The new US National Security Strategy is a troubling document, but at least provides total clarity into the way Donald Trump and his team think and intend to act. It should dispel any wishful thinking by European or other democratic governments that they can somehow ride out this challenge and hope that things will someday snap back to normal. Following months of “business as usual” after the first salvos in Munich and the berating of Zelenskyy in February, this complacency needs to be abandoned .

The strategy, which in large parts reads more as a manifesto, is not only a confirmation that the trans-Atlantic partnership and alliance is functionally over – including NATO’s Article 5 – but also sounds a clarion call to other reactionary, right-leaning thinkers and anti-democratic leaders that the US is embracing a foreign policy based on transactional self-dealing and the active undermining of democratic governments and open societies. It must be taken both literally and seriously.

From the perspective of Europe, a number of points have already raised alarms. This document is firmly closing the book on the notion that comprehensive security can be best ensured by providing support for functional, rights-based and rule of law-based democracies. However, while it is bad enough that venal transactionalism and swagger is replacing a values-based approach that has served the US quite well for over three quarters of a century, the one time that values (other than power and money) is raised in the strategy is within the context of Europe. This context is focused not on a vision of a democratic and mutually reinforcing alliance, but on  pulling Europe itself further to the illiberal right (a la Orbán’s Hungary) on issues related to migration and economic development, but also presumably big tech and the climate. We see that the Great Replacement Theory, which was once relegated to the far-right margins of politics, is an active thought system for Trump and his coterie – as it is in reactionary circles in Europe. This will boost regressive and anti-democratic elites and stoke grassroots-level polarization. The US is now seeking to export, as a matter of policy, the same polarity and domestic political dysfunction that has brought it to this point. The paragraphs referencing Ukraine, alone and in the context of the broader document, have already been enthusiastically embraced by  Moscow.

The references to the Monroe Doctrine and what they are branding the “Trump Corollary” are another sign of the US narrowing the full spectrum of its global engagement to focus on its hemisphere. This administration prefers the visions of centuries past over those of the 20th and the 21st, and is blind to the way that the 19^th century paved the way for the tragedies of World War I and World War II which ushered in the world order now being aggressively deconstructed. It is worth remembering that the Monroe Doctrine was aimed at asserting that the US would not interfere in Europe’s affairs, and similarly Europe would not interfere in the affairs in the western hemisphere. Yet taken together with the jettisoning of values, it sends a signal that while the US intends to support its ideological allies in Europe, it expects Europe to stay out of the way.

This view of geopolitics raises the question of what other spheres would exist, and reinforces the sense that Trump and Co would like to pursue a modern “three-way Yalta” of the world with Russia and China.

China is viewed as both an adversary and serious competitor, and one can wonder whether Trump envisions some new form of containment within these new spheres of influence.  Russia, perversely, is not even mentioned as a nuclear adversary, let alone a systemic or values rival. The vision for relations with the Middle East and Africa is a mix of values-free transactionalism with the potential for self-dealing among the well-connected elites; the final paragraph of the document on Africa refers to business opportunities and return on investment while noting extraction opportunities that are sure to raise concerns about a new form of colonial exploitation.

At no point in the 29 pages is popular agency mentioned at all; democratic accountability as an underpinning of security, prosperity, and dignity is relegated to the rubbish bin. Trump is attacking Europe precisely because it represents the values that he is actively discarding home and abroad; one can hear echoes of Putin’s invasion of westward-facing Ukraine.

As always, when playing this real-life version of Risk and drawing lines on the global game board a big question will be what Europe looks like without the US in its camp, and with a predatory Russia on its eastern flank. It is critical that Europe does not view this document either as something to be ignored, or as sketching out new rules of the game that it will figure out how to play.

Europe and other democratic allies – Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and others (what could be termed “Europe Plus”) – will only be able to fight against these anti-democratic and frequently kleptocratic trends if they work together and offer a new vision for the democratic world. While EU enlargement continues to be a policy that has both energized and exasperated the continent, the fact that there are candidate countries that see the value of joining (Ukraine is fighting and dying for this right) shows that there are still citizens who recognize that their future would be better with this democratic orientation.

It is easy to turn fatalistic in the face of autocratic momentum; however, given the chance, people choose a life of opportunity and dignity over closed and repressive systems. Europe has an opportunity and an obligation to push back by recognizing its role in consolidating a democratic “Europe Plus” and immediately developing active strategies to counter the new threat that its erstwhile ally has become.

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Executive Summary

The question of the allocation of state and defense property in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is again on the political agenda; a working group convened by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) is expected to continue its work until fall 2023. As the question of state property touches on corruption, environmental protection, local governance, and the nature of BiH as a state, understanding why it matters is important.

Background

State and defense property refers to territory and objects that are currently owned by the state of BiH – an estimated 50% of the territory of the country. This includes property of the former Socialist Republic of BiH and property falling to BiH under the international succession agreement for the former Yugoslavia – immovable objects but also forests, agricultural land, rivers and other bodies of water, and the resources underneath the land, e.g., mines or yet untapped mineral deposits. The issue of who holds ownership over this property was not explicitly regulated in the Dayton constitution, but has come and gone as a policy priority over the years since.

In 2004, the Council of Ministers of BiH established a Commission for State Property; in 2009 an initial Inventory of State Property was established through the Office of the High Representative (OHR). In 2008, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) included this issue within the “5+2” set of objectives and conditions for the closure of the OHR. In 2012, a decision from the BiH Constitutional Court clarified that the state of BiH is the sole owner of state property; two subsequent rulings in 2020 confirmed this decision. The issue is not mentioned in the EU Commission’s 2019 Avis which lists 14 priorities for opening accession negotiations.

State of Play

Since 2012, in line with Milorad Dodik’s efforts to weaken BiH and strengthen the entity of the Republika Srpska (RS) and reflecting the international community’s unmoored approach to BiH generally, the RS has ignored Constitutional Court rulings, instead illegally and non-transparently disposing of and selling off parts of state property. The issue is once again on the agenda for several reasons.

The key driving force is the critical state of RS public finances, as the entity needs assets and collateral to service past debt and incur additional debt. While most acute in the RS, the promise of new money is appealing to other domestic actors as well.

In addition, Croatia and Serbia, which have increasingly demonstrated their unfinished agendas towards BiH and their interest in a weak state (which would reduce resistance to external meddling), are poised to benefit handsomely from any property sell-off. So are other illiberal powers, both near (Hungary) and far (Russia, China).

The international community over the past several years has demonstrated increasing readiness to support and legitimize dealmaking by the ethnonationalist elites. The US wants to be able to further disengage by claiming Dayton loose ends are tied up. The EU wants to be able to claim that its “soft power” works and to justify the granting of candidacy post hoc, particularlysince Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is planning to visit the country in October. So there is a premium on signifiers of progress. All claim that beneficial foreign investment would result.

In 2021 Dodik suggested he could curtail his secessionist agenda if state property would be “resolved” to his liking. Rather than reacting to this as the blackmail it was, the European Commission picked up on his offer. In 2022, OHR convened an expert working group that is working in secrecy but is apparently assisting the Parliamentary Assembly in drafting a state law. The working group held its most recent session on July 14, 2023; it will likely continue into October. But the history of the issue suggests that there is no pressing need to try and resolve it now – in fact, the current political climate has produced the worst possible moment for doing so.

Why it Matters

Dodik insists on regulating the issue through an inter-entity agreement; this would feed his agenda of claiming that BiH is not a state but a sort of “state union.” He is therefore using this issue to try to redefine the nature of the state. This also suits Dragan Čović (HDZ BiH) and his backers in Zagreb, as they continue to try to carve out a Croat quasi-entity through “election law reform” and “Federation reform.” While any one of these state-weakening efforts is detrimental to BiH’s future, taken together they amount to dismantling the country. Some suggest that a state law would give the property rights to the level of municipalities. While this would appear to be in line with principles of decentralization, due to BiH’s structure – and the structure’s demonstrated incentives for malgovernance and obstacles to accountability – the long dominant verticals of power will continue to own and strip these assets for the benefits of the parties rather than the communities.

Dealing with this issue without addressing the theft to date would legitimize the corruption that has undergirded Dodik’s project.

Recommendations

1. A solution to the property issue – that is, property apportionment and disposition – should not proceed in the current, increasingly polarized environment. The international community – the EU, the US, the UK, and the other members of the PIC – should not let its priorities be dictated by Milorad Dodik or any of the other incumbents who have their eyes set on state property.

2. A fundamental reset of Western policy is needed to put an end to BiH’s unaccountable ethnocracy and to support development of a new social contract based on real devolution to local government, to finally replace the calcified partitocracy.

Only then should the property issue be tackled, in accordance with the following three principles:

• That it be a state law adopted by the BiH Parliament – not an inter-entity agreement as sought by Dodik;
• That in the division of property among governance layers, a large chunk of property must go to the state and to municipalities, with fail-safes in place to ensure municipalities benefit from these resources free from asset-stripping party agendas;
• That all illegal and unconstitutional (RS) property disposal decisions since the HR’s first disposal ban of state and defense property in 2005, in fact since 1995 – be annulled before any apportionment of the property among BiH’s different layers of government. Any other decision would mean legalizing theft, and irrevocably strangling the authority of the HR/OHR, the Constitutional Court of BiH and Court of BiH, and of the rule of law and constitutionality in general.

Read the full paper – in English

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Executive Summary

On October 17, 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron once again pre-empted the launch of European Union accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania, forestalling them until further notice. His move was only tenuously linked to the individual merits of either country. Its real rationale was evident at the time and came into fuller relief with his subsequent interview with The Economist: Macron halted enlargement to force other member states – Germany in particular – to engage him on his ambitious – but still only lightly sketched – agenda to reconfigure the EU.

Immediately prior to the November meeting of the EU’s General Affairs Council, France released a non-paper that underscored that the enlargement halt was not really about enlargement at all. The non-paper was rife with contradictions and redundancies. Its main proposed innovation is a rejiggering of the enlargement policy into seven sequential phases. But the document also demonstrated a worrisome elite orientation, and was void of reference to or grounding in the EU’s foundational source code: the primacy of liberal democratic values and standards. This portends ill for Macron’s vision of the EU more broadly.

The non-paper’s focus is on delivering “tangible benefits” in economic matters. Despite the EU’s recent embrace of the term “state capture” and a new focus on corruption, these terms are absent from the French text. In essence, the non-paper proposes throwing more resources at entrenched elites in the countries of the Western Balkans, to rent social peace for them – and a predictable status quo for the EU.

Far from being a sideshow, the struggle for EU foundational values is and must be central to the problems in the Western Balkans today. The illiberal challengers Macron cites – China, Russia, Turkey – are all heavily and increasingly engaged in the region.

While solidarity among the other EU members in response to Macron’s move is laudable, the default inclination seems to be to finesse differences, and to concede an enlargement approach based on minor, largely cosmetic adjustments. This would mean to let a good crisis go to waste, both in terms of a long-overdue recalibration of the EU’s enlargement strategy, as well as orientation toward an equally necessary, but still uncharted, recalibration of the EU to face the internal challenges of nativist illiberal populism, yawning inequality, and the climate emergency.

Recommendations

DPC recommends a different course to EU member states committed to enlargement and the EU-wide reinforcement of liberal democratic values, at a time when they are challenged both within the Union and from east and west. This does not require any major changes to mechanics, mandates, or procedures, but rather a philosophical shift in approaching the countries of the Western Balkans. The 2015-17 breakthrough in North Macedonia demonstrated two things: a) that the EU’s institutional default setting has for too long been on the side of illiberal elites; and b) the reality that in the expansion of a values-focused EU in the Western Balkans, citizens – not elites – are the Union’s real allies.

1) Instead of taking the low road and simply restarting the enlargement policy with cosmetic changes, EU member states ought to take the opportunity to assess the process seriously and self-critically – with criticism of not just the WB6, but of the EU and its member states. The Council should commission an external diagnostic analysis of enlargement in the Western Balkans to date, to understand why genuine reform has been so shallow and lackluster, and with particular attention to the adherence to foundational liberal democratic values (i.e., the Copenhagen criteria).

2) The EU does not play a neutral role when it leaves exponents of its declared values to confront illiberal governments alone. It is complicit, abandoning its natural allies. Lending the EU’s top-down support would help redress this structural imbalance. Placing civic engagement and political accountability at the center of a new enlargement policy would generate the popular traction and credibility that the current EU enlargement approach has long lacked.

3) Annual “Priebe reports” – independent assessments of Western Balkan countries’ adherence to EU foundational values and Copenhagen criteria – should become an integral element of the EU’s engagement, followed by active support to local independent constituencies to address structural weaknesses identified. These would provide connective tissue between civic advocacy to end state capture by corrupt elites to institutional rule of law and democracy and the Union.

These are initial recommendations for what needs to be an ongoing exercise in honest analysis and diagnostics. Yet these are key first principles that, if internalized, could help to strengthen both the EU and future member states.

Download full paper

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The nomination came as a particular blow given that the EC’s February 2018 enlargement strategy and the most recent country reports placed particular emphasis on the rule of law. This emphasis came largely in response to the EU’s need to address what it rightly, but belatedly, called “state capture” in North Macedonia under Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Spurred by the release of recordings documenting a host of governmental abuses of power, a report assembled by an expert team led by former EC official Reinhard Priebe systematically assessed shortcomings in North Macedonia’s rule of law and enumerated a list of recommendations. Regional civil society actors demanded “Priebe reports,” but to date this has been replicated only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a report on the state of rule of law due in November.

László Trócsányi’s has been Hungarian PM Viktor Orban’s engineer suborning rule of law to political control.  He has now been nominated to be gatekeeper to the EU club for countries which have been repeatedly assessed as sorely deficient on rule of law and other democratic protections and fundamental freedoms.  It is not coincidental that Orban and Trócsányi helped Gruevski, convicted of corruption, flee his country and granted him asylum in Hungary. A clearer middle finger to the whole EU on its fundamental values could scarcely be imagined.

Orban clearly wants a low bar for enlargement – he wants more allies in the EU ranks. Unfortunately, the geopolitical angst which has swept the EU will likely assist him. Illiberals from outside the EU – Russia, China, Turkey, and Gulf States – are gaining increasing traction with the nexus of political, economic, and media power held by Balkan elites. Such a calculus would double down on the EU’s long-standing habit of prioritizing stability and bilateral relationships with local strongmen over defending its own professed liberal democratic values and those in the region who have long struggled for them.

As made clear by Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Croatian and other member states’ backsliding on basic democratic norms, the EU’s leverage for entrenching these standards is strongest at the front door; it dissipates to relative insignificance once a state joins the EU.  Contrary to the cynical views oft-heard from Western European members, the progress of these countries was real prior to membership.  The tragedy – and lesson – is that progress, even in original member states, can regress.  But what is clear is that if progress is not delivered prior to membership, it will not occur afterward. This is a critical challenge for the new Commission – and for the European Parliament.

Trócsányi may well just be a placeholder, following his expected and deserved grilling in the European Parliament, for a less provocative Hungarian nominee. Failed Spitzenkandidat Manfred Weber basically said as much.  However, anyone sent by Orban will be doing his bidding in the Commission.  A reshuffle of this post to a non-Fidesz member is crucial.

Orban, Kaczynski, and many other EU illiberals are in favor of a worthy goal – EU enlargement – for all the wrong reasons:  to build their own ranks in the EU structures and turn it away from its very foundational values.  Trócsányi’s nomination and the new model structure of the Commission announced by incoming President Ursula von der Leyen – implies that this subversion has already gained traction. But appeasing Europe’s illiberals will not defeat them.

Von der Leyen represents Germany and the CDU, a conservative party present at the creation of what is now the European Union.  If “protecting our European way of life” is to have a connotation truly in keeping with resisting reaction in Europe and conserving the EU’s essence, then it must be reflected in the role of whoever its selected as what amounts to the EU’s recruiting sergeant.  A representative of an avowedly “illiberal” government ought to be presumptively disqualified.

It is now up to MEPs in the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) to carry on the fight that many of them and their party groups waged in the last Parliament against Hungary through the Article 7 process. This challenge applies to avowed liberals in the ALDE group, but also to socialists and conservatives. Otherwise, their message will be that the EU’s rules and values apply to those within, but need not apply to countries waiting in line to enter.

Kurt Bassuener and Toby Vogel are co-founders and Senior Associates of the Democratization Policy Council, a Berlin-based think-tank. They are based in Brussels and Dundee, Scotland, respectively.

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But how good is the good news really?

The coordination mechanism was adopted by the Council of Ministers in secret on January 26; the decision was not made public until its publication in the Official Journal on February 9. It is unclear why there was such a delay in publishing the decision, or whether it was indeed taken on January 26. Either way, the lack of transparency is hardly in line with European democratic values and suggests that the decision is the result of a backroom deal between BiH’s powerbrokers rather than a carefully considered choice. The adoption of EU-related reforms without proper consultation or debate – just think of the entity labor laws – indicates that BiH politicians are afraid of their electorates and unwilling to make the case for these reforms. The EU, and a disengaged US, have been happy to play along, deepening a pervasive cynicism about politics among ordinary Bosnians.

Even more troubling than the manner in which it was adopted is the substance of the coordination mechanism, however. The coordination mechanism puts in place a cascade of ad-hoc bodies to deal with questions of European integration – from a Working Group at operational level all the way to a College for European Integration as the top political and strategic decision-making body. Decisions that fail to be adopted at technical level are referred up to the political decision-makers and, ultimately, the College, whose members include among others the chairman and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, the prime ministers of the entities, the mayor of Brčko, and the cantonal prime ministers. As all the other bodies that make up the coordination mechanism, the College takes decisions by consensus, without a supremacy clause that would give the central government ultimate power to break a stalemate as the final arbiter.

This complex array of new bodies with its surface complexity masks a simple reality: the power to decide rests firmly in the hands of the very same leaders whose shenanigans have produced the paralysis in which BiH has been stuck for a good decade.

A premium is placed on the ability to block, not on understanding or meeting the EU’s requirements during the membership negotiations. By requiring consensus at all stages of decision-making, the coordination mechanism in fact enshrines the current systemic dysfunctionality of BiH politics in an issue area that had to some extent been shielded from it – European integration. The BiH constitution – an annex to the Dayton peace accords of 1995 – designated foreign policy as one of the very few policy areas over which the weak central institutions hold authority (Article III.1), which was used in the past to coordinate EU-related matters through a short-lived Ministry of European Integration and, since 2002, a Directorate for European Integration (DEI), part of the Council of Ministers. With the coordination mechanism, BiH now takes a step back from this set-up, directly involving both entity and cantonal ministers in EU-related decision-making. This marks a small but significant step away from a federal system toward a confederal system, where ultimate authority rests with the component parts – a system that in practice has proven to be all but unworkable. As my colleague Valery Perry pointed out in a recent paper (“Constitutional Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Does the Road to Confederation go through the EU?” International Peacekeeping [2015]), the process of EU integration has pushed the country toward more confederalism, not less.

In a sense, then, the new mechanism merely formalizes the current practice, in which all important decisions at state level are the result not of democratic deliberation by elected representatives of the people but of opaque deals between a cartel of power-brokers that has been holding BiH in a chokehold since the time of the war. While the composition of that cartel has seen shifts over time – the SDS has been replaced by the SNSD as the ruling party of a de facto one-party entity, Republika Srpska, while the SDA has at times lost its leadership role among the Bosnian Muslims – its complete control of politics has never been in question. The EU has reinforced and reified this dynamic by seeking deals on various issues with the leaders of political parties rather than with the elected representatives whose job it nominally is to take decisions. Its ‘Structured Dialogue’ and various other processes have cemented BiH’s oligarchical system, rather than breaking it up in favor of a more open politics. The coordination mechanism formalizes oligarchy without even the appearance of open debate and democratic deliberation. ‘Feudaralism’ might be a good descriptive term for it: a federalism that empowers pseudo-feudal politicians.

Despite the terse comment on the new mechanism from Johannes Hahn, the European enlargement commissioner – “we have to see how it is working,” he said on Monday – there can be little doubt that EU officials are relieved that yet another box in BiH’s bid to join the Union has been ticked. But here’s the irony: the system that is now being put in place by BiH’s powerbrokers is damaging not only for democracy and the rule of law – it is also dysfunctional. And improved functionality was precisely the reason for the EU’s demand for a coordination mechanism. So once again, the EU will support a political deal in BiH without regard for its constitutional implications or its effect on decision-making and good governance. And once again, EU officials will ask themselves why BiH is dysfunctional, and why popular faith in democratic processes is so low.

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It is tempting to dismiss the recent call for a European army by Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, as the pipe dream of an unreconstructed European federalist. Juncker’s call has had very little resonance. The EU’s 28 member states have neglected collective defense for many years. Growing euroskepticism from the both the left and the right makes the creation of new European superstructures an electoral liability. The Commission, led by Juncker, has the tiniest of roles in European defense policy.

British officials were promptly dispatched to brief journalists that the UK would never consent to a European army. Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, implored the Europeans not to duplicate alliance structures. But Juncker’s idea has potential and deserves debate.

The EU’s (and Europe’s) own defense capabilities are in a pitiful state. The closest thing resembling an EU rapid reaction force – the EU Battlegroups – have theoretically had full operational capacity since 2007 but have never been deployed. Any deployment would require a unanimous decision by all 28 member states and would still be subject to national caveats. Such restrictions hamstring operational effectiveness in any multinational operation, as seen with ISAF in Afghanistan and UNPROFOR earlier in Bosnia. Attempts to streamline defense procurements have proceeded at a snail’s pace as national governments seek to shield their defense firms from foreign competition. (The defense industry is exempt from the rules of the EU’s single market.)

Co-operation with NATO is hampered by the vexing issue of Cyprus. With one-third of its territory occupied by NATO member Turkey, Cyprus – which is outside of NATO – has blocked closer co-operation between the EU and the alliance.

At a time of rising geopolitical tension in the EU’s neighborhood – from Ukraine to Syria to Libya – Europeans are starting to realize that the current set-up is just not working. This recognition is becoming harder to ignore as times get tougher. Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor the Islamic State differentiate between the EU and NATO in their views of, and attacks on, the West.

Juncker’s model for an EU army, which recalls a proposal torpedoed by the French Parliament in 1954, cannot come to pass without some form of political federation at the European level – a European state – which makes it a non-starter. What is far more realistic (and far more desirable), is an all-volunteer European division to allow for rapid reaction during a crisis. The division should be based in one of the (formerly Soviet-occupied) Central European member states, with a battalion based at the former Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the EU maintains an anemic placeholder military force, EUFOR, making its commitment to maintain a “safe and secure environment” there hostage to fortune. The base’s airfield can accommodate the heaviest transports and enable power projection to the south. The deployment of an EU volunteer rapid reaction division would in all likelihood still require an all-EU go-ahead – but without any crippling national caveats undermining its effectiveness and with fast-track decision-making. Such a mechanism would allow member state governments to deploy forces in defense of common European interests without fear of national flag-draped caskets returning in the event of casualties, allowing for a more credible common deterrent.

This type of rapid reaction force would reassure the EU’s eastern member states that they are not second-class members. It would absorb NATO-qualified military personnel who have fallen victim to swingeing defense budget cuts, putting their skills to good use. It could also be deployed without violating NATO’s deal with Russia not to permanently base NATO forces on new member states’ territory. And it would encompass within it countries such as Sweden and Finland that have an interest in a security shield against Russia but are not members of NATO. Given the unlikelihood of Sweden or Finland joining NATO anytime soon (a desirable aim), this would allow an avenue for long-overdue common Baltic/northern tier defense planning.

Furthermore, contrary to understandable fears of duplication or de facto undermining of NATO, such a new division would not duplicate existing assets or move them away from NATO’s orbit. It would generate new forces which could complement NATO’s existing assets and coordinate via Berlin-plus arrangements, as is the case with EUFOR. In order to reassure NATO that this new division will not undercut it, a perennial fear of the British (and the Americans), it could be placed under British command. The obvious choice would be the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR).

The West’s adversaries have long taken advantage of its inter- and intra-institutional fissures, as Russia and the Islamic State currently are to achieve their geopolitical aims and territorial ambitions. A common Western defense strategy and mechanism has long been hampered not merely by a paucity of deployable forces but the will to deploy those available effectively toward the mission objectives for fear of the political fallout from casualties to national forces or contingents. European Commission President Juncker’s idea, if taken under serious consideration, starting with a serious debate, could help close some of this gap and begin the necessary transformation of the EU into an actor which can protect its interests in the geopolitical world in which it resides.

Toby Vogel and Kurt Bassuener are co-founders and senior associates of the Democratization Policy Council, a global initiative for accountability in democracy promotion.

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