Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

Eine wichtige Rolle bei der Neuausrichtung der Nato spielt auch die Türkei. Mit Zuckerbrot und Peitsche macht sich der türkische Präsident Erdogan zum geopolitischen Player. Aber nicht nur in der Nato. Türkei-Experte Günter Seufert erklärt, was Erdogan damit bezweckt.

In einem Beitrag für die »New York Times« vom 31. Mai 2022 benannte Präsident Joe Biden klarer denn je die Ziele der USA im Ukraine-Krieg: »eine demokratische, un­abhängige, souveräne und prosperierende Ukraine, die die Mittel zur Abschreckung und Verteidigung gegen eine weitere Aggression besitzt«. Washington unterstütze die Ukraine mit Waffen, damit sie in Verhandlungen die stärkstmögliche Position habe, so Biden. Der Sturz Putins sei nicht Ziel der amerikanischen Politik. Und solange die USA oder Verbündete nicht angegriffen würden, werde es zu keiner direkten Beteili­gung an dem Konflikt kommen, also zu keiner Entsendung eigener Truppen und zu keinen amerikanischen Angriffen auf russische Kräfte. Die USA, so Biden, würden die Ukraine weder zu Militärschlägen jenseits ihrer Grenzen »ermutigen« noch sie dazu »befähigen«. Es sei nicht Amerikas Absicht, den Krieg zu verlängern, um Russland »Schmerz« zuzufügen. Washington hat die Lieferung von Mehrfachraketenwerfern an die Bedingung geknüpft, dass die Ukraine damit keine Ziele auf russischem Terri­torium angreift. Dies zeigt den Balanceakt, vor dem Biden bei seinen Entscheidungen steht. Er möchte auf der einen Seite die Ukraine militärisch unterstützen, auf der anderen aber vermeiden, dass der Konflikt zu einem Krieg zwischen den USA und Russland eskaliert. Und das alles in einer Situation, in der keine Gewissheit darüber besteht, wo genau bei Putin die »roten Linien« liegen.

Aus der Ukraine nimmt die EU Geflüchtete unbürokratisch auf. Manche sprechen von einem Zweiklassensystem, andere hoffen auf überfällige Reformen.

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After being adopted by 120 states, the International Criminal Court (ICC) officially became operational when its founding treaty, the Rome Statute, entered into force on July 1, 2002. Ahead of the Rome Statute’s 20th anniversary, the UN Security Council (UNSC) held an Arria-Formula meeting on June 24, 2022, where states convened to renew their commitment to the statute and consider ways in which the ICC can contribute to accountability and the fight against impunity. Participants were asked to reflect on the relationship between the ICC and the UNSC and how best to support existing Security Council referrals to the ICC. During this crucial meeting, IPI President and CEO Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein presented a briefing to the Security Council.

In his briefing, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein highlighted the importance of demonstrating moral consistency among the UNSC and ICC, saying, “[T]o have any credibility with the millions of people out there, people who need desperately both of these institutions to function, and function properly, the Council and the Court must demonstrate – to the maximum extent possible, consistency. Moral consistency.” In addition, he referenced the historical significance of the Rome Statute and the heavy responsibility the ICC holds to serve justice and protect international peace and security.

Die Ukraine ist jetzt EU-Beitrittskandidat, so wurde es auf dem gestrigen Gipfel beschlossen. Für Dr. Barbara Lippert von der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik ein politisches Signal der Solidarität auch an die ukrainische Bevölkerung

Ensure open markets for clean technologies and products

UN peacekeeping missions tend to frame conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) narrowly both in terms of who its victims are and who is best placed to address it. The victims of CRSV are usually assumed to be women and girls, and there is often an expectation that women peacekeepers will be better able to address CRSV than men. These assumptions reflect the frequent conflation of CRSV with “violence against women and girls,” as well as with “sexual and gender-based violence.” They also reflect the broader conflation of “women” and “gender” throughout UN policy documents and training resources for military peacekeepers.

This issue brief explores how the UN system currently understands CRSV and SGBV, how this understanding affects the responsibilities, roles, and perceptions of military peacekeepers, and how UN policies—especially those focused on military women’s participation in peacekeeping—might be more inclusive. It draws on desk research as well as interviews with practitioners, UN personnel, and academic gender experts, as well as insights shared in several closed-door, expert-level workshops.

The paper concludes that the current narrow understanding of CRSV harms victims of sexual violence who are not women and girls, including men and boys as well as sexual and gender minorities. Beyond the victims, narrow understandings of CRSV also harm women peacekeepers. Those pushing to increase the number of uniformed women peacekeepers often emphasize their added value in preventing and responding to CRSV. This assumption can perpetuate the idea that women peacekeepers’ primary added value is their gender identity and saddles them with additional responsibilities, often without adequate training, resources, or authority.

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Intersessional climate negotiations just concluded in Bonn, 30 years after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed. They set the stage for the annual summit, which this year will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Talks were conducted against the backdrop of an evolving landscape in international climate politics. As it becomes increasingly clear that the Paris Agreement is not generating enough momentum, there is a renewed drive towards alternative forms of cooperation. Those initiatives, however, cannot simply do away with the politics that fetter global cooperation, but come with their own challenges.

Insufficient action

It is impossible to know where the world would be without 30 years of climate talks. What is clear is that efforts have been insufficient. Global CO2 emissions have risen almost every year since the Industrial Revolution. The past seven years were all among the top seven warmest on record. Sixteen years ago, the Stern Review warned that future costs of inaction on climate change would vastly outweigh the costs of reducing emissions. The main obstacle for acting on this warning has not been a lack of technical solutions or policy designs for their implementation, but the politics surrounding targets, obligations, and means. Now, there has been a shift in political debates from the question of Who pays for climate action? to Who gets to keep their way of life?: The world is already paying the costs of inaction.

Particularly hot and dry summers in 2018 and 2019 as well as the 2021 Ahr Valley floods have made climate change palpable in Germany. Other parts of the world are being hit even harder. Poorer countries, which have historically contributed less to global warming, are disproportionately affected. India has been suffering from severe heatwaves this year, with temperatures exceeding 45°C. At the intersessional climate negotiations in Bonn, financial support for those affected by irreparable loss and damage was a key concern for developing countries.

The politics of climate cooperation

Compensating for the lack of action through alternative forms of cooperation is not a new idea. Notably, after efforts to forge a new global agreement had failed at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, initiatives of smaller scale were, in combination, hoped to take its place. Today, there is a global treaty in place. The Paris Agreement commits all countries to keeping global warming to well below 2°C, ideally below 1.5°C. But it includes no fixed emission reduction obligations, instead leaving it to countries to determine their ambition levels individually. They must regularly report on their progress and ramp up their pledges, lest they be exposed as laggards. But such normative forces have been insufficient to keep efforts on track.

To compensate for this, attention has again shifted towards plurilateral initiatives and bilateral partnerships that are hoped to accelerate implementation. Last year’s climate summit in Glasgow yielded a host of new endeavours, such as the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa to support the country’s efforts to decarbonise its electricity system. Germany is planning to launch a climate club at the G7 summit, aiming to better coordinate climate policy, disincentivise imports from countries with less-stringent measures, and protect ambitious countries against first-mover disadvantages.

Smaller initiatives seem less tricky than multilateral treaties because there are fewer parties involved. They would make up for what they lack in scale with ambitious targets and stringent policy. Achieving these targets, however, for instance by means of establishing comparable carbon pricing systems, requires a degree of policy coordination and change that is by no means easy to negotiate even in smaller arrangements. And when compromises are made, there is a danger of watering down ambition and stringency, defeating the very purpose of going small in the first place.

Moreover, it is often unclear how new initiatives relate to the established UN process. Particularly when areas such as trade or finance are concerned, caution is required so as not to alienate other countries. As the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism has shown, domestic mitigation efforts raise concerns about adverse knock-on effects abroad. Properly addressing these concerns ex ante is imperative, but it takes up scarce political resources in both domestic and diplomatic arenas. Climate initiatives require prioritisation and commitment; more is not necessarily better. External circumstances often exacerbate the situation. The Copenhagen negotiations, for example, were hampered by the ongoing global financial crisis. Today, in light of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, energy security threatens to outrank climate action on the agenda.

Initiatives and partnerships are vital to complement climate cooperation under the Paris Agreement. They can help drive implementation, but they do not transcend broader climate politics. Those who seek to establish new forms of cooperation would be wise to consider not only what they are trying to achieve but also how they can get there. Thoughtful diplomacy is required to make initiatives work in the larger context of international climate politics.

Die tschechische EU-Ratspräsidentschaft will in der Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik der EU einen Schwerpunkt auf hybride Bedrohungen legen. Konkret sollen Diskussionen zu zwei Vorhaben aus dem Strategischen Kompass vom März 2022 beschleunigt werden. Es geht um die Erstellung zweier »Werkzeugkästen«, einer zur Abwehr hybrider Be­drohun­gen (EU Hybrid Toolbox) und einer gegen Desinformation und ausländische Einmischung (EU Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Tool­box). Doch das liefe hauptsächlich darauf hinaus, vorhandene Rechtsakte und Maß­nahmen der EU zu bündeln. Damit wird die Union der Herausforderung nicht gerecht. Viel­mehr muss das Kon­zept der hybri­den Bedrohungen kritisch hinterfragt werden, wenn es politisch überzeugen soll. Diese Aufgabe stellt sich umso dringender, weil hybriden Bedrohungen sowohl in der Nato als auch im Zuge der ge­planten Nationalen Sicherheitsstrategie Deutschlands hohe Aufmerksamkeit gilt.

Re-elected French President Emmanuel Macron has lost his absolute majority in parliament. In the final stages of the parliamentary election campaign, economic policy had come into focus as Macron came under pressure due to the populist proposals of the left from the EU-sceptic Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The left-wing alliance is now clearly the strongest opposition camp, while Marine Le Pen’s party, “Rassemblement National”, increased its number of seats more than tenfold. This means that in the next five years, Macron will not only have to articulate his economic policy goals more clearly and campaign for greater understanding and acceptance among the population, but also build on the support of other political forces in parliament. This applies in particular to the planned pension reform, in which Macron wants to raise the retirement age from the current 62 in order to ease the pressure on public finances. For although the economic situation at the start of his second term in office has been better than expected, there is considerable social discontent, which was also reflected in the low voter turnout.

Good macroeconomic record

The Covid pandemic was the biggest economic shock to France since the Second World War. Overall, however, the country weathered it well. The combination of a high vaccination rate with generous fiscal policy support and a stable level of private investment has proved successful.

The EU has played a major role in this positive development. Together, the Member States have been able to drive vaccine development, create financial space in budgets with the suspension of the fiscal rules, and provide funding for investment through the “Next Generation EU” programme.

The French government has also taken numerous measures to cushion rising energy prices and inflation, especially for lower-income households, including a one-off inflation compensation payment and a cap on the gas price. As a result, the inflation rate in the second-largest EU state is one of the lowest in the Union. In terms of energy policy, France is significantly less dependent on Russia than other Central and Eastern European states, as the lion’s share of energy is generated in nuclear power plants.

At the beginning of this year, economic growth forecasts were far above what could have been hoped for at the start of the health crisis. Unemployment – a particularly important metric in French politics – has continued to fall during the pandemic. At 7.4 per cent, it is now at its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis. Measured against these macroeconomic factors, Macron’s first term in office can certainly be viewed in a positive light.

A great amount of social discontent

A good economic situation should give an incumbent government a tailwind in elections, but the first round of presidential elections showed how fragmented the society is. Both the extreme right and the extreme left were able to record large gains. This was particularly evident among young and low-income voters. In both demographics, two-thirds cast their votes for Le Pen or Mélenchon.

This highlights the anger and disappointment with politics. There is a low level of trust in elites, politics, and the media, of which the two major national parties have been the latest victims. Both have almost slipped into political irrelevance. The low voter turnout confirms this development. After a historically low 47.5 per cent in the first round of parliamentary elections, not even half of those eligible to vote went to the polls in the second round.

With social spending of more than 30 per cent of gross domestic product, France was the OECD frontrunner in 2019. Nonetheless, there is a sense of gross social injustice that has triggered a desire for radical change. In a September 2021 poll by the Ipsos Institute, 75 per cent of respondents said France was in decline. It seems that the population does not feel that it is participating in the positive macroeconomic developments. This feeling was epitomised by the so-called Yellow Vests protests, which in 2018 were initially directed against a higher levy on fuel, but then expanded to oppose general tax policies and government. Macron, who presents himself as a president of the centre, is seen by many as the president of the rich.

Challenges for economic policy

In his second term, Macron’s biggest challenge will be the lack of a majority in parliament in addition to countering social discontent with his economic policy. In this context, the ability to reach political compromises in parliament will be a test for the French political system. If successful, it could increase citizens’ acceptance of the government’s measures. Macron has five years to overcome the ideological rifts in economic policy and convince society that the EU is not an obstacle but a means to ensure the prosperity of the French people. On the other hand, it is likely that the increasing political polarisation and threatened dysfunctionality of the parliament could hinder any reasonable dialogue on economic policy.

With this in mind, the external macroeconomic environment is becoming increasingly unfavourable, at least at the beginning of Macron’s second term, mainly because of the accumulating consequences of the war in Ukraine, such as inflation and economic slowdown. Debt financing costs are also likely to rise in the future. In addition, the EU is due to return to discussions on fiscal rules reforms in 2023. This will create fertile ground for populist forces to criticise Macron’s economic policy.