POLITICO
CONVERSATION
In
search of Europe’s confidence lost
Wolfgang
Ischinger: ‘We are half a billion people but we haven’t yet
learned to behave like it.’
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG 5/30/16, 5:36 AM CET Updated 5/30/16, 8:52 AM CET
BERLIN — Europe’s
existential struggles in recent years over everything from the euro
to refugees and Brexit has left little room in the public debate for
discussion of the EU’s place in the world.
The Union’s
ambitions for deeper collaboration on foreign policy and security
remain controversial in many member states. More broadly, basic
questions about the EU’s relationship with China, the U.S. and
Russia receive little attention. As the recent ISIL terror attacks,
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the refugee influx have
illustrated, global crosswinds tend to thrust the EU into disarray.
POLITICO Chief
Europe Correspondent Matthew Karnitschnig recently sat down in Berlin
with two of Europe’s pre-eminent thinkers on international affairs
and Europe — Wolfgang Ischinger, a veteran German diplomat who now
runs the Munich Security Conference, and Robert Cooper, a retired
British diplomat and author who spent many years as a key adviser to
Javier Solana, the EU’s former high representative for foreign and
security affairs.
On the sidelines of
the Dahrendorf Forum, they discussed a range of issues surrounding
Europe’s role in the world, in particular its evolving relations
with the U.S., Russia and China. What follows is an edited
transcript.
POLITICO: When
President Obama took office in 2009, there was a lot of worry in
Europe that he would shift the U.S.’s focus away from its
traditional Western allies to the Pacific. As he reaches the end of
his presidency, what has that shift meant for Europe?
ISCHINGER: It was
supposed to mean quite a lot, but I think most Americans would rather
that they hadn’t said it because it took only a little while after
they first pronounced a pivot to Asia that they realized they needed
to re-position to Europe.
That speaks to the
unpredictable nature of international affairs, but Obama did have a
clear vision. Where do you see the U.S. headed now in terms of its
foreign policy?
ISCHINGER: The West,
if the West is the United States, plus Europe plus a few others,
seems to have a problem with knowing exactly what our vision is
today. In the U.S., there is a lack of clarity about just what the
future role of the United States should be. Should it be withdrawal
like [Donald] Trump is proposing? In the European Union there is a
total lack of clarity. We don’t even know if Britain will be part
of the EU next year. We do not seem to be able to develop a vision
about where we will go.
Is the dearth of big
ideas, which some believe is what is driving the populist resurgence,
unique to the West? It seems other countries, if you look at Russia
in the Crimea or China in the South China Sea, where it has created
artificial islands for its military, have clear priorities.
ISCHINGER: The
non-West appears at least from my vantage point to know exactly where
they want to go. Russia wants to go away from the West. China at
least proclaims to know exactly where it wants to go, so at least we
seem to have declared clarity among non-Western important countries.
I think that makes our lack of clarity even more pronounced, more
worrisome.
COOPER: I don’t
know whether I agree with Wolfgang that the Chinese and the Russians
know what they’re going. You hear some things from Mr. Putin, but I
don’t think it’s as simple as that. The retreat from the West
doesn’t make much sense for Russia. Maybe it’s okay as a slogan,
but whether it’s really policy? As for China, I don’t know if
there’s anything like a sort of doctrine of the Chinese government.
They are very cagey about what they’re doing with the islands.
ISCHINGER: Putin’s
strategy is to preserve the status quo. His message is we’ve now
decided that we can’t modernize, but at least we want to preserve
our security status and we need a buffer zone around us. The Chinese
are building up diligently, slowly a global role from what was
practically zero 20 years ago. In terms of global activity they are
now proactively engaged all over the world, even in Latin America.
And yet in Europe,
China is almost solely seen in commercial terms, both as a market and
as the world’s factory floor.
ISCHINGER: It’s a
specific German problem, I think. The Germans tend to look at a
country of more than a billion people as a place that buys many BMWs
etc. And that’s about it. Of course that’s not good enough. We
need to become slightly more sophisticated. We are still
unfortunately quite far removed from something that smells like and
looks like and sounds like an EU strategy vis-à-vis China.
COOPER: The EU
states primarily see China in commercial terms and they compete with
each other. I agree with Wolfgang that we should have two ways of
thinking about China: one is in commercial terms, and one is in
political and security terms. On the second, we should do the
thinking together. We ought to try and keep the two distinct.
Just how relevant is
China’s growing power for Europe? Is it a threat?
COOPER: I don’t
think people on the whole feel threatened in Europe by China, but I
think it’s quite different in the region…I think that the power
shift hasn’t happened. It’s happening. I may not get the quote
right, but the famous phrase from Thucydides is that it was Sparta’s
perception of the growing power of Athens that was the cause of the
Peloponnesian wars. The perception of growing power is always
something that has the potential for instability. When you see
another power growing, the incentive is to say, ‘we better deal
with it now before it gets too big for us.’
To what degree could
China be a strategic partner for Europe?
ISCHINGER: It’s
important for us to try to make sure that China comes down on the
right side and not on the wrong side of important issues. For
example, we’re trying to inscribe into the annals of the United
Nations that the annexation of the Crimea was illegal. Can we get
China to sign up to that or to abstain? This is important. That is
why our dialogue on political security issues with China is not only
about China’s behavior in the South China Sea, which is very far
from us, but is also about how China deals with Ukraine, Libya etc.
The EU, to the
degree it discusses the issues, doesn’t seem to agree on a
strategy.
ISCHINGER: It’s
not working as well as it should. We do not agree at this point
whether we should or should not recognize China as a market economy.
It starts there and that’s not even the hardest question.
During his recent
visit to Hanover, President Obama made it clear the U.S. wants Europe
to take more ownership of its security. That’s certainly a shift
from past administrations going back to WWII. Is Europe up to the
task?
ISCHINGER: I think
that it’s actually healthy for Europe as a whole to learn that
there will not forever be the protector from Washington who will
handle all of our difficult issues. This experience of United States
not jumping immediately in and running the show in Europe as they
have done for decades now is actually forcing us to grow up little
more … If European leaders were capable of speaking about our
future the way Obama did, we would be in much less of a state of
malaise. This is a historic change that many Europeans haven’t
really digested yet, that the United States is now supporting a
stronger more united European Union.
Should taking more
responsibility for European security mean we’ll see a European
army, as some have called for for years? The U.K., which favors a
strong NATO and bilateral cooperation with other countries, is
against that idea.
COOPER: I wish
people wouldn’t rush to last stage of a European army because there
are lots of things you can do before you get to European army which
always causes trouble in my country.
How do you see the
U.S.’s role in the constellation. Will it be less of an ally?
ISCHINGER: I think
if we manage to have more European cooperation in the future, not a
European army but more pooling and sharing, that does not
automatically lead to a wider Atlantic. We will be even more
meaningful, more relevant to the U.S. if we can show that we have
something to offer.
What needs to change
in Europe’s overall mindset for it to play a more assertive role on
the international stage?
ISCHINGER: Russia
today has in nominal terms a GNP that is less than Italy’s. In
other words, the European Union alone is vastly bigger in economic
terms than Russia, which is one reason why I believe that the one
thing we need to learn in the European Union is that we don’t need
to be too timid.
We should have a
little more self-confidence. That doesn’t mean we should be
adventurous, but we are really important. We are half a billion
people but we haven’t yet learned to behave like it.
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
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