It is as if European governments were not warned about the current refugee crisis the serious consequences it could have for Europe’s foreign and security policy. Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of refugees—particularly those fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq, unrest in Afghanistan, and repression in Eritrea—have risked their lives to reach Europe.
The refugees are beholden to gangs of smugglers, with Albanians taking the leading role in exacting huge fees to get the migrants to an EU country.
Unless the EU’s crisis management policy radically changes, the flow of refugees will continue. Few North African and Middle Eastern countries provide security, stability, or a democratic and economic perspective for their youth.
Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s interior minister, said recently that he expected up to 800,000 asylum applications this year alone. Germany already has 289,000 pending asylum seekers on its books, with 40 percent coming from Kosovo, Albania, or Serbia, where there is no war or repression. At the same time, the European Commission is again trying to persuade all 28 EU member states to share the burden of refugees.
As it is, in most Eastern European countries there is an anti-Muslim sentiment and a deep reluctance to open the doors to people who are seeking security and freedom. Yet it surely should not be lost what freedom means for these countries, which until only twenty-six years ago were under the Communist yoke. Poland has now officially said it will accept Christians—as have Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Muslims, shamefully, are not welcomed.
As if that were not bad enough, Europe’s response to the refugee crisis has all the makings of weakening, not strengthening, Europe’s foreign and security policy.
Populist parties across Europe are whipping up anti-immigrant rhetoric. If governments pander to the populists, then Europe, by default, will become a fortress. Calls to dismantle the EU’s Schengen system, which did away with cross-border controls, will no doubt increase. That is exactly what these far-right parties want.
Were that to happen, any values Europe professes to have and any future plans to make Europe more seamlessly integrated would be undermined. This is damaging for Europe’s reputation as an open society committed to defending those values.
Furthermore, an inward-looking and xenophobic Europe would do untold harm to Europe’s influence in its Eastern and Southern neighborhoods—to the advantage of Russia.
Above all, Europe’s confused response to the refugee crisis confirms its weakness when it comes to crisis management. Crisis management is one of the tools the EU’s foreign policy boasts about. But because it is predicated on the use of soft power, EU crisis management has severe limitations.
Take Syria. Leaving aside sanctions against Damascus, the EU has had no policy for how to deal with the civil war in that country. It was just a matter of time before the politics of self-fulfilling prophecy became a reality, with a plethora of radical Islamist movements taking advantage of this shocking war.
With the benefit of hindsight, the EU should have acted in Syria by using hard power against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The longer the European governments sat on the sidelines, the more intractable the conflict became.
Yet opponents of hard power believe they are vindicated. They point to the damage bequeathed by NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya in 2011. There was no contingency planning for the day after—not that the leaders of that particular NATO mission, Britain and France, would ever admit it.
In Libya, the EU’s crisis management machine was almost nonexistent, even though the European Commission had known for several years about the potential scale of the refugee problem emanating from Libya and the political and social impact of overthrowing the regime of former strongman leader Muammar Qaddafi.
The vacuum left by the collapse of the regime was rapidly filled by a plethora of tribal movements as well as criminal and terrorist gangs—not to mention the havoc wreaked in nearby Mali.
The NATO mission should have been the ideal opportunity for the military side of NATO to be complemented by a robust EU civilian mission with a mandate to use force if needed to stabilize Libya’s state institutions. That didn’t happen. It was as if Europe—and, indeed, the United States—had learned nothing from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when that country’s state institutions were allowed to collapse.
Now, Europe is saddled with an ever-increasing refugee crisis. In practical terms, apart from pushing for nondiscriminatory burden sharing across all EU member states, the union can implement some stopgap measures. It can increase medical, social, education, and housing facilities in Jordan and Turkey, which have taken in millions of refugees.
The EU could also open talks with the Eritrean government. Young people are leaving this country in droves to escape repression and a near-permanent military conscription regime.
Nearer to home, since Albania is member of NATO and an EU candidate country, surely NATO and the EU can apply pressure on Tirana to rein in the criminal gangs who are demanding huge sums of money from the refugees.
These are Band-Aid measures. Ultimately, this is about the EU recognizing that its crisis management and soft power tools—both always too slow to react, let alone anticipate—can only go so far without hard power.
Comments(11)
I couldn't agree more, Judy. I remember another crisis the EU failed to "manage".
Unconvincing piece, Mrs Dempsey. Why? Because after prescribing (again) a military intervention you still fall into the same trap as the other drum beaters of interventionism: you fail to acknowledge that nation building is a hideously expensive hobby and that even the US has been cured from attempting it again anytime soon. The refugee crisis is yet again driving home the unpleasant truth (for foreign policy activists) that "projection" demands resources, resources that people in the domestic arena want to see being invested in domestic projects and not "sunk" into "black holes in some dustbowl few could point to on a globe". This I would call a solid failure of arguments to take root ... maybe something the interventionists should ponder instead of lamenting.
The refusal was made refugees from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea is an act of desperate self EU that now is unprepared and disoriented for the anticipated influx of so many people, who are now in limits them for life. Leaving these places in the hands of bandits government to have the idea of living only super collection of real large and power in their hands, with the help of a few bands that manage to commit heinous crimes, as is happening with phalanxes ISIS has already took power and has been extended in two states Syria and Iraq. Just toleration and who did these kind of crime hybrids apocalyptic movement brought from Asia and Africa to the developed capitalist countries of the EU, which as a mirror of their social advertising that were exactly "life in paradise".
Let me see if I get this. By Thomas de Maizière’s count, according to Judy Dempsey, Germany already entertains a list of more than one million asylum seekers, nearly all from places that have little or no cultural affinity with Germany. Assume for a moment that it accepts all applications. Somewhat more than one percent of Germany’s population overnight becomes “foreign.” Does the next wave alter Germany yet another one percent? A slippery slope, this. Germany has shown little success in integrating its immigrants, so why should we expect integration to succeed if the huge influx of new immigrants dramatically lowers their incentives to do so. For Dempsey, some Germans’ reluctance to accommodate this radical restructuring of its human capital blackens Europe’s eye for ignoring “any values it possesses.” These people are “inward looking” and “xenophobic.” Instead, she argues, Germany—and other European states, presumably—should double down on “crisis management,” because it “is one of the tools the EU’s foreign policy boasts about.” One needs be neither a right wing fanatic or anti-Muslim to understand that her formula is for the triumph of symbolism over reality, the good feeling one gets for having done the right thing, while the state’s social cohesion collapses and its economy tanks. Is this what Europe is supposed to be? Credit the Poles, the Slovaks, and the Czechs, who have “shamefully” revealed their understanding of just what thousands of new Muslim immigrants will mean for their societies. I doubt that they signed up for membership in the “Europe” Judy Dempsey seeks.
America's policy of "Shoot First Plan Later" is universally decried in Europe. Refugee's are the fruits of implementing that policy. The EU could help itself by insisting on "Planning Before Bombing." Who knows, it this policy showed some success we might even be able to evolve to "Interventions Other Than Bombing."
"The NATO mission should have been the ideal opportunity for the military side of NATO to be complemented by a robust EU civilian mission with a mandate to use force if needed to stabilize Libya’s state institutions." - In the old days they called this colonisation.
There wasn't a power vacuum left by the removal of Gadaffi, he had lost large swathes of Libya to Sub Human Islamists long before Sarkozy's first plane arrived. Gadaffi's solution was to carpet bomb cities taking all in his way regardless of their intentions towards his regime. Gadaffi was no friend of ours being complicit in countless terrorist acts, he got what was coming.
A timely and accurate diagnosis of the consequences of the short-sighted US and EU policies regarding Syria. The shameful silence of the world and particularly of the US administration has enabled the regime to disregard all political solutions and to stick with the military option to defeat the opposition and stay in power. The Obama's paralysis had enabled Al-Qaeda and later ISIS to set up shop in Syria and worst of all has boosted Iran and Hezbollah and encouraged them to put their full military might behind the al Assad's regime. The Syrian people, the opposition and the Free Syrian Army are not demanding military intervention. All Syrians with a few exceptions have rejected an Iraqi or Libyan style intervention. They don't want troops on the ground. They want no-fly zones in the North near the Turkish borders and in the South near the Jordanian borders. This will provide protection for the Syrian refugees and may encourage more defections from the regular Syrian army to the FSA. The second thing they demand which can be easily provided by NATO is anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. Whilst Russia and Iran are supplying armaments to the Syrian army, it makes lot of sense for the West and the so-called Friends of Syria to help the opposition. The murderous Syrian regime is getting economic and substantial military help from Russia, Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah. Worst of all evidence is emerging of collusion between the Assad regime and ISIS. In the last few weeks there has been a plethora of peace initiatives and political solutions thrown around by Tehran, Moscow, and the UN Special envoy for Syria Mr. Staffan De Mistura. None of the initiatives or ideas call specifically and unequivocally for the removal of Assad as a pre-condition for any solution which is what the majority of the Syrian people and the opposition demand. The Iranian-Russian position can be summarised in one sentence: "The West must work with Assad to fight ISIS or ISIL and he must stay in power to fulfil this function. As far as the Syrians are concerned ISIS is a joint Iranian/Syrian project to protect Assad by diverting attention from the Assad regime crimes.
Sobering commentary, Mr. Gardener. I for one have been applauding Germany's generosity from afar in Australia while bemoaning Australia's send-back and internment policy toward refugees. Haven't refugees contributed to Germany's vibrant economy? And what exactly do you mean by Europe's eye being "blackened by "radical restructuring?" Is it really so bad to have a white race 'diluted' by people of colour? Is this what you are saying? Or are there actual damages (social, economic or other) to diluting the German population with such a large percentage of non-Germans?
Crisis management is one thing, but the EU needs to address root causes : refugees are people fleeing repression, authoritarianism and mis-governance (of which conflicts from South Sudan to Syria are symptoms); migrants are poor people living in countries without a social contract, and therefore are moving to seek better lives. The EU needs to demand more of partners with regard to governance and prime its policies (trade, energy, tax, climate change etc. to address the root causes and do no further harm). The EU should also open talks with the Eritrean government as this piece suggests - but with clear conditions.
Foarte interesant!
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