these things will occur, of course; my point is that international alignments are subject to change and it is harder to know what diplomatic constellations will exist in 2050 than it is to predict either population or economic clout.

What about the level of violence? Global violence has been declining since World War II, leading scholars such as Steven Pinker, John Mueller, and Joshua Goldstein to describe war as increasingly rare and even “obsolescent.” It would be nice if that trend continued until 2050, but the past few years have seen a sharp uptick in the number and virulence of global conflicts and a future Sino-American security competition might fuel any number of other tensions. I’d keep my fingers crossed hoping Pinker and Co. are right, but I’d keep my powder dry too.

Another area we cannot easily forecast is the normative and ideological environment that will exist 35 years hence. Thirty-five years ago, Marxism-Leninism still commanded loyalty and respect among millions of people. Twenty-plus years ago, the “Washington Consensus” was supposedly sweeping the globe. Since then, various forms of Islamic extremism have become powerful currents within a number of societies. Global norms on privacy, human rights, corporate social responsibility, the role of women, assassination, the death penalty, and a number of other topics are all in flux as well, and it is hard to predict which side will win these debates or to anticipate what new movements may unexpectedly emerge. I mean: who would have predicted the gay marriage movement 30 years ago?

What is least certain about the world of 2050? As we cast our gaze forward, the greatest uncertainties lie in the realm of science and technology. The advance of scientific and technical knowledge has accelerated steadily over the past several centuries, and we simply have no idea exactly what sorts of things we will be able to do just a few decades from now. Driverless cars? Customized fetal DNA? Gene therapy to eliminate disease? Digital devices enabled not by moving a mouse or a touch screen but simply by thinking? Growing new organs in a lab and then transplanting them? We can predict some technological developments with a degree of confidence (e.g., computers will be faster and cheaper, energy usage will be more efficient, some diseases will be cured, etc.) but future discoveries (or serendipitous combinations of them) will create possibilities no one is even imagining today. At the same time, some developments predicted decades ago never materialized (like everyone else, I’ve given up hoping for my flying car). If one is trying to envision the world of 2050, it is the technological frontier where our crystal ball is cloudiest.

And let’s not forget the “black swans”: those seemingly random natural or man-made events that could shift the course of world politics in unexpected directions. A mass pandemic, a nuclear terrorist incident, an even bigger financial panic, or a catastrophic drought might have profound effects in many places, alter global discourse in key ways, and make many of our other forecasts look silly. And by their very nature, such events are hard to anticipate even if we know what their baseline probabilities might be.

The bottom line is that there’s a lot we do know about the world of 2050, and a lot that we don’t. Unfortunately, one other thing we know is that the human beings that will have to grapple with that world will still be deeply flawed and the political and social institutions that will be wrestling with these changes will still fall rather short of perfection. Our descendants will have plenty to do, and they may even look back on the current troubled state of world affairs with a certain degree of nostalgia, thinking that their forebears had it pretty good, even if we didn’t have flying cars.

GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images

UN soldiers provide water at a refugee camp in South Sudan. Photograph: Yna/EPA

Why it’s Time for the West to Lead a Rewrite of the International Security Playbook

Is a re-think of the Western-led international security enterprise needed to respond to a set of interrelated trends that have little to do with conflict between great states and far more to do with dysfunction within fragile states? The candid observer of global security trends might be inclined to respond in the affirmative given the mounting evidence that the West’s responses to vexing security challenges, especially those affecting fragile states, have yielded little positive results. In fact, in many instances, they have made matters worse.

Off-focus in an Age of Persistent Disruption

National security is the practice of protecting the state and its citizens against an assortment of threats through mixed-response statecraft, specifically, using the tools of diplomacy, defense and foreign aid. Conventional wisdom holds that the dominant and potentially most consequential threats to North America and Europe are bellicose nuclear armed rogue states like North Korea and Russia under Vladimir Putin, and of course, nuclear weapons aspirants like Iran. However, a national security orthodoxy centered on “rogues” and expressed in a grand strategy based on cold war logic is well off the mark given that today’s security landscape continues to be shaped to a far greater degree by the drivers of trends like mass migration, terrorism, and climate change than by great powers neo-colonialism.

Further, the West’s well-resourced military enterprise – led by the United States – cannot begin to mitigate, much less resolve, the root causes of the most consequential drivers of 21st century insecurity. In an era where great states conflict is most likely to be fought using the mechanism of finance and trade (e.g., sanctions) vs with destroyer squadrons and Army divisions, the convergence of political dysfunction, underdevelopment, and extremist ideologies, most now be recognized as the premier threat to international peace and stability.

An obsession with readily definable, deterable and trackable “rogues” is counter-productive in an era that is increasingly being defined by trends that have little to do with Putin and Khatami and everything to do with imploding states across the across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The toxic forces circulating within, and emanating from, failing states like Somalia, Sudan Yemen, Eritrea, Syria, Iraq, et al., continues to spill across regional borders, and increasingly into the West’s own bowls of prosperity in the forms of terror and mass migration, spiking angst, or at the very least, deep concern, from Albania to Sweden.

Fragile States Spillage – A New Normal

The up until recently under-reported exodus of Western, Northern and Eastern African youth from their tumultuous homelands into Libya (itself a failed state), and across the Mediterranean sea, is an example of fragile states spillage that has the potential to cause chronic social and economic pain across Western Europe. Many Southern European nations with their already sky-high unemployment rates, dismal growth numbers and stressed welfare systems are not prepared to absorb hundreds of thousands of young, low-skilled migrants. Given the worsening conditions across the MENA — to include the deepening desperation — the waves of migrants will be persistent and perhaps even more intense in the years to come.

There is even concern that violent extremist individuals might be mixed in with legitimate African refugees on any of the numerous illegally-operated ferries making the crossing.  The specter of stowaway terrorists amid persistent waves of unskilled foreigners landing penniless and hungry at Europe’s doorway is a stiff wind in the sails of European xenophobia generally, but islamophobia more specifically. One British columnist, in response to the migration crisis, called for “gunboats” to be used on refugees – and referred to the migrants as a “plague of feral humans.” Though this is hardly a representative sentiment of the vast majority of Europeans it does underscore the potential for a nationalistic backlash that could lead to minor or major political reordering across some of the most affected nations.

Fragile states spillage has precipitated a revolution in geo-security affairs that has come as a surprise to national security practitioners. Here, many now find that they are increasingly planning more foreign humanitarian assistance operations than war-fighting operations. But although each of the human insecurity-linked trends are by themselves problematic, some are more concerning than others due to the sheer scope of the problems and their exceedingly long resolution timelines. But perhaps the trend of most concern – one that is the most underappreciated and underreported – is one that should be the easiest to understand and most important to mitigate.

Young boys are usually recruited from within the locality, lured by money and a sense of purpose in fighting for the community [Al Jazeera Media Network & Reuters]

The Raw Materials of Terror

The youth bulge is a stage of development where a country reduces infant mortality but birthrates stay the same or increase. It is a trend that is compounding instability over large swathes of the MENA. In Sub-Saharan and North Africa about 40 percent of the population is under the age of fifteen, and almost 70 percent is under thirty years old. It’s not surprising, then, that there exists a tremendous imbalance between young men in need of meaningful employment and available jobs. Frustrated youth don’t have productive options to choose from, so many are compelled to leave their home countries, join a local illicit network (e.g., gangs), pledge to a terror group or resort to petty crime (the gateway to not-so-petty crime) to satisfy their unmet needs. The net outcome is that before age twenty, many young men become national liabilities versus national assets.

Boys with unmet psychological, spiritual and physical needs across the MENA are ripe for recruitment into violent religio-political groups like Al-Shabab, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But this is not the narrative that the architects of the counterterrorism fight want to hear. It causes no small amount of dissonance to learn that the foot soldiers of terror (really, at-risk youth whose communities and countries have failed them) are not innately evil and that most are even be redeemable. However, the itch to be seen as doing something (normally that “something” is lethal) must be scratched in order to appease a fearful public which is largely not aware of the key ingredients of which the transnational “terrorism” concoction is composed.

The youth bulge and other drivers of national instability and insecurity cannot be responded to with the West’s security apparatus. There’s no denying that a robust set of traditional military and intelligence capabilities is needed to deter great states aggression as well as to eliminate bad guys who are imminent threats, however, hard power should be the lesser applied compound in the prescription designed to cure terrorism. Developmental and national capacity building goods and processes  (often referred to as soft power) aimed at improving affected population’s human security represent a way forward that is likely to achieve the best security results over the long term.

President Obama in his 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS) stated, “The use of force is not, however, the only tool at our disposal, and it is not the principal means of U.S. engagement abroad, nor always the most effective for the challenges we face.” Though the administration persistently promises that hard power is not the “principal means of U.S. engagement abroad,” one could be forgiven for being skeptical of this pronouncement after even a cursory review of the national security balance sheet.

Uncle Sam’s military expenditures come in at over twelve times the spending of diplomacy and foreign humanitarian and development programs (more precisely, $610 billion to $50 billion). Surely, the U.S. administration and Congress can do a better job of adjusting spending priorities so that there is a more reasonable balance between hard power spending and the soft power tools that can effectively address the drivers of expanding insecurity in key parts of the world.

A Smarter Approach

Smart Power is a concept first introduced by Joseph Nye (former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton) and centers on investing in alliances and institution building as a means to enhance stability and achieve sustainable security outcomes. When practiced wisely, it is inspired by American core values and informed by scholarly analysis of observable trends versus biases towards a familiar set of threats and trends. Nye shared in a Huffington Post article in 2007 that, “Though the Pentagon is the best trained and best resourced arm of the government, there are limits to what hard power can achieve on its own. Promoting democracy, human rights and development of civil society are not best handled with the barrel of a gun.”

For smart power to gain traction, conventional notions of national security must yield to a far broader, nuanced and fact-fueled understanding of threats to international security. New goals, doctrines and strategies together would form the basis of a new international security orthodoxy, which brings closer to its center human security concerns. The premise that international security can be preserved principally with conventional war prowess must be discredited and more balanced and sensible framework for understanding (and responding to) security threats be brought to the fore. A policy of strategic patience which resists reflexive kinetic responses and is expressed principally through conflict resolution and development efforts must be sold to the American public as the most prudent way forward.

Lastly, President Obama’s NSS states that the solution to the fragile states challenge “rests in bolstering the capacity of regional organizations, and the United Nation system, to help resolve disputes, build resilience to crises and shocks, strengthen governance, end extreme poverty.” Such an approach (clearly not yet fully implemented) is smart power manifest, where victories are harder to quantify, take a long time to achieve, but are ultimately more effective than costly and controversial approaches like the target lists centric counterterrorism program. It’s time for the international security playbook to be revamped so that a human security centered smart power approach becomes America’s grand strategy for leading the world into an increasingly tumultuous 21st century.

Le 30 avril, le 1er régiment étranger de cavalerie (1er REC) a célébré le 152e anniversaire de la bataille de Camerone, sur le front de mer de Cassis (13). 

Jorge Domecq, EDA Chief Executive, today met with Jan Selstrand, Swedish State Secretary to the Minister of Defence to exchange views on the preparation of the European Council in June 2015 and Sweden’s participation in EDA projects. 

“It has been a very fruitful meeting with Jorge Domecq. It is of great importance that we not only exchange views ahead of the European Council in June 2015, but that we also discuss how we can further deepen our participation and cooperation in EDA projects”, said Swedish State Secretary Jan Salestrand. 

“Sweden is an active member of the European Defence Agency. It is for example involved in the Agency’s work on maritime capabilities where the EDA runs projects focussing on unmanned maritime systems, maritime surveillance, as well as maritime mine counter measures. Sweden is also the lead nation of the MIDCAS project developing a mid-air collision avoidance system which will contribute to the safe integration of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems into normal airspace. This project reached an important milestone end of April with the successful completion of a series of flight tests”, Jorge Domecq said after the meetings. 

The visit in Sweden is part of a series of visits by Mr. Domecq to all EDA Member States following his appointment as EDA Chief Executive and ahead of the Ministerial Steering Board on 18 May 2015. So far, Mr. Domecq visited Spain, Lithuania, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, France, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus and Finland. He will next travel to Italy.

 

More information:

• News "Jorge Domecq in Luxembourg to discuss cooperation" (5 May 2015)
• News "Defence cooperation talks in Cyprus" (23 April 2015)
• News "Chief Executive meets Hungarian Minister of Defence" (23 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Athens" (22 April 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in Poland for defence discussions"(20 April 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq meets Estonian Minister of Defence" (20 April 2015)
• News "Meeting with Croatian Defence Minister in Zagreb" (17 April 2015)
• News "Slovenia welcomes Jorge Domecq" (15 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Czech Republic" (13 April 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in Bulgaria to discuss defence cooperation" (8 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive travels to Romania" (8 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive meets French Minister of Defence" (30 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq exchanges views with Irish Minister of Defence Simon Coveney T.D." (25 March 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits The Netherlands" (23 March 2015)
• News "Discussions on European defence in Portugal" (19 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq meets German Secretary of State" (19 March 2015)
• News "Belgium and EDA discuss future defence cooperation" (18 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in the UK for cooperation talks" (25 Feb 2015)
• News "Latvia and EDA discuss cooperation opportunities" (19 Feb 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Lithuania" (17 Feb 2015)