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After the US Elections: Chances for a European Strategy on China

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by Gesine Weber

EU: the referee in the great-power competition that is the US-China relationship? (Image credit: ImagineChina)

Over the past four years, the EU’s inability to balance its position between the US and China proved to be extremely challenging. Its member states can neither afford to loosen their ties with their long-standing ally across the Atlantic, nor risk a large-scale decoupling from the giant in the East. The alliance with the US is an essential security guarantee for Europe and perceived as vital, especially by countries in Eastern Europe. Putting this relationship at risk would leave Europe’s eastern flank exposed to the unpredictable aggression from Russia.

At the same time, China holds crucial political weight in international affairs: besides its status as a major trading partner for Europe, Beijing is now heading four out of fifteen UN organisations. Turning completely away from China could therefore be seen as a rejection of global cooperation with an increasingly global player. As such, the EU finds itself in a delicate balancing act. Decision-makers across Europe urgently need to prevent the EU from falling as the first victim of the Thucydides trap between the two powers.

Keeping China on the political agenda

The necessity for the EU to find a common strategy for China is not new. Since the election of American President Donald J. Trump in 2016, the challenge of mitigating US-China competition grew to become an important issue for policy-makers in Europe. Despite transatlantic relations at their lowest point during this time, Trump’s China policy spurred on a European awakening towards China. This shift happened in two ways. Firstly, it put active policy-making vis-à-vis China and the Indo-Pacific high on the political agenda, counter to the region’s relative neglect in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) before.

Secondly, however, European reluctance to endorse the US’s maximum pressure strategy towards China underlined the diverging opinions and thereby unveiled the lack of a comprehensive EU strategy on China. Despite the release of documents such as the strategic outlook on China or the 2020 Agenda for Strategic Cooperation, there has, so far, not been a comprehensive guideline or strategy on the EU’s current and future action towards China in the different realms of foreign affairs, ranging from trade to security, to technology, so on and so forth.

Presently, should President-Elect Joe Biden wants to credibly translate his value-based foreign policy discourse into practice, there is a need to cooperate with the Europeans. In this context, finding a common approach towards China might be possible at least in some policy areas. Although President Biden will most likely seek closer cooperation with the US’ European partners, there will be little patience in Washington for intra-EU or EU-NATO power struggles or debates on the wording. This is especially the case for France and Germany: the two most influential EU member states are currently getting lost in semantic quarrels on European strategic autonomy – a term that is highly contested in Germany and a concept strong advocated for by Macron -, although both actually want the same things, to advance European security and defence.

US elections as a potential driving force for EU strategy-making

Over the history of European integration, the functionalist approach of ‘form follows function’ often demonstrated the EU’s ability to overcome challenges. New policies and approaches were first and foremost designed to serve a certain objective, and institutional adaptation could follow at a later stage of this process once the output matched the expectations. In this sense, the US elections could catalyse European strategy-making.

As EU leaders have already declared their willingness to cooperate with Biden on China, it is now important for the latter to define their priorities and identify areas of cooperation. Such a development ought to happen first among the member states and then between the EU and the US. Despite the EU member states’ diverging opinions on some issues, especially on the 17+1 format, there is a growing consensus that the EU requires a common approach to China.

Accordingly, a window of opportunity is opening here for European strategy-making. Such a China strategy, however, is not to be solely focused on the identification of threats. No, this exercise should also concentrate on drafting a positive agenda on China. The potential of global cooperation, with a broad regional and multilateral approach, is to be pursued. If the EU and its member states achieve this objective and manage to present a comprehensive approach on China – ranging from foreign investment to security in the Indo-Pacific to regulation of new technologies and environmental challenges – strategy-making will succeed thanks to geopolitical drivers — and without getting lost in technical debates. Instead of wedged in between China and the US, the EU could emerge as the balancer of both.

Gesine Weber is a first-year PhD Candidate at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, and works as a Program Assistant for the Paris Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She holds a master’s degree in European Affairs (cum laude) from SciencesPo Paris and a master’s in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include European defence cooperation, which she focuses on in her PhD thesis, the CSDP, geopolitics and questions of global order.

 

Decrypting the effects of the Russian Presidential Election

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By Jackson Oliver Webster

 

Credit Image: БЕЛАРУССКИЙ ЖУРНАЛ

 

This article is part of a two-part pre- and post-election analysis of the Russian elections and their significance for the country and region going forward. The pre-election break-down can be found here.

 

It came as no surprise that, late in the evening of 18 March 2018, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was announced as the clear winner of Russia’s Presidential Election, with 56,430,712 votes representing 76.69% of participating voters. This result represents more votes in real terms for any president in the history of the Russian Federation. The most important figure for the Kremlin however was not Putin’s score in terms of votes, rather his score in terms of turnout, which fell below the announced target of 70%. The runner up was the Communist Party candidate, billionaire Pavel Grudinin, who won 11.77% of the vote, performing slightly better than expected, possibly as a result of his personal notoriety compared to Putin’s liberal challengers.

This article will outline the performances and reactions of several opposition candidates, as well as the fate of the opposition following the election. The second part will briefly discuss how Putin’s victory and eventual succession might affect Moscow’s foreign policy and defence posture over the coming years.

 

Opposition Candidates

Liberal candidates performed particularly poorly, with Ksenia Sobchak, the self-styled “other choice against all” (“Sobchak protiv vsekh”), winning a whopping 1.68% of the vote, and veteran politician Grigori Yavlinski of the Yabloko Party obtaining only 1.05% of the vote, according to official results. Perhaps the best-performing liberal candidate was Abstention, with turnout rates especially low in the traditionally opposition-leaning city of Yekaterinburg, where, according to the Mayor’s office, only 434,000 of the city’s over 1,300,000 residents participated. Navalny will continue to claim abstaining voters as his own supporters, given his repeated calls to boycott the elections, having changed his campaign hashtag from #Navalny2018 to #NeVybory2018 (“non-elections2018”). Fraud occurred in multiple polling stations, and independent observers including Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) noted less-than-clandestine ballot stuffing on security camera footage. Grigory Melkonyats of the NGO Golos said fraud was “partly in reaction to Navalny’s boycott campaign.” In Chechnya, due to political repression and fraudulent polling, Putin won over 99% of the vote, duplicating his other strong showings in the Autonomous Republic against which he fought a war in 1999, his first action as Russia’s Prime Minister.

During the  vote, Navalny and a campaign manager sat in Navalny Live’s studio with Sobchak and a member of her staff to watch the results roll in on a broadcast later replayed by Dozhd, Russia’s only non-state owned TV network. After it was evident that, to everyone’s surprise, Putin was to emerge the clear winner, Sobchak proposed that she and Navalny’s party form a united opposition for the upcoming State Duma elections. Navalny, in his typically direct style, launched into a speech ultimately condemning Sobchak as part-and-parcel of the system she claims to oppose, saying he wants nothing to do with her ‘opposition’ which he views as ‘permitted’ and ‘selected’ by the Kremlin. Some Russian political commentators have alleged that the Kremlin will begin reorganizing a straw man ‘opposition’ based on an engineered entente between nationalist and ‘liberal’ forces, with caricatures like Zhirinovksy and Sobchak serving as rhetorical punching bags for United Russia. This would be reminiscent of the early days of the Putin presidency, when Kremlin political technologists used rapid party creation and dissolution to engineer a surprise victory for pro-Kremlin factions over the Communist Party, and later reorganised these elements into United Russia. Though your author usually avoids conspiratorial thinking, he would be less than surprised if the Kremlin tapped Sobchak for some sort of role in a post-Putin political order, however this speculation will be left for another, much longer article.

Liberal movements such as Sobchak’s and Navalny’s are caught between a rock and a hard place. Either they follow Navalny’s model and refuse to take part in an unfair election process and exclude themselves; or they participate, thus legitimising an election campaign run by a politicised Federal Electoral Commission and influenced by highly-biased state-run media with rampant voter fraud. The despondent mood of the liberal opposition is best summarised by Yabloko political consultant Max Katz:

“The opponents of Putin have put forward many strategies. And none of them has worked. The boycott hasn’t worked: the turnout is very high and — it seems — will not be artificially propped. The calls to spoil bulletins haven’t worked — there are few of them. Voting for Sobchak hasn’t worked: her score is very low. Voting for Grudinin hasn’t worked . . . his score is lower than Zyuganov’s [the leader of the Communist party] in the last presidential elections. And our calls to vote for Yavlinsky haven’t worked either.”

Navalny for his part is falling back on his “political machines”, the Civic Platform Party and the FBK, to give him and his campaign longevity beyond the presidential election. His YouTube presence has been particularly active since the elections, attacking the government over its handling of a deadly mall fire in Siberia and denouncing the elimination of direct mayoral elections in Yekaterinburg. Most recently, he called for protests on 5 May in a video entitled “Putin is not our Tsar” (“Putin nam ne tsar’”).

 

Consequences

So what can be expected, particularly from a European perspective, in the coming months and years from a reelected Putin?

Before the elections, most Western media were fixated on Putin’s particularly bellicose State of the Federation address. He boasted of all sorts of first-strike, high-tech weapons clearly in development with Western conventional foes in mind: hypersonic intercontinental cruise missiles, underwater tactical nuclear platforms, and other weapons. Many defence analysts have argued that these systems are either not beyond the conceptual stage, and may not provide any significant strategic edge should they become operational. However, the spirit of the address seemed to mark a shift towards openly aggressive rhetoric which may come to define Putin’s fifth term foreign policy.

Russian historian Irina Pavlova argues that Putin’s comments represent his will to “raise the stakes” of his current confrontation with the West. This belligerence is, she continues, a demonstration of Putin’s confidence in his own competence and position relative to his adversaries. She concludes that this assertiveness follows the general framing of Kremlin foreign policy by state media, which sets Russian civilisation against a weak and decadent Western world. It also feeds into Kremlin talking points, namely the framing of the Ukraine conflict in terms of the fight against so-called ‘Ukrainian fascists’. This creates a “modern Stalinist’” confrontation with the West in which Putin himself is the hero. “As for the sanctions the West threatens, they only strengthen this regime above all in the eyes of its own population,” argues Pavlova.

NATO defence planners[1], on the other hand, operate largely under the assumption that succession is, eventually, inevitable, and that this succession period will be extremely unstable. Many Western governments may view the current Russian regime as undesirable, but there is a general respect for the current Kremlin’s competence and strategic rationality. Thus, the key strategic goal for NATO in the east is to raise the cost of miscalculation for Moscow by strengthening Baltic defences. A legitimate concern is that, in the coming years, a succession battle within the Kremlin combined with long-term economic instability may cause Russia —or rather certain powerful actors in Moscow— to lash out in the ‘near-abroad’.

 

Conclusion

Moving forward, the most important developments in Russian politics worth following will be the fate of the ‘liberal’ opposition, in all its various forms, and eventually the succession process. The main question for the opposition is whether or not a united front will form between various factions —old liberals, Navalnyites, nationalists, communists, and so on. As for succession, there are multiple possible outcomes over the next six years. We will either see a reordering of the current elite as Putin steps down from power, or a constitutional amendment abolishing the two-term limit. Regardless, the West can expect an assertive stance from Moscow as Putin attempts to reinforce his domestic credibility in the face of a stagnant economy and shrinking European demand for fossil fuels.

 

Jackson Webster is a graduate of the Department of War Studies, and is currently reading for a master’s in International Security at Sciences Po Paris. His research focuses on Russia, its relationship with Central Europe, and cybersecurity. He is currently working on cybersecurity issues with a legal tech consultancy in Paris.

Notes

[1] Section based on an off-the-record conversation between the author and senior NATO officials.

Image source

http://journalby.com/news/navalnyy-protiv-rossii-rossiya-protiv-evropy-i-sobchak-protiv-vseh-1099 (in Russian)

 

Smoke, Mirrors, Yachts, and Dachas

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By Jackson Oliver Webster

 

The reality TV run-up to Russia’s presidential elections (Credit Image: Телеканал 360)

This article is part of a two-part pre- and post-election analysis of the Russian elections and their significance for the country and region going forward. 

 

Russia’s elections have been crafted the same way a producer designs the season finale of a reality TV show finale: the illusion of suspense hides a pre-ordained outcome. This is why the Kremlin has allowed the Electoral Commission to grant a record eight candidates the right to run. Candidates range from the centrist urban opposition, to a reality TV presenter, to an oligarch-turned-communist, to a “liberal-democratic” nationalist who wants to outlaw the speaking of foreign languages in public.

Russian political life, unlike what many Western pundits may argue, is not defined by “dictatorship”. Politics in the Federation is better characterized, borrowing a phrase from Peter Pomerantsev, as “Reality TV Russia”. Modern Russia is a militarized kleptocracy whose political discourse is largely dominated by state-run TV stations, and by the producers and “political technologists” who create their content. Debate in Russia is far more open than in one-party states like China, or indeed in many of Russia’s post-Soviet neighbors. Diverse political opinions exist and are discussed, however they’re not given sufficient airtime to reach a general audience, nor are they permitted to converge into an organised, effective opposition. Permitted opposition candidates are generally caricatures. They include nostalgic communists, raving ultra-nationalists, and now, young reality TV presenters with no political experience. In this environment, Putin’s victories are understandable. He truly does represent the best amongst this motley crew, a group selected by the powers-that-be through a politicised Federal Electoral Commission.

There is much to be said about this field of fascinating personalities, about the dramas of the past few months, and the bizarre anecdotes of Russian political life. However, I shall limit my discussion to two figures — Alexei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak — and finally, briefly, to the President himself and the system he represents.

 

Alexei Navalny 

The first is Alexei Navalny, a lawyer who gained political notoriety by running for Mayor of Moscow in 2013 and coming in a less-distant second than any previous opposition candidate. Navalny created the Fond Borby s Korruptsei (Anti-Corruption Foundation, FBK) in 2011 as a platform for his later political ventures. The Foundation has a popular YouTube channel which publishes video essays and documentaries chronicling the alleged corruption of prominent government officials. It is worth noting that, in contemporary Russia, one of the most effective ways to catalyze a political career, particularly at the local level, is by legitimizing oneself by denouncing corruption. Many of Russia’s more prominent local politicians have begun their campaigns through an anti-corruption platform — Yekaterinburg Mayor Evgeny Roizman provides another good example.

In a March 2017 video entitled “On Vam Ne Dimon” (Don’t Call Him Dimon), Navalny presented an in-depth open-source indictment of Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s corrupt lifestyle, followed by a declaration of his own presidential candidacy. This video incited unsanctioned protests in major urban centers nationwide, and Navalny and hundreds of his supporters were arrested. Subsequent protests organized by Navalny — namely in reaction to the Electoral Commission’s rejection of his candidacy — have seen surprisingly innovative responses from Russian authorities. In one instance, the Saint Petersburg city government announced the day before a protest planned on Putin’s birthday that the selected park “needed urgent repairs” and that it would therefore block the protests out of concern for “public health and safety”. In Volgograd, journalists covering a protest were pushed into buses by police and moved away from the protesters, then were returned once the protest had finished.

Navalny’s most notable recent video, released in February 2018, is entitled “Yachts, Oligarchs, and Girls”. It tells the tale of Nastya Rybka, a Belorussian escort and lifestyle blogger. In 2016, Rybka posted a series of pictures of Norwegian villages on her Instagram, followed by a video showing her patron, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, discussing the American presidential elections with a man Navalny identifies as Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko, rumoured to be the most influential voice in foreign policy at the Kremlin. The video uses open-source findings and Rybka’s autobiography to assert that the two were meeting to arrange private briefings for Prikhodko with Paul Manafort, then-campaign manager for Donald Trump and former business partner of Deripaska. The accusations have made waves in Russia, with Roskomnadzor, Russia’s internet censor, attempting to force YouTube to take down the videos (YouTube didn’t comply). Rybka is currently in jail in Thailand for illegally co-organizing a sex workshop. She has appealed to the “American media” asking for extradition in return for the “missing pieces of the puzzle” of the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia.

While Navalny’s videos are highly viewed — the exposé on Deripaska has over four million views — the political impact of these videos is limited and highly concentrated. Navalny’s supporters are mostly young, educated liberals living in large cities like Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Volgograd. The viewers of his videos are likely to be these young Russians, their compatriots living abroad, and Western Russia-watchers (such as this author). This demographic does not normally vote in elections, and with Navalny’s calls to boycott they almost certainly won’t be turning out in droves on March 18. Contrast Navalny’s legal troubles with the President’s stable voter base, combined with the internal strife in Navalny’s Progress Party, and the candidate’s path to future electoral success seems far off if not entirely untenable. Moreover, the effects of these denunciations are likely to be more long-term than March’s election. Igor Eidman of Deutsche Welle suggested that the main reaction among Russians is to ask why a man like Deripaska could be so rich while also being so idiotic as to invite an unstable escort to his illegal private meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister.

Even if Navalny’s popularity and impact are difficult to measure, the perceived threat he poses to the Kremlin is obvious. Navalny and his parry do not represent a fully-fledged “opposition” to the extent that much of the Western media has argued. That said, the Kremlin has gone to rather unsubtle lengths to discredit and disqualify him from political office on multiple occasions, with 2018 constituting but the latest example.

 

Ksenia Sobchak

Despite being presented via the Kremlin-approved press, as the opposition candidate, there isn’t much to say of her campaign. Her political views were vague-to-non-existent prior to the election, and her campaign hasn’t aggressively attacked Putin or United Russia directly, at least not with the same vigor as Navalny or the liberals of Yabloko. Moreover, the Sobchak family’s closeness to Putin is well-known — her father was the Mayor of Saint-Petersburg when Putin was Deputy Mayor, his first political post.

Sobchak’s most drastic departure from the Kremlin party line is her embrace of European-style liberal democracy as a model for political normalcy. She is one of two candidates opposing the annexation of Crimea, refusing to campaign there. This differentiates her from her communist and nationalist counterparts, notably Navalny himself, who positions himself as an ardent Russian patriot and maintains a hard stance against immigration and the influence of Western media in Russia.

 In the opinion of some observers, Sobchak is a spoiler candidate. No candidate can present him or herself without at least tacit acceptance from the state hierarchy. Navalny’s constant legal troubles stem at least partly from the perceived threat he poses to at least some elements of the Kremlin elite. Sobchak, on the other hand, has been characterized as the “approved sparring partner” for President Putin. That said, there is no actual ‘sparring’, as the President has refused to participate in televised debates and is not actively campaigning. I would therefore take this discussion in a slightly different direction. Sobchak’s candidacy fits perfectly into the character of modern Russian political life. In a country dominated by state-owned mass television, a reality TV presenter as a presidential candidate seems more than fitting.

From an electoral standpoint, Sobchak’s candidacy indirectly combats Navalny’s call for a boycott. Her campaign plays to the same urban, progressive youth who Navalny is urging to boycott. By giving these individuals — ultimately a minority electorate — an ‘acceptable alternative’ to voting for Putin, perhaps Sobchak could raise the overall turnout. The counter to this argument comes from Sobchak herself, who acknowledges the charges of spoiling, denies them, and has gone so far as to frequently attack Navalny and his colleagues.

 

Vladimir Putin

The central character of reality TV Russia is President Putin himself. Aside from being the head-of-state and the fulcrum of Russia’s kleptocracy, Putin casts himself as the physical embodiment of the nation. He’s a statesman, soldier, tough-guy, dog-lover, biker, patriot, and diplomat. But more importantly, he is above the tumultuous noise of modern society. The go-to word for Kremlin supporters is “stability”, and with his calm demeanor and straight-faced authority, Putin is the image of the stability his rule has provided.

 For the President, “success” in this election is not defeating his divided and underwhelming opposition; it’s achieving high turnout. Or, at least high enough to give his new mandate an air of legitimacy. This election, Putin is running as an independent, not as a candidate of United Russia, the ruling party. The election is therefore a direct referendum on his presidency and on his popularity.

 

Conclusion 

No one will wake up surprised on March 19. Even in the absence of fraud, Putin will probably enjoy a comfortable majority among likely voters, elevated by relative economic stability and his perceived foreign policy successes, as well as generous welfare provisions for pensioners. However Putin is not simply looking to win this election. He needs to dominate it. Should the incumbent President only be reelected by a plurality of eligible voters, this will have two negative consequences for him. The first is a loss of legitimacy, as he must undertake a difficult constitutional reform process in order to run again in 2024. The second is Navalny, who, as the most prominent figure calling for a boycott, could easily claim abstaining voters were effectively supporting him. As there is no polling data listing Navalny as a candidate, we do not know how his results would compare with overall abstention, were he allowed to run. Early voting prior to the time of writing has also highlighted the possibility that urban Navalny voters will shift to the Communist candidate Pavel Grudinin. This may be because politically engaged voters do not want to abstain, but also do not see Sobchak as a legitimate alternative to Putin given her family background and lack of experience. When I asked an academic contact in Russia why liberal Navalny supporters would vote for a communist candidate instead of Sobchak, he answered “people might want to cast a protest vote, but they’re not idiots.”

 

 

Jackson Webster is a graduate of the Department of War Studies, and is currently reading for a master’s in International Security at Sciences Po Paris. His research focuses on Russia, its relationship with Central Europe, and cybersecurity. He is currently working on cybersecurity issues with a legal tech consultancy in Paris.

Images Sources

Banner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_2018#/media/File:President_el_in_Russia_2018.png  Official logo of the election (Credit Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Image 1:  https://360tv.ru/news/vybory/vybory-2018-kak-progolosovat-za-granitsej-dosrochno-ili-iz-doma/  (in Russian)

Entretien avec Jean-Dominique Merchet sur les Réformes du Renseignement en France

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La France vivra dans quelques semaines des élections présidentielles dont l’enjeu est de taille pour l’avenir immédiat du pays. De nombreux dossiers attendent le futur chef de l’Etat, parmi lesquels la vague de terrorisme, une hypothétique réforme du renseignement, ou encore l’avenir de la construction européenne.

William Moray, de Strife, s’entretient avec Jean-Dominique Merchet (@jdomerchet) pour évoquer l’ensemble de ces sujets. M. Merchet est journaliste au quotidien L’Opinion et anime le blog Secret Défense depuis 2007. Expert reconnu en matière de défense, de sécurité et de stratégie, il est également auditeur de l’Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN). Pour toute demande relative à cet article, merci de vous adresser à la rédaction de Strife Journal & Blog.

WM – Vous avez récemment écrit un article listant les potentielles réformes du renseignement, réformes sur lesquelles le futur Président de la République devra se pencher selon vous. Laquelle (ou lesquelles) de ces réformes devrait avoir être prioritaire?

JDM – Le point qui me parait être le plus important et le plus urgent est la nomination d’un nouveau directeur général de la Sécurité extérieure (DGSE). Il y a là une contrainte forte, dans la mesure où Bernard Bajolet quittera ses fonctions quinze jours après l’élection présidentielle.

Plus globalement, mon opinion personnelle est qu’il ne faut pas trop toucher à la Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE, le service français de renseignement extérieur). Cette dernière est une spécificité française, un service « intégré », c’est-à-dire qu’elle rassemble divers services. En comparaison avec la Grande-Bretagne, la DGSE regroupe les services du MI6, du GCHQ ainsi qu’une partie des activités des SAS. Je pense que ce n’est pas un mauvais système, qu’il fonctionne bien. Certaines personnes aimeraient ‘casser la maison’, soit pour en retirer les activités militaires (le Service Action passerait ainsi aux mains du Commandement des Opérations Spéciales, le COS), soit pour réorganiser le service technique au sein d’une nouvelle agence, qui serait une NSA à la française. Pour autant, un haut fonctionnaire très impliqué dans ce dossier a récemment suggéré que : « on doit améliorer les choses, mais c’est aussi simple que de changer les pièces d’une voiture en train de rouler ». La formule me parait très raisonnable. Je ne crois donc pas qu’il y ait lieu à transformer la DGSE.

Ce qui ne va pas bien en revanche, c’est le ministère de l’Intérieur, qui en France chapeaute la Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI, le service français de renseignement intérieur). DGSI). Encore une fois, je parle strictement en mon nom propre, en tant qu’observateur attentif de longue date. Ce ministère fonctionne toujours plus ou moins de la même façon qu’au début du 20e siècle, s’agissant aussi bien de la police que du renseignement intérieur. A ce titre, il est toujours marqué par le poids des chapelles qui le composent, à savoir les préfets, la police nationale, etc. La distinction entre la préfecture de police de Paris et la Police Nationale est un autre exemple du problème, cette séparation n’a que peu de sens. Du reste, la DGSI est un service de police au fond et non une agence de renseignement intérieur, contrairement aux affirmations des politiques à sa création. Si modernisation il doit y avoir, ce serait donc davantage au niveau de l’Intérieur. A titre de comparaison, le ministère de la Défense (qui dirige la DGSE) s’est considérablement modernisé.

WM – Pourriez-vous brièvement revenir sur la polémique née de la publication du livre « Un Président ne devrait pas dire cela » ? Le Président Hollande a-t-il eu tort de rendre publiques des informations classées ‘secret défense’ au sujet des opérations spéciales, plus particulièrement des ‘opérations Homo’ ?

JDM – Oui, il a eu tort, évidemment. Comme l’énonce le titre de ce livre, François Hollande n’aurait pas dû faire cela. Je pense d’ailleurs que cet ouvrage l’a achevé, puisqu’il n’a pas pu se représenter. En d’autres termes, cet épisode aura été la dernière étape de son chemin de croix. Le vrai problème toutefois est qu’Hollande et les gouvernants dans leur ensemble ont usé et abuse de cette posture militaire, posture que je trouve très désagréable. J’entends par là le langage qui consiste à dire entre autres choses « on est en guerre ». Dans l’idéal, il faudrait en dire moins tout en en faisant autant. In fine, ce n’est pas aux politiques de nourrir les fantasmes.

WM – Comment se fait-il que l’unique réponse trouvée à ce jour par le gouvernement a la menace terroriste consiste en l’état d’urgence, à défaut d’une stratégie ? Cette mesure, qui par essence même, se veut temporaire et répondre à des circonstances exceptionnelles, a été prolongée a pas moins de cinq reprises depuis son instauration, au lendemain des attentats de Paris.

JDM – Je ne serais pas aussi catégorique quant à l’absence d’une stratégie. L’instauration de l’état d’urgence signifie élever l’état d’alerte au maximum. Il est impossible dès lors de baisser le niveau d’alerte car un tel geste constituerait un suicide politique. En d’autres termes, l’état d’urgence est une opération de communication politique ; le problème est que comme avec toute mesure de communication politique, le retour en arrière est difficile. Par exemple, j’estime personnellement que déployer l’armée dans les rues (dans le cadre du plan Vigipirate) ne sert pas à grand-chose, mais une fois que la mesure est prise, il est très difficile de revenir en arrière. Les services de renseignement, la police font leur travail, empêchent les attentats, dénouent les réseaux. Bien entendu, il importe de trouver des règles de vie ordinaire.

WM – Pourquoi la France est-elle cependant incapable de mettre en place une stratégie avec des mesures sur le long terme, à l’image de CONTEST au Royaume-Uni ?

Personne n’a la solution miracle contre le terrorisme. Une fois engage dans un cycle de terrorisme, on ne va pas s’en sortir comme ça. Il faut penser sur le long terme, bien entendu, ce qui implique trouver une solution contre la radicalisation, ainsi que tenir compte des effets de la politique étrangère. Une réflexion devrait être menée sur ces sujets et bien d’autres, et des améliorations sont toujours possibles. Pour autant, l’effort contre le terrorisme requiert aussi des mesures de protection immédiates, donc focalisées sur le court terme. L’un n’exclut pas l’autre. Il est important d’émettre des critiques, d’autant plus dans le cadre d’un état de droit, pour autant, j’estime qu’il est tout aussi crucial d’éviter les jugements à l’emporte-pièce. Vous évoquez l’exemple du Royaume-Uni ; les Britanniques ont eu la chance d’avoir été ces derniers temps moins touchés que la France ou l’Allemagne. Cependant, la France avait précédemment été épargnée pendant vingt ans tandis que l’on pointait du doigt la politique de Londres jugée trop laxiste à l’encontre des imams (et autres prêcheurs) radicaux. Bien entendu, il y a des choses qui ne marchent pas bien en France ; mais au fond, qui a la bonne stratégie ? La lutte contre le terrorisme n’est pas une science exacte.

Un soldat en patrouille sur l’esplanade du Trocadéro, haut-lieu touristique de Paris face à la Tour Eiffel. Crédit photo : AFP / Gonzalo Fuentes

WM – A l’issue du Brexit, la France restera l’unique Etat membre de l’UE disposant de l’arme nucléaire et disposant d’un siège permanent au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU. Cette situation place-t-elle Paris face à des responsabilités accrues en matière de politique extérieure ou de défense européenne ?

JDM – Non, pas tellement, dans la mesure où il est question de puissance. A ce titre, les Britanniques auront toujours un rôle important à jouer en sur le continent européen. Nous parlons après tout d’un Etat qui est un pilier de l’OTAN. Comme le soulignait fort justement Theresa May, « les Britanniques ont fait le choix de quitter l’UE mais pas de quitter l’Europe ». Du reste, je pense que l’impact auquel vous faites allusion est à relativiser : le Royaume-Uni ne jouait qu’un rôle limité au sein de l’UE en matière de défense et de sécurité extérieure. La coopération anti-terroriste ne sera pas non plus affectée, puisque les échanges de renseignement, notamment avec la France, ont lieu dans le cadre d’accords bilatéraux. A l’inverse, je ne suis pas non plus convaincu que le départ des Britanniques aura pour effet d’accélérer ces chantiers de diplomatie et de défense commune.

En résumé, je ne pense pas que le retrait de Londres aura grand impact sur l’UE dans un sens comme dans l’autre, et par conséquent les effets sur la France seront minimes. Le Brexit n’est pas bon pour l’ordre international, en termes de symbole et d’image. Mais d’un point de vue matériel, les effets seront limités.

WM – Eu égard aux nombreuses allégations de piratage informatique (émanant d’Etats ou d’autres entités) visant à perturber les récentes élections américaines, les services de renseignement français sont-ils aptes à faire face à une telle menace ? Les échéances électorales (présidentielles et législatives) approchent à grand pas.

JDM – Qui est capable de faire face à une cyber-attaque massive ? Je pense sincèrement que personne ne le peut à l’heure actuelle, pas sur une telle échelle (massive).

Toutefois, la France a conscience du problème et a des moyens pour se défendre. Une réunion du Conseil de défense et de sécurité nationale a eu lieu à l’Elysée le mercredi 1er Mars au cours duquel la question a été évoquée. Ce sujet est régulièrement abordé dans les médias, ne serait-ce que parce qu’il importe de sensibiliser le public a la réalité du problème. Par exemple, le terme ‘cyberattaque’ regroupe plusieurs niveaux. D’abord, les réseaux sociaux. Il s’agit ici de propagande, mais nous sommes aussi dans le cadre de la liberté d’expression. Le souci n’est pas tant que ces rumeurs proviennent de sources proches du Kremlin (RT ou Sputnik). Au fond, ce dont on parle, c’est de « soft power », or nombre de puissances occidentales (USA) font de même. Les Occidentaux n’ont aujourd’hui plus le monopole de la puissance et de la légitimité, les deux sont contestés. Non, le problème tient plutôt au fait qu’une partie de l’opinion publique ici, en France, souscrive à ces ‘trolls’ diffuses par les médias russes pro-gouvernementaux. Le second niveau est celui des attaques informatiques qui peuvent bloquer les sites. Encore une fois, il existe des moyens d’y parer, dans la mesure du possible. Enfin, le dernier niveau, le vrai piratage, est le vol de documents confidentiels (données et autres) dans un but précis. En France, nous n’avons pas – encore ? – eu de fuite à l’image de l’affaire Wikileaks, mais cela peut arriver.

Il importe de ne pas se faire une représentation fantasmatique du piratage informatique, au contraire, avoir une approche réaliste et concrète. Par exemple, le public ne s’est jamais plaint de Wikileaks. Par ailleurs, n’oubliez pas que le vote électronique n’a qu’un rôle extrêmement limité dans le système électoral français ; seuls les Français de l’étranger peuvent y avoir recours et dans le seul cadre des élections législatives. Au final, c’est bel et bien l’électorat qui décide, puisque le piratage du scrutin n’est pas possible. Le problème encore une fois est qu’une partie de cet électorat adhère aux trolls de la presse russe.

Depuis cette interview, le gouvernement a annoncé Vendredi 3 mars la suspension du vote électronique, par précaution pour éviter tout risque de piratage. 

Cet article a été traduit en français par William Moray. Vous pouvez trouver la version anglaise ici.

Feature image source: http://www.lopinion.fr/blog/secret-defense

Image 1 Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_-_palais_de_l’%C3%89lys%C3%A9e_-_cour_05.JPG

Image 2 Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/6009862-3×2-940×627.jpg

Waiting for the Barbarians: A response to General Election debates, why Nationalism can destroy our country

by

By Pablo de Orellana & Maryyum Mehmood:

Immigration limits
Conservative Party 2005 election poster. Remarkably, this exact phrase was taken up by Yvette Cooper in 2014. Photo: Spectator

To say ‘our country’ constitutes a claim as to whom the country belongs, and just as explicitly, to whom it does not. Nationalism is a big and old idea, a political concept that links rights to membership of a particular community. Within that community, however defined, nationalism emphasizes a duty to solidarity, fellowship and common cause around the collective of the nation.

The problem is that nationalism works equally, or even more emphatically, to draw the lines distinguishing who belongs to this collective and who does not. This division is inevitable and essential to the functioning of nationalist ideology, for to belong is to have access to rights, and to a share of the community’s hard-earned rewards: why should we pay for the healthcare, benefits, or any goods that are not destined for our community?

The ideology of nationalism: Self and Other

This love of one’s own community can take a banal form. It does not have to be virulent, racist or violent; nevertheless, it always demands separation. This is, on one level, subconscious: to love one’s community, to wish for its continued prosperity – commonly referred to as ‘patriotism’ – does not necessarily constitute sinister ideology.

The problem is that it inevitably poses a radical binary: two choices that are not compatible and may not coexist, an existential choice, as Nigel Farage is fond of pointing out. Our favourite extremist makes this clear when he says that the only question he would accept in a ballot for a referendum on EU membership would be ”Do you wish to be a free, independent sovereign democracy?’’

That being said, patriotism in and of itself does not entail a definition of who is excluded from membership of the Leviathan. Demarcating these boundaries is one of the essential discursive functions of nationalism.

The use of nationalist rhetoric is neither new nor uncommon. Figures as diametrically opposed as Mustafa Kemal, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Oswald Mosley, Mohandas Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Marine Le Pen, to name but a few, all held nationalism as a key big idea, their rallying call, despite their otherwise distinct political projects. We emphasise distinct because these figures differed in everything except for the unifying claim to link the rights of those that belong to a nation with a particular political movement motivated by attaining these rights.

That is the core of nationalism: these rights, for these very people: its nationals, those belonging to our country. This is a powerful and universally applicable idea; a dragon of populism many have ridden and many more think they can ride, perhaps even tame.

Riding the dragon of British nationalism

In the British context we have witnessed over the last decade the rise of populist appeals to voters: politicians attempting to ride the nationalist dragon for electoral advantage. They are all implicated. Most political parties are attempting to draw on concerns about immigration or, more broadly, the dangers posed by foreigners, foreigness, to this country. On the one hand, these clumsy attempts include the explicit drawing of a division between those that belong and those that do not. On the other hand each of these attempts entails a definition of the rights accorded (or that should be accorded) exclusively to those that belong.

UKIP is the spectacular and colourful newcomer to the British political scene. It is more akin to the resurrection of the cantankerous alcoholic uncle that no one invites to weddings. Much like its discursive predecessor, Oswald Mosley, Farage’s party explicitly links rights to birth. To be born British affords specific rights that in UKIP’s vision must therefore be withdrawn from all others. The right to live on this island, right to access healthcare, right to welfare benefits, right to vote, and even the right to receive treatment for HIV/AIDS are all determined by birth. Even Farage’s own wife may not be saved from the curse of her foreign birth.

We expect UKIP to link British birth, the British genus, to exclusive rights. But shamefully, mainstream parties are just as culpable – perhaps even more culpable – for the promotion of this vision. As part of their eighteen-year quest to reconquer and now keep the throne from Labour, the Conservative party has made clear efforts to address nationalism and the populist vote it commands, to the point of alienating some of its major figures, such as former Cabinet minister Sayeeda Warsi.

Their attempt to ride the dragon of nationalism has had a perverse effect. Pablo de Orellana predicted in 2011 that Sarkozy’s attempt to absorb Front National’s anti-immigration and Islamophobic rhetoric would only serve to legitimise Le Pen’s party. So it came to pass, and so too has it come to pass for David Cameron. The virulence of Conservative anti-immigration measures and rhetoric has only aided UKIP. The Conservatives have facilitated the increasing acceptability of nationalism, and its implicit and explicit differentiation between the rights of those that belong and the rights, or lack thereof, of those that escape the increasingly narrow definition of ‘British’.

One of these forms of exclusion is Islamophobia, which, in Lady Warsi’s words, has ‘passed the dinner-table test’ in the duration of this last parliament. Unlike UKIP, Tories can claim they have put their rhetoric into practice. While they have not managed to limit entry to Britain to their ‘tens of thousands’ target, they have managed to establish tighter legislation with regards to visas for foreign spouses and other family abroad and, of course, Theresa May’s infamous vans warning illegal immigrants to leave.

May is the Conservative anti-immigration hero: she has been ever ready to bring in the most draconian anti-immigrant discourse to the debate, giving Farage a run for his money. Most of the measures she’s introduced, including deferral of access to social and health security and the hunt for extremists (even in universities), are articulated around the assumption that immigrants are somehow cheating or betraying Britain.

One of Theresa May's infamous vans. Photo: Rick Findler
One of Theresa May’s infamous vans. Photo: Rick Findler

Conservative rhetoric highlights that the core of the debate is access to resources. UKIP and the Tories tell us that public resources are in danger from abuse by foreigners. Labour’s embrace of nationalism has focused, until recently, on the danger posed by immigrants to a limited labour market. In 2010 Gordon Brown declared ‘British jobs for British people’.

In the current campaign Labour appears conflicted over the issue of immigration. On the one hand they promise quantitative control on immigration. On the other, they advance the more nuanced argument that immigrants’ absorption of low-pay jobs is related to their willingness to be underpaid by unscrupulous employers, and that the answer is to enforce the minimum wage. Furthermore, Labour wants to be viewed as making efforts to tackle xenophobia: promising minority community leaders a sort of new charter of rights that set tougher penalties on Antisemitism, Islamophobia and Homophobia. Yet the mixed nature of their message inevitably invites suspicion among the electorate.

The Nation’s right to common resources

Cash for the UK: that is the only real benefit of immigration, according to Labour, UKIP and the Tories. Immigration must justify itself by bringing in cash, by not making any claims to the common resources of the nation. The unspoken part of this argument, the scariest part, is that the ‘dinner table test’ has indeed been passed: immigrants are less human, less deserving, less imbued with social, human and economic rights than those blessed with British papers or, if extremists are to be heeded, with indigenous heritage.

This is why immigrants can be detained indefinitely in detention centres; this is why they can be underpaid; this is why they are less deserving than us when it comes to healthcare, benefits and just about anything else. Their lives too seem to be worth less: an immigrant can be hurt, punished, or even killed in Calais, in Dover or in a SERCO immigration centre. They are less deserving, we are constantly being told, and they are to blame for their own misfortunes.

The Liberal Democrats are not without blame either. During the 2010 election their position on immigration was the most enlightened. Immigrants were to be considered as a beneficial good, to be regionally allocated by a fairer immigration system. To immigrants themselves, we should remember, they promised regularisation of those who had illegally entered the country and had resided for a certain amount of time as productive members of society.

Tragically, none of these ideas survived beyond the election campaign. It remains the case that, despite Nick Clegg’s wholesome rhetoric against Farage and the Conservatives during the current campaign, the Lib Dems clearly had other priorities while in government.

It would be farcical to exclude the SNP from criticism in this whole affair. For all the furore unleashed by its charismatic leader, Nicola Sturgeon, and its ruthless ongoing plagiarism of Labour’s traditional working class hero rhetoric, the basis of its discourse is to secure those lovely left-wing social rights for Scots. Once again we have claims about rights and an identity’s access to those rights.

They are by no means radical, and in the SNP’s world one can become Scottish: it is not a question of ethnicity, heritage or cultural origin, as demonstrated by the raging popularity of their Scottish Government Minister and minority poster-boy, Humza Yousaf. However, the key to SNP politics remains the claim of more social justice and equality for the Scots because they are Scots, rather than because all on this island could do with more social justice and equality.

Retrieving nationalism, past and present

It is difficult to recognise ourselves in the horror of WWII ideologies, when nationalism had taken over most of Europe and drove us all to perdition and bloodshed. The extremisms of that time appear too excessive for useful comparison. Black-shirt fascism is so old, dated and dirty that even the Daily Mail no longer supports it.

Rothermere_-_Hurrah_for_the_Blackshirts
Photo: Wikipedia Commons

However, some key features of that past nationalism are here, clearly visible today. Firstly, we have the resurgence of a right to be racist or xenophobic, in evidence in Farage’s attacks on the excesses of political correctness, Cameron and May’s sudden amour of heeding the immigration concerns of their voters, and Labour’s endless and unconstructive hesitation to challenge their right-wing opponents on the pitch of immigration.

Secondly, past nationalism rears its ugly head in the definition of rights in exclusive association to belonging to a national identity, the above-discussed link of rights to birthright. This, sadly, needs no comment. All parties – except the Greens – are working on the assumption that immigrants should have fewer rights.

Thirdly, we have seen the narrowing definition of British, Britishness and British values. Ten years ago the BNP was ridiculed for speaking of ‘native Britons’ and an ‘indigenous [white] population’. In the current discourse, this has become commonplace and acceptable: incoming immigrants will by law have less rights, regardless of who wins the upcoming election. Both Conservatives and Labour have put in place plans to limit their access to healthcare, welfare and a raft of other social measures – for a period at least, until they have proven their usefulness to the Great British Economy, the new idol of this green and pleasant land, to which some, not others, have a birthright.

Concerns about the limitations of the economy and anxiety about the fiscal health of the country have only served to maximise the separation of those that have a birthright to access that wealth from those that do not. As welfare cuts started to bite from 2010 and access became more restricted, immigrants increasingly came to be blamed for the limitations of the welfare and health systems in Farage’s rhetoric. To a smaller but politically much more respectable and influential extent, Labour and the Conservatives did the same. They only affirmed that Farage was correct. The tightness of the election race means that no party will challenge the entirety of this xenophobic discourse, often only gently qualifying it, and in the process attempting to get one over UKIP.

Determining Britishness: birth, culture, heritage

The current countdown to the election underpins a shift towards an increasingly narrow definition of what it means to be British. The effect of this race to the bottom is that, slowly, extremist nationalists in UKIP and some Conservatives are attempting to saddle and ride the unleashed dragon of that big idea all the way to Westminster. The definition of British might gradually (but not inexorably, we would like to highlight) be approaching an ethnic dividing line.

We are currently looking at dominant and widespread definitions of nation governed by birthright. But as Lady Warsi and many other British-born descendants of immigrants are making clear, even though they feel British, they are slowly and unwittingly being pushed further out of the pale of the definition. In this way we are seeing an added dimension of claims in the demarcation between those that belong and those that do not. This is clearly birth plus the “correct” (the implication is, certainly, indigenous) heritage – cultural and, increasingly, ethnic.

Recently, people like us, people not born British, but long-established and naturalised British, are coming to be called ‘Plastic Brits’. The emphasis is clearly on the falsity of our flesh.

Through its history, from the romantic historicism of Richard Wagner and the fire of Germany’s first Bismarkian national ideology through to those destroying Ukraine today, nationalism in its various iterations and reinventions has been just as dangerous as it has been useful, a powerful big idea to rally mass support. We might well recognise the good intentions of liberation nationalist ideologies in the aspirations of Sun-Yat-Sen, Nehru and Ghandi. However, it is also crucial to note that, perhaps because they too drew on divisions of who was and who was not, their ideas have been led astray, the divisions of belonging turned into violent exclusion. Chiang Kai-shek and Narendra Modi are extremists who we are confident their predecessors would have loathed.

This is not the first time that nationalism has stridently emerged in the throes of poverty and destitution after an economic crisis. Its power in such circumstances is to link the right of all members of a nation to a limited pot of resources and goods to the exclusion of others. Its most violent manoeuvre is the delimitation of who the excluded Other is, a delimitation that can change and evolve over time on a scale from ‘people on this island’ to ‘indigenous population of this island’. The last time nationalism offered solutions to an economic crisis, things did not go well. We are still European enough to remember that much.

***

Perhaps we easily forget how difficult it is to walk back from such extremisms. Francisco Franco, a scion of the Fascist nationalist dictatorial tradition of the 1930s, ruled Spain until 1975. That is very recent. These ideas are powerful, they rally potentially endless support, but they are also difficult to dissolve or moderate. Franco’s party, the equivalent of the Italian Fascist Party, the Falange Española, still exists and is still legal. Nationalism, we urge, should be fought and avoided by everyone at all the little political instances of our lives.

Our analysis has focused on the core conditions that allow nationalism to emerge. First, the rise of structural social grievances: from poverty or constrained labour markets in the UK, to the increased commodification of public goods such as land or water around the world, and the resulting stress on the most vulnerable. Second, the act of drawing the line between those that belong and those that do not. Third, the consequent linking of the definition of that national identity to an exclusive set of rights or claims, which only feels like patriotism, love and solidarity to those that belong.

The results are twofold but related: on the one hand, the violence that emerges when we follow an idea that systematically despoils some individuals of their social, economic and even human rights. On the other hand, the ideological effort that obscures this violence, that makes it acceptable at the dinner table. Ask yourself, why can an immigrant be treated differently?

We are all implicated in doing and undoing nationalism. Every one of those moments when we have the choice to demarcate those that belong from those that do not belong. Every time that we allow this to happen, every instance of immigrant-bashing, these are the myriad little acts of demarcation that are at the populist basis of nationalism. At that point, when economic exasperation needs a victim to blame, all the nationalist has to do is draw the line: they are not from here, they are not deserving.

So the likes of Farage distinguish the outsider, whose ultimate definition can be crafted, caricatured and stigmatised to suit a political agenda. We here lay blame squarely at the door of the three main parties who have found it electorally expedient to acquiesce and even participate in the race to expel the immigrant.

But this line-drawing may not stop; it will continue as long as there are grievances like poverty, which need an explanation and for which politicians must offer up solutions. The dragon of nationalism can be ridden, but it cannot be tamed. It will only ever truly submit to those that claim it in its most extreme form, which necessitates extreme demarcation of Self and Other, where the Other has less rights, becomes less human; where the Other can be humiliated, abused, stigmatised, ostracised, deported, enslaved, and, on the saddest of nationalist days, killed.

Pablo de Orellana is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research focuses on diplomatic communication and identity. He writes on a range of research subjects in academic publications as well as in Strife and other online outlets. Research interests include diplomacy, political identity, nationalism, extremist ideology, philosophy, art history, art theory and curating. 2015-16 he will be teaching a course on nationalism at the College.

Maryyum Mehmood is a PhD researcher and a Teaching Assistant at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research focuses on responses to religious and racial stigmatisation and prejudice in contemporary Britain and Weimar Germany. Her other research interests include identity politics, sectarian violence and South Asian security trends. She regularly contributes to Strife and a number of other publications. She tweets @marymood.

All photos are copyrighted and published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes.