← The Lawfare Podcast
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- [00:01]
Scott R. Andersen
The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull and the Aftermath.
- [00:32]
Caroline Cornett
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- [01:32]
Celia Belin
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- [02:11]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
I'm Caroline Cornett, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for March 1, 2025. This week, on the third anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, Lawfare launched Escalation, a new narrative podcast series which chronicles the twists and turns in the complicated relationship between the United States and Ukraine and lays bare the stakes of the Russia Ukraine war. Escalation also comes AMID Vice President J.D. vance's controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference, which led leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and newly elected German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz to call for a new approach to European security, one that does not rely on the US for today's arXiv episode, I selected an episode from March 14, 2022, in which Celia Belin and Constanze Stelzenmuller joined Scott R. Andersen to discuss how the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is reshaping Europe's approach to security affairs. They talked about what this means for institutions like the European Union and NATO, how those changes are likely to impact the fundamental debate over what it means to be a part of Europe, and more.
- [03:32]
Scott R. Andersen
I'm Lawfair Senior editor Scott R. Andersen.
- [03:34]
Celia Belin
And this is the Lawfare podcast from March 14, 2022. Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has undermined some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the security of Europe through much of.
- [03:45]
Scott R. Andersen
The post World War II era.
- [03:46]
Celia Belin
As a result, several European nations have begun to consider dramatic changes in how they approach national security, both individually and collectively. To better understand how the war in Ukraine is reshaping the European security order.
- [03:59]
Scott R. Andersen
I sat down with two of my.
- [04:01]
Celia Belin
Colleagues from the Brookings Institute, Celia Belen, a visiting fellow at Brookings and a former official in the French Ministry of Foreign affairs, and Constanze Staltenmuller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Transatlantic Relations in the center on the United States and Europe. We discussed how the Ukraine conflict is reshaping Europe's approach to security affairs, what this means for institutions like the European Union and NATO, and how these changes are likely to impact the fundamental debate over what it means to be a part part of Europe. It's the Lawfare podcast for March 14, how Ukraine is Changing European Security.
- [04:37]
Scott R. Andersen
Celia Constenza, I want to start with a broad question. In the last three weeks and the weeks leading up to that, we had a strong sense this was coming. We've seen a pretty major event happen that, at least according to a lot of people, shaking some of the foundational assumptions about European security, although perhaps I'm reinforcing some older assumptions underlying some of our institutions that some people thought moment may have passed. Tell us a little bit about what the Ukraine crisis has meant to Europeans and the conception of European security, what it means to have national security and or regional security in the context of Europe. What's changed about how Europeans are thinking about that? Celia, let me start with you.
- [05:23]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
Thank you, Scott. To be fair, waking up on February 24th in Europe, as I've been told, has been an extreme shock. The United States has been consulting with its allies and explaining how many Russian troops were amassing on the borders of Ukraine and how an invasion was possible. We had seen diplomacy happening, but for regular Europeans, and I can tell you, for regular French people that I have been able to talk to since then, this has truly been a shock, a shock that you could have a territorial Invasion of a European country by a major nuclear power threatening directly the sovereignty of a smaller European country has been perceived as something unfathomable, impossible to imagine just a few weeks ago. And that would change the fate of Europe and history. As Emmanuel Macron, French President, said last week, for a lot of people, this has been the significance of a return of tragedy in history, that history could be tragic again. And, you know, of course, you. You have seen media or regular people talk about World War Three, the risk there. So I would just point out this, this idea of a shock first and foremost.
- [06:53]
Scott R. Andersen
Do you want to add anything there?
- [06:55]
Celia Belin
I mean, I agree with Celia, Everything that she said. I would say that I had been fearing this for a while. I thought that the signs were on the horizon because of Putin's and the Kremlin's rhetoric from, say, late November. I went to Germany in late November, early December, for the first time in a long time during the pandemic, and got the impression that people who were watching the signs closely were profoundly worried about the possibility of a war. And I think what we are seeing here is the leader of a major power committing war crimes and in a way that I think revives institutions, international institutions, and legal questions and political questions that indeed we thought we were not going to, you know, had been. Had been laid to rest with the Trump era and perhaps even under the Biden administration. And I think we're all digesting that, given the horrific images coming out of Ukraine and from refugees and internally displaced persons and mass casualties in cities that.
- [08:11]
Scott R. Andersen
Are being bombarded indiscriminately going into this latest Ukraine crisis. The European Union had articulated a kind of five pillars policy towards approaching Russia since around 2018, I think, is when this kind of formula got fully rolled out. It basically consisted of tying sanctions relief to compliance with the Minsk agreements, engaging in relations with former Soviet republics, building relationships with them outside of Russia, of course, building up EU resilience to Russian threats, I think both on the cyber domain, conventional military domain, kind of across, across the gamut, their selective engagement with Russia, continued diplomatic engagement, and then supporting Russian civil society and kind of people to people programs, cultural exchange, economic ties, things like that. What does the Ukraine crisis do to those pillars? Which of those pillars stay and which of them go or have to be so substantially changed in the views of European policymakers that we're going to come up with some sort of. We're going to end up with a new formula at the end, what is the direction that the EU policies is going to take towards Russia after this crisis subsides or perhaps if the crisis becomes a more permanent feature of the continent. Celia, I'll start with you as well.
- [09:32]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
Well, I think everything has changed, truthfully, first of all, because we're not talking about a crisis anymore. This is not a crisis with Ukraine. This is war. This is invasion of a sovereign country. Obviously you have the invasion of Crimea and unrest and war in the Donbas that should have been sort of the flag demonstrating that this was already not a crisis anymore, but this was a war. But I think the EU Europeans were not prepared to view it as such back in, in the day. And this time around, the, the clear intention of Vladimir Putin to destroy Ukraine's statehood, to destroy its government, to, to change its government, to potentially annex Ukraine or who knows what's the end goal is. But clearly this is the end goal is only to, for Putin's perspective can only be achieved through war. This has changed everything. So I think a smart based policy towards the EU is not appropriate anymore. What's happening now is twofold on one side or threefold on one side. First is the support given to Ukraine and this shall continue. It's a material support for Ukraine to be able to defend itself and in the long run, support for humanitarian aid, support for hopefully at some point rebuilding and strengthening Ukraine as a country. Then the second pillar is obviously regarding sanctioning Russia, which at this point I believe, because we don't know the end goal of Putin really resemble a punishing strategy rather than a compelling strategy where we try to compel Putin and to make different decisions over negotiations at this point is really to make good on the threats. We've said that this is a big deal, this should be punished, this should not go unpunished. And as consensus mentioned, the war crimes should not face impunity. So this whole idea of punishing or sanctioning Russia is very much at the forefront. And then of course there's this idea of resilience for Europe. Europe really needs to build up its resilience. These ideas preceded, but now on the front of energy, obviously, but defense clearly really strengthening the eastern flank of NATO and more long term, its resilience against cyber attacks, its resilience also on food security, its resilience on so many different fronts that should allow the EU to not be in this situation that we've experienced over the past 10 years or since Russia invaded Georgia back in 2008. This idea of compromising with the Russian power because of, you know, so many interactions, so many economic interests where we, we might have enabled Putin on the route towards this invasion. So I think I'm not declaring a three pillar strategy because this going to be evolving, but I'm saying that these are going to be the main focus for the moment.
- [13:05]
Scott R. Andersen
Constanza, let me turn to you and ask you specifically about the German reaction because I think Germany seems to have had some of the more fundamental changes or reconsiderations of aspects of its domestic policy, or I should say its internal policy towards the, towards the region, towards its internal foreign policy. Some dramatic changes and reconsiderations are we see both Germany, which has a new government of course, kind of, I think at this point in the first few months after a major change away from Angela Merkel coming in and saying we actually are reconsidering our energy relationship, at least in regard Nord Stream 2, although the broader picture I know is still shaking out, but severing a Nord Stream 2 deal, that seems to signal that there's more reluctance to get entangled in energy dependence on Russia. And the perhaps more fundamentally about facing a pretty long standing policy since World War II to actually provide lethal security assistance to the Ukrainians fairly late in the game. And after taking a fair amount of criticism for not being willing to do so earlier in the cris, how is Germany reconsidering its role in Europe and its relationship in regard to Russia and how is that likely to impact the kind of emerging European security order that that is coming out of this Ukraine crisis?
- [14:26]
Celia Belin
Well, I think some people would say, me included, that things had been changing in Germany for a while and that this isn't an abrupt departure. I think it seems so to people who aren't Germany watchers, which I understand and you don't have to be, but it is still, I mean still an extraordinary development in German security policy. And I think, if you will, there was sort of a groundswell of concern of agitation in Berlin at Russia's behavior. That really started with Russia's provoking Georgia into a war in 2008 and then the annexation of Crimea, which really significantly shifted perceptions on Russia not just among policymakers but also in the general public. That said, the suspension, which is really a cancellation of Nord Stream 2, the operating company has since immediately went into insolvency and the Germany joining the west in very, very hard sanctions and then all the decisions that Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in a historic speech and a Sunday special meeting of the German federal legislature on February 27, those really all in all represent a sea change in German foreign and security policy. And the reason why they're not just performative or declaratory is that all three parties in this first ever traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals had to make real concessions to get to that point. The Liberals had to basically drop their fiscal hawkishness, and the Social Democrats and Greens had to get over some very ingrained attitudes to pacifism, weapons deliveries, drones and things like that. If you look at the entirety of the list, Germany says it will now spend 2% on defence. That means increasing our defence budget by 2024, by 50%. 25 billion euros. We're already at 50, having geared that up from 33 only a few years ago. That's massive. Then there is a special defense fund of 100 billion. The acceleration of the move away from energy dependency, building two new liquid natural gas terminals, buying armed drones, committing to nuclear participation, always contested in Germany, and then sending more troops to reinforce NATO's eastern flank. That's a lot. And these are things that indeed we were resisting. I. I love the tweet from Jeremy Cliff, a the editor of the New Statesman, former Economist correspondent in Berlin, who said Germany's foreign policy. Sacred cows are now a steaming part of rinder goulash, which is the German word for beef stew. And that's, you know, that that's really a substantial shift. But I think the reason why it happened is that Putin's war has managed to trigger every single, every single fear that Germans have. You know, invading sovereign nation on your doorstep, committing war crimes, atrocities against civilians, unleashing a wave of refugees that we haven't seen in Europe or in Germany since the late 1940s, threatening to use nuclear weapons, shooting up nuclear power plants, calling a Jewish president of Ukraine a Nazi, that's probably enough to get Germans going. And the interesting thing is that if you look at opinion surveys in Germany from right after that speech, they're all for everything that the Chancellor said. And when you ask, and when they asked people whether they were willing to bear costs for that, all of them agreed. Costs like energy shortages, higher prices, damage to companies. Yep, two thirds majorities for all of it. Amazing.
- [18:19]
Scott R. Andersen
Celia, this is an interesting point of. Not a contrast necessarily, but interesting to set next to the kind of French perspective on some of these questions, because, of course, we've heard President Macron make a kind of sustained critique to some extent of European security. The state of European security, really, for several years now, going back to comments about NATO being brain dead in 2018, 2019, and then coming up more recently to the French foreign minister describing kind of the European security order as nearly obsolete, just on the doorstep, that threshold of this latest crisis. There's clearly a vision that the French government, at least this French administration, which is, it's worth noting heading into election in the very near term, which inevitably colors how people approach crises like this. They clearly have a conception about what's wrong with European security order, but what is their vision about where it should go and either for France or for Europe as a whole? And how does Macron's engagement and leadership around, around the diplomatic side, around this particular issue fit into that? Of course, he's been really notable in being a prominent leader, arguably maybe the only prominent leader still keeping up a direct line of communication with Putin. Is that a sign of how France thinks Europe should be approaching security more generally? Does it fit into that picture? Or is this really just a product of the strategy for around this particular crisis?
- [19:50]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
So there are many questions in your question and many different angles that could be tackled with this on France relationship to not only to Russia, to Ukraine, to the instability in the east, and fundamentally to the European security architecture. It's many fold because your French foreign policy is manifold and has many different interest. And up until quite recently, the main interest, Emmanuel Macron, said it only last year, number one priority remained counterterrorism. And so you have to imagine that the first shift that all of France and all of its defense and security apparatus and foreign policy apparatus has to make is the shift from the main threat as not coming from the south, but coming from the east. I should point out on this regard that presidential candidate Eric Zemour, coming from the far right, a nationalist far right candidate, has just recently called the war in Ukraine a distraction because he believed this. This is distracting French voters from caring about what he perceives as a civilization threat coming from Muslim countries to the south of Europe. And so in his paranoia anti immigrant stances, he viewed the instability and the war in Ukraine as a distraction. And so but this is just one side of French politics. But in general, it colored sort of all the French decisions for the past 10, 15 years because France was under constant terrorist threat. It has been hit at many different points and in very gruesome terrorist attacks. France was engaged up until extremely recently heavily in the Sahel region for stability in the Sahel region. And over, over only two, three months, this has shifted entirely. First, because France has, as you may know, has shifted is it's a position in, in the Sahel, away from Mali, which is now under the, the leadership of a military junta that, that said that France was not welcome anymore, basically in. In the country under pressure of also of Russian mercenaries that are gaining influence in this region. And so France was in the process of shifting its resources to other Sahel countries and suddenly sort of change, shift gear and also decided to reinforce NATO's presence in Romania. So you've seen a lot of communications effort to show that, you know, the French armed forces were now on the NATO mission in Romania. All of this constitutes a major shift in French foreign policy thinking. And so it's forcing a realization that now is the time to talk about first European territorial defense, to get a grammar and a vocabulary around the war in Ukraine and the relationship to Russia. It also highlighted the sort of ambiguities in the position of Emmanuel Macron towards Russia. He had launched a bilateral security dialogue with Russia in the. In the summer of 2019, much to the displeasure of many European allies, and had sort of continued this line, this idea that we need a dialogue with such a big power as Russia in Europe. And this could have put him really at odds with everybody. But he recently shifted from this bilateral approach to a more of a collective approach, which I think sort of helped rewrite a bit of this dialogue history that he's got with Russia. At the basis, and I'll stop there of this dialogue, there was an understanding that the security architecture, namely the arms control treaties of the past that had secured a sort of area of Europe that was mostly at peace. I don't want to exaggerate that this architecture was crumbling under mainly Russian proliferation and also the US Leaving some of these treaties. And this crumble of this architecture needed to be faced and the pressures regarding Russia needed to be talked about. But probably the approach, the diagnosis was probably right, the approach was wrong. Clearly it would not be fixed by a bilateral conversation with Russia. It would not be fixed with sort of over antagonizing NATO partners. And now we. We've seen a reshifting of this French position towards a more collective stance. And, and it's welcome. There's no other choice at the moment for. Than for transatlantic partners to really stick together.
- [25:12]
Scott R. Andersen
So we're seeing, of course, two countries that are kind of the. The major powers in Europe, France and Germany. Among the major powers, Europe, I should say, you know, really rethinking their sort of security posture. And inevitably that entails the Europe more broadly security posture, from defense spending to the types of activities we pursue and mostly motivated by the threat from Russia. Not the only threat Europe faces or certainly not the only international challenge, but still the most pressing and significant military threat, at least at this point. How much daylight is there between these different European perspectives? Not just French and German perspectives, but other participants, European communities? Well, has this experience of the Ukraine crisis really pushed people in a unified direction towards building up European security in some way or another, or are there real discrepancies still in what exactly that looks like in practice? Constanza, let me turn it to you first.
- [26:09]
Celia Belin
Look, I think it's important to realize that in a European Union that has nearly 30 members, you're going to have genuinely legitimate differences of views on the use of military power, on the use of economic power. And those legitimate differences are based in relative size, in location, whether you're close to Russia or not, whether you are economically powerful or not, or whether you are small and less powerful and have to bandwagon on big countries like France and Germany. All that creates its own tensions that I think can't be sort of smoothed over or skipped over even at times of a real crisis. That does, as Celia was saying, sort of glue us all together. So that's to be expected, and that's normal. And what we do is negotiate our way out of those differences. But it is, I think, a real moment of reckoning for the way that we see our role on the continent and that we see our security provision. And I would just say there are two really important shifts here that we can see. One is the fact that the Europeans are indeed, for the first time, to supply weapons massively into a neighboring country. That is truly remarkable, particularly for German. But what's even more important to my mind is that for the first time in the history of the transatlantic alliance, we are seeing the Europeans not just take on their fair share of the burden of security, but in fact, take on the lion's share. Because in a situation where our most important sanctions are financial sanctions and export controls, the Europeans are actually taking on most of that. Now, that is because our economies are much more exposed to Russia's economy than America's is. You can only, you can see that if you only look at the amount of oil and gas that we import, America imports relatively little. So it's fairly easy for it to forego that to shut that off. It's much more difficult for Europeans, which is why we're having this discussion right now. But you can say that's to some degree our fault, that we enabled that, as Celia was saying earlier. But it also means that the sanctions are meaningful because we are willing to pay a very real cost. So that's one point. The other point that I would make though, that I don't think that we would be here where we are with this unity and this willingness to shoulder exceptional burdens and costs without the extraordinarily effective diplomacy of the Biden administration. In particular, I think we have to acknowledge that the Biden administration gave the German government, the outgoing Merkel government, and the incoming traffic light coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz a massive advance in trust. And I think it was that massive advance that I think assuaged some of the fears and the distrust in some of our smaller Eastern European neighbors who were worried that we would continue to balance and, or perhaps even to appease the Kremlin. And we finally ended up living up to that in the last week of February with the de facto cancellation of Nord Stream 2, the sanctions, weapons deliveries, and then the extraordinary announcements of Olaf Scholz's speech. But those two things really go together, both sides, the Americans and the Europeans, doing something very unusual for them. And I think that the irony here is that remember that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who is a German, was derided at the outset of her presidency when she said that she wanted to put in place a geopolitical commission. And this was seen as grandstanding and, and as a completely empty bluff. And it turns out, well, that's exactly what we're doing. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this.
- [30:13]
Scott R. Andersen
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Scott R. Andersen
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- [31:43]
This prospect of building backup European security, rearming Europe, to put it somewhat callously and not precisely, but rebuilding that security capacity is particularly interesting. It strikes me and challenging because of course, European security exists on so many overlapping layers. You have independent national policies, particularly of major military powers like France and Germany. Then you have the European Union overlay. And by that I mean you know, the array of European institutions, but primarily European Union that has its own security coordinating function. And then of course you have the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, that doesn't cover the same exact territory or states as European Union and other European institutions, but there is a substantial overlap, particularly of the major military powers. How does this reconstitution of European Europe's military capacity fit into those different layers? Or do we not know yet? How do European leaders seem to be leaning towards navigating the different intense relationships that inherently exist in modern Europe today? Celia, I'll start with you.
- [32:55]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
Thanks, Scott. I believe you know Constanza is going to be the expert on these questions of defense and security and NATO and European Union. I'm not at all. But I will just point out to one fact and maybe one paradox. We've seen the strong reaction from Europeans we have laid out earlier, both of us, this strong reaction, especially striking coming out of Germany, but also the entire union has made really incredible advances on that front. All of these point out, though, to the concept that Emmanuel Macron has put forward of building Europe's sovereignty. So people will use sometimes words such as resilience instead of sovereignty. But basically the idea would be to transform Europe into a power. As Constanze said, it's the geopolitical commission for a new European power that is being built at the moment. The phrase, the French phrase that is not as relevant probably as before might be Europe's strategic autonomy. Because what I'm struck by is that in this reaction Member states will focus on increasing their own capacities. So it's very clear in the case of Germany, but it's also the case in France that is working on shifting some priority out of sort of focusing on the instruments needed for counterterrorism towards instrument needed for high intensity battles, the type of which we might need in the future, God forbid. But so member states are focusing on their national capacities very much. And then you have NATO as sort of the other element in, in the defense side. What I think will feel less relevant would be an autonomous pursuit for an autonomous European mission and drive, just because the stakes are too high, just because we're talking about Russia and the presence of the US and all NATO allies together as a, as you know, a bulwark against Russia is just so fundamental. But I actually would love to hear Constance on that.
- [35:28]
Celia Belin
So, yeah, of course I agree with Celia. One of the absurdities of the EU versus NATO debate has always been that we're talking about mostly the same country. There's only a handful of countries that aren't in one or the other. And interestingly, we're seeing a moment now when countries that have hesitated to join NATO are actually seriously debating it. We have polls in Finland and in Sweden suddenly showing big pluralities or even majorities for the first time advocating joining NATO. And while the governments, I think, aren't at that point quite yet, they have been committing to spending 2% of defense and of their, of their gross national product on defense and signing agreements on closer cooperation with NATO and the US which is remarkable because particularly the Nordic governments were always extremely circumspect about their relationship with Russia. So arguably, Putin really has reinforced, reinvigorated NATO in ways that were thought almost inconceivable a year ago. That said, I think it's what if there's one thing that this war has taught us is that there is really a strategic continuum between the specific power assets of the European Union and of NATO, which is that for the first time we're seeing the conjoined financial power, the regulatory power of the EU over things like export controls come to the fore in ways that we have not seen in previous conflicts. And I think that the fact that the US and Europe are collaborating on truly fierce financial sanctions, particularly with regard to the freezing of Russia's central bank assets, will have a severe constraining effect on Russian political and military options in the very near future. So as Celia was saying earlier, these sanctions are not deterrent because it's at this point, I think, obvious that Putin is almost undeterrable, at least by the West. He might be deterrable by his inner circle or detournable, but that's another question. All that said, what we are seeing here is a highly unusual example of sort of almost exquisitely fine tuned collaboration between the Biden administration, the European Union and NATO. I have been writing about this topic as a journalist and as a think tanker for nearly 30 years and I have never seen anything like this. But this is also the year of the US Midterms and there will be a presidential election in two years. And of course the thought at the back of many Europeans minds is what happens if the Americans elect a Republican Congress in November and what happens if in two years there is a return of Trumpism? What does that do to this transatlantic unity? Now I think, you know, sane American security experts, whether Democrats or Republicans, I think will acknowledge that Europe is a not just nice to have, but, but essential power asset for America in particularly in any coming rivalry with China. And that there is a deep economic integration across the transatlantic space between America and Europe. That that means again that we are stronger when working together, even if that cooperation is focused on our economies rather than on our militaries. But a return of Trumpism I think would, would, I think raise some really serious questions about the security of Europe. And while I think we've all learned in this conflict that European autonomy and autarky is unrealistic, I think that with that at the back of people's minds, people are going to think very seriously about at least making Europe able to act for itself in smaller or to mid size emergencies.
- [39:34]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, Constantin, let me drill down with you a little bit more on that because that's actually exactly the next issue I wanted to turn to is the US role in all this and not just the United States, I think the other non European powers in NATO as well. But really we're talking primarily about the United States. How does that unpredictability about U.S. commitment to NATO, which we saw under a serious, I think very credible threat during the Trump administration. We were reminded of that just in the last week when former National Security Adviser John Bolton confirmed that, you know, President Trump almost withdrew from NATO in 2018 and that Bolton posited that like he likely would have done so if he'd been reelected. And there is no currently legal barrier preventing a president from doing that in the United States. Although, you know, there's some proposals to do something like that in Congress. How does that impact how Europe cultivates its ability here? Because of course, you Know, you have the model of being under the US Security umbrella that puts a large onus on the United States willingness to actually engage militarily. But there's other which is brought into question, I think, by Trumpism most squarely because of the skepticism of European alliances that you hear President Trump, a lot of people around him, speak of frequently. There's other types of relationships as well. There's arms development and arms sales and the cultivation of military technology, some of which Europe is very advanced in, other ones we aren't. And Europe more broadly, it's worth noting, has a bit of a hodgepodge in this area. We see this now in Ukraine as certain Eastern European states are still using Russian provided and even Soviet era equipment from MiG jets and other sorts of equipment that now there's an effort to transfer to Ukraine because they're on the same system, even though those other states are part of the European security apparatus. So what does autarky mean for Europe in this sort of what's realistic for them to develop? And in what areas is the tie to the United States and the outside world likely to inevitably be part of the picture, at least for the foreseeable future?
- [41:30]
Celia Belin
So first off, I think we shouldn't use the word autarky because I think that's unrealistic. I think what we can aim for and should aim for is a resilience. In other words, fortifying our defenses better than we do now by reducing things like energy dependency on Russia, by making sure that we don't sell off our physical or digital infrastructure to China ports and 5G networks and that kind of thing that doesn't, you know, that would significantly fortify our position without an actual military expense. Right. And as we have now understood for open interdependent societies like ours, that's actually really important. And we have completely under invested in resilience, not least because so many of these assets that need to be made more resilient are not in government ownership, they're in private ownership. And private companies, you know, would prefer not have, not to have to spend money or to be told to spend money on these things. That probably has to change. But we, I think, you know, have always in the past planned for really quite massive operations where the American force backbone was essential and that were so large that even the big three in Europe, the Brits, the French and the Germans, would not be able to replace that backbone. And as it turned out in the Libya intervention in 2012, which really wasn't that large, it turned out that the Americans still Had to, who were trying to hang back under the Obama administration, still had to supply us with essentials like missiles, platforms and so on. But I think that we could conceptualize small to medium sized operations in the Mediterranean, for example, or smaller peacekeeping and stabilization missions in Europe's periphery or in Africa, by thinking of British, French or German forces as the backbone for these operations. These things don't really have to be that big. And we need to be able to say to the smaller nations who at this point really don't have full spectrum forces, they have boutique capabilities, some of which are very useful and very valuable, you can come and we will supply the essentials, the logistics, the transportation, the big forces, and you can bring your specialized capabilities and we will mesh them together. And in fact, that's something that the Germans at any rate have really been working on with some of their neighboring countries, most effectively, I think with the Dutch. But they've also worked quite hard at reaching out to the Eastern Europeans to do that. But I think in a case of major territorial war, which I think still barring sort of an all out craziness coming from the Kremlin, we are not looking at that would be catastrophic. But still I think is the least likely proposition we're looking at here. What we really need is smallish, highly capable, very flexible forces that can be very quickly deployed. And we I think also need to look at improving our deterrent and defence capabilities. That's something we haven't really been willing to look at for a long time because that was such a Cold War thing to think about. So maybe, as my last point, we've seen a lot happening in this space since Russia's, the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine on February 24. But there is a lot more in that space that I think needs to happen. For example, we are still in theory, the Russian NATO Founding act of 1997, which forbids permanent deployment along NATO's eastern flanks, is still in theory in existence. But I think that the Russians have blown that off the table. So we should start discussing permanent deployments of troops to eastern flank countries. That's one thing. The other thing we could be discussing is intermediate range NATO missile stationing in answer to Russia's ability to send such missiles from Kaliningrad into Europe. I think that would be a very significant sign. And finally, and this perhaps brings us back to Celia, I think that particularly if there is a political shift in America either this year or in two years, I think that you are going to see a revival of debate about the Europeanization of the nuclear deterrent of the UK And France. That's not to suggest that I think that the French and the Brits would share their nuclear deterrent with us. But I think you might see a debate about cost sharing, about adaptation of nuclear participation and doctrine and things like that. All of these three things that I've just outlined, I think are potentially on the cards with what Putin is doing and would be very significant shifts which might, I think, at least by the Biden administration might even be welcomed.
- [46:37]
Scott R. Andersen
Celia, that question about the United Kingdom actually is a perfect entree into my next question, which I want to direct towards you, which is obviously another major actor, particularly in the military side in Europe is the United Kingdom, which is now in a position where it's not part of the European Union, still has close economic ties, close political ties in various ways, is part of NATO. How does the UK seem to be fitting into these discussions about the European security architecture? Is it likely to be a, you know, equal partner on the security level, even though politically it's not as integrated as the core European Union member states? Are we likely to look at them being a partner as opposed to a part of whatever that architecture is that comes forward? How does the UK seem likely to fit into this picture?
- [47:27]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
I have no straight answer to that question. This is quite perplexing. And I think we have only started to see what is the new post Brexit British foreign policy in the world through, you know, if you remember, the UK published its integrated review, sort of thinking of itself as more of a global power and tackling on specific area where the UK can have a net contribution to world security, but also world prosperity. And focusing very much on this idea that leaving the EU meant also for the UK to have a broader vision of the world and a broader implication beyond Europe. At the same time, this crisis is bringing back the territorial threat to Europe in a very big way. And we've seen since the beginning of the crisis the UK being very assertive and forceful in defending Ukraine, sending and communicating about sending arms to Ukraine to defend itself, being very much on the side of NATO, the us, the rest of transatlantic partners. And in this context, the UK is obviously a relevant, important partner to the rest of Europeans. But it always faces the risk of being overshadowed either on one side by the US or on the other side by other European partners. But as a third country partner, it is fundamental. France. When Brexit happened, France really lost a strong partner within the EU for security and defense investments. For, as the Constance mentioned for Intervention outside of, of Europe as well, and has been keen, you know, France has been keen on trying to protect this relationship and, and it's probably the one area where there is less friction between France and the UK because the conviction is that they need each other long term. Though I'm, I'm unsure of how this will evolve and whether, you know, the UK will want to assert itself in different ways. I think it, it is facing the, the reality it was hoping to become really this global power and have maybe, you know, we've seen that with the Aukus crisis, that, the world crisis, the Auka's decision to enter in this nuclear submarine deal with Australia and the US that, you know, was done on the back of the French deal for submarines with Australia. We saw there that the UK has this ambition to remain a pacific power, to remain a strong player. But again, in this crisis, the UK very much suffers from, from not being in the EU anymore and not exactly being the us so it's, it's always a junior partner to someone. So, so I think all of this is not clearly defined yet and there's enough pieces moving around that we, we shall see how it develops.
- [50:48]
Scott R. Andersen
I know we're almost out of time, but I have one last question I want to put to you all. Kind of gets that back to this kind of fundamental idea about how Europe and Europeans are thinking about security on the continent. And that's the idea about what does this reconstitution and rebuilding of the European security order, the reconstruction of it or reconception of it maybe I should say, mean for the idea of Europe. There was once this idea, you know, going back to the 1990s of Europe really being the con as a whole, reaching even to Russia at some point, even though you membership obviously is kind of a process. There was an idea that like culturally they're all part of a cultural and place political whole. And the idea would be to eventually, you know, have a more unified concept of Europe. That's I think, taken a lot of hits over the subsequent years, to say the least, not least because of Russian strong objections, particularly in recent years. But what does the need to build up a strong Europe militarily, from a defense perspective, mean for Europe's relationship on its periphery? Those states, a lot, mostly former Soviet states in particular, that obviously have some, a lot of cultural ties to Europe, but also very strong cultural ties to Russia. Does it mean that Europe is going to be reaching out to them, solidifying those relationships before Russia has a chance to object militarily or Is it to approach them more conservatively? You know, one of the most interesting developments related to Ukraine is this kind of rush, Ukraine membership in the European Union that we've seen taking place that is seems largely symbolical. I welcome correction if I'm wrong about that, but nonetheless is kind of notable in its symbolic significance that EU membership is being extended so readily in opposition to Russian aggression. How is that logic going to extend to other states that are on that periphery between Russia and Europe? Constanza, I'll start with you.
- [52:46]
Celia Belin
So your question touches on what has been an eternal conundrum for the European Union and one that it has never really satisfactorily resolved, which is where does Europe end? Now, it has basically extended or reached the end of its options. In the north, it's bounded to the west by the North Sea at the Atlantic Ocean. You've seen the UK having left that part of Europe, but I think currently seriously rediscovering the merits of working together with Europe, I think that we're currently seeing a real, perhaps a sea change in UK leaders willingness to cooperate, even with Brexit remaining a political fact. And in the South, I think the Mediterranean is a natural boundary. But in the east, we have always had the question of just how far does Europe go? And what you had really was Eastern European nations who were worried about Russia and as we know, with good reason, worried, pushing for membership from really the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991 onwards, and meeting with really quite considerable resistance, especially in Germany. But I think, if I remember correctly, also in France and other countries and American, successive American administrations making it a priority to sort of, shall we say, massage European attitudes to this. And the result of that was that we ended up having several rounds of enlargement until, for the EU and NATO as well, until both of those organizations were up to nearly 30 members, which does, of course, make organizing consensus and joint action, if we're honest, more difficult than it was when those institutions were notably smaller. And it has also become particularly problematic in an era of populist democratic rollback in some of these countries. That was a really concerning phenomenon, both both for the European Union and for NATO. But what we're seeing now is yet another country, Ukraine, making very serious pitch for admittance and Europeans very seriously willing to consider that. Now, I think what was discussed at this informal summit in Versailles this week was a willingness to entertain a process that would be tailor made where we would be working with Ukraine to help it along a path of transformation of its economy, its society, its democratic institutions in such a way that at the end, the question of membership kind of answers itself. But the truth is also that a country that is being besieged, that is being invaded by a great power, is in no position to join immediately, nor are we in a position to let it in, even in peacetime. The question of the absorption capability of Ukraine and of the European Union, for such a large country and with such issues to join what is, after all, not just an alliance, but a genuinely partially supranational arrangement would have been a really big issue. But still, the fact that we are all willing to discuss this and to figure out how we can do this pragmatically represents a massive change. And of course, that has implications for the region. It has implications for Belarus, and it has implications for the Caucasus, for Georgia in particular. And the Georgians have wanted to join NATO and perhaps not as quite as much the EU for a very long time. And in Belarus, you don't have the opposition isn't saying that, but you have a very vibrant opposition that after the latest crackdowns by the Belarusian dictator, Lukashenko, has had to move to outside of Belarus, but is, I think, still very active and very networked. So the current events, this war, raises a host of questions about Europe's Eastern future. And I think that none of us are really quite in a position to speculate now with any real credibility on where this will head. But it is really the most remarkable development, I think, since we took in the first Eastern European nations, the three Baltic republics in the early 90s. This is, again, it would be a different European Union and a different NATO.
- [57:37]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
Frankly, just a word, because we are less than a month out from the first round of the French presidential election. I am mindful that, you know, not every European citizen, of course, or French citizens share the sort of pro eu, pro NATO and even pro enlargement discourse that we are hearing from the French government at the moment or from Brussels at the moment. And even if everybody understands, as Constance really pointed out, that, you know, Ukraine's membership into the EU is not for tomorrow, it's going to take a long process. There is constituency, there are constituencies in France that are pretty strong. It's probably at least a third of France that have extremely different views of the role of the EU in the world. Very different views on enlargement, very much opposed to it for. For a variety of different reasons. And they're also, I must say, often opposed to the idea of European, European strategic autonomy, European, sometimes against European increase of European capacity to defend itself and security etc, because you have several camps, you have the nationalists, the ones we know best, the Marine Le Pen that are against the institutions of Brussels, against and you know, they're promoting the idea of a Europe of nations. So basically as if European countries were cooperating and collaborating but not giving up any inch of sovereignty to Brussels. But you also have another camp that are the pacifists that are sort of making a comeback with this war, the one who basically say that the European project should forever remain a sort of a project for peace and prosperity in the world, should not arm itself, should not and should fundamentally work on projects such as climate action, such as development, prosperity, inventing a new world. And this is also making sort of a comeback because, you know, as a sort of an alternative to what is today the, the French government position. So I don't believe these are majoritarian views at the moment. But when this crisis settle, we might see a comeback of of European Euro skeptics in many different ways. And we should never discount that these are going to sort of tame down the integrationist moment that we are we are currently knowing and will probably propose alternative futures as well, whether we like it or not.
- [60:31]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, unfortunately we are out of time so we have to leave the conversation there. But thank you both for joining us here today on the Lawfare podcast.
- [60:38]
Constanze Stelzenmuller
Thank you.
- [60:39]
Celia Belin
You're very welcome. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having us on.
- [60:45]
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- [60:51]
Scott R. Andersen
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- [60:55]
Celia Belin
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Scott R. Andersen
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Celia Belin
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Scott R. Andersen
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- [61:24]
Celia Belin
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- [61:33]
Scott R. Andersen
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- [61:35]
Celia Belin
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- [61:54]
Scott R. Andersen
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