La lutte contre le terrorisme: ses acquis et ses défis
It would be bold to claim to summarise this colossus of a book, with 1086 pages and weighing 1.7 kg, particularly as this tribute to the former European counter-terrorism coordinator, the Belgian Gilles de Kerchove, who held the post for 14 years (2017 – 2021), covers all aspects of the work, with an enormous range of contributors. As there is not room here to do it justice, here is a tiny overview of a few elements gleaned from its pages, in the hope that it will give our readers enough of a taste to want to find out more.
Christiane Höhn, who worked with de Kerchove for 10 years, and the Swedish researcher Magnus Ranstorp recall the role played by the former coordinator in the field of human rights, from the prisoners of Guantánamo Bay, 25 of whom have been repatriated to the member states and other Schengen zone countries, but also when, in 2010, the phenomenon of foreign competence joining terrorist groups in Syria first became recognised, with an initial package of 22 measures adopted in 2013. The contributors also paid tribute to his role in developing the strategy for the Sahel and in the interoperability of databases in the fight against radicalisation and terrorism.
Former French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve stresses that terrorism can only be combated by reinforcing cooperation between member states. “Although the free movement of people within the Schengen zone is one of the successes of European integration, the mobility of terrorists for the commission of their crimes has forced the EU to step up controls on its external borders, whilst authorising certain countries to re-establish controls on their own, as was the case for France on the night of 30 November 2015. The European Union moreover came very early to the conclusion that only the coordinated action of the intelligence services, police forces and justice systems of all countries would allow an efficient fight against terrorism”, adds Cazeneuve, who was home affairs minister at the time of the Paris attacks. He points out that the “Schengen Information System (SIS) contained more than 91 million pieces of data in 2019 and was consulted more than 6.2 billion times between 2018 and 2019”, going on to stress that “reinforcing cooperation between intelligence and police services of the European Union has made it possible to provide the SIS with better intelligence, just as systematic controls on the external borders of European nationals, which was made possible by a long-awaited reform of the Schengen border code, has made it easier to identify terrorists on their way back from theatres of operations in Iraq or Syria”.
The Public Prosecutor General François Mollins believes that, further to the creation of the European public prosecutor’s office, which will initially handle fraud against European funds and VAT fraud, “we could consider a European public prosecutor’s office competent in matters of cross-border terrorist attacks, but this will take time!” There are, he argues, other prospects “which could, furthermore, represent limits on the effectiveness of our law enforcement system and which concern the digital issue, which can be divided into two separate areas: access to and retention of personal data on the one hand, and the acquisition of digital evidence on the other”. He criticises the limits placed by the Court of Justice of the European Union on the retention of data, arguing that it has failed to understand “how the services responsible for investigations manage to identify perpetrators of crimes or members of criminal networks, whose absolute mastery of policing techniques has allowed them to ‘professionally’ remove all traces and traditional clues”. Mollins, who recalls the contribution made by the analysis of 15,094 telephone calls in targeting the criminal investigations into the attacks in Paris of 13 November 2015, argues that “the acquisition of these ‘metadata’ is (…) a valuable and indeed indispensable weapon in the contemporary fight against terrorism”. “The systematic collection of ‘metadata’ therefore becomes of paramount importance in protecting national security. Without it, in an administrative framework, the intelligence services would not get the whole story and, in a legal framework, everything would depend on the ability of the authorities to anticipate the identity of the individuals whose connection data could be useful, which is not possible”, he writes, before going on to stress the importance of the proposed regulation on the acquisition of electronic evidence in criminal matters, which is still under negotiation.
Bernard Bajolet, former director-general of external security in France, makes the case for a relaunch of intelligence at the service of the European Union. He identifies four types of requirements with the EU: operational intelligence (in the context of CSDP missions and operations), security intelligence (counter-espionage, cyber-defence) geopolitical intelligence and crisis management. Referring to the counter-espionage capacity which European institutions need, he observes that “they are indeed the object of systematic human and technological intrusion actions by powers such as China, Russia and the United States, but also many others. Brexit, which now makes the United Kingdom a rival of the European Union, should also encourage it to protect itself from this former member state which knows it down to the last detail and will remain present there”. He adds that “in view of China’s stated ambition is, the return to power politics on the part of states of medium stature, such as Russia, Turkey and Iran, Europe must give itself the resources it needs if it does not want to be stuck on the touchline keeping score. Furthermore, this is within the interests of the member states, however much some of them might feel apprehension at times at the prospect of a stronger Europe. Readers will forgive me for pointing out the obvious fact that not a single European power, even ones with nuclear weapons, an efficient army and decent intelligence services (like France,) can make its voice heard alone. Every one of our countries needs the backing of a Europe that counts in the world and if this is to happen, Europe must have its own assessment capacity, therefore the minimum level of autonomous resources in the field of intelligence”.
Although he does not believe that a federal revolution will take place any time soon, Bajolet calls for INTCEN to be reinforced, arguing that it should be able to rely “more safely on intelligence [of exclusively European origin, in the sense of the EU) than on open sources” and should have a crisis management capability operating 24/7. Such a reinforcement could be accompanied by an improvement of production of SATCEN, for instance by means of better coordination between the Torrejon centre and European industrial programmes in the field of satellite imagery and cartography, such as MUSIS. At the same time, the European institutions could acquire a security and counter-espionage service and an intelligence coordinator.
Jamie Shea, Professor of Strategy and Security at the University of Exeter, describes the role of NATO in the fight against terrorism, for instance in the framework of its operations in Afghanistan. The article, which was written before the collapse of the Afghan regime and the rise to power of the Taliban, was already looking at the country’s real prospects and reiterates that in 2017, NATO concluded that its role should no longer be based on more military intervention and expensive long-term stabilisation efforts, but instead on smaller capacity-building missions in partner countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, Jordan, Tunisia and Iraq.
Michael Chertoff, former United States Secretary of Homeland Security (2005 – 2009), and Patrick Bury (University of Bath) argue that the “homegrown nature of both jihadists and the growing number of far-right terrorists as well as the accompanying confusion between interior and trans-national terrorist threats possibly constitute the most worrying terrorist development of the past decade”. They go on to observe that the far-right threat has not been given enough priority for two decades and that these ideologies are in the process of being joined by others on the far left and by eco-terrorist motivations over the next decade. “This range of motives will rely on developing methods, including an increasing use of drones, better encrypted communications, the potential weaponisation of Covid-19 in the development of cyber-capabilities (…). Centralised jihadi groups will attempt to acquire new weapons, including neurological agents, and to develop wherever there are sanctuaries that will offer them the opportunity to do so”, Chertoff and Bury write. They continue: “the ongoing growth of all types of domestic terrorism, but with cross-border links and inspirations, will call upon the United States and other Western nations, such as France and Belgium, to lay greater emphasis on the community (within the context of anti-terrorism intelligence: Ed). Police officers belonging to a community, the leaders of the communities, teachers and professionals in the mental health care sector may all have information that could help to identify potential terrorist cases. Similarly, in the fight against violent extremism, more should be done to encourage families and friends of people at risk report potential cases as early as possible. Together with metadata, growing capacities to analyse behaviours and data will, alongside improved code-breaking techniques, constitute important tools to tackle domestic terrorism”.
“The terrorist attacks of 2020 in France, Germany and Austria reminded us once again how important it is to step up our efforts to tackle terrorism, without compromising common values”, writes the Vice-President of the European Commission, Věra Jourová, expressing concern at the potential for increased radicalisation of the citizens in the framework of the Covid-19 crisis. “The coronavirus pandemic has already amplified many economic and social problems. The crisis has seriously impacted upon the lives of the citizens, creating mass general frustration. As citizens have spent more time on the Internet because of restrictions on going out, they have become easier targets for online radicalisation. We should therefore take this risk extremely seriously and combine our efforts in activities aiming to prevent radicalisation”, states Jourová, who nonetheless firmly believes in European solidarity and the ability of the EU to “continue to construct a resilient democratic society”. (Olivier Jehin)
Christiane Höhn, Isabel Saavedra and Anne Weyemberg (coordinated by). La lutte contre le terrorisme : ses acquis et ses défis – The Fight against Terrorism : Achievements and Challenges – Liber Amicorum Gilles de Kerchove. Bruylant. ISBN: 978-2-802-76889-0. 1086 pages. €160,00
La révolution d’un continent
In this essay on European integration, the director of the Jean Monnet Foundation retraces two centuries of history of the old continent, from 1815 to 2021, history that is marked by progress despite its wars and crises.
“Throughout the course of History, crises have always seemed easier to identify than upturns, but the links between them are extremely tight”, observes Gilles Grin, after unfolding this narrative (our translation throughout). According to the author, the contemporary crisis, which initially took root in 2005, has four specific characteristics: (1) it is multiform (it is several successive crises, one after the other); (2) it is the longest (16 years compared to 11 in the case of the eurosclerosis crisis), “which increases the risk of wear and tear”; (3) it includes an unprecedented political legitimacy crisis, “which has affected the national systems equally broadly”; (4) it falls within a hostile international environment. The author goes into greater detail on the last of these characteristics: “United States of Donald Trump went so far as to describe the European Union as an enemy. The Union considers China a systemic rival. Relations with Russia are not good. The international dimension is a source of risks to the Europeans. There appears to be a tendency within it and even a considerable potential for powers in the world to divide the Europeans”.
“I have always believed that Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises”, Jean Monnet wrote in his Memoirs in 1976, but if crises “can be a factor in progress (…), it is not always either immediate or guaranteed”, argues Grin, reiterating that the “current challenge is not so much the rapid disappearance of the European Union as an insidious risk of obliteration”. (OJ)
Gilles Grin. Construction européenne – La révolution d’un continent (available in French only). Collection of debates and documents, edition 21, June 2021. Fondation Jean Monnet. ISSN: 2296-7710. 182 pages. This essay can be downloaded from the foundation’s website: http://www.jean-monnet.ch
Media Capture – An increasing Threat to Serbian Democracy
The most recent edition of the German review on South East Europe contains several articles on Serbia. While the Serbian Foreign Minister, Nikola Selaković, takes pains to demonstrate his country’s contribution to a united Europe, Michael Roick (Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung) is considerably more critical of the country. In an article on the geo-strategic challenges to the European Union constituted by Russian and Chinese interference in the Balkans, Roick asks what extent Serbia should be considered a client state (“Klientenstaat”) of China. He points out that in 2020, the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vučić, adopted a range of stances that could hardly have been further from those of the EU. Amongst other things, he lent his support to the Chinese policy in Hong Kong and the reunification of China.
In a very well documented article, the Serbian researcher Nikola Burazer highlights the deterioration of the freedom of press and democracy in Serbia. He reports that alongside the public national channel RTS, the four privately owned television channels with frequency ranges covering the whole of the territory of the country belong to or are operated by individuals with close links to the party in power and all take a strongly pro-government position. Most daily newspapers are also owned by the State or members of the governing party’s inner circle, with the exception of Blic, which is owned by Ringier Axel Springer, and Danas (United Group). Four privately owned tabloid newspapers (Informer, Srpski telegraf, Kurir and Alo) are also greatly pro-government and are “champions of fake news, disinformation and smear campaigns against the opposition and independent journalists, as well as pro-Russian and anti-western propaganda”, writes Burazer, who also suspects the public operator Telekom Serbia of having promoted the acquisition of two television channels by a businessman close to the governing party edition. (OJ)
Nikola Burazer. Media Capture – An increasing Threat to Serbian Democracy. Südosteuropa Mitteilungen, edition 02-03/2021. ISSN: 0340-174X. 176 pages. €15.00
Baudelaire/Flaubert: le bicentenaire de deux géants
“Although the year 1821 saw the death of a historical giant in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte, it also saw the births of two literary giants”, states the Revue générale, which has devoted its June edition to Baudelaire and Flaubert, offering lovers of literature and literary history a wide range of fascinating and, in many cases, unexpected insights into these two extraordinary individuals, both of whom, each in his own way, set off on a “solitary crusade against the stupidity of their contemporaries”. It includes an interview with Yvan Leclerc, author of the recent Album Flaubert for the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”, which has recently republished the complete works of Baudelaire and tomes IV and V of the works of Flaubert. (OJ)
Frédéric Saenen (edited by). Baudelaire/Flaubert: le bicentenaire de deux géants (available in French only). Revue générale, edition 2021/2, June 2021. ISBN: 978-2-390-61131-8. €22,00