Progress achieved in making European borders less onerous for travellers has long been seen as one of the most tangible successes of European integration. In recent months this progress has been been put into question, however, leading some to wonder whether the very basic ideas behind Schengen and various visa liberalisation agreements are likely to survive a rise in mistrust. This has serious implications; for citizens of Schengen member states, but also for all those Europeans who are still on the outside looking in, envious of the ease of travel that has been created in half of their continent, and wondering if the European border revolution of the last quarter century is already in retreat before it ever reaches them.
On 14 June 1985, the Schengen Agreement on the gradual abolition of checks at the common borders between Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, was signed on board the cruise ship ‘Princesse Marie-Astrid’, moored at Schengen, Luxembourg. Photo: plaza.lu
Today most Europeans move more freely across their continent than at any time since modern borders and passports were first invented. In the rhetoric of many far right parties the vision of a borderless Europe has always, however, been less a dream than a nightmare. There is Marine Le Pen, leader of the French Popular Front, demanding that France “leave the Schengen treaty. It is obvious: massive anarchic and uncontrolled immigration is one of the breeding grounds of insecurity.” There is the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, Karl Heinz Strache, calling for more national border controls to be put in place, “following the recent example of Denmark.” This is not a new position, of course: Strache, and others like him, also opposed all previous enlargements of the Schengen area, and indeed the European Union itself. It is only recently, however, that the wider debate appears to be moving in their direction. If even the Danes call for a reimposition of national border controls, why not French, Finns or Austrians as well?
And so questions were raised: is the project of a “Europe without borders” another expression of technocratic hubris, another idealistic vision thought up by over-enthusiastic jet-setting elites, not actually supported by the majority of citizens fearful of its unintended consequences? Or is the real issue diminishing trust among European elites, as the Polish interior minister put it recently in the context of debates about Romania and Bulgaria, which, he noted, had been promised to be accepted into Schengen once they met all requirements:
“Today, two member states made it impossible to make a decision on Schengen enlargement. This takes us to a sad conclusion about mutual confidence between member states … We’ve known since April that they have met the requirements. Today, the promise was broken.”
“The euro zone and the Schengen area depend on trust: that each member will run sound public finances, and that each will control its borders. When trust breaks down, integration is in trouble.”
The Danish border with Germany
When even Danes and French fear open borders with Germany or Italy, respectively, and when even Romania and Bulgaria, EU members since 2007, cannot rely on promises made to them solemnly by other member states: is it wise to expect any further bold steps towards freedom of movement from such a Union? Or does this deprive all those who do not yet enjoy freedom of movement in Europe of the hope that things will ever change?
Schengen as a never-ending crisis
And yet: sometimes even a seemingly obvious conclusion – “Schengen is in crisis because Europe is in crisis” – is still misleading. Schengen is not in fact facing an unprecedented crisis. It is highly unlikely to ever be dismantled and most likely to continue to expand. It is also likely that this process will be challenged and hotly debated every step of the way. All of this reflects the way Schengen has actually developed for more than two decades: incrementally, slowly, focused on security concerns in the light of public anxieties, in a process shaped strongly by European ministries of interior.
Schengen was not perceived by those promoting it as a matter of prioritizing freedom over security, or of idealism trumping realism. It was always defined as serving (also) national interests. Progress became possible when ways were found to demonstrate that more freedom could coincide with increased security for existing members. Progress was therefore slow or came to a halt when argument was made in purely abstract terms and not in terms of actual security concerns.
Looking back shows the patterns Ruben Zaiotti refers to. There is France, a founder and, together with Germany, inventor of the Schengen concept, having serious doubts about actually implementing the very protocol it co-drafted and which was ratified in 1993. Relying on article 2.2. of the Schengen Implementation Convention, French politicians declared throughout the 1990s that they would be forced to maintain control over land borders with Belgium and Luxembourg in the interest of national security. As Herve de Charette, French foreign minister, put it in September 1995: “If it seems, as it is the case, that our citizens security depends also on the border controls, it is understood that we have to keep them.”
“the entry into force of the Schengen Implementing Agreement has been postponed for the third time and sine die … squabbling among the member states following the announcement of the postponement indicates that political and commercial rivalries exacerbated by a lack of institutional and public control inherent to the Schengen process, are more likely to be at the root of the debacle. “
Schengen, a debacle before it had even begun to be put into place?!
This was followed by further debates in 1996, as France continued to hold out in its increasingly isolated skepticism. More than a decade after the Schengen declaration was signed in 1985 there were still French border guards checking travellers from Belgium! There was also a serious risk in 1996 that Norway would not accept Schengen and that this would sink all Scandinavian participation in the project.
The reason France did eventually lift border controls with Belgium was not due to an infection with Euro-idealism or to the sudden absence of right-wing challenges. As the father of Marine Le Pen, Jean Marie Le Pen, put it in 1998, when he was riding high in the polls: “Schengen opens the doors to drugs and insecurity as well as to immigrants and refugees from all over the world.”
There was never a golden age in which Schengen was not contested. But in the end, despite serious debates, the French, Norwegians, Swiss all decided that it was in their national self-interest to belong to this club. Real progress became possible in the end because it became obvious even to cautious (French and other) policy makers that wherever Schengen had been put in place, it actually worked: the benefits were real for French citizens and the risks manageable. The fact that, following the lifting of border controls with the Benelux, France was not flooded by drugs helped build confidence. Similar experiences changed perceptions in Germany and other countries worried about the effects of abandoning national border control.
Helmut Kohl and Romano Prodi
The difficulties Romania and Bulgaria face in joining Schengen are also not unprecedented. When Italy, a member of the G7 and a founding member of the EU, formally applied to join Schengen in 1987 it took a decade (!) for its application to be approved by its partners, especially the ever skeptical Germans. Germany’s interior minister (and the influential Lander ministries) at the time had serious concerns about Italian laxness. Germany also insisted on the drafting of detailed questionnaires to be filled out by all applicants, including Italy, in order to assess their state of preparedness. Even after Italy met all conditions, Germany remained reluctant to give its approval. As Romano Prodi told me earlier this year in an interview in his hometown Bologna, he appealed directly to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a meeting in Innsbruck in July 1997, going over the head of Kohl’s interior minister. Nor were Germans easily prepared to entrust their Austrian neighbours with managing Schengen’s external border on their behalf. As the interior minister of Bavaria at the time, Gunther Beckstein, recalled in a meeting in Munich this summer, it took a serious effort for Austrian leaders – and their “clever initiative” to invite Bavarian border police to help their Austrian colleagues in preparing for Schengen – to build trust and make German leaders feel at ease. Today Beckstein, looking back, leaves no doubt that Schengen did not come at the price of German insecurity and constitutes an important success. It is also, in his view, very hard to reverse along the German-Austrian (or any other long) border: the German border police has been completely transformed. Countless new border crossings have emerged for citizens to take advantage of their new freedom to move. Schengen Europe has become part of a new reality, accepted by police as well as by ordinary citizens in their daily lives.
Günther Beckstein
How about the recent Danish proposal? The Danish insistence on restoring border controls, announced in spring, shocked many of its European partners. Again, some saw in this a sign of a wider unravelling of Schengen. EU officials expressed “extreme concern.” This triggered a fresh debate about the conditions under which member states could “temporarily” restore border controls. In the end, this debate lead to a proposal, presented by the European Commission a few weeks ago. It suggested that in the future imposing temporary national border controls, beyond the very short term, would require European Commission approval. This, together with a regulation to further strengthen the European frontier agency FRONTEX, recently adopted by the European Parliament, would in fact mark another step towards further supranational governance of all land borders in the Schengen area.
It is unclear whether such a proposal can actually be accepted today; it may not be. What is clear is that the debate is not one about dismantling Schengen. A new Danish government has also, in the meantime, decided to refrain from restoring border controls. The new government’s common policy (Regeringsgrundlag) emphasised both Denmark’s commitment to the Schengen Agreement and the intention to cooperate with other EU countries on border controls on the basis of EU treaties and rules. It concluded that “the plans from May 2011 to erect new control systems at the Danish borders will not be implemented.”
Measuring Europe’s border revolution
Denmark has less than 70 km of land borders; this made threats to reimpose border controls more credible than similar announcements would have been if made by most other EU member states. To put recent debates on European borders in a wider historical context it is helpful to quantify some of the dramatic changes which have taken place on the continent and which have transformed its borders.
The first act in the recent European border story was the creation of new borders. In 1989 European land borders had a total length of 25,032 km. Then, following the collapse of former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the total length of land borders in Europe went up to 37,409 km. This increase reflected the dramatic politics of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Most new borders were the result of a peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union, but some were contested and fought over bitterly. Even today some borders in the South Caucasus and in the Balkans – such as the border between Serbia and Kosovo, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, or within Georgia – remain contested, with future outbreaks of violence always a possibility. These borders remain what borders have traditionally been in European history: a razor’s edge “on which hang suspended the modern issues of war or peace, of life or death of nation” (Lord Curzon), a source of tensions and conflicts.
The second act involved the removal of old borders. In 1985 a pioneering group of five countries first agreed on the aim to “abolish checks at common borders and transfer them to their external borders.” (Schengen Agreement). It then took another five years to agree on the Schengen Implementation Convention. Ratification of it lasted until late in 1993 and in march 1995 the Convention finally entered into force. Since then the area covered by the Schengen agreement has grown dramatically. The result is that since 1995 physical border controls have been dismantled on European land borders totaling 16,447 km. (see the table below for all Schengen borders in Europe today)
The third act is in fact still unfolding: it involves testing the limits of the vision of a borderless Europe on a continental scale. This is a vision of breathtaking ambition; it is obvious that it can only be brought about through incremental steps over a long period of time. It consists of both the ongoing enlargement of Schengen to the East (to all existing and future EU members) and of the process of linking the prospect of visa liberalisation for other European states with reforms and close security cooperation of these states, turning them over time into competent partners of the EU in addressing common security concerns.
José Manuel Barroso, President of the EC, took part in the celebrations for the enlargement of the Schengen area which were held in Zittau, a town on the border of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic on 21 December 2007. Photo: European Commission
In the most optimistic scenario, based on recent experiences, more European countries will one day follow the Polish path. After shacking off communist rule Poland first signed a readmission agreement (agreeing to take back illegal immigrants passing through its territory) in March 1991. It did this at the time with the small group of five original Schengen members. Following this Poland was granted visa free access to all of these states on 8 April 1991. In 2004 Poland joined the European Union; finally, in late 2007, Poland joined the Schengen zone as a full member. With this step the Polish land borders with Germany, but also with the Baltic states, became invisible.
The basic dynamic
If Schengen is not actually facing a “new” crisis, the same could be said about the wider European border revolution – including further visa liberalisation. The best reason to be confident that it will continue is the fact that the basic dynamics which has made this policy a success until now remain in place: a desire by outsiders to participate in a success story and an interest by EU member states to obtain cooperation in managing common problems. But in the future as in the past this will require serious confidence building and efforts on the part of non-EU countries.
Already today the promise of visa liberalisation as a long-term result of visa dialogues with the EU is triggering reforms among some members of the Eastern Partnership process, such as Moldova. The same approach has worked successfully to bring about domestic security sector and border reforms in all Western Balkan states after 2007. Such trends make policing the external borders easier, and extend the EU justice and home affairs acquis further.
It is only as part of a vigorous debate on how this border revolution is actually making Europe safer that it is going to be politically viable and likely to continue. But then, this has never actually been different from now.
“European” land borders refers to the land borders of all European countries with each other. ”European” are all countries eligible to become or already members of the Council of Europe. This means that we counted the borders of Turkey with its European neighbours in the Balkans and in the South Caucasus, but not with Iraq or Iran. The same is true for Russia: we counted its European borders in the East and South, but not its borders with Central Asia.
One conceptual difficulty is posed by micro-states which are placed within EU member states: Monaco, San Marino, the Vatican. We decided to leave them out of the calculation, since even before 1989 there have been no real border regimes in place.
Andorra is not a member of Schengen.
In the case of Lichtenstein the border was traditionally managed by Switzerland, which is why we counted the border with Austria (but not the Lichtenstein-Swiss border).
Please do submit your comments and suggestions, however, how to improve the table and calculations, either here as a comment or to g.knaus@esiweb.org. We would be most grateful.
Special thanks to my colleague Melissa Panzi, who was with ESI in Istanbul and is currently studying the relationship between the US and Mexico along their land borders at the university in Monterrey.
How long does it take for the whole proud city of New York to be swallowed by nature?
In his magical “The World without us” (a good christmas present for friends, by the way) Alan Weisman makes a thought experiment: he imagines a world without human beings and asks what would happen, among other things, to the urban landscape of Manhattan. His conclusion is that “the time it would take nature to rid itself of what urbanity has wrought may be less than we might suspect.”
Without the pumps being maintained, which every day keep 13 million gallons (49 million liters) of water from overflowing the subway tunnels these tunnels would quickly fill up: within half an hour water would reach a level where trains can no longer pass. Within 36 hours the tunnels would fill up completely. Within 20 years the steel columns which support the street above the train-lines would buckle. By then the city would be well on its way to revert to a forest (click here for his slideshow):
“In the first few years with no heat, pipes burst all over town, the freeze-thaw cycle moves indoors, and things start to seriously deteriorate. Buildings groan as their innards expand and contract; joints between walls and rooflines separate. Where they do, rain leaks in, bolts rust, and facing pops off, exposing insulation. If the city hasn’t burned yet, it will now … Within two decades, lightning rods have begun to rust and snap, and roof fires leap among buildings, entering panneled offices filled with paper fuel … Red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons nest in increasingly skeletal high-rise structures.”
There are a number of serious points in this tale.
First, decline is not a “problem” that human ingenuity can “solve”. All we can do is keep going: once those pumps go off, all the wisdom and craft that have gone into the New York subway system cannot prevent it to come to a halt within hours. Second, although crises and decay are not exceptional moments but the stuff of life itself what constitutes a serious crisis very much depends on the perspective of the onlooker. The collapse of Manhattan might be a serious example of decline for some, but as ornithologist Steve Hilty told Alan Weisman “If humans were gone at least a third of all birds on Earth might not even notice.”
Turning from birds to humans and from Manhattan to Brussels – and keeping in mind those two points (1. things are always in decline and 2. assessing how serious it is depends on where we stand) – the real concern I hope to share with you today is whether it is true, as a recent gathering of smart people discussed in Vienna, that today – at the end of the first decade of the third millenium – “Europe” is “in decline”?
Note that even as we pose the question, we can see what is wrong with it. Of course Europe is in decline if we look at it from the biological perspective. And as many have recently pointed out, with seriously raised eyebrows, the mere fact that there are less of us (Europeans) in the future than there are today suggests that there is something to this biological perspective. Pointing to Europe’s low birthrates, one concerned American, Robert Samuelson, writes in the Washington Post in June 2005 (title: “The end of Europe”) that
“in a century – if these rates continue – there won’t be many Germans in Germany or Italians in Italy. Even assuming some increase in birthrates and continued immigration, Western Europe’s population grows dramatically greyer, projects the US Census Bureau …”
And not only the Census Bureau. As Rainer Munz, a leading European demographer, told our group at the very outset of our seminar, demography is about slow processes which advance with a degree of inexorability: thus “we can see ahead for the next 45 to 50 years” (which for many of us is the rest of our lifespan), and what we see is this: for the period up to 2050 “without immigration, the population of western and central Europe would have declined by 57 million by 2050.” The working age population would shrink by a striking 88 million people!
This is obviously going to cause some problems: retiring at age 60, or 62 (as recently proposed by the French President, triggering major protests), is not going to be an affordable option, if we want to maintain even a rudimentary welfare state and old age pension system. To maintain their living standards Europeans will have to work longer; more people will have to work (including more women); and Europe will need to remain open to immigration from parts of the world where there is still (for now) population growth. The only countries in Europe with a growing domestic population are small Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Ireland and Turkey (where population growth will also come to an end in the foreseeable future, however).
All of this, so Robert Samuelson, ensures that Europe is “history’s has-been”: wherever they look, Europeans see their way of life threatened. At the same time they remain immobilised by their problems. European do not want more migration. They also do not want to become more competitive by adapting the American way of running their economies (i.e. reduce regulations and taxes). Therefore, “Europe as we know it is slowly going out of business.”
This sounds ominous. Of course, there are things that could be done for Europeans to remain in business, Rainer Munz tells us. The average age for people to retire in Austria today is still only 58: this could and should rise. Many more women could work (in some European countries, particularly in Scandinavia, they do). People could decide to have (some) more children. We could consume less in old age. And there could be more immigrants. But even if all of this happens, there might still be less Europeans in 2050 than now, and less people adding to Europe’s GDP.
So Europe is in decline. And this means inevitably a loss of influence also on the global stage. As Robert Samuelson concludes:
“Ever since 1498, after Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and opened trade to the Far East, Europe has shaped global history, for good and ill. It settled North and South America, invented modern science, led the Industrial Revolution, oversaw the slave trade, created huge colonial empires, and unleashed the world’s two most destructive wars. This pivotal Europe is now vanishing …”
But hold on, I wonder: what does it really mean to say that pivotal Europe has shaped history “for good and ill”? Let’s ask ourselves three naive questions:
1. Clearly “Europe” (and “European influence”) is an abstraction? Throughout the 19 century European Empires were actually bitter rivals, fearful of each other. Even if they had global Empires, as countries such as the Netherlands or Belgium had until the middle of the 20th century in Asia and Africa, these European nations were extremely vulnerable in the face of hostile neighbours (and were indeed invaded a few times by some of them in the 20th century). Also, the colonial era ended many decades ago (which was not obviously a loss to the world, or to European citizens, but that is a different debate). During the cold war, peace in Europe was in part the result of the fact that Europe’s most powerful previous trouble-maker (Germany) was divided, with Nato and Warsaw Pact troops, armed to the teeth, staring at each other across the Fulda gap. Clearly the average Central and East European had little global influence then either (or should he or she have felt pride that some citizens of the world were in awe at the combined military machine of the Warsaw Pact?).
In general, when did the average Portuguese or Spaniard, Austrian or Swede last feel that her opinion, or the leaders elected by her, had more global influence than they have today? Is the late colonial era really the yardstick by which to measure declining European influence? (at this stage of our musings we might notice how very Anglo-Saxon, or rather British, so much current thinking about European decline is: it assumes first that European colonialism was more or less a civilising and beneficial force, and second that the end of world power status was relatively recent. Few Poles or Greeks would recognise themselves in such a narrative).
2. Has the influence of the European Union also declined in recent decades? If we look at it as a concrete “European” geopolitical entity the story of the past three decades suggests otherwise. The EU has grown substantially as a result of successive enlargements, from some 300 million people to more than 500 million. Arguably, the EU today has more potential clout than the European Economic Community had at any moment during the Cold War. Or than the EU had in the 1990s, when Europeans stood by helplessly and watched the Balkans burn.
3. What is so bad about getting older? Rainer Munz presents a striking statistic: “in the course of the twenty-first century, our life expectancy is likely to rise by another 20 years. If we extrapolate the pace of recent decades – a plus of three months per year – then the gain would even be significantly greater.” This means that de facto we do not live just 24 hours, but at least 25 hours every day – although we only get to consume the extra time at the end of our lives (which I certainly regret on many busy days).
In short, we all understand the problems caused by an aging work force. But we might also pause to note that behind this “cause of decline” stands a major positive trend: the dramatic improvement in the chance for all of us (Europeans of our generation) to live to old age. We are likely to see our children and grand children – if we chose to have them -grow older as well. Yes, we might be lonely in old age but this is our choice in a way it never was for previous generations. Let’s plan to work until we are 70. And let’s assume that we will need to change profession at age 40, again at 60 and still learn new tricks when we are 75. This will be stressful. But we will not be dead.
What all of this means is that we – European societies and citizens – have choices our ancestors never had before. We can chose what to do with our longer lives. We can chose to have children and (because others have fewer) these might have to worry less about finding work. We certainly have to worry less about them going off to fight in a major war.
We can also chose to shape a credible EU that at least retains the global influence it has at the moment (and whose leaders do not indulge in fantasies inspired by a supposed Siglo de Oro of European imperialism of the kind “if only Europeans could – like Hernan Cortes in 1519 – set out and conquer a nation of seven million Indians with a few hundred adventurers”). Of course, Europeans will disagree on how such an EU should look like. Therefore changing anything will have to be incremental and slow. This will be true for reforming the Euro. This will also be true for future enlargement. It has generally been true in the history of European integration.
And, above all else, we should think hard how to best meet the challenges which we know we are going to face: further immigration, (somewhat) more diversity, and the obvious fact that a growing minority in our aging European societies are going to be Muslim. We could chose to go down the Thilo Sarrazin route: to deplore, as the former Bundesbanker did in a best-selling book (“Germany abolishes itself”) the fading of an era when most of Berlin’s population was Christian (or at least Judeo-Christian, to judge by the new rhetoric which even far-right anti-Islamic parties across Europe have cynically started to embrace) and white. Judging by this reference point it is those countries which never had or are unlikely to soon have large religious or ethnic minorities that are going to inherit the future … Only: where does this theory place aging Japan? Most of the multicultural rest of the world? Africa, Brazil, India, China, Indonesia? Multi-ethnic countries which grow and homogenous countries which do not? Or we could see the challenges or growing societal pluralism as a sideproduct of our success: as a result of peace and prosperity.
Where does this debate on the decline of Eurabia leave the US? There was, after all, also an American Sarrazin, another elderly man with grey hair, the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, making a rather similar case. Not about Islam only, which he did already in 1993 (in his bestselling and terrible “Clash of Civilisations”), but about the challenges posed to America’s national identity by … Hispanization! Huntington warned a few years ago that Mexican immigration
“looms as a unique and disturbing challenge to our cultural integrity, to our national identity, and potentially to our future as a country.”
This challenge to US identity is of a quasi-military nature:
“In almost every recent year the Border Patrol has stopped about 1 million people attempting to enter the US illegally from Mexico. It is generally estimated that about 300,000 make it across illegally. If over 1 million Mexican soldiers crossed the border, America would treat it as a major threat to their national security and react accordingly. The invasion of over 1 million Mexican civilians is a comparable threat to American societal security, and Americans should react to it with comparable vigour.”
Thus, while Latinos are the problem in the US (for Huntington), Muslims are the problem in Europe (for Sarrazin and many, many others), and both for the same supposed reason: they cannot be integrated into mainstream culture! in the US it is Anglo-Protestant Culture which is under siege … in Europe it is the Abendland which is set to decline. Thus Europe is doomed just as California (which was one of the whitest states in the US) is doomed, and arguably both are in decline since the 1960s … Some years ago former CIA director William Colby warned about the future emergence of a “Spanish speaking Quebec in the US Southwest.” Stefan Luft, a German author, makes the same claims for Germany’s cities. So then both the US and Europe are doomed …
This theory – Muslim migration causes the decline of Europe – is also developed in Walter Laqueur’s “The last days of Europe“, another book which starts with demography and ends with the near certain failure of integrating Muslims. For Laqueur the best place to observer the death of old Europe is “Neukolln or Cottbusser Tor” in Berlin. He sees a dark future for a doomed continent which is all the more dangerous because it is still hidden: “on the surface, everything seems normal, even attractive. But Europe as we knew it is bound to change, probably out of recognition for a number of reasons …” A similar theory of decline is developed by Bruce Thornton in Decline and Fall – Europe’s slow motion suicide (2007) and in Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009). And these were books written before the global economic crisis or the latest troubles of the Euro …
Islamisation is, of course, only one (if for many the most popular) explanation, besides aging, why Europe in the early 21st century is supposedly in decline. Different authors present different arguments, so let us look at a few more “causes of decline”:
there is the theory of Huntington presented in the foreword of his book “Who are we?” that “so long as Americans see their nation endangered, they are likely to have a high sense of identity with it. If their perception of threat fades, other identities could again take precedence over national identity.” Hm. While I can see how this could be applied to today’s Europeans, less likely to go to war than at any point in history, interesting policy conclusions follow from this analysis …
there is the identification by Walter Laqueur of another crucial reason for the “aggressiveness” of Muslim communities in Europe in particular: “Sexual repression almost certainly is another factor that is seldom if ever discussed within their communities or by outside observers. It could well be that such repression generates extra aggression …”. We learn: a Europe which is less sexually repressed is less aggressive. This seems intuitively right, except that in the aggregate Europe was probably never in its history less sexually repressed than today (certainly this seems to be true for Berlin …) and yet, its decline is still not stopped by the neo-pagan attitudes to sexuality. And where does this theory leave China or the US, clearly some way behind most Europeans on the scale of licentiousness?
there is the claim in an article (Europe’s Determination to Decline) by Bjorn Lomberg that it is Europe’s commitment to deal with climate change which explains its looming decline: unilaterally reducing carbon emissions will cost the EU “$250 billion a year by 2020″:
“Unfortunately it seems as if Europe has decided that if it can’t lead the world in prosperity, it should try to lead the world in decline. By stubbornly pursuing an approach that has failed spectacularly in the past, Europe seems likely to consign itself to an ever dwindling economic position in the world, with fewer jobs and less prosperity”
Even being successful in attracting tourists is a sign of decline for some! This is the Venice-Disneyland theory of the last days. Walter Laqueur writes:
“Given the shrinking of its population, it is possible that Europe, or at any case considerable parts of it, will turn into a cultural theme park, a kind of Disneyland on a level with a certain sophistication for well-to-do visitors from China and India, something like Brugge, Venice, Versailles, Stratford-on-Avon, or Rothenburg ob der Tauber on a large scale … This scenario may appear somewhat fanciful at the moment, but given current trends it is a possibility that cannot be dismissed out of hand. Tourism has been of paramount importance in Switzerland for a long time; it is now of great (and growing) importance in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and some other countries.”
Surely it is a worrying sign of decline if too many other people would want to come and visit your hometown or country?
The end is near…
During our seminar on European decline Wolfgang Petritsch pointed out that in fact some countries in Europe were not doing too badly even at this particular moment in time: Scandinavia for instance. Others added Germany, Poland, Central Europe in general. Looking at this list makes it obvious that identifying simple causes of decline (high taxes? openness to immigration? Protestantism? Catholicism?) is almost as hard as identifying simple causes for success. But if our theories are not simple, how are we going to sell our books?
It is an akward fact for declinists that most Europeans live better today than either their parents or grandparents or great grandparents (not to go back even further). Let us certainly heed the call of Timothy Garton Ash in a recent article (Europe Wake up!):
“The eurozone is in mortal danger. European foreign policy is advancing at the pace of a drunken snail. Power shifts to Asia. The historical motors of European integration are either lost or spluttering. European leaders rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic while lecturing the rest of the world on ocean navigation.”
But Tim also notes, in the same article, that “for standard of living and quality of life, most Europeans have never had it so good. They don’t realise how radically things need to change in order that things may remain the same.” This sums up the nature of the current crises perfectly. It also explains why most European voters do not look for a Churchill.
It is banal but it remains true: every generation faces crises. Greeks face a very serious crisis, for instance, and much will depend on the way its leaders (and voters) respond to it. It may indeed enter a period of decline, paying a price for many years (or decades) of overspending. And yet, while all this is true few Greeks would probably chose to go back to the social problems of the 1960s (when a different crisis ushered in a military coup and seven years of torture and authoritarianism), to those of the 1940s (a time of war and invasion followed by civil war) or those of the 1920s (when following a split of the country and a lost war over two millions displaced needed to be resettled in an impoverished nation).
Let us admit then that Europe is indeed in crisis and undergoing decline. But so is – depending on what criteria one choses – much of the rest of the world, if not now, then soon enough. In any open society a sense of crisis, and the threat of decline, is as enduring as the sense of hope and the awareness that good policies might improve things. And certainly both complacency and misleading crisis talk (such as identifying Hispanics or Muslims as the core problem threatening national identities) could lead to bad policies.
In the end one of our Greek seminar participants summed up the problem of European “crisis talk” best: perhaps a near permanent fear of decline is what any society needs in order to remain on its toes and adapt? Rather like those men and women looking after the pumps in the New York subway, aware that water is always there, ready to submerge their construction, we also must never feel secure. Like them, however, a state of near panic at all times is also certain to lead us to make many more bad decisions.
“I was very worried about the fate of the world, but I’m no longer worried about it. I think the world is going to be fine. Now whether the world as we know it is going to survive – that’s an open question.”
Indeed. And it always will be, says the pessimist in me. Or was this the optimist?
“Will Europe end like Venice?” Wolfgang Petritsch and Rainer Münz. Photo: ERSTE Stiftung
“What is the future of EU-Turkey relations?” Discussion with Alexandros Yannis, Kai Strittmatter, and Gerald Knaus. Photo: ERSTE Stiftung
“Is Europe a continent in decline” – Alex Rondos, Andreas Treichl, Boris Marte, Peter Hagen, Wolfgang Petritsch and Rainer Münz. Photo: ERSTE Stiftung
“From Brussels to Belgrade” – different perspectives on EU policy from Emine Bozkurt, Samuel Zbogar, Kristof Bender, Milica Delevic. Photo: ERSTE Stiftung
“Will Europe run the 21st century?” Mark Leonard discusses with Vessela Tscherneva, Ivan Krastev with Aleksandros Yannis. Photo: ERSTE Stiftung
Vienna Seminar 2010 – session with Nicu Popescu, Gerald Knaus, and Heather Grabbe on the EU and the European neighbourhood. Photo: ERSTE Stiftung
It was a fascinating, deeply emotional event: a commemoration gathering in Belgrade, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the 5th of October, the day Serbian citizens took their country back from Slobodan Milosevic exactly 10 years ago. The most poignant moment came at the very end, when a visibly moved Greek prime minister, George Papandreou (who had come in from Brussels on the way to Athens), told his audience about a promise he had made, after Zoran Djindic, Serbia’s prime minister, was killed in 2003, in his eulogy at Djindic’s funeral:
“There and then I made a pledge, to Zoran, but also to the Serbian people. It will continue to ensure that Serbia arrives in her natural home, the European Union. The EU is not complete without the Balkans. Anyone who argues against the Balkans joining the EU is arguing against geography, against economy, against history. Do not believe those who talk about enlargement fatigue. The EU is a long-term historical project and you have to be part of it.”
Papandreou recalled the first time he met Sonja Licht, the spiritus movens behind the whole anniversary event, at the time of the creation of the Helsiniki Citizens Assembly in Prague twenty years ago in 1990, and how much has changed since then. Sonja, sitting next to him, recalled that their’s was a friendship at first sight, “because, despite everything, we both realised that we were proud to be from the Balkans.” He then took her hand, and for a moment both seemed to be glowing, like two teenagers who had just jointly discovered a great romantic poem, as he added: “we are still proud to be from the Balkans. And the European future is the way to find unity amongst our diversity. This is what makes Europe special for the Balkans”
This vision, so often evoked in other settings, can seem banal, boring, mundane at times; the sort of thing EU and Balkan politicians evoke because it is the polite thing to say. But here, presented against the background of memories of another, darker Europe in the 1990s, recalling a velvet revolution that marks one of the happiest days in the tragic recent past of the region, recalling leaders who paid for it with their lives, not long ago, but recently, the vision of a European Serbia in a European Balkan seemed to recapture all its sparkle.
Papandreou managed to express, with a few, heartfelt words, the sense that our generation of leaders and activists are privileged, not only to watch, and also to try to contribute, to the writing of the next chapter in a book that might well be called in a hundred years the “book of European miracles”: that after the miracle on the Rhine (Franco-German reconciliation), the miracle on the Vistula (Germano-Polish reconciliation), the miracle on the Bosporus (the ongoing Europeanisation of Turkey) we are now in the middle of the miracle on the Sava and the Drina. And then the ghosts of that past, the Balkans of the 1990s, will be banished to their graves, never to return to haunt us.
(I could not help thinking of the day when, in the very same hotel this meeting took place, the mafia-paramilitary leader Arkan was shot in the lobby. The former Intercontinental has its own ghosts hanging around its corners).
But there was a more that made this event fascinating, and inspiring. It is also a reality that the transformation that received such a boost in 2000 is still incomplete. There are still enormous problems to be solved. The story of the past decade is one of many false starts, delays, failures to accept the new realities; of clashing visions, also and particularly in Serbia, as Goran Svilanovic recalled: of false priorities, and of denying realities when it came to ICTY, Serbia- Montenegro, and Serbian-Kosovo relations.
On the other hand, there is today real change in the air. Compared to previous meetings I attended in Belgrade, just slightly more than a year ago, the fact that the president himself could speak for 30 minutes without once mentioning the word “Kosovo”, talking about Serbia and the lessons from the past decade, reflects a new ordering of priorities. The fact that the foreign minister only mentions Kosovo in passing, as one of many challenges, without elaborating, is no less striking. There was also a remarkable intervention by the foreign minister of Slovakia, Dzurinda, calling on Serbia to embrace the “tough choices” lying ahead, and lauding the day the EU and Serbia had passed the joint UN resolution a few days back as the day Serbia’s leaders embraced reality and a European future. This obviously remains mined territory, and the fact that Serbia’s leaders are moving carefully, and not – as so often in recent years – recklessly does not mean that the problems are solved. Nor, and this was the key message of my presentation here, are all European leaders as clear about their vision of a European Balkans as Papandreou or Dzurinda are. It would indeed be tragic if shortsightedness leads some governments now to delay what used to be a mere bureaucratic step in the past, forwarding the Serbian membership application to the Commission to write its opinion. What is worse, most European and Serbian diplomats here seem to expect just this to happen, and whoever works on EU integration in Belgrade is not only exhausted but permanently on the verge of giving up …
But those practical concerns are for tomorrow, when we must descend from the mountain peak that offers a wider view of the distant lands that we try to reach, back to the planes where it is so easy to get lost. It is still good to rejoice, just for one instance: the past decade, for all its false starts, has led us to a moment where the vision of a European Balkans remains more alive than ever. As inspiring. And as vital.
As a matter of fact, in casting their votes Slovenian citizens will be answering a much more fundamental question – one that will have huge implications for Slovenia’s future foreign policy, and perhaps for the future of EU enlargement in the Balkans.
Slovenian citizens will be deciding whether Slovenia will remain a supporter of the Europeanisation of the Western Balkans, or will join the ranks of EU countries that hope that the promise of a European future for the region can be deferred indefinitely.
These are difficult days for South East Europe. Unemployment is rising in the wake of financial turmoil in the EU. Frustration over the EU’s endless delaying tactics is poisoning the political climate. The EU gathering this week in Sarajevo turned out to be a disappointing flop. The German and French foreign ministers did not even turn up, with senior EU officials warning off the record that “Berlin has decided that enlargement is over”.
As always, the EU is quick to blame the region for its own problems. But this is beginning to ring hollow. At present, the EU has no credible policy towards the Balkans. From Greek intransigence over Macedonia’s name to European divisions on everything from Kosovo’s status to the future of the international mission in Bosnia to whether Serbia is cooperating with the Hague Tribunal, EU policy is in disarray.
In this situation, it is critical that those who believe in a European future for the Balkans make their voices heard. Since joining the EU in 2004, Slovenia has been a steadfast ally to the region. During its EU presidency, Slovenia worked hard for a more liberal visa regime. Sunday’s referendum, however, could bring this to an abrupt end. A ‘no’ vote would leave Croatia in no-man’s land, and the rest of the region even further from its destination. It would play directly into the hands of European enlargement skeptics.
To external observers, the Slovenian position is difficult to understand. Any ship using the port of Koper, or indeed the Italian port of Trieste, must pass through Croatian, Slovenian and Italian waters. This is no big deal, as under international law, all ships enjoy a right of innocent passage through the territorial waters of other states. As for fishing, even the option to discriminate against Slovenia would disappear once Croatia becomes a EU member.
Last November, the Slovenian prime minister Borut Pahor and his Croatian counterpart, Jadranka Kosor, agreed to an EU proposal to submit their dispute to a binding arbitration. This was a pragmatic way of resolving an issue that at the end of the day was important above all in its potential to derail Croatia’s accession process. It was a reassuring assertion of states(wo)manship by the two governments. After Pahor successfully pushed the deal through parliament in April, Sunday’s referendum is the final obstacle to putting this matter finally to bed.
Yet the leading Slovenian opposition party, the SDS of former prime minister Janez Jansa, has called on Slovenia to reject the deal, which Jansa describes as ‘capitulation’ and evidence of a ‘servile mentality’.
This is blatant populism. It was Jansa himself who, in 2007, reached an agreement with then Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader to submit the matter to an international tribunal. Nonetheless, recent opinion polls suggest that Jansa’s campaign is having an impact. What once appeared to be a comfortable majority in favour of compromise has now shrunk, and the result could go both ways.
If Slovenians vote ‘no’ on Sunday, it will be a godsend to opponents of EU enlargement, playing to every Balkan stereotype. If even Slovenia and Croatia, two traditional allies with no history of conflict, cannot resolve their disagreements, what hope is there for the rest of the region? Why would Europe want yet more fractious members in its already troubled ranks?
For many people in the Balkans, the prosperous, democratic nation of Slovenia has served as a beacon of hope. A ‘yes’ vote on Sunday would ensure that Slovenia retains its influence, within the EU and the Balkan region, as a champion of a European future for the region. It would truly be a step towards the day when the Northern Adriatic would become at last a place without borders.
All is now in the hands of the Slovenian electorate. It is truly high noon in Slovenia.
3 June 2010, Kristof Bender and Gerald Knaus (ESI)
The ESI Slovenia Project is funded by Erste Stiftung (Vienna)
After two years of research, which took a team of ESI researchers across all of Georgia, from Batumi on the Georgian black sea coast to the wine-growing areas of Eastern Georgia, from Washington DC to Brussels and Moscow, we are now glad to be able to announce the upcoming publication of a brand-new ESI report later this week.
After a grim, post-Soviet decade, Georgia had captured the imagination of the world in November 2003 when a display of people power swept away the old political establishment. In its place came a new generation of leaders – young, articulate and determined to propel their small republic out of poverty and isolation and into the European mainstream.
This report looks at the promises of the Rose revolution, the way Georgia presented itself as a model for other countries, and the implications of its elites embracing libertarianism as a national ideology.
This report is about a remarkable man, a south east European country in a time of transition, and the power and influence of a seductive ideology. The man is Kakha Bendukize, a philosopher-entrepreneur and one of the most interesting thinkers in today’s post-Soviet world; the country is Georgia, a small republic of 4 million people in the South Caucasus, eager to become a global model; and the ideology is libertarianism, the belief that people will be freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimised.
For more on our Georgia research and the report itself, please come back to the ESI website later this week. In the meantime, here is a preview from the introduction:
A LIBERTARIAN REVOLUTION IN THE CAUCASUS (ESI, April 2010)
Atlas Shrugged, a 1957 novel by the libertarian thinker Ayn Rand, is an ode to the free market, the minimalist state and the sovereignty of the individual. It is also a useful text to read if one wishes to understand the worldview of Georgia’s most influential policy makers.
The main character in the novel, the engineer John Galt, escapes from an America that has become a breeding ground for socialist ideas. Galt calls on other men and women of talent and ambition to follow him to the remote mountains of Colorado in order to establish a utopia of pure capitalism. For Galt, the engineer, the scientist and the entrepreneur are the true heroes of mankind. In the end, America discovers that it cannot survive without the talents of Galt and his fellow libertarians. They return from Colorado, defeat the collectivist morality of the grey, submissive masses and bring down the oppressive state. As Galt puts it, triumphantly,
“With the sign of the dollar as our symbol – the sign of free trade and free minds – we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendour. Those who choose to join us, will join us; those who don’t will not have the power to stop us …”
Ayn Rand’s philosophy has for decades made her one of the most popular authors in America and an icon of the American right. Her ideas owe much to her personal experiences as a child in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik revolution. John Galt’s America is in fact reminiscent of the Petrograd of her youth. Her horror of collectivism stems from the memory of her father’s shop taken over by communist revolutionaries. She left post-revolutionary Russia for the US in 1926, never to return.
Today, some of Ayn Rand’s most committed followers are in fact found very close to Rand’s native Russia. Georgia, a republic in the Southern Caucasus, has in recent years styled itself as a modern-day capitalist utopia in Europe’s highest mountains. In 2008, Georgia’s prime minister was Lado Gurgenidze, who had made his fortune as an investment banker and named his private firm Galt and Taggart, after the two heroes of Rand’s novel. Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili recently informed the Georgian parliament that the 19th-century national hero (and saint) Ilia Chavchavadze was in fact “the first Georgian libertarian.” Georgia also has its own John Galt, a philosopher-entrepreneur with a mission. His name is Kakha Bendukidze, and this is his story.
Bendukidze’s biography offers ample material for a full-length novel. Born in 1956, he spent most of his adult years in Moscow. Making his fortune in Russia in the 1990′s, he rose to become one of country’s top twenty oligarchs,[1] and an influential voice on economic policy. However, by 2004, as Putin’s regime tightened its grip on strategic industries, Bendukidze found his options in Russia were becoming limited. He began disposing of assets, and moved to Georgia. In the opinion of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, already in exile,
“Bendukidze does not belong to Putin’s circle of friends and he understood sooner than everyone else that everything would be taken away from him… Bendukidze by far hasn’t exhausted his potential but right now the Russian authorities do not need such talented people.”[2]
At the time, some Russian liberals even hoped that one day Bendukidze, like John Galt, might return, when libertarian ideas regained favour in Moscow. As Vitaliy Tretyakov wrote in Rossiiskaya Gazeta:
“What can be said with absolute certainty is that Russia is highly interested in the success of Bendukidze’s truly historical mission… The liberal economic experiment that Kakha Bendukidze will certainly try to carry out in Georgia would (if successful) rehabilitate Russian liberalism (if this is at all possible).” [3]
Excerpt from upcoming ESI Georgia Report
[1] Guriev and Rachinsky, “Oligarchs: The Past or the Future of Russian Capitalism?” July 2004.
What do the authors suggest should be done about this state of affairs? They make the following concrete proposals:
keep the Office of the High Representative (OHR) intact and preserve its powers until there is a “new and functional constitutional order” (this is not defined); separate it from the EUSR
the EU should help “reshuffle the deck through the October 2010 elections” (they do not specify in whose favor)
the EU should “facilitate substantial constitutional reform”
there should be a shift in US policy, which “would have to occur at the cabinet level, even undertaken by President Obama himself”
and the US should send a special envoy for the Balkans
This raises many questions. How exactly is the EU to “reshuffle the deck”? Is OHR needed to keep Bosnia from falling apart, to push for a new constitution or both? What does substantial constitutional reform look like? And what would a US envoy do that a US ambassador cannot?
There is also a question of realpolitik: why – given current challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Iraq and Iran, in Yemen, Columbia, Israel or Haiti – should President Obama himself become interested in a country that has largely demilitarised, has seen no serious incidents of interethnic violence for a decade, has a population one fourth the size of Karachi, and is today surrounded by two neighbours, Serbia and Croatia, which – instead of planning its partition, as they did in 1991 – are committed to their own Western integration?
Vice-president Biden recently visited Bosnia and reaffirmed a US commitment to Bosnian statehood. This was a useful signal. Should Biden visit again? Is any international strategy which relies on an increase in US interest, a willingness to take on Russia and to push aside the EU in Bosnia, realistic? To put this in perspective, it is perhaps useful to look across the US’ southern Border to Mexico. As a recent NYT article noted:
“Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. In 2008, there were more than 6,200 drug-related murders, more than double the figure from the year before. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration … While Mr. Calderon dismisses suggestions that Mexico is a failed state, he and his aides have spoken frankly of the cartels’ attempts to set up a state within a state, levying taxes, throwing up roadblocks and enforcing their own perverse codes of behavior. The Mexican government has identified 233 “zones of impunity” across the country, where crime is largely uncontrolled, a figure that is down from 2,204 zones a year ago.” (NYT October 2009)
Mexico’s current problems concern the US directly. By comparison, the problems of Bosnia are both manageable and distant. Observers sometimes losely talk about Bosnia today as a failed state, but there are few facts to back this up. Crime rates, as I have shown on this site before, are low even by European standards. Life expectancy is relatively high. Child mortality rates are too high by comparison to Austria or even Croatia, but lower than in Romania or Turkey (see below).
Bosnia has regular elections. There have been alternations in power at every level of government. The police does not torture, people feel save going out at night, the military does not intervene in politics, and there is full freedom of movement throughout the country. By comparison with Turkey (where thousands of minors are in prison based on draconian anti-terror legislation and where journalists all too often find themselves in court) Bosnia is doing well when it comes to meeting the Copenhagen human rights criteria. This is not to say that Bosnia does not have problems, but it is an argument to put these problems in perspective.
MALE LIFE EXPECTANCY at birth
Switzerland
79.0
Sweden
78.7
Austria
76.8
Greece
77.1
Albania
73.4
Croatia
72.3
Bosnia
72.2
Montenegro
72.4
Macedonia
71.8
Serbia
71.7
Bulgaria
69.5
Romania
69.0
Armenia
68.4
Lithuania
67.5
Georgia
67.1
Moldova
65.1
Azerbaijan
63.8
Russia
59.0
INFANT MORTALITY RATES
Deaths / 1,000 life births
Sweden
3.2
Austria
4.4
Slovenia
4.8
Croatia
6.4
Poland
6.7
Estonia
7.2
Montenegro
7.5
Serbia
11.7
Bulgaria
11.8
Bosnia
12.0
Macedonia
14.8
Romania
14.9
Russia
16.6
Albania
19.2
Turkey
27.5
World
49.4
Bosnia is failing today most conspicuously by comparison to its (West) European EU neighbours. It has unacceptably high unemployment rates. There are a lot of political tensions (more on those in a later entry). There is widespread pessimism and deep frustration among the population. Bosnia’s leaders are not doing enough to close the prosperity gap even with Croatia and the current pace of reform means that Bosnia will not catch up (or join the EU) for another generation.
All this should concern Europeans, as – and here I fully agree with Kurt and Bodo – the EU’s credibility is at stake in the Balkans. The EU can ill afford a ghetto of backwardness. I would even argue that it owes Bosnians, given its disastrous failures in the 1990s. The Balkans should become as stable as Central Europe, and the road to get there is still long. But does this make Bosnia a priority issue for the US?
This is where the rhetoric of a looming threat, abstract warnings about possible large-scale violence in Bosnia, becomes important and the temptation arises to play up such threats, whatever the potential costs to Bosnia’s image, investor confidence, or its EU aspirations. Perhaps, some might argue, fear of a new war – and memories of the slaughterhouse Bosnia had become from 1992 to 1995 – will make a busy US president focus on Bosnia again after all?
(Skeptics might also point out that even the personal involvement of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in 2006 did not prevent the April Constitutional Reform Package, a US inspired draft, from being rejected … and that it was brought down as a result of the votes in parliament of the party led by a man, Haris Silajdzic, who had long put his trust in a stronger US role. Why would this be different the next time around?)
The notion that Bosnia needs constitutional reform to catch up with its more advanced neighbours is, on the other hand, compelling and largely beyond doubt. The hard question is how to get there. Essentially there are two ways forward. One is to impose it. The other is for Bosnia’s leaders to agree to it.
Do Kurt and Bodo propose to impose constitutional change? For if they do not (and I am not sure) we might not be so far apart in our proposals. ESI has, some years ago, written two papers on what is wrong about the current constitutional debate in Bosnia:
We never believed that what we proposed here is a master plan for solving Bosnia’s constitutional problems, only that the question – how do you get Bosnian leaders to agree to serious changes that actually make a difference – must be the starting point for any serious reflection.
This is where Kurt, Bodo and many US analysts on the one hand and most of the leaders in today’s European Union on the other part company. While everyone agrees on the need for constitutional change in Bosnia, leaders like Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt argue that this is much easier to achieve in the context of a serious EU accession process than outside of it. It is not going to be achieved by inventing criteria for Bosnia which no other candidate had to meet. This did not work with police reform in 2007, when the EU risked its credibility by inventing specific “European standards of policing” which simply did not exist (and its Bosnian counterparts knew it as well as the European Commission).
This does not mean that any progress is guaranteed, even if there is a credible offer of EU candidate status or of opening accession negotiations. The door can be wide open: it is still Bosnian politicians who must agree among each other to walk through it. But there are powerful incentives and one could see them at work even recently.
Sometimes – as in the surprising story of Bosnia’s visa reform effort – these incentives are the result of concrete and immediate benefits the EU can offer. But they are also related to wider regional dynamics.
Most Bosniaks (or Bosnian citizens identifying with their multinational state) would (rightly) hate to see Bosnia fall behind its Serbian neighbour on the road to the EU. But so would most Bosnian Serbs. There is thus a lot of benefit in a healthy regional competition when it comes to EU accession. What this requires is that this competition is organised in a manner that is fair and transparent. Above all it requires that all countries take part in the race for the race to begin. But more on this later.
Further reading: my contribution to the ECFR Bosnia debate today
Dear Daniel,
I do not know where to start: Bosnia’s problems do not lend themselves to solutions that can be formulated in four paragraphs. But let me try and use this opportunity to get Kurt, and others who share his vision of Bosnia’s problems, to explain in more detail what it is that the rest of us are missing.
Central to Kurt’s argument is the claim that “Bosnia is backsliding into political chaos and possibly even renewed ethnic conflict” (as he writes in an essay I read today) and that the risk of a return to armed conflict can “no longer be excluded”.
Who does he expect to pick up arms? Which Bosnian leader would contemplate this today? What is the scenario for such an escalation? Does Kurt know things that EU military observers, who have reduced EUFOR to an almost negligable size and do not feel guilty of irresponsibility, miss?
Please be concrete: which leader in Bosnia do you suspect is contemplating the use of armed force and a “renewed ethnic conflict”? Which group do you believe is ready to return to war? Without answering the question of what the real threat is, it is hard to confront it.
After all, to say that Bosnia is a country on the verge of disintegration is not a minor thing. If foreign or domestic investors would believe Kurt, they should rethink any future investment. Failing states also do not make credible candidates for EU accession. Most importantly, if the EU would believe Kurt, the debate about OHR would be a sideshow, a dangerous diversion even, from the real burning issues. No OHR-type mandate would have stopped Bosnia sliding into war in 1992 by “dismissing” Radovan Karadzic from his position as Serb leader. For this force was needed. So if there is a real threat of armed conflict then the urgent priority would be to send substantially more foreign soldiers to prevent another tragedy from happening.
I do not believe that there is any such threat, and as a result I believe it is deeply irresponsible to keep on talking in vague terms about it. This damages Bosnia on so many levels. But I hope Kurt will go beyond referring to “popular fears” to tell us why he thinks this risk, which he argues did not exist in 2006, when Kostuncia was leader in Belgrade, exists today.
Perhaps the EU could do a better job spelling out that Bosnia will never be allowed to fall apart, even if this is obvious to any European policy maker. There are then two obvious points to make: first, any Bosnian politician calling on people to pick up weapons again would be treated as a criminal, not as a political interlocutor. The first one who orders somebody to shot would end up in a European jail, with no place to hide. Second, an independent RS would be as miserable a place as Transdnistria, or Abchazia without Russian help. The EU has not recognized Northern Cyprus in decades, and it never will. It will never recognize any alternative to the current Bosnian state. As I said, this may be obvious but sometimes the obvious benefits from being restated.
My second question to Kurt concerns his vision of a “new and functional constitutional order”: what is this exactly? This is not, after all, a debate that started today. Is it the implementation of the April 2006 package of constitutional changes? Is it going further than the April package, towards abolishing the entities and the cantons? Or is it about turning the entities into mere administrative units, with no real autonomy?
Is a functioning Bosnia similar to today’s Belgium (a highly decentralized federal state)? Or to the Cyprus of the Annan plan (an even more decentralized state), which would have entered the EU in 2004, if the Annan plan would have been accepted? Is there a future for a complicated Federation inside the Bosnian federation in Kurt’s “functional constitutional order”? Is there room in it for a semi-autonomous Brcko district? Would this Bosnia still be a federal state?
These are not rhetorical questions. I accept Kurt’s argument that there is a lot that is dysfunctional about Bosnia’s current constitutional set up. Things have to change profoundly, in the interests of Bosnian citizens and in light of Bosnia’s EU aspirations. But how does he see this being helped by a continued OHR presence? To do what: Impose constitutional change by decree? Threaten politicians who do not accept certain reforms (with sanctions or dismissal)?
I could now sum up the conclusions I draw from my answers to these questions. But let me first get Kurt to try to change my mind (and, more importantly, that of most EU policy makers who do not share his threat assessment) about the concrete threats which he sees; realistic scenarios for a return to armed conflict; about the core features of a “functional constitutional order” and about the role of a strong OHR to promote constitutional changes.
Today I will give a presentation at the Kennedy School on an issue that has become ever more interesting in recent weeks: what is happening in Turkey currently in the field of civil-military relations? For more details please go here.
Turkey’s current transformation – in particular concerning the changing role of the Armed Forces – needs to be put in a wider context, both global and European.
As I noted in the seminar here last week it is not long ago that military interventions in politics were everything but rare. In 1962 successful coups took place in Burma, Argentina and Syria; failed coups in Lebanon, Portugal, Venezuela and Turkey. The Times noted in 1960, following the first Turkish coup against an elected civilian government, that “this has been a good year for generals.”
Since the 1960s the Turkish military has been carrying out many more interventions. However, while the officer corps has remained isolated from wider changes in Europe as well as in Turkish society the international acceptance of any military intervention has declined significantly – in Europe it has now reached a point of zero tolerance.
Recommended Reading
A good book for a historical perspective is Samuel Finer’s The Man on Horseback – The Role of the Military in Politics, published in the 1960s. Finer tries to quantify military interventions: he examines the 76 independent states which existed in the world in 1955 and finds that there had been military interventions in 47 of them.
Finer’s table: states and military interventions:
before 1861
6 states in the world
military intervention in 26
1861-1899
2 more states (Serbia/Bulgaria)
military interventions in 2
1900-1917
3 more states
military interventions in all 3
1918-1944
10 more states
military interventions in 7
1945-1955
15 more states
military interventions in 9
A second interesting book focusing on Turkey is Gareth Jenkins’ Context and Circumstance: The Turkish Military and Politics. It appeared as an Adelphi Paper, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2001. While I find Gareth Jenkins writings on the Ergenekon trial unconvincing and at times misleading – more on this here later – his text on the Turkish military is a very good introduction.
Jenkins sets out the structural features and ideological motivations and historical references that have set Turkey’s civil-military relations apart from those elsewhere in Europe. As Jenkins notes at the very outset, his book wants to explain, not judge, an exceptional situation:
“the continued domination of Turkish politics by the country’s military appears to be an anomalous anachronism, even an anathema. As a result, discussions of civil-military relations often become coloured by moral judgements as military involvement in politics is seen as not only undesireable but almost an affront to a natural order. The purpose of this paper is neither to condemn not to justify the Turkish military’s involvement in politics; merely to try to understand and explain.” (p5, emphasis added)
At the heart of the Turkish exception is the ideological nature of the Armed Forces’ commitment:
“But what makes the Turkish military unique is that it sees itself as having an almost sacred duty to protect an indigenous ideology, namely Kemalism, the principles laid down by the founder of the Turkish republic, Kemal Ataturk. This ideological dimension to the military’s perception of its role has meant that its definition of security extends beyond public order and Turkey’s political or economic interests to include threats to the country’s Kemalist legacy.”
Central to the world-view of the Turkish officer is the sense that both external and internal threats have enduring roots in Turkey’s past. An important element of military education is the Nutuk speech made by Ataturk, in which Ataturk describes Turkey’s enemies during the War of Liberation (1919-1922):
“Ataturk’s Great Speech of October 1927, the Nutuk, in which he summarised the Turkish War of Liberation, has a position akin to a sacred book and his pronouncements on a vast range of subjects are cited to support arguments as if they were virtual holy writ.” (p 32)
Jenkins notes that this is true not only for the Armed Forces but pervasive in Turkish society and in its national education system:
“Turks are taught, and most believe, that their country is under continual external and internal threat, both from other countries plotting to divide or acquire Turkish territory and from internal forces seeking to change the constitutional status quo. The result is often a virtual siege mentality, riddled with impossibly intricate conspiracy theories.”
“Turkish schoolchildren are taught that the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which, though never ratified and subsequently superseded by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, foresaw the allocation of large tracts of modern Turkey to Greece, Armenia, Italy and France (the latter two in the form of mandates), and the eventual creation of an independent Kurdish state, still represents the real intentions of the West towards Turkey.” (pp16, 17)
However, such views are particularly strongly represented among those who pursue a military career, where they form the core of the curriculum:
“The teaching of history in the military academies places considerable emphasis on the foundation of the Turkish Republic. Cadets are taught that the Ottoman Empire was eroded by a combination of foreign avarice and a paucity of patriots prepared to defend the homeland. (p 32)
In January 1999 the military academy in Ankara published a booklet calling for a second ‘War of Liberation’ against Islamic fundamentalism:
“Continual exhortations to identify with Ataturk and to see him as an immortal guiding presence effectively brings the past into the present. Indeed, cadets are explicitly taught that, although circumstances and methods may change, the external and internal threats to the country – threats which they are legally as well as morally obliged to repulse – are fundamentally the same as in Ataturk’s lifetime … international pressure to allow greater political pluralism appears reminiscent of Allied attempts to divide Turkey at Sevres.” (p 33)
Jenkins quotes General Nahgit Senoglu, the head of the Military Academies, who told the new intake of cadets in 2000:
“You will see that Turkey has the most internal and external enemies of any country in the world. You will learn about the dirty aspirations of those who hide behind values such as democracy and human rights and who want to take revenge on the republic of Ataturk.”
Such as threat perception also serves to legitimise the privileged position of the Armed Forces:
“The military’s role is further bolstered by public perceptions of the security environment, where external and internal threats are often inflated and distorted by conspiracy theories in which even Turkey’s NATO allies are secretly plotting to weaken and divide the country.1 In such a situation, it is to the military that most Turks turn […] .”(P 9)
Being educated as a military officer also includes other messages, writes Gareth Jenkins,
“From the moment that they enter the military academies officer cadets are told that they are joining an elite, […] with a sacred mission to protect Kemalism.” (p30)
Jenkins explains that the “strict military hierarchy starts in the military high schools and academies”, and even underlines that “military officials admit that the hierarchies and deference to authority in Turkish society, particularly within the family, play a significant role in enabling cadets to adapt to a military environment.” The “relative social isolation of the academies and the inculcation of a sense of being distinct from society at large inevitably combine to produce an increasing identification with their fellow cadets and the armed forces as an institution.” (p 30)
Jenkins writes that the Turkish military has “traditionally vigorously resisted any attempt by the civilian authorities to investigate allegations against serving or retired officers.” (p 29), refusing to
“cooperate with investigations into, allegations of corruption or human rights abuses involving members of the security forces, especially the gendarmerie, apparently because it believes that even an investigation would harm the image of the armed forces. For example, in spring 1997 the TGS refused to allow a parliamentary committee investigating allegations of collaboration between elements in the security apparatus and the Turkish underworld to question members of the gendarmerie. Similarly, it has refused to allow external investigations of allegations of the use of beatings, usually by NCOs or lower-ranking officers, to discipline conscripts, insisting that such cases must remain the exclusive prerogative of the military courts. (p 30)
Cook examines what he calls “authoritarian stability” in “military-dominated states”. In such systems democratic facades allowed officers to rule without having to govern. Cook notes that in Turkey for a long time “pseudodemocratic institutions give the military the respect and admiration of large majorities of the Turkish people. Although the officers are responsible for the political order, the presence of institutions resembling a democratic polity effectively shields them from any public dissatisfaction.” (p.106)
Cook quotes a Turkish officer telling Mehmet Ali Birand:
“We are opposed to anybody, no matter whether they are there by the grace of the ballot box or the votes of the National Assembly, who attempts to violate Ataturk’s principles. We have a right to act to this end in the interests of our own people, and for their protection.” (p 102)
He examines how “Turkey has been able to undertake an extraordinary and wide-ranging program to dismantle its authoritarian institutions” in recent years, a transformation he considers “extraordinary”: while changes to the structure of the National Security Council in 2001 were still cosmetic, by 2004 they significantly downgraded the formal power of the military to influence civilian decision making. So did other changes, including a constitutional amendment in 2004 that rescinded the military’s exemption from Court of Auditors’ oversight.
In this transformation the role of the EU is decisive. Cook wonders whether there are any general lessons in this, but does not elaborate:
“It is fashionable, particularly among Arab elites, to say that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside, but the lessons of EU-Turkey relations indicate that the United States and France can play a role facilitating conditions more conducive to democratic change in Egypt and Algeria. … “
Cook rightly underlines that the Internal Service Act (1961) remains intact, including article 85 which states that the “Armed Forces shall defend the country against internal as well as external threats, if necessary by force.” This is but one sign that Turkey’s democratic revolution is not yet complete. He lists the following institutional innovations as essential:
to subordinate the General Staff to a civilian minister of defence
to empower the Council of State and other parts of the judicial branch to overrule the Supreme Military Council
to overhaul the internal service codes of the armed forces, which justify the military’s intervention in politics
to alter the curriculum at military academies and staff colleges
I would add a few additional concrete steps to this essential list, including:
to clarify the limitations of the military judicial system
to finally implement Turkey’s commitment to allow conscientious objectors to do alternative service
to undertake the full regular auditing of military expenditures in line with the 2004 constitutional amendments
I share Cook’s fascination for Turkey’s recent transformation and his assuymption that it holds a lot of interesting lessons. He concludes on an optimistic note: even in the Middle East
“countries with authoritarian political systems are not necessarily fated to manifest nondemocratic politics in perpetuity – forever is, after all, a long time … the Turkish transition highlights how external actors can nurture a political environment more conducive to peaceful, democratic change.”
This is an issue I hope to explore more with my students in the seminar on intervention in coming weeks.
Saturday 11 July 2009 is a special day in the life of this particular European think tank …
In summer 1999 a group of friends gathered in Sarajevo and decided to set up a new institution to analyse international policy in the Balkans. Thus ESI is born.
Ten years later a much larger group of friends, from across a much larger Europe, comes together in Istanbul to discuss the lessons of the past decade (1999-2009) and how new ideas might shape the next decade of Europe’s evolution (2009-2019).
We come together in a colourful building full of modern art, which reflects both the diverse composition of our staff and our eclectic approach to research methodologies, but built solidly on Byzantine foundations, in the heart of the old town.
Our first debate is, not surprisingly, on Turkey: how much have things really changed in the largest EU candidate country during the past decade? And what is likely to happen in the coming years?
Nigar Goksel (Turkey), ESI senior analyst for Turkey and the Caucasus, moderates and watches as Amberin Zaman (Turkey), correspondent of the Economist and columnist in Taraf, explains what it was like to work in Turkey’s South East as a journalist in the mid 1990s … and how much has changed since then. In fact, dramatic change is continuing as we meet, she notes, refering to the most recent legal changes affecting military and civilian courts …
Barcin Yinanc (Turkey), editor in chief of Hurriyet Daily News(previously Turkish Daily News) explains why she, too, is an optimist concerning developments in her country … and why she is both a strong believer in EU soft power and in the power of Turkish civil society, including women’s organisations.
Our next debate is on the new contested neigbourhood and the Southern Caucasus. What is the likely future of EU – Russia rivalry and/or cooperation in this region? Does the EU have any soft power here?
… while the co-author of one of the most interesting recent texts on the EU and its neighbourhood, Nicu Popescu (Moldova), explains the dangers should Europe continue to pay too little attention to its Eastern neighbourhood. Keti Tsikhelashvili (Georgia), presenting ESI’s ongoing research in Georgia, agrees. There and then the idea is also born for ESI to establish a program looking at Moldova sometime in 2010. Of course, first funding must be found, but such details cannot spoil the visionary mood …
Hungry for new ideas the group moves a few steps down the road to have lunch, overlooking Topkapi Palace and the Golden Horn: here you see your Rumeli Observer (Austria), Rakel Dink (Turkey), Minna Jarvenpaa (Finland), Eggert Hardten (Germany), Marcus Cox (Australia) and Emanuela del Re (Italy) discussing the future of the world over Kebab.
After lunch Verena Knaus (Austria), ESI senior analyst based in Kosovo, talks about the EU and Kosovo, a topic of inexhaustible complexity, while ….
… ESI friend Arbi Mazniku (Albania) listens and recovers from an intense national election campaign in Albania.
Here Kristof Bender (Austria) and Alex Stiglmayer (Germany) listen carefully as Besa Shahini (Kosovo/Canada) explains the European future of the Balkans and what ESI should do about it …
The last discussion is about the future and impact of think tanks. Jordi Vaquer (Spain), director of Cidob in Barcelona, explains the plans of the Spanish EU presidency, the outlook of the policy elite in Madrid, and the possible role of think tanks in influencing the Spanish policy debate.
Kristof (Austria), Goran Buldioski (Macedonia), director of the OSI Think Tank Fund based in Budapest, and your Rumeli Observer listen, wondering why Spanish foreign policy is so peculiar.
When all is said about Turkey, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the role of think tanks participants gather for a group picture in the garden of the conference venue, next to a sculpture which expresses well the complex nature of EU foreign policy ….
At this stage a happy Rumeli Observer realises that with the ideas generated by this one day of brainstorming another two dozen ESI reports could be written. At least …!
The next agenda item is continued debate, now focusing on the Istanbul urban experience, and furious networking, this time on a boat: here Alida Vracic (Bosnia), Marcus Cox (Australia), Kristof Bender, Piotr Zalewski (Poland), Yana Zabanova (Russia), Engjellushe Morina (Kosovo) and Gerda Vogl (Austria) contemplate an uncertain future.
Once these new questions have been exhaustively discussed, some can no longer sit still …
… and start moving uncontrollably to the rythm of Turkish music…
This continues until the CD-player breaks down and serious conversation about the state of Europe becomes possible again, this time in Rumeli Hisari …
… overlooking the narrowest point of the Bosporus. Over some food, raki and wine new plans are hatched, networks are woven and conspiracies developed which future historians of ideas will find hard to disentangle …
… until, at the end of the day, even the most energetic members of the ESI family are exhausted, including Yana Zabanova (Russia) …
… Robin Gosejohann (Germany), who used to run ESI’s administration from Istanbul and is now project manager at Erste Stiftung in Vienna, Besa Shahini (Kosovo) and the youngest ESI analyst of them all, all dreaming of an even more democratic and self-confident Europe in 2019.
On 14 June 1985, the Schengen Agreement on the gradual abolition of checks at the common borders between Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, was signed on board the cruise ship ‘Princesse Marie-Astrid’, moored at Schengen, Luxembourg. Photo: plaza.lu
The Danish border with Germany
