Please, take your time
Europe and the new McCarthyism
Two major character flaws have long tested my affection for the EU. One is the European Parliament (the inevitable subject of an angry future post) but the other, much more pressing shortcoming is the union’s allergy to pre-empting crises.
This was forgivable before the 2010-15 cascading sovereign-debt and banking crises, the withdrawal of a major member state, and a public-health emergency. It isn’t now, yet politicians would prefer to fire-fight reality than make difficult trade-offs for a possibility. Less forgivable is the refusal to prepare for a probability: the imminent end of Democratic rule in Washington and the election in 2024 of an America First president (whether it’s Donald Trump or an acolyte) opposed to sustaining the US security guarantee for Europe.
In the months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Europe’s leaders – with one Hungarian exception – have been saying all the right things. Sensing a shift in the balance of power from the EU’s core to its Russian and Ukrainian borderlands and to Washington, the French and Germans changed gears. President Emmanuel Macron abandoned his non-humiliation approach and went for Russian defeat while chancellor Olaf Scholz chose an eastern audience for his new “when, if not now?” strategy. In two now-notorious speeches on 10 and 13 October, Josep Borrell – the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy – took things up a notch, prompting a Washington Post headline: The EU is turning geopolitical. Is Venus becoming Mars?
She isn’t, but Venus is at least asking the right questions. “Europeans are facing a situation in which we suffer the consequences of a process that has been lasting for years in which we have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security,” said the socialist former Spanish foreign minister. That security, he said, has been “outsourced” to the US but “who knows what will happen two years from now, or even in November?”
Bye Joe
No one knows but opinion polls and betting exchanges allow us to make a decent guess. It’s long been clear that Republicans would win back the House of Representatives in the midterm elections on 8 November. What is new is the fading Democratic poll leads in key Senate races as the catalytic effects of the supreme court’s June abortion ruling recede. Now the Republicans are odds-on to win both houses and handcuff Biden until the end of his presidency in 2025.
Source: electionbettingodds.com
Yes, the president retains full diplomatic and national-security powers, the Republican factions in the two congressional houses take contrasting approaches to Ukraine, and another aid bill should be able to sneak through the lame-duck session before the new congress sits in January. All true. But this is to under-estimate the damaging signalling effect a Republican congressional sweep will have in the European theatre and especially in Moscow, Kyiv, and Budapest.
Since the invasion, congress has approved more than $65 billion in (mostly military) aid to Kyiv but Kevin McCarthy, who is likely to be the Republican House speaker, has warned that his faction is not “going to write a blank cheque to Ukraine”. As ever, he’s pandering to the party base and the Trumpist wing of his conference; a Pew Research Center survey conducted in mid-September found only 16% of Republican voters were convinced the US was providing insufficient support for Ukraine – down from 49% in March. Of course, his threat is calibrated to allow some aid but his words will be seen in Moscow as grudging and as a fracturing of NATO solidarity with its frontline proxy. Russian and Ukrainian military strategy will adapt accordingly and so will Viktor Orbán’s political footwork inside the EU and NATO.
They all know this isn’t just talk; Republicans in both houses have form. In May, the biggest single package ($40 billion) cleared the House and Senate but with 57 Republican representatives and 11 senators opposed. In a subsequent vote to approve an extra $12 billion, McCarthy himself voted no, along with the majority of his conference. As speaker1, McCarthy will be empowered to stop bills coming to the floor altogether if they are opposed by a majority of his party’s representatives.
These are just the practical hurdles. The mood will also be entirely different as Republicans take control of House committees and launch long-promised investigations into Biden’s son Hunter with the aim of impeaching the president. James Comer, the likely next chairman of the oversight committee, will focus his inquiry on Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Chinese resource company but also on his $50,000-per-month service on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural-gas producer. As revenge for the “Russia, Russia, Russia” investigations that plagued Trump, Comer and allies will hit Biden with “Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine”. Volodymyr Zelensky is already unpopular in the Republican base for his accidental role in Trump’s first impeachment. These inquiries will feed that beast.
If the polls and bets are right, the political backdrop to the war on their border is about to be upended but the EU and its member states are not progressing beyond rhetorical support, weapons supplies, and energy provisioning. European capitals need to revolutionise their security thinking, up their spending, and get their citizens used to the idea of using hard power. They cannot wait until an unrestrained Trump returns to office.
Restoration comedy
While we’re on the restoration topic, we’ll know by this time next week whether Boris Johnson is going to be the next and former British prime minister. The betting says “no” – pricing him at 20% at the time of writing - but the Ukrainian government’s Twitter account briefly said “hell yes” this week before someone sensible stepped in.
Ukrainians’ love affair with “Boris” parallels ours with Zelensky – a fixation compounded by Johnson’s Kyiv walkaround in April. That even got one of the American good guys hot and bothered.
I think it’s no coincidence that this perception that only one man can ensure continuity in the UK’s steadfast support for Ukraine comes from countries with presidential systems. I can guarantee that any British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher – that’s John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, or Theresa May – would have taken that same stroll with Zelensky. Blair would have loved it. The only prime minister who could have moved to equidistance between Moscow and Kyiv would have been Jeremy Corbyn. But he never got the opportunity and, besides, his Russophilia and pacificism would have been as tempered in office as they were in opposition by his minority status even in his own parliamentary party.
Rhetorical, financial and military support – including the critical training of 22,000 Ukrainian officers in the UK – has support across parliament. Whoever takes over from Liz Truss next week will embody policy continuity and that will extend into the next Labour government under Keir Starmer. If you’re in any doubt, watch this 11 October speech by John Healey, the shadow defence secretary. Targeting the likes of Corbyn, he said: “Those who call ‘stop the war’ more loudly than ‘win the war’ are playing into Putin’s hands because a ceasefire now cedes new territory to Russia. It risks Russia deepening its occupation, regrouping its forces and legitimising its regime of torture, rape and executions. Putin is losing this war in Ukraine … With a general election, there may well be a change to Labour but there will be no change to Britain’s resolve in confronting Russian aggression and standing with Ukraine. It seems to me that our duty now is to make sure that Ukraine wins this war”.