This episode explores the challenges and stakes in the pursuit of strategic autonomy for the European Union. How has the war in Ukraine rewritten the rules of transatlantic relations and geopolitics for the EU? And what does the internal cohesion and unity of the EU look like today? Listen to hear fundamental questions regarding the implications of Europe's continued military reliance on the United States and NATO.
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DiQ S6 EP9
Daniela Schwarzer on Europe’s Strategic Conundrums (Part 1)
Glossary
What is the Visegrád Group?
(20:22 or p.5 in the transcript)
The Visegrád Group, Visegrád Four, or V4, is a cultural and political alliance of four Central European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, that are members of the European Union (EU) and NATO – for the purposes of advancing military, cultural, economic and energy cooperation with one another along with furthering their integration in the EU. The Group traces its origins to the summit meetings of leaders from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland held in the Hungarian castle-town of Visegrád on 15 February 1991. Visegrád was chosen as the location for the 1991 meeting as an intentional allusion to the medieval Congress of Visegrád in 1335 between John I of Bohemia, Charles I of Hungary and Casimir III of Poland. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia became independent members of the group, thus increasing the number of members from three to four. All four members of the Visegrád Group joined the European Union on 1 May 2004. source
What is the NextGenerationEU?
(25:44 or p.6 in the transcript)
NextGenerationEU is the EU's €800 billion temporary recovery instrument to support the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and build a greener, more digital and more resilient future. The centrepiece of NextGenerationEU is the Recovery and Resilience Facility- an instrument that offers grants and loans to support reforms and investments in the EU Member States for a total of €723.8 billion in current prices. Part of the funds – up to €338 billion – are being provided to Member States in the form of grants. Another part – up to €385.8 billion– funds loans to individual Member States. These loans will be repaid by those Member States. Should Member States not request the full envelope of loans available under the facility, the remaining amount of loans will be used to finance REPowerEU, a programme to accelerate the EU’s green transition and reduce its reliance on Russian gas. Funds under the Recovery and Resilience funds are being provided to Member States in line with their national Recovery and Resilience plans – the roadmaps to reforms and investments aimed to make EU economies greener, digital and more resilient. Part of the NextGenerationEU funds are being used to reinforce several existing EU programmes. source
DiQ S6EP9 Daniela Schwarzer on Europe’s Strategic Conundrums (Part 1)
Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to "Democracy in Question," the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world today. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna and senior fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at The Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the ninth episode of season six of "Democracy in Question," and I'm really pleased to welcome today Daniela Schwarzer, who has just joined the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany. She has served as Executive Director for Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, and before that was Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Trained as a political scientist, Daniela is a widely recognized expert on European affairs, as well as transatlantic and international relations with a distinguished career in policy, as well as in academic circles. She's a non-executive board member of BNP Paribas and also an honorary professor of political science both at the Free University in Berlin and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Daniela Schwarzer’s highly acclaimed book in German is titled "Final Call". It was published in 2021, and I'll discuss some of its arguments with her today because they are more actual than ever. The subtitle of her book "How Europe can assert itself between the United States and China," sets the general tone and the overall theme of our conversation. After decades of relying on soft power of its economic performance and trade relationships in the global arena, the European Union now faces a dilemma about how to pursue greater strategic autonomy. The current moment of multiple and escalating crises, political, economic, military, ecological, and now the energy crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, should serve as a wakeup call. It is indeed, as Daniela argues, a final call for European leaders who had complacently neglected aspects of security and sovereignty partly due to decades of peaceful prosperity after the Second World War, but partly also due to the very nature of Europe's uneven and erratic integration process.
This is a lot of ground to cover. So, I'm really grateful to Daniela for having agreed to record two separate episodes for the podcast. In today's episode, we focus on the single most formidable challenge Europe has faced in recent years due to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine since last February. I will ask her to explain the overall stakes involved in the EU pursuit of strategic autonomy. She'll also help us better understand how the war in Ukraine has radically rewritten the rules of the geopolitical game for the European Union. And the long-term structural consequences of the war for European unity.
Has this war provided an additional final call, so to speak, for the EU to face up to its critical weaknesses in the areas of defense and security? As an expert on transatlantic relations, I'll also ask her to talk about fundamental questions about Europe's continued military reliance on the United States and on NATO.
After all, transatlantic relations seem stronger than ever today in the shadow of the war. But it was only a few years ago that the Trump administration's partial retreat from commitments to security guarantees to Europe led to the realization that Europe must overhaul its defensive capabilities and capacities, too. And looking ahead, one can't help asking whether, or rather, how the upcoming 2024 American elections could upset the dynamics of transatlantic cooperation.
Another important area of concern I would like Daniella to reflect here on is the internal cohesion and strategic unity of the European Union. Once again, the war in Ukraine has catalyzed the process of incremental European unification in crucial respects, but it remains to be seen where the new fault lines and divisions could emerge and threaten this fragile unity. I’ll ask her to consider finally, how Europeans can reconcile a much more assertive position regarding strategic autonomy and unity with new global interdependencies, as well as with the imperative of greater solidarity with the global south.
These are some of the questions I look forward to discuss with Daniela Schwarzer in today's episode. Daniela, welcome to the podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you with me today.
Daniela Schwarzer (DS): Shalini, I'm really happy to be with you and to discuss all of those small questions which you've just given us.
SR: So, let's start, Daniela, by unpacking the meaning of a key term in your book, which is strategic autonomy for Europe as a quasi-sovereign international actor. While the principle of pooled sovereignty in the European Union applies partially selectively, common foreign and security policy have become vitally important for all the member states in the last three decades. And this led, eventually, to the creation of the position of a high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy, a position occupied currently by the commission's vice president Josep Borrell, whom you have also been an advisor to. So, this may not have definitely settled the famous Kissinger question, "Who do I call if I want to call Europe?" but it clearly signals that there is a lot of political effort behind what you summed up, and I quote you here, as "the growing consensus that the EU has to become a geopolitical actor." Or to quote Borrell himself when he says, "Europe has to learn the language of power." So, could you explain the key implications of what it means for Europe to become such a strategic autonomous actor, a geopolitical actor? And does the EU suffer from an imbalance between its traditional soft power and its relative inability to wield military power?
DS: Let me start by looking at the world around us and to what extent it has changed. And that brings me then to the point why Europe really needs to work more on, I would say, its capacity to act. So, if you look at the history of European integration, the internal developments and the external surroundings were deeply interdependent and intertwined because Europe built for itself a model which is internally open in terms of economic integration. It was all built to avoid war and bring stability to our continent, and the assumption was that this is possible in Europe and then also that the whole world would, in a way, develop in a positive way where, after the end of the Cold War, the assumption broadly was that we are heading towards a time of stability with probably no conflict in Europe, a very close transatlantic alliance, and so on. So, Europe never really invested in its own security and defense in an integrative way. So, the European Union had some components of external representation but it's very clear, where deep internal integration happened, external representation was also given. For instance, we have a single market, and the European Commission negotiates trade deals with the mandate of the member states. That's just one example where you see where it worked. But in the area of security and defense, this transfer of sovereignty didn't happen. And the member states actually, after the end of the Cold War, started disinvesting in their own security.
Which puts us today into a situation that, with the war in Ukraine going on with Russia's broad attack on Ukraine, and also in a hybrid way on many other neighbors, it is very clear that Europe needs the United States to guarantee its security. Now we see a move towards more NATO. One member state of the European Union has just joined NATO and another one is on the list. So, we clearly see that the European Union is worrying much more about its own security and defense now.
However, the term "strategic autonomy," which you mentioned, goes back a long way. It was for the first time mentioned in an EU document about 10 years ago because there was somewhat a rising appetite to bring more activeness to the European Union on the international scene. This then accelerated more when Donald Trump was elected to office, and that was the moment where the French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders in Europe really picked up the term "strategic autonomy." What do they mean? In my view, first of all, the key component is Europe or the EU, or at least a share thereof in terms of a group of member states, need to be able to take decisions together. That's the base. If you can't take a decision together, you won't be able to act. And then you have to have the means and instruments at your disposal to actually implement and follow through.
Now, if we look at the past few years of European defense cooperation, quite a lot has happened. Before the beginning of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, as a reaction to Donald Trump questioning transatlantic security guarantees and NATO, the EU member states started working together in something called PESCO, so, that's European Structured Defense Cooperation. They started to provide more transparency in terms of capabilities they actually have, they started some kind of joint planning. There's a European Defence Fund, so, there's actually some money to spend on defense projects. There's, for a long time now, European Defence Agency that benefits from this new way of broadening the cooperation on defense matters. And that has led to some progress but we are very far, first of all, from a European army. I don't think we will get there because we have sovereign states with sovereign armies. For me, this is an illusion to actually think that this will happen anytime soon. Secondly, we're also far from a European integrated armament industry; all member states need robust procurement, and the larger member states, and some smaller ones as well, really want to keep their own industrial base. It is a very sensitive area of integration, which actually lags behind other areas of integrating the economy, for reasons of sovereignty and self-protection, that's pretty clear.
But there are more and more transborder projects. Right now the discussion in the European Union is very much about, "Can we introduce qualified majority voting in areas of foreign policy?" It is possible, of course, however, in particular the smaller member states say that they are very worried because they feel they could be marginalized by, in particular, the bigger member states which have a stronger voting weight. And so, it is actually a wish to have a stronger European actor on the global scale but, in terms of institutional integration, this will take a very long time, or it will only happen in smaller groups.
But what we have, and this is a reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the rise of China, we have a much larger awareness in Europe that Europe needs to protect itself better, that it is threatened not only in economic terms or in terms of security through Russia's invasion of Ukraine but that it is also part of a very fierce systemic competition worldwide. So, much of the protection measures that have been put in place over the past years, for instance, investment screening mechanisms or the European Raw Materials Act, which is the most recent edition, all those are steps to make Europe more resilient to a possibly sharpening conflict with China where we could come into a situation that the procurement, for instance, of rare earth or other elements is limited which would cause enormous economic pressures for Europe. We think more about defense against hybrid attacks, which is both an issue with Russia but also with China.
So, I would say the EU is doing quite a bit, along with its member states, to become more resilient. And this goes deep into society and deep into democracy. Because hybrid attacks in particular mostly use tensions within society, to polarize, to really destroy trust in institutions, in the capability of governments to provide safety, and they also build very often a deeply anti-democratic counter narrative to what is happening in terms of open discourse within democracies.
SR: The last point is a very interesting one. What does this shift mean for democratic politics in Europe? And I'll come back to that. But what I do want to pick up are two points which you just made, Daniela. One, the reliance on NATO and the reliance on the U.S. as a partner. Do you think that Europe's dependence on American military power has now been exposed as a critical weakness? And if that's the case, what is Europe going to do vis-a-vis a transatlantic relationship, given the fact that, as you said quite rightly, it was during Trump's Administration and a rather isolationist U.S. policy with a retreat from multilateralism that Europe became aware of the need, and also acted according to that need, to strengthen its own defenses? The 2024 election in the U.S. looms large, and how do you think American politics and the possible change back to a Republican president will affect the nature of transatlantic relations, especially in terms of strategic autonomy? How will that realign also the relations to both Russia and to China?
DS: No matter who wins the next presidential elections in the U.S., the longer-term strategic interest of the U.S. will be to put more of its military-powered security policy behind its approach towards Asia. And China, as the rising challenger to the U.S. being the most powerful country in the world, really drives this thinking. And even when Barack Obama was U.S. president, there was this famous pivot to Asia which was announced which wasn't really materializing but still already then the awareness was there. And I remember conversations in Washington, D.C., where people told me, "You know what, Russia is yesterday's problem, and the future problem is China." And that was about five to eight years ago.
In case a president comes into the White House who has a similar mindset of Donald Trump, I think Europe has to prepare for several things. One is, first of all, the strategic attention will move further East. Secondly, the expectation will be that Europe brings a bigger contribution to transatlantic burden sharing. Meaning Europe needs to be a more powerful and active contributor to NATO if NATO is to survive. And here we see some continuity between the Trump years and what is to come and, really, in any case, whoever is U.S. president, in my view. Because Donald Trump, he did question NATO, he did question U.S. security guarantees. In the end, after his four-year term on the ground, U.S. troops actually increased in Europe. He was pushing Germany a long way to spend more on defense and he actually, at the end, took the decision to withdraw U.S. military from Germany and promised Poland, the government that is, you know, a far-right government with authoritarian traits, very much of the same mindset as Donald Trump, got the promise that troops would be relocated to Poland, which was very attractive. That, again, didn't happen in the end. So, the U.S. presence on the ground in Germany is stable, while it has been increased even more since Russia's attack on Ukraine on the Eastern flank of NATO.
We are right now speaking at a time where the transatlantic security alliance is really back. NATO is the pillar of European security very clearly. It's very hard to imagine the response to Russia's big attack on Ukraine without NATO and coordination among NATO countries, but I still believe that we have to prepare for a situation where the best-case scenario is that NATO stays, there is a strong European pillar in NATO where not only the EU member states and other Europeans contribute more but also they contribute better.
And that brings me back to the European agenda. We can use a lot of synergies in Europe which are currently unused. Europe spends a lot on defense but it doesn't always spend well. So, there are some things lacking. For instance, military mobility on the continent. But this is something that Europe has to take care of, as a whole, across borders. We have to think that through. But also, when we think about armament projects, who does what and how do we use synergies? How do we increase interoperability between the different systems? All this needs to be solved among Europeans to be a stronger contributor to NATO.
And my last point is, as much as we now want the world to be interested in the war that is happening on our continent, just, two flight hours from Berlin, we want the world to be interested, we want, for instance, Japan to support Ukraine, and even Moldova. And they do. And yet, we will be expected to do more in Asia. So, I believe, if the conflict between China and the U.S., or China and Japan, or China tries to seize Taiwan, if all of this or one of the three happens, then we will be asked, as Europeans, to stand with our partners in the political West in a geographical arena which today seems very far away from us.
SR: To pick up your point on the shifts within the European constellation, the war in Ukraine has revealed new fault lines, as we just saw on the whole question of grain hoarding and movement and the falling price of grain where several European countries, Poland, Bulgaria, etc., are striking off on their own. Poland, for example, has struck also a much more militant tone, reorienting themselves towards the British-American axis. The war also reveals another interesting fault line: isolated populist figures close to Putin, like Orban is now at many degrees of separation from his former Visegrád partners and including his illiberal friends in Warsaw and Meloni. On the one hand, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to what was seen a little bit already under COVID, a relatively unified response, and the war has consolidated it even further.
But on the other hand, you are beginning to see these various new fault lines. Some of them economic, as we see on the grains question, some of them more ideological. My question here would be do you think this unity is going to hold once the costs of the war get more and more apparent and prolonged when it comes to both energy subsidies, the whole question of the agricultural dumping effect, of cheap Ukrainian grain in Poland and Hungary, which may lead to, not only war fatigue, but discontent in the population. And Poland is facing, for example, an election very soon. So, how long will this unity hold and what kind of fault lines do you think will become stronger?
DS: To answer your question, the first thing is to look at the fault lines. Because we need to understand them and then think about policy because it is not necessarily a given that, because there are fault lines, then unity cracks. Because I do believe that governments can shape the future and do things that make it less likely, that the EU cohesion we see at the moment on key strategic questions, that this can be maintained.
Now, first of all, you mentioned several crises that Europe has gone through over the past years. And that's really 15 years of consecutive crisis starting with a sovereign debt and debt banking crisis. And then, there was the so-called migration crisis in the year 2015, and then there was Brexit, and then COVID, and now there's the war, again, with increased migration pressure, not only from Ukraine but also from the Middle East.
European societies are under pressure. European policy makers are extremely stressed out because, not only do they have to manage crises, but they have to manage fundamental transformations. Right now the big two topics, without the war but now accelerated by the war, are, first of all, energy transition, because we need to go through a green transition, and then also digital transition. So, the whole question of, not only digitizing our economies, societies, even the state, but also the question of competitiveness. Because, in this tense security environment which we have around the EU, the competitiveness of technology and the capacity to regulate technology is a crucial element to sustain open societies and democracies in the medium and long term. So, this describes where we are.
Now, what's happening is we are in a difficult economic situation because of the consequences of COVID and now the costs of the war, and the global economic downturn because of the two. So, growth rates are pretty low. We see an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth across the EU, so, between countries, but also within countries. And in my view, that's where it gets so crucial for the questions you have asked in terms of can we sustain the commitment of Europe to stand together vis-a-vis an imperialistic war of an authoritarian country on one of our neighbors that is actually transitioning towards EU membership at the moment.
I believe that, unless this situation is very carefully managed both within countries and in the EU, there is a huge danger that people will, at some point, say, "This is all too much." High energy prices that they have seen over the past winter, the problems they face personally and the fears they have with the growing security threats. I mentioned immigration, which is very easily exploited by far-right political parties that very often have close ties to Russia and other authoritarian countries. I can see a scenario where this builds up into a situation where several countries may want to review their decision to disinvest or decouple from Russian energy imports. We already see how Hungary actually doesn't fully buy into the EU sanction packages, where we may see doubts that Ukraine should be continued to be supported militarily. So, there's a real risk here.
And now, what needs to be done, in my view, are two things. One is we have to look at those parallel challenges of transformation and crisis management on a European scale and look at the successes we had during the COVID crisis with the first, COVID recovery fund, which was then called the Next Generation EU Fund, which really provides financial support to EU member states in a moment of crisis but with the goal to actually support a much longer-term perspective, and that is green transition.
Now, the question is can we mobilize more money? First of all, we have to spend the money that we have because the spendout rate of the Next Generation EU fund isn't great yet. So, this has to happen. Then, we need to look very seriously at the question do we need more of this? Because we are not replacing what single countries could do but we really have to see where European support can actually enable things that couldn't have happened on the national level. And the sad thing is, of course, that some countries have a lot of fiscal space to do these things. Take Germany, we have debt-to-GDP ratio of just above 60 percent. But if you look even at France or Spain, they are at around, let's say, 115 percent, a little up and a little down for each of them. But then when we go further, we look at Italy, the situation is much worse.
So, we can blame the countries for those deficits and debt policies of the past that have created this high debt burn but that doesn't help in a moment where we all know we have to change together and we have to stand together because of the external challenges. So, the balance will be to really think through where self-responsibility of every single country can be supported, alongside some kind of European solidarity, which is not to bail them out but to enable us all together to move ahead in a way that enhances social cohesion and doesn't split societies. Because green transition has to be a just climate transition, so, those parts of society who feel disadvantaged need to be helped to carry that burden of transition. That is true globally but it's also true for within Europe.
SR: So, Daniela, let me pick up two or three very interesting points which you just made. The COVID story, I think, was one where Europe did come together to procure vaccines together and distribute them equitably within Europe. However, what it did not do is to play a role which it could've played in many different ways in distributing vaccines globally equitably. So, it actually threw away vaccines that were beyond the date at which they should've been used up rather than supply them to, for example, Africa. It also actually opposed strongly the keeping in obeyance of the patents on COVID vaccines, which, curiously, even the U.S. government asked for at the WTO following the the case which the Indians and the Brazilians brought up together at the WTO asking for a moratorium on the patents so that more vaccines could be produced cheaper, and, therefore, distributed more equitably globally.
Now, of course, having not been in any kind of solidarity on a global scale with the vaccine question, those are exactly the countries that Europeans now want support from, in Africa and the Middle East and Southeast Asia, when it comes to what these countries perceive to be a European war. So, some of these countries are, of course, viewing this in terms of their own imperial history with Europe. So, they have little sympathy for past imperial powers now wanting solidarity from them, but that's the longer story. The shorter one is really a feeling, especially in Africa, that Europe failed miserably when it came to showing any solidarity on debt cancellation, on the vaccine patent removals, such that there could've been an equitable distribution there. So, do you see any rethinking happening on these kinds of questions?
DS: I share your analysis that Europe missed two big opportunities here. First of all, vaccine distribution and then, secondly, also the debt problem, which has been known for so many years and the efforts just weren't made. I think a rethink is happening and that is really because there were so many cold showers for Europeans when they realized that they had lost so much ground in Africa but also in other places of the world. And they realized the post-imperial situation, of course, plays in greatly because Russia knows very well how to use the current situation with reference to the time when the colonial times ended and Russia actually stood in solidarity with some of the countries and supported the leadership that was striving for freedom.
And I think the narrative that Russia has very successfully spread against the political West is really fed by the more recent examples of a total lack of solidarity of the political West vis-a-vis those countries, plus the history, and really interwoven in a way that makes it very difficult for Western political leaders that now come and ask for something to actually build up a more positive narrative. Which also has to contain offense, you can't just come and say, "Okay, I messed up in the past, now I need something," but you actually have to develop a common perspective why a partnership is valuable for both sides and how you actually practically want to rebuild trust and rebuild a relationship on the highest level.
I do see a rising awareness for this. For instance, it may look small but I think it's part of a bigger rethink, the acceleration of art restitution that is happening and the way it's being done and the work that's being done with it to revisit the past and to discuss openly what happened, to apologize, and then also to do something very practical, and that is hand back stolen art. Some people just think this is a little detail but I think it's part of a bigger movement that can potentially lead to a rebuilt relationship with countries that are currently simply looking at Europeans saying, "What do you want now?"
The awareness is very high. And, if I look at how policy makers count every UN General's Assembly vote results and look at who voted with or against the political West or who abstained...and then, of course, the next look is can we go to those countries because we need something from them? That shows you how the pressure, in a way, has shifted. But, as I said, I don't think that you can just come and ask for something now, you really have to rethink the whole relationship in a new way. That includes many things. For instance, when we speak about multilateralism, giving the African Union a place, for instance, or a seat in international fora, let's say the G20. That's one thing. It wouldn't be a big thing to do, it should happen. Involving, like the German G7 presidency did, at least a few countries from the Global South, it's a term that doesn't help much, but it's very often used by themselves, so, I dare to use it, so, bringing in big players into fora that have previously been reserved for the Global North, or just the small selection thereof. That's another step. But then also rethinking the crisis, the COVID-19 crisis, what was done there, why it happened, and how we can prepare for the next event in a better way so it doesn't take us so long to discover that we need to act in solidarity.
Just one small footnote, because you evaluated what happened at the EU in a positive way, my reading is that, first, many things went very wrong there as well. We literally closed borders, patients couldn't cross borders, people died in France while they could've been transported to Germany much earlier. This took also a few weeks really to realize that Europe is an open space, people are supposed to move freely. But if you open space and you don't provide the protection on the same level, the same geography as you opened, then what happens is the national reflex kicks in strongly. And so, you want to protect your own people. You don't worry about the others on the other side of a border, which actually had ceased to exist but, suddenly, it's back.
And so, in Europe, there definitely is a stronger feeling of solidarity among European citizens and also European governments, which led to some self-correction, also to protect the single market, of course. But this was also a process, and I think we can learn from that process because we need to realize that, if we open up, if we want to benefit from openness and we are not able to also think protection of citizens together, there's a real risk that the system is undermined and actually could collapse. So, some people were indeed very worried, and for the right reasons, that the COVID-19 crisis could also undermine the EU, to a large extent. Luckily, we managed to get over that through a big fiscal tool which was created and the solidarity mechanisms and collective purchasing and distribution mechanisms in the health sector. So, we can learn from those two examples that really, thinking on an inter-regional scale, we need to prepare much better to be ready next time.
SR: Daniela, thank you so much for this really wide-ranging conversation. Thank you very much for being with me today.
DS: Thank you so much, Shalini. Thanks for all your challenging questions and I really enjoyed the conversation with you.
SR: The world of hard politics in geopolitical power has returned with a vengeance to Europe as we learned from Daniela today. It has exposed some critical weaknesses of the European Union as an unfinished project of pooled sovereignty. Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has raised, once again the specter of large-scale military conflicts on the borders of Europe, a specter the EU founders wanted to exorcise through their vision of benevolent economic interdependence, the optimistic dream of “Wandel durch Handel” in German, transformation through trade. It was the fear of an isolationist turn under the Trump administration that prompted serious rethinking of Europe's strategic autonomy. But the war in Ukraine has now once again, increased the reliance of the EU on its transatlantic partner, the United States, and the NATO for its security.
Europe, however, faces several crucial challenges from the rise of China and the U.S.' concomitant pivoting towards Asia to potential internal divisions that could undermine its unity. Consecutive and mutually reinforcing crises over the course of the last 15 years have created societal tensions in all European societies that require even more political coordination and solidarity across the European Union. Yet any solidarity worthy of its name must ultimately begin to transcend the boundaries of Europe. It must lead to fundamental rethinking of the asymmetrical power relations between Europe and its so-called others in the global south. Europe can ill-afford to neglect the rest of the world if it wants to succeed in asserting itself in an increasingly multipolar geopolitical arena.
This was episode nine of season six of Democracy in Question. Thank you very much for listening. Join us again for the next episode in two weeks’ time when I will continue my conversation with Daniela Schwarzer.
Please go back and listen to any of the episodes you might have missed. And of course, let your friends know about the podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu, and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch\democracy.