Europe

It seems the lawmakers in Belgium are "fiddling while Rome burns." In April this year, 136 members of Belgium’s lower house voted to ban the burqa in public, while two abstained. No one voted against the measure. The move followed by one week the collapse of the country’s government over electoral boundaries based on language criteria, forcing the country to new elections.

With a national debt equal to 100 percent of GDP, this is an interesting set of priorities. Statistics on how many women in Belgium wear burqas are unavailable, but in nearby Denmark, the parliament there stopped its move toward a burqa ban when, according to Der Speigel, it found there were only a handful of women in the country who actually wore a burqa. 

There is reason to beleive that the near-simultaneous actions of Belgian politicians to deepen their linguistic disputes while banning burqas are intimately connected. According to Belgian political scientist, Jean-Michel de Waele, commenting on the new elections in an interview for EurActiv, political parties in Belgium have been taken hostage by extremists.

What accounts for this cultural extremism in Belgium? It may actually have been aggravated simply by the "invasion" of the country by foreigners. Even though non-nationals in Belgium account for only 9 percent of the total population, among EU countries Belgium is near the top of the list for the percentage of its population represented by nationals of other countries.

In Belgium's case, according to Eurostat, the larger share of these foreigners are from other EU countries – most notably Italy (17 percent of the foreign population), France and the Netherlands (around 13 percent), and Spain (around 4 percent). Moroccans make up only 8 percent of the foreign population (or less than one percent of the total Belgian population).

This dominance of non-nationals in the Belgian population mix is not caused by its being host to the European Institutions. According to Eurostat, the European Union as a whole has a "relatively high net migration rate, which in 2008 was almost three times higher than the rate of natural population growth."

Europeans are on the move. EU internal migrants across national borders are increasing in percentage terms faster than immigrants into the EU from outside. Belgium's population is one of the most adept in Europe when it comes to foreign languages. What explains this contradiction between openness to the outside world evidenced by foreign language use and extremism centred on linguistic "purity"?

Look to the demography of the capital city. Over several decades, the Flemish-speaking population of the Belgian capital has been squeezed out or has chosen to move out, as the non-national population has grown dramatically. In London, there is a similar picture. Based on one analysis of the 2001 census, in large swathes of the north of the British city, the share of foreign-born population is higher than 34 percent. (This figure strangely includes children of immigrants.) Non-national population growth in Barcelona and Madrid has also been spectacular in recent years.

As Belgium this week contemplates its constitutional future and community-based divisions, it and the rest of Europe might ponder just how much the changing face of the capital city under pressure of internal EU migration was the cause of that. The other big factor is that local people are being squeezed out of the property market in their own capital cities by the property boom associated with this more lively market and more open investment regimes.  There is a lesson in the demography of Brussels for the future of other EU capitals. All should note, however, that the immigrants who have changed the capital’s demographics and its politics most are not those very few women wearing burqas.

The two organizations signed a memorandum of understanding on May 4, 2010, at the first Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit in Dallas. The MOU commits both organizations "to work together to better promote the safety, stability and security of cyberspace."

Under the agreement, the IEEE Communications Society will bring essential technical expertise in hardware, software and networks to the Worldwide Cybersecurity Initiative and help build the technical foundation for international cybersecurity measures. Meanwhile, EWI will bring its reputation as a global policy change agent and help build trust and mobilize resources to develop and implement such measures.

The partnership between EWI and the IEEE Communications Society is an innovative combination of technical and policy expertise. Such a partnership is critical to understand threats and vulnerabilities in cyberspace, devise solutions to address them and build international consensus to implement these solutions.

The two organizations have already started working together, producing groundbreaking reports such as The Reliability of Global Undersea Communications Cable Infrastructure. In creating this formal partnership, they will intensify their efforts to ensure cybersecurity and work together to meet their joint goal "to improve the world by making it safer and better for humanity."

Click here to download the full text of the EWI-IEEE memorandum of understanding (610K PDF).

The city of Sevastopol captures modern Europe’s history in a tantalizing way. The city’s past links the easternmost reaches of the continent to its west in a way no other city does. It also speaks to the future in no uncertain terms. Europe has a date with history in Sevastopol.

The Crimea is the farthest east inside Europe that British soldiers fought and died in large numbers, some 5,000 killed in action and some 20,000 dead from disease in Britain’s “Russia War” of 1854-56.

Sevastopol also reveals with sharp clarity the transitory character of political sovereignty.  In the Crimean War, among the allies against Russia were two “states” that have since passed into history -- the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Duchy of Nassau.

The Crimean region has been a focal point of invasion and changing political sovereignty over the last millennium. Today, while very clearly a part of Ukraine, the city of Sevastopol and its naval base, like the Crimean peninsula as a whole, have been the subject of some political contest with Russia.

The region and this city have a distinct place in Russian history and psychology. Through 1855 and 1856, Tolstoy achieved his early fame with publication of Sevastopol Sketches, written in large part from the front lines of military service as the city was under siege from France, Britain and Turkey. The Soviet era added even more complex layers of memory and politics. The second siege of Sevastopol, during the Great Patriotic War, lasted some nine months and resulted in Soviet military casualties of around 11,000 killed in action.

Sevastopol is today a “Russian” city. According to the Ukrainian National Census of 2001, the ethnic composition of Sevastopol is predominantly Russian, around 72 per cent, with Ukrainians around 22 per cent.

For now, the political disputes around Sevastopol and Crimea have become quieter. In April 2010, Ukraine and Russia agreed terms to extend the lease on the naval base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol until 2042. Ukraine is now led by a political party that more clearly represents the interests of Ukraine’s Russian communities than the rival parties. The government has officially taken its country’s possible membership of NATO off the table.

But Sevastopol remains a beacon warning us of possible dark days in Europe’s future. Under the new agreement, Russia has taken on the responsibility for supporting infrastructure development in Sevastopol and the rest of Crimea. President Medvedev has already ordered planning work to begin. This is definitely good news for local residents and has to be applauded on that basis.

In the longer term, the political significance of this extra-territorial economic planning reach of Russia into the sensitive political region will be determined by what else happens in relations between Russia, Ukraine and rest of Europe. 

Here the Russian proposal for a new European security treaty takes on added significance. The case of Sevastopol, which most Europeans and American simply don’t understand, is an important part of the psychology behind Russia’s advocacy of a new security architecture. If we want a guarantee of stability in Europe’s east, then we need to understand that psychology better.

But we also need to respond to it. Europe was not prepared to come to terms with the incipient crisis represented by the political tensions between Georgia and Russia before August 2008. Europe needs to learn from that failure. It needs now to take advantage of the pause offered by Presidents Yanukovich and Medvedev in respect of Sevastopol to negotiate a new security architecture that addresses directly and adequately the “eastern question” of its security -- represented so well by the case of Sevastopol and the Black Sea region.

In May 2010, the United States announced the “initial operational capability” of its new joint Cyber Command, appointed the first leader of it at the rank of four-star general, and commenced work on a new cyber warfare intelligence center in San Antonio Texas.

But classic terms like cyber warfare and “information dominance”, long a standard in the international security discourse, may be on the way out, according to a U.S. Army Manual released in February this year. Prepare instead for “full spectrum operations” (FSO). All wired, wireless and optical technologies may now be the new field of operations, as the United States seeks to build and maintain technological advantage over its “adversaries”.
The Manual describes “three interrelated dimensions”, each (it says) with its own logic and solutions: 

• “the psychological contest of wills against implacable foes, warring factions, criminal groups, and potential adversaries,”
• “strategic engagement, which involves keeping friends at home, gaining allies abroad, and generating support or empathy for the mission,”
• “the cyber-electromagnetic contest, which involves gaining, maintaining, and exploiting a technological advantage”.

The situation that led to these world-changing developments is itself new. As the Manual says: “Unprecedented levels of adverse activity in and through cyberspace threaten the integrity of United States critical infrastructure, financial systems, and elements of national power.” The origins of the threat include “unwitting hackers,” criminals, terrorists and states.

But most importantly for the social organization of coercive power, the United States has assessed that, “collectively, the threats create a condition of perpetual turbulence without traditional end states or resolution.”

Thus, while it seemed bad enough that states have not yet agreed to common definitions of cyber war or cyber peace, we are now faced with an absence of reference points for “cyber victory.” And the cyber enemies of the United States may not even have hostile intent, but merely be “unwitting hackers”.

The good news of course is that the United States is at least moving to match its national security policy to one of the more serious threats it, like other states, faces. 

How does NATO respond? What does point #2 above (“gaining allies”) look like for NATO? The Albright report on NATO’s new security concept also released in May 2010 identified “cyber assaults of varying degrees of severity” as one of three more probable forms of attack. The report recommended, without clear reference to the massive transformation that would be involved, that NATO should plan to mount a fully adequate array of cyber defense capabilities, including passive and active elements”. The authors suggested that military commanders be given pre-authorized rules of engagement for immediate response to cyber attack.

As it responds to the Albright report, NATO will have choices to make about the three dimensions mentioned above. How will NATO manage the psychological contest with adversaries? (Not well it seems so far!) Who beyond NATO will be useful allies? Could Russia qualify? And how should NATO prepare for the day to day electro-magnetic contest with the diverse range of witting and unwitting threats? It is almost inconceivable that NATO could build a joint “cyber command”? Or is it?

Maybe that should be a NATO aim for the next decade, with a concentration on just parts of the spectrum of threat, such as protection of critical information infrastructure. And, for no other reason than their mutual dependence on normal energy trade and high-volume international bank transfers, NATO and Russia have to be allies.

Of some note to NATO planning, a new US Army (single service) Cyber Command, also announced in May this year, will be set up with “no new growth or impact to Army end strength” and “will be funded from within existing fiscal resources”. Now that will be a challenge. 

In "Euro-Atlantic: Equal Security for All," an article to be published in the May 2010 issue of Revue Defense Nationale, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov makes a case for a rethink of European security, naming the EastWest Institute among the sources of thought leadership on the issue. The article was reproduced by ISRIA, an online news service specializing in diplomatic and intelligence information.

David Firestein's recent piece in The Moscow Times, Reset in Danger of Being Set Back, received considerable attention from a number of policy media organizations. A sampling of organizations carrying the piece:

News

• Official Russia
• St. Petersburg Times

Think tanks and NGOs

• American Policy Examiner
• China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
• EU-Russia Centre
• Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization

Websites and blogs

• Robert Amsterdam
• La Russophobe
• RealClearWorld
• The News Links
• Blognews24
• Inosmi.ru

EWI Vice President Greg Austin comments in a TIME Magazine piece about European involvement in Afghanistan.  Austin discusses the likelihood of Europe's contribution to Obama's call for an increased number of troops in Afghanistan.

"The timeline is diminishing. European support will last for a year, maybe two," says Greg Austin, vice president of program development and rapid response at the EastWest Institute. "But in the long term, it is not sustainable for the U.S. and its NATO allies to bear the burden. There has to be a more hard-nosed diplomacy to mobilize neighboring countries. Countries like India and Pakistan will be able to better provide police training in Afghanistan than Denmark."

On October 20, 2009, The Washington Post reported on EWI's recent publication, Reframing Nuclear De-Alert: Decreasing the operational readiness of U.S. and Russian arsenals.

"The study does a good job of trying to move the debate away from the old fear of nuclear forces being on a 'hair trigger alert,'" writes Walter Pincus, author of the Post story.

Placing EWI's study in a broader policy context, Pincus adds: "De-alerting is among the issues being analyzed in the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review. When completed by the end of this year and approved by the White House, the review will set out the administration's strategic nuclear policies, including the appropriate alert levels."

EWI is working to ensure that the report informs these strategic nuclear priorities and paves the way towards more constructive U.S.-Russia relations.

EWI Vice President of Program Development and Rapid Response Greg Austin was interviewed on Czech Television about challenges for NATO's new Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.