First step, to stop the escalation

The UN Secretary-General made a brief statement today about the current situation in the Gulf. I see the statement as important. We have reached a very dangerous crossroads. António Guterres’s message was about restraint, the exercise of maximum restraint. My call, following his appeal, is for countries such as Russia, China, Japan and the EU to seize Guterres’s words and repeat them loud and clear. They should also launch an initiative that would aim at freezing the situation as it is and, from there, try to establish a dialogue platform. I know it is not easy. But these are exceptional times. Those countries have the historical responsibility of making use of their influence. They should try to get both parties to the conflict to put a stop to escalation. That would be a first but important step. A most urgent step, for sure.

A deeply divided Iraq

In the dangerous and complex situation we have now around Iran, one of the key losers is Iraq and its population. The country is deeply divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, has no economy and possesses very little capacity to respond to the multiple security threats it faces. These are all the necessary ingredients for an explosive national crisis. And tonight, the country is a step closer to such crisis. The Shia members of the national parliament voted a resolution recommending that all foreign armies be asked to leave Iraq. The Sunni and Kurd sides of parliament boycotted the vote. In fact, they feel excluded from the current political dispensation. That creates the right ground for new conflicts.

The EU's position on Iranian matters

As I express my disagreement and concern regarding the decision to execute General Qassem Soleimani, I must also recognise that the regime he spent his life fighting for is an aberration in today’s world.

I acknowledge the rights of the Iranian people to decide about their government and its politics. The problem is that their leaders do not give the people the freedom to choose. The leaders have imposed on the population a religion-based dictatorship, that has all the features of a medieval type of life. The country has become hell on earth, in the name of God. That is unacceptable, in Iran, as well as in the neighbouring countries or anywhere else in the world. And that must be denounced in all kinds of forums. The condemnation is not about religion, it is about making use of religious beliefs to impose a totalitarian regime on people.  

The European approach to such countries must combine pressure on human rights and democratic values with economic restrictions. In addition, it must include serious security measures to avoid those countries’ hostile actions, including the promotion they could make of all kinds of radicalism and religious fanaticism. Our policy must be a delicate mix of firmness, encouragement, dialogue, distance and prudence. In the end, it is about sticks and carrots, but certainly not about drones and bombs. It should also be about helping other countries that want to move away from the influence of those theocratic dictatorships.

This approach is certainly very different from the one President Trump is pursuing. That’s our right and nobody in Washington can challenge it. Secretary Pompeo’s remarks about the role of EU countries – he basically said that key European States have not been supportive enough of the American action – are not welcome. Here, as in other occasions, it is our duty to be clear about our policies towards a very explosive and complex area of the globe. And our policies are not subordinated to the views in Washington, or elsewhere outside the EU.

Killing Soleimani

The decision to authorise the deadly attack on General Qassem Soleimani raises many questions and opens the door to a few uncertainties. In my opinion, it was taken in the wake of two events that the US Administration considered to be especially striking.

One was the attack by demonstrators close to the militias that Iran is supporting in Iraq against the US Embassy in Baghdad. In Washington's ruling circles, this incident is seen as very serious. It is also a reminder of dramatic memories, of what happened in Tehran forty years ago. For the American leadership, the assault against the embassy is something that cannot go unanswered.

The other event was the naval military exercise that Iran carried out a week ago together with China and Russia. The current American Administration did not want any of these three countries to believe that such maritime manoeuvres would have any chance of intimidating it or diminishing its resolve. And this determination and firmness had to be demonstrated without any room for misunderstanding.

In deciding, President Trump must also have thought about the impact that such forceful action would have on his electorate. This is a decisive political year for him. He needs to show that he does not hesitate when it comes to respond to those who are presented as the enemies of the United States.

But we have several problems here.

One of them is that acting to show strength, based on the principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is unacceptable. It opens the door to a spiral of violence and throws away certain basic norms of relations between states. It is an historic step backwards. You cannot build peace on retaliation. The international community has other mechanisms to deal with conflicts and to make governments that do not obey the established rules reflect.

Another problem is that this type of decision cannot be taken without measuring all the consequences that may follow. My analysis of Mike Pompeo's statements is that these consequences have not been considered. The Secretary of State now talks of lowering the tension in the region after an act that inevitably leads to an escalation. It sounds like that neighbour who spends the night with the music screaming and the next morning tells me on the stairs that we all need rest and tranquillity. 

A third aspect has to do with the legality and morality of this kind of action. These two sets of questions cannot be ignored. War itself has its rules. Several academics have been addressing these issues. There are good pieces of reflection written about conducting attacks with drones in foreign lands. And the majority opinion seems to go in the opposite direction to what has now happened.

Nor can one ignore the discussion about the military doctrine behind the so-called "decapitation" of hostile movements. I will not dwell on this subject, but the truth is that the validity of the theory that advocates the elimination of leaders to resolve a conflict has much to be said about. Let me just refer that often the dead leader is replaced either by another leader that is even more radical. In other cases, we witness a fragmentation of the movement, with smaller terror groups acting on their own, and a new level of danger, amorphous and more difficult to combat.

After all, all this is far more complex than many would have us believe. And this complexity increases exponentially when a character like Qassem Soleimani is assassinated by a great western state.

Responding to the strong men

As we consider the year ahead, and keep in mind the way some leaders behave, we should expect some shocks. These are unpredictable times. One must watch the key radar screens all the time. That means to keep a very attentive eye on people with real power, from Donald Trump to Xi Jinping, without forgetting Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or even Narendra Modi, Imran Ahmed Khan, Kim Jong-un, and a handful of players in the Middle East.

Power games, deception and confrontation seem to be the main lines of inspiration in today’s international affairs. They make the world a dangerous place once again. It would be a serious mistake not to recognise the existing threats to peace and stability.

The response ought to be based on moderation, respect for the values that have been accepted in the last decades and speaking truth to power. To remain silent at this stage would be unacceptable. 2020 calls for strong and balanced views.

The first day of 2020

This blog will continue in 2020, I hope. The key inspiration will remain to combat delusion and irrationality in politics. This objective takes into consideration that some of our political leaders seem to have lost contact with reality and the aspirations of common people.

Iran and its allies at sea

What a present, just before the end of the year! Irony apart, the joint naval exercise that has just taken place in the Gulf of Oman and brought together Iran, Russia and China aimed at sending a very powerful message to the US and its allies. And it did.

The Oman sea lane is especially important for China’s strategic interests. It is, in my opinion, a top priority among China’s lines of communication with the world. That’s why they decided to participate. They wanted to demonstrate their navy’s modernity and outreach. For Russia, it was an opportunity to show they are back as an international maritime power. Both countries wanted also to send a message about stability in the region, meaning, their political commitment to discourage any strike against Iran, because it could have extraordinary consequences for a large part of the Middle East.

And in the case of Iran, the message was clear: to show they have powerful allies. Therefore, they should be left alone.

We must also note this exercise was a new one. It had not happened in the past.

Investing in Chinese private security firms

The Chinese leaders are very much aware that the protection of the infrastructure built in foreign lands as part of the gigantic Belt and Road Initiative will be a major issue. Such infrastructure will face a variety of menaces. They also know they can’t exclusively count on each participating country’s security apparatus. It’s a fact they will increase the security cooperation with the States concerned. We will see in the next few years a serious push in the area of bilateral security cooperation. State to State cooperation, the official side of the matter, will be competing with the security assistance coming from Western countries. It will become a new front of tension as well.

However, the Beijing leaders do not consider that form of cooperation as enough. Consequently, and without any fanfare, they have opened a new door in their domestic economic edifice. We are now witnessing a rapid expansion of the private security firms in China. This is a fast-growing sector of the economy.

My sources tell me that there are already more than 4,000 Chinese companies ready to operate overseas and protect their country’s investments. In addition, the industry related to the production of security gadgets for the use by private companies is also expanding fast. It is a high-tech sector of the economy. We should have no illusions about that. Two weeks ago, in Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan Province, an area that borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, a beautiful region for that matter, there was a major exhibition of Chinese-produced security items. Without going into the details, the show was a major eye-opener. One could see the Chinese are far more advanced in that industry than what we can guess.

Russia, China and the EU: what's next?

In the medium term, sometime towards the middle of the forthcoming decade, Russia could opt for China, in terms of economic and trade relations. Basically, that would mean China would replace the EU as a market for the natural resources Russia produces and would become a supplier of finished goods that are today imported from the West. That could be an alternative for Russia, particularly if the political tensions with the EU and the sanctions that go along those tensions have not been resolved.

In that case, the leaders in the Kremlin could adopt a more adversarial approach towards the EU. I think we cannot exclude such a scenario as we look ahead.

But, for now, the Russian population are more prepared for a love-hate relationship with the rest of Europe. Russians do not feel particularly connected to the Chinese culture and way of life. There are old mental barriers that are not easy to overcome. Russians see themselves as fundamentally Europeans – the Christian background dimension has gained a lot of ground in Putin’s Russia. History has told us that it is easier to entertain a conflict with those who are our cultural and geographical neighbours. The real fights are between those who are very much alike to us. The others, especially if they are far away in terms of geography and culture, we tend to ignore them. At least until they come knocking at our gates.

The delicate EU approach towards Russia

We quite often forget that politics is about the control of power. Consequently, we also lose sight of a very fundamental question: what is, in each given situation, the key source of power?

Political leaders know they must pay special attention to this question.  And that the answer is found in the domestic arena, not in the field of international affairs. Power is based on the way domestic politics are played. The domestic voter must be persuaded. The effective political narrative takes that into account.

Vladimir Putin knows it. And we should keep it in mind when dealing with him. That is my message to President Macron, to the politicians in Italy and all those in the EU who are now advocating a new type of dialogue with President Putin.

Russia’s relations with the EU will always be a mix of tension and commerce. The Russian leaders want to keep a certain level of friction. They will picture the EU as a devilish power, a rival that wants to create chaos in Russia. They must create an external menace, the EU, as a way of justifying their strong hold on power. Therefore, they bet on old feelings about Germany – and more recently, on a new wave of negative feelings about Poland. All this helps them to fuel Russian nationalism, as well as gain voters’ support. It gives them an excuse for a strong hand against their internal opponents, presented as foreign agents, and a justification to spend an extraordinary amount of resources on the Russian Armed Forces and on the internal security structures. In exchange, the Armed Forces and the different Police organisations become key pillars of Putin’s power edifice.

But President Putin cannot ignore the economy. It must turn and generate enough resources, including those resources required to sustain a certain standard of living for the population. That means he needs to maintain open the access to the EU markets. Particularly, for Russia’s gas and oil exports, on one side, and, on the other, to import food and other goods and services from Europe. The Russian dependency on European markets, as suppliers and buyers, cannot be ignored.

The EU relationship with Russia must take such equation present. It’s a combination of power and economic factors. Interests, yes, but not about shared values, or common political objectives. As such, it would be naïve to think we can have a healthy cooperation with Russia, now and in the medium term. It will continue to be a question of balance between conflict and opportunity.