Much has been written, and is being written all the time, about the large-scale efforts to fight climate change, and why they hopelessly fall short of the mark. At the same time, however, this is not one single fight, contained to the realms of high politics.

Regular citizens, activists, people from all walks of life, have also been doing what they can to stem the tide, to make the world more prepared, to make it more sustainable. We have chosen to sit down with one of these people for an interview.

Meet Dr. Ruxandra Lupu. She is a distinguished researcher, with a PhD in film/video and photographic arts from the University of Leeds. Professionally, she’s been working at the intersection between business and academia for a long time. She describes herself as “a traditional printmaker and digital humanities researcher”.

In 2020, she founded Eithne, a company that allows her to marry her academic and professional knowledge of textiles and printmaking, with the push for sustainability. You can read more about her extensive background here.

More interestingly from our point of view, Dr. Lupu has been disseminating her hard-won knowledge. Together with international partners, Eithne is implementing Sustainique, a project that aims to teach advanced and sustainable textile production techniques to “VET providers, textile designers, entrepreneurs, employees, and trainers in professional fashion firms”.

Of course, supporting research, education, and knowledge dissemination is one of the things the EU arguably does best, and we also believe it’s one of the essential tools in building a shared European home. That’s why we sat down with Dr. Lupu for a chat about sustainability and textiles.

Question: Which aspects of sustainability does your work address?

Answer: My work initially did not explicitly focus on sustainability. As a printmaker, I engaged in craftsmanship through textile printing. My focus shifted to sustainability when I researched the impact of innovation for a British media cluster. This project highlighted the importance of greening media technology and achieving sustainability through creative storytelling and processes.

Since then, my attention has turned completely into sustainability in arts and crafts, both as a researcher and an independent entrepreneur. In the past two years, my work has concentrated on the craft and textile fields, exploring sustainability in competencies, technologies (like haptics), storytelling, and innovation practices.

I particularly focus on responsible and hidden innovation in relation to sustainability. My approach now combines multimodal and interdisciplinary methods to address sustainability in arts and crafts, with an emphasis on care and responsibility, especially in textiles and fashion.

Q: How do you describe sustainable textile innovations, and their role within a more responsible fashion industry?

A: From a theoretical perspective, textile innovations are novel textiles created through new materials, designs, or production processes. The concept of novelty can be tricky, since changes occur daily. For example, is a textile fiber from an ancient crop innovative? Is engineered yarn from orange peels innovative? Both can be seen as innovative, but ensuring these products are durable, caring, and respectful to the environment and communities is key.

Labels like GOTS and Oeko-Tex should certify products, but their transparency and scope, especially in addressing social and economic aspects like fair trade and worker safety, can be limited. While traceability is vital, it’s challenging due to the complex production chains in textiles. We need comprehensive sustainability measurements, considering cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors in developing textile innovations.

Q: What is the state of the art of adoption of textile innovations in Europe?

A: Europe has high ambitions for textile innovations. Initiatives like Master programs at IAAC Spain and Boras University Sweden, and EU-funded projects such as WORTH, DeFine, and Re-Fashion, support this goal. Institutions like Fashion for Change advocate for a more resilient industry.

However, impact measurement and consistency of innovations lag behind. Many new products are not widely adopted due to low market availability, high prices, and risks associated with new materials. Young designers are more open to these innovations, often for limited editions or unique products, but mass adoption remains distant.

Q: How can material libraries contribute to fostering the uptake of textile innovations? What are the challenges they face?

A: Material libraries are places of discovery, stimulating designers by offering textiles and materials instead of books. Europe has fewer than ten material libraries, mainly serving architects and engineers, with few focusing on textiles. In 2022, a project with the University of Florence showed that designers are curious and open to new materials. However, material libraries face challenges like staff shortages, lack of funds, and a need for specialised experts. Educational institutions, especially at VET level, play a crucial role in promoting sustainability and innovation in textiles and fashion.

Question: How should holistic education be set up in terms of fostering the uptake of sustainable textile innovation?

A: Holistic education should encompass both external and deep knowledge. Designers need to understand, not only the physical properties of materials, but also how they were created, by whom, and their environmental and social impacts. This multifaceted knowledge helps designers make informed, sustainable choices. Future designers should be educated to assess materials’ properties for their specific needs, and understand their broader impact on communities and ecosystems. This approach fosters a resilient and caring practice in the textile industry.

The post Sustainable Textiles: An Interview With Dr. Ruxandra Lupu appeared first on My Country? Europe..

To date, the only evidence that Pratasevich is even alive is a video broadcast on the dictatorship’s State television. Here, the journalist bears clear marks of torture and declares – rather unconvincingly – that he has been treated well. This is followed by a “confession” regarding the “crimes” the regime alleges he committed against them. If Lukashenka feels he can get away with it, Pratasevich will be executed by firing squad. It’s a rarely used method even in Belarus, but one the regime has been preparing the ground for by labelling the journalist a “terrorist“, which enables the harshest punishments under what passes for “law” in Belarus.

The fact that a country in Europe is waging such a campaign of terror and despicable brutality against its own people is simply beyond the pale. But Lukashenka isn’t stopping there, as he fights tooth and claw to retain a position of power the rest of the world recognises is not his to have.

To get at Pratasevich and Sapega, Lukashenka has committed an act of State terrorism, directed against an EU-registered plane on an internal EU flight, which was “escorted” by a jet fighter – an act of military aggression that implicitly threatened EU civilians and the plane’s crew with death if they refused to comply. As part of this terror attack, EU citizens were left stranded at Minsk airport until the plane was released. Two passengers who were exercising their right to freedom of movement inside the Union’s borders were brazenly kidnapped.

The gravity of this act would warrant extraordinary measures, but the EU lacks the legal and political mandate required to meet force with force. It does have other tools at its disposal to strike back at Belarus, but is not utilising them too effectively yet.

A Toothless Great Power

The action carried out by Lukashenka against Ryanair would have been unthinkable against an internal Russian or USA flight packed with Russian or American citizens. The jet fighter involved in the act of aggression would have surely been downed, and possibly the airbase responsible for the operation would have been put out of action as well.

Unfortunately, the EU is a peculiar type of Great Power, one endlessly hampered by weakness and internal disunity, and most critically by the pathological shortsightedness of its Member States. The timidity, opportunism, and domestic constraints of national leaders mean that the EU lacks the competencies to respond to the hijacking the way it should – with a military response to protect the lives of EU citizens, force Belarus to respect its own citizens, and punish the perpetrators. But the chronic political anaemia that has taken root in every European capital prevents this. The internal disunity is even worse when considering the issue of Russian involvement, which is even more divisive to Member States.

But if the EU can’t react the way a Great Power should, what can it do? Luckily, it can do a few things, and to some degree it already is. However, a different approach will be needed to exploit the EU’s leverage to the fullest.

The Response So Far

Following an emergency session, the European Council has pushed through a sanctions package that goes some way to inflicting pain on Lukashenka’s regime without overturning the apple cart. The essence of the move is to lock Belarus out of international aviation by banning Belarusian overflight in the EU’s air space, as well as access to EU airports.

The Council has also called “on all EU-based carriers to avoid overflight of Belarus,” and while this measure has largely been heeded, at the time of writing both Ryanair and Alitalia have failed to respect it. Overflight is an important – if secondary – source of precious income for Belarus, particularly on flights bound eastward into Asia. All told, the measure will cost Lukashenka’s regime anywhere between 50-70 million USD.

A carrot has been put forward with the stick: should Belarus embark on a path of democratisation, the EU has a 3 billion EUR aid package waiting in the wings. This message is of course intended primarily for Belarus’ political opposition, but it’s not realistic to expect them to be in a position to take the EU up on its offer anytime soon.

The sanctions also target individuals close to the regime, blacklisting them from various activities. More countermeasures are expected to be announced in the coming days. While effective in their own right, these sanctions are a sign that the EU still hasn’t given up on its wait-and-see strategy towards Belarus. This approach is understandable, since it’s driven by forces outside of the EU’s control, but it’s also misguided. Lukashenka is essentially walking away with impunity and will continue to stir trouble – unless we stop him.

The Russian Problem

Russia benefits from this situation more than anyone else involved. The more Lukashenka loses face in the West, the narrower his political room for manoeuvre becomes. Left with only Russia as a bridge to the rest of the outside world, as well as a patron in economic and military terms, Lukashenka has no choice but to hang on to Putin even tighter. This in turn puts him on an even more confrontational path with the West, in a positive feedback loop.

The EU has tackled this through, primarily, ambivalence. It has sought to punish Lukashenka, but not too harshly, always dangling the hope of a Euro-Belarusian rapprochement should Minsk change its tune.

Some Member States recognise this strategy has failed. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are spearheading a political effort to extend sanctions on Russia as well. This effort isn’t based on the analysis that Putin is the primary beneficiary of the current crisis, although that certainly plays a part. Rather, it rests on the (most probably correct) assumption that the Belarusian KGB lacks the operational capabilities to carry out the espionage operation required to keep tabs of Pratasevich’s trip to Athens without direct Russian assistance. France is also leaning towards this position, as President Macron has become manifestly frustrated with the timidity of European sanctions against its eastward opponents.

But the rest of the Union is a lot more ambivalent. Countries like Italy have a long history of opposition to new rounds of sanctions against Russia, primarily based on (largely imaginary) commercial grounds. Orban’s Hungary is of course always ready to cozy up with the Kremlin, a strategy Budapest calls the “eastern pivot”. Germany, torn by ambivalent political inclinations and its own commercial ties with Russia, is also a source of frustration for those wishing for a tougher EU response.

We Have Nothing to Gain by Waiting

That, however, doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. Even ignoring Russia’s involvement and sticking with current sanctions against the Kremlin, and even within the current mandate of the EU, there is considerable room to manoeuvre and develop a better foreign policy towards Belarus, one much more effective at pursuing Brussels’ objectives and interests.

For a start, the loss of overflight fees will not bankrupt Lukashenka’s regime, but other countermeasures might. Large State-owned companies are the primary pillar on which Lukashenka’s regime lays its foundations. These oligarchs form the elite in the country, provide precious connections to Russia and the rest of the world, and bankroll the heavy militarisation of society required to maintain Lukashenka’s illegal hold on power. Hitting these companies would mean striking at Lukashenka where it actually hurts.

One such example is Belarusian mining and extraction company Belaruskali, whose employees are deprived of the right to strike – among others. Belaruskali enjoys strong connections with a Norwegian energy giant, Yara, which acts as a gateway into the European Economic Area – of which Norway is a member. Why should this situation continue, in a context where Belarus has clearly decided to douse its bridge with Europe in gasoline, and burn it?

The Americans, untroubled by the internal division and uncertainty that hampers the EU’s every move, have been following precisely this strategy, heaping so many economic sanctions on Belarusian refineries that Russia has been forced to cut its oil exports to Minsk. These oil exports, which are subsidised by the Kremlin, are the economic lifeline of the regime. Cutting it would do more to restrain Lukashenka’s bloodthirst than a thousand overflight restrictions.

Another low-hanging fruit that would make sure sanctions are not a half-measure would be to restrict the sale and holding of Belarusian treasury bonds. No financial institution inside Europe should help bankroll the regime that is going to put that cash flow into even more repression of its own citizens. Other key Belarusian economic interests, such as the illegal smuggling of cigarettes from and into the EU (which has reached truly dazzling proportions), would make for easy targets for any concerted response. It would also very quickly exert financial pressure on Lukashenka.

The only carrot Europe should offer to Lukashenka is to ease some of the restrictions if Minsk releases its political prisoners. This doesn’t mean Pratasevich and Sapega alone. There are now hundreds of political prisoners lost inside the depths of the Belarusian security apparatus, a number that keeps growing ever since the parody of national elections held last year. Only by de-escalating his war against his own people should Lukashenka be able to win some breathing room. And even then, the ultimate objective should always be his removal from power, by any means necessary.

Belarus has turned into a black hole of repression and State-sanctioned violence right at the border with the EU. The poison pouring out of Minsk is beginning to cross the border, threatening the lives and safety of European citizens as well as the opposition figures that, at this critical juncture, should enjoy our protection. It is clear that the strategy of half-measures has failed. Lukashenka will keep stirring up trouble unless he’s unable to, and it is up to us to make him stop. That will, unfortunately, require European national leaders to take their heads out of the sand. One wonders how bad things will have to get before they are forced to do so.

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Vaccine Nationalism And Political Myopia

Let’s start with the fundamentals. The EU’s negotiating wasn’t slow, nor was it inefficient. In fact, the EU – AstraZeneca purchasing agreement precedes the company’s similar deal with the United Kingdom. The “British first” clause did not stem out of a commercial contract. It was the result of public funds made available to Oxford, which AstraZeneca gained access to once the two teamed up to develop a vaccine.

Deploying early funding to support a vaccine for the new coronavirus is undoubtedly a sensible move. Vaccine nationalism, conversely, was extremely myopic. The funding being made conditional on Britain receiving doses before anybody else might seem like a nation-state ruthlessly pursuing its interests while leaving the rest of the world out to dry, and to a degree this is true. But even if one handwaves this selfishness as acceptable, the fundamental point is missing: this logic makes it harder, not easier, to fight the pandemic.

Every new generation of the virus increases the likelihood that it will mutate. The more people are infected all over the world, the likelier it is that the virus will change. The more the virus changes, the less effective vaccines will be. Should the UK manage to vaccinate its entire population, and open up to the rest of the world, it would be confronted with a situation in which contagions still surge in the majority of the planet, leading to more and more variants, and presenting the spectre of a new wave in the UK itself, endangering all the work done so far. Only a global rollout of vaccines can properly stem the tide of the pandemic.

The World “First”, Europe “Second”

This is not fringe epidemiology. This fact was well understood as far back as January 2020. For all the uncertainty surrounding the new coronavirus, it was still a coronavirus – many in this clade are already known to science, and while there could be no certainty as to how fast the virus would mutate, it was fair to assume it would eventually produce variants, especially if confronted with piecemeal vaccinations. This is why, when Germany funded BioNTech like the UK did Oxford, the government in Berlin did not include a “Europe first” clause. Nor did the European Commission see it fit to intervene and request one. This attitude remained consistent when BioNTech partnered with American pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Meanwhile, the UK vetoed a partnership between Oxford and American company Merck, forcing a partnership with British AstraZeneca instead.

And yet, while the EU was making sound medical R&D decisions, and trusting its long-standing partners to do the same, worrying signs started coming out of the Atlantic. Then-president Trump tried to steal BioNTech from Germany to gain exclusive American access to the vaccine. The move failed, and even so, back then it caused an uproar. Why the same indignation is not on display now, with countries monopolising vaccine doses, is a great mystery of public opinion.

Export Bans And The Global Vaccine Supply Chain

Trump didn’t seem overly concerned with his failure to steal the BioNTech vaccine. Indeed, he didn’t even bother to sign Pfizer supply contracts. This is because he knew that most of the new partnership’s production capacity was in the United States; he only needed a legal excuse to seize doses present on American soil, or block them with an export ban, and he would get all the jabs his country would need. The absurdity of this beggar-thy-neighbour policy is that European vaccines are being used, not only in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, but also Mexico and Canada – the two countries bordering the Continental United States, who have no other option given their neighbour’s export ban on vaccines.

The legal cover for this – which the Biden administration is still using at time of writing – is twofold: one is Trump’s December 2020 executive order, giving Americans first priority to vaccines produced on American soil. The other, more substantial basis is the Defense Production Act.

We’re not discussing a trickle here, either: millions of EU doses have been used in the aforementioned countries, as well as in developing countries, while the United States and the United Kingdom simply seize EU doses produced on their soil and regularly purchased well in advance. This unilateral seizing is nothing short of vaccine piracy, and as mentioned, it’s making it all the harder to have a meaningful global impact on the pandemic. Should dangerous variants proliferate, it might even backfire, causing untold damage to the economy, as well as – and more seriously – additional loss of life. The United States alone has got its hands on over five million EU vaccine doses.

EU-UK Relations Take Centre-Stage

On the other side of the coin is the UK’s own vaccine piracy – primarily fueled by what the EU deems AstraZeneca’s breach of contract. Already on 29th January, AstraZeneca informed the EU that it would be unable to meet promised shipments due to “production problems” in its two European plants. This was because doses slated for the EU had been delivered to the UK instead. Brussels demanded AstraZeneca uphold its contract, which obliged it to make use of all four of its production facilities (two in the UK, two in the EU) to meet its obligations on deliveries. Shielded by the “British first” clause, AstraZeneca refused to bridge the gap with exports from the UK. The stage was set for a cross-channel battle of wills that is not yet concluded at time of writing.

Up to January 2021, the EU had included the UK in all of its anti-pandemic industrial coordination plans, making sure Britain was not isolated from the world economy on critical items such as ventilators and medical equipment during the first and second surges of covid cases. This has included as many as ten million vaccine doses exported from the EU to the UK. Britain’s current manipulation of vaccine exports has ended that cooperation. The Commission has retaliated and is moving ahead with its own export ban, and it is likely that additional countermeasures will be forthcoming. As more vaccines enter the market, AstraZeneca’s leverage will diminish. Legally, the battle might well last for years to come. Politically, the tide has already turned against them.

The Strategic And Political Bankruptcy Of European Member States

A final consideration should be made to close out this much-needed reframing of the vaccine narrative. It would be easy to draw the conclusion that the EU was naive to trust in its international partners to put collective long-term interests ahead of their own short-term benefit. This misses the fundamental point on two levels. First is the already explored medical argument: a piecemeal rollout of vaccines in select countries is an own goal, as the virus rages everywhere and the number of mutations increase. The failure to coordinate vaccine distribution on an international scale ultimately represents the failure of humanity to address this crisis effectively; it will lengthen it, not shorten it.

A narrower but equally important point is that the EU did not act naively – rather, it acted as it has always been intended to act, by design. It is completely unreasonable to expect the EU to act and think like a hard power, neorealist security institution, when Member States still jealously guard their monopoly on security and national defence. As we have emphatically argued before, Member States are in the driver seat when it comes to running the Union through the pandemic, and they’re making a terrible job of it.

The Catch 22 Vaccine Scenario

Healthcare is also a competence lying primarily with the Member States. Their refusal to equip the EU with the proper tools to handle security responsibilities has left this flank open to Anglo-American vaccine piracy. It is their political timidity which leads them to preserve this institutional status quo even in the face of a world-changing crisis. In addition, their pathological concerns with short-term gains over long-term strategy is what motivates them to use the EU as a scapegoat for everything they fail to accomplish.

Unfortunately, this is the “Catch 22” European institutions are constantly exposed to. Had the European Commission truly tried to force BioNTech to end its partnership with Pfizer and find a European partner instead, Member States today might be playing the blame game the other way, pointing to the failed partnership as the reason for the delayed availability and rollout of anti-covid jabs. This crisis has made it obvious that 19th-Century European nation states are not fit to govern themselves in a crisis.

If you want evidence of the need for true European integration, look no further than the vaccine rollout crisis. This is more than recrimination about the past – it contains a concern about the future. The end of the pandemic is not yet in sight. Even as immunisations mount, the process to make the virus both endemic and harmless will be long and arduous. Will Europe get through to the end of this great challenge still in one piece? How exactly do European Member States plan to survive climate change when the coronavirus has so thoroughly outmatched them? These remain, at the moment, tragically open questions.

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The Political Definition of Empire

Political scientists defining the EU as an imperial polity do so in reference to a very specific definition of empire. At this point, it’s important to stop and keep in mind that such definition – like most definitions in the field – is arbitrary to a degree, subjective, and usually quite distinct from the vernacular meaning. This means that its applicability to everyday language is limited. No matter how many papers are published detailing lists of supposed EU imperial characteristics, European citizens are unlikely to start referring to the Union as an empire any time soon. Nevertheless, given the growing references in the academic literature, it is interesting to explore what lens European integration is being read through.

Scholars such as Hoerber, Sigalas, Muenkler, Grande, and others define an “empire” as a more fragmented alternative to the modern, territorial nation-state. Rather than a classical pre-national political entity based on military might (like the Roman Empire) or a hegemonic project on the part of a nation-state to assert dominion over the planet (like the British Empire), the European Union would be classified as a new type of empire, with some critical differences. Traditional empires (and, to some degree, nation-states) have a centralised institutional framework, with a distinctive capital from which all power emanates to the periphery. This is a far cry from the mesh of regional, national, and supranational governance the EU is built upon.

Clear borders are one of the hallmarks of nation-states, but imperial borders tend to be fuzzy. Scholars point to the uncertainty surrounding European borders – while EU membership is pretty distinct, the circles of affiliation involving the EEA, EFTA, and various special partnerships, make the European borderlands considerably harder to pin down exactly in a political and economic dimension. But where a traditional empire typically involves an exploitative relationship between the centre and the periphery, driven by a monocephalic power structure, an imperial polity is driven by civil and cooperative policymaking. The fragmentation of institutions leads to a polycephalic system of power, where “loser’s consent” is a fundamental requirement for every policy. The taboo of violence, rather than coercive violence towards the periphery, is what these authors place at the heart of European integration.

Scholars also cite an overarching mission as a defining characteristic of old and new empires – as opposed to nation-states, whose primary concern is their preservation and furthering of their interests. This kind of imperial mission is a specific, ontological purpose that justifies the existence of the political entity. For the European Union, this objective is regularly identified as the establishment of peace and prosperity in Europe, following the calamity of the two world wars. This mission is what motivates the EU’s continued existence, and serves as the “guiding light” of its policies.

Imperial Priorities

Scholars who adopt this definition of the EU as an imperial polity are quick to point out this has real-world implications, mostly apparent in European political debate. Furthering peace, security and prosperity across a sphere comprising multiple nations is one such implication, which usually goes hand in hand with the promotion of economic prosperity. Preoccupations about both areas figure prominently in debates about European integration and crisis management.

More importantly, there is a clear civilisational divide between the imperial polity and the outside world, which is contrasted with domestic political life for its stark differences in values and norms. For instance, European attitudes that go beyond national specifics – on subjects like healthcare, foreign policy, human rights etc – are often defined in opposition to the other great powers of the day, such as the United States, Russia, and China. This divide is typically not met with hostility, but with a desire to promote one’s values abroad. The European Union is certainly greatly preoccupied with strengthening democratic standards across the world, for example by including human rights clauses wherever possible when striking trade deals with third countries.

Last but not least, policy both at home and abroad should be in accordance with the overall mission at the heart of the political entity. If this means promoting human rights and free trade abroad, it also means fighting against corruption and stimulating economic development at home. Most critically, the imperial polity becomes a successful mediator for political conflicts between its centre and its periphery. Thanks to its decentralised structure, and the common desire from the various political actors to have stakes in the outcome of negotiations, the millennia-old practice of imperial discrimination on its borderlands is avoided.

A Union by any Other Name

When looking at the above criteria, we can see why an increasing number of political scientists refer to the EU as an imperial polity. However, the earlier caveats on subjectivity and arbitrariness remain. All we can really say for certain is that the analysis is internally consistent, based on the parameters established at the outset. To put it bluntly, that doesn’t mean it’s “true”, broadly speaking. Whether it’s politically expedient, useful, or accurate from a communication standpoint to label the EU as an empire is an open question, and one which non-academics can reasonably be sceptical about. The term did make its way outside of academia, as noted by Hoerber and Sigalas. EU Commission President Barroso said as much in 2007, claiming that the EU was the world’s “first non-imperial empire”.

Ultimately, it is hard not to escape the conclusion that this is just another chapter in the constant soul-searching that marks European political culture. “What is the EU?” is a question that evades simple answers. There is no historical or contemporary equivalent for this ambitious project of regional integration, and attempts to make the EU fit the categories of the past always come up somewhat short of the mark. Sitting somewhere between being an international organisation, a confederation of states, a federal state in its own right, or a multi-national federation, the EU is a bit of all the above, but neither of those can describe it fully and accurately.

“Empire” is a definition that is, therefore, in good company – a partially accurate attempt, at best, to define a daring political project that defies definition. Whether it will have more success than its counterparts will have to be seen. The European Union will continue to change and deal with a difficult world around it, but the quest for a handy label to describe it still has no end in sight.

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Eurobonds By Any Other Name

The current EU budget has a very restricted ceiling: it’s capped at 1% of the EU’s GDP. This puts severe limits on how effective, bold, and ambitious the EU can be with its policies even at the best of times – and a global pandemic is far from that.

This is where the Franco-German proposal comes in. In a surprising break from past timidity, France and Germany have proposed an increase for the EU budgetary ceiling for the next three years – raising it to 2% of GDP. That extra 1% would amount to some 165 billion Euros a year, for a total of 500 billion. Crucially, it would not be covered by Member State annual contributions: it would be debt, which the EU can issue in its own name.

This is critical in a number of ways. First and foremost, it means that this new debt would not show up in Member States’ national accounts. This would massively help Member States with low credit ratings and intractable debt problems, such as Italy. Secondly, it builds on a mechanism the EU can already use. Brussels is already allowed to issue debt, but for very limited purposes – typically, to support Member States with economic difficulties or to intervene on the balance of payments. What would change with the introduction of the Recovery Fund is that the sums of debt the EU is allowed to issue would be much larger.

Most fundamentally, this gives the European Commission a political backing and mandate it desperately needed to act. The issue of economic reconstruction is now being reframed as a European problem, not one restricted to the national economies. Technicalities still need outlining: we don’t know how new EU debt will be distributed among Member States, how reimbursing will work out in practice, and whether the system will become a permanent feature of EU policy-making after its expiration, three years from now. But the political commitment is serious. The word “Eurobond” was never mentioned in Franco-German press releases. Ultimately, however, that is what’s at stake right now – and the EU’s financial solidity with it.

The Bad News

It is, perhaps, depressing that this proposal is coming from the two largest Member States in the EU. But this should not surprise us, nor overly concern us. It’s no surprise, because the bitter truth is that the EU is still a low-trust political environment that Member States will only countenance so long as they feel they are in charge. The system can only truly be altered by them, by design. However, some of the claims made in the public debate – that Germany and France are going behind the Commission’s back, for instance – are wildly exaggerated. The Commission strongly endorses the initiative, and was kept informed of its development at all times, as were other Member States.

Claims that this is an undemocratic decision process are also off the mark. In order to become policy, the Fund will need approval from the parliaments of every Member State in the European Union. Naturally, the truly ideal option would be to give the European Parliament the final word. That scenario remains remote, at present. But that doesn’t mean that France and Germany have hijacked European decision-making.

The bad news is that several remain opposed to this scheme. Austria, the Netherlands, and Finland have already voiced their opposition. While Macron and Merkel were telling the press that France and Germany were standing up for Europe and that extraordinary times required extraordinary measures, Austrian chancellor Kurz took to Twitter to dampen enthusiasm for the move. The Visegrad countries have not shown their hands yet. It’s likely that they can be convinced to support the move. What price they will demand remains an open question.

There is a further element of uncertainty: what is going to guarantee repayment? The answer is vital, because the EU having solid credit and market confidence is fundamental for this plan to succeed. Since the Recovery Fund is not part of the Treaties, debt will require purely political backing. The EU needs to make credible commitments to debt servicing and its own financial soundness. This is certainly doable, but it does make the European credit position more volatile with an eye to the future.

The Good News

The need for unanimous approval on the part of the Member States is politically cumbersome, but it also solves a legal problem. The German constitutional court will not have jurisdiction over EU fiscal policy that is cleared by the German parliament (along with its other 26 equivalents in the EU).

The best news of all, perhaps, is that France and Germany are taking the EU seriously again. There is perhaps some reason to hope that the lessons imparted by the 2012 Euro debt crisis did not go unheeded. Paris and Berlin have both recognised the gravity of the situation and the necessity to take the initiative. The ability for the EU to issue its own debt in large scale is a transformative event.

Henrik Henderlein, an economist who serves as director to the Jacques Delors Centre, has labelled this the European Union’s “Hamiltonian moment”, a political signal that “the EU is more than a grouping of nation-states, and has its own federal identity.” Should the Recovery Fund become policy, it might be the EU’s real, first step towards statehood. It will be up to Member States to make that happen. Now more than ever, we need national capitals to rise up to the challenge, be brave – and take the plunge.

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When Did Things Get This Bad?

When we say Member States are the undisputed leaders of the EU, some readers might be taken by surprise. After all, so much political campaigning in Europe today is based on scapegoating an “unelected bureaucracy” which is allegedly over-mighty in its interference with national politics. However, that is not what the actual practice of politics in Europe tells us. Even aside the very extensive powers given to the Council by the Treaties themselves, customs have evolved considerably. Consider this: between 1961 and 1973, only six European summits took place. The Treaty of Lisbon contains provisions for four meetings a year. Now, the European Council meets about twice that number every year, sometimes more.

This is a momentous change, so it would be sensible to ask what brought it about. The answer is the series of blows that hit the continent over the past decade. The Great Recession of 2008, the Euro debt crisis of 2012, the Crimean crisis in 2014 and the refugee crisis in 2015, and finally the Brexit negotiations. The latter negotiations are an excellent example of what we mean: the Commission received a mandate from the 27 Member States to conduct negotiations with the UK, but the buck always eventually stopped with national capitals. They were the only ones who could authorise an extension, for example.

Now, the situation here described need not necessarily be bad. Europe has evolved in the direction of a permanent diplomatic conference, one that never disbands but carries on indefinitely and really does try to work in concert. It’s a political development without precedent in history. Diplomacy by conference also has some inherent strengths: the ability to cut deals on a face-to-face basis and the trust and familiarity developed by its participants over time, amongst others.

However, it also has glaring weaknesses. The horse-trading behind closed doors hampers political legitimacy, and institution-building is inherently weakened by the resurgence of national diplomacy, which risks turning Europe from a power in its own right into a mere forum. Moreover, European nations specifically suffer from weaknesses which are unique to them. Those weaknesses have led to widespread mismanagement of European policies. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has laid them bare for all the world to see, and it’s a truly ugly spectacle.

Chronic And Acute Mismanagement

A Reuters exclusive has revealed just how painfully incompetent Member States have been when exercising their share of healthcare competences. Already in early February, the European Commission was warning Member States that the storm was coming – and was inquiring into their preparations. Member States did not heed the warning and reported to the Commission that national healthcare systems were in an advanced state of readiness. No need to alter procedures or place orders for more ventilators, masks, and other essential supplies. Everything was under control.

And then it wasn’t. As the pandemic sucker-punched the EU, Member States threw themselves headlong into a shambolic race to secure masks and stick to their national stockpiles. It took weeks of diplomatic work for the Commission to enact joint stockpiles, joint industrial production, and to keep transfers of medical equipment going. The measures taken by the Commission and the ECB are impressive – you can read more on them here – but where the supranational institutions have acted well, Member States have failed.

The spectacle of unpreparedness didn’t stop with the question of coordination. What followed was an increasingly incoherent discussion over what financial tools were best suited to address the coronavirus-triggered economic recession. In this, all sides displayed exceeding political myopia.

Southern States have grounded their argument for coronabonds (which is otherwise perfectly reasonable) with bizarre and rather grotesque attempts at blackmail. This is Italy did when it threatened not to make use of the European Stability Mechanism if bonds were rejected – even though it is the country that would currently benefit from the ESM the most. Nordic countries, meanwhile, have shown their complete inability to grasp the magnitude of the situation, with the Netherlands in particular actively looking for a solution that would require the smallest amount of change to the EU as it stands. In other words, a band-aid.

The problem with band-aids is that deep wounds remain open below. This is the same approach the EU undertook to address the 2012 debt crisis. Change the least possible amount of things in such a way that you can barely make it through the crisis. This is extremely poor risk management: the risk of doing too much is much smaller than the risk of doing too little. The Great Recession has taken a full decade to play out across the West. It has poisoned the wells of our political debate, encouraged radicalisation, lowered social trust, and some Western countries are still to return to pre-2008 GDP levels.

The coronavirus crisis will be worse. The numbers clearly show that it is the worst economic crisis since 1929, and it’s only just getting started. It is completely naive to believe it will not have a similar impact. And it is completely reckless to assume we can just scrape by with an ad-hoc, barely workable, fundamentally timid response. And yet, eight years after the Euro debt crisis, it’s happening again.

Active Leadership Avoidance

In the summer of 2019, we wrote an article dissecting the truly shambolic spectacle of the European nominations which followed the elections. Re-reading the closing paragraph to that article almost twelve months on is peculiar:

“The European Union’s real problem is not in the Treaties or their implementation or even in the apparent and increased fragmentation of its electorate. The real problem is that its policy elites are not ready to rule the continent. After the Great Recession and the 2012 Eurozone crisis, one wonders what other near-apocalyptic scenario will be required to snap European politics out of its sclerotic complacency.”

It is perhaps an example of supreme irony at work that the question received a prompt answer. Apparently, we can scratch global pandemic off the list of crises capable of waking European leaders to the reality of the dangerous 21st Century. But it’s also useful to illuminate what the problem is: there is no reason why even a Europe of nations had to mismanage coronavirus so badly.

There is no magic barrier protecting the European institutions from reforms. Proposals that come to mind would be concentrating emergency healthcare competences at the EU level, giving the EU a budget worth of its status as a regional great power, or even just taking the Commission’s warnings about a pandemic seriously. All these things are easily doable with political will. Sadly, that’s when we get to the hard part.

Can we move forward?

The core problem is that European policy elites do not take the EU seriously. They lack the vision, the determination and the ambition to make use of its great potential. They are content with its market and financial achievements, and – in the words of economic historian Adam Tooze – prefer to argue endlessly over milk quotas as opposed to dealing with high politics. Of course, just because our leaders are uninterested in high politics, that doesn’t mean high politics are uninterested in them.

If anything, in the present century, questions of high politics are multiplying. Territorial defence is back on the agenda, and so is war on European soil, along with problems of nuclear security. The United States can no longer be assumed to have our best interests in mind. The continent needs a revamp of its infrastructure, has to worry about Russian ships in the melting Arctic, and peace in Ireland. And in all of this, climate change is coming.

Coronavirus has been very educational in showing just how unprepared we are to deal with existential crises. A virus cannot be argued away or swept under the rug. No amount of wishful thinking will make it disappear. It does not care for our leadership’s intense desire to keep Europe frozen in the 1990s forever, or to remain on the benches while letting others be the big players.

For all the doom and gloom in this article, it must be made clear that we can pull through these crises. The EU has a high technological base, a genuinely cutting-edge single market, a solid industry, and our societies are relatively peaceful and trusting. But we cannot get the job done if Member States refuse to rise up to the challenge. They must start taking Europe seriously – or leave the room for other institutional actors who will.

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The Effects Of And Strategies Against The New Coronavirus

The medical aspect of this fight is best left to sources that can make qualified statements. But the dangers of coronavirus are clear: it’s a very contagious disease that is mild in most cases, but extremely threatening to the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. Besides the lopsided mortality rates, which increase significantly with age, the new coronavirus also causes a very high number of hospitalisations, usually due to severe pneumonia. These hospitalisations greatly exceed what any healthcare system on Earth can handle at any given time – in terms of ICU beds, ventilators, doctors required to staff the units etc. Once hospitals collapse, the mortality rate skyrockets – both because coronavirus patients who could be saved in an ICU are left without medical care, and because people getting injured or sick from other ailments would have no access to medical help. Ultimately, the “do nothing” and “mitigation” strategies would result in millions of people dying. Should you wish to dig into the data, we can warmly recommend this fantastic piece by Tomas Pueio.

This only leaves one workable strategy: suppression. That is to say, extreme social distancing to deprive coronavirus of the opportunity to spread quickly, ideally bringing the number of sick people at any given time below ICU bed capacity. While of a more uncertain impact, this could also place selective pressure on the virus to favour less lethal and less noticeable strains. In order to work, however, suppression requires participation from the whole of society, as well as extensive economic mobilisation. The fight against coronavirus will not be won by doctors alone – the entire world will have to mobilise in order to sustain them.

We are at war. This is not just a metaphor: suppressing a pandemic is functionally very similar to fighting a war. Just like in wartime, there is a physical space of concentrated effort – in this case, hospitals, where loss of life is the norm. Just like during a war, sustaining this physical effort requires a complex logistical supply chain that includes coordinated production and distribution of essential equipment, like ventilators and face masks. The civilian population is also asked to make sacrifices – in this case, by staying indoors and following government directives. There is one major difference between a war and a pandemic, however. During a war, industrial production is maximised. The opposite happens during a pandemic, because the lockdown inevitably results in lower output.

The European Union has introduced a sweeping set of countermeasures – which are a good start, but only a start. As we look into what has already been done, remember that this is just the beginning of a drawn out effort that can only work if we act together. Suppressing coronavirus will change the European Union (and likely the world) in ways we cannot fully anticipate, and the pandemic is expected to trigger the worst economic recession since 1945, further increasing the complexity and fluidity of the situation. This is a world-upending, historical moment of rare magnitude, and we must all rise up to the challenge. Make no mistake: this will be a very long fight – but it’s one we can win together.

What The EU Has Already Done Against Coronavirus

The EU has a checkered record when it comes to dealing with crises. This is a product of its institutional set up and small mandate: the EU is built as a leadership avoidance scheme, which gives every Member State the breathing ground they need to come to bargains with one another, and have confidence that such bargains will be respected. This is great for wider European integration, but terrible in times of crisis, where clear leadership, fast decision-making, and an unequivocal chain of command are essential to response coordination.

However, the EU has learnt its lesson since its abysmal handling of the Euro debt crisis in 2012, where only the help of the Federal Reserve kept the Eurozone away from the abyss, as we detailed here. The measures being undertaken today at a European level are the right ones, and compatible with the small mandate of the Commission, they also display a refreshing dynamism.

First, the EU set up a Corona Response Investment Initiative, freeing up €25 billion that will shore up national healthcare systems, and shield workers and companies from the economic fallout of the suppression measures. It also allocated funds to vaccine research, as well as research of treatments that might make the pandemic more manageable. Additionally, the Commission has triggered the Stability Pact’s General Escape Clause, and greatly relaxed State aid rules. This will allow Member States to pump as much money into the economy as needed in order to fight coronavirus, bail out companies, and shield workers from the economic fallout.

These financial measures are paired with logistical and industrial interventions: the European Commission is coordinating, and massively ramping up, joint industrial production of all essential medical equipment, like face masks and ventilators. It has also forbidden exporting these products to third countries – with the exception of the United Kingdom, which is great news for London, since Britain only possesses 5,000 ventilators and lacks the domestic capacity to build more. Brussels is also setting up a common stockpile of all this essential equipment, to hand out to Member States to make sure that no one runs out. Once treatment and a vaccine are available, these will also be made a part of this common stockpile.

Further, the EU is also moving to ensure that the 300,000 EU nationals currently stuck outside the EU can make it back home safely, by pressuring other countries into keeping a select few airports open for emergency return flights, and ensuring the smooth functioning of the internet at a time of surging traffic through deals with Netflix, YouTube, and others.

However, the real centerpiece of the wider European effort to fight the new coronavirus comes from the ECB. It’s the so called “bazooka”.

Deploying The Bazooka

Following an embarrassing gaffe by Christine Lagarde, and after the global nature of the threat became evident, the European Central Bank introduced the so-called Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme, also known as PEPP or, informally, the bazooka. This is the single largest measure so far at a European level. It’s an emergency €750 billion package to buy government and  company debt across the Eurozone. What this means in practice is that the ECB will guarantee Member States’ liquidity, so that whatever amount of money they spend to fight coronavirus will be backed up by the might of the ECB. The extension to private debt also means the ECB will be playing a hands-on role in protecting companies and ordinary people from the inevitable economic recession that will result from suppression measures.

There is no time-frame from when this will end, except that it will in any case last to the end of 2020 at a minimum. The timing of the maneuver is up to the ECB’s judgement. Ultimately, the pace of the fight against the pandemic, as well as the stimulus required to kickstart the economy after the outbreak , will determine how long this massive purchase of assets will go on. One thing is certain – this is a watershed in the history of the European Central Bank. Not even Draghi’s famous “whatever it takes” statement extended this far. In all the doom and gloom about the slow progress of European integration, we must also acknowledge that the progress done since 2012 is clearly on show here. This level of interventionism places the ECB much closer to a traditional central bank. There is free talk now of the PEPP helping guarantee jobs and companies as well as currency stability, after all. This may not have formally expanded the the Bank’s mandate, but in practice, it already has.

The Central Banks To The Front

This is a global pandemic, and as such it naturally warrants a global response. We have already witnessed a number of efforts at international cooperation against the new coronavirus, with varying degrees of success. For example, countries are trading doctors and task forces, ventilators and face masks, and the global scientific community is focusing on vaccine research. But what about financial and economic mobilisation?

Here, too, the EU does not operate in a vacuum. The ECB’s bazooka, in particular, is not an isolated measure: it is part of a wider effort by several central banks to guarantee that the global economy will survive the pandemic, and keep the machine of health and research running. The US Federal Reserve, the ECB, and the central banks of Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Canada, are coordinating financial action in this respect. The reader might ask, why these central banks in particular, and what it is they are doing exactly. The answer lies in the lessons learnt during the Great Recession of 2008, and the Eurozone debt crisis of 2012. In that occasion, the Federal Reserve provided liquidity to other central banks – and in the latter case, particularly the ECB. These are currency swap lines, so called because the liquidity is denominated in multiple currencies. In effect, the Federal Reserve acted as the lender of last resort for other central banks. This was part of a “backroom deal”, and not widely publicised – American public opinion was vehemently against it, pushing the Obama administration to operate discreetly.

Today, these currency swap lines have been expanded. The same central banks that tried them out in 2008 and 2012 are now leaning on them even more strongly. What consequences this will have on world finance in the long term is hard to foresee, but in the immediate, the strategy is clearer: these measures prevented a heart attack of the world economy both in 2008 and 2012. The hope is that they will do so again.

European Coronabonds

Talk of coronabonds has also greatly intensified over the past week, with Commissioner Gentiloni quite open that the proposal is on the table. Fiscally conservative countries like the Netherlands and Germany have opposed any sort of financial risk-sharing at a EU level for years. They remained so even at the height of the Euro debt crisis in 2012, with Merkel famously saying that risk-sharing would not happen in the EU “for as long as I live”. This opposition to joint bonds has not dissipated, but the reality of the pandemic has significantly weakened it. Merkel is allegedly open to the idea of coronabonds. The Netherlands are still looking for an alternative solution they could table. However the rapid evolution of the pandemic makes the adoption of coronabonds increasingly likely. Italy and Spain are the hardest-hit countries, but almost every Member State is weeks behind them in the curve of contagions. As such, things will get worse at a European level before they get better.

Total War Against The Coronavirus

As should be apparent from everything we have outlined thus far, these are extraordinary measures that might have appeared radical only a short time ago. Now, they have become widely accepted – to varying degrees – as the correct measures to fight the global pandemic. But what happens after the world emerges victorious from the pandemic – however long that might take?

They will likely roll back some of these measures, though perhaps not all the way. Others will remain in place. Every major crisis in the past century or so has resulted in fundamental changes at an institutional and policy level. It was the Great War that first introduced the managerial State we are familiar with in the 21st Century, introducing a level of government intervention in the economy that would have been unthinkable before 1914. The Great Depression fundamentally reshaped the way statesmen thought about world trade, and the Second World War provided the shock that ushered in the contemporary global order. The Great Recession of 2008 has defined early 21st Century political culture, from the rise of the far right to the quasi-institutionalisation of currency swap lines between central banks. It is hard to see how a global pandemic of this magnitude could fail to do the same. It’s a historic moment that will lead to a profoundly changed conception of European institutions and their mandate. For better or for worse, we do not yet know. What we do know is this: there’s no going back.

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Europe’s Nuclear Dilemma

All of this is of great interest to Europe, which has been a springboard for nuclear weapons for all of the aforementioned seventy-five years. Brexit, in particular, has brought the issue to the fore again. The departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union has been discussed in painstaking detail, and so have its many ramifications and consequences. One field that is often overlooked by the general audience, however, is the consequences Brexit is going to have on European security, and especially in one specific area of European security – nuclear deterrence. After the British departure, France is the sole EU Member State with nuclear capabilities. The situation is aggravated by Trump’s erratic and unpredictable foreign policy.

This is not lost on European leadership. For the past four years, the EU and its Member States have devoted an unusual amount of attention to the question of military integration. There have been more than just words, too. New common military projects, like PESCO and the European Defence Fund, have given a real incentive to cooperation between Member States. However, all these new developments primarily provide monetary incentives for joint defence procurement and make it easier to deploy troops across the EU. They do not even touch on questions of national defence spending, let alone on high politics and strategic culture, and leave out several glaring omissions – like nuclear deterrence.

There is good reason for these omissions. The EU is effectively built to make bargains possible and fruitful, and to avoid leadership at all costs. This has several advantages – notably, small Member States such as Malta or Cyprus get their voice amplified, avoiding a monopoly of the larger States. The reliance on institutional compromise is what makes grand bargains possible. This is a very effective scheme for overall European integration. However, it is a terribly unsuited one for military integration, which requires a chain of command, clear and fast decision-making, and centralised leadership. Nowhere is this truer than in the management of a country’s nuclear arsenal.

French President Macron was the first head of government to acknowledge the nuclear elephant in the room. He has recently made headlines with his call for a European debate on the French nuclear deterrent, but the precise intention behind his words remains unclear. It cannot be taken for granted that France will commit a national resource to wider Union defence with such high stakes, to the point of considering a nuclear threat to any EU Member State as a nuclear threat to France’s own soil. But what his words have done is to make clear beyond any possible equivocation that European institutions and governments must treat this as a very real, and very serious policy question. The departure of the UK, and the growing uncertainty surrounding NATO, present a twin problem: part of it is strategic, the other part political.

The Strategic Problem

The security situation in the West increasingly resembles the Cold War. This might come as a surprise to readers, who are used to a different narrative regarding foreign policy and military matters. With the Cold War over, it is true that the West in general and NATO, in particular, focused away from containing the dissolving Soviet Union, and toward military intervention all over the world. The last decade, however, has largely reverted the trend.

Russia is ahead of all of Europe in military capabilities. This might not be apparent from looking at government budgets and defence spending. Indeed, the Russian defence budget is low in absolute terms, although it’s a high share of the country’s GDP. Spending, however, does not linearly translate into capabilities. The high availability of raw materials, low salaries and procurement costs, along with other factors, make the Russian military comparatively cheap to run and build up.

All Russian armed forces are still beleaguered by a host of technical and organisational problems, and many of their flashy new pieces of equipment serve more for marketing purposes than for the actual battlefield. In capabilities, however, Russia is still ahead of continental Europe, at a time when European governments have been neglecting their own defence. This means the gap is widening. Crucially, Russia is able to conduct combined arms operations, something that can’t be said for any European military at the time of writing.

In response, Western countries are shifting focus once more, away from intervention and towards a more classical emphasis on territorial defence. This new situation means that everyone can re-evaluate their position, and the Trump administration has been doing just that. Further, the intensified rivalry between the USA and Britain on one hand, and the EU on the other, has weakened certainties that there would be a common nuclear deterrence. Transatlantic politics have shifted in a way that is pitting the United States and Great Britain against continental Europe on trade, finance, and the future of the liberal world order.

This poses a problem for Brussels. With wider alliances suddenly uncertain, all that remains is the French nuclear deterrent. This, alone, would be hard-pressed to cover the entirety of the European Union in the event of an attack. And the French willingness to risk nuclear devastation to defend another Member State cannot be taken for granted indefinitely.

At a time when Russia is ahead of the EU in terms of conventional military forces, a nuclear deterrent is an indispensable guarantee against the outbreak of war. We have taken this deterrent for granted over the past few decades – but now, we no longer can. Of course, nuclear proliferation by itself could greatly raise international tensions and would need very careful managing. But with the two Atlantic great powers drifting away from each other, we can no longer sweep the question under the rub: the EU needs a nuclear deterrent.

It is unthinkable for Europe alone to supplant NATO with domestic means. When it comes to nuclear deterrence, however, the technical capacity to handle nuclear weapons is already present in Europe. The technical aspect alone is not enough, though – there is also a political dimension to all this that cannot be ignored. Who would build, field, and maintain these nuclear weapons? Who would make the political commitment to territorial defence that makes a nuclear deterrent credible?

The Political Problem

The answer to these questions proves vexing. An EU nuclear arsenal would require an endowment of defence responsibilities upon the EU that is well beyond anything currently contemplated. It would also require a whole new framework to establish who has control over such weapons and through what procedures, and it would raise several questions about the status of this nuclear program under international law. So far, nuclear development has been exclusive to nation-States, and a supranational organisation acquiring one would certainly complicate the picture.

The other option, and on the surface of it a far more practical one, is to push at least one Member State to develop a nuclear arsenal, thus filling the void left behind by the United Kingdom. There are several historical precedents that might point to likely candidates. During the Cold War, multiple European countries ran, or considered running, semi-clandestine nuclear programs to acquire deterrence against a Soviet invasion.

Italy devoted simultaneous attention to its own indigenous nuclear program, as well as to the planned NATO multilateral development and deployment of nuclear weapons. Sweden’s own program was thinly disguised as research in civilian nuclear technology, and Germany also considered its own nuclear program but never officially pursued it. Eventually, the Non-Proliferation Treaty put an end to all these plans. Despite this, many European countries today remain part of NATO’s so-called nuclear sharing.

A single Member State acquiring nuclear deterrence certainly looks more practical, but this solution also has its own complications. Every EU Member State has acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it is unclear how the subject could be broached internationally to negotiate an addition to the official list of nuclear States. Of course, the Israeli option of running a clandestine nuclear program that remains just short of completion while in peacetime is always available. However, while that simplifies the approach on the international arena, it doesn’t help with domestic politicking. Member States would be putting a lot of trust into this hypothetical new nuclear Member State, and the horse-trading required to gain sufficient goodwill all-round might be too much for any one government to stomach. Further, there is no clear appetite anywhere in Europe, when it comes to public opinion, for the acquisition of new nuclear weapons.

A third, much more moderate proposal would be to replicate NATO’s nuclear sharing agreement, but at an EU level. This is certainly reflected in Macron’s statements that French nuclear forces play a deterrent role in Europe, reinforce European security through their mere existence and, in this respect, have an authentically European dimension. Macron has also proposed a strategic dialogue, with interested European partners, on the role of French nuclear deterrence in our collective security.

It’s possible that Macron is linking the introduction of an EU nuclear sharing agreement to concessions in other policy areas. For example, such a sharing agreement would certainly remove some headaches from Germany, given the touchy subject – but would enable Macron to demand that Berlin give way on some economic proposals advanced by Paris. The timing of his statements – just as negotiations over the EU budget have ground to a halt – certainly seems to suggest such a possibility.

A nuclear sharing agreement would not put EU nuclear deterrence on an equal footing with Russia, but it would be better than nothing. That seems to be the name of the game when it comes to European integration these days.

The post [OPINION] The European Union Needs its Own Nuclear Arsenal appeared first on My Country? Europe..

The latest comment, however, prompted a strong, angry reaction from Angela Merkel, who delivered a barb of her own: “I understand your desire for disruptive politics, but I’m tired of picking up the pieces. Over and over, I have to glue together the cups you have broken so that we can then sit down and have a cup of tea together.”. Macron rebutted that he could not in good faith attend the meeting and pretend that nothing had happened in Syria.

We’ve Seen All This Before

International media have reported on this Franco-German spat as an unexpected low in their relationship, but when one looks closer at the long debate over European security policy, this row seems to follow a remarkably old playbook. France has traditionally been one the more NATO-sceptic of all EU Member States, while Germany sits much closer to eastern European countries at the opposite end of the spectrum, one that sees transatlantic cooperation as existential. With their words, Merkel and Macron have rekindled an old debate. Should the European Union rely on NATO for security, or should it create its own armed forces to uncouple from the United States?

The framing of this question, however, is not accurate and presents a false alternative. After all, an EU army would be just that – an army – while NATO is an alliance involving multiple countries. Why should one be an alternative to the other? The implication that they are mutually exclusive is never explained. As a military actor, the EU could also fit within NATO, and defence cooperation between the two institutions is already the norm – in fact, it’s likely to intensify under the new European Commission.

What is likelier is that this false alternative is serving a deeper political interest. NATO remains controversial in many circles, and the decades of Warsaw Pact (and later Russian) propaganda against the alliance have left a lasting mark in European public opinion. Many see NATO as an instrument of American policy-making, which is a misread since the United States rely primarily on bilateral security agreements to expand their political clout.

Others believe NATO constrains its Member States to dangerous foreign policy adventures, like Iraq, but there is no provision for offensive wars in the North Atlantic Treaty, and even its mandates on defensive wars are designed to give individual countries great leeway. In stark contrast, while not entirely free of controversy, a wholly EU defence project is much more acceptable: it doesn’t exist, after all, allowing observers to project their preferences onto it and avoid disappointment.

As we have detailed before, it is completely impossible for the EU to entirely replace NATO with purely domestic security within a reasonable timeframe. Building joint European armed forces will take decades and significant political commitment, not to mention investment. However, this material impossibility does not answer the long-term question of goals. Even if Europe accepts the present reality of NATO inevitability, should it strive for an uncoupling of the alliance over the coming decades?

The West: Stronger Together

The magnitude of the US – EU relationship is taken for granted and underestimated. When one sets out to do the math, the results are quite impressive. The European Union will be about 20% of the world economy after Brexit and is also experiencing sluggish economic growth. However, when counted together, the EU and the United States represent nearly two-thirds of the world’s GDP. The figures are similar if we look at trade and finance, and the latter is an especially weak sector for Europeans, following the collapse of the EU banking system after the Great Recession of 2008.

If the EU and the United States go their separate ways, or even pursue radically incompatible objectives as with the Iran nuclear deal, only non-Western countries will benefit. More specifically, a permanent split will likely bring China and G77 into a position stronger than any of the two Western groups in isolation. This is especially relevant because China is a unique kind of rising competitor in world history: the Chinese Communist Party plays the longest possible game, with patience and cunning, and they play it for keeps.

The rest of the world is looking for ways to react, and it’s interesting to note how Chinese economic inroads into post-Soviet Asia have immediately strengthened the ranks of the Eurasian Economic Union. Counter-balancing China is almost impossible – one needs a sizable portion of the planet to be on board to achieve parity. Should the West split into two groups, China can just manipulate one against the other – to a degree this is already happening with the Chinese Belt and Road initiative.

Of course, pluralism in the West is not just a disadvantage. Western countries can experiment with different policies, and debate is useful. But ultimately, uniting the West is herding cats, and some of the EU’s and the United States’ friends or would-be allies are far-flung and next to impossible to defend without iron-clad nuclear guarantees. More worryingly, some are already firmly in China’s sights: Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand are all experiencing significant Chinese pressure and encroachment. The net result is that forging a common Western security policy will be hard regardless. But with the United States saying one thing and the EU another, it will be hopeless.

The Lifeblood Of World Policies

So far, we have focused on finance, GDP size, and share of the world economy. However, Brussels’ main limitations when evaluating a lone wolf strategy are others. The EU economy could double in size overnight and it wouldn’t make a huge strategic difference, in the sense that Brussels would still have no world policy. Indeed, the radical conclusion of even the most cursory of analyses is that the European Union is in no position and will never be in a position to maintain a world policy.

Running a world policy requires the ability to project power all over the globe. In common parlance, power projection is often mistaken for military intervention (sending troops on the ground) but that is inaccurate. Power projection in purely military terms means the ability to project power away from a country’s own shore, i.e. what kind of blue water naval capabilities are available, and what range is available to them thanks to technology and/or how many safe ports are available along the way. Economic, political and cultural pressure help smooth things over, and the latter is the field the EU specialises in. This is commonly called soft power, and it’s certainly useful – but alone it is not enough.

European powers maintained vast colonial empires precisely so they could project power far from home. As the age of colonialism faded, the United States found an alternate model of getting to the same objective: a network of bilateral security guarantees, in which American forces would protect a country in exchange for key basing rights. Even this strategy is now being confronted with its limitations, however, as the United States progressively cut back from their involvement abroad.

Power projection is, for instance, absolutely indispensable in keeping the sea lanes open. This is only one task among many, but it’s a poignant example since, without open sea lanes, there is no free trade. Without allies in the Pacific, there is no US Pacific Fleet. Without US Pacific Fleet there is no freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Without freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, then maybe Vietnam, the Philippines, and China would have escalated their maritime dispute into a shooting war. If not, then the former two would at the very least under constant threat of Chinese naval blockade – which would immediately destroy the EU – Vietnam free trade agreement. Soft power alone would not help the West in such a scenario, and levying punitive economic measures against an opponent the size of China would be unlikely to have an impact.

In such a scenario, the EU by itself would be powerless, since the only deterrence against such an escalation is the presence of friendly navies in the Pacific. No European taxpayer would consent to the outlandish defence spending required to build a colossal blue water navy so that Brussels can back up freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea by force. If one aims to present a tangible threat to China for deterrence purposes, those costs soar even higher. Maintaining that level of overseas deployable capabilities is simply not worth the expense.

When part of a worldwide network of friendly countries, however, the European Union could deter China without directly fielding a navy to the far side of the world. Several Pacific countries could step in to provide containment – to a degree, this is already happening since Chinese calculations have to take into account the presence of the US Pacific Fleet. Again the United States crop up as the one country able to keep a finger in every pie, and this only works because they have allies everywhere, ready to back them up in exchange for protection.

Even then, keeping the shipping lanes open is a burdensome undertaking, and Americans themselves have been winding down their involvement. Only truly global cooperation can ensure that the job is done – the idea that the European Union could back up its own agreements in far-flung corners of the world without help is simply outlandish.

The West in a Fractured World

The example of the shipping lanes is replicated in many other areas of foreign policy and security. As military equipment becomes more complex, so do logistics, to the point where only a handful of countries on Earth are capable of deploying and sustaining expeditionary forces abroad. The democratisation of military theory, technology, equipment, and training (mostly done by us Europeans, and especially the Americans) make it easier than ever for non-State actors to become threats.

All of this means that nobody other than the United States will occupy such a hegemonic position on the world stage for the foreseeable future. The European Union can stick to the West, influence it and bring its priorities to the table – or it will have to give up agency on what happens outside its neighbourhood. The Mediterranean, the EU – Russian border, and possibly the Arctic are the EU’s three security frontiers. Anything beyond that will be entirely outside our influence.

To make one example, the European Union is just not going to get an invitation to the Korean six-party talks, even though tensions in Korea rank consistently high among the primary sources of danger for international stability. Indirectly, however, Brussels does have a channel to the six-party talks, specifically through the United States. The alternative would be to eschew representation at all, and have no say on the matter of peace and war in Southeast Asia. Moreover, it is only a handful of EU Member States (France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) who have an active interest in maintaining an independent world policy. Most of the EU is fine with moving responsibility up one level, to NATO and the wider network of Western cooperation, like an informal military club of liberal democracy.

The world’s powers, great and small, did not miss this. China, India, Russia, Brazil, and others have already accepted a role as potentially regional superpowers. Other countries like Turkey and Iran are trying to rise to similar roles in their regions. Most crucially, however, when the United States stop being the world hegemon, the days of world politics are going to be over, at least for the foreseeable future.

Commentators occasionally wonder whether the European Union can replace the United States as the “leader of the free world” but the truth is that it cannot, and it never will. The needed material expense and the imperial overstretch that comes with it is a vision of the past, not the future. That future is one where dictatorships outnumber democracies, where no one country can control shipping lanes or have anything to say around the world unless the whole West speaks with one voice on its core interests. Even then, limitations will be painful, and there is no way to realistically forecast how much these power relations will be impacted by climate change – but there is no viable alternative to the West.

The United States can achieve truly global power projection only with global help, and even then, they are struggling. European countries are never going to be able to do that ever again. While the European Union has a clear interest in forming its own defence forces, it will not have a say in the wider world without a strong network of alliances. The world is already fracturing; giving up on NATO and the West now would only deepen the fissures until the entire postwar order shatters beyond repair.

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A complete or even representative survey of all these cultural practices would be impossible, but with Halloween just behind us and the darkest months of the year ahead, this is a great time to take a peek into some of the spookiest things Europeans do when – in the words of famous author George R.R. Martin – the nights are dark and full of terrors.

Santa’s Spooky and Evil Twin

In southern Germany, Austria, and Sudtyrol, Santa Claus’ spooky evil twin makes a yearly appearance. We are of course talking about Krampus, who snatches wayward and naughty kids on Christmas. Krampus is a relatively well-known, if minor Christmas figure, popularised by (among other things) the 2015 movie of the same name. In the folklore stories, the kids’ ultimate fate is left unspoken, but we can safely assume it to be absolutely horrifying.

It’s not clear why anyone would want to rub this in during the holiday season – but for over five centuries now, Krampusläufe (Krampus walks) have been a fixture of early December in these regions of Europe. During these walks, people dress up as Krampus, which involves a lot of fur, demon masks, and nasty fangs. Clad in these fashionable costumes, the paraders go around town in what must be a concerted wave of terror for the local kids. Sounds like some spooky fun!

Spooky Carnivals and Future Harvests

Creepy carnivals are typical of many regions in Europe, and rituals made to mark the passing of the seasons are even more widespread. As the days grow colder and the nights grow longer, Europeans re-enact the propitiatory rituals of their ancestors, ushering in the future harvest as the circle of life metaphorically begins anew. From wicker baskets to burning brands and flaming scarecrows, these events are strongly impressed in the collective conscience of all Europeans, thanks to the particular intensity of their symbology, bringing together life and death.

The two aspects – spooky parades and rituals of seasonal renewal – occasionally go hand in hand: death is in life, and from death new life can bloom anew, just like spring follows winter. This is the case with practices such as Kukeri, a Bulgarian tradition. People hit the streets wearing long masks resembling a pointy hat. The masks are milk-white and adorned with gaping jaws and terrible fangs, as well as twisted horns and cold, lifeless eyes. The paraders are tasked with driving away evil spirits from people’s homes, after which they dance in the squares to the sound of bells tolling. Obviously, all this has to take place at night, lest the sun catches the masked paraders on the road.

A similar event takes place in Serbia during the early months of the new year. This spooky winter carnival sees fantastic masks of outrageous size and complexity, and the common themes are nature and decay: bird feathers, animal heads, sheep skins, cattle belts and more such attires. The masked paraders arm themselves with clubs and wooden swords, occasionally blackening their faces with dark paint, and proceed to exorcise winter demons and usher in the spring. Naturally, the ritual is propitiatory to good health and bountiful harvests in the spring to come.

Halloween

Halloween is a popular holiday in the West these days, and primarily known for its successfully marketed iconography: carved pumpkins, bats, spooky masks, children prowling neighbourhoods asking “trick or treat?” at every door. Many falsely believe Halloween to have originated in the United States, but the festival is actually completely European. Its origins are in pre-Christian Ireland, and it stems from a common theme in ancient European autumn festivities: when the nights grow longer, the veil between our world and the afterlife grows thinner. Demons prowl the Earth, ghosts and damned souls wander in the night, and the dead come walking – a phenomenon the Gaels called “Samhain“.

In order to appease the gods and restore the division between worlds, the Gaels would collect food (hence trick or treat), light massive bonfires, and carve spooky faces into turnips (later pumpkins) placing candles within, to scare the dead away. The legend of Jack O’Lantern, a soul that neither heaven nor hell will take in and is condemned to roam the Hearth by candle light, is the purported origin of the carvings. While heavily filtered through the trappings of modernity, all the key spooky elements of the festival remain with us to this day.

Until Death Do You and Your Cheese Apart

Geography always has a powerful impact on culture, and that is especially true of mountains. Isolated mountain communities are often left out of the march of time sweeping the wider world, and they occasionally develop their own unique twists or quirks on cultural practices. Naturally, these practices sometimes center around death.

The Swiss mountain hamlet of Grimentz, located in the high-elevation valley known as Val d’Anniviers, has had to contend with more than just isolation over the centuries. In pre-modern times, survival on the jagged peaks was not guaranteed, leading to elaborate rituals regarding the preservation of nourishing food – and its connection to death. Cheese, in particular, is at the center of death rituals in Grimentz: whenever a person is born, they are assigned a wheel of cheese. This cheese is left to age for the entirety of its owner’s life, and is only served once the latter passes away, at the funeral.

While morbid, this ritual has some very distinct origins. First of all, there is the tie between people and the nutritious, hearty dairy that allows them to survive the mountains: the bells of the deceased’s cows are made to ring at the funeral to mark the passing, for example, and the ceremony includes a picnic in honour of the deceased, where wine and bread accompany their life-long cheese wheel. The emotional bonding is a reaffirmation of communal life after death, but the cheese is more than just a testament to the life of the deceased: it’s also a sign that the person left something for other people to nourish themselves. A seasoned cheese hard as nails is both the legacy of a long life and of a communal spirit in a harsh environment hostile to human survival.

Thorri’s Spooky Feast

Decay, death, rejuvenation, life, the harvest, evil demons, and food: all the themes outlined so far come together in a creepy last hurrah during Thorri’s Feast, an Icelandic holiday that takes place in January. To mark the new year, Icelanders commit to eating the most disgusting food imaginable: fermented shark, sour ram testicles, and boiled sheep heads. Definitely a yummy way to begin the new year!

Somewhat more common, but not universally popular recipes such as liver sausages and blood pudding are also in evidence. The origins of the feast are hazy, but Thorri is believed to personify winter. Fermenting or salting food was a way of preserving it in pre-industrial times. It’s conceivable that, as the shortest days of the year were finally behind, the Icelanders of yore could dip into their food stores and sustain themselves through the feast.

Did you like this article? You might also like Endless Solitude: An Accountof Europe’s Most Remote Places.

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