Avuncular American

Turkey and Europe: Yes, No, or Impossible?

Years ago in a community development project in Ramallah, when it was still just a sleepy, recently-occupied West Bank town, one of my fellow volunteers, a devilish Turk named Ali, gave me language lessons. In Turkish body language, said Ali, you have the nodding of the head up and down for “yes,” the shaking side to side for “no,” and then something else. Tilting your head back to where your chin pointed to the onlooker (I’ve seen this elsewhere accompanied by a dismissive “tsk” sound) means “impossible.”

So which one is it to be for Turkey’s European Union hopes: yes, no, or - as in "you silly Turks, whatever made you think we’re genuine about those accession talks" - impossible?

Map of Turkey and its neighborhood, from the European Commission Enlargement website, “Turkey - Candidate Country Profile.” As in Perpetual Candidate?

To the annoyance of Nicolas Sarkozy (and I dare say a few others), US President Barack Obama, speaking at the Turkish Parliament yesterday, repeated that

The United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union. (Applause.) We speak not as members of the EU, but as close friends of both Turkey and Europe. Turkey has been a resolute ally and a responsible partner in transatlantic and European institutions. Turkey is bound to Europe by more than the bridges over the Bosphorous. Centuries of shared history, culture, and commerce bring you together. Europe gains by the diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith — it is not diminished by it. And Turkish membership would broaden and strengthen Europe’s foundation once more.

Obama and Sarkozy can agree on one thing: the US is not a member of the EU. The preceding is therefore called, in good American parlance, jawboning - “to influence by persuasion” (usually in domains where direct power is limited or, as in this case, nonexistent). But Turkey-in-Europe is both a geographic and demographic fact, and goes back centuries to the time when the Ottoman Empire - and latterly, the Young Turks - ruled large European territories.

This American stance on Turkey’s EU credentials is not new, but when Obama speaks of Europe “gaining in diversity,” he brings a certain credibility to the argument that Bush and others never had. As far as the US image is concerned, Obama had to surface from not only the generally abyssal depths into which Bush had sunk US-Muslim relations, but also had to repair damaged US-Turkish relations.

Who, other than Turkish democrats and US Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, remember then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz calling for the Turkish Army to exert its “traditional leadership role” (code for carrying out a coup d’état) in the face of the elected Turkish government’s opposition to allowing US military use of Turkish territory to invade Iraq in 2003? Frank called for Wolfowitz to resign. He eventually did, but for other reasons, and from a different job…

So Obama’s reference to “Turkey’s strong, vibrant, secular democracy” helps make amends for Bush and Wolfowitz dissing elected Turkish democrats, just because they were of the (moderate) Islamist persuasion and saw - like Obama did as a Senatorial hopeful back in 2003 - that invading Iraq was a sure-fire way to stir up a regional hornet’s nest.

That region - Turkey borders on 7 countries and is across the sea from another five - is why Turkey is important to NATO and potentially to the EU. We’ve long known Turkey for its troop-contributing potential as NATO’s second largest army, but, as Dr. Bahadir Kaleagasi, TUSIAD (Turkey’s Industrial Association) representative in Brussels said recently, “Turkey is either - or both - the northernmost country of the South or the southernmost country of the North.” Kaleagasi didn’t need to refer to Turkey’s ongoing mediation efforts between Israel and Syria (nor its attempts to get Hamas legitimated), but he did talk about Turkey’s position vis a vis Iran: “the Turkish-Iranian border is unchanged since medieval times, one of the world’s most ancient.” Interesting prospect, as the West enlists Turkey’s help in its efforts in the multiple regional challenges - Palestine/Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, and “Af/Pak.”

On the matter of Turkish membership in the European Union, I straddle a diplomatic “Errant European” and “Avuncular American” line. Expressing myself as an American, Europeans don’t want to hear another call from a Yank who should mind his business about the strategic interest and basic fairness of dealing honestly with a Candidate Country. As a dual American/Irish-European, I have nothing against Turkey’s Islamic identity, and agree with Obama when he sees the positives for diversity.

But I do honestly question whether the EU should expand indefinitely. And that doesn’t mean just the matter of Turkish accession. Can the EU limit enlargement to the countries on this map (essentially Turkey plus Croatia, Macedonia, and “potential candidate countries” in the rest of the Balkan peninsula)? Or will the process carry on as long as this applies: “Any country that satisfies the conditions for enlargement can submit an application.” The OSCE, by the way, has 56 member states, and the Council of Europe 47.  So there's a long way to go until "Europe" reaches its outer limits.

This post first appeared in "Errant European" (Euractiv/Blogactiv)

NATO - Still the Best Vehicle for Engaging With Europe?

Note: This article - drafted before the recent Summit - appears in the current issue of the Foreign Service Journal - minus my interrogatory punctuation in the title.  As the article is lengthy, I've made this an "extended entry," so be sure to click below to read through to the end. Image courtesy NATO.

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Informed Americans have never doubted that NATO has always been devoted to the defense of Europe.  The “North Atlantic” in the treaty organization’s name refers to the indispensable presence in the Alliance of the U.S. (and Canada), and the extension into the Cold War era of the trans-Atlantic lifelines thrown to Europe during both World Wars.

Yet among European publics in the post-Cold War present, NATO appears to be mostly about the United States and its continued influence in Europe.  Though it is an alliance based on mutual defense, with decisions reached by consensus of the biggest and the smallest member-states, NATO still translates as “American” in most European minds.  This perception has its ramifications for European efforts to find the proper alignment between their defense posture as NATO members and their plans for a defense role for the European Union.

The number of European uniforms visible at NATO’s sole headquarters in North America, Allied Command Transformation (formerly SACLANT) in Norfolk, was always minimal compared to the thousands of US and Canadian troops stationed in Europe.  During the Cold War, of course, it was Europe that needed boots-on-the-ground protection against the Soviet Union.  Now, despite NATO’s wider horizon, Europe remains the Alliance’s geopolitical epicenter.

Europe’s attitude towards NATO is schizophrenic.  On one hand, the Alliance provides strategic protection for European member-states and lessens their need to spend money on defense.  The flip side is having to deal with American activism, whether nudging NATO’s borders ever closer to Russia’s sensitive frontiers, or taking NATO “out of area,” all the way to Afghanistan.  But, as David Calleo observed in the December 2008 Foreign Service Journal (“NATO’s Future: Taking a Fresh Approach”), the “toolbox” strategy of using NATO as an intervention force risks transforming “a defensive European alliance into an instrument for American intrusions around the world.”

Since the end of the Cold War some two decades ago, almost every NATO summit has been an excuse to rehash op-eds proclaiming “The End of NATO.”  The underlying disagreements usually pit the United States against the Europeans, but are almost always patched up to allow the alliance to carry on.

This is not to minimize what can be existential (in terms of NATO as an organization) questions.  Does the North Atlantic-European quadrant of the globe still require a standing alliance in the face of a diminished threat from the East?  As NATO expands to almost double the number of member states it had during the Cold War, can its decision-making apparatus withstand the increasing difficulty of reaching consensus?  And – for both Europeans and Americans – does an alliance dedicated solely to defense capture the growing complexity of relations between the world’s largest trading partners and densest concentration of democracies?

Membership Means Something

After the Second World War, with the Cold War blasting its Siberian air on a ravaged Western Europe, the wartorn population greeted the creation of NATO in 1949 with relief.  The postwar path of multilateral defense went in hand with cooperation in the economic sphere: the Marshall Plan and its successor, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Coal and Steel Community, the almost-forgotten precursor to today’s European Union.  There was strength in numbers.

In some sense, NATO is a victim of this success.  European member-states – which also tend to belong to the E.U. – no longer see NATO as their primary institution of reference.  Even in the collective security sphere, NATO’s monopoly is over.  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has responsibilities for early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation, as well as a membership that truly extends from “Vancouver to Vladivostok.”

But the OSCE – “the largest regional security organization in the world” – isn’t a NATO competitor.  With its 56-member state Council, including countries as different as Belarus and Belgium, OSCE is a convenient forum but not a defense alliance.  NATO, with its potential membership list of 50 (the “Euro Atlantic Partnership Council,” which combines NATO’s 26 members with its 24 partner countries, has been a way-station to membership), should be wary of going down a similar “talking shop” route.

NATO membership means something, as last summer’s South Ossetia conflict powerfully reminded the world.  In discussions throughout 2008 over Georgian accession hopes, both before and after Russia moved troops in August, NATO countries emphasized the Article V mutual defense clause.  Peter Savodnik, writing in the January 2009 Harper’s (“Georgian Roulette”), posited the dilemma: “The question is whether NATO believes Georgia ... is worth defending.”  He cites Charles Elbinger of the Brookings Institution: “Let’s assume that they had been admitted to NATO.  Do we really believe that NATO would have come to their defense?  I personally do not believe there’s any stomach for a military confrontation with Russia.”  Savodnik believes that should NATO welcome Mikheil Saakashvili’s Georgia, the Alliance “may not survive a second attack.”

What Europeans Want

In the hierarchy of Europe’s multilateral organizations, neither NATO, OSCE nor OECD attracts the most attention and funding.  The European Union does.  And the E.U. has its own alphabet soup of security-related processes (most can’t be called institutions yet).  Foremost among them are the Common Foreign and Security Policy, which is to dovetail with the European Security and Defense Identity within NATO.

How?  That’s what is all rather confusing, especially to Europeans-on-the-street.  Wags point out that there is no common policy, nor individuals to lead it as long as the Lisbon Treaty remains unratified.  Nor is there an identity for Europeans to assume.  Even so, CFSP reflects a longstanding desire in European countries to have a foreign policy and a military force independent of – but not opposed to – NATO.

Barack & Bill: Presidential Superstars Wow Europe

No need for me to chronicle or comment on the seemingly never-ending summit saga of President Obama.  His procession through Europe - London to Strasbourg to Prague to... Istanbul, which has a foot in both Europe and Asia - has been documented amply, including by Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb, who wrote in yesterday's New York Times of the President's effect on Europeans - and Americans:

Mr. Obama confers dignity on his country and its people.

Can't get much more bang for your public diplomacy travel dollar than that.

(Photo courtesy Justine Tkachenko, Young Democrats Abroad Belgium)

That other Presidential superstar, William Jefferson Clinton, known as Bill to his closest friends, has also been winning European hearts and minds, most recently at last week's Global Progressive Forum (GPF, hosted by the European Socialist group at the European Parliament) in Brussels.  Bill spoke convincingly to hundreds of center-left social democrats, trade unionists, and assorted do-gooders about the world's multiple crises, summoning up an easily-remembered trinity: The Three U's.

The world, according to Bill, is:

Profoundly unequal; and was so even before the current economic crisis, which has only compounded the inequalities.  And the inequalities are not just between North-South, rich-poor nations.  Clinton pointed out the huge income, health care, and education gaps within the United States.

• Profoundly unstable; a reference to the gyrations of the financial system and commodity markets - the "great unraveling."   Clinton's formula to help people understand what Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are: "you take a previously risk-free investment - family home mortgages - you create an 'insurance' against default, and then bundle it into a highly risky investment."
• Ultimately unsustainable; irreplaceable fossil fuels fueling disastrous climate change.

Clinton, to sustained applause, said that the solution to each of the "U's" is found in the others: the economic system is unstable because it is unequal; aid flows can't stop just because budgets in rich nations are momentarily stretched, as the South can be part of the solution to demand for goods; unsustainable energy use can be converted to clean, green sources as part of worldwide stimulus plans.  It's not a zero-sum game.

Drawing on his Clinton Foundation work in India, he likened land fills and trash dumps to power plants: "Every time I see a garbage dump, I see money and jobs."  Evoking images from "Slumdog Millionaire," Clinton said that we need to "turn scavengers into recycling engineers."

The Obama-Clinton tag team has reminded Europeans - after eight long years of "with us/against us" Bush-Cheney battering - that American presidents can be inspiring.  As Amélie Nothomb entitles her NYT Op-Ed - "Liberty, Equality, Envy" - sometimes they can even make European leaders a bit jealous.

Can We Can* the G8 Now? Please?

* "Can" - to dismiss, fire

You may think what you want about the decisions taken at the London Group of Twenty - G20 - meeting, but this point is not up for debate: it is a much more representative group than the "rich white man's club" (apologies to Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and the Japanese), AKA the G8.

The difference between the G8 and the G20, said Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization, "is like night and day."  Lamy, who has attended numerous G8 meetings and was a player in last week's London meeting, knows of what he speaks.  He made the remarks at the Brussels "Global Progressive Forum" (GPF) at the European Parliament, fresh from his London conference.  "The balance of forces is completely different," said Lamy, who prior to the WTO was the EU's Trade Commissioner.  "With the presence of the BRIC countries in the G20, the geopolitics are redefined," said Lamy.  In the proper, democratic direction, for this French social democratic free trader.

Lamy believes that there is no contradiction between regulation and free trade; he points out the difference between free trade partners Canada and the United States, where the former maintained proper surveillance of the financial sector while the US... well, we know what happened.

Lamy didn't call for the end of the G8 meetings, but others have.  In the Toronto Globe and Mail, Gordon Smith and Barry Carin, both G8 summiteers under the Chrétien government in the '90s, say that the G8 "is on life support," and take little solace in the fact that Canada will host the 2010 G8 Summit.  They call for a transubstantiation of the G8 into the G20:

Our government should prepare the ground this week in London and transform next year's Canadian G8 summit into a Canadian G20 summit.

I couldn't agree more.  Look at what will happy this July: the countries that will help fund, consume, or produce their utmost to counter the worldwide recession - primarily China - will be given colonial treatment, according to Smith/Carin:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has invited G20 leaders to Sardinia for only part of the meeting; non-G8 countries will inevitably see this as second-class treatment.

It's probably too late to cancel the Sardinia Summit, though after Berlusconi's erratic behavior at the G20 and at today's NATO Summit, some of his fellow summiteers would probably happily forego  his  hospitality.

NATO Shadow Summit: Moral, Muscular, Multilateral

“NATO is watching us watching them.”

Such was the sentiment - confirmed by the impressive NATO presence, including several Assistant Secretary General (ASG)-level officials - at the end of this week’s two-day “NATO Shadow Summit.” The event, the first of the name, inspired in part by the new organization “NATO Watch” (along with principal partners ISIS-Europe, BASIC, and the Bertelsmann Stiftung), was a perfectly-timed prelude to the real thing about to unfold in Strasbourg.

Officially subtitled “Options for NATO: Pressing the Reset Button on the Strategic Concept,” the conference attracted a wide variety of observers and actors in the security community, garnering the wisdom of an impressive array of speakers, including NATO Policy Planning Director (and better known as former Spokesman of the Alliance) Jamie Shea. But there were contrarians galore, and the list of “what NATO can’t do” (or perhaps “shouldn’t try to do”) was long.

The words Strategic Concept may sound wonky, but need not. Lord Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General, put the first strategic concept this way: “Keep the Americans in (Europe), the Soviets out, and the Germans down.” Mind you, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and the dawn of the Cold War, things could be as simple as that. If only the world were still as simple.

If there was a single unifying notion to the “Shadow Summit,” it was that NATO had somehow gone astray, that amidst the hoopla over 60th birthday parties, there is a crying need to involve citizens (or at least civil society, represented in part by the self-selected organizations present) in determining what NATO should stand for.

This elaboration of a new direction has taken the form of a “Citizens Declaration on Alliance Security,” which was presented in draft form at the Shadow Summit and will undergo further iterations based on input from participants. It would take NATO in a general moral direction (R2P, “Responsibility to Protect” civilians in conflict zones, best explained here by one of its prime proponents, the International Crisis Group). Muscular, in that NATO’s quasi-monopoly in the world’s political-military alliance game should mean something. And multilateral, well, because after George W. Bush gave unilateral and “coalition of the willing” such bad names, collective security is back in play.

“Tough love” for NATO was the reigning mindset. This was not the “NATO Game Over” collection of pacifists of a few weeks ago, nor the inevitable civil disobedience “Block NATO” movement converging on Strasbourg. Far from it. There were NGO veterans of Afghanistan, who may be against war and who may not appreciate Taliban targeting of soldiers and aid workers alike, but who recognize that organized, civilized peace enforcement is often a necessity.

The conference was rich in content, and this post only gives you a taste. Its organizers promise an annual event; indeed one slide imagined “NATO At Seventy” ten years hence. Still in crisis, still posing existential questions. Now, at least, there is the beginning of a citizens’ forum to help the summiteers along.

ISIS-Europe promises a full report in due course.

(This post first appeared in Euractiv/Blogactiv "Errant European")