I M MI G RATI O N I M MI G RATI O N
Humanizing Migrants Vladimir Putin specializes in turning refugees into pawns. Amid the mass migration from Ukraine, Europe must learn how to handle the push and pull of conflict.
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
F
or the past three decades, Europe’s leaders have pursued a noble strategy to prevent conflict using trade, aid, and diplomacy. But their reliance on soft power has had an unintended consequence: it has left them divorced from reality.
Soft-power tools are honorable and often pragmatic methods of conflict
prevention and, at times, resolution. Just look at America’s Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the Second World War, or the foreign aid provided today by the wealthy West to smaller and poorer nations. However, as we now see, it is deluded to conclude that evil men can be stopped by soft power alone. In the months since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Europeans have been reminded of the necessity of having a wellfunded and well-trained military. But a key battlefield in the conflict playing out in Ukraine continues to be overlooked: immigration policy. This is, of course, nothing new: just as soft
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the founder of the AHA Foundation. Her latest book is Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights (Harper, 2021). 96
H O O VER DI GEST • Summer 2022
