The mutating left of Western Europe and the illiberal states of Central and Eastern Europe

Last week, Brookings published a suite of 20+ “Democracy & Disorder” papers covering democracy issues around the globe and implications for geopolitics and international order. Given the troubled state of Europe and the West these days, a number of them focused on the Old Continent. I co-authored two of them.

Célia Belin and I have followed up our March 2018 American Interest piece on the “Macronification” of Europe with a paper on how "the challenges of globalization, identity, democracy, and the governance of the European Union have weakened social democratic political parties over the past 20 years.” In the second half of the paper, we categorize political parties on or stemming from the left in Western Europe into four categories “based on radical versus mainstream ideology and experimental versus traditional methods” - the Established Left of the classic center-left social democrats (but also including Germany’s rising Greens, on the more experimental side), the Radical Left which yielded Syriza’s revolt in Greece four years ago, the Experimental Left which includes Italy’s Five Star Movement, now governing in coalition with the far-right League, and the Extreme Center embodied in Emmanuel Macron. We recommend U.S. policymakers do more to engage to the European left on Russia and understand its approach to sovereignty and that the American left engage its transatlantic counterpart.

We published another long-in-the-works report the same day, on “The anatomy of illiberal states,” analyzing the tools that illiberal leaders of NATO and EU member states have used to erode checks and balances on their power, which I co-authored with Alina Polyakova and Torrey Taussig plus Kemal Kirişci, Amanda Sloat, James Kirchick, Melissa Hooper, Norman Eisen, and Andrew Kenealy, who wrote case studies on Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Our many recommendations boil down to a tougher but not carrot-free approach for the U.S. Congress and executive branch, key actors in the European Union, and NATO to member governments which have damaged their countries’ democracies.

I encourage you to check out the reports, hope you find them interesting/useful, and welcome your thoughts.

European Politics is Turning French

I have a piece out in The American Interest, co-authored with my Brookings Institution Center on the United States and Europe colleague Célia Belin, titled "European politics Is Turning French." (If you're blocked by the paywall, the full text can also be read at Brookings' Order from Chaos). We describe ongoing political realignment in Europe, with the pro-EU center consolidating against centrifugal nationalist-populists, a process that damages the center-left in particular given the center-right bent of economic governance in the bloc. 

The 2017 French electoral cycle may be the textbook example of this overhaul of European politics... With Macron’s rise to power, French politics have gone through a process of “Macronification,” a unification of centrist constituencies around a pro-European agenda, leaving little air for anything but radical far-Left and far-Right parties adopting an anti-EU line... While both of France’s mainstream parties were badly wounded by “Macronification,” the Socialist Party (PS) was obliterated...

Indeed, in France and elsewhere, commitment to Europe feels increasingly like the kiss of death for social democrats. Although the European project is, fundamentally, a politically liberal idea—designed to transcend the dark forces of nationalism—to which the European Left is deeply attached, the European Union of today hardly resembles the leftist ideal of a “United States of Europe"... The European Left finds itself in the paradoxical situation of defending the symbolic value of the European Union while deploring its current policies. Paying a high price for their European commitment, leftwing parties either accede to power as responsible stakeholders stripped of their ideology and identity, or watch from outside government as the Right chips away at what remains of the legacy of 20th-century social democracy.

Where the left / center-left in Europe and America are going in this age of right-wing populists on the rise is one of my primary research interests and one I have in common with Célia, so expect more from us on this topic. 

The Democrats' Foreign Policy in the Shadow of Trump

My policy paper on the foreign policy of the U.S. Democratic Party after Barack Obama's presidency and Hillary Clinton's failed presidential candidacy was published this week by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. I've been working on this for a few months, with the idea to explain where the party might be going on foreign policy to U.S. allies in Europe and beyond as well Americans inside and outside the Beltway. I focused on the rhetoric and legislative initiatives of a few key players in the party, include Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and others. The paper is more descriptive than prescriptive, but I call for a more broader and serious debate on policy towards Russia, and on foreign policy generally ahead of the 2020 election.

Per my executive summary:

Despite the broad success of Barack Obama’s presidency, America’s Democratic Party finds itself debating the political path back to power amid the chaos of the Donald Trump administration, which has jumbled expectations for what a Republican foreign policy looks like. This paper examines where the Democrats might be headed on foreign policy — in opposition, for the coming 2020 presidential campaign, and for their eventual return to the White House in 2021 or later — focusing on the arguments of Congressional Democrats who might have a future in national politics. 

Foreign policy did not play a major role in the 2016 primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and the de facto Democratic foreign policy may be a continuation of Obama’s championing of the liberal international order mixed with pragmatic strategic restraint. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has articulated this “progressive foreign policy” direction most vocally. This Obamanian path competes with a somewhat more interventionist liberal hawk camp, including Clinton and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, and a more critical left, which claimed victory over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement during the primary and which includes Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a sharp critic of regime-change military interventions. 

With Democrats more committed to multilateralism and diplomacy, particularly compared with Trump, America’s liberal democratic allies and partners will welcome the return of the party to the White House, but the post-Trump clean-up job will be Herculean and will require the rebuilding of Washington’s diplomatic apparatus itself. Congress is also playing an important role on foreign policy in the Trump era and Democrats must work with their colleagues across the aisle to mitigate Trump’s damage. Democrats should sharpen their foreign policy skills and debates in search of solutions to prevent catastrophic wars and ameliorate international problems. This includes finding a proactive and sensible policy toward Russia, despite the politicization of all things Russian in the aftermath of the 2016 election.

A paper on the Republicans is forthcoming from GMF colleagues. I also wrote a related blog piece on Bernie Sanders' foreign policy speech in September for GMF's Out of Order blog on Medium. 

Welcome / Reflections on the Election in France

Welcome to my new website. I'm Ted Reinert, I'm a 34-year-old American living in northern Virginia, and I spend much of my time thinking about politics in wider Europe, in my own country, and around the world. I'm planning to use this space to promote my published writings and offer some additional longer-than-140-character commentary, largely on matters of international affairs and politics, but occasionally on some of my other interests like cinema and travel (though I love Twitter as a news source and way of sharing good journalism and more). Since I was last active on my Blogspot site The Penguin Revolutions, I've been working as program officer at the Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, a heavily editorial role working with brilliant fellows on topics like liberal order, religion, Russia, and Germany. I've written and presented some of my own commentary in recent years - most recently on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to the Trump White House (on Al Jazeera, which can be seen here and here, and on the Academy website) - but am planning more of this going forward as the Academy closes its doors - journalism was my first career and I love writing.

Five years ago, living in Brussels and working as a researcher at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I visited the northern French metropolis of Lille on a day trip for the second round of the French presidential election, and blogged about it. Sharply critical of Germany's reticence to take steps that might actually solve the euro crisis, I welcomed François Hollande's victory (as did hundred of people on Lille's Place du General de Gaulle), while keeping my eye on the long campaign in my own country, which thankfully resulted in Barack Obama's reelection. In my view, Obama remains the smartest, wisest, and most inspiring political leader of our time, prudent with restraint in foreign policy and successful domestically despite scorched-earth opposition. Hollande, for his part, wasn't so bad. But vexing problems of providing good stable, jobs amidst technological change and global competition continue to haunt the United States and Europe alike, and so do the old xenophobic nationalist demons. Illiberalism has been on the march since May 2012 - Vladimir Putin tightening authoritarianism in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan doing the same in Turkey, Viktor Orban consolidating "illiberal democracy" in Hungary, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's coup and crackdown in Egypt, continued carnage in Syria, the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Poland's fall to a vengeful Law and Justice Party, the victory of the mendacious Brexiteers, and the tragic twists that unbelievably brought us U.S. President Donald Trump. Against all this, Merkel's frustrating inflexibility in the management of the common European currency doesn't seem so bad. (Although it too is dangerous. I'm worried about Italy). 

France has averted a catastrophe far right vs. far left runoff with the first round first-place finish of Emmanuel Macron (an alumnus of the German Marshall Fund's Marshall Memorial Fellowship program, by the way, and we're very proud). Macron waved the flag of the European Union, and it helped him to victory. The dike has continued to hold against the far right in continental Western Europe, as Sylvie Kauffmann points out - perhaps the post-World War II wariness of nationalism is stronger there, perhaps the politicians of the center right have simply been more principled there than in the United States and United Kingdom. The defeat of Marine Le Pen is highly likely - and France doesn't have an electoral college to get in the way - but one can't be too complacent. Nor, in defeat, will she be spent as a political force. 

But a President Macron would have his work cut out for him, governing without an established party behind him, and challenging the German position on the euro to try to rebalance the European Union economy - in a German election year. On that note, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis's account of his dealings with Minister Macron two years ago is interesting. 

Thanks for reading.