La grande confrontation
With great realism, European Parliament member Raphaël Glucksmann demonstrates and argues that the war in Ukraine is not a distant isolated phenomenon, with no consequences or any real importance to our democracies, as many Europeans still believe is the case. Because, irrespective of the level of education and training, whether or not the person has been exposed to Russian propaganda, among the elite and the more ordinary people, there are a great many preconceptions and pretexts, which are largely unfounded but very reassuring: Ukraine is part of the Russian zone of influence and Russia has legitimate interests in intervening there; Ukraine is not a real country and has never been independent; Russia was prompted to act to protect oppressed Russians or Russian-speaking minorities; the war is the consequence of the encirclement and weakening of Russia desired by the Americans and brought about through NATO and the European Union; the Europeans’ interests lie not in Ukraine, but in a Swiss-style policy of neutrality and resumption of trade. All these statements flout history and sweep away freedoms and human rights, but most importantly, they place immediate reassurance above long-term strategic interests. This is something else the MEP tackles forcefully and convincingly, but in places with just a touch too much romanticism and lyricism.
As well as his meetings, for instance with journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and first-person witness statements gathered over many years, Glucksmann gives over much of this book to the lessons he has learned from the hearings and working sessions of the special committee of the European Parliament on foreign interference, which he has chaired since 2020. “The verdict of our work is unanimous”, he writes (our translation throughout): “for years, European leaders have authorised allowed tyrannies, predominantly Russia and China, to put our leaders on their shopping lists, to invest in our strategic sectors to make us dependent on them, to persecute or assassinate their opponents on our soil, to interfere in our elections and to fund political movements hostile to the European Union… without ever having to pay the price for their attacks. Our weakness was an invitation to aggression, our cowardice and encouragement to conquest. In the case of Russia, they have taken our continent to the edge of the abyss”.
“Everything always starts with corruption”, stresses the author, who devotes many pages to the Qatargate scandal, the incident of Azerbaijan buying votes within the Parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe and the role of European figures – from Gerhard Schröder to François Fillon, via Esko Aho, Christian Kern, Wolfgang Schüssel and Karin Kneissl – in the deployment of Russian economic interference and Europe’s dependence on it for gas and other Russian raw materials. “When Vladimir Putin sent his troops out to attack Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Germany was more than 50% dependent on Russian gas and the strategic stocks it sold were methodically run down by Gazprom in the months preceding the invasion. The embargo on hydrocarbons called for by our Parliament has thus been kicked down the road and imports – in terms of value, but also of quantity: we have to build our stocks back up! – went up in the first months of the war”, the author points out, adding that this was in the order of more than 60% compared to the same period in 2021 The result is that “before managing to free itself from gas dependency, Europe financed the Russian war effort against Ukraine to the tune of 800 million euros a day for a period of six months”. However, certain energy companies, including Total, and their shareholders, also benefited, taking the time to withdraw from Russia, Glucksmann also stresses. Yet it is to be regretted that despite the many pages on European, particularly German, dependency on Russian gas, the author says nothing about French dependency on uranium.
“The stated intention of restoring the fallen empire is not simply a quest for a lost grandeur. We do not want the empire because it would finally bring peace and stability to Russia, but for the opposite reason: having no clear borders, recognising only fluctuating boundaries, it is in a state of permanent war”, the author writes, adding that “the term used by the official propaganda machine – ‘Russky Mir’ or ‘Russian world’ – implies that Russia is within its rights to intervene militarily in every distant corner of the ‘Russian world’. But what are the geographical limits of this ‘Russian world’? The USSR? The former Communist bloc as a whole? The Empire of Catherine the Great? Any land in which Russians live? Wherever the Russian language is spoken? This ‘world’ has no precise limits, or more accurately, it has the limits set upon it by the Tsar depending on his needs at that point in time. And war thus becomes a constant state for the Russians and the nations decreed to belong to their ‘world’”. This, incidentally, received confirmation from Vladimir Putin himself, when he told a nine-year-old schoolboy in November 2016 that “Russia’s borders do not end anywhere”, Glucksmann recalls.
The author also quotes Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy chairman of the Duma, who, shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, said that “everyone must realise that mobilisation and a world war to the death await us. Someone will lose his job, another his business, many will be wounded, even more of our fellow countrymen will be taken by death. Our national ideology is war”. This ideology does not stop at Ukraine, but has been exported as far as Africa via the Wagner group and the juntas it promotes, maintains and serves, practising predation without mercy. The former colonial powers are not off the hook: Glucksmann asks “what is the difference between the Wagner Group and Daesh? Why is it not on the European list of terrorist organisations as called for by the European Parliament?”
Glucksmann also criticises what he describes as the “original sin of the European response to Putin’s war”, referring more specifically to the progressive nature of the sanctions (we are currently somewhere between the 12th and 13th packages) and the resources supplied to the Ukrainian forces, which are not enough to “overturn the balance of power on the ground and starve the Russian war machine of oxygen”. “It takes many weeks of debates to decide to supply heavy weaponry, then further months to agree to supply the air defence systems (that are still lacking) and then yet more months to agree to send the requested tanks (…). This piecemeal approach waters down the impact of our assistance. It is prolonging the conflict more than helping to abate it. It allows Ukraine not to fall, but it does not help it win. It comes directly from our inability to state jointly, as Europeans, that this war is our war as well”, he writes.
The author then goes on to ask the real question of 2024: what will we Europeans, so dependent on the American umbrella, do if the US should decide to withdraw after the American elections in a few months’ time? Or the next time? “The first duty of political authority is to protect the stronghold. I am fighting for the European Union to develop its own autonomous defence capabilities because I cannot reconcile myself to the fact that we are dependent on how the people of Michigan vote every four years to know whether Vilnius, Riga or Berlin will be protected or not”, Glucksmann highlights. He goes on to stress that “United States are a vital ally in supporting Ukraine and defending Europe from Putin, but to depend exclusively on them is a form of madness. We have no say in the evolution of the public debate in America (and the Russian trolls have more influence than we do) and we have no visibility in the forthcoming elections on the other side of the Atlantic; we must therefore grow and move away from the status of child to that of adult. This will require a massive investment in defence”.
“As at all times throughout History, democracies are wilfully blind and weak until they have no choice but to open their eyes and roll up their sleeves, until they reach the tipping point when they recover, mobilise and prove to the world that no system is more solid and fairer than their own. This critical moment has arrived” Glucksmann, argues. He adds, devastatingly, that “the war calls for the notion of realism to be redefined and reappropriated by people tough enough to not spend their lives naval-gazing or lowering their eyes from the face of the enemy. Working towards the total defeat of Putin in Ukraine is realistic. Defending the Uyghur deported by an authoritarian hyper- power which plans to dominate our economies and world trade is realistic. Breaking away from unregulated globalisation that is weakening our nations and reinforcing our enemies is realistic. Putting in place ecology of war (the author promotes the concept of ecological power: Ed) is realistic. Speeding up the energy transition is realistic”. He is no doubt right, but is all of it at once in any way realistic? (Olivier Jehin)
Raphaël Glucksmann. La grande confrontation – Comment Poutine fait la guerre à nos démocraties (available in French only). Allary Éditions. ISBN: 978-2-3707-3453-2. 186 pages. €19,90
The European Union in Asia and the Indo-Pacific
In this study, the Austrian diplomat Michael Reiterer, amongst other things a former delegate for the European Union to Japan and EU ambassador to South Korea and Switzerland, stresses that “facing the Sino-USA power competition and the Sino-Russian cooperation to build a new international order, the EU will have to leverage its strength through vigorous policies, based on an in-depth analysis of its economic and security interests”.
As regards trade, the EU’s absence from the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) and CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreements puts it in a disadvantageous position when it comes to imposing standards, the author notes.
Reiterer also takes the view that the “EU should engage China bilaterally, while keeping the option to additional (trilateral) meetings with the USA, Japan, and South Korea and eventually enlarge to quadrilateral with India”. “This could build a common shared basis of mutual interests, in terms of economy, environment and climate change”, he explains.
To this end, “efforts to strengthen military capabilities, secure supply and production lines, maintain open trade and preserve technology ecosystems, to enhance resilience, not isolationism or protectionism, are necessary. These are elements to build a ‘cooperative autonomy’, a more appropriate term than ‘strategic autonomy’, which gave rise to misunderstanding in the sense of isolationism or decoupling from the USA or NATO. The essence of such a policy of cooperation to achieve autonomy should also be of interest to Japan and South Korea”, the diplomat writes, going on to argue that the countries seeking self-preservation in the battle of the major powers between China and the United States could have an interest in cooperating “with a benign power, like the EU, which also strives to pursue its interests on its own terms”. (OJ)
Michael Reiterer. The European Union in Asia and the Indo-Pacific – International Cooperation in the Era of Great Transformation and Mounting Security Challenges. Jean Monnet Foundation. Debates and Documents Collection no. 31. December 2023. This study is available to download free of charge at: https://aeur.eu/f/apj
La concurrence en électricité augmente les prix
In an edition given over to science and technology, the review Futuribles offers us an article by the honorary Contrôleur Général of Électricité de France (EDF), Lionel Taccoen, who argues just how right the former head of EDF (for 20 years), Marcel Boiteux, was in 2007 to warn against opening the public electricity sector up to competition. He was right for several reasons: the principal sources of production are owned by the former monopolies (particularly in the field of hydroelectricity) and/or inaccessible to others (nuclear), which means identical purchase costs for new entrants to the market; electricity transport costs are the same for all operators; marketing costs (which would not exist in a monopoly) push prices up. This all means that competition was never going to reduce prices. Furthermore, the specific constraints of tension on the network make the idea of competing on cost illusory because they preclude the functioning of a true market based on supply and demand. In the course of 20 years, consumers have had time to experience this and measure for themselves the stratospheric increase in prices. A fascinating article, extremely useful in helping to understand the mechanisms and, possibly, finally open the eyes of the staunchest supporters of competition and liberalism! (OJ)
Lionel Taccoen. Marcel Boiteux avait raison – La concurrence en électricité augmente les prix (available in French only). Futuribles. Edition 458. January-February 2024. ISBN: 978-2-8438-7473-4. 136 pages. €22,00