Left Out in the Cold: The Problematic Partial Inclusion of Europe’s East

Europe will always be unfinished, because it is an idea as much as a geographic expression, and a rather idealistic one at that.

The European Union and a few countries which opted not to join, like Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland, have their problems – structural economic imbalances in the EU which threaten its sustainability, nationalism on the rise, democratic regression in countries like Hungary and Romania – but overall these countries are still among the wealthiest and the freest in the world.

The geographical dilemmas of completing a Europe “whole, free, and at peace” remain, however. The peninsulas and islands jutting into the northeastern Atlantic can be pretty sure they’re part of Europe, as can anyone living anywhere near the Alps. But the seas and straits between Gibraltar and the Caucasus and the Ural Mountains are a pretty arbitrary divide. The problem of only partial inclusion in Europe has been particularly damaging for the more than 260 million citizens of the Russian Federation, Turkey, and Ukraine.

The EU has its reasons to consolidate its troubled project rather than continue to expand to new countries. However, Western Europe has a record of sending contradictory messages to the countries in the continent’s east. These include extending candidate status to Turkey in 2005, then electing Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy with their “privileged partnership” and non for Ankara; refusing to confirm the potential of future membership for Ukraine and Moldova, despite the EU treaties opening such potential to “any European State” which respects European values; expanding visa-free travel to all the Christian countries in the Balkans before any of the Muslim countries; and rhetoric from European Council President Herman Van Rompuy about European unification’s roots in Middle Ages Latin Christianity, which dismayed Bulgaria. 

With Catholic Croatia now safely in the EU, 23 years after Germany unilaterally recognized its declaration of independence, and the four Eastern Christian countries in the bloc (Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Romania) in not particularly good standing in the eyes of the older member states, many EU citizens would be happy to keep these borders. These are the realities of how a union of 28 disparate democracies handles the prospect of extending pooled sovereignty to some of more than a dozen countries further east. These nations are seen as less culturally similar to the older member states. Some are quite large, some quite small. They are fragile democracies at best, many fractured, several with breakaway enclaves. All are relatively poor. But ambivalence in EU capitals and mixed messages sent by Western European leaders imposes real costs and dilemmas on the democrats of Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other countries.

Extending the hugely successful European integration project to the east was always going to be a huge challenge. There are many reasons to call Europe’s eastern neighborhood policy a great success – the EU has absorbed 11 former communist countries (12 when you include East Germany), with over 100 million people. But some clear failings are seen with the three big countries in Europe’s eastern reaches. Although Russia and Turkey have had a good 21st century in many respects, with incomes and international influence steadily rising since the year 2000, it is not surprising that both of them as well as Ukraine have seen massive protests by pro-democracy / pro-Western citizens in the last three years, which autocratic leaders attempted to crush.

Russia, with 142 million people, was always too big and proud to join the EU. But Russia is clearly a part of modern Europe in many ways – economically integrated, if mostly as a source of energy sent through pipelines and oligarch’s cash spent in London and Switzerland, a member of political groupings such as the Council of Europe and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a participant in Eurovision and UEFA soccer tournaments. However, democracy failed in Russia, damaged by the chaos of the wild 90s and then smothered in the Putin era by an elite prioritizing its personal short-term interests and willing to ignore a clear long-term downward trajectory masked by high energy prices. European companies and many leaders – above all in Germany and the City of London – tried to look past Russia’s democratic failings and corruption. But if Berlin’s “Annäherung durch Verflechtung” (rapprochement through interdependence) worked, “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade) failed. Vladimir Putin watched as NATO expanded to Russia’s borders (as was the right thing to do – the Baltics had very good cause to want NATO membership), watched the Western intervention in Kosovo (again, the right thing to do in the face of ethnic cleansing), watched the U.S. invade Iraq (a grievous mistake in which the U.S. ignored some of Putin’s better advice), and suffered a major political defeat in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Putin’s anti-Western side was stoked and he transformed from a awkward partner of the West to an adversary. Russia took actions to destabilize its neighbors whenever they tried to move closer to the EU and the United States. Those who claim that the Obama Administration’s “reset” policy was wrongheaded are unrealistic or ideologues – it was necessary to try to mend ties with Russia and progress was made on nuclear reductions, Russian membership in the World Trade Organization, cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya. Dmitry Medvedev was not completely a puppet as president. But in 2011 Putin announced he had decided to return to the presidency – a historic mistake for Russia – and responded to subsequent protests with greater repression. At the same time, Russia backed the Assad regime in Syria to the hilt as its killed tens of thousands of its citizens and radicalized the opposition. Washington – and importantly Berlin – have rightly responded with more vocal criticism of Putin and his regime.

Turkey, with a fast-growing population of 80 million, is about to surpass Germany on the population table. Many Europeans see it as too big, too poor, and too Muslim to join the family. Turkish membership would change the EU, and for EU citizens and leaders who follow the polls, the negatives of such a change outweighed the positives – greater diversity, stronger demographics, etc. – which required greater imagination to see. The arguments of those who saw the benefits were drowned out. Turkey’s candidacy has effectively been dead for years, buried by the hard opposition of several member states and ultimately by the subsequent actions of the increasingly dictatorial Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. For many years, Erdoğan advanced democracy in Turkey by pursuing European integration and civilian control of the military. But his uglier side has been unavoidable in the last year, as his response to the Gezi Park protestors made clear to the world that he had a purely majoritarian view of democracy and did not respect those of his countrymen who disagreed with him. Challenged by a corruption scandal, Erdoğan has responded with purges in the criminal justice system and banning Twitter. He may have substantial support, as the most recent elections again confirmed, but at this point he is clearly damaging Turkey’s democracy.

Ukraine, with 44 million people, is where the autocrats – Putin as well as Viktor Yanukovych – failed. Corruption is even worse in Ukraine than in Russia or Turkey and the country has been consistently misgoverned. Persistent Russian interference, often using its energy monopoly as weapon, has not helped. Critically, the EU has also refused to make clear whether or not Ukraine could ever become a member, limiting politicians’ appetite for reform. President Viktor Yushchenko made a mad dash for NATO membership, despite such a move (and his government) being unpopular within the country, but at the Bucharest Summit in 2008, Germany and France stopped a Bush Administration push to give Ukraine – and Georgia – a Membership Action Plan. Ukraine’s diversity gave it a more competitive and indeed chaotic political space than many of its fellow post-Soviet states, while it remained a fragile economy with terrible government finances and was walloped by the global economic crisis in 2008. In 2010, Yanukovych, rejected in the Orange Revolution, won a fair presidential election, then surprised many in the West with the aggressiveness of his monopolization of the levers of power. He also made moves which pleased Russia, like unconstitutionally extending the lease on the Black Sea Fleet’s base by 25 years. But with the EU offering an Association Agreement including a comprehensive free trade deal, Yanukovych balanced Brussels and Moscow for his own gain as long as he could. In November 2013, his time ran out, and he chose Moscow and gave impetus to the EuroMaidan protests. If he hadn’t used violence against the protests when they were relatively small and imposed draconian “dictatorship laws” in January 2014, Yanukovych might still be in power. Instead, he ended up fleeing in February after several bloody days in Kyiv and an abortive deal brokered by the EU. Ukraine swung west and an incensed Putin invaded and annexed Crimea. Now Ukraine faces major difficulties in maintaining control of its territory even without Crimea, given the activities of secessionists in the east directed and/or inspired by Moscow, while its economy remains on the brink of collapse, elections must be helped, and difficult economic reforms must be implemented.

So all three countries are severely troubled. Russia and Turkey look more autocratic than they have in decades, while Ukraine reached that point earlier in 2014 and currently remains at acute risk of state failure. All three are divided countries, their places in today’s Europe – which for people many means the EU, NATO, or both – are vexed. The reasons for this are manifold, the products of geography, history, economics, and domestic politics and foreign policy in dozens of countries. China’s economic performance over the past three decades has given autocracy a good name, while Putin’s model of so-called “sovereign democracy” has inspired imitators. The United States, leader of the free world, allowed its financial system to blow up the world economy, setting some countries back by a decade, and characteristically did nothing to deal with the root causes of the problem. Both the U.S. and the EU are distracted by internal problems, some very serious, and fatigued with foreign policy and enlargement. But Russia and Turkey heading fast in the wrong direction and Ukraine in chaos are very dangerous indeed for Europe and its allies across the Atlantic.

It is in the enlightened self-interest of Europe and the United States to help Ukraine stabilize and succeed as a less corrupt democracy in which citizens can meet their aspirations and to incentivize democratic development and European integration in Russia and Turkey. But success will require more creativity and generosity than has been in evidence in recent years. 

Socialism in One Country (At Least)

Yesterday's election results are quite troubling, in Greece. The extreme austerity program imposed by the euro zone and IMF is painful and may not be working, but the seven-way split of seats is going to make it very difficult to form a functional government at all. A racist fascist party that makes European far-right figures like Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders look good made it into parliament. The old-school Communist Party is still there. Many analysts expect the divided result to lead to new elections in weeks, after no one gets paid next month. The chance of a Greek exit from the euro zone, and all that entails, just went up.

France, on the other hand, had a result to welcome. I have never been a hater of Nicolas Sarkozy, but his strong points (a good partner to the United States, Germany, Britain and others, indisputable energy, a reform agenda) were matched by serious negatives (implacable opposition to Turkey's integration into Europe, anti-immigrant populist posturing, continued failure to follow through, political tone-deafness which led to his deep unpopularity in France). Not long ago, on some level, I worried that his impending defeat at the hands of Socialist Francois Holland would upset the markets, reignite the euro crisis, and damage Barack Obama's chances of re-election - the most important of a host of significant elections. But ultimately, I concluded that a jolt to the austerity mantra of Angela Merkel, the ECB and the IMF was exactly what Europe needed, and that was most important at the moment.


Though the European social welfare state needs reform, it does not deserve the blame for an economic crisis that was caused by deregulation and the irresponsible behavior of the financial sector. But with Greece launching a succession of sovereign debt crises two years ago, a crisis of globalized free market capitalism became a crisis of what was left of the state in Europe. Neoliberalism, a cause of the crisis, was triumphing in continental Europe, that bastion of social democracy. Germany is largely to blame. As her mentor Helmut Kohl complained, Merkel is destroying Europe. There is no political leadership on positive further European integration such as Eurobonds and ECB purchases of government debt coming from Berlin, despite this being the only way out of the euro crisis other than at least partially breaking up the euro zone. Just strict fiscal discipline, with no room for "crass Keynesianism." And Sarkozy was not providing a counterbalance. He was the junior partner of Merkozy. As society suffers under austerity, you get results like in the Greek elections yesterday. Or the 6.4 million French voting for Le Pen in April. And desperate center-right politicians accommodating the far right to stay in power.

Francois Hollande has changed the conversation, even before his victory yesterday. Merkel and Mario Draghi are talking about the importance of growth, even if they have different ideas. The way forward will be difficult. President Hollande's agenda is even more intimidating than President Obama's was in January 2009, given the weaknesses of the French economy compared with the power of Germany and the markets. But his election is a good thing.

But that's enough of the economics - I was in France for the election yesterday as the Socialists celebrated their first presidential victory since 1988, in the left-leaning northern city of Lille (where Parti Socialiste chief Martine Aubry is mayor), a 35-minute TGV ride from Brussels. The city was fairly quiet during the day, except for the lively Wazemmes market, near which we discovered a polling station. We stood in line checking out the scene until someone told us we needed our blue cards to vote, then left the election to explore an art museum, the book market in the old bourse, the citadel, and the zoo (I mused that if the zoo had been somewhere in America, two weeks prior, I might well have run into a Campaigning Newt).

Around 5, we stopped for a drink at a bar with a TV and watched commentary about a good turnout. At 8, we were walking by another bar when I spotted Hollande's picture flashed on the screen and heard cheers. We entered and caught Sarkozy's concession speech, where his raucous crowd of supporters reminded me of those at John McCain's concession four years ago. After a nasty final stretch of campaign, both Sarkozy and Hollande were very gracious once the result was announced.

On the Place du General de Gaulle, the party had started. A crowd of a few hundred people gathered, waving posters of Hollande and flags - of France, of the Parti Socialiste, of the Hollande campaign, of Algeria. A congo line weaved through the crowd as dance music pumped out of a balcony above. I caught the scent of weed. Socialism is back, in one leading European country at least, and if it's hardly going to be a party over the next months and years at least it could be one on Sunday night.

Germany's Charm Offensive

As it were, I've returned to Brussels after six weeks in the United States and its Caribbean possessions. I'm still a sort-of super intern, with some more responsibility, a slight raise, and a different living situation. I will be here until the end of June. It's good to be back in Europe, living here for the fifth time now if you count it as separate from last year. I'll get to see some new places like Switzerland and maybe Russia, and hope to make it to Ypres's cat-throwing festival and a reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo.

I return to a Europe still on the brink of calamity due to the euro crisis, though it feels calm and the EU decisions of last December make muddling through more likely than apocalypse. Belgium actually has a government, which is novel. Today the country has been shut down by a general strike, with a dusting of snow thrown in for good measure. And Germany is still making people mad.

Extra supervision of member state budgets is probably one of the inevitable measures for getting over the euro crisis. But Germany has been particularly tone-deaf in suggesting an EU budget commissioner take over Greek fiscal policy. I can't say I'm optimistic about Greece improving its finances - default seems inevitable, perhaps even in March when a 14.4 million euro bond comes due, and a new government in April could well lead Greece out of the eurozone and even the European Union. But with technocratic governments in place in both Greece and Italy due a combination of market and northern European political forces, and with Germany's history, a little more respect for Greek sovereignty and democracy is due. This crisis has seen Germany's emergence as the political leader as well as the economic leader of the European Union, and so far it is doing an even worse job diplomatically than it is in solving the crisis.

I write this as someone who loves Germany, speaks the language, and knows the history, hardly a Germanophobe. But Angela Merkel is not doing a very good job these days, nor any of the parties in her coalition. I'll object to the Bavarian conservatives simply on principle, they're far too conservative. The Free Democrats have been inept in government under the leadership of Guido Westerwelle, also an inept foreign minister, and haven't improved noticeably under Philipp Roesler. And Merkel's Christian Democratic Union has lost virtually all of its leaders capable of challenging Merkel to various scandals as she has dragged through a disappointing second term. Its parliamentary leader, Volker Kauder, proudly claimed that "now all of Europe is speaking German" a few months ago. Perhaps the Social Democrats would do better.

One prominent European who is now speaking German is none other than the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. In a TV interview last night he profusely praised Germany as a fiscal model for France. Merkel and Sarkozy have always had an awkward partnership, despite general ideological compatibility, so it was a bit surprising when Merkel announced that she'd not only tacitly endorse Sarkozy's reelection - which she would be expected to do as a fellow leader of the European People's Party - but actually campaign for him. She is obviously afraid that Socialist Francoise Hollande would demand the renegotiation of some of the deals stitching together the euro crisis response. But such blatant intervention in French internal affairs does not strike me as a good thing. The only time I can remember the leader of one country campaigning for his or her preferred candidate in the election of a close partner country, with joint appearances on the campaign trail, was when Vladimir Putin tried to assist Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2004. That resulted in the Orange Revolution. Which brings me to a second point - Merkel campaigning for Sarkozy is probably counterproductive. France and Germany have a strong partnership, but they also have a long history - and the French are as proud a nation as I can think of. If Germany says vote for Sarkozy, I can see more voters persuaded to vote for Hollande - or Marine Le Pen.

And Whither France?

And now, a word from France, a country I know less well than Germany, but which is still pretty important to modern Europe, and relating to the pan-European rise of the far-right which I've commented on a number of times on this blog. I read two good articles today. Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the Front National and the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, godfather of the modern European far right, has shocked France by topping Nicolas Sarkozy and Martine Aubry in a poll conducted more than a year ahead of the actual presidential election. I doubt we'll see a President Le Pen anytime soon, but indications are that she has the charisma and political skills to be an even bigger political force than her father. Additionally, with an unpopular center-right incumbent, a divided left, and focused challenger from right of the mainstream, the dynamics in the 2012 French presidential election may be fairly similar to the 2002 election. Still, I would bet we'll see either another term of President Sarkozy or a President Strauss-Kahn.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy is building a national museum of French history. Now that's controversial.

Commentary on Europe, 2008-2009

Here's my blog posts about European politics from my first year at SAIS. PostGlobal is a blog run by the Washington Post which unfortunately went on "extended vacation" last summer, but for the year before that they subcontracted their European coverage to SAIS students and I helped coordinate the project as the student leader in Bologna and wrote six commentary pieces. This was a great experience which I was thankful for but the headlines are sometimes vague so I sum them up:

July 27, 2009 - Resetting Russian Relations - actually this one is about German policy on Russia, and the difference between the political parties, it's related to a paper I did in the spring semester.

April 6, 2009 - Russia's Olympic Election - Boris Nemtsov, a Kremlin critic, ran for mayor of Sochi, the Black Sea resort town where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held. So the race developed into a bit of a zoo with a lot of interesting characters. Nemtsov didn't win.

January 16, 2009 - Artwork, Toilets, and EU Identity - On the infamous Entropa art installment in Brussels by Czech artist David Černý.

January 7, 2009 - For New EU President, A Baffling Array of Challenges - The Czech Republic takes over the rotating presidency of the EU and copes with war in Gaza, the cutoff of gas to Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and Nicolas Sarkozy.

October 24, 2008 - Reason Rules in Tussle with Kremlin - McCain and Obama's stances on Russia compared, and what Russia and Georgia think of them.

October 14, 2008 - McCain Falls Plainly on Spain - John McCain gratuitously insults Spain, and what Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, and Silvio Berlusconi think of the candidates McCain and Obama.