Posted by Kyle Atwell in
European Issues on Tuesday, June 17. 2008
This is a guest article by Carole van Eyll, a native Belgian currently working as an intern at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Carole has expertise in international and European public law.
"Belgium has ceased to exist," said a journalist from the Belgian national French-speaking TV station during a hoax news report in 2006, stoking long-term questions as to the reasons of existence of this small yet complex country.
Whether a premonition or provocation, the Belgian situation has since become increasingly tense due to the often caustic relations between the two main linguistic communities, which include mostly Dutch-speakers in northern Flanders (60% of the population) and Francophones in southern Walloonia.
I live in a country that has yet to ratify the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities; where children who cannot speak Dutch are not allowed on playgrounds, and their parents in the same situation are restricted from buying new houses in certain Dutch neighbourhoods; where elected politicians native of another official language are prevented from assuming their functions; and where people are instructed by their politicians to denounce vendors who advertise in languages other than Dutch.
The worst thing is that Belgium is a developed European country, a founding member of the EU, and the host nation for NATO Headquarters and most EU institutions. It is ironic that the towns surrounding some of the West’s main institutions for spreading democracy and human rights values – towns in the heart of Europe and the West – are themselves unable to practice what they preach. Continue reading ""Belgium has ceased to exist...""
David Vickrey, editor of Dialog International and a volunteer for Senator Obama's presidential campaign, discusses in the following guest blog post the likely development of transatlantic relations in an Obama presidency:
Recently Stern Magazine polled German readers concerning who they supported in the US primaries in the race for president. Barack Obama was the clear preference. You could say that Obamamania has gripped Europe just as it has much of America. Many Germans share the view of Elmar Brok - a German member of the European Parliament- that "Obama's candidacy is romantic".
But would an Obama administration meet the expectations of his European fans? Or is this a case of "be careful what you wish for" and the reality of a President Obama will disappoint?
Obama has said very little about his views on Europe and transatlantic relations. The focus of his campaign has understandably been on his plans to end the war in Iraq and his policies for addressing the economic meltdown in the US. But he has written and spoken enough about foreign policy to provide some clues on his approach to Europe:
Ronald Asmus has a new “grand strategy” for the west: it should continue to expand eastward (see Foreign Affairs, subscription only):
The challenge of securing Europe’s eastern border from the Baltics to the Black Sea has been replaced by the need to extend peace and stability along the southern rim of the Euro-Atlantic community—from the Balkans across the Black Sea and further into Eurasia, a region that connects Europe, Russia, and the Middle East and involves core security interests, including a critical energy corridor. Working to consolidate democratic change and build stability in this area is as important for Western security today as consolidating democracy in central and eastern Europe was in the 1990s.
The west’s most important accomplishment following the Cold War has been its integration of central and eastern European countries that were previously part of the Soviet Union—countries that have undergone significant reforms to be accepted into NATO and the EU. It is interesting that despite the ubiquitous negative publicity NATO is receiving these days, due largely to a perceived lack of teamwork in Afghanistan, there are several countries that continue to fervently seek membership—take the 71 percent of Georgian’s who endorsed NATO membership in a January referendum for example (see Today’s Zaman).
A group of European and American military leaders co-authored a report that was released last week, titled Toward a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World, Renewing Transatlantic Partnership (PDF version available from CSIS). The top brass – all with NATO experience – argue that the Alliance remains critical to both Europe and the US:
We are convinced that there is no security for Europe without the US, but we also dare to submit that there is no hope for the US to sustain its role as the world’s sole superpower without the Europeans as allies.
The manifesto begins by arguing that many current and future threats – such as terrorism, international crime, demographic shifts, energy security, climate change, etc. – cannot effectively be addressed by any single country on its own. Instead, NATO provides the best opportunity for western countries to address new threats because it "links together a group of countries that share the most important values and convictions and that took a decision to defend those values and convictions collectively."
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
German Politics on Friday, August 31. 2007
The German equivalent to the Department of Homeland Security has designed a Trojan to help spy on the computers of terror suspects. Spiegel International writes about the debate:
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble insists that such cyber spying would only be carried out in a handful of exceptional cases and would only target those suspected of planning terror attacks. Nevertheless, a debate has erupted in the press as to whether Schäuble -- known for his provocative, America-esque anti-terror tactics -- may have once again overstepped his bounds. In July, the minister ruffled feathers with suggestions that Germany should consider targeted assassinations of suspected terrorists.
Reuters reports that according to one German paper the proposed law even allows temporary computer spying without a court order.
Once again, similar challenges, suggestions, criticism and debates on both sites of the Atlantic, right?
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
German Politics on Thursday, August 23. 2007
The two well-known sociologists Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen claim that their colleagues are being persecuted for the crime of sociology and in the name of the war on terror. Their op-ed in The Guardian has the headline: "Guantánamo in Germany." Yeah, right... They also claim that the "state of emergency prevails" in Germany, France and the US: "The laws meant for real threats are invoked to counter shapeless fear."
Eva Haule of the leftist terrorist group RAF was released on parole on Friday. The court ruled that she no longer presented a threat to society. She has, however, shown no remoarse and has not "shed light on the numerous assassinations carried out by her group, many of which remain unsolved," writes Spiegel International.
She was convicted of killing two Americans in a 1985 air base bombing. She was in prison since August 1986.
Officials in Washington have since realized that the German investigation is more than just a symbolic act. This week in Berlin, a group of senior officials from the interior, foreign and justice ministries will meet to discuss the sensitive issue of how the German government should handle the Munich petition for "arrest for the purposes of extradition." There is general agreement within the government in Berlin that the request should be promptly delivered to the Bush administration, which would be tantamount to an official request for the arrest of the men being sought. (...) At a recent lunch in the German Embassy in Washington, Michael Hayden, the new CIA director, complained about the "bottomless criticism" from Europe that the US government faces for abducting suspicious Islamists. One US diplomat calls Germany's approach the "German double standard." On the one hand, he says, the Germans seek to benefit from information gleaned by the CIA. On the other, they are careful to keep their hands clean. According to US diplomats, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made it clear to her German counterpart, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that the investigations of the agents present a serious problem.
Apparently, the German prosecutors discovered the real names of the CIA pilots involved in the "renditions":
The US agents were not as smart as the police had assumed -- or perhaps criminally negligent. Thanks to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), all it took was a simple computer search for the investigators in Old Europe, without any official assistance from the US Department of Justice, to determine the real names of "Captain James Fairing," "Eric Fain" and "Kirk James Bird."
UNRELATED: "Verboten: Germany Bans Tom Cruise" reports ABC News:
Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defence Ministry said on Monday.
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
German Politics on Friday, March 23. 2007
No religious folks in the former GDR? Think again! "A school in the eastern German city of Chemnitz has taken the Harry Potter books off its syllabus, after Christian parents objected on religious grounds," writes DW World. The Atlantic Review has written about similar cases in the US: Challenged Books and the "Banned Books Week".
Another uproar: "Politicians, lawyers and migrants' groups in Germany were incensed over a German judge's decision to reject a divorce case, saying the Koran permits husbands to beat their wives," reports DW World.
The creation of a stable and well-functioning state requires a well-trained police force that is not corrupt, but abides by the law and enforces the law without bias. Afghanistan is not anywhere close to such a police force. According to a Congressional Research Service report (see Atlantic Review post) "the United States has become more active in training the Afghan police, possibly as a result of the reported deficiencies in German training." Now it seems that the US training has failed as well: "Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone." writes the New York Times:
The training experts say the United States made some of the same mistakes in training police forces in Afghanistan that it made in Iraq, including offering far too little field training, tracking equipment poorly and relying on private contractors for the actual training. At the same time, those experts say, the failure to create viable police forces to keep order and enforce the law on a local level has played a pivotal role in undermining the American efforts to stabilize both countries. In Afghanistan, the failure has contributed to the explosion in opium production, government corruption and the resurgence of the Taliban. In Iraq, the challenge is even larger: Sectarian death squads have infiltrated the police force and helped push the country to what many are now calling a civil war.
Ulrich Speck writes in his Kosmoblog (in German) that Germany should conduct such evaluations as well. Indeed, the German police training and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere should be evaluated with scrutiny. In the long run, Germany can only justify its refusal to send troops to South Afghanistan, if the German policies prove successful, argues Ulrich Speck. Thus, a lot has to be done regarding reconstruction in the North and the police training in the entire country.
Continue reading "Germany and the United States Failed to Train Afghanistan's Police"
• Security Officials Promote Integration as Crime Prevention: "Due to its prominent profile in foreign and security policy, Germany is becoming more and more a target of terrorist attacks," said Ernst Uhrlau, president of the German Intelligence Service (BND) on Thursday in Wiesbaden."
• Germans Warned to be Vigilant Against Terror Threat: "In her weekly video podcast, the German Chancellor has urged Germans to help police combat terrorism. But she warned that measures such as video surveillance weren't enough."
The Atlantic Review has already written about German Reactions to the Midterm Elections. Americans are now commenting about the European reactions to the elections: "Aspen Institute Berlin Director Jeffrey Gedmin has an interesting and useful piece, 'Even Happier than the Democrats,' in the Weekly Standard," writes Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and also adds his own thoughts in his Washington Note. Gedmin:
When European commentators say they are still yearning for an end to American unilateralism, moral crusades, and the influence of "fundamentalist evangelicals," what they really mean is that they are longing for a United States just like secular, post-national, consensus-seeking, Social Democratic Europe. But, of course, even with Democrats controlling the House and the Senate, it ain't gonna happen.
Clemons agrees to some degree, but adds:
Europe yearns for a pragmatic, problem-fixing America, engaged in the world's real problems and building international collaborations to meet these challenges. America has departed this space on ideological quests and left a giant void in global affairs that the Europeans have had to partially fill.
ENDNOTE: There was quite a stir in the blogosphere about the news that former Abu Ghraib prisoners, supported by an American NGO, seek prosecution of Secretary Rumsfeld in Germany. Several popular American bloggers misunderstood the Time Magazine article and incorrectly blamed the German government and vented their anger. Some even made Nazi references, as reported in a previous post. U.S. law professor Andrew Hammel writes in his blog that there have been 53 petitions to invoke Germany's "universal jurisdiction" law for war crimes (adopted in 2002), but "none has been acted on, according to this week's Die Zeit, so there's pretty much zero chance of Rumsfeld going to prison in Germany." Besides, yesterday, an association of peace groups filed a lawsuit against Chancellor Merkel and Defense Minister Jung for "preparing an offensive war." They claim that the White Paper on German Security Policy violates Germany's constitution, reports Die Welt (in German). Thus, the significance of the lawsuit against Rumsfeld should not be exaggerated.
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