The war in Ukraine exposed bluntly once more the appalling state of European defense capabilities—as seen in former Yugoslav republics in the late 1990s—and how Europe still depends on the United States to fight a war on its own continent.

Under US President Joe Biden, Washington has demonstrated its indispensability to NATO and European security at the very moment of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the present situation is unsustainable.

To stay safe against Russian and other aggression in the future, Europe will need a convincing conventional and nuclear deterrent of its own, and Germany will be key. The invasion of February 24, 2022 opened many eyes, but the biggest awakening took place in Germany.

Moscow’s assault on a European neighbor caused an epiphany in Berlin’s decades-long, complacent foreign and energy policy, as well as in its free-riding security and defense posture under Washington’s nuclear and NATO’s conventional umbrella. Chancellor Olaf Scholz understood the urgency for his country as he declared in his famous speech a Zeitenwende (time for change) for Germany’s foreign, security, defense, and energy policy, which was well received in Europe and the United States. Scholz pledged a one hundred billion euro special fund to rebuild the German armed forces that had decayed under the sixteen-year-long chancellorship of his predecessor, Angela Merkel. Berlin’s selfish post-1989 mantra—essentially “make peace without spending money for weapons”—became history almost overnight.

Today Germany is one of Ukraine’s biggest weapons providers after the United States. It is about to increase its defense budget of fifty-one billion euros to fifty-three billion euros. But Berlin needs to understand that the moment of truth has arrived for the Euro-Atlantic community of democracies.

After the US presidential election next year—no matter who makes it into the White House—Europe will need its own capabilities to defend European territory and borders from an outside aggressor. If Donald Trump returns to the White House or another Republican president takes office, we could see a shrinking of defense support for NATO, as the US military may concentrate its forces toward Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

Former US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis admitted during his confirmation hearing in 2017 that the US military is not strong enough to meet the challenges it faces around the globe. Or in the words of Elbridge A. Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense, “if we have to leave Europe exposed, so be it… Asia is more important than Europe.”

Therefore, to make Europe safe for peace and democracy in the future, NATO needs to strengthen its conventional and nuclear pillars. Russia’s aggression today against Ukraine and tomorrow perhaps against Poland or the Baltic states makes the Europeanization of NATO imperative. In the words of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “Europe has to play a special role in American thinking… But I could understand in a modified arrangement that Europe could play a more important role in some areas. I am not offended by autonomy in my definition of it.”

For the past twenty years, US presidents from both the Democratic and Republican parties have been asking European allies to take burden-sharing seriously. Here are four ways to start: 

1. It is imperative to strengthen the competitiveness and innovativeness of Europe’s military technological and industrial complex and to harmonize its procurement base. Buying off-the-shelf US equipment can go hand-in-hand with buying European equipment—and this should apply to all NATO members.
2. Not only must NATO forces be interoperable—allowing them to use each other’s platforms seamlessly while fighting alongside each other—but this should extend to potential future NATO members like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. 
3. For the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, a permanent increase of their defense spending to beyond the NATO target of 2 percent of gross domestic product should be seen as an obligation. Emerging from the Vilnius summit, where a new push is under way to get all allies beyond 2 percent, it is the responsibility of the biggest European economies to upgrade their conventional forces in order to protect European soil—when Washington might be too busy in Asia.
4. Europe needs a credible nuclear deterrent of its own, under NATO command. Only a trilateral British, French, and German nuclear umbrella, combined with a US umbrella, all under the command and control of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) will be a credible deterrent for Russia. This would require that France and Germany find a solution for equipping their joint Future Combat Air System—a new generation of advanced fighter jets—and the German F-35 dual capable aircraft with French nuclear weapons. Germany would not have its own nuclear weapons, so this arrangement would not violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NATO command structure must be tailored in such a way that Europe can fight a conflict in which neither Americans nor Canadians may wish to get involved, while taking advantage of NATO commands and systems. To this end the deputy SACEUR has to be European, and a headquarters-based Combined Joint Task Force must serve as his or her operational command.

Today it is clear that the main threat to European security does not come from Russia’s conventional forces, but from its tactical nuclear weapons and its sophisticated hybrid warfare. For Germany to be a full and equally strong part of a new European pillar of NATO, it needs to break the ultimate taboo and accept that a wider shared European nuclear deterrence should now be part of Berlin’s Zeitenwende defense thinking.

Of course, an outcry will arise: A stronger nuclear role for Germany will sound unthinkable to many. But so was Russia’s full-scale invasion and war in Europe only last year.

There have been strategic debates in Bonn since the 1950s about whether the Article 5 joint defense pact would really be implemented by Washington in case of an attack—whether a US president would sacrifice New York for Berlin or New Orleans for Munich. Today 62 percent of Germans are in favor of spending more money to modernize the Bundeswehr properly so that it can defend its country. Meanwhile, 47 percent of Germans agree with their government’s heavy support of the Ukrainian military—with another 16 percent wanting it to go further.

This, then, is the moment to start a debate in Berlin, Paris, and London about a trilateral French, British, and German nuclear European Defense Initiative, and the responsibility of those three powers to protect Europe if Article 5 is invoked in a worst-case-scenario.

Adm. Jacques Lanxade was joint chief of staff of the French Armed Forces and served as a defense advisor to French President Francois Mitterrand.

Denis MacShane is a former UK minister of Europe and a former UK delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO.

Margarita Mathiopoulos is a defense expert and professor emerita of US foreign policy and international security at Potsdam University. She also served as a foreign policy advisor to the former chairman of the German Free Democratic Party, Guido Westerwelle.

Gen. Klaus Naumann served as chairman of the military committee of NATO and joint chief of staff of the German Armed Forces. 

A German language version of this article first appeared in Handelsblatt. It is printed here with the authors’ and publisher’s permission.

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The completion or near completion of those measures is indeed helpful to DLICs, even if the measures fall short of what is needed—the sustainable development gap of those countries has been estimated to be $2.5 trillion per year. What the DLICs really need are concrete initiatives and the less said about grand strategy the better. Dressing those initiatives up as parts of a “new global financial architecture” risks conflating them with the geopolitical conflict centered around changing or preserving the current world order. That conflation will only make it more difficult to develop the international consensus required to adopt those measures. 

The Paris Summit showcases the potential and limits of the plurilateral approach  

The Paris Summit brought together senior representatives of about thirty-two countries, international organizations such as the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), civil society organizations advocating debt relief and climate financing for DLICs, as well as private-sector businesses. Besides Macron, presidents and prime ministers from South Africa, Brazil, Germany, China, and a dozen or so African countries attended. The United States was represented by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Special Climate Envoy John Kerry. The Summit represents an example of a plurilateral approach where a relatively small group of countries get together around a common agenda instead of the multilateral approach involving all members of the international community. Other examples include the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has been able to push through a few plurilateral trade agreements on specific issues, having failed to facilitate any round of multilateral trade liberalization since its inception in 1995; and the IMF which has recognized that working with smaller groups of like-minded countries can be a practical way forward. 

The Paris Summit exhibited the potential and limitations of the plurilateral approach. The results of the Summit were contained in the Chair’s summary of discussion, essentially reflecting participants’ appeals and statements of wishes rather than new commitments by countries. In fact the United States—a key country in any international undertaking—has been lukewarm at best about several proposals to raise funding, including worldwide taxation of CO2 emission in shipping and aviation, of financial transactions, and of fossil fuels in general. Yellen reiterated that multilateral development banks (MDBs) should try to optimize the use of their balance sheets to provide more finance to climate-related projects before asking members for more capital. 

Concrete results from the Paris Summit 

Nevertheless, the Paris Summit managed to produce two sets of results. One is a Road Map highlighting important events and meetings such as the G20 Summit in September in New Delhi and the IMF/WB annual meetings in October in Marrakech. Also noteworthy is the meeting of the 175-member International Maritime Organization in July to discuss the idea of taxing emissions from shipping, and the United Nations Summit on the Future in September 2024. The road map is useful in focusing international attention on important gatherings to push for further progress on the various commitments and initiatives already on the table. 

More useful to DLICs are announcements of the completion or near completion of previous pledges. Specifically, President Macron expressed confidence that the 2009 pledge by developed countries to spend $100 billion a year to help DLICs deal with the impacts of climate change will be fulfilled later this year. The OECD has reported that in 2020 the total amount reached $83 billion—the failure to meet this promise on time has been a disappointment for DLICs. More positively, the IMF reported that it has met its goal of asking countries with excess SDR reserves to re-channel $100 billion of the SDRs allocated in 2021 to help DLICs—with $60 billion pledged for its Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) and Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT). In particular, the RST is aiming to help DLICs deal with climate change through an exception to the short-term nature of IMF lending, offering loans with a 20-year maturity and a 10-year grace period. 

The WB also outlined a toolkit that had been in the works for some time and includes offering a pause in debt repayments during extreme climate events (but only for new loans, not existing ones), providing new types of insurance for development projects (to help make those more attractive to private sector investors), and funding advance-warning emergency systems. In particular, it has announced the launching of a Private Sector Investment Lab to develop and scale up solutions to barriers to private investment in emerging markets. Progress has been reported in efforts by MDBs, especially the WB, to optimize their balance sheets according to the G20-endorsed Capital Adequacy Framework in order to be able lend $200 billion more over 10 years—with the hope of catalyzing a similar amount of investment from the private sector (which is easier said than done). 

Most concretely, after years of procrastination, the official bilateral creditor committee agreed to restructure $6.3 billion of Zambia’s bilateral debt, a portion of its total public external liabilities of more than $18 billion. The deal extends maturities of bilateral debt to 2043, with a 3-year grace period; an interest rate of 1 percent until 2037 then rising to a maximum of 2.5 percent in a baseline scenario; but up to 4 percent if Zambia’s debt/GDP ratio improves sufficiently. In the baseline scenario, the present value (PV) of the debt will be reduced by 40 percent, assuming a 5 percent discount rate. This is lower than the 50 percent PV haircut accorded to some other countries in debt crises and is insufficient to meaningfully reduce Zambia’s debt load. Nevertheless it is helpful, especially in allowing Zambia to receive a $188 million disbursement from its $1.3 billion IMF program. The deal was reached contingent on Zambia negotiating comparable agreements with its private creditors and after the multilateral development banks (MDBs) pledged to provide concessional loans and grants to DLICs in crises. 

Key takeaways  

First and foremost, the results of the Paris Summit show that it is useful to maintain pressure on governments and international organizations to deliver on their pledges and commitments to various initiatives, as well as to agree to new ones to help DLICs. Even though each of the measures is insignificant compared to the overall needs, cumulatively many of them can provide tangible support to DLICs.  

Secondly, progress on any of these initiatives requires agreement by all key countries, including China. For example, the Zambia debt restructuring deal was achieved only when China’s preferences have been honored—including no cut in the principal amount of debt, relying instead on maturity extension and low interest rates; classifying several loans including from China Development Bank as commercial, not official; and requiring other creditors including MDBs and private sector investors to participate on a comparable basis in the debt relief. Hopefully, the Zambia deal can represent a template to speed up the restructuring process for DLICs, as flagged in an earlier Atlantic Council post.  

And that leads to the last takeaway from the Paris Summit, mentioned earlier. Countries should not let debt alleviation and climate change mitigation initiatives be used as political scoring points in the geopolitical conflict between the West and China. This will make it difficult to build the consensus required to move forward in these efforts.  

Hung Tran is a nonresident senior fellow at the GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council, and former executive managing director at the Institute of International Finance and former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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The post Lessons from the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Moreover, Macron’s ambitious agenda to ensure European sovereignty will only move forward with the inclusion of CEE countries. In fact, it’s an agenda that must be built with them. The stakes were thus high for the French president when he stepped on stage in Bratislava. But while location is important, what’s said in speeches by leaders matters even more. Macron’s speech shows his intent to build a stronger bridge between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe.

Ukraine needs ‘concrete and credible security guarantees’

France has supported Ukraine throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country beginning in February 2022. At the same time, France is one of the few countries deciding to remain discreet about the exact type and quantity of military aid it is sending to Ukraine. It also engaged Putin in the first few months of the war to convey key messages to the Russian president. Moreover, France has spent time and resources to address concerns from the Global South, whose stance on the war Macron views as important. As a result, some of France’s attention and support in the form, for example, of food aid has gone to the Global South and not directly to Ukraine. This has conflicted with the views of some leaders in CEE countries, who have sought to make Ukraine the sole priority. In all, these policies, combined with its track record of outreach to Russia before the invasion, occasionally fell short of convincing France’s allies and partners of its commitment to deliver on its intent to support Ukraine “as long as necessary.” 

In that regard, the speech offers three important points. First, Macron laid out the conditions for an eventual peace in Ukraine to be an enduring one. He stressed the necessity of avoiding a ceasefire that would simply turn into a frozen conflict. 

Second, in line with the recent Group of Seven (G7) leaders’ statement, Macron underscored the need to “give Ukraine concrete and credible security guarantees” and rebuked the inadequacy of the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which provided Ukraine with non-legally binding security assurances rather than outright security guarantees. 

Third, Macron demonstrated how the French policy toward European Union (EU) enlargement has strengthened significantly in just the last year. Remember that it was Macron’s trip to Kyiv in June 2022 with leaders from Germany, Italy, and Romania that laid the groundwork for the EU’s historic decision to grant candidacy status to Ukraine and Moldova. In Bratislava this week, the French president went further in stating that he supported a policy of EU enlargement with no intent of stalling (while also noting the need for the EU to have the capacity to effectively integrate more countries). He said, “the question is not about the if, or the when, but about the how.” Macron further emphasized this point by reiterating that the European Political Community is no alternative to EU enlargement.

NATO just had ‘the worst of electric shocks’

While US-French cooperation runs deep, Macron also believes in a need to make Europe stronger through strategic autonomy. This view is usually met with skepticism, sometimes less so in the United States than in the rest of Europe, where strategic autonomy can be perceived as potentially detrimental to NATO unity. In his Bratislava speech, Macron pushed back against such skepticism by dismissing the arguments that a stronger Europe would necessarily weaken the transatlantic community while also reinforcing “the European pillar of NATO.” Macron notably thanked Washington twice for critical US engagement in European security. He saluted the efficiency of NATO collective defense and, after referring to the Alliance as “brain dead” in 2019, said Wednesday that “Putin jolted it awake with the worst of electric shocks.”

In all, Macron’s speech offered an opportunity for more fruitful and closer cooperation between France and CEE countries. This is both due to France’s evolving foreign policy on key issues for these countries and to the tone Macron struck, which might be as important. Indeed, in a major applause line of the speech, Macron referred to a comment in 2003 by the then French President Jacques Chirac, saying that the CEE countries supporting the war in Iraq missed “the opportunity to shut up.”

“Some said you had missed an opportunity to stay quiet. I think we also lost an opportunity to listen to you,” Macron said. “This time is over.”

Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. Before that, she worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

The post Did Macron just dispel Central and Eastern Europe’s skepticism about France?  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

However, it’s possible that investors would try to buy more US Treasuries in the wake of default. Why? Because there is no viable alternative. Think back to the start of the Global Financial Crisis or COVID-19. In both situations, the world scooped up US bonds. That’s because there is nothing else like US Treasuries.

In a crisis, investors search for safety. Safe assets have a high likelihood of payout and can be traded easily. In practice, that usually means bonds issued by a handful of stable governments in advanced economies. The problem for any investor looking for safety in the wake of a US default is that the US Treasury market is much larger than any similarly-rated government bond market.

Would the world turn to German bunds, the only other AAA-rated sovereign debt in the G7? Maybe, but as the chart above illustrates, their market is less than 1/10th of the size of the US Treasury market. And German fiscal rules make it basically impossible for them to ever catch-up.

Where else to go? The UK gilt market? Beyond its small scale, you will recall the UK had its own credibility crisis just last year.

China? If you’re looking for a reliable, transparent, liquid market where you can turn your holdings into cash quickly without question, China is not it. 

Japan seems like a reasonable option until you realize the amount of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) available is overwhelmingly influenced by the central bank’s intervention in its bond market.

Where else could investors turn? They could hold more cash, but the opportunity cost of doing so has risen in the form of higher interest rates. They could look for relatively safe private sector assets, like the bonds of large, stable firms. But as the crisis of 2008-09 showed, even highly-rated private sector securities can be risky in a crisis.

There simply are not enough safe assets available for investors to move off of Treasuries. This is one reason why flirting with a default is so maddening. The US government issues something the rest of the world desperately wishes it had.

In the immediate aftermath of a default, Secretary Yellen may calm the Treasury market by promising to continue to pay interest on debt even as other bills go unpaid. But no one should mistake that for a solution. There would be massive fallout both for the US and global economy in this scenario. The bottom line is that in a default, even if US Treasuries have a short-term win, everyone—including the US—will still lose.

Josh Lipsky is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former adviser at the International Monetary Fund.

Phillip Meng contributed research to this piece. A version of this piece appeared in the GeoEconomics Center’s private Sunday night newsletter  Guide to the Global Economy. To subscribe to the newsletter please email sbusch@atlanticcouncil.org.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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The post There is no alternative to US Treasuries appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Read on to find out how these powerful democracies are tackling some of the world’s thorniest problems.

This post will be updated as news develops and more reactions come in.

Click to jump to an expert reaction:

Daniel Fried: The G7 brought good news for Ukraine and strong new sanctions on Russia

Josh Lipsky: Unthinkable two years ago, G7 countries are addressing China together

John E. Herbst: Hiroshima makes clear the authoritarian high-water mark has passed

Daniel Tannebaum: Continued alignment on Russia sanctions is impressive, but it’s time to finish the job

Kyoko Imai: The Quad crumbles without a corner

Dexter Tiff Roberts: What will the G7 do when China next attempts economic coercion?

Thomas Cynkin: A breakthrough in fighting China’s economic coercion, but the details must be fleshed out

Steven Tiell: The regulators are coming for your AI

Robert Cekuta: G7 leaders should have gone further on energy security

Bee Yun Jo: US-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation is back on track

Jessica Taylor: Can US-South Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation endure beyond a photo op?

Parker Novak: Biden skipping Papua New Guinea was a missed opportunity

The G7 brought good news for Ukraine and strong new sanctions on Russia

The G7 summit generated a lot of support for Ukraine, again demonstrating that persistent predictions of eroding support are off. The G7 Leaders’ statement on Ukraine was strong and, critically, did not push Kyiv toward negotiations on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms (a common recommendation from a certain school of thought that seems resigned to Russian victory even as the battlefield seems to favor Ukraine). The rapid coming together of a European coalition to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, an initiative that the United States in a policy reversal has now joined, was a major step in intensifying military assistance for Ukraine—a big G7 deliverable, as the saying goes. 

There were also new sanctions announced, outlined thematically in the G7 statement and in detail by the United States. These were also a big deal, even as the new sanctions did not include some ambitious proposals. For example, there was no lowering of the oil-price cap, no across-the-board ban on trade with Russia with exceptions (a so-called “white list,” as opposed to the current “black list” approach), and no decision to use the immobilized Russian sovereign assets for Ukraine.

But the announced US sanctions package was broad, well-prepared, and impactful. To cite only a few of the new measures, the Biden administration targeted sanctions evaders from around the world, a labor-intensive process that may hinder Russia’s efforts to escape the vise of restrictions on high-tech exports to Russia. It went after future Russian energy production and export capacity, a clever move that seems intended to lock in pressure on Russia’s critical energy sector for the longer term. The new US sanctions also targeted Russian gold sales (and the European Union seems prepared to target Russian diamond exports), good examples of going after Russian foreign-exchange earnings. 

This was solid work. Sanctions theory usually asserts that sanctions are intended to change behavior. The Russian sanctions regime, however, seems intended to weaken the Russian economy generally, and rightly so. The current sanctions recall (and are more sophisticated than) the Cold War–era sanctions that contributed to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union. Putin, who seeks by war to recreate the Soviet and Russian empires, may yet learn that democracies, for all their messiness, are not as weak and feckless as he supposes.

—Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was the coordinator for sanctions policy during the Obama administration, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia during the Bush administration, and senior director at the National Security Council for the Clinton and Bush administrations. He also served as ambassador to Poland during the Clinton administration.

Unthinkable two years ago, G7 countries are addressing China together

China is not mentioned a single time in the G7’s new special statement on economic security—but make no mistake, it is all about China. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the issue of combating China’s economic coercion a priority for Japan’s G7, and with this unified statement the leaders achieved what will likely be the lasting legacy of the summit. The big question coming into Hiroshima was: Could the leaders maintain unity against Russia and harness that collective power in addressing China? The statement is the first concrete sign that the answer is yes. Two years ago, during the United Kingdom’s G7 summit in Cornwall, it would have been hard to believe that European leaders would sign on to a statement that was so specifically directed at Beijing. But after China targeted Lithuania for its support of Taiwan, the calculus on the continent began to shift. Now, all G7 leaders have committed to a new rapid response coordination platform if another country is targeted. They are also speeding up their push for new supply chains and trying to leverage the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment as an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative. 

The statement doesn’t specify what other specific steps the group will take to combat what they describe as the “disturbing rise in the incidents of economic coercion.” And you can be sure that other participants at the G7, including India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will stay away from associating with this statement. Many countries will ask privately, what about the West’s use of sanctions and other tools of economic statecraft? The answer from the G7 is that those tools have a legal basis and are a justified response to violations of international law. The bottom line is that the G7 has shown it will increasingly focus on China and will try to maintain a coordinated policy approach. That’s a major development.

—Josh Lipsky is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former adviser to the International Monetary Fund.

Hiroshima makes clear the authoritarian high-water mark has passed

G7 summits are usually nerd nirvanas, producing long statements on numerous issues that specialists mine to figure out in which direction the world’s leading democracies are moving, usually incrementally. Hiroshima was different. It was rich in substance and symbolism indicating that the world’s great democracies recognize the dangers, geopolitical and economic, posed by the two authoritarian revisionist powers, China and Russia.

In the summit statement and discussion, the G7 leaders seemed to be moving toward the understanding that China is a predatory power that needs to be kept in check. The statement also laid out a host of measures to further support Ukraine and isolate Russia for its war-crime laden aggression; and by hosting Zelenskyy, it gave the world a clear symbol of the world’s great democracies’ determination to enable Ukraine’s successful defense. To underscore this, the Biden administration used Hiroshima to finally allow the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. What’s more, Hiroshima offered a reminder of just how potent the democratic ideal is in also hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a long-time Putin pal and stalwart of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). It would have been nice to be a fly on the wall in the Kremlin as Putin watched the coverage of Modi’s bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy.

Was it really just fifteen months ago that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Putin issued their lengthy joint statement in Beijing and the world appeared to tremble at the specter of the marching authoritarian great powers? And today, Xi meets with the five Central Asian leaders while the G7 countries sit with India and Ukraine, and International Criminal Court–indicted Putin wonders if he can attend the BRICS Summit in South Africa in August without being arrested. Were these the extraordinary “changes” that Xi told Putin their two nations were driving when they met in Moscow in March?

—John E. Herbst is senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and served for thirty-one years as a foreign service officer in the US Department of State, retiring at the rank of career minister. He was US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.

Continued alignment on Russia sanctions is impressive, but it’s time to finish the job

The G7 members continued to show their alignment on new waves of Russian sanctions after meetings in Hiroshima over the last few days. The rhetoric continues to be one threatening those who would evade or circumvent sanctions, or those supporting them, with severe penalties. We’ve certainly seen designations of those who have circumvented sanctions to date, but without material enforcement, is the coalition missing the plot? Having served at the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the US Department of Treasury, I know firsthand the time it takes to bring an enforcement case to conclusion. If the goal is further isolation of Russia, then seeing nearly five billion dollars per month of exports from G7 nations (according to the Atlantic Council’s Niels Graham) is evidence of the scale of Russia’s role in the global economy. I do not mean to say that those who have been trading monthly with Russia have been violating sanctions, but perhaps countries and companies do not feel as much that they need to make a choice.

Hopefully, in time, there will be further rounds of sanctions focusing more broadly on export bans, unless otherwise expressly exempted. This would certainly make life more operationally easier for financial institutions which finance the aforementioned trade. For example, as sanctions were built up on Iran, culminating in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), trade with Iran was certainly viewed largely as off-limits, and further enforcement actions against global banks reinforced the consequences for those who would purposefully violate these sanctions. When the JCPOA was enacted and secondary sanctions lifted, as a condition of the deal, there were initial views that Western businesses, where permissible, would flood the market. There were numerous reports of civil aviation, automotive, and consumer products companies who announced plans to reenter the market. Few, if any, global financial institutions would facilitate this trade, even if it was legal. At one point, then US Secretary of State John Kerry and then UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson convened the world’s largest banks to remind them that certain trade was now permissible. But the banks did not bite. The fear of potentially being on the wrong side of the remaining Iran sanctions, and the large-scale penalties that went along with those violations, was a painful reminder that it may not be worth it.

Now, Iran is certainly not Russia. The former is, according to the International Monetary Fund, the twenty-second largest economy in the world, while the latter recently ranked as the eleventh largest. However, for these Russia sanctions to be truly effective, more companies need to fear the downside risk to their organizations if things go wrong and they end up violating sanctions. To be clear, I do not wish for enforcement to occur outside of the truly egregious examples of violations. Enforcement has served as an effective deterrent historically to help reinforce a sanctions agenda. In the Iran example, these were some of the largest banks in the world that paid billions of dollars in settlement costs, and billions more in remediating their historical issues. There is another reason why enforcement is critical in a new sanctions regime, especially one as challenging to implement as with Russia. It is at times hard for companies to know whether they’re doing it right. Some of the best guidance out of OFAC used by firms was borne from enforcement actions, where organizations could apply the lessons learned to themselves and ask if they had done something similar. At the most basic level, if continued rounds of new sanctions are launched without material examples of violators, assuming they exist, can we really say they’re effective?

—Daniel Tannebaum is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Economic Statecraft Initiative in the GeoEconomics Center and a partner in Oliver Wyman’s Risk and Public Policy Practice, where he leads the firm’s Global Anti-Financial Crime Practice.

The Quad crumbles without a corner

Biden’s decision to abruptly end his Asia trip and pull out of the Quad Leaders’ Summit reflects poorly on US credibility and reinforces doubts about its resolve. The leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States were expected to meet in Sydney on May 24 to enhance cooperation on critical and emerging technologies, climate change, and maritime domain awareness. However, Biden cut his trip short to deal with domestic debt ceiling negotiations, which are undermining US foreign policy at a pivotal moment for the Indo-Pacific region.

The Quad Summit was intended to signal unity in the face of Chinese attempts to challenge the existing regional order. Instead, China will be further emboldened to assert territorial claims, expand naval capabilities, and militarize islands in the South China Sea. This is a diplomatic gift to Xi, and Chinese state media outlets will jump at the opportunity to tear Washington down. In its messaging to the region, Beijing will claim that a country failing to keep its own government afloat is unfit to lead.

China is right about one thing: Building trust requires consistency, reliability, and simply showing up. Withdrawing from diplomatic trips to Asia due to political emergencies has become an unfortunate pattern for the United States, as presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all did so.

Furthermore, US foreign policies are at risk of a 180-degree shift every four years, as shown by the political re-emergence of Donald Trump—who ditched the 2017 East Asia Summit in the Philippines because it started late.

Nonetheless, the United States has been deemed the unofficial leader of the Quad. Although the four leaders met on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima, the meeting only lasted fifty minutes and was a clear indication that the Quad framework had been pushed to the wayside.

Perhaps another country ought to take control. With India overtaking China as the most populous country in the world, Modi is asserting himself. India’s prime minister is proceeding full steam ahead with his visit to Australia, which includes a public event, a bilateral with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and meetings with leaders in the business community. But India’s democratic backsliding under Modi means that other Quad members must exercise caution in their engagement.

While the four countries sought to resuscitate the Quad Leaders’ Summit by bandwagoning onto the G7, it is evident that this was a missed opportunity to not only strengthen Quad partnerships but more importantly signal commitment to Indo-Pacific countries.

—Kyoko Imai is an assistant director with the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

What will the G7 do when China next attempts economic coercion?

While some are criticizing the “G7 Leaders’ Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security” for lacking detail on how countries intend to respond to economic coercion (coercion from China, of course, even if Beijing is never mentioned by name), just the fact that the disparate G7 members, all of which have significant trade and investment relations with China, were able to put out such a strong statement is a big accomplishment. “We will work together to ensure that attempts to weaponize economic dependencies… will fail and face consequences” is just one of numerous tough lines in the document.

If there was any doubt whether China is taking the statement seriously, just check out its irate response. Late Saturday, Beijing lashed out at the United States, calling it the “real coercer” that “politicizes and weaponizes economic and trade relations” with its use of sanctions. It went on to warn the G7 to stop “bludgeoning other countries” and “stoking bloc confrontation.” We will have to wait to see what concrete steps are taken by the G7 the next time one of its members or partner countries faces business pressure from China (the Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion that the G7 mentions indeed lacks specificity). But the statement released at the close of the Hiroshima summit is nonetheless a big first step toward confronting this growing challenge head on.

—Dexter Tiff Roberts is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative and Global China Hub.

A breakthrough in fighting China’s economic coercion, but the details must be fleshed out

Perhaps the signal achievement of the Hiroshima G7 Summit was agreement on a “Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion” to counter Chinese economic coercion, highlighted through a stand-alone document.

Despite the obvious utility of such a mechanism, this outcome was long in coming. Japan and the United States have urged coordination among the leading industrialized democracies to counter Chinese economic coercion. However, European G7 countries have been reluctant, fearful of antagonizing Beijing. They exceeded expectations by joining consensus not only on a general statement of principles opposing economic coercion, but on a coordinating mechanism to take concrete actions.

Now that the G7 has moved past admiring the problem and reached consensus on the need for a coordination platform, the devil will be in the details of implementation. A good starting point may well be mapping out supply-chain vulnerabilities by industry and sector, alerting countries and corporations that might be affected, and helping them devise and implement “de-risking” strategies that would render them more resilient to supply-chain disruptions by China.

This could be an important means of G7 outreach to Global South countries, sensitizing them to the perils and pitfalls of economic dependence on China and demonstrating the benefits of upholding international order and the rule of law in cooperation with developed industrial countries and multilateral institutions.

Another important element will be devising joint approaches on mitigation via ready-made tools to counter economic coercion by providing support and relief for countries targeted by China. Flexible response options include, inter alia, stockpiling critical materials or commodities that China could restrict, providing export credit insurance to encourage alternative exporters to meet demand when China restricts exports, and enacting temporary tariff reductions to compensate when China restricts imports. Similarly, the G7 could consider retaliatory measures, although that may be a bridge too far at this juncture.

Whichever tools are adopted, the G7 decision to work together through a common coordination platform may be seen in retrospect as a watershed moment for countering Chinese economic coercion.

—Thomas Cynkin is a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative and a former career US diplomat, serving in Japan and elsewhere.

The regulators are coming for your AI

The G7 has lobbed the latest of three notable salvos in signaling that governments around the globe are focused on regulating Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). The G7 ministers have established the Hiroshima AI Process, an inclusive effort for governments to collaborate on AI governance, IP rights (including copyright), transparency, mis/disinformation, and responsible use. Earlier in the week, testimony in the United States highlighted the grave concerns governments have and why these discussions are necessary.

“Loss of jobs, invasion of personal privacy at a scale never seen before, manipulation of personal behavior, manipulation of personal opinions, and potentially the degradation of free elections in America.” These are the downsides, harms, and risks of Generative AI as Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) recapped after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 16, saying “this is quite a list.”

Just last week, the European Union (EU) AI Act moved forward, paving the way for a plenary vote in mid-June on its path to becoming law.

Make no mistake, regulation is coming.

Read more here:

GeoTech Cues

May 22, 2023

The regulators are coming for your AI

By Steven Tiell

The Group of Seven (G7) has lobbed the latest of three notable salvos in signaling that governments around the globe are focused on regulating Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). The G7 ministers have established the Hiroshima AI Process, an inclusive effort for governments to collaborate on AI governance, IP rights (including copyright), transparency, mis/disinformation, and responsible […]

Technology & Innovation

—Steven Tiell is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. He is a strategy executive with wide technology expertise and particular depth in data ethics and responsible innovation for artificial intelligence.

G7 leaders should have gone further on energy security

When it comes to energy security, the G7 Leaders’ Hiroshima Communique falls short. While paying extensive, needed attention to slashing greenhouse gas emissions and rightfully condemning the negative impacts on global energy security stemming from Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, the communique could do better in addressing the changing geopolitics of energy and meeting the world’s need for assured, predictable, and affordable energy.

The communique is strong on the imperative to decarbonize and limit the rise in global temperatures. Fighting climate change requires radical changes in how the world gets and uses energy. However, energy security, affordability, and access are also important.

While last year Europe built oil and gas stocks as the EU, the United States, and others sanctioned Russia, it was the warmer-than-normal winter that was key to the continent avoiding serious energy shortfalls and economic pain. Significant new natural gas supplies to replace Russia’s will not be on stream for another year or more; tight, expensive energy supplies will remain a reality. Next winter may not be as obliging. Continued international action is essential.

Another serious factor tightening the market is rising energy demand. Emerging economies, especially China and India—not the mature, industrialized West—now drive the demand side of the ledger. Their decisions about whether they use coal and other fossil fuels to generate electricity or to decarbonize have global impacts. The G7 needs to keep engaging them.

A third energy security issue demanding attention concerns the billions of people without access to energy today. One of the Sustainable Development Goals is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all,” but those without it rose by twenty million in 2022 to nearly 775 million. As many as three billion people lack a safe way to cook, leading to millions dying each year from household air pollution. Moreover, another two billion people are expected to join the world’s population between now and 2050. All of them will need access to reliable energy.

While focusing on pushing the energy transition ahead, the 19,000-word G7 communique is too often silent on other pressing realities. Working, as the communique says, “to holistically address energy security, climate crisis, and geopolitical risk including expansion of global use of renewable energy in order to… keep a limit of 1.5°C within reach” is a worthy objective. But it may prove inadequate in meeting other pressing energy security challenges.

It is essential the United States, its G7 partners, and other governments widen the aperture. The realities of a growing world population looking for greater access to energy should be taken into account. Solutions need to be developed, including new technologies. Governments will need to recognize that some countries will remain more dependent on fossil fuels than others. Countries that already face high borrowing costs and other difficulties in obtaining needed financing, for example, will face difficulties financing lower carbon energy solutions. 

G7 leaders need to keep a focus on a changing, dynamic global energy security picture, and push on a wider range of policies and actions.

—Robert Cekuta is a former principal deputy assistant secretary for energy at the State Department and was the US ambassador to the Republic of Azerbaijan.

US-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation is back on track

Six months after their previous meeting in November, the leaders of South Korea, the United States, and Japan resumed their talks on the last day of the G7 summit—where highly anticipated topics included enhancing real-time information sharing on North Korea’s ballistic missiles, as well as the possibility of Japan joining the South Korea-US Nuclear Consultative Group announced during South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to Washington last month. Although the meeting was short, given tight schedules at the summit, the brief sideline meeting is the culmination of real progress in getting trilateral relations back on track.

Most importantly, the three leaders did get to discuss “new coordination” over North Korea’s “illicit nuclear and missile threats,” according to the White House statement. This manifests how working-level discussions are ongoing and making real progress. As Biden invited Yoon and Kishida for a formal trilateral meeting in Washington, more fine-tuned outcomes will be available in the near future. Second, their appearance in the setting of Hiroshima was symbolic in and of itself. The leaders of South Korea and Japan put forth “courageous” efforts (as Biden put it) to mend ties during their bilateral meeting just before the trilateral sideline meeting, which showcased their unity and just how much their ties have improved in the past few months.

Moreover, as Yoon clarifies and realigns South Korea’s approach to global issues—agreeing to push back against China’s “coercive behavior” and provide more non-lethal aid to Ukraine—the trilateral meeting signals a resumed heyday of trilateral security cooperation.

— Bee Yun Jo is a nonresident fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative and an associate research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. She is also an evaluation committee member of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an advisory committee member of the the ministry’s Department of Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

Can US-South Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation endure beyond a photo op?

The decision by Kishida, Yoon, and Biden to meet despite the compressed timeline of Biden’s abbreviated Asia-Pacific trip displayed the leaders’ strong desire to communicate that increasing trilateral cooperation is a priority. However, significant hurdles remain to advancing this cooperation.

Amid North Korea’s efforts to improve its nuclear and missile capabilities, the three countries have notably increased cooperation on combined military readiness and intelligence sharing. However, there is a limit to their working together, as shown by South Korea’s rejection of Japan joining the South Korea-US Nuclear Consultation Group and Seoul’s hesitation to expand the grouping’s military cooperation beyond North Korea.

As anticipated, the G7 Leaders’ Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security highlights continued cooperation toward strengthening the semiconductor supply chain. The United States is trying to form a semiconductor alliance (known as the Chip 4) with semiconductor heavyweights South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. But despite the group’s increased alignment on export controls, this alliance has not yet come together. With US-South Korean-Japanese trilateral military cooperation solely focused on North Korea, it is unclear whether the grouping would be able to coordinate a response in the event of a critical threat to the supply chain outside of the Korean peninsula. For instance, the idea floating around some national-security circles that the United States should blow up TSMC’s foundries on Taiwan in the event of a cross-strait conflict displays a clear lack of discussion of contingency options. Earthquakes and climate change–driven weather events also threaten the supply chain, but it is unclear how the prospective Chip 4 would cooperate to come up with flexible response options as their respective semiconductor industries continue to compete.

The picture also remains unclear for US-South Korea-Japan cooperation on strategic stability. The South Korean public so far appears unmoved in its disapproval for Yoon’s overtures to Japan, and it does not appear that Kishida will expend political capital to match Yoon’s effort. Meanwhile, amid international concerns the United States is becoming even more protectionist, the US public remains predominantly concerned with the economy, making it difficult for either Republicans or Democrats to shift from an increasingly “America First” approach. But perhaps the biggest hurdle for this group is how to balance the need to cooperate among each other on Chinese threats against the need to maintain an off-ramp from tensions to cooperate with China as well.

—Jessica Taylor is a nonresident fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, a logistics officer in the US Air Force Reserve, and a Ph.D. candidate in Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs Security Studies Program. She served in South Korea from 2019 to 2021 as an international relations strategist for the headquarters command staffs of United Nations Command, ROK/US Combined Forces Command, and US Forces Korea.

Biden skipping Papua New Guinea was a missed opportunity

First, let’s acknowledge the things that the United States has gotten right as it’s stepped up its engagement in the Pacific Islands over the past year. It is following through on promises to expand its diplomatic footprint, opening new embassies in the Solomon Islands and Tonga and reestablishing the US Agency for International Development’s regional mission in Fiji. Senior officials have lavished attention on the region with high-level visits, and last September’s United States-Pacific Islands Country Summit was the first ever hosted in Washington. Crucially, compacts of Free Association with the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau are also being finalized.

US President Joe Biden’s now-scrapped visit to Papua New Guinea (PNG) was meant to be a culmination of these efforts and send a powerful signal to Pacific Islanders about the US commitment to the region. Instead, it underlines skepticism about the United States’ ability to follow through on the promises it has made and its staying power. The concurrent cancellation of Biden’s visit to Australia for the Quad summit only reinforces this; as a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald put it, “Biden’s 11th hour Quad snub a disappointment, a mess, and a gift to Beijing.”

Will this do long-term damage to US efforts in the Pacific? Perhaps not. But, in the immediate term, the optics are dreadful. After the visit to PNG was canceled, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden plans to host a major summit with leaders of the Pacific Islands “within this calendar year.” It is important to follow through on that promise. In addition, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a visit to Port Moresby on May 22.

This episode showcases a key challenge bedeviling the United States on the world stage—that of internal political dysfunction hindering its conduct of a consistent foreign policy and projecting an unappealing image across the world. If the United States is going to succeed in the Pacific—and elsewhere, for that matter—it not only needs to deliver on its assurances, but also get its domestic house in order. 

—Parker Novak is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

The post Experts react: A ‘game changer’ G7 summit in Japan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This month’s topline events

Macron China Flap. Accompanied by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Marcon traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. With a delegation of some sixty business leaders, Macron’s visit raised eyebrows after his comments on Taiwan, suggesting that Europe should not get “caught up in crises that are not ours,” and on relations with the US, advising that France should avoid becoming a “vassal” in the service of a larger power’s agenda. France later joined a G7 statement warning Beijing against “any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion” regarding Taiwan.

• Shaping the order. With China seeking to leverage the promise of greater commercial engagement to keep outside powers from interfering on Taiwan, Macron’s visit and subsequent comments did not sit well with allies and risked playing into Beijing’s efforts to drive a wedge within the transatlantic alliance. But the diplomatic fallout may be limited, as French officials later sought to downplay the comments and von der Leyen and other European leaders continue to press for a more assertive strategy to stand up against the threats to the rules-based order posed by China.
• Hitting home. As China seeks to expand its global influence, the American people would benefit from closer cooperation with allies and partners to defend shared values and interests.
• What to do. The Biden administration should prioritize efforts to develop a common strategy with key European and Asia-Pacific allies on China to deter a potential attack on Taiwan and limit Beijing’s ability to undermine the rules-based order.

Russian Offensive Stalls. A much-touted Russian military offensive in the Donbas region of Ukraine that began in late winter stalled, as Russian forces failed to make any significant gains around the town of Bakhmut despite a heavy investment of military resources and troops. Armed with more advanced Western weapons, the Ukrainian military began preparing to launch a strong counteroffensive, though US officials have reportedly expressed concerns that Ukraine may also end up falling short. Separately, Xi Jinping spoke for the first time since the war began with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and offered to help negotiate a settlement to the crisis.

• Shaping the order. Despite suffering heavy casualties, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no signs of backing down, seemingly convinced that a war of attrition will eventually accrue in Russia’s favor, if Ukrainian forces are worn down and political support for Ukraine in Western nations begins to dissipate. While China’s proposed peace plan has so far failed to gain traction, diplomatic pressure toward a ceasefire is beginning to build. A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive is likely to dampen such pressure and could provide a boost of momentum for Ukraine to sustain the fight.
• Hitting home. Americans have a strong interest in Ukraine’s success, as the US would be more secure in a world where aggressive dictators cannot get away with attacking other nations.
• What to do. The Biden administration should work closely with NATO allies to deliver as quickly as possible the advanced military equipment that Ukraine needs to succeed in its forthcoming counteroffensive.

Biden’s Global Economic Plan. In a series of major speeches, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan laid out a new global economic strategy that aims to reduce dependence on China by investing in domestic capacity and working with allies to promote diversified global supply chains in certain strategic sectors. Echoing European Commission president von der Leyen, the US plan calls for “de-risking and diversifying,” rather than decoupling, with China. But the speeches received mixed reactions from US allies concerned about rising protectionism and among many economists, who suggested the plan could lead to higher inflation and create new economic risks as the government tries to pick winners and losers.

• Shaping the order. Biden’s new economic plan represents a pivot from the past several decades of US global economic policy, which was premised on reducing trade barriers and integrating authoritarian powers such as China and Russia into the global economy, in the hopes that it would lead to a more open and peaceful world. In this effort to build a new economic order or a new “Washington Consensus,” as Sullivan called for, liberalizing trade is taking a back seat to establishing more stable and reliable supply chains and seeking to expand the domestic benefits of global trade.
• Hitting home. While some US businesses may be negatively impacted, at least in the short-term, America will be economically more secure over time by ensuring that critical economic sectors are not dependent on China.
• What to do. Building on Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland’s proposal for an economic alliance of democracies, the Biden administration should create a new ally shoring framework that outlines a common approach for reorchestrating supply chains and managing trade with Russia and China.

Quote of the Month

“We will together embrace the future of the [US-Korean] alliance, undergirded by our shared core values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights…The alliance will not only ensure the security and prosperity of both countries, but also contribute to the peace and security in the Indo-Pacific and of the world.”

– South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, speaking at the White House, April 27, 2023

State of the Order this month: Unchanged

Assessing the five core pillars of the democratic world order    

Democracy (↓)

• The FBI arrested two men on charges that they helped establish a secret “police station” in New York on behalf of the Chinese government – part of a series of US prosecutions in recent years to disrupt Chinese efforts to surveil and harass individuals from China who are critical of Beijing.
• Tunisian security forces arrested Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the main opposition party, as part of President Kais Saied’s escalating crackdown against political dissent and representing a further setback for a nation once seen as a rising example of democracy in the Arab world.
• A Russian court sentenced democratic opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison, in what appears to be the longest sentence imposed for political activity in post-Soviet Russia. The move came just days after Russian authorities detained a Wall Street Journal reporter for allegations of spying, an action strongly condemned by US officials.
• On balance, the democracy pillar was weakened.

Security (↓)

• China conducted its second major live-fire exercise in eight months targeted at Taiwan, including drills for “sealing off” the island, in response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.
• China has reportedly begun to construct a military base in the United Arab Emirates, as part of an ambitious campaign to build a global military network that includes at least five overseas bases and 10 logistical support sites by 2030.
• South Korea pledged to not develop its own nuclear arsenal and will be given an increased role in any potential decisions on US nuclear retaliation against North Korea, as outlined in a new Washington Declaration issued by President Biden and South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol. Separately, Pyongyang claimed it had successfully tested a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time.
• With the potential to cause serious damage to US diplomatic and intelligence efforts, an American national guardsman leaked dozens of highly classified documents revealing information ranging from Ukrainian military capabilities to collaboration by US allies in the Middle East with Russia and China.
• Xi Jinping spoke with Ukrainian President Zelensky by phone, in their first known conversation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Beijing sought to position itself as a potential peacemaker in the ongoing conflict.
• On balance, the security pillar was weakened.

Trade ()

• While meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silvia pledged to boost economic cooperation with China and called for an alternative BRICS currency to replace the US dollar to finance trade between the two nations.
• Japan began purchasing Russian oil above the $60 per barrel price cap imposed by the G7, after being granted an exception by the US and other participating nations to meet its energy needs.
• The Biden administration set forth a new global economic strategy that aims to reduce dependence on China by investing in domestic capacity and promoting diversified global supply chains in certain strategic sectors.
• Overall, the trade pillar was unchanged.

Commons ()

• G7 energy ministers, meeting in Japan, committed to boosting the adoption of renewable energy and set ambitious new targets to expand offshore wind and solar power capacity by 2030.
• According to the World Meteorological Organization, European glaciers lost a record amount of mass over the past two years due to the combined effects of global warming and below-normal snowfall.
• Given the implications of the UN climate report, the global commons pillar was unchanged.

Alliances (↑)

• President Biden hosted South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol for a White House state dinner, as the two leaders met to discuss shared challenges. Yoon also vowed to strengthen bilateral security and economic ties with Japan.
• In an effort to repair relations frayed under the leadership of former president Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. met with President Biden at the White House. The visit came just days after the two nations held joint military exercises in the South China Sea.
• Meeting in Japan, G7 foreign ministers stood united in criticizing China’s coercion of Taiwan, and agreed to intensify sanctions against Moscow for its war on Ukraine.
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen chaired a meeting of the “Five Eyes” finance ministers, including Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the US, to discuss challenges stemming from the war in Ukraine and potential Chinese economic coercion.
• Overall, the alliance pillar was strengthened. 

Strengthened (↑)________Unchanged ()________Weakened (↓)

What is the democratic world order? Also known as the liberal order, the rules-based order, or simply the free world, the democratic world order encompasses the rules, norms, alliances, and institutions created and supported by leading democracies over the past seven decades to foster security, democracy, prosperity, and a healthy planet.

This month’s top reads

Three must-read commentaries on the democratic order     

• Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, in Foreign Affairs, write that while the United States has become less dominant over the past 20 years, it remains at the top of the global power hierarchy, safely above China and far above every other country.
• Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg, in The Atlantic, contend that the future of the democratic world will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break the existing stalemate with Russia.
• Tom Malinowski, in Foreign Affairs, recalls numerous successes of US democracy promotion efforts over the past decades and argues that the US must maintain a foreign policy that is true to its ideals.

Action and analysis by the Atlantic Council

Our experts weigh in on this month’s events

• Fred Kempe, in Inflection Points, suggests that outcome of the war in Ukraine will depend on what sacrifices the United States and its allies are willing to make now to secure the future.
• In an Atlantic Council Memo to NATO heads of state, Alexander Vershbow and Ian Brzezinski argue that the alliance should use the upcoming leaders’ summit in Vilnius to begin the process of integrating Ukraine into NATO.
• Dan Fried, in Just Security, argues that Congress can investigate the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan without compromising the State Department’s vitally important Dissent Channel.
• Imran Bayoumi, in Foreign Policy, makes the case for a democracy-first approach to Haiti and other vulnerable states that prioritizes building democratic institutions and promoting economic development.
• In the New Atlanticist, Emma Verges, Markus Garlauskas, and Joseph Webster argue that China’s support to Russia is vital to sustaining Russia’s continued aggression in Ukraine.

__________________________________________________

The Democratic Order Initiative is an Atlantic Council initiative aimed at reenergizing American global leadership and strengthening cooperation among the world’s democracies in support of a rules-based democratic order. Sign on to the Council’s Declaration of Principles for Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace by clicking here.

Ash Jain – Director for Democratic Order
Dan Fried – Distinguished Fellow
Soda Lo – Project Assistant

If you would like to be added to our email list for future publications and events, or to learn more about the Democratic Order Initiative, please email AJain@atlanticcouncil.org.

The post State of the Order: Assessing April 2023 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Distinguished guests at the workshop included H.E Laurence Boone, Minister of State for Europe for the French Foreign Ministry; Ms. Kerstin Jorna, Director General of the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW); Mr. Olivier Guersent, Director-General of the Directorate General for Competition; Mr. Emmanuel Moulin, Director General at the French Treasury; and Mr. Benoît Potier, Chief Executive Officer of Air Liquide, among others. In addition to these guests, the Atlantic Council, DGAP and GEG were honored to host other key policymakers, analysts, and private sector representatives.  

One year on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe has managed to mitigate the worst effects of the energy crisis and maintain its support for Ukrainians’ defense of their homeland. Participants noted the significant number of initiatives taken at the European level on a vast array of subjects, including diversifying imports, deploying clean energy, and building supply chain capacity. The conversation in Paris ranged from how to meet basic energy needs now to building a resilient net zero economy in the future, with a focus placed on industrial strategy, infrastructure needs, and scaling up public and private funding, and infrastructure needs.

Whereas participants at the first workshop in Berlin highlighted the successful cooperation between European member states in the face of the energy crisis, discussants in Paris underscored increasing tensions between member states on several vital issues. Attendees emphasized the crisis of trust between member states, evidenced by disagreements on electricity market reform, divergences on the role of nuclear and natural gas in the energy transition, state aid rules, and even the lack of progress made towards a Capital Markets Union. Some panelists argued that Franco-German disagreements on nuclear energy inhibit Europe’s ability to make progress in its energy transition, while others expressed concerns around the necessity of nuclear support schemes at the EU level. There were also diverging perspectives around how loosening the state aid rules would impact market unity.  

Participants also emphasized the need for European cooperation, especially in building common energy infrastructure. Indeed, renewable energy deployment must go hand in hand with infrastructure investments, such as electricity grids, hydrogen pipelines, and electric vehicle charging stations. Panelists shared the view that, to meet these many goals, Europe would need to strengthen its infrastructure planning capacities, accelerate reforms in project permitting, and scale up access to funding if it is to meet its ambitious decarbonization objectives. Increasing and diversifying the number of long-term energy contracts signed with producers, such as contracts for difference and power purchase agreements, could help incentivize investments in clean power.  

Looking beyond the continent, European participants described the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as a welcomed shift in US climate policy and positive shock for Europe’s own decarbonization efforts. Several participants argued that the IRA would encourage Europe to build its own resiliency in clean industry supply chains and open potential avenues of cooperation with the United States. But European panelists also expressed concerns regarding its impact on European industry due to the law’s national preference rules, seen as discriminatory against European manufacturers, even though the EU offers comparable, but perhaps harder to navigate incentives. This highlighted a remarkable shift in focus from the workshop in Berlin a few months prior, where policymakers and analysts had debated Europe’s capacity to meet energy demand. In Paris, however, the conversation focused not on energy supply, but on low-cost, low-carbon energy as a prerequisite for a competitive industry.  

The Atlantic Council looks forward to continuing this workshop series throughout 2023.  

Transform Europe Initiative

The Atlantic Council’s Transform Europe Initiative (TEI) is a critical element of the Europe Center’s drive towards structural reforms in Europe.

TEI leverages a robust body of work in strategic decarbonization.

Explore the program

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

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The Global Energy Center promotes energy security by working alongside government, industry, civil society, and public stakeholders to devise pragmatic solutions to the geopolitical, sustainability, and economic challenges of the changing global energy landscape.

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The post <strong>Decarbonization solutions for addressing Europe’s green industrial policy challenge</strong>  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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The Atlantic Council, the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and Groupe d’études géopolitiques (GEG) were honored to host “Decarbonization solutions for addressing Europe’s green industrial policy challenge,” a high-level workshop on decarbonization in Paris on March 20. The event promoted an open discussion between policymakers, analysts, and the private sector on Europe’s energy challenges, and to discuss what could be a common approach to on Europe’s energy security and climate challenges, and to discuss what could be a common approach to resolving threats to US-EU solidarity as well as Europe’s internal fissures.

Featuring

H.E. Laurence Boone

Secretary of State for European Affairs

Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the French Republic

Kerstin Jorna

Director General, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW)

European Commission

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Sena Latif

Acting Chief of Mission

Embassy of Romania in Paris

Benoît Potier

Chief Executive Officer

Air Liquide

Laurence Tubiana

Chief Executive Officer

European Climate Foundation

In conversation with

Board director

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky

Vice Chair, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Latin America China

Guntram Wolff

Chief Executive Officer

German Council on Foreign Relations

Transform Europe Initiative

The Atlantic Council’s Transform Europe Initiative (TEI) is a critical element of the Europe Center’s drive towards structural reforms in Europe.

TEI leverages a robust body of work in strategic decarbonization.

Explore the program

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The Global Energy Center promotes energy security by working alongside government, industry, civil society, and public stakeholders to devise pragmatic solutions to the geopolitical, sustainability, and economic challenges of the changing global energy landscape.

learn more

The post Decarbonization solutions for addressing Europe’s green industrial policy challenge appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Europe faced a perfect storm in 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia cut off gas supplies at a vulnerable time for Europe: a combination of low European gas storage levels and hindered domestic production capacities in nuclear and hydropower from climate change-related extreme heat and drought. Participants noted the war has challenged Europe’s prevailing energy and security policies, as well as the continent’s climate prestige and green industrial ambitions. It is also a challenge to achieving Europe’s climate change ambitions and green industrial growth. Several participants argued that Europe now faces a new impossible trilemma: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, maintain continuity in its energy supply, and ensure the survival of industry and affordable energy prices for households. The last issue is especially difficult to navigate, as Europe’s industry is threatened by high energy prices, rendering it uncompetitive against US and Chinese counterparts with access to cheaper fossil fuel energy.

Participants agreed that while the energy crisis has affected individual member states in different ways, the response must be found at the European level. This requires increased coordination within Europe, notably on emergency measures to address the crisis,  simplification of regulatory frameworks, enhanced energy interconnections, and agreements on how various clean energy and low-carbon energy sources can enhance security and decarbonization. In particular, while nuclear energy remained a point of contention, all participants stressed the need to move forward in a constructive and cooperative manner. Panelists widely shared the view that Russian aggression in Ukraine must “shift attention, not the priorities”, meaning that Europe’s climate objectives, in terms of renewable energy generation, energy efficiency and electrification, remain more relevant than ever.

Participants argued that, while Europe now looks to Africa as an alternative supplier of fossil fuels to replace Russian imports, Europe should increase cooperation with the African continent for clean energy imports, green hydrogen, and critical raw materials, all key components of Europe’s decarbonization trajectory. Looking eastwards, participants noted the importance of China in renewable energy supply chains, and warned against the threat that European industry faces in several key sectors including wind, noting China’s long-established near-monopoly in the solar industry as an example.

In 2022, Europe responded to Russia in a decisive manner, ensuring its domestic energy needs were largely met by attracting LNG cargoes (albeit at high prices) and reducing demand. Participants agreed that this was a result of critical policy decisions, combined with beneficial external factors: low demand in COVID-stricken China, and record-breaking warm weather over the European winter. Discussants acknowledged that Europe had narrowly avoided a catastrophe, but that coming winters would provide new challenges and opportunities due to resurgent demand from China and uncertainty over whether future winters will be so mild. In short, the energy crisis of 2022 has offered key lessons for Europe to continue its decarbonization journey.

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“It’s a good incentive… to invest in all these green infrastructures,” Pouyanné said at an Atlantic Council Front Page event on Thursday.

Pouyanné agreed with many Europeans that the IRA is protectionist and undermines the transatlantic relationship, saying that this is part of a “trend” in which the United States, by creating its own rules, seems to be believing less and less in the multilateral trading system built on World Trade Organization agreements. But he also said that the law is a “clear political decision by the United States” made because “they want that green industries will take place on their territory.” For example, he noted, nearly 90 percent of solar panels are manufactured in China, creating “another problem of dependency” for both Europe and the United States in the future.

According to Pouyanné, the United States took advantage of an “opportunity” in the energy transition by passing the IRA, so “let’s do the same in Europe.” To avoid a future in which Europe relies heavily on imports, he said, the continent “must take decisions” to guarantee “that green industries [will] be located in Europe.”

Below are more highlights from the event, moderated by Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe, where Pouyanné discussed the role of oil and gas in the energy transition and the energy impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“No way to escape” natural gas

• Pouyanné said that because this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates is being hosted by a major oil-producing country, “it raises the bar for the whole oil and gas industry… [We have] to engage, as a lot of stakeholders are expecting us to do.”
• At COP26 in Glasgow, US President Joe Biden released a plan to tackle methane emissions from the oil and gas industry; Pouyanné said that TotalEnergies can lower methane emissions by 80 percent by 2030, while keeping an eye on lowering all other emissions from the production process. “If I can produce oil and gas with no emissions, I’ve done my job in production” to cut emissions, he argued.
• “Natural gas is a fundamental energy for the transition” because it emits half the methane that coal does, Pouyanné explained. Natural gas, he added, will also help provide a consistent source of energy to fill the gaps of intermittent wind and solar power while new infrastructure to support energy storage and transmission is brought up to scale.
• This year, with Russia’s war in Ukraine raising questions about the global energy supply, Pouyanné said that the world discovered how important energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability are—and how much reliability depends on gas. “On one side, the Biden administration [said] one year ago, ‘you need to diminish your emissions,’ and then we hear ‘you need to drill more.’” That, Pouyanné said, shows how the world will “need gas for very long.”

The global divide

• While TotalEnergies had invested fifteen billion dollars in Russia, it has begun withdrawing from its Russian investments. “We have impaired almost all of our Russian assets,” Pouyanné explained. “We have step-by-step progressively retracted from almost all of our business in Russia.”
• As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, Pouyanné warned, the West must “be careful” to avoid believing that the rest of the world sees the conflict as a fight between democracy and autocracy. “It’s not the dominant [narrative] today in the Middle East, in Asia, [or] in Africa,” he said, explaining that leaders in the Global South are more focused on developing their economies than the war. He recalled how there have been mixed responses from countries to imposing sanctions on Russia and to voting on condemning Russia in the United Nations.
• Pouyanné noted that he sees a similar division between the West and the rest in the climate debate with each passing COP. “It should not be” so divided, he said, “Let’s avoid antagonism. Let’s keep humility. Let’s listen to these [Global South] leaders.”

Investing in renewables—and fossil fuels

• A day after TotalEnergies posted a record yearly net profit, Pouyanné talked about the French oil major’s plan to spend the increased profits. The company plans to invest sixteen to eighteen billion dollars of its capital, with around five billion going toward low-carbon energies and about twelve billion going toward hydrocarbons. “With twelve billion dollars,” Pouyanné explained, the “objective is to continue to maintain… stable production for this decade and continue to grow our liquefied natural gas business.”
• But, he noted, it will be “very important” to “continue to invest in oil and gas” to keep profits and investments high across the energy sector: “If I can invest five billion dollars in low-carbon energy in 2023, it is because I have made money from oil and gas,” he explained.
• Pouyanné said that the biggest investment opportunities lie in emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and African countries. TotalEnergies, he explained, has invested in new oil fields in Brazil and new projects, including a $3.5-billion pipeline, in Uganda.
• While people in the West “complain about the Chinese influence in Africa,” he said, that influence is growing because of China’s more long-term approach to investing in the continent—rather than exporting natural resources right away.
• The TotalEnergies head said the company will take some of the profits made in Uganda, Mozambique, and elsewhere to “invest in Africa.” That includes the electric grid. “When you don’t have electricity in the country, it is difficult to [improve] economic growth,” he said.
• Pouyanné explained that with technologies such as electric vehicles gaining in popularity, “the oil market at a certain point will begin to decline… this is why we invest in electricity, because this is a growing market.”

Katherine Walla is an associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

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What came of his meetings with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London, and with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris? Will European lawmakers now support hastening Ukraine’s entry into the EU? Will Western tanks beget fighter jets? Below, our experts on the inner workings of European politics break down the meaning of Zelenskyy’s trip and what to expect next from each capital.

Click to jump to an expert reaction

The view from London: Doug Klain

The view from Paris: Marie Jourdain

The view from Brussels: Dave Keating

The view from Berlin: Jörn Fleck

The view from Kyiv: Peter Dickinson

The view from London

Itinerary: arrival at London Stansted airport on Wednesday, speech at Westminster Hall, meetings with King Charles III and Sunak, visit with Ukrainian forces training with the British military in Dorset

Zelenskyy’s surprise visit to London underscored that Britain stands out as one of the few Western European powers able to marshal both the resources and political will to substantially aid Ukraine in pursuit of outright victory over Russia—something Sunak aptly identifies as an explicit shared goal of his government.

Sunak’s statement that “nothing is off the table” shows that the United Kingdom is not letting up after announcing it will send Challenger tanks to Ukraine—now set to deploy on the battlefield in March. Along with sanctions and an “immediate surge” of equipment that will surely aid a coming Ukrainian offensive, what really stands out is the United Kingdom’s plan to train twenty thousand Ukrainian soldiers and marines. This kind of NATO-style training is one of the keys to Ukraine’s success in consistently outmaneuvering a numerically superior but professionally inferior Russian army.

British politicians may well be trying to outdo each other in just how much they can support Ukraine. Within hours of Zelenskyy’s visit concluding, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for the transfer of Typhoon fighter jets for Ukraine to make use of the newly announced training for Ukrainian pilots on NATO fighters. (The suggestion was quickly identified by some experts as less likely to help, since Typhoons are ill-equipped for fighting conditions in Ukraine.) Still, Britain’s military, financial, and rhetorical support is meeting the moment as Ukrainians prepare for what may be a decisive next few months, facing down a likely Russian offensive while preparing their own.

—Doug Klain, a London-based nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Find him on Twitter @DougKlain

The view from Paris

Itinerary: arrival at Paris Orly airport on Wednesday night, dinner meeting at the Elysee Palace with Macron and Scholz, flight Thursday morning with Macron to Brussels

Zelenskyy could not skip Paris in his European tour, and his message Wednesday was clear: Ukraine has weaponry needs, and France has capabilities.

In recent weeks, French strategic communication has evolved regarding the delivery of military equipment to Ukraine. Paris is now more assertive, even as the drivers of the decision about military aid have not changed. The aim is still to avoid escalation, match the Ukrainian operational needs, and preserve French national capacities. But France’s recent decision to send AMX 10-RC armored vehicles is not only significant for what it might change on the battlefield, but also because they were presented in official statements as “tanks,” in part to encourage other allies to move forward with their own tank deliveries to Ukraine. This move reveals that France does not now view these deliveries as unacceptably escalatory and suggests that France is considering Ukrainian requests to send additional weapons that were excluded before. However, it does not mean Paris will actually send its Leclerc tanks, which are very limited in number, unlike the German-designed tanks. Nor does it mean France is any closer to sending Rafale or Mirage jets, even as Zelenskyy’s visit aimed to push French leaders in that direction, as did the visit ten days earlier by Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, who addressed the French National Assembly with a similar message. On jets, Paris’s hesitation is similar to the Biden administration’s thinking: questions about constraints on training, maintenance of the jets, and how they will be used.

Zelenskyy’s quick visit is a reminder that, for Paris, what is at play is not only the necessity for Ukraine to prevail and European stability to be restored, but also the credibility of France as a reliable European military partner able to lead. For Ukraine, it is key to have the continuous support of France when it comes not only to the war but for its future in Europe.

—Marie Jourdain, visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and a former staffer for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy

The view from Brussels

Itinerary: arrival Thursday morning at Melsbroek military airport, where met by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, President of the European Council Charles Michel, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen; address to European Parliament; meeting with twenty-seven European Union (EU) heads of state

While Zelenskyy was mainly focused on weapons delivery during his visits to London and Paris, in Brussels his main message was one of European unity. Ukraine’s place is in the EU, he said, and “a free Europe cannot be imagined without a free Ukraine.” During a joint press conference, Zelenskyy told Michel that he wants to see accession talks with Ukraine begin this year. That requires unanimity among all twenty-seven member states, Michel reminded him. The reality is that EU accession is a long process and, as von der Leyen said Thursday, it has to be “a merit-based process.” There can be no fast track for Ukraine simply out of sympathy. Otherwise, the message sent to the Western Balkans is, “You can only join the European Union if you’re at war.”

The difference between this visit and Zelenskyy’s visits to London and Washington was perhaps best represented by his choice of language. When speaking to the US Congress and British Parliament, Zelensky spoke in English. In all his appearances in Brussels, he spoke only Ukrainian—even though English would have been the natural choice as it is the main working language of the EU. He explained why at his press conference. “The Ukrainian language is part of the European discussion.” Hearing Ukrainian “will be common practice when Ukraine will be part of the European Union.” In the United States and United Kingdom, he was a guest and spoke his hosts’ language. In the EU, he wants to be home. 

—Dave Keating, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and the Brussels correspondent for France 24

The view from Berlin

Itinerary: no stop scheduled

The absence of Berlin among Zelenskyy’s European tour isn’t exactly a snub, as some might have it. Scholz joined Macron and Zelenskyy in Paris, and the last-minute addition of the French capital was likely a concerted effort by Zelenskyy to lock Macron into more meaningful military support than France has thus far provided. For its part, Germany is still the leading EU member state in terms of gross military and financial aid to Ukraine, despite its dithering and delaying on tanks. And following Scholz’s decision to provide Leopard 2 tanks and to let other allies do the same, Ukrainian-German relations seem to be on the up again. A constructive visit by the new German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, to Kyiv a few days ago seems to have underscored this.

The choice to go to Paris, not Berlin, then likely has more to do with what the Ukrainian president hopes to get from France than what he is not getting from Germany. Macron has thus far escaped the fever-pitch of criticism Scholz has faced for his handling of assistance to Ukraine, and Zelenskyy’s visit was paired with an interview in a French daily in which he expressed his confidence that Macron had fully come around to the threat from Putin and Russia—having shown impatience with the French leader in the past for his diplomatic outreach to Putin. Combined with Zelenskyy’s time constraints and the potential for more French support, a preference for Paris over Belin makes strategic sense.

—Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center

The view from Kyiv

Itinerary: return to Ukraine TBA

Zelenskyy’s whirlwind European tour has not produced any immediate breakthroughs in terms of military aid, but Kyiv audiences have been encouraged by positive signals in London, Paris, and Brussels that indicate Ukraine will eventually receive the tools it needs to defeat Russia. There remains considerable frustration in Ukraine over the slow pace of the decision-making process, but the statements that have accompanied Zelenskyy’s visit underline the recent shift toward abandoning earlier red lines and supplying new categories of weapons and equipment. While many Ukrainians have been highly critical of the overcautious approach adopted by many Western leaders, the key message now seems to be that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to arming Ukraine.    

Zelenskyy’s triumphant trip has also underlined the continued strength of international support for Ukraine. This is important at a time when Ukrainians are acutely aware of Russian efforts to weaken Western resolve. Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes the West will eventually lose interest in Ukraine and is counting on war-weary Western leaders to pressure Kyiv into accepting a compromise peace that would allow Russia to retain its Ukrainian territorial gains. In this context, the rapturous applause that followed Zelenskyy from Westminster Hall to the European Parliament was particularly welcome. Many Ukrainians noted gleefully that these scenes must have made for particularly grim viewing in the Putin bunker.

—Peter Dickinson, editor of UkraineAlert

The post The view from European capitals on Zelenskyy’s trip across the continent appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How does France view its own role in Europe on Ukraine? Has President Macron’s position as an alleged “mediator” with Russia changed since the beginning of the invasion? What is public opinion in France on the government’s response to Russia’s war? And how is France responding to talk of a pending geopolitical shift to Europe’s East?

As we approach the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Rachel Rizzo sits down with Brookings Visiting Fellow Tara Varma and Atlantic Council Visiting Fellow Marie Jourdain to discuss the current policy debates in France on Ukraine and the future of European strategic autonomy.

You can watch #AtlanticDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast.

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The post #AtlanticDebrief – How has France’s role on Ukraine evolved? | A Debrief with Tara Varma and Marie Jourdain appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Many critics slammed the IOC decision as a step toward normalizing relations with Russia despite Moscow’s ongoing genocidal invasion of Ukraine. “Ukrainian decathlete Volodymyr Androshchuk will not be representing his country at the Paris Olympics because he was just killed by the Russian armed forces. In other news, the IOC announces that Russian athletes are welcome in Paris,” tweeted Yale historian Timothy Snyder on February 1.

Some went even further. A joint statement from a coalition of Ukrainian athletes and the Global Athlete movement drew attention to Russia’s record of exploiting the Olympics for propaganda purposes. “Russia used the Sochi Olympics to bolster its international standing before annexing Crimea,” the statement highlighted. “Russia has proven time and time again that athletes are an integral part of its foreign policy. If Russian athletes are allowed to return to international competition, the Russian state will again use athletes to bolster the war effort and distract from the atrocities in Ukraine.”

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Anger over the IOC decision reflects global outrage at the brutality of the invasion launched by Russia in February 2022. As the war in Ukraine approaches the one-year mark, the list of Russian atrocities continues to grow. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed and more than ten million people have been displaced by the fighting. Dozens of towns and cities have been reduced to rubble by Vladimir Putin’s advancing army, while regions of Ukraine occupied by Russia have reportedly been subjected to an array of war crimes including mass executions, torture, sexual violence, and forced deportations.

With Russia showing no signs of abandoning its efforts to extinguish Ukrainian independence and force Ukrainians back into the Kremlin orbit, there appears to be little scope for a negotiated settlement that would lead to a sustainable peace. Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that the only way to end the war is on the battlefield. Unless Russia is decisively defeated, the war will continue.

As the Russian invasion enters its second year, it is imperative to maintain support for Ukraine. If the international community starts taking steps to normalize relations with Russia, this could set a dangerous precedent. The Kremlin has long predicted that Western leaders will eventually lose interest in Ukraine and seek to resume cooperation with Russia. Allowing Russian athletes to return to the Olympic Games would send a strong signal that such expectations are entirely realistic. Other authoritarian rulers would also note the West’s apparently short attention span and draw the obvious conclusions for their own aggressive foreign policies.

Opponents of the IOC stance argue that allowing an unrepentant Russia to return to the Olympics is particularly foolish given the long history of failed attempts to appease the Kremlin. Following the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the United States initiated a notorious “reset” of relations with Russia. Meanwhile, European leaders continued to advocate policies of appeasement and pursued deepening economic ties with Moscow right up until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials and their colleagues in the Baltic states, Poland, and other former Warsaw Pact countries advised against these policies for many years but were consistently ignored or accused of exaggerating the Russian threat. With the largest European conflict since World War II now raging in Ukraine, such accusations are no longer valid. If the Olympic authorities choose to ignore the war and insist on the return of Russian athletes, it will strike a powerful blow against international unity in support of Ukraine.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Numerous individual athletes and national sporting associations have already voiced their concerns over the possible return of Russian athletes to Olympic competition. Many also continue to stand with Ukraine. It is important to note that the IOC has demonstrated its support, establishing a solidarity fund to help the Ukrainian Olympic community that had raised $7.5 million by summer 2022.

“Many members of the Olympic community are continuing to make huge efforts to support the Ukrainian Olympic community,” an IOC spokesperson commented recently. “These efforts take the form not just of financial aid but also logistical support and ensuring Ukrainian athletes can continue to take part in competitions by providing travel support, training facilities, accommodation, equipment, and uniforms.”

Support for Ukraine has come from many of the world’s top sporting brands. In the United Kingdom, the English Premier League dedicated one week’s matches during the 2021/2022 season to the people of Ukraine. Numerous individual English football clubs including Leicester City, Leeds United, and West Ham United organized charity events and donations for Ukraine. Across Europe, football clubs have played charity games against Ukrainian teams Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk in order to raise money for Ukrainian causes.

In the world of tennis, top players including Rafael Nadal participated in a charity competition ahead of the US Open. “I’m incredibly proud of the way we were able to use the global platform of the US Open to increase the worldwide tennis community’s support for the Ukrainian people,” USTA Chairman of the Board and President Mike McNulty said on the US Open website.

The support for Ukraine demonstrated by members of the international sporting community is meaningful. However, if Russian athletes are given the green light to participate at the 2024 Paris Olympics, this will send a clear message that the international community is no longer fully committed to opposing the invasion of Ukraine. That would be catastrophic for the Ukrainian people and would also have dire consequences for the future of European security.

Mark Temnycky is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and an accredited freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 28, 2023

Poland is leading Europe’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

By Diane Francis

Poland was the unsung hero of the recent landmark decision by Berlin and Washington to provide Ukraine with tanks as Polish leadership continues to shape the European response to Russia’s genocidal invasion.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

UkraineAlert Jan 24, 2023

Putin is facing defeat in the information war

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s entire invasion of Ukraine has been built on a web of deceit but Putin is now facing defeat in the information war as the gap between the Kremlin’s alternative reality and the real world becomes too big to bridge.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Feb 1, 2023

Europe’s last empire: Putin’s Ukraine war exposes Russia’s imperial identity

By Botakoz Kassymbekova

Vladimir Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine has exposed modern Russia’s unapologetically imperial identity but could yet lead to the collapse of the Kremlin’s broader imperial ambitions, writes Botakoz Kassymbekova.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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The post Russian presence at Paris Olympics risks normalizing Ukraine invasion appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In this context, after tense and drawn-out wrangling among Western allies and partners, Germany has finally agreed to send (and allow others to send) Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, while the United States will provide 31 M1 Abrams tanks. Ukrainians and their supporters have welcomed these long-awaited decisions. Leopard print is now all the rage in Ukraine.

Such decisions are worth celebrating as they were hard fought and will make a difference in saving Ukrainian lives. But while the landmark step of sending tanks demonstrates further Western resolve in support of Kyiv, Ukraine’s partners cannot afford to take a victory lap. Instead, they must remain firmly focused on the work ahead. Tanks are a vital element in Ukraine’s fight, but timing is everything and more is still needed to win the war. Ukraine’s allies and partners must continue to prepare for the long haul in order to defeat Russia.

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In the short term, Ukraine’s Western partners need to ensure the country has what it needs to defend against Russian attacks and launch additional counteroffensives to push back Russian forces. In addition to main battle tanks, the announcement earlier this month by France, Germany, and the United States that they would provide newer infantry fighting vehicles, as well as other countries stepping up to provide critical equipment including Czechia, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, were important steps toward ensuring Ukraine will be able to pack a substantial punch. Meanwhile, Patriot missile systems will further augment Ukraine’s air defense against Russian missile attacks that have terrorized civilians.

While this support is meaningful, there is no time for complacency. Speed in both decision-making and delivery must now be prioritized. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said to the latest Ramstein Format meeting on January 20, “time remains a Russian weapon. We have to speed up.”

New weapons systems will require training and logistical support networks to handle everything from maintenance to refueling. Moreover, Russian forces continue to launch attacks, while their terror tactics remain a major threat to the civilian population and infrastructure. Crucially, Putin’s troops are also digging in and fortifying their positions in an effort to better defend and consolidate their gains.

Ukraine’s Western partners should not stop with tanks and armored fighting vehicles. While tanks have long been a Ukrainian priority, a range of other important items featured on Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov’s wish list before the latest Ramstein meeting, including more air defense systems and systematic ammunition supplies. And just as HIMARS devastated Russian supply depots, transportation nodes, and command centers during summer 2022, setting the stage for Ukraine’s autumn counteroffensives, the United States should now give Ukraine longer range systems and UAVs, including ground-launched small diameter bombs and ATACMS, to better enable Ukraine to lay the groundwork for future counteroffensives.

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The international coalition of nations backing Ukraine’s war effort cannot confine themselves to short-term thinking alone. Evidence suggests Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing for a long war, overseeing the mobilization of new recruits and ordering the country’s defense industry to boost production. Western leaders must make it abundantly clear, in word and action, that Putin cannot wait them out.

It is also vital to consistently and clearly reaffirm and communicate the interests and values at stake in this war. Most notably, Russia under Putin has proven itself to be irredeemably revanchist, undermining European security and flagrantly violating international norms in an unjustified war of aggression. In the long-term, transatlantic security is best served by a strong, committed response to Putin’s aggression.

Furthermore, Western partners need to ensure they are able to produce what is necessary to support Ukraine and account for their own security. There are positive indicators toward this end. For example, a recent New York Times report stated that the Pentagon is planning to substantially increase the monthly production of 155 mm artillery shells, critical for the howitzers Ukraine has used to counter Russia’s artillery advantage. The United States, along with allied and partner governments, will need to continue to work with the private sector to ensure long-term support for Ukraine is feasible.

Finally, Western leaders should prepare for a world in which Ukraine is victorious and Russia is defeated. Indeed, there ought to be shared strategic clarity that this is the desired end state. Fear of the consequences of Russia’s defeat must not delay further support for Ukraine.

A defeated Ukraine would be a disaster, inviting further aggression from Putin once he rebuilds his battered military. That outcome seems less likely at this point, though a hypothetical collapse of Western support in conjunction with a major renewed Russian offensive means it cannot be ruled out. A concession-laden compromise remains more likely, spurred by fatigued Western allies and partners losing the will and capacity to support Ukraine. This, too, would be far from ideal, as it would show Putin (and other autocrats) that aggression can pay, even if it is costly.

The best outcome is one in which Ukraine is victorious and well-positioned to become an integrated part of Western institutions capable of deterring any future aggression. This scenario would see Russia defeated and Putin’s dreams of empire shattered against the steely resolve of Ukraine and its Western partners. With continued and heightened support, there is a viable path to this outcome.

A Ukrainian victory would bring its own uncertainties. What would a defeated Russia mean for the future of Putin and his regime? Would the regime collapse and unleash democracy or a new autocracy? The possibility of instability in a country with massive amounts of nuclear weapons must also be taken into account. These are genuine concerns and Ukraine’s Western partners should be thinking through how to navigate them. It is clear, however, that the devil we know is a callous, genocidal, cosplaying Peter the Great who only stands to destabilize and destroy unless he is stopped for good.

Jeffrey Cimmino is associate director in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Shelby Magid is deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 25, 2023

Scholz tank drama casts unflattering light on Germany’s Russia problem

By Diane Francis

After months of debates and delays, Germany finally succumbed to international pressure on January 25 and announced that it would be delivering German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine and allowing others to do so.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Jan 24, 2023

Putin is facing defeat in the information war

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s entire invasion of Ukraine has been built on a web of deceit but Putin is now facing defeat in the information war as the gap between the Kremlin’s alternative reality and the real world becomes too big to bridge.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Jan 17, 2023

How Europe can help Ukraine defeat Russia and win the peace in 2023

By Andreas Umland

Continued European support for Ukraine will be crucial in 2023 and must feature a combination of intensification and innovation if Vladimir Putin’s invasion is to be decisively defeated, writes Andreas Umland.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Tanks are vital but Ukraine will need much more to defeat Putin’s Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The European Union’s (EU) two sine qua non powers are used to having different views on strategy and policy but working through their differences. Yet for a time late last year, their determination to reach common ground to advance European interests seemed to falter. Their lack of progress on issues from energy and inflation to defense, amid a war raging in Europe and heightened geopolitical tension, impacts the ability for the whole of Europe to remain economically strong and strategically relevant.

US policymakers should care about this particular episode of Franco-German sitcom drama. The Paris meeting will take on higher stakes for the EU and transatlantic unity as Moscow’s war in Europe continues and Washington and Beijing square off. The flurry of visits of top officials between the two countries—plus a joint visit to Ethiopia by their foreign ministers—since the postponement of the summit are a sign that Germany and France intend to restore the dynamic of the partnership; yet the road remains bumpy.   

Both sides’ cabinet officials created this format exactly twenty years ago, and Paris’ decision to postpone the convening from October to now was an unusually blunt diplomatic signal from France that the so-called French-German engine of the EU needed resetting. The effects of diplomacy by Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic on professional relationships, the departure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (who worked with four French presidents during her tenure), and stylistic differences between French President Emmanuel Macron and new Chancellor Olaf Scholz contributed to the estrangement. They also had genuine policy differences, due to the two countries’ divergent energy mixes and economic structures, resulting in visible disputes for months.

At best, Berlin and Paris seemed uncoordinated on defense initiatives—from the Future Combat Air System project to a new German-led initiative for a European Sky Shield Initiative aiming to create an air- and missile-defense system. At worst, Germany seemed to suggest open disregard for French and European interests: It devised its own two-hundred-billion-euro shield against exploding energy prices, in the form of household subsidies and price controls, while resisting French proposals for an EU-wide price cap for fossil fuels. Macron even felt compelled in October to publicly warn Germany not to isolate itself.

Since then, a concerted effort by German leadership to re-engage with its inevitable partners in Paris seems to have reset atmospherics. Scholz’s announcement in Brussels of German support for a natural gas price cap came after French-led revisions to the EU plans to make them more palatable to Berlin. In particular, the Green leadership duo in Scholz’s complicated three-way coalition, vice chancellor and economy minister Robert Habeck and foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, established new rapport and initiatives with their French counterparts. This should not be surprising since, with the notable exception of nuclear policy, the Greens are closest to Macron’s vision for a more assertive EU on the geopolitical stage. 

The stakes in Paris

But at stake for the January 22 meeting is greater alignment and a renewed fruitful dynamic between Europe’s two essential powers over the continent’s place in a fundamentally changing geopolitical and geoeconomic context. US observers should not expect a resolution and grand strategic bargain from the joint cabinet retreat. Yet the ability of this unnatural partnership to deliver, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine, is essential for the transatlantic community.

This summit does not only offer the opportunity to make progress on bilateral issues but is also about making this cooperation relevant to the new strategic context: The Elysée Treaty reconciled long-time enemies and is a milestone in the European project, one of peace. The return of war on the European continent and the exacerbation of strategic geopolitical competition call into question the very identity of Germany’s foreign policy. They also pose fundamental challenges for Europe’s political and economic model, creating the risk of being left behind economically and strategically. The French-German relationship must adapt by redesigning itself to meet these new challenges together and then forge a shared vision for moving forward. Their ability to do so will be key for the future of European and transatlantic policy.

A strong German-French partnership, as desirable as it might be for both countries and Washington, may not appear so for some of their European partners. This is especially true at a time when the legitimacy (let alone capability) of these countries to lead has been questioned by their performance in the lead-up to Russia’s war in Ukraine and cautiousness in supporting Kyiv militarily over the past year.

Yet the dynamic of cooperation remains vital for Europe. While the electoral landscape shifted dramatically in favor of far-right movements in the past few years (more recently in Sweden and Italy) and Brexit made European cooperation with the United Kingdom a headache, the French-German relationship remains a reassuring signal of stability.

Second, any ambitious EU action requires upstream agreement between Berlin and Paris. For instance, reaching compromise made the European recovery plan, the largest stimulus package ever financed in Europe, possible; announcing together (along with Italy and Romania) support for Ukraine’s EU membership candidacy made it much more likely. Keep an eye on the ability for both countries to reach consensus on industrial policy addressing the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a vision for Europe’s future, energy, or China policy—either in the joint statement or at the post-summit press conference.

At the same time, both will have to make sure their partnership is not looking inwards, but instead effectively engaging other European partners. Russia’s war against Ukraine has changed EU dynamics more than many in Paris and Berlin might acknowledge. Europe’s center of gravity is moving eastward, and France and Germany need to successfully work with Central and Eastern Europeans on major questions of Europe’s future.

Finally, both countries should keep in mind that without strong coordination, their respective initiatives are less likely to thrive. The French announcement of a European Political Community, if coordinated with Germany, may not have struggled as much to define its purpose. Germany may find more diplomatic success if it not only consults France ahead of time but also considers Europe more effectively in its decision-making process—as demonstrated by the criticism from Germany’s neighbors of its two-hundred-billion-euro shield against high energy prices.

Bridging economic and geopolitical divides

While German-French cooperation encompasses many policy domains (including between civil societies), two stand out for transatlantic and European policy. The first regards economic cooperation. Following the postponement of their cabinet summit, France and Germany convened high-level meetings and reached significant agreements: Economy ministers Habeck and Bruno Le Maire issued a joint statement calling “for a renewed impetus in European industrial policy… boosting European strategic sovereignty.” A month later, they published a paper called “For a European Green Industrial Policy” to offer a vision for the EU in response to the IRA—which has been widely criticized as protectionist by European leaders.

Yet France and Germany (or more accurately, the German coalition) do not yet share a joint vision on how to make sure the EU leads on green industry. The debate runs hot within the coalition over potential additional joint financing instruments, with the chancellor also under pressure from European partners (which don’t have the same deep pockets as Germany to afford industrial subsidies).

While the IRA has been a necessary wake-up call across Europe, the strategic answer remains to be found—and will require French-German agreement. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced a Green Deal Industrial Plan at the Davos conference this week, but the question of funding remains open, as Germany so far is reluctant to agree to a European Sovereignty Fund.

Other options (which are not necessarily mutually exclusive) range from relaxing state aid rules, adding tax credits, and simplifying EU procedures for investments (especially on breakthrough innovation and infrastructure via the Important Projects of Common European Interest), to developing European green industrial partnerships or ensuring a minimum level of European-made production in strategic sectors, such as clean technologies. While they agree on the need to address the issue of competitiveness, European economies have such diverse needs and capacities that there is a high threshold for reaching consensus. But Franco-German agreement and coordination remains a necessary prerequisite for a European-wide deal.  

Another related key domain of cooperation regards energy policy. On November, 25, both countries issued a “political declaration on Franco-German solidarity.” Both countries made different technological choices on nuclear energy, but there is a need to make progress now on hydrogen policy and to come up with compromise for the EU’s reform of the electricity market, which is currently linking power and gas prices, an untenable position after the surge of gas prices in 2022. The European Commission plans to come up with a market reform this spring after consultations with EU member states, and once again, the ability for Germany and France to find common ground will be critical.

The second item is Europe’s geopolitical strategy. Last year was a rough one for Germany, with its foreign-policy culture fundamentally challenged if not discredited, leading to a makeover with the Zeitenwende. Germany is addressing its energy dependency on Russia, but it is uncertain whether it will address its economic dependency on China—as shown by the much-criticized China trip by Scholz and a delegation of business leaders in November. Paris will be closely scrutinizing the new German strategy on China, which should come shortly after the country’s first-ever national security strategy, which was expected to be released for the Munich Security Conference in February but is likely to be delayed. France has hardened its stance toward China in the past few years but intends to pursue a distinct policy from that of the United States, as Central and Eastern European states have also grown wary of China.

The Zeitenwende, if translated into China policy, could thus provide an opportunity for a more united European policy toward Beijing. Nonetheless, it is Germany’s third dependency that France may be the most wary of—dependency on the United States for its security. While NATO remains the cornerstone of collective security for both countries, France expects Germany to adopt strong language on European strategic sovereignty in its forthcoming national security strategy, including on industrial defense capabilities. Germany may not want to. What France views as military dependency on the United States that weakens the transatlantic relationship, Germany largely sees as part of securing NATO integration and a US presence underpinning the partnership with the United States. Both will have to come to a broad consensus that allows for more European capabilities and the ability to use them without Washington’s direct involvement, while maintaining strong integration with NATO.

Viewed from Washington, the January 22 Franco-German summit may seem like a symbolic reunion to restore a welcome bilateral dynamic with limited wider impacts. But US observers should watch more closely. In the past, the partnership has proven to be essential to the new stability of the European continent and a force breaking taboos of what the EU can and cannot do. Facing a strategic environment that questions the validity of what this relationship can achieve, these two essential EU member states must find common ground, and quickly, on the big challenges facing the EU—from energy security and global competitiveness to defense cooperation and Europe’s future as a geopolitical actor. The United States and its global interests will lose out if Europe, its partner of first resort, remains rudderless and divided on the major strategic decisions of our time. A new alignment between France and Germany is a necessary first step in devising a coherent European response.      

Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and previously worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

Jörn Fleck is the senior director of the Europe Center.

The post Like it or not, Europe can only tackle its big challenges with Franco-German consensus appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Russian forces claim control of strategic Soledar

Tracking narratives

Russian hacker wanted by the FBI reportedly wins Wagner hackathon prize

Frenzy befalls French company accused of feeding Russian forces on New Year’s Eve

Former head of Russian space agency injured in Donetsk, mails shell fragment to French ambassador

Sputnik Lithuania’s former chief editor arrested

International response

New year brings new military aid for Ukraine

Ukrainian envoy to Georgia discusses deteriorating relations between nations

Russian forces claim control of strategic Soledar

Russia said on January 13 that its forces had taken control of the contested city of Soledar. Recent fighting has been concentrated in Soledar and Bakhmut, two cities in the Donetsk region that are strategically important to Ukrainian and Russian forces. Moscow has been trying to take control of the two cities since last summer. Over the past week, Russia has increased its presence on the fronts with the support of Wagner units. Russia wants control of the Soledar-Bakhmut axis to cut supply lines to the Ukrainian armed forces.  

On January 10, Russian sources claimed that Wagner forces had advanced into Soledar. Interestingly, Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin denied the claim and said the forces were still engaged in fighting. Wagner’s presence was established in a camp near Bakhmut. Soldiers from the Wagner Group and other special forces deployed to Bakhmut after other military units had failed to break through the Ukrainian defense.  

On January 11, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said that heavy fighting was taking place in Soledar and that Russian forces had replaced the unit operating in the city with fresh troops and increased the number of Wagner soldiers among them. The same day, Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces had taken control of Soledar. The Ukrainian defense ministry denied the allegation. On January 12, Ukrainian sources shared unconfirmed footage of soldiers driving on the main road connecting Bakhmut and Soledar with Sloviansk and Kostyantynivka to as evidence that the area remained under Ukrainian control.  

Elsewhere, on January 11, the Kremlin announced that Valery Gerasimov would replace Sergei Surovikin as commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. The unexpected move could be interpreted as evidence of a struggle for influence in Russian military circles. Surovikin is considered close to Prigozhin’s entourage, which has criticized senior officers recently, including Gerasimov. Some analysts believe that the change signals a possible military escalation from Russia. 

Furthermore, on January 8, Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian offensive the vicinity of Makiyivka and Stelmakhivka. Further north of Lysychansk, on January 11, Ukraine also repelled an attack on the city of Kreminna. In the neighboring Kharkiv region, aerial threats remain high. On the southern front, the city of Kherson and several cities across the Zaporizhzhia region remain targets of Russian attacks.  

Lastly, a new Maxar satellite image from nearby Bakhmut exemplifies the brutality of war on the frontline in Donetsk. The image shows thousands of craters, indicating the intensity of the artillery shelling and exchange of fire between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

—Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Brussels, Belgium

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russian hacker wanted by the FBI reportedly wins Wagner hackathon prize

In December 2022, the Wagner Group organized a hackathon at its recently opened headquarters in St. Petersburg, for students, developers, analysts, and IT professionals. Wagner announced the hackathon on social media earlier that month. Organizers created the promotional website hakaton.wagnercentr.ru, but the website went offline soon after. A December 8 archive of the website, accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, revealed that the objective of the hackathon was to “create UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] positioning systems using video recognition, searching for waypoints by landmarks in the absence of satellite navigation systems and external control.” Hackathon participants were asked to complete the following tasks: display the position of the UAV on the map at any time during the flight; direct the UAV to a point on the map indicated by the operator; provide a search for landmarks, in case of loss of visual reference points during the flight and returning the UAV to the point of departure, in case of a complete loss of communication with the operator.   

On December 9, Ukrainian programmers noticed that hakaton.wagnercentr.ru was hosted by Amazon Web Services and asked users to report the website to Amazon. Calls to report the channel also spread on Telegram, where the channel Empire Burns asked subscribers to report the website and provided instructions on how to do so. Empire Burns claims hakaton.wagnercentr.ru first went offline on December 9, which tallies with archival posts. However, there is no evidence that reporting the website to Amazon resulted in it being taken offline.   

Snapshots of hakaton.wagnercentr.ru from the Wayback Machine show the website was created in a Bitrix24 online workspace. A snapshot captured on December 13 shows an HTTP 301 status, which redirects visitors to Wagner’s main website, wagnercentr.ru. The Wagner website appears to be geo-restricted for visitors outside Russia. 

On December 23, a Wagner Telegram channel posted about the hackathon, claiming more than 100 people applied. In the end, forty-three people divided into twelve teams attended. The two-person team GrAILab Development won first place, the team SR Data-Iskander won second place, and a team from the company Artistrazh received third place. Notably, one of Artistrazh’s co-founders is Igor Turashev, who is wanted by the FBI for his connection to computer malware that the bureau claims infected “tens of thousands of computers, in both North America and Europe, resulting in financial losses in the tens of millions of dollars.” Artistrazh’s team comprised four people who won 200,000 Russian rubles (USD $3,000). OSINT investigators at Molfar confirmed that the Igor Turashev who works at Artistrazh is the same one wanted by the FBI.  

Wagner said that one of the key objectives of the hackathon was the development of IT projects to protect the interests of the Russian army, adding that the knowledge gained during the hackathon could already be applied to clear mines. Wagner said it had also invited some participants to collaborate further. The Wagner Center opened in St. Petersburg in early November 2022; the center’s mission is “to provide a comfortable environment for generating new ideas in order to improve Russia’s defense capability, including information.”

– Givi Gigitashvili, DFRLab Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

Frenzy befalls French company accused of feeding Russian forces on New Year’s Eve

A VKontakte post showing baskets of canned goods produced by the French company Bonduelle being distributed to Russian soldiers on New Year’s Eve has sparked a media frenzy in France. The post alleges that Bonduelle sent Russian soldiers a congratulatory package, telling them to “come back with a win.” The post quotes Ekaterina Eliseeva, the head of Bonduelle’s EurAsia markets. According to a 2019 Forbes article, Eliseeva studied interpretation at an Russian state security academy.  

Bonduelle has issued several statements denying the social media post and calling it fake. However, Bonduelle does maintain operations in Russia “to ensure that the population has access to essential foodstuff.”  

French broadcaster TV 5 Monde discovered that Bonduelle’s Russia division participated in a non-profit effort called Basket of Kindness, sponsored by the Fund of Presidential Grants of Russia. Food and supplies were gathered by food banks to be delivered to vulnerable segments of the population. However, during the collection drive, Dmitry Zharikov, governor of the Russian city of Podolsk, posted on Telegram that the collections would also serve military families.   

The story was shared on national television in France and across several international outlets. The Ukrainian embassy in France criticized Bonduelle for continuing to operate in Russia, claiming it was “making profits in a terrorist country which kills Ukrainians.”

—Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Brussels, Belgium

Former head of Russian space agency injured in Donetsk, mails shell fragment to French ambassador

Dmitry Rogozin, former head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said he was wounded in Ukrainian shelling on December 21, 2022, at the Shesh hotel in Donetsk while “celebrating his birthday.” In response, Rogozin sent a letter to Pierre Lévy, the French ambassador to Russia, with a fragment of the shell.   

In the letter, Rogozin accused the French government of “betraying [Charles] De Gaulle’s cause and becoming a bloodthirsty state in Europe.” The shell fragment was extracted from Rogozin’s spine during surgery and allegedly came from a French CAESAR howitzer. Rogozin requested the fragment be sent to French President Emmanuel Macron. His message was relayed by Russian news agencies, and on Telegram by pro-Russian and French-speaking conspiracy channels.  

At the time of the attack, Rogozin was accompanied by two members of his voluntary unit, “Tsar’s wolves,” who were killed in the attack, according to reporting from RT, RIA Novosti, and others.  

– Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Brussels, Belgium

Sputnik Lithuania’s former chief editor arrested

On January 6, Marat Kasem, the former chief editor of Sputnik Lithuania, was arrested in Riga, Latvia, on suspicion of “providing economic resources” to a Kremlin propaganda resource under EU sanctions.  

The following day, pro-Kremlin journalists held a small demonstration in support of Kasem in front of the Latvian embassy in Moscow. Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov and politician Maria Butina attended the event. 

The demonstration was filmed by Sputnik and amplified with the Russian hashtag  #свободуМаратуКасему (#freedomForMaratKasem) on Telegram channels operating in the Baltic states, including the pro-Russian BALTNEWS, Своих не бросаем! | Свободная Балтика!, and on Butina’s personal channel. The news of Kasem’s arrest also reached the Russian Duma’s Telegram channel, which re-shared Butina’s post. 

– Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Brussels, Belgium

New year brings new military aid for Ukraine

International efforts in support of Ukraine are continuing in full force in 2023. On January 4, Norway announced it had sent Ukraine another 10,000 155mm artillery shells. These shells can be used in several types of artillery units, including the M109 self-propelled howitzer. On January 5, Germany confirmed it would provide Ukraine with Marder fighting vehicles and a Patriot anti-aircraft missile battery. German news outlet Spiegel also reported that talks are underway to supply Ukraine with additional Gepard anti-aircraft guns and ammunition. 

In addition, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the British government would supply Ukraine with military equipment capable of delivering a “decisive” strike from a distance. At the end of 2022, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace discussed the possibility of transferring Storm Shadow cruise missiles, with a range of up to 250 kilometers. Finland also reported that it is preparing its twelfth package of military assistance to Ukraine.  

US aid to Ukraine is also being reaffirmed with a $2.85 billion package on top of weapon deliveries. Additionally, the US plans to deliver fourteen vehicles equipped with anti-drone systems as part of its security assistance package. The company L3Harris is part of the Pentagon’s contract to develop anti-drone kits. This equipment would help protect Ukrainian civil infrastructure, which has been a frequent Russian target since October 2022.  

On January 6, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would supply Ukraine with units of the light AMX-10RC armored reconnaissance vehicle. These vehicles were produced in 1970 and have been used in Afghanistan, the Gulf War, Mali, Kosovo, and Ivory Coast. The French defense ministry also announced that the country was to deliver twenty units of ACMAT Bastion armored personnel carriers. 

On January 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Presidents Andrzej Duda of Poland and Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania in Lviv. During the visit, Duda announced that Poland would deliver fourteen units of the much-awaited German Leopard combat tanks, and Nauseda announced that his country would provide Ukraine with Zenit anti-aircraft systems. 

Meanwhile, the largest manufacturer of containers for the transport of liquified natural gas has ceased operations in Russia. French engineering group Gaztransport & Technigaz (GTT) said it ended operations in Russia after reviewing the latest European sanctions package, which included a ban on engineering services for Russian firms. The group said its contract with Russian shipbuilding company Zvezda to supply fifteen icebreakers to transport liquefied natural gas was suspended effective January 8.

—Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Brussels, Belgium

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Ukrainian envoy to Georgia discusses deteriorating relations between nations

On January 9, Andrii Kasianov, the Ukrainian Chargé d’Affaires in Georgia, published an article discussing the deteriorating relationship between the two countries. The article stated that the top issues affecting relations were military aid to Ukraine, bilateral sanctions against Russia, visa policies for fleeing Russians, and the legal rights of Mikheil Saakashvili, the imprisoned third president of Georgia, who is also a Ukrainian citizen. 

Kasianov noted that Tbilisi declined Kyiv’s request for military help, specifically for BUK missile systems, which were given to Georgia by Ukraine during Russia’s 2008 invasion. The diplomat said that the weapons request also included Javelin anti-tank systems supplied to Georgia by the United States.  

“Despite the fact that the Georgian government categorically refused to provide military aid, Ukraine opposes the use of this issue in internal political disputes and rejects any accusations of attempts to draw Georgia into a war with the Russian Federation,” Kasianov said. 

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Georgian Dream-led government has accused Ukraine, the US, and the EU of attempting to drag Georgia into a war with Russia.  

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

The post <strong>Russian War Report: Russian hacker wanted by the FBI reportedly wins Wagner hackathon prize</strong>  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

John Herbst: Once again, the weapons are welcome but too long delayed

Marie Jourdain: France leads the way in European security—and could strain relations with Germany

Jörn Fleck: Berlin’s hand was forced by Washington and Paris

Justin Conelli: What another Patriot battery will do for Ukraine

Once again, the weapons are welcome but too long delayed

The news this week that the United States, France, and Germany are providing light armor to Ukraine—not tanks—is a welcome but late step that continues the pattern of Western arms supplies from the three countries to Ukraine. Going back to last winter before Moscow launched its massive invasion, all three countries have hesitated before sending Ukraine the weapons it needs. That started with Javelins and Stingers, and continued with MiG fighters, anti-ship missiles, longer-range artillery (to eighty-five kilometers), and Patriots and other air-defense systems.  

The good news is that supply is becoming more sophisticated. But the slow pace means that the war lasts longer than necessary and desirable. The Biden administration needs to state that its clear objective is to help Ukraine make the Russian presence in Ukraine untenable. The smart way to do that is to provide Kyiv the still longer-range artillery, missiles and drones (to three hundred kilometers), tanks, and aircraft (F-16s) enabling Ukraine to sever the land bridge to Crimea and thereby force a Russian retreat from southern Ukraine, making it extremely difficult for Russia to supply its military and more in Crimea.

—John Herbst is the senior director of the Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.

France leads the way in European security—and could strain relations with Germany

The announcement of France supplying AMX-10 RC light tanks following a phone call between the French and Ukrainian presidents came at a surprising time given that the visit by the French minister of defense to Kyiv just a few days ago provided the opportunity for such an announcement. The French decision and communication in that regard sends clear signals on the evolving French policy in support of Ukraine: Since last February, France has supported Ukraine in all dimensions (including helping to organize the “Standing with the Ukrainian People” conference in Paris) but, to many observers, the military component was falling short. There was little communication around defense issues and limited deliveries, although France did send critical Caesar howitzers and helped fund the European Peace Facility—which has backed the Ukrainian armed forces. 

It is not only significant that France decided to go forward with delivering such military gear without other Western partners (its announcement coming a day ahead of Germany and the United States), but that France emphasized that it is indeed sending tanks. (Whether AMX-10 RCs are actually tanks is an open question for military experts.) 

The delivery may not be the decisive military move to allow Ukraine to face the expected Russian offensive in spring. Instead, it is much more a political move: Coming a few weeks before the French-German Summit, the signal is not good for the two countries’ relationship. It is too soon to tell the impact of French leadership in Europe, but France, more than Germany, seized the importance to demonstrate that a European country can also lead the way forward. Demonstrating its reliability as a partner behind Ukraine is a prerequisite to have its voice heard when the time comes to design a new European security architecture along with Ukraine and NATO allies.

—Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Europe Center and previously worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

Berlin’s hand was forced by Washington and Paris

The German government’s decision to join the United States and France in providing infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine follows a familiar pattern in Berlin’s support for Kyiv—better late than never. The commitment to send a significant number of Marder tanks finally does away with one of Germany’s biggest phantom debates—largely conducted with itself—about the escalation potential of tank deliveries vis-à-vis Moscow. One can only hope Thursday’s coordinated action will focus minds in Germany on what Ukraine actually needs to push back Russia’s aggression. The addition of one Patriot system to the package—one of the more valuable and rare assets of the German armed forces—and talk of more Gepard anti-aircraft guns that have proven effective against Russian drones are a strong sign in the right direction too.

But allies should still temper expectations of a fundamentally new quality of German leadership from the decision to deliver Marders and Patriots amid Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s proclaimed Zeitenwende policy shift. Scholz can say his government stuck to the much-repeated principle of Germany not moving alone and only in conjunction with allies. But in Thursday’s announcement, Berlin once again looked like its hand was forced by Washington and Paris and it did the right, overdue thing only when left with no other options. Voices among Scholz’s Green and liberal coalition partners acknowledge that the Marders should have gone to Kyiv last spring. The strategic and mentality shifts a successful Zeitenwende will require have yet to fully materialize. Or to put it in terms of Scholz’s 2021 domestic campaign promise—that’s not (yet) the German leadership any of his allies ordered. 

—Jörn Fleck is the senior director of the Europe Center.

What another Patriot battery will do for Ukraine

Germany’s recent commitment to provide a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine comes at a time when air-defense capabilities represent Kyiv’s most pressing near-term requirement for Western support. The ruthless Russian strike campaign targeting critical infrastructure and key resources is enacting a terrible toll on Ukraine and its civilian population, which will only accelerate as brutal winter conditions continue to set it. The barrage of ballistic missile and drone strikes not only terrorizes population centers, it also serves to deplete Ukrainian air-defense munition stocks, with Russia often enjoying the asymmetric advantage of relatively cheap loitering munitions being intercepted by very expensive air-defense missiles.  

On the front lines in the Donbas, slow attritional warfare is taking place across more entrenched and defensible positions than previously seen. As Ukrainian air-defense capabilities continue to dwindle, Kyiv will have to make difficult prioritization decisions to either protect cities from Russian strategic bombardment or defend front-line positions. This type of prioritization could allow for more damaging operations by Russian Aerospace Forces in areas left vulnerable by the lack of air defenses. The Patriot missile battery provided by Germany, coupled with the one from the United States (along with a steady supply of munitions), will be critical to Ukraine protecting its cities and securing hard-won positional gains while simultaneously defending against localized offensive operations by Russian forces.

—Justin Conelli is the senior US Air Force fellow in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice.

The post Experts react: Can new French and German weapons turn the tide in Ukraine? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What were the key takeaways from the year-end European Council summit? What were the main wins and roadblocks as the Union heads into the new year? Should the EU be worried about countries like Hungary and Poland continuing to leverage their veto power and exert pressure on European decision-making? What are the potential impacts of the Qatar corruption scandal in the European Parliament to public trust in European institutions and European unity as a whole? What plans are developing in the EU to boost competitiveness and address the US Inflation Reduction Act? What impact will this have on transatlantic trade relations and cooperation in general?

On this episode of #AtlanticDebrief, Europe Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Damir Marusic sits down with Dave Keating, Brussels Correspondent for France24 and Europe Center Nonresident Senior Fellow, to discuss all the developments coming out of the latest #EUCO meeting.

You can watch #AtlanticDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast.

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The post #AtlanticDebrief – What did the European Council summit reveal? | A Debrief from Dave Keating appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In the run-up to the February 2022 invasion, Moscow sought to frame the coming offensive as a rational response to decades of NATO expansion into regions of Central and Eastern Europe formerly dominated by Russia. Kremlin officials declared that Russia felt threatened by NATO and demanded far-reaching security guarantees from the West. These protestations of innocence have continued since the invasion began, with Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials claiming that the growing NATO presence in their neighborhood left Russia with no choice but to respond militarily.

The NATO expansion narrative has been widely embraced by self-styled foreign policy realists and Western apologists for the Putin regime, who have used it to argue that the United States and other NATO members must accept their share of the blame for the carnage in Ukraine. They typically claim that Western encroachment into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence was unnecessarily provocative and inevitably led to a violent reaction.

This argument is superficially persuasive but does not stand up to serious scrutiny. Its most obvious flaw is the assumption that NATO poses any kind of security threat to Russia itself. Far from being a plot to encircle Russia, NATO’s post-Cold War enlargement was driven by defensive considerations on the part of new member states in Central and Eastern Europe, who scrambled voluntarily to join the military alliance in order to protect themselves from the imperial ambitions of a resurgent Russia. In other words, the key factor behind the expansion of NATO was fear of renewed Russian aggression among countries that had only recently gained independence from the Kremlin. Their membership bids required no prompting from Washington, London, or Berlin.

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Opponents of NATO enlargement tend to assume the alliance seeks some kind of military confrontation with Russia. However, this is not supported by the facts, to put it mildly. Indeed, beyond the dark fantasies of the Kremlin propaganda bubble, the entire notion of a NATO attack on Russia is widely recognized as absurd.

Since 1991, NATO officials have sought to build trust with Moscow and have created numerous bodies to promote bilateral dialogue. In the early 2000s, Putin himself even expressed an interest in exploring possible Russian membership. Until this year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the alliance had adopted a highly conservative approach toward the deployment of troops and armor in new member states located closer to Russia, and had made significant efforts to maintain transparency. These are not the actions of an army preparing to attack.

The ultimate proof that NATO poses no military threat to Russia can be found in Putin’s own actions. During summer 2022, Finland announced its decision to end decades of neutrality and join the military alliance. With a shared border of over 1000 kilometers, news of Finnish NATO membership should have sparked a major security crisis in Russia and led to a rapid military build-up to counter this emerging threat. Instead, Putin actually withdrew most Russian troops from the Finnish border zone and redeployed them to Ukraine. Clearly, he understands perfectly well that NATO has no intention whatsoever of invading Russia.

Russian protests over allegedly mounting NATO involvement in Ukraine are similarly unfounded. The alliance famously refused to grant Ukraine a Membership Action Plan in 2008, opting instead for deliberately vague promises of future membership. Since the onset of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, NATO has made no effort to change its cautious stance on Ukrainian membership. On the eve of the current invasion, it was obvious to advocates and opponents alike that potential Ukrainian NATO membership was still decades away.

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If NATO has no intention of invading Russia or offering Ukraine membership, what is all the fuss about? Russia’s displeasure over NATO expansion is genuine enough, but it is not based on any sense of insecurity. Instead, Moscow objects to the fact that it is no longer able to openly intimidate its NATO neighbors. With virtually no soft power tools at its disposal, Russia has traditionally used its military might to project influence throughout the wider region. NATO membership makes this impossible and is therefore bitterly resented.

Russian complaints over NATO enlargement are not only a reflection of Moscow’s frustration. Crucially, these complaints also serve as a highly effective smokescreen for imperial aggression. While Kremlin efforts to portray the attack on Ukraine as an anti-Nazi crusade or a war on Satanism have invited ridicule, attempts to blame NATO have proven far more effective. International audiences conditioned by decades of Western geopolitical dominance have been all too willing to believe that the West must also be somehow responsible for Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine.

While it is perhaps more convenient to point the finger at NATO and the West, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in fact the most brazen act of unprovoked international aggression in Europe since the days of Hitler and Stalin. Putin himself has repeatedly denied Ukraine’s right to exist and has compared his war to the imperial conquests of eighteenth century Russian Czar Peter the Great. He has attempted to annex four Ukrainian provinces and has declared that Ukrainians are in fact Russians (“one people”).

This helps to explain why so many people were upset by President Macron’s talk of security guarantees for Russia. For years, the Kremlin has cynically exploited imaginary security threats as a means of justifying its own acts of international aggression. With his recent comments, the French President risked validating these fake concerns. In reality, of course, it is Ukraine and not Russia that is in desperate need of security guarantees. Echoing the Kremlin’s deliberate disinformation merely serves to embolden Russia and prolong the war.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 1, 2022

Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion proves Russia is no superpower

By Taras Kuzio

Vladimir Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion has dramatically undermined the credibility of modern Russia’s Great Power pretensions and exposed the dysfunctional reality behind the Kremlin’s claims to superpower status.

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UkraineAlert Dec 13, 2022

Vladimir Putin: 2022 Loser of the Year

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Russian leader Vladimir Putin is the biggest loser of 2022. His disastrous decision to invade Ukraine has left Russia internationally isolated and shattered the country’s reputation as a military superpower.

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UkraineAlert Nov 10, 2022

Battle of Kherson: Russian retreat confirms Putin is losing the war

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

The war is still far from over, but Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kherson may eventually come to be seen as one of the key turning points in the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Memo to Macron: Russia doesn’t need security guarantees but Ukraine does appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As French President Emmanuel Macron heads to the United States for a state visit, what is the state of US-French relations? A year after the AUKUS agreement and subsequent diplomatic fallout, how important is the state visit—President Biden’s first—for US-French relations? How will the United States and France stay united in their efforts against Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine while managing differences in approach towards an increasingly assertive China? How much can we anticipate the US Inflation Reduction Act will impact not only US-French and US-European trade relations but also cooperation more broadly? 

On this episode of #AtlanticDebrief, Europe Center Senior Director Jörn Fleck sits down with Georgina Wright, Senior Fellow and Director of Institut Montaigne’s Europe Program, to discuss President Macron’s state visit and US-French relations.

You can watch #AtlanticDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast.

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The post #AtlanticDebrief – What is in store for US-French relations? | A Debrief from Georgina Wright appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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The post Scheunemann in Teles Relay: Ukraine’s application and prospects for NATO membership (in French) appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What are the origins of Europe’s energy crisis?

As concerns continue to grow over Europe’s capacity to endure a winter with less Russian natural gas, Senior Fellow Ben Judah spoke with Dr. Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, on Europe’s energy, climate and geopolitical reckoning. What are the historical origins of Europe’s predicament? Is the current crisis only caused by war in Ukraine? Why have Western Europe politicians become more “energy illiterate” when describing policy objectives? Is this a geopolitical and climate-related reckoning for Europe, in addition to it being an energy security-related reckoning?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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The post #BritainDebrief – What are the origins of Europe’s energy crisis? | A Debrief from Dr. Helen Thompson appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The US dollar has soared against the world’s major currencies this year by 13.5 percent. It reached parity with the euro in July for the first time in twenty years. It has touched 144 yen and 0.86 pounds per dollar, levels unseen since the turn of the century. Such dollar strength can pose problems for the rest of the global economy, and history shows why. 

The United States has been here before. In the early 1980s, the dollar surged by more than 50 percent against other major currencies with no signs of respite. The economic backdrop was comparable to today’s—inflation was high, and some central banks remained reluctant to hike rates while others dared to do so. In response, global economic heavyweights struck an unprecedented deal. The 1985 Plaza Accord stipulated an agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan to jointly intervene in the foreign exchange markets by selling dollars to weaken the greenback. However, similar coordination is unlikely to happen again. Neither China, nor the original participants of the Plaza Accord, are willing to engage in such an agreement today. 

The time-traveling dollar: From the 1980s to the 2020s

Over the past few months, the dollar has reached a relative strength only seen once since 1985. In both the early 1980s and early 2020s, major fiscal spending and rapidly tightening monetary policy generated conditions that facilitated a surge in the dollar’s value. 

In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan implemented tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Simultaneously, the Federal Reserve System (Fed) hiked rates to tame runaway inflation, hitting a high of 19 percent in 1981 before returning to double digits in 1984 after a brief fall in between. But while the Fed was hiking rates, other major central banks darted in the opposite direction. The Bank of Japan slashed its policy rates from 9 percent to 5 percent and the Deutsche Bundesbank from 9.5 percent to 5.5 percent between 1980 and 1984.

In response to the pandemic, President Joe Biden has similarly undertaken expansionary fiscal policy through the American Rescue Plan. As inflation accelerated, the Fed responded by raising interest rates and deploying quantitative tightening. But other central banks have lagged behind the pace and extent of Fed action. The Fed has already hiked rates twice by seventy-five basis points each, while the European Central Bank has only hiked rates by fifty points, and the Bank of Japan has shied away from changing them at all.

The greenback is thus in high demand, and it is hardly a surprise that we have seen a sharp appreciation in the value of the dollar, similar to its surge in the 1980s. Higher returns as a result of higher comparative interest rates, as well as the dollar’s safe haven status during fears of a global recession, have incentivized capital inflow and strengthened the dollar exchange rate.

Don’t expect a Plaza Accord 2.0 just yet

In 1985, the dollar’s strength was hurting American exporters, especially in the auto sector. The US Treasury Secretary at the time, Jim Baker, was open to negotiations that could result in an erosion of the dollar’s strength. The end result was the Plaza Accord. The coordination between the Group of Five economies was highly successful—by the end of 1987, the dollar had more than halved its value against the yen and the deutschmark.

However, you shouldn’t expect a second iteration of the Plaza Accord—at least not yet. 

For starters, the global economy today would be unrecognizable to an observer in 1985. China has emerged as one of the largest trading partners for the United States, the European Union, Japan, and the United Kingdom. While in 1985 it was easier to effectively manage exchange rates with European powers and Japan, an agreement now without Chinese participation would be ineffective as a result of its engagement in a large share of trade with those countries. China has little motivation to cooperate; right now, the yuan is not trading at levels that would force the Chinese to the negotiating table. Though that could change as the yuan falls under increasing pressure as the hawkish Fed puts US monetary policy at odds with that of China, it is unlikely to anytime soon. 

More importantly, there is no political will for such an agreement among the original Plaza Accord participants. Unlike in 2013, when lawmakers pushed for a currency oversight bill, or in 2019, when President Trump demanded the Fed help weaken the exchange rate, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has made clear that she wants “market exchange rates” to determine the value of the dollar. It helps her case that a strong dollar eats away at inflation, which still sits considerably higher than the Fed’s long-running target of 2 percent. Since 2013, the Group of Seven has also committed to non-intervention in currency markets, with a renewed commitment as recently as May 2022. 

Things may look different if the United States enters a recession. It’s possible that inflation ebbs but dollar strength remains, hurting exporters. Indeed, that’s precisely what happened in 1985. In spite of two continuous quarters of negative GDP growth, however, the US labor market remains remarkably strong, suggesting the United States may not be in a recession yet.

A strong dollar is here to stay. So what next?

The upward momentum of the dollar value may fade, but the dollar value will likely settle at a level higher than that at the end of 2021. As in 1985, a stronger dollar will produce winners and losers.

For the United States, the stronger greenback could mildly ease inflationary pressure in the short-term by making imports cheaper. But just like 1985, it will hurt export growth as the US could become a relatively more expensive country to produce in. Dollar strength could also hamper profits of US companies abroad by deflating revenue generated overseas. Corporate growth of large firms could trim down as a result, as Microsoft, Netflix, and IBM have painfully learned. 

As well, the possibilities of imported inflation will make countries other than the United States anxious, even if a persistently strong dollar promotes export growth. Nearly half of international trade is conducted in dollars, even in exchanges not involving the United States. This means most businesses worldwide trade goods across international borders in exchange for dollars, which they must then exchange for their local currency to avail their earnings. As the dollar gained strength in the last few months, traders began to pay more local currency to acquire the same amount of imports as before, thus adding to inflationary pressures on non-US economies. This will especially concern countries that rely on imports for their agricultural needs—such as Egypt and Afghanistan—and for energy needs—such as Europe and Japan. 

The Plaza Accord was an unmatched agreement of economic cooperation that devalued the dollar. It shall remain so as long as China does not participate and inflation concerns persist in the United States. A new reality for the global economy of a strong dollar is on the horizon, and the global economy must prepare for its repercussions. 

Mrugank Bhusari is a Program Assistant with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. Follow him on Twitter @BhusariMrugank

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The post Don’t expect a Plaza Accord 2.0 to reverse the dollar’s surge appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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In reality, Putin’s war is the most unapologetically imperialistic undertaking of the twenty-first century. The Russian dictator seeks to annex entire regions of Ukraine while eradicating all traces of Ukrainian identity and statehood. In order to disguise this genocidal agenda, he employs a range of propaganda myths that have deep roots in the Russian imperial consciousness and reflect modern Russia’s refusal to recognize the reality of an independent Ukraine.

Putin’s favorite myth is the notion that Ukrainians are actually Russians and form part of an indivisible whole (“one people”). In July 2021, he published an entire essay in support of this argument entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” This remarkable document brought together many of Putin’s most shameless distortions including the claim that Ukrainians traditionally saw themselves as Russians and the assertion that modern Ukraine was established on historically Russian lands. “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia,” he wrote. “For we are one people.”

In normal circumstances, it would be tempting to dismiss Putin’s pseudo-scientific imperial narrative as the harmless rant of a delusional dictator. However, his historically illiterate essay was no laughing matter. It was subsequently made required reading for all Russian military personnel and is now widely regarded as an unofficial declaration of war against the continued existence of an independent Ukraine.

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Putin is not the first Russian ruler to insist Ukrainians are in fact Russians. Similar arguments were common during Czarist rule when much of today’s Ukraine was incorporated into the Russian Empire. This continued in modified form throughout the Soviet era with Ukraine and Russia typically portrayed as “brotherly nations.”

Over the past two decades, Putin has taken this propaganda trope to new extremes. He has weaponized the “one people” narrative to demonize any Ukrainians who insist on a separate identity, while at the same time portraying today’s Ukraine as an “anti-Russia” that can no longer be tolerated.

Unsurprisingly, the “one people” concept was always far more popular among Russians than Ukrainians. In the aftermath of Putin’s essay, polls found that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians rejected his claims of historical unity between the two nations. Following the full-scale invasion of their country, the percentage of Ukrainians who now view Russians as a “brotherly nation” has become vanishingly small. With tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed and entire cities reduced to rubble, the myth of “one people” is officially dead.

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Putin’s promotion of fraternal narratives has always been a way of expressing his territorial claims to Ukraine. Legitimizing these claims means whitewashing centuries of imperial oppression. While the close geographical proximity of the two countries means that they inevitably share many features of a common past, the story of Russia’s relations with Ukraine has always been defined by Russia’s aggressive expansion and Ukraine’s struggle for independence.

For hundreds of years, Russian rulers suppressed Ukrainian statehood aspirations while ruthlessly russifying the country. The reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were marked by particularly gruesome atrocities, but there was no single period when Ukrainians were not subjugated in their own land. Indeed, as long ago as 1731, French writer Voltaire was moved to observe, “Ukraine has always aspired to be free.”

Efforts to eradicate Ukrainian identity accelerated during the Soviet era. The early Bolsheviks brutally crushed the fledgling Ukrainian state established in 1918 amid unprecedented bloodshed in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Stalin’s reign then saw the mass murder of Ukraine’s intellectual leadership. The darkest period of all came in the early 1930s when the Soviet authorities engineered a genocidal famine to wipe out the agrarian communities that had for centuries served as the traditional repositories of Ukrainian national culture. An estimated four million Ukrainians starved to death. 

Putin makes no effort to address or excuse these staggering crimes. On the contrary, he simply ignores them while portraying periods of enforced cohabitation as evidence of eternal brotherhood.

Sadly, international audiences still sometimes struggle to grasp the scale of Putin’s cynicism and continue to repeat the Kremlin’s “one people” propaganda. In April 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that he still considers Russians and Ukrainians “brotherly peoples.” Others have echoed Russia’s fraudulent historical claims to advocate for appeasement or undermine international support for Ukraine.

This needs to change. There should be no more talk of a compromise peace or attempts to placate Putin while Moscow is engaged in the genocide of the Ukrainian nation. Instead, the international community must be unambiguous in its rejection of Russian falsehoods and historical distortions.    

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine relies heavily on a series of myths that reflect modern Russia’s failure to break with its imperialistic past. While the rest of Europe underwent decades of turbulent decolonization following WWII, Russia still clings to an anachronistic imperial identity that prevents its own development while exposing its neighbors to the horrors of colonial conquest. The current war in Ukraine is a throwback to an altogether darker era and a painful reminder that if Europe wants lasting peace, it must work toward a post-imperial Russia.

Nestor Barchuk is international relations manager at the DEJURE Foundation.

Further reading

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The post Imperial myths and genocidal realities: 100 days of Putin’s Ukraine War appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 13, Scowcroft Center nonresident senior fellow Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu published a piece in The New York Sun on the new term that has emerged in Ukrainian vernacular – “to do a Macron” – and the history and origins of Macron’s visions for Europe.

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The most high-profile advocate of appeasement so far has been former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who garnered global headlines when he argued at the recent World Economic Forum that Ukraine should be prepared to cede territory to Russia in order to end the war. Likewise, French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a compromise solution and warned against “humiliating” Putin, while his German and Italian counterparts have indicated support for similar positions.

Arguments in favor of appeasement have also become increasingly common in the international media. A May 19 New York Times editorial that spoke of the need for Ukraine’s leaders to make “painful territorial decisions” was one of numerous recent high-profile articles calling on Kyiv to accept the Russian annexation of Ukrainian lands in exchange for peace.

These outpourings of solicitude for Putin are an indication of continued international reluctance to accept the reality of an escalating confrontation with the Kremlin. They also reflect widespread ignorance of modern Russia and a failure to grasp the true nature of the current war.  

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The war unleashed by Vladimir Putin on February 24 is a classic example of unprovoked international aggression. Crucially, the main objective of the war is to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation. This goal has been repeatedly stated by Russian officials including Putin. It is also regularly reinforced by the Kremlin-controlled Russian media, where talk of genocide in Ukraine has become normalized since the beginning of the invasion.

Russian war aims include the elimination of the territorial, political, economic and cultural basis of Ukrainian statehood. Putin himself has often declared that Ukrainians are really Russians (“one people”) and has argued at length that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent and sovereign state. In other words, this is a genocidal war in line with the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention. It is being waged with the explicit intention to “completely or partially destroy a group based on its nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion.”

Confirmation of Russia’s genocidal objectives in Ukraine goes far beyond the unhinged public statements of Putin and his propagandists. During the first three months of the war, evidence has emerged of mass murders, widespread torture and sexual violence designed to hinder future childbirth, forced deportations (especially of children), the destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage, and systematic policies of Russification. In areas occupied by the Kremlin, potential opponents of the Russian takeover have been subjected to Soviet-style round-ups and in many cases remain unaccounted for.

These war crimes are not aberrations but rather a revival of traditional Russian imperial policies toward Ukraine. From the 1708 sack of Ukrainian Cossack capital city Baturyn during the reign of Russian Czar Peter the Great, to the genocidal famine engineered by Stalin in early the 1930s, Russian leaders have a long history of ruthlessly eradicating any manifestations of Ukrainian statehood. Today’s war fits seamlessly into this long and bloody history of Russian imperial aggression.

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As any student of WWII will tell you, attempting to appease genocidal tyrants with territorial concessions is not only morally repugnant but also strategically nonsensical. The only response such figures understand is overwhelming force. The only meaningful objective is their total defeat.

Supporters of appeasement must also recognize that a genocidal war of aggression cannot be accommodated within the existing framework of the international order. Indeed, war crimes on this scale are antithetical to any kind of order whatsoever. Failure to defeat those responsible for such crimes merely accelerates the descent of world politics into the jungle and sets a dreadful geopolitical precedent for the decades to come.

As many commentators have written, it makes no sense to pursue a negotiated settlement over Ukraine’s head analogous to the infamous Munich Pact of 1938.  President Zelenskyy has already forcefully made this point. Nevertheless, we must constantly remind people that in launching this war, Putin broke at least seven solemn international treaties and accords to which Russia is a full signatory. On what basis can we assume that he and his government would observe any new settlement?

Nor is there any indication that Russia is currently seeking to save face or ready to accept a negotiated settlement. Putin has so far refused every “off-ramp” or offer of negotiation because he thinks he can ratchet up the pressure on what he considers to be a decadent West until it gives him everything he wants. Like a mob boss, Putin uses the threat of violence to intimidate his Western opponents. He knows they fundamentally fear a military confrontation and sees each successive appeal for appeasement as proof that his bully-boy tactics are working.   

Those clamoring to dismember Ukraine in order to continue doing business with Moscow need to explain why we should be so afraid of Russia when it is Russia that faces an infinitely stronger alliance. Instead of seeking to negotiate at Ukraine’s expense, the West should focus its energies on making sure Ukraine wins and Russia loses. This is obviously the correct approach for Ukraine itself and for the democratic world in general. It would also ultimately be in Russia’s interest if the country is to finally emerge from its authoritarian prison and follow the path of postwar Germany. 

Appeasing Russia will not end the war or secure peace in our time. On the contrary, it will embolden Putin, prolong Ukraine’s pain, weaken the West, and destabilize the wider world. The entire notion that the current war can be resolved via compromise is a dangerous illusion. Until Russia is decisively defeated, any pause in the fighting will be temporary. Territorial concessions will only whet Putin’s appetite for further conquests while exposing millions more Ukrainians to the Kremlin’s genocidal agenda.

Stephen Blank is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

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The post Memo to Henry Kissinger: Appeasing Putin means enabling genocide appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukraine’s military success has won global admiration but has also sparked alarm among some Western leaders and commentators. French President Emmanuel Macron is the most prominent of the many voices now warning against driving Putin into a corner. Instead, Macron advises leaving the Russian leader an off-ramp.

The off-ramp envisioned by Macron would likely involve a ceasefire enabling Russia to retain at least some of the territorial gains it has made since the invasion began on February 24. Aside from the dubious morality of having their lands traded for peace, Ukrainian officials believe that any such deal would only postpone another round of aggression until Russia rebuilds its forces.

The French leader is far from alone in advocating appeasement. Indeed, Macron’s German and Italian counterparts have also indicated support for similar positions in recent weeks, while a May 19 op-ed by the New York Times editorial board was the latest in a series of high-profile articles in the international media calling for Ukraine to cede territory in exchange for an end to the fighting. These arguments in favor of appeasement are typically framed as foreign policy realism, but in fact they have little in common with Putin’s version of reality and underline the failure of many in the West to understand the true nature of modern Russia.

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Advocates of appeasement often echo the belief that Russian foreign policy is a defensive response to the post-1991 expansion of the NATO alliance into Moscow’s traditional sphere of influence. They appear unaware of the far deeper historical context underpinning the Russian invasion and ignore the fact that imperial Russia had been oppressing Ukraine and other neighbors for centuries before NATO existed. These imperial instincts remained intact throughout the Soviet period and have thrived once more in Putin’s Russia. In other words, the Kremlin’s current aggression fits a culturally well-embedded script that has little to do with the actions of the West.

A related and equally important misunderstanding is the failure to realize that imperialism is necessarily based on racist premises. Russians traditionally categorize Ukrainians either as “Little Russian” loyalists, sly but amusing bumpkins, or irredeemable fascists. Each category is racist in its own right, reflecting the traditional Russian desire to deny Ukrainians agency and identity while also dehumanizing those who are viewed as hostile to Russian rule.

Most Russians simply refuse to recognize that modern Ukrainian society has little in common with the Kremlin’s crude stereotypes and is instead characterized by political secularism and European values. This was the great miscalculation of the Kremlin’s invasion and a key reason for Russia’s military setbacks. Putin appears to have sincerely believed his soldiers would be welcomed with flowers by large portions of a divided Ukraine. Instead, Ukrainians united against him. While Russia’s racism is based on false premises, it cannot be dismissed as it shapes the regime’s behavior.

Arguments in favor of compromise ignore the considerable capacity of Russia’s state bureaucracy for mobilizing hatred. This was put on display in Ukraine by the widespread and militarily superfluous atrocities committed by the Russian army in its areas of occupation and by the persistent terror bombing of residential areas in eastern Ukrainian cities which, incidentally, have large ethnic Russian populations. 

Such conduct is the most persuasive argument in favor of Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations and against appeasement. Countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, which are all infinitely more acquainted with traditional Kremlin practices than Macron and other members of the appeasement camp, were not taken over against their will by an expansionist NATO. On the contrary, they themselves did everything possible to secure membership.

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Talk of appeasing Putin has two unintended but harmful effects on Russia. First, such appeals are enthusiastically echoed by the Kremlin propaganda apparatus to legitimize its victimization narrative, which helps Russians to avoid a self-examination of their dysfunctional notions.

It also forecloses a productive relationship with Russia’s neighbors. In this context it is worth noting the lesson provided by Poland, which historically held parts of Ukraine in situations that produced periodic violence by both sides. Modern Polish politicians and academics are intellectually mature enough to avoid demonizing Ukrainians and to admit that Poles were responsible for their share of the violence. Poles and Ukrainians engage in an honest dialogue and have agreed on the formula “to forgive and ask for forgiveness.” As a consequence, the two countries are now good friends and close allies. In contrast, most Russians would angrily reject the entire proposition of asking Ukrainians for forgiveness.

In the meantime, Russia and neighboring countries needlessly forego the economic benefits that could have come from better relations. The Kremlin could have achieved mutually advantageous trade that would have allowed Russia to continue using Ukrainian gas pipelines to Europe, and Russia’s citizens could have been spared the high cost of bypass pipelines to Europe and the unprofitable Power of Siberia to China. Instead, Russians remain mired in the repressive governance and economic stagnation that are the trademarks of the Putin regime.

Regardless of how the war plays out in Ukraine, Russia is likely to emerge as the biggest loser. Its institutions have been exposed as corrupt and its army is now widely regarded as inept.

The Chinese will be the first to notice this weakness and will call in the financial and political debts that Russia has accumulated. Chinese firms will obtain equity in sanctions-weakened Russian companies. This will accelerate Russia’s transformation into a de-industrialized resource appendage locked to authoritarian China with poor prospects for future democratization.

If Russia retains control over Ukrainian territories, the Kremlin will have to maintain a strong repressive apparatus not only in Occupied Ukraine but also in Russia itself in order to ensure resistance does not spread. Liberalization will be indefinitely foreclosed, to the detriment of ordinary Russians.

At a fundamental level, the Russian public needs to be cured of nostalgia for former imperial possessions like Ukraine before there can be any hope of a lasting peace in the region. However, Western entertainment of the Kremlin’s victimization narrative merely postpones this process.

Through their complicity in Putin’s political course, Macron and other appeasers misjudge the underlying reasons for this course and play a secondary but significant role in Russia’s continued decline. Appeasement is obviously bad for Ukraine but it is also disastrous for Russia itself.  

Dennis Soltys is a retired Canadian professor currently living in Kazakhstan.

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 18, 2022

Putin’s Black Sea blockade leaves millions facing global famine

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports is strangling the country’s economy and also threatening to spark a global food security crisis by preventing Ukrainian agricultural exports from reaching international markets.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

UkraineAlert May 15, 2022

Western advocates of appeasement need a crash course in Putinology

By Anders Åslund

The war in Ukraine has exposed the fundamental failure of international audiences to appreciate the true nature of modern Russia. Western advocates of appeasement clearly need a crash course in Putinology.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert May 17, 2022

Vladimir Putin is running out of options to avoid defeat in Ukraine

By Taras Kuzio

Vladimir Putin expected a quick victory in Ukraine but now finds himself facing a catastrophic defeat that will shatter Russia’s pretensions to military superpower status while threatening Putin’s own authoritarian regime.

Conflict Crisis Management

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Appeasement is the worst possible policy for both Ukraine and Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine?

As international support for Ukraine remains steady in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Kira Rudik, member of the Ukrainian Parliament and leader of the Voice Party, about which of Ukraine’s allies have helped the most. Why does Ukraine view British Prime Minister Boris Johnson so positively? Why isn’t US President Joe Biden viewed as favourably in Ukraine despite consistent US military aid to Ukraine? How does Ukraine view French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

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The post #BritainDebrief – Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine? A Debrief from Kira Rudik appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Farrand quoted in Qantara on Algerian pushback against French language appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What’s at stake in France’s Presidential Election?

As French President Emmanuel Macron maintains a lead ahead of his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Ambassador Gérard Araud, former French Ambassador to the US and Senior Fellow, for #BritainDebrief to discuss how this election will impact France. What is France’s role in NATO? What will happen to the European Union and France-Russia relations if Le Pen wins the election?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – What’s at stake in France’s Presidential Election? | A Debrief from Ambassador Gérard Araud appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What world order comes after Ukraine?

As military aid to Ukraine increases from NATO and major US allies, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Patrick Porter, Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for #BritainDebrief to learn more about how modern alliances will change following the Russia’s invasion. What will happen to Ukraine’s neutrality? What dense web of complexity exists for alliances and sub-alliances in global security?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – What world order comes after Ukraine? A Debrief with Patrick Porter appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Jump to an expert reaction

Gérard Araud: Macron rallies ‘the beavers,’ but French politics are still muddy

Marie Jourdain: Europe was not voting, but Europe was at stake 

Rama Yade: A fragile ‘front’ against the far right holds—for now

Dave Keating: ‘A deep sigh of relief’ in Brussels

Macron rallies ‘the beavers,’ but French politics are still muddy

In most capitals a sigh of relief greeted the clear victory of Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential election. The figures, roughly 58 percent to 42 percent, look uncontestable and impressive.  

The French political situation is actually much more ambiguous than these figures indicate on a first reading. The results of the first round—28 percent for Macron—are a more realistic indication of the popular support of the incumbent. In the second round he has benefited from the rallying of what the French call “the beavers” (who want to build a dam) against the far-right without really supporting him.

To summarize an election more complex than it appears, the majority of the 42 percent who chose Marine Le Pen were not far-rightist but were expressing their anger and resentment against a political and social system they consider twisted at their expense. The 58 percent who voted for Macron were often less supporting him than opposing a candidate who remains unacceptable because of her father—an unreconstructed far-rightist—and of her lack of any executive experience. 

In other words, Macron doesn’t have the mandate that the figures seem to promise. Furthermore, he will need to get a majority in the coming parliamentary elections in June. French voters typically give a majority to the president they have elected; it might be different this time. The French political landscape is a field of ruins: The traditional center-left and center-right parties have collapsed during these elections, and Macron’s centrist La République En Marche, which held the majority in the outgoing House, has not succeeded in establishing roots in the country and has lost all local elections since 2017. Therefore, the left and the right are trying to unite to prevent the president from getting a majority.

It means that French political uncertainties are not over. The worst scenario—a Donald Trump/Brexit moment—has been avoided, but it remains to be seen whether Macron will be able to govern by himself or will have to create a coalition with another party on the left or on the right.

—Gérard Araud is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former French ambassador to the United States. 

Europe was not voting, but Europe was at stake

At the Champ de Mars today, where the partisans of Emmanuel Macron were gathered to celebrate his victory, there were as many French flags as EU ones. The reelected president made clear during his campaign that the European project was at stake, although it remains unclear what part the European issue played for voters. In 2017, Europe as an issue played a decisive role, as leaving the Eurozone was part of Marine Le Pen’s program, and the majority of citizens were not in favor of such a plan. That pledge was not reiterated this time, although her program in 2022 would have challenged the EU with an alternative vision for the bloc. 

As war returned to the European continent and with the result of the election much more uncertain this time, the stakes led European leaders to express their concern: The opinion piece by the German, Spanish, and Portuguese leaders published in Le Monde on Friday was unprecedented. Stating “the choice French people are facing is crucial for France and for all of us in Europe,” they laid out how the trajectory of France is intertwined with their own countries, as all of them are EU (and NATO) members. Given that France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO and the EU, none of its partners is indifferent to the result of the election.

While the war in Ukraine is still raging, and France still holds the presidency of the Council of the EU for two more months, the reelected president has a challenge to find the balance between the demanding international/European agenda and the more domestic concerns expressed by French citizens, knowing that 28 percent of them decided not to vote (a record since 1969).

—Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and previously worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

A fragile ‘front’ against the far right holds—for now

Emmanuel Macron has won a second term. But it’s worth remembering five takeaways:

1. Factoring in those who abstained, 62 percent of voters did not vote for him
2. He was re-elected with 38 percent of registered voters, against 43.6 percent five years ago. 
3. This represents the lowest level of support for a winning president since Georges Pompidou in 1969.
4. Abstention was near record levels.  
5. Exceeding 40 percent for the first time, the nationalists made progress, marking the failure of a president who intended to reduce the influence of the far right in the country.

Once again, the “republican front”—a coalition opposed to the far right—saved Macron, like all presidents elected against the nationalists, but this front is increasingly fragile: The number of supporters of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round who went on to vote for Macron declined by 10 percentage points from 2017, to 42 percent, while Le Pen’s share rose by the same amount, to 17 percent. (The rest sat out or left their ballots blank.)

Even more than in 2017, this election leaves a country divided electorally (this time no longer in two but in three parts) as well as sociologically (with a president supported by retired people, senior executives, and conservatives who want nothing to change). And more importantly, the country is frustrated and angry.

Macron can cope with it just like last time and say only the victory matters. Or he can finally rise to the level that history demands. Because, more than ever, the country cannot afford to lose five years.

—Rama Yade is director of the Africa Center, senior fellow at the Europe Center, and former French deputy minister for foreign affairs and human rights.

‘A deep sigh of relief’ in Brussels

Brussels greeted the news of Macron’s reelection, by a wide margin, with a deep sigh of relief. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sent out a note of congratulations almost immediately. But there is still great unease that, twice in five years now, the EU had to worry about its second-largest country falling to the far right.  

Now people in Brussels are looking ahead to the legislative elections in a few weeks time. The prospect of a divided cohabitation government, where the French president doesn’t have a majority in parliament and the prime minister comes from a different party, would not be welcomed here. It would mean that the ministers in the Council of the EU, the upper house of the EU’s legislature, could take decisions in opposition to France’s representative in the European Council, Macron.  

However, even if Macron is unable to get a majority in parliament, the majority that is formed would likely be made up of the center-left and center-right—and thus unlikely to be in extreme opposition to Macron’s EU policies. But tonight Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left leader who came in third just barely behind Marine Le Pen in the election’s first round, called on voters to make him the next prime minister of France. Le Pen made the same appeal. While a far-left or far-right majority in parliament remains a very distant prospect, were it to come to pass it could lead to gridlock in the EU’s lawmaking process.

—Dave Keating is a nonresident senior fellow at the Europe Center and the Brussels correspondent for France 24.

The post Experts react: Macron wins another presidential term. What now for France, the EU, and the world? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The center held. French President Emmanuel Macron won a second term in office Sunday, with a decisive victory over far-right challenger Marine Le Pen against a grim backdrop of rising inflation and war in Ukraine. Our experts are here to analyze the global ramifications for the European Union, populism, and more—while laying out what’s next for France under Macron.

• Rama Yade (@ramayade): Director of the Africa Center, senior fellow at the Europe Center, and former French deputy minister for foreign affairs and human rights

• Marie Jourdain (@MarieJourdain10): Visiting fellow at the Europe Center and former official with the French Ministry of Defense

• Dave Keating (@DaveKeating): Nonresident senior fellow at the Europe Center and Brussels correspondent for France 24

Eminent ‘front’

• Early returns showed Macron earning around 59 percent of the vote—a healthy victory but short of his 66 percent showing five years ago against Le Pen. “Once again, the ‘republican front’—a coalition opposed to the far right—saved Macron,” Rama says. “But this front is increasingly fragile.”

• That’s because Le Pen was able to peel off more supporters of left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the third-place finisher, for the best-ever showing for the far right—another blow to Macron, who set out to reduce the faction’s influence in the country. Plus, a near-record number of eligible voters abstained from the vote. Rama says this all reflects a country that is “divided” as well as “frustrated and angry.”

• But for those cheering Sunday night, Marie had a keen observation: At Macron’s Eiffel Tower celebration “there were as many French flags as EU ones” because Macron “made clear during his campaign that the European project was at stake.”

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Nerves in Brussels

• Those images were cause for a “deep sigh of relief” in Brussels, Dave tells us. “But there is still great unease that, twice in five years now, the EU had to worry about its second-largest country falling to the far right.”  

• European luminaries went all out to back Macron, including what Marie called an “unprecedented” opinion column in Le Monde by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa calling for French voters to preserve “European values” as freedom and democracy are challenged.

• While Le Pen backed off her 2017 pledge to pull France out of the Eurozone, she still would have “challenged the EU with an alternative vision for the bloc,” Marie tells us. Le Pen advocated for a “Europe of nations,” Marie adds, pushing “the primacy of French law over European law.”

Permanent campaign

• French voters head back to the polls in a matter of weeks to determine Macron’s governing partners, and his party is in danger of losing power in the June parliamentary elections.

• Dave points out that both Le Pen and Mélenchon have asked voters to make them prime minister. “While a far-left or far-right majority in parliament remains a very distant prospect, were it to come to pass it could lead to gridlock in the EU’s lawmaking process,” he says, with France’s leaders at odds with each other in Brussels. 

• As the war in Ukraine continues to rage, Macron hardly gets a breather with his triumph, Marie notes. The challenge for the president, now back at the helm of a permanent member of the UN Security Council and founding member of NATO and the EU, will be “to find the balance between the demanding international/European agenda and the more domestic concerns expressed by French citizens.”

The post With Macron’s victory, the ‘fragile’ center holds in France appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Farrand quoted in Sued Deutsche on changing views on French language in Algeria appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The French leader’s statement is doubly troubling. It ignores the obvious genocidal intent behind Russian war crimes in Ukraine, while at the same time serving as a reminder that European perceptions of Ukraine are still often dangerously distorted by the lingering effects of Russian propaganda. Despite eight years of Kremlin aggression against the country, it seems that some European leaders continue to view Ukraine through a Moscow prism.  

The idea of Russians and Ukrainians as “brotherly nations” is an old Kremlin propaganda trope that has long been used to justify Russian domination over Ukraine. Much like Vladimir Putin’s oft-repeated claim that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” the brotherhood narrative does not imply a partnership of equals. On the contrary, it is implicitly understood to mean that Ukrainians are part of a larger Russian world and should know their place.

When seen from this unapologetically imperialistic perspective, any Ukrainian attempts to assert an independent identity are viewed as acts of direct hostility toward Russia. In other words, talk of Russian-Ukrainian unity is code for the subjugation of Ukraine and has served as the ideological basis for centuries of oppression.

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Given the amount of time he has recently spent speaking on the phone with Vladimir Putin, it is perhaps unsurprising to see Macron parroting Russian disinformation about Ukraine. Nevertheless, he really ought to know better. As long ago as the early eighteenth century, Macron’s illustrious compatriot Voltaire was sufficiently aware of the Ukrainian independence struggle to write, “Ukraine has always aspired to be free.”

Over the intervening three hundred years, Russia has consistently sought to russify Ukraine and erase the basis for a separate Ukrainian identity. The Ukrainian language has traditionally been one of the main focuses of these efforts, with dozens of separate bans and Czarist decrees aimed at eradicating Ukrainian from public life. Russia’s determination to deny Ukraine national status was perhaps most concisely expressed in the Valuev Circular, a secret 1863 imperial decree which declared: “A separate Ukrainian (“Little Russian”) language has never existed, does not exist, and cannot exist.”

Russian efforts to crush Ukraine’s statehood aspirations escalated dramatically in the first half of the twentieth century. The fledgling Ukrainian republic which was established in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution was eventually defeated and absorbed by the Bolsheviks, but memories of this short-lived independence survived and served as a direct challenge to Soviet rule.

A decade later, Stalin moved to decisively end Ukrainian dreams of establishing their own independent state. In the early 1930s, the Soviet dictator turned Ukraine into a giant concentration camp and engineered an artificial famine throughout the country’s agrarian heartlands, leading to the death by starvation of at least four million Ukrainians. Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term “genocide,” saw the forced famine as part of a systematic Stalinist campaign aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian nation, which he described as “the classic example of Soviet genocide.”

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Russia’s centuries-long campaign against Ukrainian statehood and national identity provides crucial context for anyone seeking to understand Putin’s goals in the current war. Indeed, the Russian ruler’s decision to gamble everything on such a high-risk military undertaking only begins to make sense when viewed from the perspective of his Czarist worldview and revisionist imperial ambitions.

Identifying Putin’s intentions is essential in order to determine whether his actions constitute genocide, which is defined by the UN as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” Fortunately, Putin himself has provided ample evidence of his genocidal intent toward Ukraine. For many years, he has publicly denied the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation and argued that Ukraine’s long struggle for statehood was in fact a foreign plot designed to undermine Russia.

In a notorious July 2021 essay on the alleged historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, Putin claimed all Ukrainians were in reality Russians and accused modern Ukraine of occupying historically Russian lands. During a series of unhinged addresses at the start of the war in February, he went even further. Ukraine, Putin stated, was an illegitimate “anti-Russia” run by “neo-Nazis and drug addicts” that could no longer be tolerated. Instead, it must be “de-Nazified.”

The full genocidal meaning of Putin’s words was made explicit in an article published by Russian state press agency RIA Novosti on April 3 which explained that “de-Nazification” actually meant “de-Ukrainianization.” The article went on to claim that the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state in 1991 was the “Nazification” of Ukraine before declaring that anyone who self-identified as a Ukrainian was a “Nazi.” In this depraved vision of a future Ukraine without Ukrainians, the country could no longer be sovereign, nor could it be known as Ukraine.

The genocidal vision outlined by Putin and his propagandists is now being implemented by the Russian military in Ukraine. In the first seven weeks of the conflict, thousands of Ukrainians have already been murdered in a systematic fashion which recalls the darkest chapters of the totalitarian twentieth century.

Sexual violence has also been used as a tool of genocide, with victims reporting that their Russian abusers boasted of traumatizing them deliberately in order to prevent them from giving birth in the future to Ukrainian babies. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to Russia with Ukrainian children adopted by Russian families. All of these crimes qualify as acts of genocide.

Thankfully, international awareness of Putin’s Ukraine genocide is increasing. Macron’s regrettable remarks came immediately after US President Joe Biden had directly accused Putin of being a “dictator” who “commits genocide.” The US leader later doubled down on his comments, stating, “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian.”

Such clarity is certainly welcome but also long overdue. Putin’s genocidal intentions in Ukraine were on public display long before the outbreak of the current war and are firmly rooted in Russia’s imperial past. He is merely the latest in a long line of Russian rulers who have denied Ukraine’s right to exist and is now taking this criminal thinking to its logical conclusion.  

European leaders like Emmanuel Macron must wake up to the enormity of the crimes taking place on the continent’s eastern frontier before it is too late. Time is running out to save a European nation of more than 40 million souls, and history will not be kind to those who fail to act despite ample evidence of Russia’s apocalyptic plans.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Apr 9, 2022

Lend-Lease for Ukraine: US revives WWII anti-Hitler policy to defeat Putin

By Chris Alexander

The United States is reviving the WWII Lend-Lease program which helped defeat Hitler in order to dramatically increase arms deliveries to Ukraine and set the stage for Vladimir Putin’s eventual military defeat.

Arms Control Conflict

UkraineAlert Apr 8, 2022

Perseverance can bring Russian war criminals including Putin to justice

By Thomas S. Warrick

Patience and perseverance are vital as efforts get underway to bring Vladimir Putin and members of the Russian military to justice for crimes against humanity committed during the war in Ukraine.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Mar 28, 2022

No compromises with the Kremlin: Why we must denazify Putin’s Russia

By Kateryna Zarembo

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to be engaged in a crusade to “denazify” democratic Ukraine, but in reality it is his own increasingly authoritarian regime that is in urgent need of “denazification,” writes Kateryna Zarembo.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Memo to Macron: Putin’s Ukraine genocide is not the act of a brother appeared first on Atlantic Council.

A familiar French face-off is back—this time with even higher stakes. After earning more than 27 percent of the first-round vote yesterday, centrist French President Emmanuel Macron will attempt to stave off far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, who garnered 23 percent, in an April 24 runoff. But this rematch of their 2017 contest, which Macron won handily, is shaping up to be much closer amid the war in Ukraine and global economic disruption. Our experts break down Sunday’s results and predict what’s next for France and Europe more broadly.

• Gérard Araud (@GerardAraud): Distinguished fellow and former French ambassador to the United States during the Hollande and Macron administrations

• Marie Jourdain (@MarieJourdain10): Visiting fellow at the Europe Center and former official with the French Ministry of Defense

• Dave Keating (@DaveKeating): Nonresident senior fellow at the Europe Center and Brussels correspondent for France 24

‘A field of ruins’

• If there’s one lesson from the past several years, Gérard tells us, it’s that Macron has failed to resolve the “political crisis” that catapulted him to the presidency in 2017: “French political life is more than ever a field of ruins: Macron is leading a centrist block of nearly 30 percent, but his only credible adversaries are extremists.”

• Also troubling, Marie believes, is an apparent lack of voter interest, which led one-quarter of eligible voters to simply sit out Sunday’s vote. “That is the second-highest abstention [rate] since French citizens started electing their presidents,” she notes.

• Many of those who did vote, Marie adds, seem to have taken a “tactical” approach by choosing the candidate they thought was most likely to perform well rather than their preferred choice. “As such, it is important not to overestimate support for the [leading] candidates’ policies,” she advises.

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Unreal reality

• In Brussels, Dave reports, there is less anxiety over a potential Le Pen victory than in 2017—when the triumphs of Brexit and Donald Trump were still fresh shocks—and even “a feeling of inevitability [about] Macron’s reelection.”

• But this attitude risks lulling officials into complacency, Dave argues. A far-right victory “would be no less of an existential crisis for the European Union now,” he explains. As the EU’s top military force, only nuclear-weapons power, and only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, France under a Russia-friendly Le Pen could completely alter the bloc’s geopolitical trajectory. “The very future of the EU would be in doubt,” he tells us.

• What might that look like? In addition to nixing French sanctions on Russia (in what Dave says would be a “body blow to the West”), Le Pen could join forces with her populist allies in Poland and Hungary to “deconstruct the EU from within” while paring back Paris’s role in NATO. Nevertheless, Dave says, alarmism in Brussels hasn’t reached a fever pitch quite yet. “The attitude right now: Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Second-round rager

• As the runoff campaign kicks off today, Gérard notes, Macron will face the challenge of winning over hostile leftist voters while Le Pen might benefit from continuing her economy-focused strategy without diving too deep into “the most controversial aspects of her far-right program.” Macron’s “victory is anything but guaranteed.”

• And while all other presidential candidates—except those on the far-right—said they wouldn’t vote for Le Pen, Marie adds, it’s unclear whether their constituents will “be on the same wavelength.”

• What’s more, Marie reminds us, the near-term future will also be instructive: “The parliamentary elections in June will be critical for the winner to implement his or her chosen policies.”

The post FAST THINKING: Should Europe brace for a Le Pen presidency? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Experts from our Europe Center are here to break down the results and what they mean for France, Europe, NATO, and the world at large.

Gérard Araud: French politics is a field of ruins

David Keating: Le Pen presents an existential crisis for the EU

Marie Jourdain: The political scene has been shaken since 2017

French politics is a field of ruins

The first round of the French presidential election today has confirmed that Macron has not succeeded during his mandate to respond to the political crisis he had taken advantage of in 2017 to be unexpectedly elected. The far-right and far-left candidates got 53 percent of the votes combined while the traditional political parties, the conservative (Les Républicains) and the socialist (Parti Socialiste), which have dominated French political life for decades, sank to under 5 percent and under 2 percent, respectively. As for the Greens, they have not overcome their problem of credibility to become a mainstream party and are stagnating at a mediocre 4.5 percent.

In other words, French political life is more than ever a field of ruins: Macron is leading a centrist block of nearly 30 percent, but his only credible adversaries are extremists.

For the second round, Macron will again face the Le Pen he decisively defeated in 2017, but the circumstances this year are quite different. In 2017, Macron was a fresh face and had no record to defend; now, he is feeding strong hostility in a substantial part of the public, especially among the leftist voters he needs to win. Le Pen has led a low-key campaign focused on household purchasing power at a moment when inflation is becoming a general concern in the country. She has avoided the most controversial aspects of her far-right program and has been served by the competition on her right from another candidate who made her appear nearly moderate.

All polls show so far that Macron should win but with such a small margin that the result may be reversed in the second round of voting on April 24. His victory is anything but guaranteed.

—Gérard Araud is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former French ambassador to the United States.

The view from Brussels: Le Pen presents an existential crisis for the EU

As expected, the French presidential election’s second round will be a repeat of 2017. But here in Brussels, there is a very different atmosphere, as people watch the election, than there was five years ago. In 2017, fresh off the shock victories of Brexit and then US President Donald Trump, people had intense anxieties about the prospect of a Le Pen victory. This year the French election isn’t being very much discussed in Brussels. Obviously, the war in Ukraine is taking up most of people’s attention. But there also seems to be a feeling of inevitability for Macron’s reelection—a feeling somewhat reinforced by Macron’s somewhat comfortable lead of more than 4 percentage points over Le Pen in the first round, despite recent polls suggesting a possible tie. There were 2.7 percentage points between them in the 2017 election’s first round.

That being said, a Le Pen win would be no less of an existential crisis for the European Union (EU) now than it was in 2017. The timing would probably be even more serious given the war in Ukraine and Le Pen’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. France is the only significant military power in the EU. It holds the union’s only permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and is the only EU member that is a nuclear power. If France were to pull out of the efforts to sanction Russia, it would be a body blow to the West.

The very future of the EU would be in doubt. Le Pen no longer calls for France to leave the EU—almost  all of the far-right in Europe stopped doing that after they observed the effects of Brexit. But she has said she wants to deconstruct the EU from within and that her first foreign visit as president would be to Brussels to demand immediate work on revising the EU treaties. She would join with her allies in the Polish and Hungarian governments to do so. The prospect for NATO is no less gloomy. Le Pen has called for France to pull out of NATO’s integrated command structure “so as to be no longer caught up in conflicts that are not ours.”

Despite the likelihood of this election being a closer race than the one in 2017, there is less anxiety and less attention being paid than five years ago. It may be that people in Brussels just don’t have the bandwidth right now to think about the prospect of a Le Pen presidency, which could very well lead to the collapse of the EU. The attitude right now: Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

—Dave Keating is a nonresident senior fellow at the Europe Center and the Brussels correspondent for France 24.

The political scene has been shaken since 2017

The French people have set up the same match as five years ago, with Macron running for a second term against the far-right Le Pen. The third-place candidate is also the same: Jean-Luc Mélenchon (far-left). So it is all the same? No, the turmoil of the French political scene is real.

The composition of the country’s political forces has been shaken. First, the two historical parties of the French Fifth Republic, which produced seven out of eight presidents since 1958 (Macron being the exception), are not only not in the second round, but they are far from it, with less than 5 percent of the votes. This will cause serious economic consequences for these parties, as public reimbursement for the campaign goes only to those parties that garner 5 percent of the vote. Second, the far-right is the leading political force in the country (around 30 percent of the vote), ahead of the center (Macron’s party with 27 percent) and the divided left (under 30 percent).

Sunday’s vote offers two main lessons: First, the campaign’s lack of enthusiasm translated into a lack of mobilization, with 25 percent of eligible citizens deciding not to vote. That is the second-highest abstention number since French citizens started electing their presidents (although not as high as feared). Second, Macron, Le Pen, and Mélenchon all performed better than in 2017, which is a result of many voters opting for a “tactical” vote. That means that voters, knowing their favorite among the twelve candidates was not likely to win, chose the candidate most likely to perform well. As such, it is important not to overestimate support for the candidates’ policies.

What is next? Except for the other far-right candidates, all the candidates stated that they will not vote for Le Pen. Yet, it is uncertain if their voters would be on the same wavelength. Monday starts a new campaign. In a context where the war in Ukraine still dominates the news, the French people expect the president to engage on the domestic scene and participate in the debates over the next couple of weeks. The remaining two candidates must win over voters who did not vote for them. As such, the result of the second round remains unknown. And whatever the results, the parliamentary elections in June will be critical for the winner to implement his or her chosen policies.

—Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and previously worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

The post Experts react: It’s Macron vs. Le Pen, with Europe’s future on the line appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Meet the final two candidates

The candidates on the issues

Ahead of the runoff, both candidates released their official presidential programs detailing their campaign positions. This is a side-by-side comparison of their positions on key issues.

Crime and public safety

Defense

Digital literacy

Economy and purchasing power

Energy

Environment

Europe

Immigration

Retirement

Social services and education

Expert insights on the election

Understanding the electorate

Heading into the second round of the election, Macron and Le Pen will have to compete to win over the voters who supported the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

These graphics break down the first round of voting by four key indicators: age, education, social class, and geography and indicate which segments of first-round voters supported Mélenchon in significant numbers and must now pick between the two final candidates.

Age

Mélenchon performed best with younger voters receiving 31 percent and 34 percent of the two youngest age ranges, respectively. Macron came out ahead with older voters and Le Pen was favored by those in the middle age ranges.

Education

In the first round, 26 percent of voters with a university degree backed Mélenchon, along with 22 percent of voters with a high school degree. Macron performed best with the most-educated voters, and Le Pen dominated among the least-educated voters.

In France, students take the baccalauréat (le bac) exam at the end of high school to earn a high In France, students take the baccalauréat (le bac) exam at the end of high school to earn a high school degree. Subsequent education levels are measured relative to the baccalauréat, with two years of university equaling the baccalauréat +2 and a college degree equaling the baccalauréat +3. 

Social Class

Mélenchon received approximately one-quarter of the first-round vote from each of the four segments of currently employed workers. Macron carried a commanding percentage of approximately one-third of the votes from executives and pensioners, and Le Pen mirrored those results almost exactly among lower-class workers.

Social class is divided into five tiers on a scale where the laborer class would equal the American lower class and the executive class would equal the upper class.  

Geography

Mélenchon performed best in the suburbs surrounding Paris as well as in those in the south of the country. Macron carried the west of the country and most large cities, and Le Pen performed well in the northeast and southeast in less urban areas.

The French government is divided into 101 administrative departments to oversee local services of the federal government. Hover over each department to learn more about their electoral outcomes.   

Meet the frontrunner candidates

With twelve candidates in the running for the first round, the field is crowded. We have focused on the top five candidates according to aggregate polling. The candidates are organized throughout this dashboard in descending order of their poll numbers as of April 6, 2022.

Aggregate polling

The candidates on the issues

The following quotes come from the candidates’ official Twitter accounts.

Domestic priorities

Explore some of the domestic drivers of the presidential race.

Cost of living

In the French debate, it’s often called pouvour d’achat (purchasing power). How far can a citizen stretch a euro? As the global economy enters a turbulent period, French voters are nervous about their standard of living.

Social protection

Social protection efforts range from healthcare to retirement. In this election, the age of retirement, pensions, and access to medical care are key issues. Some of the candidates mention “annuities” which refers to each year a worker contributes to their pension fund.

Immigration

Though not as dominant as in previous years, immigration is featuring in this election as well. A sizable tranche of voters remain concerned about its impacts on domestic security and French culture.

Crime and safety

Domestic terrorism and crime (referred to in French coverage as délinquance) are of top concern to voters.

Social justice

Societal inequality in the French debate (inégalités sociales) refers to the unfair or discriminatory treatment of minority groups due to their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. This is a polarizing topic and central to the platforms of some of the candidates.

Climate

The candidates agree on the importance of protecting the natural environment but opinions vary significantly on the extent to which climate protection should impact industry, the economy, and the everyday lives of French citizens.

International priorities

Learn more about the candidates’ positions on issues of interest to international observers.

Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is set to redefine the European security order, and has initially unified Europeans in their response. The candidates have different opinions on France’s role in responding to the war, however.

NATO

As a NATO Ally, France is part of the integrated military command structure and is expected to work with other Allies on defense issues. However, there is serious disagreement among the candidates on the value of NATO and if France should even remain in the Alliance. 

European Union

One important topic in this campaign is how France can maintain its sovereignty and what role it should play within the European Union.

Defense

The European security landscape is changing rapidly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the candidates have different ideas on what measures should be taken to protect France at home, and how involved France should be in international conflicts. 

The France-US relationship

France is America’s oldest ally, but also a persistent critic. After the AUKUS announcement and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the candidates have different perspectives on the extent to which France should partner with the United States over pursuing their own strategic autonomy.

Africa

The French military had been in the Sahel for almost a decade to fight jihadism. In recent months, France has announced the end of its campaign in Mali and its ambition to forge a new strategy for engaging Africa.

China

French voters are divided on China. The candidates, too, are wary, but call for different approaches in response to China’s human rights abuses and its emerging alliance with Russia. 

Trade

France is the European Union’s second largest economy but the candidates differ in their opinions of globalization and how much France should rely on trade over self-sufficiency.

The candidates in their own words

These word clouds illustrate which keywords appear most frequently in each candidate’s public addresses, tweets, and statements.

Related content

Experts react Apr 10, 2022

Experts react: It’s Macron vs. Le Pen, with Europe’s future on the line

By Atlantic Council

Our experts break down the results of Sunday’s first round of presidential voting in France and what they mean for Europe, NATO, and more.

Elections Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist Apr 7, 2022

How will Russia’s war in Ukraine reshape the European political scene? Look to France.

By Marie Jourdain

France’s presidential elections this month represent an important barometer of the strength of European populism. Here’s how the war has already shaken the campaign.

Conflict Elections

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The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

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The post French Election Dashboard: Everything you need to know about the presidential race appeared first on Atlantic Council.

All this amounts to a new geopolitical reality that the public was not expecting. Now, voters across the continent are facing opportunities to express their views at the polls in a series of key votes.

In Hungary and Serbia, right-wing leaders Viktor Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić successfully played up their ability to protect their populations in the context of the war, convincingly winning elections last weekend. But the upcoming presidential vote in France on April 10—with a second round held April 24—may be the most significant of the lot, given the size and importance of the country. 

The run-up has been like no other in recent memory. With voters already transfixed by the war, few are paying attention to the electoral contest. The campaign itself has offered little reason for voters to refocus: President Emmanuel Macron, the current front-runner—who announced he would run at the last moment—has spent little time on the trail, while most candidates canceled rallies after the war broke out. As a result, a recent poll found only 62 percent of French people are interested in the campaign, a figure that’s far lower than usual.

How the war influences this election could be instructive far beyond France.

The impact on voters

When the war started, 82 percent of the population claimed to be “concerned” by it, with 65 percent saying it will play an important part in determining their vote.

Another poll asked voters to rank the main issues that will shape their choice. Cost of living remains the top one (52 percent), followed by the war in Ukraine (33 percent) and the environment (28 percent). Normally, domestic issues such as employment dominate such polls, but the shift in priorities—in the 2017 presidential election, no foreign or military issues were among the top concerns—stands to reason: The war has already had tangible consequences on the French economy (the rising price of gas, for instance) and society (around thirty thousand refugees have arrived in France). This means the line between foreign and domestic policy is blurred.

The French public is more or less receptive to the Russian narrative on Ukraine, with one out of two believing at least one of the Russian arguments on the origins of the war—such as the notion that the West is pushing Ukraine into NATO or that Russian-speaking Ukrainians support the invasion. But this does not mean they support Russia, since 78 percent of voters in late February believed the Russian invasion was “illegitimate.” All the candidates have condemned the attack, and now pro-Russian voters—already very skeptical of the political and media system—will need to choose from what is available, or sit out the election completely.

The impact on candidates

For their part, the candidates were required to adapt their electoral strategies and, sometimes, their views as the result of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Macron—seen as a solid crisis manager—has benefited from the rally-around-the-flag effect, and statistics show that voters most likely to rank Ukraine as an important factor in their decision are also more likely to vote for him than any other candidate. As president of the Council of the European Union (EU), Macron is also at the front lines when negotiating with the other European leaders at a time when the EU is playing a major role on energy policy, refugees, and financing the delivery of weapons. Yet the political benefits of Macron’s geopolitical role are starting to ebb as the war is not as urgent for the French public as it was when it started.  

The other candidates were aware of the advantage Macron was earning on the world stage. Valérie Pécresse, a right-wing challenger, convened a “strategic council of defense” in an attempt to burnish her own leadership credentials—but it failed to gain traction when compared to Macron’s real-life global leadership. Still, Macron’s advantage could backfire: Juggling a demanding international agenda and electoral campaigning is a difficult task requiring mental agility. Moreover, his crisis managing means he is spending less time explaining his policy proposals to voters.

Meanwhile, the fact that three of the top five candidates—Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon—had once praised Russian President Vladimir Putin has not translated into a real electoral liability for them. The difficulties for Zemmour are more related to his inability to improve his image and to address the concerns of French voters on the economy. On this, at least, Le Pen is on more solid ground, having devoted much time to campaigning specifically on pocketbook issues. Zemmour also failed to connect on the question of refugees. The promise of keeping foreigners out of France has been a signature issue of his campaign, even as the public has warmly welcomed Putin’s Ukrainian victims. At the opposite end of the political spectrum, Mélenchon is the last real hope for the left, so left-wing voters appear ready to overlook his past comments on Russia.

Showing clear support for Ukraine is a strategy struggling candidates adopted. Yannick Jadot, the Green candidate, has been demonstrating in the streets and attacking French companies still doing business with Russia, including accusing TotalEnergies of being “complicit in war crimes.” But there are limits to this tactic: None of the candidates advocated for a non-fly zone, since no one wants France to become a co-belligerent in the war.

Though all candidates have expressed support for Ukraine, the war has revealed deeper shifts.

For example, Jadot and Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo back the continued delivery of weapons for the Ukrainian military and called for an embargo on Russian gas and coal (not as large a sacrifice for France as for Germany, since it has invested heavily in nuclear power), while all the other major candidates opposed the embargo or did not take sides. Le Pen and Mélenchon, who have argued that France should withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command, have had to admit that the timing for this move was not right. The distrust of NATO also extends to European defense, as the far right remains skeptical of strengthening it. Finally, Macron and Pécresse committed to increase military spending, while the left did not make specific commitments.

The politics of uncertainty

The war in Ukraine has put geopolitics front and center in France as in no other recent election. Yet still, only half the population describe themselves as informed about foreign policy, and there are strong misunderstandings—among voters and some candidates alike—about several issues: what NATO is and does, what nuclear deterrence means, what it means to be at war, what France’s vulnerabilities and points of diplomatic leverage actually are.

Unfortunately, however, this month’s race is unlikely to change any of this—and the potentially record level of abstention, at a time of such grave crisis for the democratic world, is a troubling symptom of the lack of enthusiasm of the French people to make their voices heard.

This election has not sparked any passion, within France or abroad, and has been mostly overshadowed in the news by the war in Ukraine. The far right is now the leading political force in the country, and Le Pen could actually win the presidency. Yet few within France are thinking through the repercussions of such a result on European politics and French diplomatic engagement. The winner of the election will play a critical role within the United Nations, NATO, and the EU, as well as dealing with Russia to shape future European security.

With populist victories in Hungary and Serbia, and inflation breaking records, European unity is at stake in this year’s elections. While all eyes are directed toward Ukraine, looking away from rising populists is not an option.

Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and previously worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

The post How will Russia’s war in Ukraine reshape the European political scene? Look to France. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Can the West Airlift Ukrainian Refugees to Safety?

With estimates of up to 3.5 million refugees flooding out of Ukraine following the Russian military’s invasion, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Gerald Knaus, Chair of the European Stability Initiative, on the feasibility of an airlift of Ukrainian refugees from Poland, Hungary, and Moldova to other parts of Europe and the United States to enable burden sharing. How many refugees will need to be airlifted by the end of the month? How will the Ukrainian refugee crisis look in 6 months?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – Can the West Airlift Ukrainian Refugees to Safety? A Debrief from Gerald Knaus appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Dungan joins Bloomberg to discuss French President Macron’s position as wartime leader appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Can decarbonization disarm Putin’s war machine?

As European countries have reluctantly started to announce programs to be less reliant on Russian oil and gas, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviewed Laurie Laybourn, Visiting Fellow at the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator for #BritainDebrief. What have the UK and Europe announced so far in addressing their reliance on Russian oil and gas? How can the UK and Europe face the new “petro-aggression” from Russia? What long-term steps must be taken in encouraging sustainability to prevent more petro-aggression in the future?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – Can Decarbonization Disarm Putin’s War Machine? A Debrief from Laurie Laybourn appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What impact are Britain sanctions having on Russia?

As Britain joins the global anti-invasion coalition to take increasingly assertive economic actions against Russia, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Dr. Maria Shagina, visiting fellow at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs’ Center on US Politics and Power, for #BritainDebrief. How has British sanctions policy on Russia looked since Brexit? What new leverage can Britain and its allies apply against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – What impact are Britain and Allied sanctions having on Russia? A Debrief from Dr. Maria Shagina appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Is this economic war with Russia?

As a newly-formed anti-invasion coalition forms in the international community and takes increasingly severe economic actions against Russia, Europe Center Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviewed Edward Fishman, former Russia and Europe Lead in the State Department’s Office of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation, for #BritainDebrief. What’s the strategic thinking behind these heavy sanctions against the Russian central bank? Do the sanctions prevent Russia from continuing the invasion?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – Is this economic war with Russia? A Debrief from Edward Fishman appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Friedlander interviewed by France24 on the cost of sanctions appeared first on Atlantic Council.

But the process came to an abrupt halt. The Court of Cassation—France’s highest jurisdiction for civil and criminal matters—ruled on November 24, 2021 that the proceedings launched against C. were illegal. The decision threw all proceedings against Syrian and other nationals suspected of crimes against humanity in France into doubt, undermining the country’s credibility in the fight against impunity. The blow was all the heavier in contrast to the weighty sentence Germany’s regional court in Koblenz was about to hand down to Colonel Anwar Raslan, the former officer of the intelligence services of the Assad regime (who had participated in the torture and murder of prisoners as the head of the investigation unit at a notorious Damascus prison), on January 13.

Other factors made the Court of Cassation’s ruling particularly untimely. Having taken up the presidency of the European Union (EU) Council, a major executive intergovernmental body of the EU, it would have been fitting for France to set an example for its partners. Moreover, the fleeing of the Syrian dictator’s uncle, Rifaat al-Assad, from France in October 2021—despite a jail sentence handed down by a French tribunal—recalled the country’s longstanding complacency towards former dignitaries of the Assad regime.

In recent years, French diplomacy has sought to mobilize the international community in the fight against impunity. It played an active role in ensuring the dissemination of photos documenting regime torture, known as the Caesar Files, while contributing to the formation of the United Nation’s Impartial and Independent International Mechanism, headed by a French magistrate. It supported the commission of inquiry on Syria, and not a week went by without Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian underlining his commitment to the quest for justice. In February 2020, he co-signed a text with other European ministers that vowed: “We will maintain our commitment—notably within the framework of our national jurisdictions—so that the crimes committed in Syria do not go unpunished.”

Another unintended consequence of stopping proceedings against Syrians charged with crimes against humanity was to undermine actions against impunity in relation to the use of chemical weapons. Here too, France has played a pioneering role as the head of the International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, which brings together some forty countries.

For French authorities seeking to formulate an appropriate response, the question was why the Court of Cassation had reached its decision. France has a limited form of universal jurisdiction. A law that passed on August 9, 2010—which incorporated into French law the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court—allows for legal proceedings against individuals residing in France who are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Among the requirements is so-called “double criminality,” whereby French prosecutors can only prosecute crimes when they are expressly criminalized by the state where they were committed, or if that state is a party to the Rome Statute and has, thus, criminalized the conduct by ratifying the treaty. The Court of Cassation noted that this wasn’t the case for Syria, though lower jurisdictions had interpreted it differently.

If France is to remain consistent with its international commitments, the only option for the Emmanuel Macron government is to amend the 2010 law to suppress the “double criminality” requirement. During a debate at the Foreign Affairs Commission on January 18, France’s Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs committed to move in this direction. A statement circulated set out in black and white: “Provided the suitable parliamentary modalities can be found, the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs is resolutely in favor of suppression of the double criminality requirement for crimes against humanity. This suppression would be applicable with immediate effect.”

This position is evidently important. Nevertheless, two obstacles remain. Firstly, the Justice Ministry—not the Foreign Ministry—is responsible for criminal policy. In the months preceding the Court of Cassation’s ruling, the Justice Ministry refused amendments proposed by members of parliament seeking to amend the law. One can only hope that the halt in proceedings on November 24, 2021 will lead the Justice Department to reconsider its position. If nothing else, the Court of Cassation’s ruling has made plain the absurdity of the double criminality requirement. The question remains: how likely is it that a country that commits crimes against humanity will outlaw such crimes or take any possible prohibition of those crimes seriously?

The second obstacle is the parliamentary calendar. Due to the upcoming French presidential election in April, the current parliamentary session will close at the end of February. General elections are due to take place on June 12 and 19 and the new assembly will not hold its first session until October. An extraordinary session could be convened in June or July, but only to deal with urgent domestic affairs. It will, thus, fall upon a new government and assembly to re-examine the 2010 law—no sooner than the end of the year in all likelihood.

Therefore, it’s the responsibility of all those committed to the fight against impunity in France to keep mobilizing so that no more time is lost. It would be a great shame for France to fall behind other countries—in particular its European partners—in the effort to deliver justice to the victims of the Assad regime.

If the scope for changing the course of events in Syria is limited, it’s honorable to take a stand against the abominable crimes of the Assad regime. It would be a great pity for France to be seen as a safe haven for Assad’s accomplices. Nevertheless, today, Abdulhamid C. walks free.

On a political level, convicting those responsible or complicit in the regime’s crimes against humanity serves to erode the legitimacy of the Assad clan. At a time when many countries are moving to normalize relations with Damascus, it’s more important than ever that the regime’s true nature, which plunged Syria into the abyss, isn’t forgotten.

Ambassador Michel Duclos is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and a senior advisor to the Institut Montaigne. Follow him on Twitter: @MrjDuclos. 

The post A perpetrator of Syrian crimes against humanity went free in France. Here’s why it shouldn’t happen again appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“‘Finlandization’ would appear to rule out [the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine] and allow Moscow a heavy hand in Ukrainian affairs — concessions Kyiv and NATO have rejected as unacceptable, ” wrote the New York Times.

“All of this goes against what Ukraine has been striving for,” said Anna Wieslander, director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council. “It would be a big shift from a long-term political aim of joining NATO and joining the EU, which is what they have wanted.”

The post Wieslander on “Finlandization” of Ukraine in New York Times appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“[Putin] does not want to stop negotiating but rather continue increasing his sphere of influence in Europe. It is an interplay between military escalation and negotiations…If nothing happens militarily now, the chances of him taking action may be reduced. However, he can always withdraw and come back in the summer. We just don’t know. He can talk about deescalation all he wants, but he’s the one who is escalating.”

“He has maintained a respectful tone towards Macron. However, in the end, I am convinced [Putin] wants to make a deal with the United States. They are the most powerful countries in the world. If he can strike a deal with the strongest country, Putin can also show that Russia is strong.”

The post Wieslander interviewed on Putin-Macron meeting by Sweden’s “Expressen” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

France holds the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers for the first half of 2022—an ideal perch from which to further its digital ambitions. Along with chairing an endless parade of obscure Council meetings, the French are convening a two-day public conference, starting today, entitled “Building Europe’s Digital Sovereignty.”

Monday’s focus is on “the four pillars underpinning European digital sovereignty: security, innovation, regulation and values, and openness,” reviewing the steps the bloc has taken so far and planning future moves. (“Values” is often code for resisting the long arm of US intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but “openness” is a counter-balancing nod to the EU’s traditional, if weakened, embrace of free trade.) Tuesday will be devoted to “nurturing European champions,” showcasing the continent’s technology entrepreneurs, particularly those from smaller firms.

This isn’t just another manifestation of the EU’s penchant for policymaking-by-conference. Waving the flag of digital sovereignty is good domestic politics for French President Emmanuel Macron, especially as the country’s presidential election approaches. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire and Secretary of State for the Digital Economy Cedric O have been at the forefront of efforts to develop local alternatives to foreign cloud-service providers. Last year, they launched a “trusted cloud strategy” (“cloud de confiance”) setting out criteria for protecting French data from US laws. Companies such as Microsoft and Google have created joint ventures with French partners to offer their services without disruption. France also intends to seek a local successor to Microsoft as host of its COVID-related Health Data Hub (HDH).

But even these measures have proven insufficient to shield governments such as Macron’s from domestic allegations that they’re being too cozy with Big Tech. On January 25, Virginie Joron, a member of the right-wing National Rally party of Macron’s presidential rival Marine Le Pen, denounced the French government’s initial decision to let Microsoft host the HDH. “You have introduced American giants into the data of French administrations, in the very heart of the state,” she declaimed in the European Parliament, according to a Politico report. Valérie Pécresse, a center-right presidential candidate, voiced similar criticism of the role of US tech giants in a recent French parliament address. The French left has chimed in as well.

These domestic steps are matched by a steadily advancing EU digital-policy agenda. In 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen asserted that “it is not too late to achieve technological sovereignty” in critical technology areas. Thierry Breton, a French former technology executive who is now the EU’s top official for the internal market, has played point for measures designed to promote European cloud-service providers and seed continental advances in newer technologies such as blockchain, quantum computing, and semiconductors.   Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition enforcer, has made headlines with her willingness to challenge the business practices of US tech giants.

The Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act—twin efforts to address the economic dominance and social impact of powerful online platforms—are close to legislative enactment. The European Commission has proposed an Artificial Intelligence Act, aimed, among other things, at regulating uses of AI in the areas of education, employment, and public benefits. The EU has already enacted the Data Governance Act, which should improve sharing of government-held data with private sector entities eager to exploit it. A companion bill, the Data Act, due to be proposed later this month, similarly aims to facilitate business-to-business and business-to-government sharing of primarily industrial data.

The concept of digital sovereignty thus plays both an offensive and a defensive role in France’s EU Presidency. By holding conferences and chairing meetings of the grouping’s member states, the Macron government can help push European digital legislation towards conclusion. These efforts, together with domestic initiatives to hobble foreign cloud giants, can also help immunize Macron from the charges of his presidential rivals.

As Frances Burwell and I argued in a paper for the Atlantic Council in June 2020, almost all of the EU’s new digital legislative proposals aim at exercising greater control over Europe’s data. There’s no denying that the idea of digital sovereignty is a driving force in European technology policy debates today. And the ripple effect of decisions taken in Brussels and other European capitals will be felt across the pond.

Kenneth Propp is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

The post France’s new mantra: liberty, equality, digital sovereignty appeared first on Atlantic Council.

United and resolute engagement by the West is essential if we are to avoid catastrophe. A recent survey has identified strong backing among the Western public for an assertive policy in support of Ukraine. We believe this is an important and timely message for Western leaders.

Today, Western leaders are trying to balance firmness with efforts to avoid escalation. Are they prepared to back up diplomacy not only with sanctions but also with military support in a worst-case scenario?

We felt it was important to systematically survey Western public opinion in order to gain a sense of how the public views the current crisis. What policies towards Ukraine do people in Western countries want to see? Will citizens support their leaders in a coherent and firm policy to defend Ukraine?

The six-country study commissioned by the Yalta European Strategy and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation included 600 interviews per country with representative samples of the general population in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Poland.

Across all countries surveyed, though of course with national variations on all issues, the study found that Western populations not only endorse strong diplomatic and economic measures, but also back military engagement to deter Russian aggression and protect Ukraine’s borders. If deterrence fails and Russia invades Ukraine again, Western populations are even more emphatic in their backing for military support from NATO member states.

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Western citizens want to stand with Ukraine and believe that an assertive set of policies can successfully deter Russia. At the same time, they expect Ukraine and its leadership to commit fully to reforms and the elimination of corruption.

Here are some key results of the survey:

Western public support is based on broadly positive attitudes towards Ukraine, and to the idea of the country joining the EU and NATO.

Clear majorities or nearly half of all respondents believe that Ukraine and the West share the same values, including 61% in Poland, 57% in the UK, 56% in Canada, 54% in the US, 48% in Germany, and 47% in France. When asked the same question about Russia, the answer is a clear “no.”

On the question “If the EU/NATO would accept candidates in the next five to ten years, which country should be admitted?” Ukraine ranks top among eleven listed candidate countries. Across the West, majorities consider it important for their home country to support Ukraine, its freedom, and efforts to defend itself. Majorities also see support for Ukraine as important for European security.

Western populations oppose the idea of “sacrificing” Ukraine in order to improve relations with Russia. Only around 15% of respondents feel it is more important to improve relations with Russia than defend Ukraine, with the highest figure being 18% in Germany.

In terms of the present military crisis, majorities or nearly one-half in all six surveyed countries favor NATO allies making a commitment to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression including 66% in Poland, 61% in the US, 61% in Canada, 57% in France, 49% in Germany, and 47% in the UK.

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Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

Through unity and resolve, the West can help defend both Ukraine’s territorial integrity and democratic values. We believe the West has a moral obligation to do so. Western nations have always supported and encouraged Ukraine on its European and Euro-Atlantic path. The West now has a responsibility to stand with Ukraine during this moment of truth.

The recent survey shows that Western citizens will support their leaders if they do the right thing. At the same time, the Western public want their leaders to be tough not only in defending Ukraine, but also in demanding reforms from Ukraine.

There is a consistent belief held by 70% in the UK, 67% in Poland, 63% in the US, 60% in Germany, 55% in Canada, and 53% in France that Ukraine must first get its act together before more substantial long-term support can be given. Western populations sees Ukrainian civil society as the main partners in the pursuit of reforms.

In a moment of grave threat, Western populations are ready to support Ukraine’s right to defend itself and the country’s choice of a democratic future. As Western leaders face up to a great crisis, they have reason to feel their voters will back them up and not hold them back if they adopt principled positions in support of Ukraine.

Carl Bildt is a Member of the Board of Yalta European Strategy. Aleksander Kwasniewski is Head of the Board of Yalta European Strategy. Victor Pinchuk is the Founder and a Member of the Board of Yalta European Strategy. Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a Member of the Board of Yalta European Strategy.

Survey Methodology Statement: Schoen Cooperman Research completed 600 interviews per country in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Poland with representative samples of general population adults, as well as an additional 185 interviews with professionals with higher educations and middle-to-upper incomes in each country, on behalf of Yalta European Strategy and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

Respondents in the secondary sample are defined as professionals working in industries such as technology, business services/consulting, finance, healthcare, law, academia, government, or media & entertainment with post-secondary education or the equivalent in their home country and annual incomes in the upper one-quarter or one-third of the income distribution in their home country. All survey interviews were completed online.

Respondents were reached using random selection procedures and were required to pass a series of screening questions in order to ensure they are adults in the given home country. The margin of error for each general population sample is +/- 4% at the 95% confidence level and +/- 7% at the 95% confidence level for each sample of professionals with higher educations and middle-to-upper incomes.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 25, 2022

Ukrainian diaspora says Canada must do more to back Ukraine against Putin

By Diane Francis

Members of Canada’s large Ukrainian diaspora are growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as their government’s failure to stand with Ukraine as it faces the prospect of a full-scale Russian invasion.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jan 22, 2022

Stop asking what Putin wants and start asking what Ukrainians want

By Mychailo Wynnyckyj

Fears of a major European war have sparked endless speculation over what Putin may want and how the West should react, but Ukraine itself has been largely reduced to the status of bystander in its own national drama.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Dec 11, 2021

Memo to the international media: Putin has already invaded Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

One depressing aspect of Russia’s latest military build-up on the Ukrainian border has been the flurry of headlines posing the same question: will Putin invade Ukraine? In reality, Russia has already invaded Ukraine and the war is now in its eighth year.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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The post Survey: Western public backs stronger support for Ukraine against Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Europe today, as in the aforementioned period, does not have a decisive voice in the great geopolitical issues that will define its future.

Let’s go back to the Algiers of 1943. In June, the French Committee of National Liberation was formed, with Charles de Gaulle as co-chairman and Jean Monnet among the five original members. That summer, the Red Army of the Soviet Union on the Eastern front and the Allied landing in Sicily marked a turning point in relation to Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht. The divide was drawn between the supremacy of the Soviet Union (along with the United States) and the weakness of Europe and of the United Kingdom.

Importantly, at that time, and in line with a deep-rooted, historical tradition, the United Kingdom was considered European only in a broad, fluctuating sense, which also may include Russia. And so, the disputed delineation of Europe’s frontiers (which still hangs over our heads and has paralyzed, to a great extent, coordinated action in the twenty-first century) was already clear in these first designs of the post-war European order. Present, too, was the dilemma (as artificial today as it was then) between Atlanticist affiliation—based on fear of the Soviet protectorate—and Continentalist allegiance—stemming from reticence to the Anglo-American (now, simply American) hegemony.

The idea of building Europe beyond sovereignties (a need as conspicuous today as it proved to be in Yalta) is part of the reflection of the different groups of resistance (Algiers, but Ventotene’s Spinelli as well). The voice of de Gaulle’s Free France, bypassing the Vichy government, took the lead in this quasi-clandestine debate, as the powers that be engaged in dialogue exclusively among themselves. We are now living a painfully similar situation: Russia only recognizes the United States as a direct interlocutor.

In the objectively unfavorable context in 1943, Monnet laid the groundwork for the rebirth of Europe. And his idea, which became history, confronts us today.

It is true that we are not at war; but Monnet’s intellectual scaffolding presumes a state of peace. And although Europe’s challenge is not “rebuilding,” we Europeans have to accept that our survival as a society—one that can determine its future and defend its principles and values, liberal democracy, the rule of law, and multilateralism—depends just as much on collating national sovereignties as it does on a balanced, proactive transatlantic relationship.

It is said that Monnet, in those days of 1943 (the quote is part of a set of meditations dated August 5) paced back and forth, studying a wall map of the “great” Europe, pondering the nature of the structure that could undo the Gordian Knot of “the German question” (with Otto von Bismarck’s unification in 1871, the weight of Germany—stemming from its wealth and population—became a permanent factor of instability). Monnet’s deliberations revolved around how to create a framework that both integrated and disciplined Germany: a “European entity” with an economic and political vocation that he called a “federation.” The equivalent of addressing “the German question” in our days is the search for a single European voice in the three areas which define the twenty-first century: engagement with China, the health of the transatlantic bond, and Russian revisionism.

Let’s start with Beijing, a paradigmatic case of the trademark ambiguity that afflicts us in Europe: Europe seeks, above all, to be “understanding” (is China a “partner,” a “competitor,” or a “rival”?). This ambiguity transcends semantics—it is pure vacillation. Although our discrepancies with China are basic, rooted in disparate ways of seeing the world—the primacy of freedom versus security, citizen versus collective subject—the dispersion of our national interests and policies defies understanding.

Nor are we clear about what we want with the United States. On one side, we have French President Emmanuel Macron with his “we will see” take on US President Joe Biden; on the other, the countries of Eastern Europe that cling to NATO (and, therefore, to the United States) as guarantor of their defense and territorial integrity. And yes, the transatlantic alliance is, as in 1943, of vital importance for Europe. But Europe needs to be clear: The United States does not have the same relevance or the same interests as it did eighty years ago.

Today, it is a fractured society, whose foreign policy “for the middle class” is impregnated with confrontation (because, unlike us Europeans, the United States is clear about what to call its relationship with China). Although in an extreme situation the transatlantic bond would withstand, Europe is low on the totem pole, as was proven by the unfortunate development of the AUKUS storyline.

The urgency, the drama, and the potential catharsis come from Europe’s eastern neighbor. There are many Europeans who, out of ignorance, indolence, or even conviction play into the Kremlin mantra of Russia as a historical victim of hostility—from the outside world in general, and from the West in particular. After a period of weakness caused by the dismantling of the Soviet Union, in this view, Moscow has managed to regain great-power status without any help, despite the incomprehension—if not sabotage—of Europe and the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly leads the patriotic feat of fighting off alleged aggression and threats to the country’s security on its western border, which the United States is accused of having plotted in the aftermath of the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” (the dissolution of the Soviet Union), in the words of the president. This is the philosophy behind his article published last July, which unexpectedly crystallized in Russia’s December 17 ultimatum.

Europe is once again absent from the key conversation surrounding a process that will undoubtedly impact its collective future. Putin has reneged on the Normandy Format and is only addressing the United States. NATO today, after years of European complacency and under-funding, is seen as little more than a multilateralist front for Washington. As for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting, it is a sad fig leaf to (poorly) hide the shame of Europe’s belittlement. The US Deputy Secretary of State’s meeting with the EU High Representative was a consolatory (if appreciated) formal gesture.

Europeans don’t count—not through our institutions and not even through France and Germany, as in the Minsk Accords. Europeans cannot accept the situation. Europe has to participate as the European Union, coordinating the member states, particularly the large ones, not bundled up in the cloak of US power or waiting in the wings.

Europe has to react. Our reality is objectively no worse than the one facing Monnet in August 1943. But we have much to learn from the founding fathers of European integration: ambition of vision, strength of conviction, clarity of exposition, and self-confidence.

A version of this article originally appeared in El Mundo. It has been translated from Spanish by the staff of Palacio y Asociados and is reprinted here with the author’s and publisher’s permission.

Ana Palacio is a former minister of foreign affairs of Spain and former senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank Group. She is also a visiting professor at the Edmund E. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Board of Directors.

The post How Europe can reclaim its voice in the Russia crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This is what we call a difficult start. Released the day after the announcement of the security partnership between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, the European Union’s first strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific had little coverage as the diplomatic crisis rose. With AUKUS the Europeans were not perceived as essential partners of the United States in the region, especially on security issues. Since then, the Biden administration went out of its way to prove the opposite. These diplomatic efforts come also in recognition that the EU engagement in the Indo-Pacific is there for the long run. The EU has proper interests in a region it has been engaging for a long time: the annual trade between the EU and the Indo-Pacific region is the highest between two regions of the world. The novelty of the strategy is thus not that the EU is showing interest in the Indo-Pacific region, where it is already largely active, but that the EU elaborated a common vision. Because the EU has strategic interests there, it intends to step up its engagement, including on security and defense issues.

The EU approach is inclusive, ready to engage relevant partners on matters of shared issues, but values and principles also guide its action. As such, it opens the door for deeper cooperation, or coordination, with the United States. The coming French presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first semester of 2022 presents a great opportunity to turn commitments to deepen such cooperation into action, demonstrating that the transatlantic community can effectively deliver together in the Indo-Pacific region.

The European Union is usually not seen as a global actor in the Indo-Pacific because of a limited awareness of the challenges in a distant region, a diversity of stances regarding China, or cooperation being limited to some areas. By assessing the EU’s strategic interests and vision, the strategy intends to prove the contrary. Through cooperation, mainly by strengthening and diversifying its partnerships, the EU sets its own approach. Implementing the strategy will now be the right way to demonstrate that the EU is the global actor it intends to be in the region.

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The post The EU as a global actor in the Indo-Pacific appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This is the third in a five-part series of Atlantic Council publications calling for the United States and its allies to revitalize the rules-based international system and establish new institutions to strengthen cooperation among democracies to succeed in an era of strategic competition.

The first, Present at the Re-Creation: A Global Strategy for Revitalizing, Adapting, and Defending a Rules-Based International System, sets forth an overarching global strategy for the United States and its allies that focuses on the need to strengthen cooperation among democracies, while simultaneously seeking to engage other global powers in areas of common interest.

The second, From the G7 to a D-10: Strengthening Democratic Cooperation for Today’s Challenges, proposes the creation of a new D-10 as a core group of leading democracies to develop joint strategies for addressing today’s most pressing global challenges.

This report makes the case for an Alliance of Democracies and draws on relevant sections from these two publications.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Oct 30, 2019

Present at the re-creation: A global strategy for revitalizing, adapting, and defending a rules-based international system

By Ash Jain, Matthew Kroenig

We need a new strategy—one that is both ambitious and innovative, geared towards meeting the challenges and opportunities that the new decade brings.

China NATO

Report Jun 8, 2021

From the G7 to a D-10: Strengthening democratic cooperation for today’s challenges

By Ash Jain, Matthew Kroenig

With the rules-based democratic order under threat, leading democracies need to develop common strategic approaches that pool their collective influence to confront today’s challenges.

Australia Economy & Business

Executive summary

On December 9–10, President Joe Biden will host a Summit for Democracy, a virtual event to which the leaders of more than one hundred democracies worldwide have been invited. The summit is aimed at setting forth an affirmative agenda for “democratic renewal” and tackling “the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action.”¹ This will kick off what the administration is calling a “year of action,” which will culminate in a second summit, this time in person, approximately one year later.

The summit convenes at a time when democracy is facing unprecedented challenges. Autocratic powers, particularly China and Russia, have become more assertive in challenging key tenets of the global system, each in their own ways but increasingly aligned, as they engage in coercive tactics to expand their influence.² Meanwhile, democracies are on the defensive as they seek to contend with these global threats. Many nations, including the United States, face deeply polarized electorates and increasing distrust in institutions among their own citizens. As Biden has highlighted, the world is in the midst of a fundamental debate—an inflection point—between “those who argue that autocracy is the best way forward” and “those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting [today’s] challenges.”³

To succeed in this new era, the United States and its democratic allies and partners must strengthen cooperation. Working together, leading democracies retain a preponderance of power over China and other revisionist autocracies that would allow them to decisively shape global outcomes. But they need new institutions, formal and informal, that are fit for purpose, and reflect the evolving global distribution of power and the nature of today’s challenges. While institutions created in the post-World War II era, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), have convened democracies for decades, most are segmented by geographic region. But this system of institutions requires adaptation and renewal to address the challenges of today’s world. The United States and its allies need new entities that facilitate cooperation not just in specific regions, but among larger groups of democracies worldwide.⁴

An Alliance of Democracies could play an essential role in this regard. It would serve as a political alliance aimed at forging common threat assessments and coordinating strategies among democracies to position the free world for success in the growing strategic competition with revisionist autocratic powers. The alliance would help foster cooperation to defend against a wide range of threats to democratic countries, counter authoritarianism, and advance shared interests and values.

Support for closer alignments among democracies is building. In hosting the Group of Seven (G7) summit earlier this year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to advance the idea of a D-10 club of democracies.⁵ Lawmakers in the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada have expressed support for new coalitions of democracies, and the “traffic light coalition” that will form a new government in Germany explicitly referenced support for initiatives such as an “Alliance of Democracies” in a recent policy paper.⁶ In the United States, proposals for closer cooperation among democracies have drawn bipartisan support among lawmakers in Congress.

In addition, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley were joined by distinguished former officials from nineteen democracies worldwide—including former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, and former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi—in endorsing a Declaration of Principles that called for partnerships that bring together likeminded governments, including “a potential new alliance of free nations” to advance a rules-based order.⁷ A call to create such an alliance was also made by signatories to the Copenhagen Charter for an Alliances of Democracies, issued earlier this year, which includes the heads of the National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute, and International Republican Institute.⁸

Biden’s call for a Summit for Democracy and the underlying rationale for convening such a summit—advancing democratic cooperation in the context of a global struggle between democracy and autocracy—could help propel the idea of an alliance forward. The administration’s plan for a series of summits—one this year and one next—could engender habits of cooperation among democracies, providing the building blocks for a sustainable network of democracies. If these summits continue on an annual basis, they could serve as a de facto alliance, leaving the door open to a more formalized entity down the road.

This report explains why an Alliance of Democracies is needed today, and how the leaders of the free world should act to bring this concept into reality. It describes the strategic context for the creation of such an alliance, its potential mission and organizational structure, and its proposed membership – initially, perhaps thirty or forty consolidated democracies that share concerns about challenges to the free world and are committed to taking action. The report proposes specific areas around which to prioritize alliance action. It addresses concerns that have been raised about an Alliance of Democracies, and contends that the strategic benefits of such an alliance outweigh the costs, including the political and diplomatic capital that would be required to create it. The report describes how an Alliance of Democracies could galvanize meaningful cooperation on global challenges and help restore confidence in the free world.

Lead authors

Former staff

Ash Jain

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Europe & Eurasia Indo-Pacific

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post An Alliance of Democracies: From concept to reality in an era of strategic competition appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Can Britain and France get on?

How does the French establishment feel about UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson? Which of France’s main foreign policy objectives currently match those of the UK? Does Brexit still cast a shadow of UK-European relations?

To get a broader perspective, Europe Center senior fellow Ben Judah interviewed Georgina Wright, a senior fellow and director of the Paris-based Institut Montaigne’s Europe Center for #BritainDebrief.

Why did Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron’s relationship deteriorate so much? Could track II negotiations between the UK and France be the first step in mending their relations?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – Can Britain and France get on? A debrief from Georgina Wright appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Often deployed side-by-side, both countries are well aware of the challenges posed by climate imbalance, both in adaptation and in mitigation, and their militaries are among the few taking it increasingly into account in their strategic thinking, operational planning, and capability building. While the US Department of Defense released its Climate Adaptation Plan and Defense Climate Risk Analysis Report last month—with a Sustainability Report and Implementation Plan yet to come—France has published several strategies of its own in recent years related to green defense and climate security, most recently the defense energy strategy and a plan to preserve biodiversity. Back in 2015, it launched the Observatory on Defense and Climate to analyze the geopolitical and security issues created by climate change. Still, France does not have a comprehensive strategy encompassing all the dimensions of climate security. The next bilateral strategic dialogue between France and the United States could thus address this issue. It would send the political signal that climate security is a high-level priority and lead to bilateral working groups between experts. It would provide the opportunity to share assessments on the impact of climate change on threat analysis to foster common understanding. These kinds of discussions would nurture strategic thinking in both countries, influencing the forthcoming US National Defense Strategy and helping the French Ministry for the Armed Forces to finally produce a proper climate defense strategy.  

Both countries took a step in the right direction to foster cooperation this month at the Paris Peace Forum, where they signed a “joint statement on climate change and the armed forces” along with twenty-three other countries by acknowledging the need “to play our part in combatting climate change as well as preparing our forces for the impacts of climate change and the energy transition.” Indeed, both sides recognize the need for cooperation: In 2015 France organized the first international ministerial convention on climate and defense, while a soon-to-be-created role at the US Department of Defense will oversee climate change response and may be particularly committed to engaging its partners across the world. Now there is a need to translate these statements into concrete action.

While both countries are prepared to engage their partners in building the necessary capacity to jointly address the hazards of climate change, they must ensure coordination through regular dialogue to ensure these investments are allocated in the most efficient way.

Any enhanced bilateral cooperation should also include other partners, whether NATO, the European Union (EU), or other regional bodies. Both France and the United States already participate in the Pacific Environmental Security Forum—which brings together Pacific nations’ militaries, civilian agencies, and non-governmental organizations to forge environmental solutions. The United States and France should favor increased climate cooperation between the EU and NATO, and at the moment both organizations are stepping up (with the EU Climate Change and Defense Roadmap and NATO Climate Change and Security Action Plan for instance). In this joint effort, the EU could be considered as a NATO strategic partner. The United States and France should also officially support the Canadian proposal to host a NATO Center of Excellence on Climate and Security. This center could be designed like the Hybrid Center of Excellence based in Finland, which is a platform for both NATO and the EU.

Meanwhile, adapting their missions, infrastructure, equipment, and training to the effects of climate change is another challenge for the US and French armed forces. Here’s how they can improve on each point:

1. Missions: French and US armed forces often lead Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations and will do so more in the future. To do so effectively, each country needs to know what capabilities the other has—and where they’re located—to deliver military assistance during fires, hurricanes, or other natural disasters. The difficult coordination of operations among the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom after Hurricane Irma hit the Caribbean in 2017 led to the creation of the Multinational Caribbean Coordination Cell, aimed at streamlining air and sea efforts to deliver aid. Wherever the need might arise, France and the United States, along with other partners, could foster such flexible cooperation to better coordinate their capabilities. France and the United States could lead such an effort in the South Pacific, for instance, an opportunity for renewed cooperation in the Indo-Pacific in the post-AUKUS context.

2. Infrastructure: Risk assessments of infrastructure are a priority for both countries. France is especially concerned about its overseas installations in the South Pacific and West Africa, where the effects of climate change are greater. For its part, the United States will also complete a climate exposure assessment of all its major installations abroad by April 2022. There is much to gain from increased dialogue on how to conduct such analyses, particularly about how to limit the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.

3. Equipment: On this challenge, taking into account climate change’s impacts must play a greater part in designing and modernizing key equipment, from soldiers’ clothing to sonar devices. While the French General Directorate for Armament is currently considering this issue, the US Department of Defense also acknowledges that mission success “will depend on… forces, equipment, and capabilities engineered to adapt to and withstand more extreme environments.” The two countries could thus find synergies in industrial cooperation.

4. Training: The French military has already participated in five exercises with Arctic countries in extreme-cold conditions, and it was the second-largest participant (apart from host countries Sweden, Finland, and Norway) in the Arctic Challenge 2019 exercise. The United States, which trains regularly in such conditions, was the largest. In May the Pentagon also held the first edition of its climate and environmental security tabletop exercise, Elliptic Thunder. Future exercises should include greater participation of allies and partners, according to Annalise Blum, a senior advisor for climate at the Pentagon.

Both the United States and France are determined to move forward after AUKUS by enhancing cooperation. They are also already committed to tackling climate change at the security level, keeping in mind that operational efficiency must be preserved at all times. Cooperating on climate security, while beneficial to their strategic thinking and future operations, can strengthen this critical bilateral partnership.

Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and previously worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

The post Climate security can help bring the US and France together once again appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This month’s topline events

Biden at the G20. On only his second overseas trip as president, Joe Biden joined the leaders of the world’s most powerful economies in Rome for the annual G20 Leaders’ Summit. While Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin were notably absent (joining virtually instead), the G20 endorsed a previous agreement to set a global corporate minimum tax of fifteen percent and agreed to boost the global COVID vaccine supply.

• Shaping the order. Biden’s presence at the G20 and his administration’s efforts to drive forward the global tax accord showcased American leadership on the global stage. But the absence of any significant new commitments, particularly on the climate front, highlighted the difficulty of garnering consensus on key challenges in an increasingly fractious international system.
  
• Hitting home. The global tax deal could discourage US companies from sheltering revenue in offshore tax havens and relocating facilities overseas, potentially preserving American jobs.
  
• What to do. While the G20 provides an important venue to engage with global powers, the Biden administration should continue to bolster cooperation with likeminded democracies in other venues where action is more likely to succeed.

Defending Taiwan. For the second time in two months, Biden stated the United States was committed to defending Taiwan in the event of an attack by China – a position that would depart from a long-held US policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan. A White House spokesperson later suggested the remarks did not signify a change in policy. Separately, Taiwan’s president acknowledged for the first time the presence of US troops on the island for training purposes, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned the US and its partners not to interfere in Taiwan’s affairs.

• Shaping the order. Biden’s pledge to defend Taiwan, despite being walked back, suggests the US may be preparing the ground for an eventual shift in policy from “strategic ambiguity” to “strategic clarity” on Taiwan – a move that Beijing will almost certainly view as provocative but one that could help deter a future Chinese attack.
  
• Hitting home. Deterring an attack against Taiwan would help preserve regional peace and avoid a potential military confrontation, which could have far-reaching economic impacts.
  
• What to do. The administration and Congress should continue to move toward a policy of strategic clarity to defend Taiwan against any potential attack, while bolstering the military capabilities of Taipei and other US allies in the region.

Assad’s Revival. After years of diplomatic isolation, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was invited to speak with Jordan’s King Abdullah for the first time since the regime began its brutal crackdown against a popular uprising in 2011. Other Arab states, including Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, moved to revive diplomatic and economic ties as Assad continues to consolidate his grip on power.

• Shaping the order. Throughout the Syrian uprising, the Assad regime has engaged in a campaign of violent oppression and committed mass atrocities against its own people, including through the use of chemical weapons, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Yet the recent flurry of diplomatic engagement with Syria suggests that if their crackdown is successful and they wait long enough, violent dictators can be re-legitimized – a serious setback to the advance of a rules-based democratic order.
  
• Hitting home. Assad’s revival could bolster support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, increasing the threat of violence against Americans and US allies in the region.
  
• What to do. The US should maintain its policy of isolation and sanctions against Syria until the regime is held accountable for its atrocities, and should strongly encourage US allies, including in Europe and the Arab world, to hold the line on normalizing relations with Damascus.

Quote of the month

“At this moment, the global political landscape is undergoing drastic change. Free and democratic countries around the world have been alerted to the expansion of authoritarianism, with Taiwan standing on democracy’s first line of defense. …The situation in the Indo-Pacific region is becoming more tense and complex by the day …[D]emocratic countries are working to strengthen our broad-based, mutual cooperation in order to respond to regional and global developments.”

– Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s National Day speech, October 10, 2021

State of the Order this month: Unchanged

Assessing the five core pillars of the democratic world order    

Democracy ( ↓ )

• As noted, Jordan’s King Abdullah spoke with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the first time since the Syrian uprising began, as other Arab states welcomed re-engagement with Damascus, despite the regime’s commission of mass atrocities and use of chemical warfare against civilians.
• Sudan’s military seized power, arresting the country’s prime minister and dissolving the transitional government, sparking widespread protests and undermining Sudan’s fragile transition toward democracy.
• The United States rejoined the UN Human Rights Council, three years after former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal, as the Biden administration seeks to strengthen US support for human rights.
• On balance, the democracy pillar was weakened.

Security ( ↓ )

• According to Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, China has tested a hypersonic missile designed to evade America’s missile defense systems, a move that he described as very close to a “Sputnik moment.” A new Pentagon assessment also indicated that China will likely have at least 1,000 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2030, a significant expansion from the 200 warhead arsenal it possessed last year.
• US officials issued new warnings about China’s ambitions to develop artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could give Beijing a decisive military edge and eventual dominance over key economic sectors.
• China and Russia held joint naval drills in the Pacific Ocean, an indication of the two nations’ growing political and military alignment.
• Russia shut down its mission to NATO, after NATO expelled eight members of the Russian delegation, alleging they were working as undercover spies. 
• In light of these developments, the security pillar was weakened.

Trade ( ↑ )

• The US and EU reached an agreement to suspend steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and began discussions on a more sustainable pathway to resolve the issue.
• As noted, the G20 endorsed an agreement negotiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and joined by over 130 nations that sets a minimum global corporate tax rate of fifteen percent.
• In light of these developments, the global trade pillar was strengthened.

Commons ()

• While pledging to end the financing of coal power plants in countries outside their own, the G20 failed to agree on firm commitments to end the use of coal or to take other significant actions to reduce global warming, as world leaders headed for a major global climate summit, known as COP26, in Scotland.
• G20 leaders pledged to vaccinate seventy percent of the world’s population against COVID by mid-2022, while the pandemic reached a grim milestone – killing more than five million people around the world.
• On balance, the global commons pillar was unchanged.

Alliances ()

• On the margins of the summit, Biden met with French president Emmanuel Macron in an attempt to smooth relations amid tensions over the recent AUKUS submarine deal between the US, Australia, and Britain. Biden acknowledged that the US had been “clumsy” in its approach and that France is “an extremely valued partner,” as the two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and on counterterrorism in Africa.
• Relations between France and Australia remained strained, as President Macron suggested that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had lied about the submarine deal. The two leaders met in Rome to begin efforts to repair their damaged relationship.   
• Overall, the alliances pillar was unchanged.

Strengthened (↑)________Unchanged ()________Weakened (↓)

What is the democratic world order? Also known as the liberal order, the rules-based order, or simply the free world, the democratic world order encompasses the rules, norms, alliances, and institutions created and supported by leading democracies over the past seven decades to foster security, democracy, prosperity, and a healthy planet.

This month’s top reads

Three must-read commentaries on the democratic order     

• Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that it would be a grave error for the United States to waver in its commitment to democracy, which she suggests is poised for a comeback.
• Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen writes in Foreign Affairs that if Taiwan were to fall, the consequences for the democratic alliance system would be catastrophic, as it would signal that in today’s global contest of values, authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy.
• Eliot Cohen, in The Atlantic, contends that if America succumbs to its internal divisions and its desire to withdraw from international politics, the world order, such as it is, will crumble.

Action and analysis by the Atlantic Council

Our experts weigh in on this month’s events

• Matthew Kroenig, in a new Forward Defense report, outlines a strategy for the US and its allies to deter Chinese strategic attack as China continues its strategic forces buildup that could threaten the US-led, rules-based international order.
• Fred Kempe, in CNBC, argues the US-China bilateral relationship is increasingly significant – and potentially perilous – as both countries struggle to manage brewing tensions amid their domestic challenges and competing visions of global leadership.
• Matthew Kroenig and Jeffrey Cimmino, in The Dispatch, argue that the US and its allies should work closely to deter a Chinese attack on democratic Taiwan to avoid full-scale war.
• Dan Fried and Brian O’Toole, in the New Atlanticist, offer steps to improve the US Treasury Department’s latest sanctions policy review by implementing more discrete, achievable goals and clarifying guidance across sanctions programs.

__________________________________________________

The Democratic Order Initiative is an Atlantic Council initiative aimed at reenergizing American global leadership and strengthening cooperation among the world’s democracies in support of a rules-based democratic order. Sign on to the Council’s Declaration of Principles for Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace by clicking here.

If you would like to be added to our email list for future publications and events, or to learn more about the Democratic Order Initiative, please email AJain@atlanticcouncil.org.

The post State of the Order: Assessing October 2021 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On November 9, CNN quoted Scowcroft Center director Barry Pavel in a piece about Vice President Kamala Harris’s trip to France to continue to mend the US-France relationship in the aftermath of September’s AUKUS pact.

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Africa Center Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Economy & Business Technology & Innovation

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On November 9, Senior Vice President and Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Barry Pavel was quoted by CNN in an article titled “Harris tasked with the next phase of cleaning up Biden administration’s French faux pas.” In the article, Pavel notes that the United States and France had both accepted the need to rebuild their relationship following the damage caused by the AUKUS deal, but that it was not yet clear how the rebuilding might proceed.

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Barry Pavel

Distinguished Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more

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This Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) special publication brings together a number of experts from Europe and Asia to discuss the implications of AUKUS for Europe. AUKUS is a critical geopolitical development. It has complex chapters attached to it. Therefore, any assessment of the AUKUS has to be understood from a comprehensive perspective, going beyond just a security partnership. The prime aim of this publication is to discuss the real motives and objectives behind the AUKUS. More importantly, it examines the fallout of the AUKUS on Europe and how it will impact or influence the European future outlook toward the Indo-Pacific.

Anna Wieslander chairs the ISDP’s board.

The post AUKUS: The Impact on the Transatlantic Partnership — Wieslander in ISDP Report appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This month’s topline events

France-AUKUS Fallout. Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced a new Indo-Pacific security partnership, known as AUKUS, that involves the sharing of advanced technologies and joint production of nuclear-powered submarines. But in entering the agreement, Australia also cancelled a major submarine contract with France, resulting in an acrimonious public rift among allies in which French leaders castigated Australia and the United States for a betrayal of trust and temporarily recalled its ambassadors to the two nations.

• Shaping the Order. The formation of AUKUS represents a significant effort to bolster the defense capabilities of US allies in preparation for a long-term strategic competition with China. It also showcases America’s emphasis on the Indo-Pacific and the importance of new alliance frameworks that connect transatlantic and transpacific partners. But the fallout with France — though partly stemmed by a subsequent Biden-Macron phone call — could have serious ramifications, potentially undermining allied solidarity to deal with China and other key global challenges.  
  
• Hitting Home. America is stronger and more likely to succeed in confronting global challenges when it is working closely with its core allies and partners.
  
• What to Do. With President Joe Biden set to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in late October, Washington should seek to supplement AUKUS with an additional framework for cooperation that incorporates France’s important role in the Indo-Pacific, while continuing efforts to forge a common strategic approach among leading democracies on China.

Biden’s Quad Summit. Biden hosted the first ever in-person summit of the Indo-Pacific Quad, bringing together the leaders of Australia, India, and Japan for an hours-long meeting at the White House that resulted in a joint statement affirming their shared values and commitment to defending an open, rules-based order. The leaders also agreed to advance cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines and semiconductor supply chains, as well as to establish a student scholarship program. China’s foreign minister denounced the Quad as an “exclusive closed clique” that runs against “the trend of times.”

• Shaping the Order. The summit reaffirmed the Biden administration’s commitment to global alliances and partnerships – amid doubts about US leadership following the Afghanistan withdrawal – and highlighted efforts to strengthen Indo-Pacific cooperation in the context of a rising China. In addition, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s participation in the summit reinforced India’s gradual foreign-policy shift away from its traditional non-aligned role and toward closer cooperation with the United States and leading democracies.
  
• Hitting Home. With its focus on technology cooperation, the Quad could serve as a platform for reducing dependence on China for critical goods and lead to new opportunities for US businesses. 
  
• What to Do. The US should continue efforts to bolster the Quad, which provides an important framework for strategic engagement with key Indo-Pacific democracies. At the same time, with European allies eager to engage in the region, the Biden administration should establish an additional coalition, such as a D-10, that brings America’s core transatlantic and transpacific allies under a common umbrella to advance a free and open Indo-Pacific.

China’s Pacific Trade Gambit. China applied to join the CPTPP, the transpacific free trade pact initially negotiated by the United States and several major trading partners, including Japan, Australia, Canada, and Mexico, as a potential counterweight to China, but from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2017. Taiwan quickly followed with an application to enter as well, while the UK began talks to discuss its interest in joining. With the consent of all members required for expansion, Japan’s economic minister cast doubt on Beijing’s application, stating that China would have to meet “extremely high standards” before it could be considered for entry.

• Shaping the Order. China’s bid to enter the CPTPP represents a diplomatically savvy move to position itself as a willing trade partner and global leader on free trade, in contrast to the United States, which is increasingly viewed as pursuing a more protectionist agenda. While unlikely, at least in the short-run, Beijing’s entry into the agreement potentially increases economic dependence on China, particularly among smaller member states. 
  
• Hitting Home. Though they can result in economic dislocation and cause adverse impacts to certain industries, free and fair trade agreements generally increase overall prosperity, create new jobs, and lower prices for consumers, and America’s decision to stay out of the CPTPP has likely been a net loss for the US economy.
  
• What to Do. The Biden administration should seek to join a renegotiated CPTPP as part of its broader plans to reframe global trade benefits for the middle class. Alternatively, Washington should seek to develop a new trade framework that binds together leading democratic economies across the transatlantic and transpacific into a single common market.

Quote of the Month

“We are liberal democracies that believe in a world order that favors freedom.  And we believe in a free and open Indo-Pacific because we know that’s what delivers a strong, stable, and prosperous region so our citizens, our peoples can realize their hopes and dreams for their futures in a liberal and free society.” 

– Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Quad Summit, September 24, 2021

State of the Order this month: Unchanged

Assessing the five core pillars of the democratic world order    

Democracy ()

• China released two Canadian citizens who had been detained for three years over what appears to have been an act of “hostage diplomacy” in response to the earlier arrest by Canadian authorities of a Huawei executive on US fraud charges. The two Canadians were released hours after the Chinese executive was released in Canada.
• The International Criminal Court approved a formal investigation into possible crimes against humanity allegedly committed under the leadership of Philippine President Duterte in the context of his “war on drugs.” Days later, Duterte announced he would retire from politics, walking back reports that he was planning to run for the vice presidency in 2022.
• The Taliban effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to reopen only for boys, and said it would resume executions and amputations of the hands to enforce its harsh interpretation of sharia law.
• Under pressure from Russian authorities, Apple and Google removed an app that allowed Russians to coordinate protest voting in the country’s recent parliamentary elections, a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s campaign to constrain political opposition to President Vladimir Putin and regulate internet activity.
• Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin agreed to bolster security and economic ties as the two countries resumed previously stalled efforts to move toward closer political integration. Having alienated Europe, Lukashenka has become increasingly reliant on Putin’s support to remain in power, for which the price may be surrendering elements of Belarus’ sovereignty.
• On balance, the democracy pillar was unchanged.

Security (↑)

• The AUKUS agreement forged by Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States will bolster US and allied undersea naval capabilities and broader technology cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, while helping to deter China’s coercive actions in the region.
• The Quad Summit also enhanced cooperation among leading Indo-Pacific democracies to counter China’s growing influence.
• Following joint exercises between Ukraine and NATO military forces, Russia warned that any expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Ukraine would cross its “red lines.”
• Iran became a full member of a Central Asian security body led by Russia and China – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – in an effort to bolster security and economic ties with the two powers and help avert sanctions imposed by the West.
• With new initiatives to advance cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, the security pillar was strengthened.

Trade ()

• As discussed above, China applied to join the CPTPP, the transpacific free trade agreement, a move that if successful would create the world’s largest free trade zone. It would also, at least for now, exclude the United States, which initially negotiated the pact as a potential counterweight to China. Taiwan and the United Kingdom also sought to join the agreement.
• With prospects dimming for a post-Brexit free trade agreement with the United States, British officials said they were considering joining the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.
• Top US and EU officials met in Pittsburgh for the launch of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, discussing plans to coordinate joint responses to emerging technologies and pursue common efforts to counter unfair foreign trade practices — an implicit reference to China.
• Overall, the global trade pillar was unchanged.

Commons ()

• President Biden, speaking with global leaders at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, announced that the US will donate an additional 500 million doses of the COVID vaccine to developing countries, bringing the total US donation to over 1.1 billion vaccines.
• Amid US special envoy for climate John Kerry’s visit to China, Chinese officials warned that mutual cooperation on climate cannot be separated from other geopolitical issues. Separately, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that China will stop building coal-burning power plants overseas, a move that, if implemented, could have a significant impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 
• Overall, the global commons pillar was unchanged.

Alliances ()

• As discussed, the AUKUS agreement resulted in an unusual public rift between France and the United States, leading Paris to recall its ambassadors to Washington and Canberra. Biden and Macron, later speaking by phone, agreed to further discussions on resolving the issue, and Macron agreed to the return of France’s ambassadors.
• AUKUS and the first-ever in-person meeting of the Quad Summit, hosted at the White House, both served to advance US alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, enhancing mutual cooperation in the context of China’s rise.
• Meeting with Ukrainian president Zelensky at the White House, President Biden reinforced the administration’s commitment to support Ukrainian sovereignty and pledging, in a detailed joint statement, to bolster cooperation with Ukraine on defense, energy, and economic issues.
• On balance, the alliances pillar was unchanged.

Strengthened (↑)________Unchanged ()________Weakened (↓)

What is the democratic world order? Also known as the liberal order, the rules-based order, or simply the free world, the democratic world order encompasses the rules, norms, alliances, and institutions created and supported by leading democracies over the past seven decades to foster security, democracy, prosperity, and a healthy planet.

This month’s top reads

Three must-read commentaries on the democratic order     

• Charles Edel and David Shullman, writing in Foreign Affairs, argue that the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to promote its style of authoritarianism to illiberal actors around the world by spreading propaganda, consolidating its economic influence, and meddling in foreign political systems.
• Fiona Hill, in Foreign Affairs, contends that the polarization of American society has become a national security threat, hindering the projection of American soft power and leaving it more vulnerable to the Kremlin’s subversion.
• Tom McTague, in The Atlantic, suggests that the success of AUKUS could mark the beginning of a new world order consisting of “multiple and complementary alliances” being forged by the US and its allies in context of China.

Action and analysis by the Atlantic Council

Our experts weigh in on this month’s events

• Fred Kempe, in CNBC, suggests that Xi Jinping is making the most audacious geopolitical bet of the 21st century by demonstrating that he can produce the world’s dominant power by doubling down on his state-controlled economy, nationalistic propaganda, and far-reaching global influence campaigns.
• Barry Pavel, in the New Atlanticist, contends that by forging AUKUS, the Biden administration is taking an important step to build a key alliance element of the edifice required for the new era.
• Ash Jain, writing in the New Atlanticist, contends that while its specific outcomes were relatively modest, the Quad Summit successfully laid the foundation to advance three strategic US goals: countering China, aligning India, and revitalizing alliances.
• Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig, in Foreign Policy, debate the ramifications of AUKUS and China’s interest in joining the CPTPP.
• Dan Fried, writing in Just Security, responds to the restraint school and discusses tensions between the realist and values-based foreign policy traditions.
• The Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center launched the China Pathfinder project, featuring a new system to assess China’s record of economic liberalization and performance in comparison to the United States and nine other leading open-market economies. The project suggests that while China has made demonstrable progress toward economic liberalization over the past decade, it still falls far short of other OECD economies in terms of market competition.

__________________________________________________

The Democratic Order Initiative is an Atlantic Council initiative aimed at reenergizing American global leadership and strengthening cooperation among the world’s democracies in support of a rules-based democratic order. Sign on to the Council’s Declaration of Principles for Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace by clicking here.

If you would like to be added to our email list for future publications and events, or to learn more about the Democratic Order Initiative, please email AJain@atlanticcouncil.org.

The post State of the Order: Assessing September 2021 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What does AUKUS mean for Britain?

The new pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States has grabbed headlines because of French disgruntlement over it triggering a cancelled a submarine deal. But what does the agreement mean for Britain? To find out, Europe Center senior fellow Ben Judah spoke to Dr. Euan Graham, Senior Fellow for Asia-Pacific Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in Singapore for #BritainDebrief.

Why did Australia choose to push for it? How has it been received in the region? And is there a chance Britain will be disappointed?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

Explore the program

The post #BritainDebrief – What does AUKUS mean for Britain? A debrief from Euan Graham appeared first on Atlantic Council.

But the agreement is more than just an arms deal. French President Emmanuel Macron lauded it as advancing his dogma of European strategic autonomy. Among other provisions, the two NATO members agreed to a mutual defense assistance clause in case of a third-party attack, and as a result, Article Two of their treaty looks much like NATO’s Article Five. It’s clear from the context that it aims to address instability in the Mediterranean by tackling multiple challenges in the region, from armed conflict and terrorism to migration flows and energy challenges.

For his part, Mitsotakis believes the agreement essentially goes beyond each country’s obligations within NATO and the European Union (EU) by committing to mutual defense assistance. Such a pact between two member-states is a first for NATO, even as its members routinely form alliances with third countries (such as US deals with Finland and Sweden or the trilateral Greece/Cyprus/Israel and Greece/Cyprus/Egypt partnerships).

Yet the Greek-French defense pact is bound to bring to the fore some of the underlying challenges in NATO’s southern flank, such as the longtime tensions between Greece and Turkey. Open conflict between the two Alliance members is not an outlandish scenario: Ankara has repeatedly warned that it would consider Athens’ expansion of its territorial waters to twelve nautical miles—as Greece stresses is its “non-negotiable” right to do—to be cause for war. Lately, Turkey has also expanded its claims based on its “Blue Homeland” doctrine to Greek islands, not recognizing a continental shelf or the right to an exclusive economic zone (contrary to international law as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Turkey has not signed).

In such a conflict, NATO would be caught in a tricky position. Recognizing this reality, it has set up a deconfliction mechanism to help avoid new tensions from flaring up. Yet being fellow members of the Alliance has not helped the two countries address their maritime disputes, and NATO has shied away from taking sides. With this pact, the understanding in Greece is that France is effectively pledging to take its side—including in armed conflict—should both believe there has been an attack on Greek sovereignty. Ankara, meanwhile, has criticized Athens for what it says is a “policy of armament, isolating and alienating Turkey.”

The United States, which has been the primary mediator between Greece and Turkey, welcomed the agreement in principle, with a State Department spokesperson saying Washington “strongly support[s] Greece’s role in creating stability in the region.” Indeed, in the context of its National Security Strategy, the United States has encouraged partnerships between its allies in the Eastern Mediterranean as a way to counter Chinese and Russian influence in the region. The need to do so is timely as US forces disengage from the Middle East, which leaves room for Iran and Turkey to expand their own zones of influence there.

The Franco-Greek alliance may be seen through the same lens—as a valuable partnership of US allies in a tense region. A greater French presence in Greece would strengthen NATO’s southern flank while also helping avoid a destabilizing crisis in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. Greek diplomats were quick to stress that this pact would complement, not counter, the already strong US-Greece strategic partnership. An update of their defense agreement next month is expected to cover a long-term period, allowing for more investment in US bases such as Souda Bay in Crete (a strategic island that’s been characterized as an unsinkable aircraft carrier).

Macron has noted that Europe should not be naïve and should act to strengthen its common defense, given the US pivot to Asia. Yet Europe should not discount the United States’ continued interest in European security. Strategic sovereignty—a term preferred by France’s ambassador in Washington—may be a better way of framing this new pact and setting the goals for European autonomy. It does not imply a separate course for Europe, but the proactive support of joint transatlantic priorities in its neighborhood, principal among them being the stability of the Mediterranean. 

Katerina Sokou is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and the Washington correspondent for the Greek daily Kathimerini and SKAI TV. Follow her on Twitter @KaterinaSokou.

Further reading

New Atlanticist Sep 3, 2021

Italy shows how defense partnership is done

By Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo

The country may be among the United States’ most reliable allies in Europe—which is why it should help lead NATO.

Defense Policy Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist Oct 1, 2021

How to ensure Afghanistan isn’t the graveyard of European defense

By Federica Fazio and Nicolas Adams

Stronger cooperation and interoperability can boost Europe’s capacity to project hard power.

Afghanistan Defense Policy

New Atlanticist Sep 30, 2021

Why the Quad summit was a strategic success

By Ash Jain

While its specific outcomes may have been relatively modest, the summit successfully laid the foundation to advance three strategic US goals: countering China, aligning India, and revitalizing alliances.

Australia India

The post Greece and France give European strategic autonomy a shot appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On September 24, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford discussing the latest news in international affairs.

In this column, they discuss the consequences of AUKUS, including its implications for Indo-Pacific security and US relations with France.