All posts by Tobias Bunde

#FutureNATO Storify

Since April 2014 I have been a member of the NATO Emerging Leaders Working Group, a project run by the Atlantic Council. The group, consisting of 15 diplomats, scholars, and business leaders under 35, was one of three groups tasked to develop recommendations to the NATO Secretary General in the run-up to the Wales Summit in September 2014. In mid-June, we presented our ideas in Brussels. You can find more information about the three reports here.

In order to keep the discussion going and involve more (young) people we decided to experiment with the idea of a Twitter debate. I had hoped that – given the support by some partners including the Atlantic Council and its blog NATOSource as well as Chatham House – we would bring together a number of people interested in discussing some of the topics we raised in our report. Nonetheless, I have been quite surprised that it turned out so well when we launched our first debate yesterday. The debate dealt with NATO and its relationship to Finland and Sweden, two countries that are members of the EU, but not of NATO, and have often contributed more to NATO missions than some allies. In the report we suggested NATO offer them a fast-track membership option. Now we wanted to know what people in Finland and Sweden thought about it. Would such a public offer be seen as constructive for triggering a more intensive domestic debate or would it be counterproductive (if considered as interference)? And why did Sweden and Finland contribute so much to NATO missions without being able to count on NATO defending them as non-members (Art. 5).

Of course, we’re still learning (for instance, it might be better to focus on one single question, rather than a set of questions; it might also be helpful to have a short blog post as a starter instead of a number of background articles on our Facebook page), but my feeling was that many enjoyed the debate and learned new facts and discussed aspects they had not been aware of before. And I got to “know” a few new people working on similar topics… A sort of “summary” can be found below.
As the Atlantic Council staff told us, the debate had 2,463,736 impressions reaching 339,471 accounts, with 231 users posting 712 tweets. Not too bad a start I would say.

Next week, we’ll discuss the (in)famous 2 % target for defense spending.

StorifyPlease check out the summary of our debate.

Additional discussions will be announced via @FutureNATO and on the respective Facebook page.

Putin, the Atlanticist

Putin wins a prize
Image credit: “Siggiko”

Since 1997, the American Academy in Berlin has awarded the annual Henry A. Kissinger Prize “in recognition of outstanding services to the transatlantic relationship.” Taken literally, this means that the next recipient can only be one person: Vladimir Putin.

Just a few weeks ago, even the most committed Atlanticists would not have predicted a spectacular comeback for NATO in 2014. At this year’s Munich Security Conference, often dubbed the transatlantic partnership’s “family meeting”, the mood was quite pessimistic. [My detailed conference report, in German, will appear in the next issue of the Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik.] The Europeans, and especially the Germans, were upset about the fact that Senator Kerry gave a speech about the “transatlantic renaissance” without mentioning the NSA affair at all. As some observers noted, the Americans “just don’t listen to us anymore, they only listen in.”

On the other hand, the U.S. representatives were frustrated that the Europeans were not eager to discuss other topics they deemed more relevant. Again, the old burden-sharing debate resurfaced – but with more urgency. In contrast to earlier debates, the U.S. administration has actually followed through and significantly reduced their troops in Europe while ramping up their forces in the Asia-Pacific (the “rebalancing” FKA “the pivot to Asia”). Quite symbolically, after 69 years, the last Abrams tanks left European soil in 2013, which many saw as a “historic moment”. [It should be noted, however, that a number of refurbished Abrams tanks have returned to Germany in 2014.]

Under Obama, the United States has made clear that it does not expect to lead every military mission the transatlantic partners undertake. In Libya, the Europeans had to realize that they lacked the capabilities to run an intense air campaign alone. In early 2013, when the Europeans discussed the crisis in Mali, NATO’s Deputy Secretary General, Alexander Vershbow, bluntly stated: “The US and NATO cannot be everywhere.”

In earlier years, U.S. politicians would have been furious if the Europeans had planned for an operation without the United States. But the new message was: Europe, it’s your job, get used to it. Yet, given that these debates were about “wars of choice” in a “post-interventionist era”, few Europeans pushed for a major overhaul of Europe’s defense planning – much to the dismay of Washington.

Waiting for the “transatlantic renaissance”

It didn’t help that a conversation between Victoria Nuland and a U.S. ambassador was leaked, in which the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs used the F-word in respect to the EU. Ironically, Nuland is one of the few remaining committed transatlanticists in Washington and had coined the notion of a “transatlantic renaissance”. Now, that whole concept seemed to be a non-starter.

Enter Vladimir Putin. Thanks to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the ongoing threats from Moscow, the transatlantic partnership, and with it NATO, is back again.

With his actions in the past few weeks, Putin has actually provoked what he had successfully avoided for a long time: the rapid rapprochement of NATO members’ policies towards Russia. He might not have provided a “solution” to one of the core challenges in the internal debate about the Atlantic Alliance in the twenty-first century: How do we define our relations with Russia? But at the very least, he has made a new consensus among NATO member states much more likely. Continue reading Putin, the Atlanticist

Security Saturday: The A-Word

German observation team in Afghanistan (By John Scott Rafoss (090121-M-6058R-004) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons”)
Last week, I was reminded of an exceptional issue of the German newscast heute journal a couple of years ago. Before talking about his next topic, anchorman Claus Kleber had directly addressed his audience: “Please do not switch now. Because we know that if I now utter the words conflict, Israel, and Palestine, we will immediately lose some ten thousand viewers.”

I often have a similar feeling when it comes to discussing the Western involvement in Afghanistan. Basically, no one wants to talk about it anymore. The prevailing mood – at least in Berlin – seems to be: Let’s just get out of that far-away country and forget it as soon as possible.

Continue reading Security Saturday: The A-Word

Security Saturday: Who cares about Syria?

By Voice of America News: Scott Bob report from Azaz, Syria. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
In his speech at the Freie Universität Berlin, Peer Steinbrück (SPD) made clear he opposed any arms transfer to the Syrian opposition. As is the case with the German government, he did not offer any alternative policy options. German politicians have long warned of an escalation of the conflict, but few have come up with specific proposals what the country could do to avoid it. As Markus Kaim (SWP) argues in an interview with the newspaper Südkurier, Germans are particularly good at telling others why their ideas won’t work, while not coming forward with an alternative. But is this enough for a country that size? Continue reading Security Saturday: Who cares about Syria?

A “Conference / workshop / methods school” on Identity

yss-identity

As a graduate student, you regularly go to academic conferences. This is important for a number of reasons: First, and probably most importantly, a usual conference comes with a deadline. Being accepted thus means that you are forced to write and hand in something that you might otherwise contemplate about for another six months. Conferences thus provide structure to the life of the graduate student. Plus, you usually meet nice people who you already know or would like to get to know (see also: “free booze”). So, there’s nothing wrong with the big conferences.

However, they can also be quite disappointing. You may be lucky and end up with a discussant helping to improve your work tremendously. Or you may not. Occasionally, you just don’t find people dealing with similar theoretical and methodological questions. Finally, most conferences last only one to three days so that you don’t have the time for repeated conversations over a few days.

Last week, I had the privilege to participate in a different type of event: the Young Scholars School (YSS) on European Identity, which took place from March 17 – 23 in Jena and was organized by the convenors of the ECPR Standing Group Identity, Viktoria Kaina and Pawel Karolewski.

What made this “conference” quite special was the fact that the event did not fit into one of the regular forms of academic interaction on the graduate student level. Neither could it be labeled a method summer/winter school, nor was it a series of lectures or a mere graduate conference. Continue reading A “Conference / workshop / methods school” on Identity