Thoughts on a reformed foreign policy in Europe

We do not know how to beat autocracies. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, attempts to push back dictatorship in the world, to punish abusers of human rights and to expand liberal and democratic values have been faltering at best. While there was a wave of new democracies after 1989, many of these were only able to take root in the most favourable of environments - supported by major financial backing, directly guaranteed by American military force and surrounded or very close to more established liberal democracies. Fast forward to today and worldwide democracy is now on the backfoot, submerged under a rising autocratic tide whose waves are beginning to erode even Europe and the United States. From Russia, to Belarus, to China, to Afghanistan, authoritarianism is tightening its grip. On top of all this, from the European perspective, the old American guarantor of the global liberal order has become less willing, less reliable and more eratic. 

And yet, although ever official in every foreign ministry of every democratic country must be able to recognise, at a glance, that this is a shift moving against our interests, we seem unable to successfully stop it. Why? And can anything be done?

For us in Europe, the need to craft a better foreign policy is obvious. A foreign policy that could advance our security interests, protect human rights and encourage the spread of democracy around us would clearly put us in a better situation than we are today. There are four obstacles that must be understood before we can consider a better approach to our foreign policy, some of which are common to other parts of the West, some of which are unique to Europe. First, the inability understand the conditions of victory in today's 'peace-war'. Second, the failure to prepare public opinion and to avoid falling into the politics of the 'forever war'. Third a debilitating lack of independent capacity, forged from a hostility to military integration and the historic ability to rely on the US. And, fourth, a disorganised approach to the consequences of conflict, fuelling anti-democratic populism at home. 

To start with the first point, we must first understand what is meant by the 'peace-war' - developed by French general and military strategist André Beaufre, it is particularly pertinent to our situation today. During the course of the 20th century, Beaufre argued that our connection to war and peace, eternal conditions of our species, had changed (from the Western perspective at least). The cost of war had become too high and our appetite for it had waned. The creation of nuclear weapons in particular made all-out war with our enemies a highly dangerous prospect. 

But he noted that the mere absence of all-out war did not mean we had peace either. We still had severe conflicts of interest with other states and we would still engage in a wide variety of conflictual actions. Peace was not a general condition that we fell back on, it wasn't the default state of relations between countries in the world, but a specific achievement that persisted only with our close allies. Geopolitical theorist Pierre Hassner summed it up by saying that perhaps true war and true peace died together.

It certainly feels like an apt description of where we are today. Whether China, Belarus or Russia, it is objectively correct to say that we are not at war with any of these states. But it is not obvious that we are at peace with them either. Conflict and tensions saturate our relationships with these countries. The annexation of Crimea, the takeover of Hong Kong, the hijacking of planes and torture of dissidents - actions which might in a past time have been taken as provocations for war. Yet we do not wish to go to war. And while we have been engaged in war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, it is hard to argue that our withdrawal will now give us peace. Indeed, as the military is pulled out of Afghanistan, we are swiftly defaulting to the range of 'not-war' policies that we use for these kinds of conflicts - we talk about isolation, non-recognition, sanctions or other means of exerting a 'moderating influence'.

And yet who believes that these 'not-war' conflicts will deliver a better victory, advance our interests or attain a true peace? Divested of the clarity of the conventional war, we have not landed upon a better way to beat modern autocratic groups and states. This is not in praise of war, but it is a condemnation of our strategy today. We do not really know what victory in the 'peace-war' looks like, nor how it ends, nor if it ever ends. 

Next, we must reckon with the way that successive political leaders have been unable to communicate the course of foreign policy decisions. This first of all manifests in the lead-up to major foreign policy decisions and the inability of politicians to prepare the public for what a certain course of action will truly require. This is most obvious in the case of military interventions, where citizens have rarely been prepared for length of commitment required for such an intervention to be successful. Indeed, while Afghanistan has shown us the importance of long-term commitment, where a comprehensive plan is laid out to not just defeat the immediate enemy but to then support the construction of an effective democratic state (including, for an indeterminate length of time, guaranteeing its security), decision-makers in Europe have become ever more reluctant to commit in any way, instead going on the defensive and only advocating 'limited interventions' (of the kind that gave us the failures in Syria and Libya). Since the early 2000s, we have gone in reverse and politicians have become less willing than ever to be upfront about the political will needed to carry out a successful intervention. Much as we may wish it were otherwise, there is no shortcut to defending democracy and human rights. 

Less costly ventures, like the sanctions imposed on Russia or Belarus, have demonstrated the same failings - as politicians have confidently told the public that we are protecting the right to protest or self-determination and yet have no real plan for actually preventing these regimes from simply continuing as they are. Over time, the public will notice this discrepancy and will either give up on the value of international sanctions or will see the lack of change as evidence of our weakness. 

The errors at the beginning of foreign policy initiatives are then repeated as time moves forward. Different stages are not clearly marked out, new initiatives are announced, u-turned, reannounced or dropped without a word, red lines are issued too hastily and then not backed up with action, and the entire policy begins to blur into one overarching mess, with no clear idea in the public mind of where we are or how this will end. This is how engagements like Afghanistan came to be marked as 'forever wars' - a term that may not have been accurate but certainly resonated with citizens. 

This lack of effective communication has caused public opinion to sour on interventions abroad and to grow increasingly sceptical of the idea that we have a mission in the wider world. 

For democracies, popular support and public opinion in foreign policy is essential. No policy, no matter how well planned it may be or how successful it appears in practice will ultimately achieve its goals if the public greet it with a default of scepticism and come to see it as a doomed venture without end. 

Third, our foreign policy is evidently limited by a debilitating lack of independent military capacity. Military action is not always the right response, and just because we can intervene does not mean we should, but it is hard to argue that we benefit from our current situation, where, unless led by the United States, the option is rarely on the table. 

Certain individual European countries (mainly France and the UK) can carry out specific military operations without relying totally on American personnel, but even here we are often dependent on US logistics infrastructure and intelligence. Other countries in Europe have even less capacity to act independently of the US. 

For much of the post-WW2 period, there has been a general acceptance of this status quo. The US was willing to take the lead in many actions, including in the European neighbourhood and to guarantee the defence of Europe itself. There was little forcing Europe to reckon with our deficiencies and so we chose not to. Rather than thinking about how we could develop a more effective foreign policy, for that inevitable time when our interests and those of the US would not be perfectly aligned, generations of European politicians have kicked the can down the road, either sticking to simply niceties about European action or actively working to prevent any further European integration in foreign and military affairs. 

This has blocked Europe from building up capacity, not just in the strict sense of ammunition or soldiers, but also in terms of decision-making capacity. Even if Europe acquires enough tanks and planes, it is far from obvious how such a force would be deployed - who would take the decision? Who would hold command? How would units from different countries work together? Who would generals be accountable to? For Europe, military capacity is not simply about defence spending (indeed this is maybe a secondary problem if you can pool all European spending into one), it is also about the political and command structures, which are not simply absent but for which our politicians do not have even the beginnings of an answer.

We can see plainly today the weakness of such a position and the inherent danger in relying on a partner, however trusted and valued, whose geography and interests can pull it in another direction entirely. The US today is turning its attention to China, pivoting to the Indo-Pacific region. But Europe cannot dislocate itself from instability and conflict in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. 

The distance that separates the transatlantic partnership has perhaps never felt so big as today, now that the US has unilaterally decided to pull out of Afghanistan, leaving Europe to face the consequences (and seemingly feeling little need to communicate with European leaders on the matter).

Finally, our foreign policy has been repeatedly undermined by a lack of planning and forethought to deal with the consequences of any conflict. To be clear, this need not be a conflict where we have intervened (though that would obviously be a relevant scenario), simply any conflict that is close enough to have an impact on us. Whether we took an active role in the conflicts in Syria or Lybia or not, for example, the likelihood of increased refugee flows should have been apparent from the start and should have become a clear policy priority before the numbers crossing the Mediterranean or coming through Turkey and into Southwestern Europe really picked up.

Having failed to establish a humane and systematic approach for asylum seekers, we have instead repeatedly borne witness to a stumbling stream of desperate people, risking their lives and making their way through whatever route they can. And while tragic scenes of the deadly consequences of this approach have occasionally sparked moments of generosity, more often the chaos has been seized upon by populist politicians to advocate for an inward turn, a closing of hearts and borders, and for a rejection of solidarity in the face of suffering. In response, mainstream politicians have been hesitant, defensive and reactionary, often simply echoing the ideas of populists as short-term responses while doing very little to fix the underlying problems. It is a form of foreign policy failure that has been self-reinforcing in recent years.

If democracy is to resist the autocratic wave, our foreign policy cannot keep compromising on our values. As it stands, every wave of asylum seekers that is not greeted by a safe route, an organised system to process their claims and a quick resolution to their case is a victory for anti-democratic populists and extremists.

This then, is where we stand and the obstacles we face. After the great shift of the end of the Cold War, this is the new status quo we have settled into. Not the final victory of capitalism and liberal democracy, but a hostile atmosphere of managed tensions between democracies and autocracies. It represents a world where autocracies have more space to flex their muscles, particularly within their borders and in their immediate neighbourhoods. Today there are enough such states that this autocratic emboldening has become an essentially global phenomenon. Some democracies or proto-democracies have already been essentially destroyed. We live in the status quo of a democratic-autocratic coexistence that is seeing democracies lose more and more ground.

In Europe especially, we find ourselves in a precarious situation. Europe's geography is very different from that of the US and while geography is not destiny it is clear that having two substantial landmasses around us makes a big difference compared to two oceans. Our foreign policy will need to reflect this. Depending on our actions or inactions, the stretch of land which envelopes Europe, from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the Arctic one of Russia, can take many different forms. Today it is probably closest to a ring of fire, characterised by wars, dictatorships and instability. 

Our challenge is to turn it into a wall of gardens - gardens because these would be democratic and free states, whose citizens can have free and decent lives, and a wall because this would be a layer of protection, an act of liberalism that would also make us safer. For Europe, this is the first (though not only) objective.

What kind of foreign policy could overcome the failures set out above and achieve our core objective?

To make Europe's foreign policy more effective in both achieving the goals of specific missions and in general pushing back against autocracy, there are four ideas we can consider, each of which should respond to one of the above problems. First, we must be more ambitious in our dealings with autocratic states and establish actual long-term strategies. Second, more investment in our capacity to operate without the US, including a realistic assessment of the European integration which would be required to make it work. Third, better communication of the different foreign actions, such that conflicts can be won without a country then being left to its fate. Fourth, a policy towards asylum seekers that is not only generous but also organised and efficient.

First, to break out of our current deadlock in failing to win the 'peace-war', we must reimagine our approach to autocratic states and groups which violate international law and human rights. While we are highly focused on punishing specific acts of wrongdoing (e.g. international sanctions) and containing such entities, we do not have any real vision for what a strategic victory might look like. How do we actually reach a world where the Taliban, Lukashenko, Putin or Xi Jinping don't pose a threat to our interests and values? Even the punishments we do deploy seem to do little to deter these regimes from pursuing their repression at home and expansion abroad. 

We need to rediscover victory and consider what is needed for those states to at least think twice about directly violating our warnings. In some cases this will mean a shift in strategic objectives, away from simply punishing wrongdoing and containment and towards neutralising threats to democracy and freedom. This should not mean an enthusiasm for military adventurism or to slip into a neo-colonial mindset of determining the futures of other countries, but it will require a considered willingness to apply overwhelming military force as and when it is truly required.

To take the specific case of Belarus, it is evident that we will not have security along that border until the dictatorship is ended and a liberal democracy is allowed to take root. Sanctions in reaction to the repression of protests or ballot-fixing are unlikely to get us there, hence we need to imagine a proactive strategy to achieve our goal. This could be as passive as waiting out Lukashenko and then taking action to ensure democratic groups can come in afterwards, through to more active funnelling of financial resources towards the democratic opposition today, all the way to military intervention - with a plan to maintain the troops necessary to allow democracy to stabilise and guarantee against a Russian counter-intervention (which, until the Russian regime also changes, could be an indefinite requirement). 

The point is not that any of these options would necessarily be the right one, but simply that they would represent actual strategies to advance our interests, a shift away from playing defensive and towards a plan to win. 

Second, having just mentioned the idea of military intervention, we must also reckon with the work that needs to be done so that Europe can carry out such actions - on its own if necessary. 

To understand what this might mean, we must first dispense with the idea of an 'EU army'. Not because it would not be effective or desirable - militarily speaking it could be the best option for Europe to have a more serious intervention capacity which could operate independently of the US. Rather the issue is that a truly European army would need a European government in order to command it. No fully integrated military can exist in Europe until there is a fully integrated civilian chain of command. As political union must precede military union, and as there is no immediate prospect of the former, there is simply no practical way that a European military could function. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, sticking to only investment in purely national capacities and operating a kind of 'European NATO' would not go far enough. Countries have limited resources to put into military capacity and for most European states it simply is not politically possible to limit investment in social policies such as education or healthcare in return for more for the armed forces. What investment there is would also see a substantial degree of waste as each country would need to invest in its own logistics and infrastructure support. This multiplication means that the total of European military spending is much less than the sum of its parts. 

European military integration must therefore be pursued but, until new political structures exist, with reasonable ambition. The move to establish joint projects and defence procurement, a Europeanisation of the defence equipment industry, is a good start and should continue much further. In addition, more operational plans must also be steadily rolled out. The most obvious step would be to put the EU Battlegroups (which have existed for many years now) to actual use. They are likely not actually ready for use as a main intervention force but until they start being deployed more regularly it will be impossible to know what needs to be done to improve them. Prior to this, new initiatives should likely be avoided until what exists already has been put to the test (it is unclear, for example, what France's, extra-EU and extra-NATO, European Intervention Initiative has really added). Once tested, this model can be reformed or expanded as necessary. 

It should be noted that European integration is a force multiplier for most, perhaps all, projections of external force and does not need to be limited to only military applications. The levelling of sanctions, for example, is rarely meaningful when done by a single European country alone but can have major economic repercussions when organised systematically at the European level (the supposed advantage of acting independently meanwhile - the ability to act more quickly - offers little in terms of meeting actual policy goals and is primarily about political posturing).

Third, the different phases of our foreign policy engagements must be more clearly marked out in the eyes of the public. To guarantee a sustained public support for military interventions and other actions abroad, the public needs to be convinced of the balance of costs. This requires a clear explanation of the progress being made and tangible evidence that any human costs are short-lived and declining - the whole thing wrapped up in a clear narrative that separates the different phases of a successful foreign policy.

In essence, the prospect of indefinite deterrence in an otherwise peaceful country at the end of a military mission (such as the US presence in South Korea) is a very different sell to an indefinite war in a country riven with conflict. Afghanistan could not have been placed at either of these extremes, but if leaders had been able to fully explain how much closer they were to the former than the latter, public support could have been sustained. 

It must be stressed that this is not just a question of running a good PR exercise. It would have likely been near impossible to avoid the decision to pull out of Vietnam, for example, which really was the archetype of a conflict with severe costs and little improvement in sight - a true 'forever war' scenario. Afghanistan by contrast showed real improvements in the overall stability of the country and the prospects for the lives of individuals. The failure was in successfully communicating that the early phase of intense conflict at the start of the intervention had ended and that a new kind of mission was being undertaken, one which was not simply a war against an enemy which happened to be based in Afghanistan but a partnership with Afghanistan to defend their aspirations towards democracy and freedom. In other words the military mission must be more clearly distinguished from keeping the peace.

Now obviously you still have to know when to mark these points - it is not enough to simply say 'mission accomplished' (especially if your actual words do not match this message) but when used correctly, it can ensure that public opinion is refreshed on a regular basis. Even better if these stages can be marked by a clear moment of democratic consent (either through an election or through a vote in the relevant legislature). 

Changing the practical nature of the engagement can also be an important way to maintain public support, such as building civic institutions through bilateral programmes - the training of police or gendarmerie forces, for example (and there is some evidence the EU programme to train gendarmes in Afghanistan was one of the more successful institution-building exercises). In short, while the public in a democratic state can never sustain indefinite war, there is reason to believe they can get behind indefinite engagement - separating these two will likely be an important part of future foreign policy success.

Fourth, amid an admittedly more direct and forceful approach to foreign policy, it is important not to forget the humanitarian values that should be guiding us. Nowhere is this more pressing or more evident than in the case of asylum seekers. 

While in the long-term, a reformed and successful foreign policy would reduce the flows of refugees (as other countries would become more desirable places to stay), in the short-term refugees fleeing from persecution and conflict are going to be a reality of life - without even touching on the refugees that could be produced as a result of the impacts of climate change. 

We have already seen how a failure to properly accommodate this reality can lead to the kind of chaotic and confused response that convinces voters that we are being 'overwhelmed'. The truth is obviously nothing of the sort - a cursory glance at the relative numbers can tell you as much - but an open and generous asylum policy will depend on public acceptance, and an impression of organisation and control is a necessary condition for that acceptance. 

This need not mean a hard cap on refugees being accepted into Europe (even if that approach is becoming more common) but a cap can be workable so long as it is set high enough to be meaningful. More importantly, it requires border states to establish safe routes into Europe where asylum requests can be quickly processed in common European facilities, funded by all, to then be relocated across Europe. A voluntary system could operate, giving European funding to those towns, cities, regions or countries willing to take in refugees. It is hard to say in the abstract whether the numbers taken in on a voluntary basis would be enough to accommodate all the accepted asylum seekers but it would likely be necessary to start with this concept as negotiating quotas has proven nigh-on impossible so far. What is essential, however, is that the system operates swiftly - rejected applicants should go through their appeals and then be removed from the territory while those who are accepted should be found their new homes. The reasoning behind this is simple - public opinion across Europe can tolerate the steady integration of refugees, but a populist backlash in response to the creation of semi-permanent migrant camps along Europe's borders is inevitable. 

These proposals may not be all the right answers, but they at least represent the start of a discussion which is long overdue. Europe must step up and claim responsibility for its own security and well-being. To achieve this it will need to exercise greater independence and perhaps make uncomfortable choices. What is without doubt is that change cannot wait much longer if we are to avoid further disasters.