Some initial answers are suggesting themselves already. Europe stuck to the Paris climate accord despite the U.S. retreat and—through French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular—mounted a defense of a more tolerant, less nativist form of politics and a rules-based international order. Europe’s own internal challenges, from economic woes to the difficulties in managing migration, are far from resolved. They require European leaders to balance foreign priorities with those at home. But 2017, in some ways and with some exceptions, was the year of the dog that didn’t bark: Populists and anti-immigrants didn’t prevail in elections in France, the Netherlands, or Germany. The wave many feared was only beginning to gather force with Brexit and Trump’s election in fact appears, for now at least, to have crested with them. The space this has created has allowed for several European leaders to voice their support for norms the U.S. is in danger of discarding. [...]
The third category is trickiest, for it would entail Europe breaking ranks not only with the U.S., but also with some of its own habits. Over the past several years, European foreign policy has progressively defined itself more and more as an extension of domestic anxieties, chiefly concerning terrorism and migration. That’s understandable. Political leaders can ill afford to come across as divorced from public opinion and its apprehensions—however revved-up and exploited for partisan purposes. And so they must make the public’s angst at least partially their own. [...]
Examples of what Europe might do to counter this trend are legion. To mention a few: European leaders might use Europe’s position as Africa’s chief peace and security partner to help nudge the continent’s long-serving incumbents toward peaceful transitions of power. They might assess more critically the performance of strongmen who promise aggressive counter-terrorism military operations in the hope of external leniency toward their repressive behavior at home. They could give diplomacy a try where the U.S. approach appears to be wanting, pressing Saudi Arabia and Iran to open a channel of communication, say, or stressing the need to negotiate with the Taliban if the Afghan conflict is ever to come to an end. And they could match their criticism of rivals’ abuses—from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons to the Taliban’s horrific attacks against civilians—with a rebuke of those committed by Western allies.
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