Politico: Europe’s defense fund ignores real threat: populism

There’s no question the EU should boost its defense capabilities and excise wasteful duplication in its members’ military arsenals. But the plans being discussed could seriously backfire. [...]

The defense fund is part of a broader “securitization” of EU foreign policy that bodes ill for future stability. It could also draw resources away from areas of EU foreign policy that are crucial to dealing with the geopolitical drivers behind the threats Europe faces.

The amount of money the EU and its member countries commit to promoting human rights, encouraging democratic reforms and strengthening civil society is extremely limited compared to the budget touted for the defense fund. And, in recent years, most member nations have slashed their aid budgets.

Europe’s aid program is increasingly imbalanced. Across North Africa and the Middle East, the Sahel and some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the EU has made funds available to authoritarian regimes to help limit migrant outflows. By doing so, it is doing little to foster the kind of democratic change that would help address the underlying causes of the migration. Funds that boost unaccountable security forces are more likely to intensify rather than temper insecurity, instability and radicalization.

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Politico: Democratic Unionists’ price for keeping Tories in power

Unlike a majority of Northern Irish voters, the DUP backed Brexit in last year’s referendum. The unionists have said that they want to ensure there is no hard border with the Republic of Ireland and that cross-border trade remains “as frictionless as possible” — something that is crucial to the economies on both sides of the border.

But the DUP also opposes any change to the unfettered movement of people between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. “People in Northern Ireland, for all sorts of practical reasons, want ease of access across the border. Easy movement is good for everybody,” Nelson McCausland, a former DUP minister in the power-sharing executive in Belfast, told POLITICO. “How you reconcile that with all the other considerations is key. We have to do that in a way that does not effectively create a new border at Larne or Belfast harbor.” [...]

The DUP’s Brexit campaign in Northern Ireland was, at best, lukewarm. The DUP received over £435,000 in donations during the campaign – an unheard of sum in Northern Irish politics – but spent barely £10,000 there. The rest was spent on the British mainland. The source of these donations is still unknown due to Northern Ireland’s donor secrecy legislation. [...]

The DUP is likely to prioritize investment in Northern Ireland as its price for propping up May. “There is a desire within the DUP to rebalance the economy — investment in research and development, investment in the university [Queen’s University Belfast],” said McCausland. “What we are talking about here is a need to create opportunities for people.”

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FiveThirtyEight: Donald Trump Is Making Europe Liberal Again

The beneficiaries of the right-wing decline have variously been politicians on the left (such as Austria’s Van der Bellen2), the center-left (such as France’s Emmanuel Macron) and the center-right (such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democratic Union has rebounded in polls). But there’s been another pattern in who gains or loses support: The warmer a candidate’s relationship with Trump, the worse he or she has tended to do. [...]

So if you’re keeping score at home, right-wing nationalist parties have had disappointing results in Austria, the Netherlands, France and the U.K., and they appear poised for one in Germany, although there’s a long way to go there. I haven’t cherry-picked these outcomes; these are the the major elections in Western Europe this year. If you want to get more obscure, the nationalist Finns Party underperformed its polls and lost a significant number of seats in the Finnish municipal elections in April, while the United Patriots, a coalition of nationalist parties, lost three seats in the Bulgarian parliamentary elections in March.

Despite the differences in electoral systems from country to country — and the quirky nature of some of the contests, such as in France — it’s been a remarkably consistent pattern. The nationalist party fades as the election heats up and it begins to receive more scrutiny. Then it further underperforms its polls on election day, sometimes by several percentage points. [...]

While there’s no smoking gun to attribute this shift to Trump, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence. The timing lines up well: European right-wing parties had generally been gaining ground in elections until late last year; now we suddenly have several examples of their position receding. Trump is highly unpopular in Europe, especially in some of the countries to have held elections so far. Several of the candidates who fared poorly had praised Trump — and vice versa. He’s explicitly become a subject of debate among the candidates in Germany and the U.K. To the extent the populist wave was partly an anti-establishment wave, Trump — the president of the most powerful country on earth — has now become a symbol of the establishment, at least to Europeans.

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openDemocracy: Liberal democracy: a hard choice for Ukraine

Since war broke out in 2014, Ukraine has experienced a difficult period both for its citizens and liberal values, which are the bedrock of any democratic state. The war has affected almost everybody in the country, and the conflict has become a justification for illiberal initiatives undertaken by Ukraine’s state apparatus. For Ukrainian society, the choice in favour of liberal freedoms is becoming more and more difficult. At first glance, restricting them seems to be necessary. [...]

These worrying trends are visible across the Atlantic ocean, from Ukraine. Indeed, Ukrainian citizens support the women who come out to protest, Muslims who face discrimination and suspicion, and the newspapers whose correspondents have been refused entry to presidential press conferences. But this support seems to reflect an opportunity to observe the crisis of liberal democracy elsewhere. And this begs the question: are liberal values merely an object to be observed at a distance for Ukraine? Is this just an opportunity to sympathise with the crisis of democracy in Europe and America?

It’d be wrong to say that Ukrainian citizens cannot see illiberal tendencies in their country. But there is one factor that restrains our reaction to them: the external threat. In discussions of liberal democracy — from freedom of speech to the right to peaceful assembly — the importance of observing human rights is not placed first. [...]

Ukrainian society’s consensus of justification towards people who have turned patriotism into vandalism is becoming more and more tangible. Indeed, when a country is at war, and the border with the aggressor state remains open, right-wing politicians offer a clear understanding of the situation. This picture is simplified, and is based exclusively on the national idea and ethnocentrism. And it’s possible that right-wing vision of the situation at hand are incompatible with the Constitution, and stretch our understanding of freedom of speech. But they give people an opportunity to solve the problems facing the country and society via very simple methods. 

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The New York Times: Across Russia, Protesters Heed Navalny’s Anti-Kremlin Rallying Cry

An extraordinary wave of antigovernment protests swept across Russia on Monday, as thousands of demonstrators gathered in more than 100 cities to denounce corruption and political stagnation despite official attempts to stifle the expression of outrage.

Riot police officers in large cities and small detained hundreds of participants, with more than 700 apprehended in Moscow and 300 in St. Petersburg, according to OVD-Info, an independent organization that tracks arrests. There were reports of about 100 detentions elsewhere across Russia. [...]

It was difficult to assess the exact number of cities or people involved in the demonstrations across this vast continent of a country with 11 time zones. But the proliferation of protests and the predominantly youthful crowds seemed to indicate that Mr. Navalny had succeeded in broadening his movement beyond the more than 80 cities that took part in demonstrations in March. [...]

The protests were ostensibly focused on government corruption, but other issues, like economic doldrums and the mass demolition of apartments, brought people onto the street. Many participants said they were disgusted at the gradual dismantling of democracy in Russia, and of any semblance of a real opposition. [...]

The latest confrontation between Mr. Navalny, 41, and the Kremlin began on March 2, when he released a video depicting Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev as the crooked beneficiary of palaces, yachts and other luxuries paid for by some of Russia’s richest tycoons.

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