The State of The Transatlantic World 2015

THE STATE OF THE
TRANSATLANTIC WORLD
2015
2015 Transatlantic Academy. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the Transatlantic Academy. Please direct inquiries to:
Transatlantic Academy
1744 R Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009
T 1 202 745 3886
F 1 202 265 1662
E Info@transatlanticacademy.org
This publication can be downloaded for free at www.transatlanticacademy.org.
About the Transatlantic Academy

The Transatlantic Academy is a research institution devoted to creating common approaches
to the long-term challenges facing Europe and North America. The Academy does this by each
year bringing together scholars, policy experts, and authors from both sides of the Atlantic
and from different disciplinary perspectives to research and analyze a distinct policy theme
of transatlantic interest. The Academy was created in 2007 as a partnership between the
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd
Bucerius. The Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation joined
as full partners beginning in 2008, and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung joined as a full partner in
2011. The Joachim Herz Stiftung and the Volkswagen Stiftung joined in providing additional
support in 2011, as did the Aurea Foundation and the Hungary Initiatives Foundation in 2013.
On the cover: German Chancellor Angela Merkel stands next to U.S. President Barack Obama
at a press conference at the White House, February 9, 2015. Michael Kappeler/dpa/Corbis
The State of the

Transatlantic World
2015
February 2015
Contents
n From the Executive Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
n Russia, Ukraine, and the West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Russia and the West: Looking Ahead
James Goldgeier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Crisis in Eastern Europe: Will the Transatlantic Alliance
Be Up to the Challenge?
Hanns W. Maull. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The State of the Crisis in Ukraine
Kateryna Pishchikova. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
n EU Europe and the World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Galapagos Europe
Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Germanys Learning Curve: Transiting from Restraint
to Responsibility
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Italys Foreign Policy Activism: The Quest for Sustainability
Nathalie Tocci. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Polish Foreign Policy: End of the Golden Years
Bartlomiej E. Nowak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
No Solidarity? Growing Refugee Inflows and the Need
for EU Asylum Policy Reforms
Steffen Angenendt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
n The European Union: Internal Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The EU: Made in Britain
Michael Leigh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
An Illiberal Polity in the Euroatlantic World: Lessons
from Hungarys Backsliding
Gbor Halmai. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The Eurozone in 2014: Some Improvements,
But More Must Be Done
Thomas Straubhaar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
At Last, A European Energy Union?
Tim Boersma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
The State of the Transatlantic World2015
n Challenges in the Middle East. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

A Dangerous and Bloody 2014 in the Middle East
Geoffrey Kemp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Consociationalism: The Last Best Hope for the Middle East?
Michael Bell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Russia, the Islamic State, and Emerging Non-Traditional
Security Challenges for NATO
Christina Lin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
The Growing Transatlantic Divide on Israel
Michael Barnett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
The Islamic State Group, Saudi Arabia, and the
Recurrent Purification Impulse in the Arab World
Janice Stein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Islamic State Group and the Tragedy of the Yazidis
Pavol Deme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
n Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Turkey and the Euro-Atlantic Community: Turbulence
and Ties of Interest
Kemal Kirici . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Turkey and the European Union: Cooperating on
Asylum and Migration, For All the Wrong Reasons
Juliette Tolay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
n The World at Large . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Canada in the Transatlantic World
David Cameron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Self-Inflicted Wounds: The War on Terrors
Continuing Toll on Liberal Values
Clifford Bob. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Climate & Energy Politics: Brussels & Washington
on the Road to Paris
Stacy D. VanDeveer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Chinas Rise Continues
Martin Jacques. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
ii
n From the Executive Director
am pleased to introduce the second edition of The State of the

Transatlantic World. As with last years edition, we have assembled
essays from a number of current and former fellows of the Transatlantic
Academy to offer their insights on significant developments in transatlantic
relations over the past year and offer some glimpses on what to expect in the
year to come. Last year, the focus was on the impact of the Edward Snowden
revelations, especially on the U.S.-German relationship and the challenge to
the transatlantic community posed by the excesses of a burgeoning national
security state in the United States. The so-called Pacific pivot of the Obama
administration was also a central topic, as were problems of democracy and
governability in Europe and the United States. Developments in Turkey and
in the fields of energy and natural resources also received a lot of attention.
In contrast, the year that just ended, 2014, was dominated by Russias actions
in Ukraine and their implications for the post-Cold War European order,
the eurozone crisis as exemplified by the crisis in Greece, and the rise of
the so-called Islamic State group and the terrorist threat it poses in Europe.
This edition looks at these three major issue areas as well as developments
in Turkey and broader global changes. Turkeys seeming retreat from the
development of a liberal democracy paralleled developments in Hungary
and Russia and has made a question posed by Michael Ignatieff are the
authoritarians winning? a central one for the Western liberal order.
Essays by James Goldgeier, Hanns W. Maull, Kateryna Pishchikova, KlausDieter Frankenberger, and Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard focus on the
complex of issues surrounding this geopolitical earthquake caused by
Russias actions and its implications for the transatlantic alliance. It is clear
that the Russian challenge to both the European security and liberal orders
will be one that will require a long-term Western strategy in response, and
the Transatlantic Academy will indeed take up this topic in the coming year.
Russias actions, the rise of the Islamic State group, and the eurozone crisis
all have profound implications for the foreign policies of both the EU and
some key member states. Nathalie Tocci offers a consideration of the revival
of Italys foreign policy role, while Bartlomiej E. Nowak looks at Polish
foreign policys golden years. Sir Michael Leigh delves into the problematic
iii
relationship of the United Kingdom to the EU and the possibilities of

Brexit. Insights into additional central challenges facing the European
project are provided by Thomas Straubhaar on the eurozone, Tim Boersma
on a European energy union, Steffen Angenendt on refugee flows, and
Gbor Halmai on Hungarian illiberalism.
The continued and escalating turmoil in the Middle East is more directly
felt in Europe than in North America, given the continents proximity to
this volatile region. Essays by Geoffrey Kemp, Michael Bell, Christina Lin,
Michael Barnett, and Janice Stein provide insights into the regional impact
on a variety of European policies as well as areas of both divergence and
convergence with the United States. Pavol Deme photo essay about the
Yazidis gives a human face to the turmoil in the region.
Turkey has always been a special interest for the Academy, which devoted
its second fellowship year in 2009-10 to Turkeys evolving role in its region.
Essays by Kemal Kirici and Juliette Tolay explore this pivotal countrys
changing relationship to both the United States and Europe.
Finally, global developments outlined by Martin Jacques on the continued
rise of China, David Cameron on Canadas role in the transatlantic world,
Stacy D. VanDeveer on climate and energy policies, and Clifford Bob on the
costs on anti-terror policies on the liberal order conclude the volume.
Running through all these issues are questions for Western leadership. The
United States, for a variety of both domestic and international reasons,
has not played the role in this new Europe that it did in the post-war era.
Europe, with a new set of leaders and faltering economies, will now have
to step up and take on more responsibility while maintaining the cohesion
it has shown so far in its response to Russian President Vladimir Putins
challenge. The new year, 2015, has already seen major changes in Greece
after its elections and is awaiting the outcome of elections in the United
Kingdom, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Portugal, and Estonia, while the EU
has a new leadership team in both the Commission and the Council. The
Greek election result has set off a major crisis in the eurozone, and Russias
intentions remain unclear while the viability of Ukraine is very much in
question. The first two months of 2015 have also seen lethal terrorist attacks
in Paris and Copenhagen, which brought home the issues of freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, immigration, social and economic inequality,
racism, and anti-Semitism in a toxic mix that confronts the Western liberal
iv
order, most immediately in Europe. Although the Obama presidency is

winding down, its efforts to reduce and alter the U.S. foreign policy footprint
have been undone by the Islamic State group and Russia. The United States
and Europe may wish that the world would leave them alone but the world
has other intentions. We hope these essays will prove stimulating, and we
welcome your comments.
I would like to thank Ted Reinert for his excellent editing of this volume and
Jessica Hirsch and Christine Chumbler for their work in bringing the online
and print editions to fruition. Thanks as well to all those who contributed
their time and thoughts in their essays. This volume is a testament to
the Academys network of current and former fellows who continue to
contribute to the ongoing discussion of the transatlantic relationship.
Stephen F. Szabo
Executive Director
The Transatlantic Academy
n Russia, Ukraine, and the West
Russia and the West:

Looking Ahead
James Goldgeier
elations between Russia and the West have not been this poor in
three decades, since before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in
Moscow in March 1985.
A major reason for the turnaround three decades ago was the new Soviet
leaders cognizance of the countrys economic weaknesses. Oil prices were
declining in the early 1980s and then plummeted in 1986; with a stagnating
economy the Soviet Union could not afford to support a global foreign
policy to counter the West. In fact, Gorbachev needed Western cooperation
to revive his countrys economic fortunes. That sense of weakness continued
during the Boris Yeltsin years, as Russias post-Soviet economy went into free
fall, and Yeltsin eagerly sought Western assistance to build a market-oriented
democracy.
When Vladimir Putin became president of Russia in 2000, he set about a
new course correction, desiring to bring Russia back as a global power that
could stand up to the West rather than try to join it, an objective enabled
by the rise in oil prices during his initial two terms as president. In his drive
to stop what he viewed as the humiliation of Russia prior to his coming
to power, Putin sought to prevent the West from promoting its vision for
a Europe whole and free, a vision he believed undercut Russias national
interests.
A decade ago, Russia accused the West of fostering the color revolutions
in Georgia and Ukraine, and in 2008, after NATO announced those two
nations would someday be members of the Atlantic Alliance, Putin went to
war in the Caucasus. When Ukraine flirted with closer ties to the European
Union a year ago and the pro-Russian government in Kyiv collapsed, Putin
moved first to seize and annex Crimea and then to foster instability in
eastern Ukraine.
Over the course of 2014, in the face of Western sanctions and falling oil
prices, Putin has only grown more publicly defiant. In his end of the year
state of the nation address, he denounced those in the West who were trying
to bring Russia to its knees, complained that the declining ruble was not the
result of sanctions or the fall in oil prices but rather currency speculators,
and placed Crimeas importance to Russia on par with that of the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem for Muslims and Jews.
Going into 2015, how should the West and Russia assess their policies and
what are the prospects for their relations in the new year?
In the West, the focus has been on ratcheting up sanctions in response
to Putins actions in Ukraine by going after the elites around Putin, and
targeting key sectors of the Russian economy. The goal of the sanctions
policy is to create enough discomfort among Putins top supporters that they
will put pressure on their boss to change course. Given that the oil price
decline does provide an assist to the Wests sanctions approach, the United
States and its allies should maintain their pressure, and follow the same
principle that underpinned the Cold War strategy of containment: keep
Russia from undermining Western objectives in Europes east any further
by shoring up the Baltic countries and Poland, in particular, and maintain
pressure on the Russian government as a long-term strategy to foster a
change in direction.
Putin, however, has used Western actions to bolster his internal popularity;
his policy appears predicated on the belief that Russia can hold out longer
than the West as sanctions take their toll on both sides. Putin has acted as if
he believes the Russian people and elites can endure more pain than Western
investors, and his hope is that the latter will put enough pressure on their
governments to soften the policy.
The central problem for 2015 is that there is no sign that either sides goals
are realistic in the short term. Putins loyalists are in too deep. The Russian
president cannot change course without looking weak, the one thing he
cannot abide. The greatest chance for Russia to break the Wests united front
was with German business elites, given the strong economic ties between
the two countries, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a tougher course
to date than anyone thought imaginable, stiffened in part by the horrific
shootdown of MH17 over Ukraine in July.
As we assess whether changes in direction might occur, one wild card is
oil prices. Their steep decline in 2014 hurt Russia badly, but they would
have to drop significantly further for Russia to change policy. It is worth
remembering that Russias aggressive foreign policy after 1973 correlated
with a steep jump in oil prices and then became much more conciliatory in
the late 1980s after oil prices sank. But prices are still higher than they were
when Gorbachev and Yeltsin were in power. If oil prices continue to decline,
then Putin might have to make an adjustment, particularly if the ruble
continues to fall; but for the moment, we should expect him to maintain his
current policy.
The other wild card is Ukraine itself. Will the government of Ukraine be
able to move forward with a serious economic plan? Successive governments
since independence have failed to put forward real reforms and root out
corruption. If the Ukrainian government somehow were to prove more
successful than its predecessors, that might enable it to change the dynamics
on the ground. But without additional Western assistance, it will continue to
struggle and might yet default early in 2015.
As the new year gets underway, the West should maintain its firm policy
against Russian aggression in Ukraine and strengthen its efforts to bolster
the eastern members of NATO. This strategy may require a long-term
application, given Putins potential to remain president until 2024, but a
continued drop in oil prices and/or successful Ukrainian governance may
yet produce opportunities for change earlier than currently seems possible.
James Goldgeier is the dean of the School of International Service at American
University and was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 2010-11
Academy year on Global Shift: The Transatlantic Community and the New
Geopolitics.
Crisis in Eastern Europe:

Will the Transatlantic
Alliance Be Up to the
Challenge?
Hanns W. Maull
urope may have been whole and free for a while after the end of the
Cold War, as U.S. President George H.W. Bush famously proclaimed
in his speech given in the German city of Mainz on May 31, 1989.
There can be no doubt, however, that after the Russian annexation of Crimea
and its destabilization of eastern Ukraine, it is now deeply split again. Then,
as now, Europe was divided by fundamentally divergent conceptions of
political order, involving different perspectives on individual dignity, rights,
and freedom and different conceptions of how to organize the economy,
society, and foreign relations.
In the Marxist-Leninist worldview, communist societies were to be built on
the new man; economies were to be based on collectively shared means of
production and central planning; and politics were to follow the principles
of democratic centralism and socialist internationalism. In todays East, the
Russian regime cultivates a cynical belief that people can be manipulated and,
if necessary, coerced at will. The economy is to provide the spoils for those who
run the country. And in their pursuit of wealth and power, they are entitled to
use the levers of state intervention whenever it suits their purposes. In politics,
too, the ultimate goal is control the exercise of power for its own sake.
In international relations, this translates into a claim for an exclusive sphere
of influence around Russias borders in which Moscows writ will not be
challenged. Then, as now, the pan-European order ultimately lives under the
Damocles sword of threat and use of force, either through traditional military
instruments or through subversion, and of deterrence and defense against
such threats. Relations between East and West are once more dominated by
mutual distrust, perceptions of hostility and zero-sum thinking.
All this is not to deny that there are important differences between the old
Cold War in Europe and the new split between Russia, the West, and the rest.
During the Cold War, economic interaction was limited; today Russia finds
itself deeply intertwined with the global economy, and it will have a hard
time extricating itself from this dependence. In the past, by the mid-1950s at
the latest, political systems had consolidated along ideological lines. While
they ultimately turned out to be quite brittle, states in the Soviet sphere of
influence appeared to be as solidly entrenched as those in the Western half
of the continent. Today, weak and dysfunctional statehood prevails across
much of eastern Europe, including even some member states of the European
Union, and a weak state syndrome certainly is one, if not the, root cause of
the Ukraine crisis and the foreign policy behavior of a Russian president who
seems to be strangely afraid of his own people. This weakness of Russia as a
state makes Moscow behave much less predictably than it used to during the
Cold War. The icy stability of Mutual Assured Destruction thus has given way
to a volatile and blurred but still highly risky picture.
Lastly, while the United States was the unchallenged leader of the West and
the main antagonist of the Soviet Union in the past, Washingtons position
in the newly divided greater Europe is much less certain. The United States
is still deeply absorbed, politically and militarily, by its efforts to extricate
itself from the Middle East and to refocus its strategic priorities on the East
Asian region. Moreover, its foreign policy performance is suffering from
pernicious political infighting between the president and Congress, between
Democrats and Republicans. While the United States nevertheless will
almost certainly remain involved in Europe, at best it will lead from behind,
at worst be a distracted and uncertain ally. This time, much more will have
to be done by the Europeans themselves to manage this new Cold War, both
in terms of security policy and of creative diplomatic footwork.
What has to be done now by the West seems clear in principle. First,
the West needs to reassure those of its members who have reason to feel
threatened by Moscows ambitions by providing effective protection.
Second, the states caught between the two blocks need to be strengthened
and consolidated in ways that are acceptable to all concerned. Third, a new
modus videndi will have to be hammered out diplomatically for all parties
in the newly divided Europe in other words, a contemporary equivalent
to the Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe (CSCE) process
launched in the late 1960s.
Will the Transatlantic Alliance be up to this challenge? That remains
to be seen. To rise to the occasion, the alliance would need to revive an
6
increasingly dormant sense of solidarity and community and take its

own convictions, principles, and values more seriously than it has tended
to do recently. This effort to mobilize foreign and security policies in
and for Europe around a common purpose will have to include not only
governments and politics but also societies; without strong social support
and a firm sense of priorities, it will be impossible to conduct the kind of
foreign and security policies that the new situation in Europe will require.
There are signs that such a change of mood may be happening, at least in
parts of Europe. In Poland and the Baltic states, of course, suspicion and
distrust of Russia was never far from the surface; it is therefore not very
surprising that both governments and public opinion have reacted quite
strongly to events in the Ukraine. Defense expenditures have already been
revised upward significantly. Perhaps the most remarkable shift, however,
has happened in Germany, which traditionally favored close economic
cooperation and political dtente, or even entente. Now, attitudes toward
Russia have turned distinctly skeptical among both the elite and the broader
public, and German business seems about to reassess its previously cozy ties
with Putins world as well. It would not be a great surprise if this changing
mood would eventually also support increases in defense spending in
Germany. Similar shifts have taken place in northern Europe and in the
Netherlands. In southern Europe, however, support for tougher policies
toward Russia is lukewarm. At the same time, political parties of the Left, but
also of the populist and extremist Right across Europe have expressed open
sympathy and support for Russia, its policies, and its strongman politics.
Even with public support, however, walking the fine line between robustly
defending Western interests and values on the one side and avoiding
unnecessary and counter-productive moves to pressure Moscow into
submission on the other will be a tough act for the Alliance. It would require
solid analysis, rather than preconceived notions about what Putin is up to, and
cautiously calibrated responses and initiatives combining credible deterrence
and defense with persistent efforts to test, and if possible develop, moves
towards dtente and the reconstruction of a sustainable pan-European order. It
looks like a tall order for this rather wobbly and rickety alliance.
Hanns W. Maull is a senior distinguished fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und
Politik in Berlin and was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 201011 Academy year on Global Shift: The Transatlantic Community and the New
Geopolitics.
The State of the Crisis

in Ukraine
Kateryna Pishchikova
t has been more than a year since a series of turbulent events started in
Ukraine that dramatically changed not only the countrys course but
also the broader geopolitical situation in Europes eastern neighborhood.
When taking stock of the difficult situation in Ukraine by early 2015,

two daunting challenges stand out: its loss of territorial integrity with the
annexation of Crimea and an ongoing military conflict in the countrys east,
and its dire economic situation.
The first blow to Ukraines territorial integrity came in March when Russia
annexed Crimea, the only autonomous region of Ukraine and home to the
Russian Black Sea Fleet. While the occupation of Crimea was quick and
bloodless, Russias involvement in the military insurgency in Donbas (an
area that comprises two provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk) involved more
nefarious tactics, ranging from pro-Russian propaganda and support to antiKyiv groups to direct supply of weapons, intelligence, military personnel,
and training. More than 4,000 people have been killed since the beginning of
the conflict and there are an estimated half a million refugees.
Moscows position has become clear it is prepared to intervene militarily
to keep Donbas in limbo and outside of Kyivs control. What is less clear at
the moment is whether it has an interest in expanding the zone of conflict.
The border along the conflict zone has been unstable and porous. The ceasefire agreement signed in September has not been respected so far. Moving
further south and west would provide Russia with a land corridor to the
annexed Crimea. The benefits of such a move are not to be underestimated.
For now, the peninsula remains almost fully dependent on Ukraines
mainland for its supplies of energy and water. Its only direct link to Russia,
via the Kerch Strait, has proven ineffective. Building a bridge over the
strait may be a solution in the long term but would be a costly and possibly
insufficient one.
The costs of escalation, however, are also high. This kind of large-scale
military operation will involve heavy fighting with Ukrainian forces, and
more resistance from the local population than has been the case in Crimea
and Donbas. It will most likely trigger additional sanctions by the West.
Russian President Vladimir Putin may not be interested in further escalation
in the immediate future. Yet the long-term implication is that Ukraine will
continue to live under the constant threat of a possible expansion of the
military invasion.
Being at war puts a huge burden on Ukraines already failing economy and
increases the risks of further polarization in the country.
Ukraines GDP is predicted to fall by 10 percent, inflation has risen to almost
20 percent, and its currency has devalued 50 percent against the U.S. dollar.
Central Bank reserves are below $10 billion. Experts agree that despite an
IMF bailout, default remains a real possibility.
External assistance is vital at this point. While Western solidarity with
Ukraines pro-European aspirations may be high, impatience with Ukraines
lack of reform and rampant corruption is also on the rise. There is little
appetite in the West for financing another round of aid pilfering in a country
of its size. Concrete progress with comprehensive reform should be shown
quickly; the current government will not be getting a second chance.
The government also needs to walk a fine line and avoid exploiting
nationalist sentiment in the face of Russian invasion. That would only
reinforce the divisions within Ukraine that are constantly exploited by
Russian propaganda. While a stronger sense of belonging in the face of
an external threat is a welcome development, it should not be coached in
extreme nationalist terms. Although the majority of Ukrainians in the east
and south oppose Russian military intervention, many speak Russian as
their mother tongue and have relatives in Russia. Their primary concern
is with Kyivs inability to provide stability, order, and prosperity. Their
anti-Russian sentiment is more nuanced. They may be outraged with
Putins policies but most do not share the deep-seated mistrust of Russian
imperialism that is more common in the center and west of the country for
obvious historic reasons.
The top priorities for the Ukrainian government are therefore progressing
with deep and comprehensive reform and providing security. The focus
should be on state-building, pluralism, and kick-starting the economy, as
well as on decisive action against corruption and incompetence, which
citizens in every region can relate to. After all, these priorities were at the
heart of the so-called Euromaidan agenda at the height of the protests.
On the positive side, the political process in Ukraine has improved
considerably after the Euromaidan revolution. Both presidential and
parliamentary elections, though not flawless, were free and fair and
accurately reflected the changed political landscape in the country.
Even more importantly, in contrast to the slumber that followed the Orange
Revolution a decade ago, todays post-revolutionary phase is characterized
by the strong involvement of civil society in all spheres of life. People did not
demobilize when the street protests stopped. There is more civic activism
in the regions as well as in Kyiv. This translates into more healthy societal
pressure on the political institutions and demands for structural change.
So what about the long-term transatlantic strategy toward Ukraine?
Unfortunately, the Wests behavior has been largely reactive so far. What
remains missing is a broader strategy toward the eastern neighborhood as a
whole that would factor in Russia as a regional power distrustful of the West.
The politics of confrontation is not something the European Union
is equipped for or interested in in the long term. Immediate threat
containment is also insufficient for addressing the underlying causes of
the Ukrainian crisis. Even though there would have been no violence
without Russian meddling in Ukraine, it is Ukraines own corrupt politics
and the mismanagement of relations between the center and regions that
provided the fertile ground for the crisis. Dealing with Ukraines governance
deficiencies remains the only way to a sustainable long-term solution.
The current Russian leadership, on the other hand, clearly benefits from the
newly enforced status quo in the region. Frozen and reheated conflicts,
limited sovereignty, and dysfunctional states benefit the Russian model
of regional dominance and prevent the eastern neighborhood states from
transforming themselves.
The EU and United States therefore need to find a delicate balance between
addressing the immediate security threats and pursuing a long-term
strategy that remains principled and engaged. Such a strategy has to be
driven by cooperation, not confrontation, but should not degenerate into
simply appeasing Putin. That would fail the aspirations of the pro-reform
10
constituencies in Ukraine and elsewhere in the region and damage Western

interests in the long term.
Kateryna Pishchikova is an associate fellow at FRIDE and a visiting scholar at
Cornell University and was a Transatlantic Academy fellow during the 2012-13
Academy year on The Future of the Western Liberal Order.
11
n EU Europe and the World
13
Galapagos Europe
Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard
n March 2014, Europeans woke up in Vladimir Putins world: a

place where borders can be changed by force, where international
institutions are powerless, where economic interdependence is a source
of insecurity, and predictability is a liability rather than an asset.1 Russias
intervention in Ukraine forced the European Union to recognize that its
idea of postmodern European order had dissolved. Instead of spreading
osmotically to encompass a continent and eventually a whole planet
Europes postmodern order was suddenly in retreat. Just as the break-up of
Yugoslavia ended the Cold War European order, the Crimea crisis marked
the end of the post-Cold War European order.
The fact that Europeans saw themselves as a model for the world is hardly
surprising. For the past 300 years, Europe was at the center of global affairs.
In 1914, European order was world order, shaped by the interests, ambitions,
and rivalries of the European empires. World War I was also known as
the European war. In 1919, although it was the U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson who reordered the world, his vision for global peace was primarily
an attempt to reorder Europe. Even during the Cold War when the global
superpowers were non-European powers order was still centered around
control of Europe and the contest between democratic capitalism and Soviet
communism as a battle between European ideologies.
It was not until 1989-91 that a European model for international conduct
emerged that was based on a set of assumptions and practices radically
different from the global order. What came to an end in 1989, wrote British
diplomat Robert Cooper, summarizing the new situation, was not just the
Cold War or even the Second World War. What came to an end in Europe
(but perhaps only in Europe) were the political systems of three centuries: the
balance of power and the imperial urge.
The key elements of this new European order were a highly developed
system of mutual interference in each others domestic affairs and security
based on openness and transparency. The new postmodern security system
did not rely on a balance of power, nor did it emphasize sovereignty or
1
14
This piece is based on the authors essay The New European Disorder, European Council on
Foreign Relations, November 20, 2014.
the separation of domestic and foreign affairs. It rejected the use of force
as an instrument for settling conflicts and promoted increased mutual
dependence between European states. The postmodern European order was
not interested in changing the borders of Europe or in creating new states,
like after World War I. It did not attempt to move people in order to secure
these borders, like after World War II. After 1989, Europes ambition was
instead to change the nature of borders themselves, to open them for capital,
people, goods, and ideas.
The new European order was different from all previous post-war
settlements. The Cold War ended without a peace treaty or a victory parade.
It was heralded as a common victory of the West and the Russian people.
It was also meant to be a transformative order. The remaking of Europe
took the shape of extending Western institutions, most of them created
for a bipolar world. The unification of Germany became the model for the
unification of Europe. Maps went out of fashion, displaced by economic
graphs documenting the financial and commercial interdependence of
Europe and the well-being of European nations.
Europeans were aware of the distinctive nature of their order but they were
also convinced of its universal nature. From the World Trade Organisation
to the Kyoto Protocol and from the International Criminal Court to the
Responsibility to Protect, European norms seemed to be in the ascendant.
Europeans were convinced that economic interdependence and converging
lifestyles would be the dominant source of security in the world of
tomorrow.
Russias annexation of Crimea made Europeans suddenly realize that
although the EUs political model is admirable, it is unlikely to become
universal or even spread to many in its immediate neighborhood. Europeans
had mistaken Russias failure to block the creation of the post-Cold War
order as assent. Weakness was taken for conversion. This experience is
similar to that experienced by Japanese technology companies. A few years
ago, these companies became aware that although Japan made the best 3G
phones in the world, they could not find a global market because the rest of
the world could not catch up with the technological innovations to use these
perfect devices. This became known as Japans Galapagos Syndrome.
Takeshi Natsuno, who teaches at Tokyos Keio University, told the New York
Times that Japans cellphones are like the endemic species that Darwin
encountered on the Galpagos Islands fantastically evolved and divergent
15
from their mainland cousins. Rather than being too big to fail, Japans
phones had become too perfect to succeed.
Now it is Europe that is facing its Galapagos moment. It may be that
Europes postmodern order has become so advanced and particular to
its environment that it is impossible for others to follow. It evolved in a
protective ecosystem, shielded from the more muscular, modern world
where most people live. After Crimea, Europeans were forced to think about
how to counter Russian aggression; they also were forced to imagine what a
European order can be now that Europes universalism has become a kind of
exceptionalism.
But the end of the post-Cold War European order does not mean that
Europe is back in the Cold War. During the Cold War, the confrontation
between Moscow and the West was about who owned the future and who
could offer a better world. Todays conflict between Russia and the EU is
about who lives in the real world.
Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign
Relations. Both were Bosch Public Policy Fellows during the 2012-13 Academy year
on The Future of the Western Liberal Order.
16
Germanys Learning Curve:

Transiting from Restraint to
Responsibility
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger
n the old days, the Munich Security Conference was a semi-religious

congregation of U.S. and European stalwarts of Atlanticism. In recent
years, it has become a bell-weather for global security matters. But while
the conference has enlarged its scope and participation, one thing has not
changed: it is the place for German leadership to present itself as a credible
force for international security, a place where friends, allies, and competitors
look for clues of change in German attitudes toward its role in the Atlantic
arena and in the world beyond. In February 2014, political leaders, military
chiefs, and security specialists were in for a nice surprise.
President Joachim Gauck laid out what could be read as a new German
foreign policy manifesto. We cannot assume that we will be spared the
conflicts of the world simply by staying out, he admonished his citizens.
The German president explicitly rejected what German historian Heinrich
August Winkler called a dubious right to look away, arguing Germany
needed to act earlier, more forcefully, and more substantially, sometimes
with the use of military power.
For many in the audience, it seemed Germany had gotten rid of the ghosts
of the past and overcome its Cold War mentality: grow economically, but do
not take risks politically. Many still remembered Germanys abstention in the
United Nations Security Council on the vote to impose a no-fly zone over
Libya in March 2011.
The impression that Germany was moving from its cherished culture of
restraint to a culture of responsibility was reinforced by two key members
of Chancellor Angela Merkels cabinet who seconded Gaucks call. Foreign
Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that the culture of restraint should
not be abused as an excuse for doing nothing. Defense Minister Ursula von
der Leyen said indifference is not an option for Germany, adding: If we
have the means and the capabilities, then we have the obligation and the
responsibility to act.
17
With respect to means, Von der Leyen would soon find out that the state of
the German armed forces was very bleak indeed: choppers do not fly, fighter
jets are grounded, transport aircraft break down on routine missions. This
is a restraining factor that needs to be addressed. Defense spending must
be increased. Germany has repeatedly failed to meet the NATO target of 2
percent of GDP. Merkel, like other allied heads of state and government, has
promised to do more. This commitment must be kept.
The German public is another restraining factor. It overwhelmingly
disagrees with the proposition that Germany should sharpen its
international profile and is highly critical of the use of military force to
solve international problems, including crisis management. Large segments
of the German public want to see the country confine itself to being a big
Switzerland in terms of what it does and how it acts internationally. The
public is not a source of support for a government that is ready to stick its
neck out.
But at least on the elite level, there is a growing willingness and readiness to
carry a greater political burden for Europe and the Atlantic alliance. After
all, during the years of the euro crisis, Germany had become the undisputed
political leader of Europe, adding political clout to its economic dominance.
In other words, there is a convergence of what others expect Germany to
do, which is to provide leadership, and Germanys self-defined role in the
world. There is still a gap between the two, and not all expectations are
met. Some are explicitly rejected, particularly in the field of international
economic policy. But in a more general sense, the gap is narrowing. The
United States has been particularly pleased with this narrowing process,
even though it wishes to see it advance more rapidly and eventually
disappear completely. For Washington, a strong Germany acting robustly
and providing positive leadership in a world that is in disarray comes as a
big relief.
In practice, there were two major conflicts in 2014 where Germany did not
retreat to its old seat in the grandstands, but decided to get involved and take
risks, even at considerable domestic cost: Iraq and Ukraine.
When the terror militia of the so-called Islamic State advanced with
lightning speed in Iraq, when large-scale atrocities were reported and
genocide seemed imminent, the Merkel government made a bold decision to
send weapons to Kurdish militias. This went against a well-established policy
18
guideline not to export weapons to high-intensity conflict areas. While

critics accused the government of stoking the flames of violence, Germany
even looked at the possibility of setting up military training camps in Iraq.
The real test of Germanys willingness to shoulder burdens and show
leadership is in Ukraine. So far, Berlin has shown the willingness to review
the relationship with Russia and no longer do business as usual, at least for
a while. Given the complex nature of the German relationship with Russia,
this has not been easy. The public was against any escalation over Ukraine
and is wary of a new period of confrontation with Russia as NATO beefs up
the defense of its eastern European members. Actually, more than just a few
Germans, including former chancellors, put the blame for what happened in
Eastern Europe on allegedly misguided Western policies that had provoked
Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene in Ukraine.
This view is also a reflection of the corrosive effect of growing antiAmericanism in Germany, which is moving from the margins to the
center. The business community was, and continues to be, strongly against
economic sanctions against Russia, the chosen form of response to Russias
aggression first in the Crimea and later in eastern Ukraine. As Germany
had by far the biggest commercial relationship with Russia among Western
nations, it had the most to lose. But to the chagrin of major business
interests, Merkel made clear who is in charge and agreed to impose Western
sanctions against an aggressive, revisionist Russia. On the European
level, she acted as a moderator and a facilitator. On the Atlantic level, U.S.
President Barack Obama deferred to Merkels leadership more than once.
She has combined a determination to increase the costs for Russia of its
aggression with repeated calls for dialogue with the Moscow leadership.
While many argue that Germany is still a risk-averse, post-military trading
state, the Ukraine/Russia crisis shattered old concepts and exposed illusions.
It was not easy for the Merkel government to chart a course between
domestic politics and economic interests on one hand and political,
strategic, and alliance considerations on the other. For some, this may not
be forceful enough. Others accuse Germany, the major power in Europe,
of not investing enough in the Western alliance. But Berlin is moving from
restraint to responsibility, without completely letting restraint slip away. The
trick is to balance the principles and lessons learned from an inglorious past
with the necessities of today, which are to maintain and recreate order and
stability. More profoundly, it is closing the gap between rhetoric and reality.
19
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger is foreign editor of the German newspaper

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and was a Bosch Public Policy Fellow during the
2010-11 Academy year on Global Shift: The Transatlantic Community and the
New Geopolitics.
20
Italys Foreign Policy Activism:

The Quest for Sustainability
Nathalie Tocci
fter years of foreign policy sclerosis, Italy is making a noticeable

comeback on the international scene. While confirming its
traditional attachment to European integration and to the
transatlantic alliance, Rome is playing an increasingly active role in
the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Much of this activism can be
explained by personalities, be they those of former Foreign Minister Emma
Bonino and her team, of her successor Federica Mogherini, now EU high
representative, or of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi himself. And yet to
make a lasting foreign policy impact, developing more articulate long-term
strategies premised on both greater political stability and a deep-rooted
structural reform of the foreign policy apparatus in the country will be of the
essence.
Italys more active stance began in 2013 with the government headed
by Prime Minister Enrico Letta. The seeds were sown with Boninos
nomination to the foreign ministry, backed by a solid team of deputies
including Marta Dass and Lapo Pistelli. Notwithstanding Italys spiraling
economic crisis, which endures to this day, Rome resumed punching its
weight in the international arena under Boninos leadership. Notably, in
the second half of 2013, Italy took a strong stance against Western military
intervention in the war in Syria, manifested its openness toward Iran
following the election of President Hassan Rouhani, sealed the agreement
over the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline carrying Azerbaijani gas to Europe, and set
in motion a long-awaited reform of its development policy, in the process
revamping relations with sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, Italy
redoubled its commitment to deeper European integration, in particular by
backing plans for a banking union, as well as to a revamped transatlantic
partnership, strongly supporting negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP).
With the fall of Lettas government came the rise of Matteo Renzi and
Federica Mogherini. While lacking a strong agenda of her own, as Boninos
successor at the foreign ministry Mogherini added to Italys visibility on the
foreign policy scene. She was ubiquitous in her presence both in Europe
21
and the United States, in Italys immediate neighborhood to both east and
south, and in Latin America. Italy has been a prime player in the attempted
resolution of the Libyan crisis; it has been the principal whistleblower
through the save-and-rescue Mare Nostrum mission on the migration
crisis in the Mediterranean; it was the first European country to ring the
alarm bells on the Islamic State groups threat in Iraq; and it has capitalized
on improved relations with African countries both for quick wins
such as the liberation of the Sudanese woman Meriam Yahia Ibrahim
Ishag, convicted for apostasy as well as for more long-term results, for
instance the launching of an EU-Horn of Africa dialogue on migration
and development under the Italian EU Presidency. Mogherini, her deputy
Pistelli, and Prime Minister Renzi and Italian diplomacy as a whole all
deserve credit for these accomplishments.
Italys increased activism is indisputable. Some of this activism automatically
dovetails with U.S. positions and approaches, for instance with regards to
Libya, European integration, the Southern Gas Corridor, or TTIP. On other
issues, namely Russia-Ukraine, Iran, and Syria, while interests converge,
views may occasionally be somewhat different. And yet even when positions
differ, a more internationally active Italy making its voice heard, particularly
on the issues closest to its foreign policy interests, means value added for
Europe, for the United States, and for the transatlantic partnership as a
whole.
The quest now is that of sustainability, and, connected to this, of lasting
foreign policy influence. In order for Italy to make not only its voice
heard but its actions felt in international affairs, it is of the essence for
Rome to create sophisticated strategies grounded upon deep knowledge of
developments on the ground as well as alliance building with friends and
partners. In the case of Libya, for instance perhaps the top foreign policy
priority for Italy at the current juncture it is not enough to have deep
understanding of developments on the ground, which Italy does, not least
because Romes is the only large Western embassy left in Tripoli, because
of the significant presence of ENI, and because of the large Italian-Libyan
community. In order to make its influence felt, Italy must elaborate upon
international strategies to move the UNs troubled mediation efforts forward
and build sound international coalitions to back these up. To do so, an active
foreign minister or prime minister is necessary, as is political courage and
vision. But it is not sufficient. If Italy wants to translate its greater visibility
into actual influence, personal vision and courage must filter down into
22
institutions and the development of a strategic culture across the various

foreign policy stakeholders in the country. What is needed for this to happen
is a degree of political stability over the last two years Italy has had no less
than four foreign ministers along with a sorely needed restructuring of
the countrys foreign policy apparatus.
Nathalie Tocci is deputy director at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome and
was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 2009-10 Academy year on
Turkey and Its Neighborhood.
23
Polish Foreign Policy: End of

the Golden Years
Bartlomiej E. Nowak
rom 2008 until recently, Polish foreign policy enjoyed golden

years. Once Poland was firmly anchored in Western institutions
like the European Union and NATO, Warsaws voice started to gain
prominence and respect across Europe and even globally.
A number of factors contributed to Polands credibility. First, its economy
was growing at a time of near zero growth or recession in other EU
countries. Polish governments were very cautious in their management of
public money and Warsaw safely navigated the European financial crisis.
The monitoring of Polish banks proved to be very efficient and the article in
the Polish constitution that capped the level of public debt was even adopted
as a European solution. Though Poland has not entered the euro zone and
has so far averted a decision on joining while the EUs economic crisis
continues, Warsaw has successfully secured its voice on major solutions
concerning monetary integration.
Second, Poland has started to play the Brussels game very effectively. It
has closely allied with Germany (despite many policy differences like on
the future of euro zone, energy and climate policy, and Eastern policy)
and learned how to build coalitions. Both the Visegrad group (with
Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) and the Weimar Triangle (with
Germany and France) were reinvigorated. These steps bore fruit in Polands
presidency of the European Council in 2011, which appeared to be a big
success and added to Polish visibility across the world. Not less important,
it was followed by effective preparations for the UEFA Euro 2012 soccer
championships held in Poland and Ukraine.
Third, Polands Eastern policy gained prominence. With the creation of
the EUs Eastern Partnership, initiated by Poland and Sweden, the policy
effectively became Europeanized. Polands credibility was vastly enhanced
by a very pragmatic policy toward Russia under the Civic Platform of
Donald Tusks government, which treated Russia as it is, not as we wish it
to be. Russias foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, even attended the meetings
of Weimar Triangle, visited the annual summit of Polish ambassadors,
24
and created the so-called Kaliningrad Triangle jointly with his German
and Polish counterparts. Poland had gotten unstuck from its Post-Cold
War warrior label and, for the first time in its history, did not feel that
its geographic location between Germany and Russia was geopolitical
determinism.
Fourth, Polands foreign policy horizon became much more globalized
than in the past. It appeared that Polands model of successful post-1989
transition could be a good trademark and it attracted interest during
the Arab Spring of 2011. The Community of Democracies, which is
headquartered in Warsaw, gained more ground in international politics
and played an important role in a peaceful political transition in Myanmar.
Poland initiated the European Endowment for Democracy, headquartered
in Brussels, and founded Go China and Go Africa programs for the
global expansion of its business sector. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
visited Poland in 2012 to meet leaders of 11 Central and Eastern European
countries. Furthermore, Poland became an object of interest of world energy
investors due to its vast shale gas potential.
But 2014 marked the end of Polands foreign policy golden years. All the
factors that so strongly contributed to the Polish success story were put
into a very different context, primarily due to Russian aggression against
Ukraine. For Poland, this is not just the issue of instability in its immediate
neighborhood. It is also a challenge for the liberal world order that was so
beneficial to its own rise after the peaceful revolution of 1989. Events both
to the east and the south of Europe have proven an obvious weakness of
the two major organizations that underpin the institutional framework of
Polands foreign policy: the EU and the NATO. These organizations did
not help to deter the Russian annexation of Crimea and the presence of
Russian soldiers in the Donbas. Poland is aware that the Russian problem
will be a major issue of foreign policy for at least the next decade and that
the EU and NATO are not in good shape internally. The perception of
danger has reached a post-1991 high in Polish public opinion. For the last
couple of years, Poland invested heavily in the reinvigoration of Europes
sluggish defense and security policy. However, it assumed that this was only
in response to the potential U.S. pivot to Asia. The 2012 GMF Transatlantic
Trends found that only 38 percent of Poles considered U.S. leadership
desirable and 45 percent thought that NATO was essential for national
security. This was one of the worst results across the EU countries. But the
Polish push toward making Europe a stronger foreign policy player has
25
clearly failed. Other EU countries did not even aspire to update Europes
security strategy.
Today, according to 2014 Transatlantic Trends, 78 percent of Poles see the
United States positively while two-thirds of them think that NATO is again
essential for our own security. If Europe is incapable and demilitarized, the
United States is again considered as a key ally. However, this is in a very
specific context. President Bronisaw Komorowski has openly declared the
end of foreign military adventurism. But Poland cannot assume that a
NATO concentrated around its core territorial defense function will remain
relevant for the United States if the European allies do not really share the
burden. Therefore, territorial defense dominates Polish thinking now, as
was expressed in the recently approved national security strategy. Some
have even jokingly called this a Polish pivot to Poland. This is not a big
overstatement.
At the same time, when the East is in flame, the EU is struggling with
disintegration processes in many areas. France and Italy have openly
declared their hostility to the Fiscal Pact that is fundamental for the future
of euro zone. Great Britain is on the verge of withdrawal from the EU. From
Polands perspective, its cherished anchor in the world a stable EU and
NATO in disarray. Warsaw cannot stop this process. It is much more
aware now that at least in order to have influence over it, Poland should
finally decide to join the euro zone. It may be now in the core interest of
Polands foreign policy, despite all the problems that are still looming on the
horizon for the ill-designed monetary union.
If the selection of former Prime Minister Donald Tusk for the post of
president of the European Council was the jewel in the crown of Polish
foreign policys golden years, it symbolizes the beginning of a new period
as well. For many years, Poland struggled to join the key institutions of the
Euroatlantic area. Now it will have to work on the larger responsibility of
keeping them relevant.
Bartlomiej E. Nowak is chair of international relations department at the Vistula
University in Warsaw and was a Joachim Herz Stiftung fellow during the 2013-14
Academy year on The Future of International Liberal Order.
26
No Solidarity? Growing Refugee

Inflows and the Need for EU
Asylum Policy Reforms
Steffen Angenendt
ccording to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR), the global number of refugees has significantly
increased during the past five years. By the end of 2013, the agency
reported there were 51.2 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide,
including 33.3 million internally displaced (IDPs), 1.2 million asylumseekers, and 16.7 million refugees under UN protection. In addition,
between January and June 2014, 5.5 million new forcibly displaced persons
were registered. Although most refugees are living in other parts of the
world (with Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, and Jordan among the major
refugee-hosting countries), an increasing number tries to find protection
in Europe. In 2013, 435,000 new asylum seekers entered the EU, a 20-year
peak. This imposes serious policy challenges on the member states: an
increasing number of deaths at the external EU borders, a general lack of
solidarity between member states with regard to the reception of refugees,
and an overall lack of coherent asylum and migration policies.
With a further increase of inflows to the EU to be expected currently
mainly from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Serbia, and Iraq new approaches
in national and EU policies are necessary. On EU level, three major
questions must be addressed: 1) How can the responsibility for refugees
be shared? 2) How can humanitarian disasters at EU external borders be
prevented? 3) And how can overburdened refugee-hosting countries like
Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan be supported? In addition, member states will
have to reconsider their national refugee policies. It should be anticipated
that many refugees are going to stay for a long period of time, or for the rest
of their lives. But if they become immigrants, integration must become a
central ambition.
Later this year, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is scheduled
to enter into force. It should provide refugees with equal asylum procedures,
and conditions of reception and living in all EU member states. At present,
these procedures and conditions are not in place, and it is unlikely that
27
this goal will be reached in 2015. The EU external border countries find
themselves disadvantaged by the 1990 Dublin Agreement pursuant to which
a refugees country of first entry to the EU is responsible for the respective
asylum procedure. De facto, these states let refugees travel to other EU states.
Clearly, the European asylum regime based on the Dublin regulations is
malfunctioning, with few member states (Germany, Sweden, Italy, France,
and the U.K.) hosting the overwhelming majority of refugees. It is now time
for a debate on the distribution of responsibility considered fair by all EU
states.
A first step would be an agreement on criteria on the basis of which member
states determine refugee distribution. Criteria could include population size,
economic strength, and unemployment ratios, as well as humane factors
such as family members or a diaspora living in the respective member
state. In a second step, a procedure for the distribution of refugees could be
established. A mechanism of financial compensation or incentives would
be less bureaucratic than a physical redistribution of refugees. It should be
taken into account that refugees are likely to seek protection in member
states where a diaspora provides support structures.
Compensation can only work when EU provisions regarding the
harmonization of asylum standards are followed and member states are
prevented from designing their asylum standards in such a way that they
are less attractive for refugees. The debate on distribution should provide
incentives for countries such as Greece to improve their asylum system.
For ethical, humanitarian, and political reasons, EU member states cannot
turn a blind eye to the present grave situation at their external borders.
According to NGO estimates, since 2000 more than 23,000 irregular
immigrants have lost their lives in transit.
To effectuate a long-term solution, cooperation with neighboring countries
above all the North African states is required. These states need to
be persuaded to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean Sea by
dangerous means. Such cooperation is possible with Tunisia and Morocco.
But currently, most refugee boats start from the Libyan coast. Because
state structures in Libya have collapsed, neither cooperation on refugee
protection nor migration management is possible. The Italian operation
Mare Nostrum, which rescued shipwrecked persons close to the Libyan
coast, illustrates the EUs dilemma. From a humanitarian perspective, the
28
operation was highly successful. At the same time, it produced a pull effect
and strengthened traffickers. Surely, and contrary to the hope of politicians,
the dismissal of humanitarian missions would not lead to a decrease in
numbers of people trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea migratory
pressure remains too high. In November 2014, the Italian government
terminated Mare Nostrum and engaged in the new Frontex operation
Triton. But the mandate of Triton is limited to border protection in EU
coastal areas and will therefore save fewer people.
Truly effective external border control in the Mediterranean comprises
three efforts. Firstly, EU states should support North African states in
building up comprehensive asylum and migration policy capacities. The
capacity of those countries to manage the increasing immigration from
sub-Saharan Africa and other regions is a precondition for cooperation
with Europe. Secondly, EU states need to provide the North African
states with incentives for cooperation in the form of possibilities of legal
migration for their nationals. In many EU states, labor demand is increasing.
Within the framework of the so-called EU Mobility Partnerships, the EU
could offer more migration programs. Refugees should also be offered
more legal migration channels. Thirdly, external border control should be
complemented by an effective rescue program in the Mediterranean area,
shouldered by all EU states.
Integration of refugees becomes a crucial issue, especially with regard
to a fading welcome in some member states for refugees and (Muslim)
immigrants. Currently, the protection of refugees is based on the assumption
that they should return to their home countries once the situations there are
considered safe. This idea also shapes public perception and explains why
integration has up to now in many countries only played a minor role in
refugee policy. A fundamental change in thinking is necessary, facilitating
labor market access for refugees. The concept of the refugee as a pure
recipient should be set aside. Many refugees want and have the capacities to
meaningfully participate in their host country.
Generally, the accommodation of refugees is crucial for their integration.
Isolated housing and special schooling is harmful to integration. Given
the complexity and urgency of the issue, national asylum summits with
public actors and civil society actors should be convened. Thereby, active
citizenship to this cause and networking between refugee integration
initiatives would be strengthened.
29
The refugee question presents all EU states with great challenges. It can be
anticipated that in some states in fragile economic situations and with the
fear of extremism, calls for walling-off will grow louder among the public.
Nevertheless, a further increase of refugees can be managed if the policy
reforms mentioned are introduced. EU states need to pursue a common
migration policy. They need to agree on a fair distribution of responsibilities.
They need to engage increasingly in refugee integration. And they need to
communicate the necessity of acting in a way that enhances, rather than
undermines, the commitment of their citizens to assist those in need.
Steffen Angenendt is a senior associate at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in
Berlin and was a Bosch Public Policy Fellow during the 2008-09 Academy year on
Immigration and Integration.
30
n The European Union:
Internal Challenges
31
The EU: Made in Britain

Michael Leigh
ritain is in the grip of a prolonged political crisis concerning its

own constitutional order and its membership in the European
Union, exacerbated by acrimonious and misleading arguments over
immigration. As in other European countries, a demagogic anti-EU, antiimmigration movement has driven the established parties into a defensive
posture. The current prime minister, David Cameron, felt compelled
to promise an in/out referendum on Britains EU membership if his
Conservative Party returns to power after the May 2015 general election. As
a further gesture to the populists, he is now hinting at advancing the date of
this referendum.
But such efforts at appeasement have proved futile, provoking everincreasing demands. At the same time, British leaders have upset natural
allies within the EU and missed an opportunity to become the leading
European voice advocating forward-looking policies such as completing the
single market, strengthening Europes global competitiveness, and building
an energy union. The government has also failed to explain to voters that
the EU today bears strong signs of British design and as such serves Britains
interests well.
Over the past four decades, the EU has been transformed from a relatively
small Community of nine member states to a Union with 28 members
embracing much of the European continent. What was once an inwardlooking, largely Francophone, club has become a broad-based Union that
is Anglophone, outward-looking, and open to trade. The United Kingdom
is largely responsible for the EUs predominantly liberal ethos and present
geopolitical dimensions.
From the outset, Britain backed both enlargement and extending the EUs
global outreach. British commissioners, including Leon Brittan, Chris
Patten, Pater Mandelson, and Catherine Ashton, piloted the EUs trade
policies and external relations at crucial moments in their development.
Britain was among the most consistent advocates of enlargement in Central
and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. Today Britain supports
EU assistance for democratic transition in the Balkans, Ukraine, and
32
other former Soviet states as well as sanctions against Russia following its
annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine.
British membership in 1973 led to closer EU links with the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA), which paved the way for Sweden and Finland
to join the Union in 1995. Britain championed new forms of association
with African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries (many its former colonies),
now incorporated in the EU-ACP Cotonou agreement. This is widely
considered a model for development assistance a key British foreign
policy priority.
Margaret Thatcher joined forces with Commission President Jacques Delors
in the late 1980s to eliminate restrictions on the free circulation of goods,
services, capital, and workers the original goal of the common market.
The commissioner in charge at the time, Arthur Cockfield, as well as the
then secretary-general, David Williamson, were both British. For decades,
the single EU market has favored British exports of goods and services,
especially financial services. Since 2010, the most senior EU official in
charge of the single market and services has been British. Jonathan Hill,
the commissioner appointed in 2014 to regulate the single market, is also
British. The Danish and Swedish commissioners for competition policy
and trade, who took office last November, support a liberal agenda in line
with British thinking. Today they are engaged in challenging negotiations
with the United States for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Efforts by euroskeptics to detract from the EUs trade-friendly track record
have not convinced British business leaders.
Britain has played a key role in shaping other core EU initiatives from
the Regional Development Fund to the Common Fisheries Policy. Britain
and the Nordic countries that entered the EU in 1973 (Denmark) and
1995 (Sweden and Finland) transformed the EUs administrative culture.
New EU officials are now trained in ethics, integrity, and sound financial
management, part of the reforms named after the former British Labour
Party leader, Neal Kinnock, who served as commission vice-president from
1999 to 2004. Today, transparency and accountability are the rule in the
institutions. In any event, question time in the European Parliament, a
practice imported from Britain, is there to keep commissioners on their toes.
For decades, British officials have been sought after as chiefs of staff,
advisers to commissioners and assistants to directors-general of different
33
nationalities because of their reputation for probity and efficiency. But

uncertainty about future British membership has discouraged young Britons
from applying for EU jobs. In the last few recruitment competitions, the
proportion of successful candidates from Britain has fallen to 1 or 2 percent.
Some 45 percent of U.K. staff are now over 55 years old and scheduled
to retire in the next 10 years. Instead of looking over its shoulder at the
euroskeptics, the government should do more to channel British officials to
the EU institutions before they become a wasting asset.
To be sure, not all EU policies are to the liking of British governments. But
their officials have proved adept in negotiating opt-outs from the euro, the
abolition of border controls, and certain labor market rules, as well as police
and judicial cooperation. Indeed, Britain has been so successful in this that
it now seeks to opt back into certain EU arrangements, like the European
arrest warrant. Britains budget rebate is a precedent that other member
states seek to emulate.
Buoyed by Britains success in Europe, the countrys politicians should have
the courage to articulate a coherent vision of how they would like the EU to
develop. Instead of making impossible demands on their European partners,
they should mobilize Britains redoubtable political skills to negotiate further
reforms, cut red tape, and make the EU more competitive. This is the best
answer to the euroskeptics and the best way to secure votes for continued
British EU membership.
Sir Michael Leigh is a senior advisor to The German Marshall Fund of the United
States and is currently a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow for the 2014-15
Academy year on Religion and Foreign Policy.
34
An Illiberal Polity in the

Euroatlantic World: Lessons
from Hungarys Backsliding
Gbor Halmai
ollowing the 1989-90 democratic transition, Hungary experienced

two decades of solid liberal democracy until 2010, when the Fidesz
Party gained a two-thirds majority in the parliament and introduced
a new constitutional system eliminating checks and balances and guarantees
of fundamental rights. After a second two-thirds victory in 2014, Prime
Minister Viktor Orbn publicly insisted he aimed for an illiberal democracy,
naming Russia and China as models among others.
Until the fall of 2014, the Hungarian public seemed to be unconcerned
about the governments illiberal politics, while the first anti-government
demonstrations were either apolitical (against a planned Internet tax), or
the consequence of an external action (the United States diplomatic step
to deny entry to corrupt Hungarian officials). Even though most of the
demonstrators requested the resignation of the current government, some
of the speakers at the Day of Outrage in Budapest on November 17 also
spoke out against the 1989 liberal democratic transition, rejecting all of
its political actors and requesting a real regime change. In other words
the protests are directed both against illiberal and liberal democracy. The
demonstrations were accompanied by a serious slide in the popularity of
both Fidesz and Orbn. The party had lost 12 percent of its sympathizers, or
900,000 voters, while the prime minister himself lost 16 percentage points of
support, within one month.
This argument will not focus on the reasons for four years of silence
from the public. Instead, the focus is on two interrelated and seemingly
conflicting issues: firstly, the very characteristics of the 1989-90 transition
and the role of the political and intellectual elite in these changes, and
secondly, the public perception of liberal democracy in Hungary.
Whatever the speakers of the November 17 demonstration think about it,
the 1989-90 rule of law revolution put in place the institutions of a fullfledged liberal democratic system. This institutionalization was a top-down
35
elite process, where two differently but equally illegitimate actors, namely
the Communist Party and the newborn opposition movements, agreed
upon the new constitutional order. One can argue that having democratic
elections first would have been a better way to proceed, but actually both
parties to the National Roundtable negotiations had good reasons to be
afraid of the victory of the other.
But even if understandable, the lack of any kind of public participation in
the design of the new system was certainly instrumental for the population
not to identify itself with the idea of liberal democracy. The elite failed
to finish this post-sovereign constitution-making process later with a
democratically enacted new constitution. This gave Fidesz the opportunity
in 2010 to falsely argue for a real change of regime and the replacement of
the Stalinist constitution.
The Constitutional Court and some public intellectuals (myself included at
least until a certain point) have their own responsibility for not taking the
legitimacy issue seriously by arguing that the comprehensively amended old
constitution with the active interpretation of the Court provided an effective
living constitution, and that there was thus no need for a legitimate new
one. Even if some critics of the legal constitutionalism seem to forget
the important role of the Constitutional Court (at least in the first nine
years), the current disappointment with 1989 and with the ideal of liberal
constitutional democracy is partly due to the lack of any participatory
element in this process. This is the failure of the entire elite, not exclusively
that of the political parties, because convincing the public to accept a set of
proper values is a historic responsibility of elites.
The second point is the degrees to which the values of liberal democracy
were accepted by the Hungarian population in 1989 and to which are they
now.
Regarding 1989, even though the transition to democracy in Hungary was
driven by the fact that a large share of the population gave high priority
to freedom, one of the legacies of Hungarys milder version of socialism
with the toleration of private businesses, relative social security, and no
unemployment in the Kdr regime (the happiest barrack in the camp)
from the 1960s onwards was that people expected the new state to
produce speedy economic growth. The public expected that the country
could attain the living standards of neighboring Austria overnight, without
36
painful reforms. In other words, one can argue that the average Hungarian
pursued the West in 1989, though not so much in terms of the Western
economic and political system, but rather in terms of the living standards of
the West. Therefore Hungary had a relatively huge possible backsliding risk
with the post-1989 economic changes and decline in living standards, which
undermined the legitimacy of democratic institutions and could turn back
the process of democratization.
The lack of real economic reform and success did not help to strengthen
the middle class and the civil society. In such a situation, the perceptions
of liberal democracy can play a crucial role. One doubts that there were
dormant Fascist or even National Socialist mentalities, which have
gradually found their way to surface, or that Orbn is a neo-Fascist
dictator, but as surveys on the links between modernization and democracy
show, the societys historic and religious heritage leaves a lasting imprint.
According to these surveys, the publics of formerly agrarian societies,
including Hungary, emphasize religion, national pride, obedience, and
respect for authority, while the publics of industrial societies emphasize
secularism, cosmopolitanism, autonomy, and rationality.
The described democratic backsliding in Hungary demonstrates that
the institutional framework is a necessary but not sufficient element of a
successful democratization. Behavioral elements, including political and
constitutional culture, are as important as institutions. The other lesson
of this case study is that on one hand, the very definition of democracy is
changing and democracy is not necessarily liberal. On the other hand, the
borders of democratic and authoritarian regimes are increasingly blurred;
there are many different hybrid systems such as todays Hungary. Due
to a new Cold War situation in Europe, these systems are not influenced
exclusively by the liberal democratic West.
Gbor Halmai is a Visiting Research Collaborator at the Woodrow Wilson School
and Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University and was a
Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 2012-13 Academy year on The
Future of the Western Liberal Order.
37
The Eurozone in 2014:

Some Improvements, But
More Must Be Done
Thomas Straubhaar
ometimes a figure says more than 1,000 words. The euro devaluated 9
percent against the U.S. dollar in 2014. At the beginning of that year,
one had to pay $1.37 for 1. At the end of the year it was only $1.21 to
1 (and late January 2015 $1.13: 1).
Obviously, currency traders have changed their expectations about the
eurozone during the past year. They view the future of the eurozone more
critically than that of the United States for many reasons. Gross domestic
product (GDP) in the United States is expected to grow by about 3.8
percent in 2015, but only by 1.3 percent in the eurozone, according to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). This substantial growth gap nourishes
the well-founded expectation that interest rates will rise earlier and by more
in the United States than in the eurozone. Greeces far-left Syriza party has
now come to power after promising to renegotiate Greeces bailout by the
troika of the European Central Bank (ECB), the EU, and the IMF, and this
will lead to a return of uncertainty about the future of the common currency.
Finally, as eurozone consumer prices turned negative in December 2014
for the first time in five years, ECB President Mario Draghi confirmed his
statement in favor of a loose monetary policy, and for European quantitative
easing (QE) through the purchase of government bonds in the amount of
114 trillion for the 18 months from spring 2015 to fall 2016.
The blurred perspective on the further development of the eurozone can
also be recognized in a broader setting. The trade-weighted nominal
effective exchange rate of the euro against the currencies of the 20 most
important trade partners of the eurozone indicates a devaluation of the euro
of 3.5 percent in 2014.
The good news, however, is that the strongest factors driving the devaluation
of the euro have to do with the recovery of the U.S. economy and the return
of confidence that the U.S. economy is embarking on a lasting upswing.
The devaluation of the euro is beneficial for the eurozone in the short run.
38
It functions simultaneously like an import tariff and an export subsidy,

increasing the prices for imported goods and services and decreasing the
prices for exports. Thus, foreign firms can sell less in the eurozone, and
European firms can sell more abroad. This protects eurozone economies
against foreign competition and increases the competitiveness of European
products in global markets.
The strong U.S. dollar might indeed dampen the strength and speed of
the (expected) U.S. interest rate increase in 2015. Given that in times of
deflation, the ECB has no incentive to increase rates, the U.S. Federal
Reserve Bank might hesitate to make moves that would lead to further
appreciation of the dollar, if that would widen the interest gap between
the United States and the eurozone. European monetary policy will stay
expansive to stimulate the business cycle.
The economic outlook for the eurozone in 2015 includes both positive and
negative factors.
On the positive side, several arguments justify more optimism. For the
first time since the outbreak of the financial market crisis in 2008, all
eurozone countries will be out of recession in 2015, according to the IMF.
The real GDP of the big four euro economies Germany, France, Italy,
and Spain is expected to grow at a substantially stronger level than
in 2014. Developments in Spain look especially bright due to improved
financial conditions and rising confidence in the stability of the banking
sector. The smaller eurozone countries of the southern periphery also seem
to have managed the turnaround. Structural adjustment processes have
begun to be felt in the performance of the economy, slowly increasing the
competitiveness of local firms. Meanwhile, low prices for raw materials and
energy work like a stimulus package for the European economy.
Significantly, the European Banking Union was established in 2014. The first
pillar of the banking union, the European Single Supervisory Mechanism
(SSM) based at the ECB, has already started its work by supervising major
European banks according to uniform rules and high standards. The SSM
will be augmented by the establishment of a European Single Resolution
Mechanism (SRM) as the second pillar of the banking union. The SRM will
ensure that failing banks can exit the market without becoming a major
threat to the banking system as a whole. Measures ensure that bank owners
and creditors will bear an appropriate share of the losses first, and only
39
afterwards will a common resolution fund financed by the banking sector

step in. As the German Bundesbank stated, Public funds are to be used
only as a last resort, and then only if financial stability would otherwise be
jeopardized. A harmonized system of deposit guarantee schemes (DGS) will
be the third pillar. The DGS will strengthen financial stability and consumer
protection (by guaranteeing a coverage level of 100,000 per depositor)
while maintaining a level playing field within the EU.
The European Banking Union will surely strengthen financial stability and
stabilize the banking sector in the eurozone. It will improve the efficiency of
cross-border financial activities and loosen the doom loop between financial
sector debt and sovereign debt, which exacerbated the crisis in the past.
On the negative side, some eurozone states remain uncompetitive with slow
structural reforms. Italy is still suffering from structural adjustment costs,
and its economy contracted in the first half of 2014. Its growth will be weak
in 2015, with an unemployment rate of about 12 percent. Several other
national economies are characterized by persistently high unemployment
rates and debt, and are not able to restore higher employment through
regular self-correcting forces. Unemployment will remain a constant source
of anger and sometimes violent political protests.
While yields on government bonds have generally fallen to very low levels
for most countries (due to low growth and weak inflation expectations),
Greek government bonds went in a different direction. Discussions about
an early exit from its international assistance programs and about the new
Syriza governments resistance to European pressures to undertake structural
reforms put considerable upward pressure on yields on Greek government
bonds. Financial actors again became nervous about the possibility of a
Grexit a Greek exit from the eurozone an option not foreseen in the
statutes of the European Monetary Union.
It is clear that much was improved in the eurozone in 2014 but also that
much more must be done. The euro crisis is over but many severe problems
remain. Overall, the euro will be weak but more stable in 2015, but the
probability that single member countries may come under pressure and have
to pay higher risk premiums for further credit is higher than a year ago.
Growth rates remain too low, and high unemployment persists not only
in the periphery but also in the core euro economies. The threat of secular
stagnation feeds the political breeding ground to rally against further
40
structural change (desperately needed for a further improvement of

international competitiveness) and for protectionism and nationalism. This
is how many protest parties gain support and momentum. They will argue
for a return to a Europe of strong nation states with slogans like France for
the French, British jobs for British workers, or Courage to stand up for
Germany. This will in turn compound the search for common EU strategies
and pragmatic compromises to strengthen the European monetary union.
Thomas Straubhaar is a professor of economics at the University of Hamburg,
is currently a non-resident fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, and was a
Helmut Schmidt fellow during the 2009-10 Academy year on Turkey and Its
Neighborhood.
41
At Last, A European Energy Union?

Tim Boersma
014 was a very eventful year for European energy security. In January,
the European Commission (EC) launched its proposals for a new
climate and renewable energy package, covering the period until
2030. The overall assessment at the time was that the package was not as
unambitious as expected in light of the difficult economic state of affairs.
Nor were the proposals watered down further by the time it got accepted
in the fall. They resulted in a package with, at its center, an obligation to
cut carbon emissions by 40 percent in 2030 compared to 1990, a shared 27
percent renewable energy target, and reforms to the EU Emissions Trading
System (ETS). Of course, many criticisms can and should be made of the fall
2014 agreement. There are still no binding targets for energy efficiency and it
remains uncertain whether the ETS reforms will be sufficient to drive up the
price of carbon emissions. It is also unclear how the EC is going to safeguard
that member states adhere to a collective target for renewable energy.
However, the event that truly shook up the European energy landscape was
the war in Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea. EU-Russian
relations have not necessarily been permanently damaged, but clearly a new
urgency has been given to the creation of a truly collaborative European
energy policy. In the months after the annexation of Crimea in March,
and with the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorating, tensions between
Russia and Europe rose, reawakening the old and ongoing debate about the
implications of dependence on Russian energy resources. In capital cities
throughout Europe, there were outcries about diversification away from
Russian natural gas (though Russia is equally important as a supplier of
oil, uranium, and coal). Many European leaders look across the Atlantic
Ocean, where the fracking boom continues to pump up natural gas and oil
production, and U.S. policymakers and analysts debate whether exports of
their commodities could help out citizens in Ukraine and the wider region.
Of course, hopes of a U.S. energy bailout are wishful thinking. There
are no quick fixes to Europes energy dependence: the alternatives are
all significantly more expensive than existing supplies, opposed on
environmental grounds, and/or not yet available. Furthermore, the United
States has its own issues to deal with; crude oil cannot be exported from
the country by law, and the market is not ready to start exporting liquefied
42
natural gas before the end of 2015. In addition, it remains to be seen what
volumes will eventually be competitive on global markets. Regardless of
these facts, EU policymakers study all these alternatives extensively.
Following the May 2014 European elections, the outgoing European
Commission published an energy strategy for Europe. This detailed document
laid out possible future scenarios for energy security and announced
additional studies in the form of so-called stress tests, intended to give a
detailed description of the bottlenecks in the existing energy markets. Further
urgency to alter the status quo was created as the situation in eastern Ukraine
deteriorated, by now claiming thousands of casualties and resulting in the
tragic shooting-down of MH17, killing all 296 people on board.
In the early fall, the EC published the results of the stress tests, concluding
that completion of the internal energy market by 2014, an explicit goal of the
previous European Commission, was not going to happen, and that under
business as usual conditions, it is was unlikely to happen before the end of
the decade.
As winter approached and the situation in Ukraine remained in limbo, fears
of a new gas supply disruption in Europe arose, even though Gazprom does
not have an alternative market to sell its product. In addition, sanctions and
(predominantly) falling oil prices put additional pressure on a cash-strapped
Kremlin. European calculations of available stored natural gas (due to the
previous mild winter) and improved infrastructure connections suggest that
a supply disruption can be weathered by most member states, though that
assumes perfect collaboration and would come at a stiff price. Of course,
perfect collaboration is highly unlikely, as energy matters continue to be
a national affair. Furthermore, actors in a liberalized market environment
generally skew away from paying a premium.
It is in this context that the new European Commission presented its plans
for an Energy Union. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker intends
to seize this opportunity to finally get a proper energy policy in place and
complete the internal energy market. In the coming months, we shall see
whether he will succeed. It is too early to criticize the broad outlines that
to date have been suggested. However, there is a real risk that by deploying
an all-encompassing approach, new policies at the end of the day may have
limited effect. Member states continue to be divided over several core issues,
such as governance (is energy a European competence or a member state
43
affair?), renewable energy and carbon reduction (what is the role of coal,
shale gas, and nuclear power?), and who pays for critical infrastructure
(northwestern Europe has made its own arrangements, why can other
member states not do the same?).
It seems unlikely that the new EC, despite its talent and experience, can
solve all these issues. A more focused approach on the most urgent matters
would be preferable. Recalling last years debates about single-source
dependency on Russian natural gas, and knowing that for the larger part
of the EU that is no longer an issue, this seems like an area where the EC
can make meaningful progress. There is plenty of available data on where
investments in interconnectors, pipelines, reverse flows, and storage
facilities are lacking, and they are clustered in a handful of member states,
particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. Trial and error in the last decade
has shown that a market-based approach is not realistic in this part of the
continent, as volumes are too small and private investors therefore prefer
other opportunities. Hence, existing financial support has to be allocated
with this focus in mind. As available funds under the existing frameworks
are not nearly sufficient, creative thinking is required to safeguard that the
necessary aforementioned investments can be made without further delays.
The European Investment Bank can possibly play a more prominent role,
and for certain strategic projects, alternative and long-term rates-of-return
can be considered in order to attract additional capital from institutional
investors and pension funds. Completing the internal gas market addresses
the most urgent political risk. This is preferable to continued day-dreaming
about alternative supplies from exotic places, which generally come with a
substantial premium.
Europe is going to be import dependent for the foreseeable future. Contrary
to common wisdom, that does not need to be problematic. The key to
dealing with dependency is two-fold: in the short term creating access to
alternatives for those member states that have not done so already, while
similarly staying on track to diversify away from fossil fuels in the long run.
The new EC is not going to solve all the worlds problems, but if it could
make efforts along the lines described above in the coming months and
years, that would mean very significant progress.
Tim Boersma is a fellow and acting director in the Energy Security and Climate
Initiative at the Brookings Institution and was a Transatlantic Academy fellow
during the 2011-12 Academy year on Natural Resources: The New Geopolitical
Great Game?
44
n Challenges in the Middle East
45
A Dangerous and Bloody 2014

in the Middle East
Geoffrey Kemp
lthough each year seems to witness yet more bad news from the
Middle East, the events of 2014 were the most dangerous and bloody
since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies.
In April, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ended nine months of intensive
diplomacy to establish a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli crisis. Given
the endless number of trips Kerry made to the region and the hours spent
negotiating with Israeli leader Benyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas, it became clear that, unless the United States is prepared to
put forward its own plan and back it with real carrots and sticks, no progress
will be possible. Instead, a third Intifada may be inevitable.
Indeed, the Gaza confrontation between Israel and Hamas that officially
began on July 8 may have been the prologue to a new era of IsraeliPalestinian violence. In response to endless rocket attacks on Israeli villages
and towns and the murder of three Israeli teenagers in June, Israel launched
Operation Protective Edge, an air and ground operation that resulted in over
2,100 Palestinians killed as well as 66 Israeli soldiers and 7 Israeli civilians.
The brief war was notable for a number of reasons, including the fact that
Western and Middle East news outlets provided 24-hour coverage of the
fighting that, coupled with social media, meant a world-wide audience.
This was unfortunate for Israel in terms of global public opinion given the
asymmetry in the casualties. However, most of the harsh criticism of Israel
came from Europe rather than the Middle East. In fact, a real game change
in the conflict was that Egypt sided with Israel and prevented any resupply of
weapons and food to Hamas across the Egyptian border. This allowed Israel
to systematically destroy most of the concrete layered tunnels that Hamas
had built over the years to penetrate into Israeli territory and provide egress
for military operations, including kidnapping.
Although the Gaza War received much attention, it was a minor event
in comparison to the continuing bloodshed in both Syria and Iraq. Civil
wars in both countries have already cost hundreds of thousands of lives
and created a refugee nightmare across the Middle East, especially for
Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. U.S. hesitation to adopt an aggressive strategy
46
toward the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria allowed Damascus to regain the
initiative against the opposition, which itself remains bitterly divided. The
emergence of the so-called Islamic State in the middle of the year caused the
most chaos, representing a new and fearful phase of the conflict.
In June 2014, seemingly out of the blue, Islamic State fighters attacked Iraqs
second-largest city, Mosul, and created panic among the Iraqi army and the
civilian population. The Iraqi officers, selected for their loyalty to the Shia
Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki rather than for their military competence,
fled at the first sign of conflict. Their demoralized men followed suit, leaving
behind a bonanza of front-line U.S. military equipment, food, and medical
supplies. Historians may have to go back to the Austrian rout of the Italian
army at Caporetto in November 1917 to find an equivalent debacle.
The impact of the fall of Mosul was profound and immediate. The entire
U.S. policy for Iraq was put in jeopardy including the safety of the proU.S. region of Kurdistan. Furthermore, the horrors of the Islamic States
behavior were graphically shown on social media, adding to the fear and
angst throughout the region. What was especially dangerous about the rise
of the Islamic State group is that it had its origins in the confusion and chaos
of Syria, and the caliphate it now seeks would include large swathes of both
Syria and Iraq.
It was against this backdrop that the United States and several Arab
countries began to conduct air strikes, first in Iraq and later in Syria. The
United Kingdom also began very limited air operations in Iraq, but not
Syria. However, by mid-December it was clear that while Turkey would
provide some support to this new allied effort, it would not commit its large
military forces until the United States agreed to also take a much tougher
line with the Assad regime who the Turks argued were benefitting from
the air war against the extremists. In late 2014, Iran began to use its ancient
air force to hit Islamic State targets in Iraq. Video clips of the rugged F-4
Phantom fighters sold by the United States to the Shah of Iran in the early
1970s conjured up memories of the old days when Washington and Tehran
were partners.
The utter confusion over who are friends and foes in the Iraq and Syrian
civil wars is equally apparent in the efforts by the P5+1 countries to find
a way to negotiate a settlement with Iran concerning its nuclear program.
While the United States and the European powers have worked diligently
47
to keep Russia and China engaged and supportive of sanctions against Iran,
Western sanctions against the Putin regime over the Ukraine crisis make
it unclear just how cooperative Moscow will remain on the Iranian issue.
Russia and Iran also share a common interest in keeping the Assad regime
in power in Syria. Both countries have suffered from the dramatic fall in oil
prices. Will this harsh economic development make them more or less likely
to be more conciliatory?
2014 ended with the prospect for continued bitter clashes in Washington
over the Middle East between the Obama administration and a new
Republican-controlled Congress. Elections are scheduled in Israel in spring
and the issue of the U.S.-Israeli relationship will become a central feature of
the long, drawn-out campaigns in both political parties as they decide on
contenders for the 2016 presidential elections. Despite the looming threats
posed by Russia in Europe and China in East Asia, the Middle East will
remain the most likely flashpoint for conflict in the coming months.
The good news is that because of the unspeakable brutality of the Islamic
State group, a large coalition of countries, including most members of
the transatlantic community, has come together to provide to counter its
advances, with varying levels of support. Aside from the United States and
the U.K., Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have all conducted air
operations in Iraq and in some instances, Syria. Albania, Greece, Turkey, and
Cyprus have allowed their airfields to be used by coalition members to either
launch air strikes or for shipment of arms to the Kurds. Germany, Austria,
Italy, and other smaller European countries have agreed to provide weapons
and training to Kurdish fighters, and the EU itself has committed over
$200 million for humanitarian assistance in Syria and Iraq. The Europeans
are especially worried about the large number of European-born Muslims
or converts who volunteer for jihad, fight in Syria and Iraq, and then may
return to commit violence at home. This is also a concern of U.S. intelligence
agencies. The common desire to destroy the Islamic State group and all that
it stands for is in marked contrast to the bitterness that beset the Atlantic
alliance during the 2003 Iraq War and can therefore be considered a positive
development.
Geoffrey Kemp is director of Regional Security Programs at the Center for the
National Interest and was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 201112 Academy year on Natural Resources: The New Geopolitical Great Game?
48
Consociationalism: The Last

Best Hope for the Middle East?
Michael Bell
he vicious situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate,

with the Sunni-extremist army of the Islamic State group (ISIS)
demonstrating a reinforced ferocity.
The ISIS phenomenon caught those who thought they knew the region
flat-footed and led to renewed military involvement by the United States and
its allies, despite the Obama administrations determination to get out and
stay out. The Middle East seems to be a sand trap from which there is no
escape. Western powers are too blinkered by faith in majoritarian democracy
and disdain for traditional patronage cultures to explore other governance
models. This cannot continue.
In a paper published by the Transatlantic Academy in June 2014, I argued
that there is little chance rules-based pluralist societies could be realized,
given the dysfunction of Arab Middle East polities dominated by ethnonationalism and ideological belief systems, underpinned by a strong
authoritarian tradition where identity determines outcomes.
The violent interplay of these realities was unleashed in Iraq by the U.S.
invasion in 2003. In Syria, chaos was induced in 2011 by the noble, but illfated, attempt to bring a pluralist rights-based Arab Spring to that country.
Societies whose post-colonial cohesion had been maintained by indigenous
but corrupt and highly autocratic leaderships disintegrated because
they were devoid of legitimacy. Ethno-national and ideological beliefs
systems sprang to the fore with a still more perverse dynamism through
ISIS, determined to create a purist Caliphate based on a badly skewed
interpretation of Islam.
To the Islamic State group, any means are justified, indeed required, to
cleanse society This terror group now controls large swathes of western and
central Iraq and much of eastern Syria. Conglomerate anti-ISIS forces seem
to be having some effect in stabilizing the battle front, at least in parts of
Iraq. In the long run it is unclear if ISIS per se will survive. More certain is
that the forces of disintegration and conflict will.
49
What are Iraq and Syria going to look like when and if the power of the
Islamic State group is broken by air and ground offensives? What if ISIS
manages to carve out its own living space among the ruins its cadres have
created? The consequence in either case: ethnically cleansed, blood-soaked
Rwandas, unless there is a strong dose of realism respecting the limits of
the possible.
Yet we seem afraid to grasp the nettle, to consider the future beyond
our military engagement. When we consider a yet-to-come Middle
East governance system, what emerges? Not much beyond the same red
herrings: military force destroys insurgencies. In Iraq, effective, if not good,
governance becomes the norm by getting the right people (if they can be
found) in the right place. In Syria somehow, an increasingly peripheral
moderate opposition is empowered. Our old thinking is just that old.
Critical thought has been dismally lacking.
Some realistic power balance that satisfies minorities and majorities
alike is necessary, even if its chances might be a long shot. Lebanons
model of consociational power-sharing despite its too-evident flaws
could just conceivably offer a solution that ensures a degree of stability.
Consocitationalism is a form of government involving guaranteed group
representation. In Lebanon, governing power is reserved for members of the
countrys Maronite Christian, Shia Muslim, and Sunni Muslim communities.
The president is Christian, the prime minister Sunni, and the speaker of
the house Shiite. Legislative seats are allocated by sect and religion. Most
importantly, the influence of each is negotiated behind the scenes, providing
a just and sustainable if rough equity and a fragile communal security.
The Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart, who first defined the
consociational concept, specified four prerequisites for success: 1) clear
boundaries between ethno-national and religious cultures because limited
contact between identity groups reduces tension; 2) confessional elites
working closely together, while maintaining the loyalty of their constituents;
3) a balance of power between these elites, rejecting majoritarianism; and
4) decentralization, providing sufficient autonomy to each community to
ensure legitimacy.
The alternatives are stark. In the case of Syria, the allies are caught between
radical Islam, a badly splintered and largely ineffective moderate opposition,
and the Alawite-based Assad regime. The latter, however much we might
50
be loath to admit it, provided security and stability, for most who kept
their heads down. The regime was the protector of minorities: Alawites,
Druze, Christians, Ismailis, and Palestinians. The Sunni elites were well off,
providing they scrapped any idea of democracy or majority rule. Yet in Syria,
the real task of reconstruction seems too complex to contemplate. Western
commentators simply mumble on confusedly when the subject is raised.
Iraq, badly fragmented as it is, has in contrast the skeleton of a working
political structure. Rebuilding functional and legitimate governance through
negotiation, as was done albeit under different circumstances in the wake of
imperial withdrawal from India after World War II, stands a (very) modest
chance of success.
Iraq has an institutional basis. Although corrupt and riven by cultural
divides, it is defined by its constitution as a federal state. The three-person
Presidency Council must be composed of a Shia, a Sunni, and a Kurd. Iraqs
political system is not yet frozen: witness the replacement of Nouri al-Maliki
as prime minister by the relatively more progressive Haider al-Abadi. The
Shiites, represented by the prime minister, can and should be pressed hard
by Western countries to share real power with the Sunni minority, whose
alienation allowed the Islamic State group to breed.
Recognition of such realities constitutes the essential basis for positive
change. But reform also requires sustained regional co-operation,
particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose role in the Arab crisis
has been massively discordant because, geo-strategic factors aside, they
are in fierce competition respecting religious and ideological identity. We
in the West, and they, had better start thinking about alternatives akin to
consociationalism if we want to circumscribe the terrorist threat at our own
doorstep.
Michael Bell is senior fellow at the Norman Patterson School of International
Relations at Carleton University in Ottawa and was an Aurea Foundation fellow
during the 2013-14 Academy year on The Future of International Liberal Order.
51
Russia, the Islamic State, and

Emerging Non-Traditional
Security Challenges for NATO
Christina Lin
he year 2014 was an annus horribilis for transatlantic security, with

Russia invading Ukraine and the emergence of the so-called Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq. NATOs European members suddenly
find themselves facing simultaneous threats on two fronts Russia in
its eastern flank and a potential terrorist state in its southern flank in the
Mediterranean.
However, while NATO is confronting an increasingly unstable security
environment in its immediate neighborhood, it is concurrently decreasing
its defense budget. Moreover, this resource constraint is going to affect
NATOs capabilities and doctrine at a time when its focus will be split
between multiple significant threats.
In NATOs 2011 Libya campaign, Europeans militaries fielded top-rate
troops, ships, and aircraft but had inadequate stockpile of munitions that
lasted only weeks or even days. In midst of an airstrike, campaign many
nations ran out of munitions, and France began dropping concrete bombs
essentially using advanced aircraft to throw rocks at the enemy. NATO
also heavily relies on the United States for critical military capabilities such
as surveillance, in-flight refueling, and transportation. And despite pledges
to increase defense spending at the September Wales summit, it is unlikely
members will follow through, other than those most directly threatened
by Russian belligerence such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.
Germany and Great Britain have already announced further cuts.
In the face of decreased European and U.S. spending, U.S. officials are now
focused on bolstering European military readiness to remedy previous
shortcomings in the Libya campaign and to sustain NATOs military
bandwidth. In December, NATO established an initial assurance force for
rapid deployment, intended to be an interim solution until the Spearhead
Force of 4,000-6,000 troops becomes operational in 2016. This force would
incorporate lessons learned from the Libya campaign such as developing
52
and improving command and control facilities, weapons and ammunition

depots, and airstrips and other facilities to accommodate fielding a force
quickly.
NATO hopes this Spearhead Force will reassure member states bordering
Russia and re-emphasize the mandate of collective defense. However, the
Islamic State group remains a threat in NATOs southern flank; this is where
the other two missions elaborated in NATOs 2010 Strategic Concept, crisis
management and cooperative security, come into play.
In the Mediterranean, NATO can apply the smart defense of cooperative
security with existing Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) partners, as well
as Arab Gulf states in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), for crisis
management and power projection. With the increasing non-traditional
security challenges of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation,
and militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean over energy resources, this
presents a unique opportunity for NATO to adopt a southern strategy with
regional partners and stakeholders.
On counter-terrorism, NATO is considering leveraging the experience
of Asian global partners such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New
Zealand from its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission
in Afghanistan and applying it toward combating the Islamic State group.
In fact, in May 2014, the NATO Defense College convened a conference
in Vancouver, Canada, on NATOs Asia pivot called Euro-Atlantic Meets
Asia-Pacific, with a special focus on preserving the valuable interoperability
and partnerships gained from the ISAF coalition. Shortly thereafter, the rise
of the Islamic State group in July and August presented an opportunity to
maintain cooperative security between NATO members and its Asia-Pacific
partners.
Indeed, NATOs security cooperation with Asian partners on counterterrorism will continue to be relevant in its Asia policy portfolio postAfghanistan. In an age of globalization, terrorism is a virulent contagion that
has spread to both the Middle East and Asia. According to Admiral Samuel
J. Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, the Islamic State group
has already recruited thousands of fighters from Muslim populations in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Chinas Xinjiang province, and
elsewhere. NATO can thus leverage its counter-terrorism interoperability
53
with ISAF partners to foment a comprehensive regional strategy to combat

the spread of the Islamic State.
Linked with counter-terrorism, preventing nuclear terrorism and arresting
WMD proliferation is also important for NATOs MD and ICI partners in
the Mediterranean, as well as for its Asian partners. Given that Pakistan is
a fertile breeding and recruitment ground for Islamic extremists, there is
growing concern that the Islamic State group may acquire Pakistani nuclear
weapons. Should this occur, NATO would have a nuclear-armed terrorist
state in its southern neighborhood, a frightening prospect.
NATO and its partners also share stakes in maintaining energy and
maritime security in face of the increasing militarization of the Eastern
Mediterranean. In addition to NATO-Russian naval rivalry spilling over
from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and
Israel are also increasing their military presence in their scramble over
hydrocarbon resources in the Levantine basin. Additionally, China has
entered the Mediterranean and conducted joint naval war games with
Russia to signal its stakes in regional stability, while Russia has established a
permanent Mediterranean naval task force to signal its return to the region.
Looking ahead, with declining transatlantic defense spending, rising
non-traditional security challenges, and a revanchist Russia, NATO will
increasingly rely on cooperative security with partners for power projection,
and Europe and North America will have to pivot together with their Asian
partners to address various security challenges across the globe.
Christina Lin is a fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H.
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and
was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 2013-14 Academy year on
The Future of International Liberal Order.
54
The Growing Transatlantic

Divide on Israel
Michael Barnett
t is looking more and more as if the United States and Europe are about
to go their separate ways on the best approach to Israel, the Palestinians,
and the moribund peace process.
Since 1967, the United States has supported Israel through good times
and bad; through Israeli governments that they can get behind and Israeli
governments they would like to kick in the behind; through moments
when Israel has been a true friend and moments when it has fallen into
the proverbial with friends like these category; through moments when
Israel has shown a willingness to subordinate its interests to the demands
of the United States and through moments when Israel has seemed to taunt
the hand that feeds it. Although the United States and Israel have recently
had a difficult stretch in terms of the politics of personality between Barack
Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, behind the frosty photo opportunities the
alliance, according to some, has never been stronger. And while the White
House at times thinks that perhaps a stick might go well with all the carrots,
Congress has usually responded by inserting itself as something of an Iron
Dome between Israel and the White House. The United States relationship
with Israel has remained remarkably, consistently strong over the last half
century, and it is likely to remain that way in the immediate future.
Europe has always been a different story supportive, but with limits. Its
historically strong pro-Israel sentiments have deep roots elements of
Christian Zionism, guilt from the Holocaust and a history of anti-Semitism,
and sympathy for a country that began with a social democratic orientation
and has maintained a commitment to democracy and the rule of law. Yet
there were always reasons to maintain some distance. Europes strategic
and economic interests tilted more to the Arab states than to Israel, in part
because of geopolitics and in part because of oil politics. Immigrants to
Europe from Arab countries or of the Muslim faith make up a much greater
percentage of the population than Jews. There also is Europes rejection of
ethnonationalism and the belief that a Jewish state is an anachronism in a
multicultural world. And there have been hints of traditional and modern
anti-Semitism.
55
In many respects, the differences between the United States and Europe
on Israel did not matter because Europe deferred to the United States in
terms of basic policy and exhibited no more willingness to use its available
sticks than did the United States. Yet over the last decade there are signs
of a change. Precisely why the European states are exhibiting a willingness
to get tough with Israel is a matter of rampant speculation. Some suggest
that there has been an intensification of the previously mentioned factors
that have always made European states less supportive than the United
States. Also, the United States has little to show for its leadership except
failure, more settlements, and growing radicalization in the territories;
Europe might not be able to do any better, but it is hard to do much worse.
And then there is the simple exhaustion with what is perceived to be Israeli
intransigence and actions in the territories that suggest creeping annexation.
These different sides of European policy toward Israel are becoming
increasingly difficult to reconcile. In many respects, the European Union
remains as supportive as ever and ties are becoming closer. There are
important new agreements designed to expand economic cooperation with
Israel and give Israeli goods easier access to European markets. Europe
continues to have a strong interest in the high technology sector in Israel.
Israel was the only non-European country to be invited to participate in
the Horizon 20/20 program promoting research and development. Europe
continues to be an important source of capital for Israels start-up firms,
and Western states continue to see Israels technology firms as a source of
dynamic innovation. Israel has pitched itself as a possible alternative to
Russia for Europes natural gas needs. Security cooperation remains strong,
especially on terrorism.
Yet these indicators of continued cooperation and solidarity are belied
by the growing rumbling of sanctions to force Israel to withdraw from
the territories. Many of these activities are occurring under the label
of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS
movement is not of one voice. There are some who favor divestment but
not boycotts, especially boycotts of academic institutions. There are some
who favor boycotts of Israeli products, but only those that originate from
the territories. There are others, though, who favor boycotts of any and all
Israeli companies that directly or indirectly benefit from economic activity
that comes from the territories. There are some who believe that Jerusalem
should be included in the territories, while others want to exclude it.
56
Regardless of whether or not the EU continues to try and manage this

increasingly schizophrenic policy, the threats have grabbed the attention of
the Israeli government and business leaders. In a bit of bluster, only months
after lobbying for greater economic ties to Europe, Netanyahu declared
that Israel would reduce its dependence on Europe because of the threats of
economic sanctions. Easier said than done. Israeli firms are also beginning
to feel the squeeze, and are quietly demanding that their government do
something that, at the very least, makes it seem like Israel gets the message.
Parenthetically, there is one other lever that European policymakers have
that might grab the attention of the Israeli public. Israelis love to travel
abroad, and the EU is their favorite destination. Part of the reason for its
popularity is because it is close and they do not need visas. But what would
happen if the EU made the simple change of requiring visas of Israelis?
Will these economic threats force a change in Israeli policy? It is anyones
guess, though if anything can pressure Israel to change its ways, the threat
and delivery of BDS is a likely candidate. Why? Israelis are comfortable
with the status quo. They can live with the current arrangement. Part of the
reason why the status quo is acceptable is because they are not certain what
a Palestinian state would bring. An additional reason is that they have never
had to face the possibility that, in the future, the costs of occupation might
rise. The threat and delivery of economic punishment, though, would raise
these costs. How high might they have to be before Israel begins to yield? It
is unclear. But even if Israel does not bend, at the very least many Europeans
are saying that they would no longer feel as if they are complicit in the
oppression of another people.
We are arriving at a moment when the United States and Europe are
beginning to articulate very different foreign policies toward Israel. Some
might suggest that it does not matter what the Europeans do, but it does.
Some might suggest that this is all choreographed, that the United States is
playing good cop to Europes bad cop. Europe might be playacting for the
moment, but my sense is that there are forces bubbling from below that are
likely to push European policy from the realm of play to the realm of the
real.
Michael Barnett is university professor of international affairs and political science
at George Washington University and is currently a Transatlantic Academy senior
fellow for the 2014-15 Academy year on Religion and Foreign Policy.
57
The Islamic State Group,

Saudi Arabia, and the
Recurrent Purification
Impulse in the Arab World
Janice Stein
ince last summer, the worlds attention has fixated on the so-called
Islamic State and its capacity to inspire young people from Syria and
Iraq to Paris to Ottawa to undertake acts of violence in their name.
Recoiling in horror from the violence, leaders and publics are asking: What
is the Islamic State group? Who does it speak for? Are they amongst us? And
how do we in the transatlantic world cope? Unfortunately, the answers are
not straightforward.
A cacophony of voices has always spoken for Islam. Unlike Catholicism, long
governed by a clear hierarchy led by a single spiritual leader, the Muslim world
splintered after the death of the Prophet Mohammad, as competing factions
claimed to be his true descendants. Even as his heirs claimed to be the sole,
the exclusive, and the authentic voice of Islam, multiple voices spoke in noisy
chorus. Within Islam, a religion of law, four major legal traditions emerged
over time, enriched by legal arguments and interpretations.
It is this diversity of voices, and a lively tradition of reform and renewal, that
opened up space for an impulse to return to fundamentals, to purify the
faith and the world.
The Arabs, who gave the world Islam, have always included claimants
who profess to speak for an authentic Islam. In the last few decades, the
resurgence of the search for the true, the original, and the fundamental is
in large part a response to the failure of autocratic Arab governments to
improve the lives of their citizens, to deliver services to the poor, and to rein
in visible corruption.
This turn to the fundamental, Seyla Benhabib argues, is fueled by rage and
civilizational despair among many young Muslims. This anger has turned
many in the Arab Middle East not only against their own governments,
58
which have enriched themselves while exploiting their citizens, but

even more so against the powerful infidel West, which has sustained
and supported these governments. It has also inspired anger among
young Muslim citizens of Western countries who are denied economic
opportunities and a sense of belonging in their societies.
These angry voices are heard most loudly today through al Qaeda and
through the Islamic State group, which today controls eastern Syria and
northern Iraq. The two groups compete with each other as well as with
moderate non-violent groups for the mantle of the true voice of Islam, but
both are beacons to angry disenfranchised young men and women across
the Muslim world.
This is not the first time, however, that the Arab world has been galvanized
by the search for the authentic. In the 18th century, Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Wahhab, from Nejd in the Arabian peninsula, was determined to
purify Islam from the corrupting influences of innovation and to return
believers to the practices of the Prophet. He formed an alliance with the
emir Muhammad ibn Saud. Today, the kings of Saudi Arabia, the guardians
of the holy places of Mecca and Medina, are the heirs to Wahhabism and its
determination to purify Islam. For decades, they have financed and exported
fundamentalism to the Muslim world, while keeping a tight grip on dissent
at home. They have done so in the name of the purity of Islam in the face
of corrupting foreign influences, with the authority of the Custodian of the
Two Holy Mosques.
The House of Saud was not alone in claiming to speak for Islam. In Egypt
in 1929, Hassan al-Banna founded the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood,
to return believers to the faith in the face of the influence of the British
colonizers and the grotesquely corrupt government of King Farouk. The
Brothers not only issued a call to purify the faith, they also ran schools and
clinics among the poorest urban and rural populations in Egypt. They would
grow to be the strongest Muslim organization in the country and across the
Arab world, with branches in almost every country, before they were first
forced underground by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Theirs was
an Islam defined against corruption, one that served the poor and returned
the faithful to the purity of the faith.
It is no surprise that the House of Saud feared and detested the Brothers, who
fully returned the enmity. This was a family argument about legitimacy and
59
voice, and between them, there was room for only one. Almost a century
later, when the Brotherhoods Mohamed Morsi won the presidency of Egypt,
the Saudi monarch used every means at his disposal to undermine the new
leader, who was deposed by the Egyptian military in July 2013. The fierce
ongoing enmity between the House of Saud and the Brotherhood is only
understandable through the lens of the struggle for the mantle of purifier.
That struggle is equally fierce between al Qaeda and the Islamic State group,
the latter a splinter of the former. Although there are differences of strategy
and tactics between the two, both claim to be the sole voice of a purified
Islam. Both are reacting primarily to the corruption and failures of Arab
governments and secondarily to Western intervention in the Arab world.
Neither can live with the other. And this time, unlike in earlier rounds of
purification struggles, the violence is exploding in Western cities as well as
throughout the Muslim world.
How has the West reacted? The picture of U.S. President Barack Obama
arriving in Riyadh with a 40-person delegation of luminaries to greet the
new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, says it all. The irony is clear:
this administration has decided to turn to the cradle of purification, the
Wahhabi kingdom, as a bulwark of stability against the violence inspired
by the latest leaders in the call for a return to authenticity and fundamentals.
The picture also tells a mildly optimistic story. The fire of purification burns
fiercely for a while, but then is quenched by the realities that organizations
face. The kings of Saudi Arabia make the compromises that they must. The
Brotherhood that Morsi represented before he was overthrown was but a
pale imitation of what it once was. The puritans do not remain puritanical
forever.
What can the West do? Endure, with stoicism, patience, and intelligence.
The fight among this generation of purifiers goes on, its primary victims the
hundreds of millions of devout Muslims whose voices are drowned out by
this quarrel among the purifiers. Our best protection from the flying debris
is the use of our intelligence assets in ways that are compatible with our basic
values, the deepening of our open and inclusive societies, and a long view of
history.
Janice Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of
Political Science at the University of Toronto and is currently a Bosch Public Policy
Fellow for the 2014-15 Academy year on Religion and Foreign Policy.
60
The Islamic State Group and

the Tragedy of the Yazidis
Pavol Deme
he recent emergence of the radical so-called Islamic State in

parts of Iraq and Syria and its cruel exercise of power has created
outrage around the world. Last year, a broad-based international
coalition was created with the aim of eliminating this dangerous terrorist
organization.
One key impulse for more robust international military involvement against
the Islamic State group last fall was its ferocious attack on the Yazidis, a small
and little-known ethno-religious community living in northern Iraq. Horror
stories of Islamic State fighters driving this minority from their homes to the
mountains where hundreds of them died of hunger and dehydration, killing
Yazidi men en masse, and raping and enslaving Yazidi women and girls
showed the brutal order of the groups self-declared caliphate.
Although the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi have been subject to mistreatment for
centuries, they were never under such an existential threat as they have been
during this recent rise in Islamic fundamentalism. Members of this ancient
monotheistic religion, with roots in Zoroastrianism, are special targets for
Islamic State extremists who are trying to purify their captured territories.
Muslim radicals view Yazidi as apostates worshiping the devil. They force
them to convert to Islam; those who refuse are killed.
Although recent victories of the Iraqi armed forces, helped by the United
States and other allies, over the Islamic State fighters has liberated many
Yazidis, the communitys future is still dire. It is estimated that before the
Islamic State attacks, there were about 600,000 Yazidi living in Kurdish
villages and cities. So far, tens of thousands of them have fled the country or
lost their homes, and thousands live in hard conditions in multiple refugee
camps or on Mount Sinjar near the Syrian border. Without coordinated
international efforts, the existence of this unique faith, which has survived
for millennia, may disappear in front of our eyes.
61
These photos were taken in Lalish, the most sacred pilgrimage site for the
Yazidis, during the Chama festival in October 2013, very soon after the
initial formation of the Islamic State group. I hope these images give a sense
of this endangered communitys way of life.
Pavol Deme is a transatlantic fellow with The German Marshall Fund of the
United States based in Bratislava and was a Transatlantic Academy/GMF fellow
during the 2012-13 Academy year on The Future of the Western Liberal Order.
The ancient Yazidi faith predates Islam and Christianity. Yazidis believe in
one God, who created the world and entrusted it into the care of sevenangels.
Preeminent among these is the Peacock Angel, Melek Taus. Fundamentalist
Muslims identify this angel with Satan.
62
Temple in the holy site Lalish, a small mountain valley village in northern Iraq.
The tomb of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, the main figure of the Yazidi faith, is under
these conical roofs of the 13th century temple.
Entrance to the temple. A

mystical black snake is to the
right of the doorway.
63
The tomb of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, who died in 1162. Yazidis tie knots in the
colored cloths covering the tomb to represent their problems. They pray while
circling the tomb.
Pilgrims bring oil to be used in the temples holy fire. Water and fire are important
components of Yazidi rituals.
64
Hereditary Prince Tahseen Said, leader of the 1 million Yazidi people around the
world. He called on international leaders last summer to rescue his community in
northern Iraq from the Islamic State group.
Even though the Yazidi spiritual Supreme Council decided to cancel the traditional
Chama festival in 2013 for security reasons, hundreds of Yazidi believers from Iraqi
Kurdistan and beyond still arrived in Lalish to mark the seven-day Feast of the
Assembly pilgrimage.
65
n Turkey
67
Turkey and the Euro-Atlantic

Community: Turbulence and Ties
of Interest
Kemal Kirici
014 was another year characterized by turbulence in Turkish relations

with Europe and the United States. In Turkeys neighborhood, large
swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory fell under the control of the
Islamic State group and Russia annexed Crimea. While the regional chaos
and insecurity raised friction between Ankara and its Western allies, it also
paved the way for some degree of policy convergence.
Russias annexation of Crimea and continued destabilization of eastern
Ukraine are blatant violations of established norms and rules of the postWorld War II European security order. For Turkey, however, these conflicts
pale in comparison to the challenges and headaches created by the violence
and instability in Syria and Iraq. The country hosts a refugee population
fast approaching 2 million and Bashar al-Assads regime in Damascus is not
about to fall anytime soon. Instead, the emergence of the so-called Islamic
State has exacerbated the situation. Turkey is depicted in Western media
as both a key player in efforts to degrade and ultimately defeat the group
as well as a spoiler of these efforts. After the Turkish government showed
reluctance to intervene in support of Kurdish resistance to an Islamic State
onslaught on the Syrian border town of Kobane, some even called for
Turkeys expulsion from NATO.
However, a degree of convergence between Turkey and the transatlantic
alliance appears to be unfolding, slowly but surely. Defeating the Islamic
State group, stabilizing Iraq, and finding a solution to the Syrian quagmire
will all require Turkeys active support. This is widely recognized. There is
also growing recognition that Turkeys policies are more consistent with
those of its transatlantic partners on issues like foreign fighters and oil
smuggling. Despite President Recep Tayyip Erdoans insistence that the
primary focus of the transatlantic alliance should be the removal of Assad,
more and more Turkish analysts and officials on the ground recognize this
is an unrealistic approach, and pragmatism is needed. U.S. Vice President
Joe Bidens visit to Turkey in November and his remark that we need
68
Turkey, and I think Turkey believes that it needs us as well should be seen
from the perspective of growing realism. Furthermore, the swelling refugee
population in Turkey and the need to continue humanitarian assistance into
Syria are bringing Turkey and the transatlantic community closer to each
other, as the EU and United States are trying to put a refugee resettlement
program in place in response to calls from Turkey for greater burden
sharing.
Another source of turbulence in Turkeys relations with the transatlantic
community is a deepening of Turkish-Russian relations. Russian President
Vladimir Putin visited Turkey within one week of Bidens departure, and
Ankara has kept its criticisms of Putins actions in Crimea and Ukraine to
a minimum. Turkeys muted response to a blatant violation of a neighbors
territorial integrity is puzzling, particularly since territorial integrity has
long been a sacrosanct principle of Turkish political culture. Furthermore,
Crimea has a large minority of Tatars with close ethnic, historical, and
religious ties to Turkey and a clear preference to remain part of Ukraine.
Russia and Turkey also have conspicuous diametrically opposed policies
toward Syria: Putin has been unrelenting in his support for al-Assad, while
Erdoan has been a virulent opponent. But Turkish officials have yet to
complain about Russias stance on Syria, in stark contrast to Erdoans
consistent, bitter criticism of the West over its inaction.
It is clear Putin has been playing on Turkeys dependence on imported
energy. The Russian presidents decision to scrap the South Stream project
and instead promise an alternative transit pipeline through Turkey, if
realized, is likely to further enhance this dependence. Turkey runs a more
than three-fold trade deficit with Russia, which it can only partly balance
with income from Russian tourism and from Turkish companies doing
business in Russia. Maintaining good relations with Russia has become an
economic sine quo non. Putins leadership style and anti-Western rhetoric
may also endear him to Erdoan and to some extent the Turkish public.
Yet the stark reality is that Turkey is far more deeply integrated economically
with the EU than with Russia. In 2014, the EU accounted for 39 percent
of Turkeys foreign trade, compared to 8 percent for Russia. Exports to
the EU rose by 9 percent compared to 2013, while exports to Russia fell
by 15 percent. The mounting economic crisis in Russia is likely to further
undermine Turkish exports and possibly Russian tourism to Turkey.
69
Turkeys recent democratic backsliding is another good argument for

why Turkey needs the EU. Erdoans decision to clamp down on media
closely associated with the Glen Movement at the end of 2014 provoked
widespread criticism of disregard for basic democratic freedoms and rule of
law in Turkey. Erdoans rebuke that he did not care what the EU thought
brought EU-Turkish relations to a new low. Many in Turkey long for the
days when the AK Party government adopted reform packages one after the
other, grew the economy, and presented Turkey as a model for democratic
transition in the region. Today, democratic regression and a weakening of
rule of law are frequently cited as adversely affecting the performance of the
Turkish economy. Continued engagement with the EU is critical to building
confidence. Turkey also needs the EUs business because the instability in
its neighborhood to the south and east has resulted in a loss of markets and
fall in capital inflows. The case can also be made that the EU needs Turkey
economically, especially at a time when the EU is still struggling to come out
of recession and sanctions on Russia are hurting exports.
Under these circumstances, it seems both sides have an interest in
overcoming the turbulence in the relationship and remaining engaged with
one another. While Turkish membership in the EU is not likely to happen
anytime soon, maintaining a credible process is crucial. It is paramount the
EU open a number of new chapters for negotiations. It is also crucial that
the EU and Turkey adopt the World Banks April 2014 recommendation of
upgrading their customs union. Both sides have expressed interest in doing
so, and economic realities suggest that everyone would benefit.
Additionally, the United States should explore the idea of enlarging the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to include Turkey
or sign a bilateral free trade agreement with Turkey. In the long run, this
would help re-anchor Turkey to the transatlantic community, enlarge the
business community with a stake in liberal market values, make Turkey a net
contributor to the transatlantic economy, help with employment creation,
and increase strategic cooperation.
Stronger and deeper relations with the West would help revive Turkeys
democracy and economy and restore its soft power in the region. Early
signs of such engagement could also help minimize the damage resulting
from the continued populist and anti-Western discourse emanating from
Turkeys political leadership. However, it is likely that Erdoans resentful
discourse towards the West will continue at least until the parliamentary
70
elections in June this year. In turn, the outcome of the election will not
only determine whether Turkey will be able to recover from the democratic
setbacks of recent years but also whether the turbulence in its relations with
the transatlantic community can be overcome.
Kemal Kirici is the TSAD senior fellow and director of the Center on the
United States and Europes Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution and was a
Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 2009-10 Academy year on Turkey
and Its Neighborhood.
71
Turkey and the European Union:

Cooperating on Asylum and
Migration, For All the Wrong
Reasons
Juliette Tolay
here is not much good news regarding Turkeys relationship with

the European Union. Even though opportunities for cooperation
do exist (on trade and foreign policy, for instance), any attempt
at rekindling the relationship seems to drown easily in tensions driven by
negative domestic developments. But on the issue of migration and asylum,
the EU-Turkey relationship looks much more promising and could even
deliver concrete results. Amidst a very slow accession process, in December
2013, Turkey and the EU concurrently adopted a readmission agreement
and a visa liberalization roadmap. Many considered this a breakthrough
in the relationship. By October 2014, the readmission agreement came into
force following ratification by the Turkish parliament; later that month, the
European Commission issued a relatively positive progress report on the
visa liberalization roadmap. Equally telling was the agenda of the first visit
of the new EU foreign policy team (led by High Representative Federica
Mogherini) to Turkey in early December 2014. Most of the discussion seems
to have focused on the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey, and its
security ramifications for both Turkey and the EU. Following the meeting,
the EU commission committed an additional 10 million of humanitarian
assistance for Syrian refugees in Turkey.
This indicates that questions of asylum and migration have become central
to the relationship. Given the lack of obvious positive developments in other
areas, one might even wonder whether this is not the only area of common
interest left between the two partners. If that is the case, this is worrisome
and disappointing: not only because the EU-Turkey relationship has much
more to offer than cooperation on immigration and asylum, but also
because this cooperation on migration is based on flimsy foundations.
EU-Turkish cooperation on issues of asylum and migration is tenuous
because it is based on a securitized vision of immigration and on interests
72
that are actually diverging. The deal reached in December 2013 trades
Turkeys commitment to readmit irregular third country nationals into
Turkey (the readmission agreement) for the prospect of Turkish nationals
traveling to the Schengen area without visa requirements (the visa
liberalization roadmap). While EU bureaucrats now seem convinced that
it would be fair to liberalize the visa regime with Turkey, most EU member
state governments and publics are nervous about this. In the meantime,
Turkish authorities are worried about the costs of having to readmit large
numbers of migrants, and the very real possibility that the visa roadmap will
not succeed. Unless both sides show substantial dedication and goodwill in
the process, the potential for higher tensions and frustrations born out of the
deal are real.
In addition, the EUs willingness to step up assistance to Syrian refugees in
Turkey stems from mixed motivations, combining humanitarian concerns
with the desire to prevent large influxes from Syria (and Iraq) into Europe,
as well as the need to secure Turkeys cooperation on counter-terrorism
regarding Islamic State fighters transiting through Turkey. Even though
Turkey consistently requests more funds to manage the refugee crisis from
the EU (and other actors in the international community), the current
Turkish leadership also seems to find its share of benefits in the current state
of affairs, as it keeps tight control over how international assistance to Syrian
refugees is used in Turkey and discursively uses the low level of assistance as
a tool in domestic politics (President Recep Tayyip Erdoan has repeatedly
blamed the EU for admitting only 30,000 Syrian refugees while Turkey is
hosting 1.6 million). In both cases, the EU is demonstrating a securitized
vision of migration and asylum, focused on keeping undesirables
(irregular immigrants and refugees) out of Europe. And the Turkish
government is tacitly agreeing with this securitized vision as long as they
can derive material gains from it. While the announced intention of such
programs may well be the well-being of immigrants, the implementation of
such policies is not conducive to an environment protective of the human
rights of migrants.
Even though one could rejoice at the existence of an area of active
cooperation between Turkey and the EU, one should be wary about the
unhealthy nature of this cooperation. It does not seem to reflect a longterm convergence of values, but rather a conjectural convergence of
interests. The potential for cooperation between Turkey and the EU goes
beyond a securitized vision of migration, and even beyond the stalled
73
accession process. On issues of energy, trade, rule of law, foreign policy

(including Cyprus and Syria), there are a number of opportunities awaiting
cooperation: discussions the development of a Southern Corridor for
procurement of gas and oil to the EU through Turkish territory could be
prioritized; the EU-Turkey customs union could be upgraded and improved,
with provisions to acknowledge the new situation that the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would create; the EUs interest
and (financial) commitment to Turkish civil society efforts to assist the
rule of law and freedom of expression in Turkey could be renewed; and the
informal practice of Turkish participation in informal EU foreign ministers
meetings could be deepened and formalized. On migration, Turkey and the
EU could focus more on providing a protective framework for individuals
at risk. This would mean providing more legal channels for asylum seekers
and refugees to secure opportunities to live a decent life in Turkey and in the
European Union. What matters most, however, is not only the end-point of
the cooperation but also the dedication and values shared during the process
of building up cooperative relationships.
While the United States is often shielded from these migration-related
issues, the scope and political ramifications of the Syrian crisis heightens the
relevance of U.S. policies. While the United States is the biggest donor to the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
and its activities in Turkey, it has itself so far resettled very low numbers
of Syrian refugees. Washington claims that its priority is a comprehensive
political solution for Syria, which will eliminate the pressures currently
displacing people. But short of this goal which, as of early 2015, appears
as very remote cooperation with Turkey becomes complicated and often
vanishes behind other goals with higher priority, such as the fight against the
Islamic State group (and disagreements on this issue). Here again, we find
security concerns take precedence over human rights and human dignity.
Migration and asylum issues, in all of their dimensions (human,
humanitarian, social, economic, political, security, etc.), have become a
central conundrum for both sides of the Atlantic, and are increasingly
becoming one in Turkey. While domestic concerns tend to dominate the
policymaking process, the inherently international nature of migration
and asylum requires international cooperation: the EU and Turkey (and
the United States as well) have to build together a consensus on migration
and asylum policies that go beyond short-sighted political gains but rather
74
favors long-term policy answers to the human and natural phenomenon of

movements of population.
Juliette Tolay is assistant professor of political science and public policy at Penn
State-Harrisburg and was a Transatlantic Academy fellow during the 2009-10
Academy year on Turkey and Its Neighborhood.
75
n The World at Large
77
Canada in the
Transatlantic World
David Cameron
uring nine years in power, Prime Minister Stephen Harper

and his Conservative government have transformed Canadian
foreign policy. Inheriting in 2006 a country that for many years
had espoused a broad liberal internationalist bent, Harper has placed
less emphasis on Canadas role in building consensus on key global issues
and more emphasis on projecting Canadian values and the ideological
preferences of the current government into the international arena. Thus
the key issue in understanding the shape of Canadian foreign policy beyond
2015 is a domestic event, namely, the federal election slated to occur in
October. If the Conservatives win a third term in power, one can expect
existing trends to continue. If, however, either of the two main opposition
parties take power, it is highly likely that Canadas approach to foreign affairs
will shift back, in tone and substance, toward the status quo ante.
Traditionally, support for the United Nations and collective security, a
commitment to peace-keeping, advocacy of a rules-based international
system, the careful management of relations with the United States, the
espousal of Canadas role as an honest-broker were the international
orientations that guided the behavior of most Canadian post-war
governments.
This began to change with the arrival of the Harper Conservatives in 2006.
More inclined to view foreign policy as a matter of taking sides, less inclined
(in Harpers own words) to just get along and go along, the government
of Canada began to chart a different course. It was stung in 2010 when
Canada lost its bid to gain a seat on the Security Council to Portugal,
possibly a consequence of its approach to international relations. The Harper
government clearly took sides in the Middle East, abandoning Canadas
traditional honest-broker role and becoming Israels most uncompromising
ally, surpassing even the United States. Harper justifies what seems to many
to be its uncritical commitment to Israel by arguing that it is the only liberal
democracy in the region. In January 2014, he became the first Canadian
prime minister to be invited to speak to the Israeli Knesset.
78
Canada has been an active participant in Western diplomatic and military

initiatives, committing ground troops to Afghanistan, and joining the
international coalitions engaging in air strikes on Libya and Islamic State
fighters. It has been an active supporter of international sanctions against
North Korea, Iran, and Russia. Indeed, Harper has been the Wests most
aggressive critic of President Vladimir Putin; his comment to Putin at the
November 2014 G20 summit in Australia was widely reported: Well, I guess
Ill shake your hand. But I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get
out of Ukraine.
In February 2013, the government established the Office of Religious
Freedom within the foreign ministry, a further reflection of the valuesdriven foreign policy to which the government is committed. The Offices
mandate is to promote and defend freedom of religion in the world as a key
foreign policy priority. There has been recent government discussion of
the possibility that Canada, in its intake of Syrian refugees, might privilege
religious minorities, contrary to international practice that supports
resettlement programs that are need-based, non-discriminatory, and likely
to achieve successful integration outcomes.
These foreign policy innovations are a reflection of Harpers efforts to alter
the political and cultural complexion of Canada domestically, and to gain
political advantage at home. A conviction politician whose ideological bent
is markedly to the right of the political center of gravity in Canada, Harper
has pushed steadily to reframe public debate in this country. Where the
former Liberal government celebrated the achievements of their former
leaders, whether it be the peace-keeping initiatives of Lester Pearson or
Pierre-Elliot Trudeaus 1982 passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
Harpers government has evoked a Conservative past the importance
of Sir John A. Macdonald, the countrys founding father; the northern
vision of John Diefenbaker; and the military traditions of Canada, rooted
in the countrys British and monarchist heritage. In 2011, the government
re-established the historical names for the countrys military branches: the
Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the Canadian
Army. In 2014, Harper made his ninth annual Arctic tour, echoing
Diefenbakers vision for the north and asserting Canadas sovereignty over its
territory.
International trade and economic policy may attract less public attention
than military action, but they have nevertheless been a central focus of the
79
government since its inception. The political base of the Conservative Party
is in Alberta. This orientation has led them to build their national economic
policy on natural resource exploitation, especially on the development
of the oil sands of Alberta, rather than on industrial, urbanized central
Canada. The thus-far fruitless quest to construct a pipeline to make it
possible for Albertan oil to reach external markets has put the Canadian
government at loggerheads with the Obama administration. Meanwhile,
the political economy of oil and pipelines has been transformed by the
rapid increase in supply and the precipitous drop in price. The regional
effect within Canada of the dramatic decline of international energy prices
will be profound; Ontario is predicted by some economists to become the
fastest growing provincial economy in Canada in 2015. Harper has made
it clear that environmental concerns are of decidedly secondary concern to
his government compared with economic growth; however, now that even
Albertas new Conservative premier is acknowledging that some attention to
environmental concerns is warranted, the prime minister is uncomfortably
expressing some mild interest in regulation.
The government is currently involved in the international negotiation of
several trade agreements. Canadas biggest trade deal since NAFTA, the
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European
Union would lift approximately 98 percent of EU tariffs on Canadian
products, and open up Canadian markets to European commerce. An
agreement in principle was signed with the EU in October 2013 and the
negotiations were effectively concluded in August 2014. It is expected that
ratification will take two years, given that not only the European Parliament,
but also all EU member states must sign on to the deal. Assuming that the
provisions are not perceived to be seriously damaging to Canadian interests,
this agreement will be regarded as a significant achievement of the Harper
government and will buttress its reputation as a solid economic manager.
However, given that the European economies are in the doldrums, CETA
may have somewhat less impact on public opinion than it otherwise would.
Canada joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks in October 2012, but these
negotiations, involving a dozen Pacific economies, are far from completion.
National security issues have recently moved to the forefront of political
concern and public consciousness. The shootings on Parliament Hill in
Ottawa in the fall of 2014 and Canadas role in bombing Islamic State
extremists in Iraq will both be up for parliamentary review in the first half
of 2015. These parliamentary debates will be colored by the terrorist attacks
80
in Paris, and will set the stage for what will almost certainly be a significant
national security discussion in the October election. It will be Harpers
choice whether he wishes to lead an inclusive national conversation on the
issue or whether he prefers to use it as an instrument of wedge politics.
David Cameron is dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of
Toronto and was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow during the 2012-13
Academy year on The Future of the Western Liberal Order.
81
Self-Inflicted Wounds: The War

on Terrors Continuing Toll on
Liberal Values
Clifford Bob
he erosion of liberal principles in the course of the war on terror

continued in 2014 and shows little sign of abating in 2015. Key
countries in North America and Europe appeared willing to sacrifice
privacy, accountability, and liberty in a quixotic search for absolute security
against small-scale if horrific attacks. Violent extremists, todays expansive
name for terrorists and those who condone them, have little capacity to truly
damage the national security of Western countries. Their taking of innocent
lives is a terrible crime, and governments should prevent and punish attacks.
But ill-considered policies, rationalized by the claim that we are at war
with terrorism, violent extremism, or radical Islam, are counterproductive
and pose major risks to liberal values.
An important function of any government is the provision of security.
But no government can guarantee its citizens are safe against every risk.
Attempts to do so inevitably require the expansion of state power. A basic
tenet of liberalism is the protection of individuals from the states overawing
power. Over centuries, this has led to constitutional and legal protections
including warrants, habeas corpus, judicial review, prohibitions on torture,
and freedom of expression.
In a war that truly threatens national security, some restrictions may be
unavoidable. But when the threat is small more like violent crime than
combat such restrictions are themselves dangerous. Terrorism, despite
loss of life and media frenzy, remains a minor threat. Outside war zones,
ones chance of being killed by attacks is minuscule. The threat does not
imperil the existence of any Western country. It merits a serious response,
but one that is proportionate. Yet measured by dollars spent and lives lost
since 9/11, the reaction has been hugely outsized. Since 2001, the United
States has increased homeland security spending by over $1 trillion, even
excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. European countries,
Canada, Australia, and others have upped expenditures tremendously as
well.
82
Liberal states have also ceded too much power to unelected and
unaccountable security bureaucracies. In the United States, the firestorm
over Edward Snowdens revelations of the scale of surveillance resulted in
little change in 2014. President Barack Obamas National Security Agency
(NSA) review panel, packed with former security and administration
officials, called for limited changes. An NSA reform bill, which would
have placed modest restrictions on surveillance, died in the Senate in
November, with legislators hyping threats. Top security officials who gave
false testimony to Congress faced no consequences. The Central Intelligence
Agencys spying on Senate Intelligence Committee staff, which subverts core
principles of separation of powers and Congressional oversight, resulted
in nothing more than an apology. Release of the Senate Torture Reports
redacted executive summary led to no legislative changes or prosecutions
to prevent future abuses. And the Obama administrations unprecedented
prosecutions of whistleblowers continued.
In the United Kingdom, the governments Counter-Terrorism and Security
Bill would grant unprecedented powers to the state. It calls for bans on
extremist speech, travel restrictions, and exclusion orders that could
leave travelers stateless. It would even require school workers to identify
children at risk of being drawn into terrorism. Prime Minister David
Cameron is pushing for very intrusive legislation to empower government
to monitor every means of communications, including the content of
communications. Already over the past three years, around 20,000 Britons
have been investigated for online comments, according to The Independent.
In France, days after the Paris attacks against Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher
supermarket, Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared war against terrorism,
against jihadism, against radical Islam. This sentiment, while heartfelt, is
ultimately empty. War against a political tactic is as futile as war against
a vague doctrine. All it ensures is that the wars will last forever, with
attendant rights violations. Indicative of this, within days of the Paris attacks,
French police arrested controversial comedian Dieudonn Mbala Mbala
for ostensibly sympathizing with one of the attackers in a Facebook post. A
broader crackdown on hate speech and rhetoric supporting jihad ensued.
All these measures are having pernicious effects. A 2015 Pen America
survey of 800 writers worldwide claims that writers in democratic countries
now censor themselves nearly as much as those in authoritarian countries.
Unable to rely on governments to observe their rights, citizens have turned
83
to corporations. Apple, Facebook, and others now feed a growing demand

for encrypted communications.
As 2015 progresses, the challenge of preserving liberties in the face of
fear-mongering looms ever larger. Societies and governments should ask
themselves several key questions:
What is the threat to any Western countrys national security from violent
extremism? In 2014, democracies continued to act as if this was the most
serious risk they faced, even though, measured by lives lost, it clearly was
not. The case of the so-called Islamic State is indicative. Abhorrent as its
tactics were, the Islamic State fighters propaganda focused on building a
state; it said almost nothing about aims beyond the region. Yet the United
States, United Kingdom, and France along with authoritarian Persian
Gulf allies raced into battle to defeat and ultimately destroy the group.
If we bomb them, should we be shocked that they or their allies bomb us?
Perpetrators of the heinous Paris attacks, as well as other terrorist actions,
have repeatedly cited Western alliances with brutal Middle Eastern dictators,
drone killings of civilians, torture of suspected terrorists, and the continued
operation of the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp. If Western countries
wish to limit blowback, they should pull back on overseas adventurism.
Is it realistic to strive for absolute security? In 2011, U.S. Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates testified there is no such thing as eliminating risk.
Statements such as Gates need to be broadcast loudly and repeatedly, to
inoculate Western citizens against trading basic rights for the illusory goal of
complete safety.
Does dragnet surveillance work? The self-serving claim, repeatedly
made by security agencies such as the NSA and the U.K. Government
Communications Headquarters, that they need to collect it all to keep
us safe has not been objectively evaluated. Judicial warrants kept liberal
societies safe for centuries both from security threats and security
services. Such tried and true procedures have not been shown to be
insufficient against violent extremism.
In the effort to secure themselves, liberal states must continually guard
against undermining their own values and doing the terrorists work for
them. Unfortunately, it is questionable that 2015 will be the year that
democracies turn back the tide.
84
Clifford Bob is Professor and Raymond J. Kelley Endowed Chair in International

Relations at Duquesne University and is a currently a Transatlantic Academy
senior fellow for the 2014-15 Academy year on Religion and Foreign Policy.
85
Climate & Energy Politics:

Brussels & Washington on the
Road to Paris
Stacy D. VanDeveer
he 21st conference of the parties (COP21) of the United National

Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled from
December 2015 in Paris, looms large in climate and energy policy
planning and activism on both sides of the Atlantic. Inevitably, expectations
of the summit are far too high. Analysts of multilateral politics tend to
gaze in wonder as others raise hopes that this time this time! a global
summit will produce the grand and glorious bargain needed to save the
earth from catastrophic climate change. It wont. No summit will. Climate
change and the acrimonious politics it produces will be with us for the rest
of the century.
While #Paris2015 will not save us, it offers a host of opportunities to make
progress on many fronts, including the needs to slow and reverse increasing
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, build capacities and raise funds for
adaptation to climate change, improve efforts to reduce deforestation, raise
commitments to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energies of all
kinds, and square global environmental and energy goals with other global
initiatives to alleviate poverty and advance gender equality. The stakes are
high. If the Paris summit is successful, real peoples lives will be saved in the
decades to come. If it is not, individuals, communities, states, and whole
societies will pay a heavy price.
Rhetorically, the Obama administration, EU officials, and most of Europes
national leaders are singing the same tune on climate change and clean
energy. They agree that climate change is happening and caused by humans,
that the climate should not warm more than 2 degrees Celsius and that
policies and emissions reduction goals should reflect that, and that the
poorest areas of the developing world will need (and should get) assistance
to adapt to accelerating climate change. Getting agreement on these broad
issues was not easy, but nonetheless it was the easier part.
86
Washingtonians are happy to proclaim the worlds need of U.S. leadership

at every turn, but EU climate and energy policies have long been well ahead
of those of the United States. The EUs then-15 member states met and
exceeded the commitment they took in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to reduce
their collective GHG emission by 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2012
cutting them by a little over 12 percent. And the EU of now 28 members is
on track to meet its 2020 goal of a 20 percent reduction (from 1990), having
reduced emissions by about 18 percent already. Per capita emissions in
Europe are less than half those in the United States, while European leaders
like Sweden have per capita emissions of about one-third of the United
States, and less than China. Globally, European leaders have traditionally
shaped the global political agenda, setting an example at home and pushing
other large emitters to commit to doing more.
Recent months, with ongoing economic challenges and more prominent
political differences within EU institutions and among member states, find
Brussels struggling to collectively set aggressive climate and energy goals
for 2030 and beyond though the existing goals still exceed those of other
states. In 2014, EU member states agreed to reduce GHG emissions by 40
percent by 2030, with a goal of 27 percent renewable energy for the whole
EU, as well as goals for improved energy efficiency.
In the United States, the Obama administration and the Environmental
Protection Agency have begun to make good on years of promises to address
climate change more aggressively at home and abroad. Federal regulations
are raising automobile efficiency and various air pollution standards in
ways that also reduce GHG emissions. Proposed federal regulations, if
finalized and implemented, will reduce carbon emissions from new coalfired plants substantially, reduce methane emissions from the energy sector,
and push U.S. states to reduce GHG emissions within their jurisdictions.
Furthermore, environmental leaders among the U.S. states like California
and Massachusetts already demonstrate that U.S. emissions can fall more
quickly than current federal policy requires without identifiable economic
harm.
Obamas international climate and energy policies also made news, with
an agreement with China that commits the United States to emissions
reductions through 2025 and commits China to slow its emissions and
reverse (or cap) their annual growth by 2030. U.S. negotiators are working
with India to strike a deal in early 2015, and with other large emitters in
87
emerging market states, to make clear commitments in the run-up to the

Paris climate summit. All told, the Obama administration says the United
States can reduce its emissions by about 17 percent by 2020 (from peak
emissions in 2005). This brings them back to approximately what they were
in 1990 meaning that it will have taken the United States 30 years to
cap emissions at 1990 levels. The 2014 U.S.-China voluntary commitment
pledged the United States to make best efforts to reduce emissions by 2628 percent by 2025.
But both the EU and the United States have clear and important limits
to their negotiating leverage in global climate politics and with each
other. Brussels is finding it harder to both implement existing policy and
increase future goals at home. Problems with the European trading system
and uneven implantation of existing energy and climate policies across
the Union raise questions about the ability of EU officials and institutions
to make good on their promises. Furthermore, EU officials remain so
committed to global multilateralism that they often accept any deal as long
it is sustains continued multilateralism. In other words, they are unwilling
or unable to say no. This was well illustrated at the 2009 summit in
Copenhagen, when most European leaders stood next to U.S. and Chinese
leaders and declared the Copenhagen Accord a success despite its failure
to achieve any significant agreement on future commitments.
U.S. negotiating leverage is undermined by domestic politics. Obama seems
willing to make commitments for GHG emissions reductions and funding
for multilateral programs in the last two years of his presidency. But the
likelihood that he can get Congressional backing for any of his climate
change, energy, or financial commitments remains exceedingly low. For
many of the United States negotiating partners in Europe and around the
globe this tale sounds familiar, reminding many of the poor U.S. record of
environmental treaty ratification and multilateral promise-keeping.
While no global climate summit will save us from catastrophic
environmental and social change, what such summits can do is focus power
people and institutions on an enormous and complex problem at the same
time. Climate is only one of a complex set of interconnected, resourcerelated challenges characterized in the 2012 Transatlantic Academy report
as the global resource nexus. As demonstrated in Want, Waste or War?, a
newly published monograph based on that report, transatlantic and global
88
actors face a host of governance issues around land, energy, food, water, and
minerals as the climate warms.
Officials and activists from the United States, Europe, and around the world
are on the road to #Paris2015. Like Chaucers 14th century pilgrims on
the road to Canterbury, they see the world very differently and they have
many tales to tell some more believable than others. Transatlantic accord
on climate change and energy goals cannot save the world in Paris, or
anywhere else. But such accord is essential to raise commitments for the
2020s and 2030s on both sides of the Atlantic and help to shape climate
and energy policies among other global emitters. If that happens in Paris,
the pilgrims can have their free meal before they go back home to begin
working to implement their promises and to set off down the road toward
the next summit.
Stacy VanDeveer is a professor of political science and chair of the department at
the University of New Hampshire and was a Transatlantic Academy senior fellow
during the 2011-12 Academy year on Natural Resources: The New Geopolitical
Great Game?
89
Chinas Rise Continues

Martin Jacques
he rise of China continues unabated. In a Western world that is

constantly seduced by bearish sentiment about Chinas economic
and political prospects and ultimately by the idea that its rise is
unsustainable this deserves to be constantly repeated. Otherwise we find
ourselves diverted from the most fundamental geopolitical trend of our
time, that China is in the process of changing the world as we know it.
This is not to ignore, or brush away, the many problems that China faces.
The most important of these during the course of the last year has been
the governments twin struggle to reform the economy while maintaining
its target growth rate of 7.5 percent. It is possible that the latter will prove
unachievable and that the growth rate might settle down more in the region
of 5 to 6 percent, but, especially in the context of what is clearly a major
structural shift in the nature of the economy which may already be
rather more advanced than previously thought this should be regarded as
perfectly acceptable. What we should not expect is a hard landing, entailing
a much lower growth rate, or some kind of implosion. This remains an
extremely unlikely scenario.
2014 saw a key landmark in Chinas economic rise: according to the World
Bank International Comparison Program, Chinas GDP, as measured by
purchasing power parity, overtook that of the United States in the latter part
of the year. It is anticipated that Chinas GDP will now pull rapidly ahead of
that of the United States; the World Bank and the IMF both project that its
economy will be 20 percent larger by 2019.
Arguably the most dramatic illustration of Chinas growing power and of
U.S. decline is in East Asia. The U.S. pivot to Asia or rebalancing as
it is now described has made little headway. Its central tenet was military
to strengthen and extend its military relationships with its key allies in
the region, namely Japan, South Korea and Australia, and, to a much lesser
extent, the Philippines. Japan, however, is still facing profound economic
problems, while Prime Minister ShinzAbes growing nationalism
together with his denial of Japans past has led to a serious deterioration
in relations with South Korea and, at the same time, has served to embarrass
the United States.
90
These, however, are relative side-issues compared with the central problem.
The reason for U.S. decline in East Asia has never been military but
economic. Similarly, the reason for Chinas rise has been economic not
military. If the United States is to reverse its decline, it has to find a way of
strengthening its economic position in the region. Its preoccupation with
military strength is barking up the wrong tree, and represents a fundamental
misreading of the reasons for Chinas rise. Or, to put it another way,
Washington is behaving as if the world is still as it was rather than seeing
China as a quite new kind of challenge, which is economic rather than
military.
In this context, the most important event in 2014 was the launch of the
Chinese-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which
garnered 21 member countries from East Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia,
despite strong U.S. lobbying aimed at dissuading countries from signing
up. In the event, only five countries declined, namely Japan, South Korea,
Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. Indonesia has since decided to join,
leaving four rather predictable candidates as refuseniks. The bank will fund
a huge infrastructural development program across Asia, which will spur
a China-led process of growing economic integration. To understand its
huge potential significance, we should think of the role played by the U.S.
Marshall Aid program to Europe after World War II.
The purpose of the U.S. pivot to Asia was to forestall Chinas growing
influence in the region and enhance that of the United States. The widely
representative nature of the AIIB, and its vaulting ambition, signals the
failure of the pivot. Chinas influence in East Asia and beyond continues to
grow apace. Meanwhile, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a U.S. attempt to reset
the trade template in the Asia-Pacific and marginalize China in the process,
is bogged down in very difficult negotiations with the other participant
nations and, equally seriously, is unlikely to receive fast-track approval in
Congress.
This brings us, finally, to the domestic situation in China. Apart from the
governments attempt to achieve a major structural shift in the nature of the
economy, the two most important themes have been the anti-corruption
drive and the idea of the Chinese Dream. Both tell us much about the state
of China and how the leadership perceives the future.
91
The extent of the anti-corruption drive surprised virtually all observers. It

is hugely more ambitious than anything that has previously been attempted
on this issue since the beginning of the reform period in 1978. We can draw
two conclusions. Firstly, the problem of corruption in the party and the
government is far more serious and widespread than has previously been
thought and was seriously undermining the credibility and authority of
Chinas ruling institutions in the eyes of the people. Secondly, it underlines
the determination of President Xi Jinping to boost the popularity and
authority of the party and government. The anti-corruption campaign
has been hugely popular amongst the people and has greatly boosted Xis
standing.
The idea of the Chinese Dream was first launched in a speech by Xi Jinping
in late 2012. Since then, it has continued to be widely discussed in China.
The proposal offers an important insight into the changing nature of the
countrys mood, priorities, and perspectives. The idea of the Chinese Dream
would have been inconceivable during the Deng Xiaoping and post-Deng
era, when the countrys overwhelming priority was economic growth and
poverty-reduction. These were hard times. But China is now in a different
place. It can afford to dream, to imagine a very different kind of future, both
at home and with regard to Chinas role in the world.
It underlines the new and burgeoning confidence of the Chinese and
also reminds us that China has arrived at a very new moment in its
contemporary history following its precipitous decline after 1800. China is
remaking itself and will remake the world. It has begun to give very serious
thought to these questions.
Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the
World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order and
was a Bosch Public Policy Fellow during the 2012-13 Academy year on The Future
of the Western Liberal Order.
92
The Transatlantic Academy is grateful to our partners for making this

work possible, including the German Marshall Fund of the United
States, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd
Bucerius, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Fritz Thyssen
Stiftung, the Joachim Herz Stiftung, the Volkswagen Stiftung, the
Aurea Foundation, and the Hungary Initiatives Foundation.
1744 R STREET NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20009
T: 1 202 745 3886
F: 1 202 265 1662
E: INFO@TRANSATLANTICACADEMY.ORG
WWW.TRANSATLANTICACADEMY.ORG

The State of The Transatlantic World 2015

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The State of The Transatlantic World 2015

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THE STATE OF THE

2015 Transatlantic Academy. All rights reserved.

About the Transatlantic Academy

The State of the

n Challenges in the Middle East. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

n From the Executive Director

am pleased to introduce the second edition of The State of the

relationship of the United Kingdom to the EU and the possibilities of

order, most immediately in Europe. Although the Obama presidency is

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

n Russia, Ukraine, and the West

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

Russia and the West:

Crisis in Eastern Europe:

increasingly dormant sense of solidarity and community and take its

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

The State of the Crisis

When taking stock of the difficult situation in Ukraine by early 2015,

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

constituencies in Ukraine and elsewhere in the region and damage Western

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

n EU Europe and the World

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

n March 2014, Europeans woke up in Vladimir Putins world: a

Germanys Learning Curve:

n the old days, the Munich Security Conference was a semi-religious

guideline not to export weapons to high-intensity conflict areas. While

Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger is foreign editor of the German newspaper

Italys Foreign Policy Activism:

fter years of foreign policy sclerosis, Italy is making a noticeable

institutions and the development of a strategic culture across the various

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

Polish Foreign Policy: End of

rom 2008 until recently, Polish foreign policy enjoyed golden

No Solidarity? Growing Refugee

ccording to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

n The European Union:

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

The EU: Made in Britain

ritain is in the grip of a prolonged political crisis concerning its

nationalities because of their reputation for probity and efficiency. But

An Illiberal Polity in the

ollowing the 1989-90 democratic transition, Hungary experienced

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

The Eurozone in 2014:

It functions simultaneously like an import tariff and an export subsidy,

afterwards will a common resolution fund financed by the banking sector

structural change (desperately needed for a further improvement of

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

At Last, A European Energy Union?

n Challenges in the Middle East

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

A Dangerous and Bloody 2014

Consociationalism: The Last

he vicious situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate,

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

Russia, the Islamic State, and

he year 2014 was an annus horribilis for transatlantic security, with

and improving command and control facilities, weapons and ammunition

The State of the Transatlantic World2015

with ISAF partners to foment a comprehensive regional strategy to combat

The Growing Transatlantic

Regardless of whether or not the EU continues to try and manage this

n Russia, Ukraine, and the West

n EU Europe and the World

n The World at Large