Does Europe have anything to do with the Middle East? The question has infinite answers, but it is likely that the most accurate, certainly the most visual, occurred this week on the beaches of Rota. Last Tuesday, 66 years after the signing of the Treaties of Rome, the European Union held its first non-theoretical military exercise outside NATO.
As reported by Politico, the publication that best knows the insides of Brussels, air, land and maritime armed forces from nine EU countries landed on one of the beaches of the Cadiz city to rescue a fictitious European ally called Seglia, whose Government had asked for help to address a security problem caused by a violent extremist group. During the exercises, Spanish troops defended themselves from enemy forces.
The different attacking armies, and here is the uniqueness, neither speak the same language nor use the same military equipment nor do they currently have a unified political command, which clearly reflects Europe's difficulties in advancing a common position, sometimes not even own. Making good on Kissinger's famous phrase: when I have to call Europe, I don't know who to call. To Paris, to Berlin, to Brussels? No, Europe doesn't look like anything.
The reason is very obvious and does not deserve any explanation.. Military or political deterrence, which is part of the hallmarks of international relations, like it or not, has been absent from Europe's foreign and security policy for almost seven decades, which partly explains its progressive geopolitical irrelevance..
The curious thing is that, at the same time, Europe is the region that has put the most resources on the table to help development on the planet and has contributed the most to the expansion of globalization, which has had a high cost for its productive structure. internal. The weight of emerging economies has gone from 40% in the early 90s to 60% today, reflecting a radical change that is still difficult to evaluate today..
The euro loses its step
It is true that it has also benefited from the expansion of trade, but the balance has been unbalanced. You just have to take into account, for example, that, according to a recent work published in ICE, one of the most prestigious magazines in the country, the participation of the euro in currency transactions carried out throughout the planet has fallen almost seven points. since 2001 (up to 30.5% adding all purchase and sale operations). The presence of the dollar, on the contrary, has remained stable, while the Chinese yuan has gained what Europe lost, despite the fact that the old continent exports almost 50% more than the US and close to China..
This may explain, in part, the decline in Europe's political influence throughout the planet, particularly in hot zones, despite the economic power it represents.. Probably due to the absence of diplomatic action that has worked in parallel to shore up, and in some cases encourage, democratic systems without the need for military intervention, as the neocons intended during the times of the second Bush.. That is to say, foreign action has been emptied of political content, which has ultimately strengthened autocratic systems, which have often even been presented as more efficient..
The extreme of its lack of strategic autonomy has been its high dependence on global value chains, which has ultimately weakened its political position to negotiate with third parties and has made Europe more vulnerable.. For example, almost 80% of suppliers to European companies that use semiconductors are based outside the European Union.. As a consequence, diplomatic pressure in favor of democracy, which is part of international relations, has been minimal.. It is the high dependence on foreign countries that has weakened Europe's ability to influence.
The most obvious case is that of China, which has taken advantage of European and North American investments without taking any steps towards democracy.. What's more, social clauses have not even been included in many bilateral agreements, which would have allowed another model of globalization.. Of course, less asymmetric than the current one, based on dependence on cheap labor.
Europe, likewise, is the largest contributor of development aid in Africa, but China and Russia, despite this, have more influence. Europe's offer, in fact, has been more typical of an NGO, undoubtedly necessary, than of a continent that must say something in international geopolitics, given that the economic integration of the planet has not stopped growing since the years 80s and 90s after the abatement of protectionist tariff policies. On the contrary, the economic offer of China and Russia has had a widespread appeal for what has been called the global south..
Asymmetric benefits
Nor in the Middle East has Europe's position been noticed despite the fact that, thanks to the European Neighborhood Policy, countries such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority and Tunisia have an asymmetric preferential regime that benefits the arc Mediterranean to the detriment of the EU.
This preferential treatment has been of little or no use to influence the region. Precisely, because it has looked the other way when it was necessary to pressure States to comply with international law, in the case of Israel for its settlement policy or its position on East Jerusalem.. And when it has not done so, it has thought that the policy of sanctions was enough, which have proven clearly insufficient on many occasions, and on other occasions, even counterproductive, as has happened with Russia or Iran, which have found the way to salvation. in the creation of a new regional order that paradoxically competes with Europe itself.
This is, in fact, the dramatic dilemma that surrounds the politics of the continent today.. If it does not show sufficient commitment to defending the interests of the Palestinians, which is not incompatible with Israel obtaining the necessary security guarantees, it will distance itself from emerging countries and the global south, which in the end is the worst news for Ukraine. , which is the main wound that remains open in Europe. Among other reasons because, with reason, it can be accused of having a double standard with kyiv and Gaza regarding war crimes..
Brussels only has to remember the cost of credibility in the region that it had to support the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by blindly following Washington, which has finally ended up expelling both from the area and emboldening, on the contrary, Iran. , the main winner of what is happening. The old axis of evil from the times of George W. Bush has transformed today into something more compact and more responsive. Not even the US today has a determining influence over Tel Aviv, as has been seen with the illegal settlement policy.. As the latest of Haaretz's main editorials argues, democracy is also tested in times of war.
Diplomatic prestige?
Mistakes are paid for, as Biden himself has admitted, and are the origin of an increasingly multipolar world, and in which Europe's diplomatic prestige has been liquidated by failure to articulate its foreign policy around the economy and not the geopolitics, which goes much further than trade agreements. And what is no less relevant, when thinking that the Abraham Accords could solve the problem by bringing Israel and some Arab countries together, but ignoring the Palestinians. A policy of appeasement that has proven useless after the brutality of Hamas terrorists.
As former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt recently wrote, the two decades of diplomatic progress following the Yom Kippur War were followed by three decades of setback.. Forces opposed to reconciliation and peaceful compromise gained the upper hand on both sides. The Palestinian fundamentalists of Hamas and other related organizations have grown stronger, while the Israeli fanatics, represented by Netanyahu, questioned for months by a good part of the Israeli population for his attacks on the separation of powers, have expanded their settlements in the West Bank ( that the US no longer considers illegal) in occupied lands that were destined to become the territory of a future Palestinian state.
On the other hand, the progressive replacement of Arafat's PLO, which when the Oslo Accords were signed was still a terrorist organization for much of the planet, by Hamas, the fanatical instrument of Iran, which has managed to unite Shiites and Sunnis. , at the expense of the Palestinians themselves, makes any solution unviable as long as they prioritize the recovery of pre-1948 lands over the prosperity of their own people.. And, above all, as long as they do not give up on throwing the Israelis into the sea.
Together, the fanatics on both sides, although evidently with very different dimensions, have destroyed the bridge that the Oslo Accords built just 30 years ago.. And Europe's impotence is nothing more than the expression of so much political complacency in the name of obtaining commercial results.. Now, with the region on fire, Europe has neither peace in Palestine nor any influence over Netanyahu's Israel, very different from that of Isaac Rabin and Shimon Peres..