The European Council on Foreign Relations

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Madrid view: Mutiny on the Bounty

Date: 4th May 2012 | Author: Jose Ignacio Torreblanca,

Power can be exercised directly, by submitting an issue to a vote, or more subtly, by eliminating all discussion on a policy and its alternatives from public discourse. What is not talked about does not exist. This is why politicians devote so much energy to controlling the public agenda. This was the way things were in the EU with regard to austerity. But in less than a week the dykes have broken and we are awash in discussion. As with any sudden change, it is easier to explain it after the fact than to predict it before.

In the last two years many voices have been raised in favor of a change of strategy. Yet they always came to nothing. They failed mainly because the people these messages were addressed to might question the legitimacy of those who proposed a change of course. On the one hand, messages from across the Atlantic were rejected on the grounds that the US and the EU

Madrid view: The politics of solidarity

Date: 10th April 2012 | Author: Jose Ignacio Torreblanca,

Categories: Madrid view,

Spanish development aid is to be cut by 1.580 billion euros, which is a 70-percent reduction. This is in sharp contrast with the cutbacks in other areas of state expenditure, which average 17 percent. International cooperation, which represented 0.4 percent of GDP, will now fall to 0.26 percent, levels last seen in 2002. Needless to say, the development community has been horrified by this move, which will set back our compliance with the UN objective of devoting 0.7 percent of GDP to development by a decade.

The government is cutting back cooperation expenditure for the simple reason that it can. In a democracy, votes are the bottom line. Politics is, after all, a marketplace where the politicians seek to maximize their profits, or minimize the adverse costs of their decisions. In the case of aid, apart from a small minority of professionals, who are lifers in the development

Madrid view: Obama’s three wars

Date: 19th January 2012 | Author: Jose Ignacio Torreblanca,

Categories: Madrid view,

Barack Obama received a poisoned legacy from his predecessor. Though distinguishing between Iraq as a war “of choice” and Afghanistan as a “necessary” conflict, in both cases he promised a pull-out. The first withdrawal has already taken place, and was certainly more honourable than Obama could have imagined. The withdrawal from Iraq does not make up for the disaster of the invasion in the first place, validate the subsequent loss of life or even leave a stable democracy behind; but it does allow for a turn of the page, a budget reduction in time of crisis, and a concentration on the real objective: Pacific Asia.

The second withdrawal is also underway, with a military deadline (2014) and a political schedule that seems to be just about working out. To negotiate with the Taliban, who shielded Bin Laden, might not seem to be the best way of closing the September 11 case, but seen

Madrid view: Arab League Awakenings

Date: 11th January 2012 | Author: Jose Ignacio Torreblanca,

Categories: Madrid view, Middle East and North Africa,

The scandalous complacency with the Syrian regime shown by the Arab League’s observation mission has an upside: it points to the awakening of a culture of human rights protection in an international organization that has always stood for contempt for democracy and human rights, and in parallel for rejection of any foreign interference.

The profile of the mission chief could hardly be more unfortunate. He is Mustafa al-Dabi, ex head of military intelligence for the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir — who, remember, has an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him for his role in the Darfur genocide. If there is anyone, the human rights organizations say, who has shown that using the army to repress the civilian population is legitimate, then General Dabi is certainly that person.

Bashar al-Assad’s blindness is such that he has not even profited from the

Madrid view: wobbly BRICs

Date: 21st December 2011 | Author: Jose Ignacio Torreblanca,

Categories: China, Euro Crisis, Madrid view,

One consequence of the crisis in Europe is a return to the tendency for introspection. The past decade was wasted on institutional debates such as picking up the pieces of the failed European Constitution after the debacle of the referendums in France and the Netherlands, and rebuilding the consensus necessary to get the unity plans going again, consuming a lot of time and energy along the way. This is why, when the Treaty of Lisbon came into effect two years ago, a firm resolution was made to leave institutional debate behind, renouncing new reforms of the treaties. Lisbon, it was said, would be the last treaty for a long time. In future the Europeans would practice politics, not institutional engineering. But now, two years later, that Europe capable of united action in defence of its interests and values has yet to gel, and there is talk of yet another treaty.