Globsec 2014 Summary Brochure

The Leading Foreign Policy and Security Forum in Central Europe Shaping the Transatlantic Strategic Agenda

14 – 16 May 2014

Summary

www.globsec.org

Table Of Contents The GLOBSEC Story

5

Executive Summary & Recommendations

6

Full Report

12

Night Owl Sessions

36

Dinner Sessions

37

Policy Sessions

44

Gala Dinner

46

GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum 2014

48

Business Fora

50

City Talks

51

Tweets 54 About us 55

The GLOBSEC Story GLOBSEC began in 2005 as a small initiative of several students led by Róbert Vass, now CEO and Executive Vice-President of Strategy Council. Although they lacked significant funding and no major foundation or institution supported them in their first steps, their dedication and clear vision motivated them to pursue their goal.

“GLOBSEC is a true success story for Slovakia and Central Europe. We wanted to put Bratislava and Central Europe on the map of transatlantic thinking and to move the region from the periphery to the centre of international agenda debate,” said Róbert Vass, the founder of GLOBSEC. GLOBSEC has quickly showed its viability and gained support of government institutions, particularly the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, as well as nongovernmental organisations. This institutional backing has allowed GLOBSEC to grow both is size and importance.

In several years, GLOBSEC has risen from humble beginnings to become the premier foreign policy and security forum in Central Europe. GLOBSEC formally and informally raises the influence of Central Europe in global affairs. The regional dimension of the conference is emphasised by the participation of high-level decision-makers from the Visegrad Group and beyond.

Róbert Vass Executive Vice President Central European Strategy Council Founder of the GLOBSEC Forum

GLOBSEC is considered to be one of the top five conferences of its kind in the world. It is a vibrant platform that helps to shape international debate. The most influential experts from leading European and transatlantic thinktanks, academia, business leaders and politicians come to GLOBSEC to discuss issues that make headlines in the global media.

INTERESTING FACTS

Milan Solár GLOBSEC Director Managing Director Slovak Atlantic Commission

 The first GLOBSEC conference in 2005 was attended by about 100 people. In 2014, the number of participants exceeded 800.  In 2005, GLOBSEC hosted 27 speakers from 13 countries. Nine years later, the conference welcomed 147 speakers from 34 countries. It was covered by 216 media staff from 17 countries.  In the first year, GLOBSEC consisted of 2 keynote speeches and 4 roundtable debates. In 2014, the Forum introduced 11 main panel discussions and chats, 4 night owl sessions, 2 keynote speeches, 14 dinner sessions, 3 business fora, 5 public discussions under the umbrella of the GLOBSEC City Talks series and the GLOBSEC Young Leader´s Forum.  The average age of the organising team of the first GLOBSEC was 20 years. Even today, the GLOBSEC team is much younger than is usual at conferences of its kind.  About 90 members of the core organising team and 60 members of the support technical staff are involved in preparation of GLOBSEC. The first GLOBSEC in 2005 was organised by a core group of ten people.

Summary | 5

globsec 2014 Executive Summary & Recommendations The Bratislava Global Security Forum, taking place in Slovakia from May 14–16, 2014, was dominated by the evolving crisis accross the border with Ukraine. A select number of other topics also featured prominently on the agenda, such as the NATO summit in September, the future of Afghanistan, the prospects for Visegrad Group and Central European cooperation, security and privacy in the cyberworld, the rise of populism in European elections, and the future of the EU. In addition, GLOBSEC’s smaller, informal fora brought insights and recommendations on a host of other themes, which can be found in the full report from the conference. Recommended actions are marked with a star («).

1. UKRAINE (AND BEYOND) Shedding light on Russia’s objectives in Ukraine and beyond was GLOBSEC’s single most vexing challenge, with some speakers, including at senior political level, expressing resignation on “reading Mr. Putin’s mind” and focusing instead on “judging Moscow by its actions”.

By all accounts, however, there was more clarity about Moscow’s objectives here in Central Europe, given the historical experience with Russia, than in Brussels or other European capitals. Opinions converged on the reemergence of geopolitics in European and international relations. Russia seeks to recreate the Russian empire, with its old spheres of influence and enough strategic depth to protect itself from military attack. One essential aspect can be found on President Putin’s home front; this is an effort to strengthen his grip over public opinion and the political system. With the idea of “Eurasia”, buttressed as it were by a social conservative philosophy, a countervision to European integration has emerged, warned Timothy Snyder of the Institute for Human Sciences.

Masked as a trade agreement, the Eurasian Union in fact represents a cultural, ideological and political challenge whose goal is to reduce the European Union into a politically fragmented economic bloc and to prevent, most importantly, the emergence of a common energy policy.

An accompanying risk would be the decoupling of the transatlantic bond.

The crisis in Ukraine, once again, caught the West by surprise, which may point to yet another serious failure of our early warning capabilities. The issue is not merely technical; many have pointed to an all-out “illusion” entertained by the West not only about Russia’s intentions, but about the world at large. A fundamental difference of worldview has existed between Russia and, most notably, the European Union, which has now come to the fore with full force.

Recommendations are those of the Central European Strategy Council, the conference organiser. They are largely based on opinions expressed at the GLOBSEC Bratislava Security Forum 2014.

1

Summary | 6

 Accelerate the understanding of the nature and magnitude of the challenge underlying Russia’s current behavior. If in doubt, err on the side of geopolitics.  Keep the means of communications with Russia open and consider creating special channels to better understand Moscow’s intentions and to reduce the risk of miscalculation.  Improve analytical and intelligence capabilities, including the sharing of information, in order to better understand fast-paced and complex situations.

globsec 2014 Executive Summary & Recommendations  Reinstate critical analysis as a basis for policy, instead of wishful thinking. Both NATO and the EU must enable frank discussion at the highest political level.  Maintain international pressure on Russia through diplomatic, political, and economic means (sanctions). Continue increasing NATO’s military presence in the East of the Alliance’s territory.

In Ukraine itself, Russia will voluntarily accept the country’s closer association neither with NATO nor with the European Union. Military invasion into the East, followed by regional war, cannot be excluded. At the very least, Russia will continue trying to destabilise the country to prevent its drifting further West. However, there was consensus that Ukraine was likely to survive as a unified state, rather than splintering into the East and West.  Support the emergence of legitimate national institutions in Ukraine, particularly through parliamentary elections, including through assistance, advice, and monitoring. Let the people of Ukraine decide their country’s constitutional arrangement independently.  The EU should step forward with a robust response by giving Ukraine a European perspective beyond the EU association agreement.  Substantiate the non-recognition policy towards Crimea, e.g. by discouraging European investment or by imposing visas on individuals from politics and business.  Assist Ukraine militarily, both bilaterally and through NATO and the EU. Individual Allies should consider providing packages of military assistance, defensive equipment, and intelligence assets.

ing nationalist policies, based on misguided historical myths, that caused tragedy in ex-Yugoslavia. A reversal of the successful 1990s, when the nations in the region, for the first time in history, started to see their future in the same way, namely in Euroatlantic integration, is a distinct possibility, with the fruits of Western engagement squandered. Russia’s close relations with some countries in the region should not be underestimated.  Provide a clear European and Atlantic perspective for all Western Balkan nations. EU and NATO members should intensify their support to local governments to help them pursue reforms, fulfill the accession criteria and become full-fledged members in the near future.

Globally, other major actors are watching attentively.

What is truly at stake in Ukraine are the basic principles of the global order. There is considerable concern in other parts of the world about borders being changed by force, underlined US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

If geopolitics prevails, decisions will be made in China and elsewhere that favour military solutions over a world order based on the freedom of choice for all states.  Seize on the opportunities for promoting a rulesbased world order and create coalitions of pressure on Russia by actively reaching out to partners around the world.

Mr. Putin’s attack on Ukraine is but the first step in a much larger conflict. In Russia’s neighbourhood, Moscow seems determined to solidify its control over, or at least destabilise, the former members of the Soviet Union, including the Baltic states, Georgia, Moldova, as well as Belarus and Kazachstan, both of whom are now members of the Eurasian Union. Russia may reach even deeper into NATO and EU countries to attempt the same in its former Central European satellites.  Rethink and resource the EU’s Eastern Partnership in order to make association with, and eventual membership in, the EU more attractive than the Russiacentered alternative, the Eurasian Union.  Enlarge NATO, both to continue its long-term Open Door policy based on the freedom of nations to choose their alliances, and to prevent these nations from Russian intimidation. On the earliest occasion, invite Montenegro to become a NATO member and give Georgia the Membership Action Plan. Press Greece (and Macedonia) to a final resolution of their dispute.

In the Western Balkans, noted Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, the Ukrainian crisis now risks to be opening room for the reemergence of the destabilisSummary | 7

tecting international stability, particularly around Europe, as well as its more active political engagement in Central and Eastern Europe, are strongly desirable.  The Visegrad Four, being on the frontline, must hold together and drive the regional and transatlantic agenda.

A comprehensive EU toolbox. Difficult as it may be, the West must deal with all of the “five crises” related to Ukraine: the crisis of association with the EU; the crisis of revolutionary change against a failed political class; the problem of Russian aggression; the threat of gas cut-offs to Europe; and the problem of world order. This complexity requires a comprehensive approach; the instruments for dealing with the crisis will have to come from the political/military, but also the economic and social toolboxes. Consensus exists on the broad objectives, in terms of “upholding Ukraine’s unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”. However, serious differences have emerged on policy, including the sanctions and the eventual membership of Eastern neighbours in the EU.

The proper mindset. Security, prosperity and freedom must no longer be taken for granted. Striving for peace in no way implies weakness or pacifism. Russia understands the language of strength. Germany is key to the “awakening” of Europe. The possible unraveling of the European order should be enough to force a wake up on both sides of the Atlantic. A number of speakers exhorted the West to get real about the world; the amount of defence spending and the accelerating pace of military modernisation outside Europe illustrates the dangerous change happening around us.  Forge a common transatlantic response to Russia’s actions, based on commitments from both sides.  The US should resist temptation to retreat into isolationism, given the geopolitical challenge across Eurasia. In the wake of the “Asian pivot”, US policy must be Europeanised.  Europe must get serious about the threat, and about defence in general. This is a moment for leadership; the political class needs to patiently explain to the skeptical publics that legitimate modernisation of the armed forces, based in legitimate institutions (EU and NATO), is overdue. Concrete commitments from Allies on the Eastern border are necessary.  A strong leading role of Germany in international affairs and its greater defence contribution to proSummary | 8

 Europe needs both firmness and unity, rooted in values and interests, and translated into a consistent effort at bridging differences on policy and tools.  Revamp the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) based on the conclusions of the European Council on Defence in December 2013. Moreover, accelerate discussions on the revision of the EU Security Strategy and the reform of the EU Battlegroup Concept.  Step up the ongoing effort in tracking dirty money in Western banks.  Use EU law enforcement tools to counter human rights abuses.  The Visegrad Four should lead the push for bringing Ukraine, as well as other Eastern Partnership and Western Balkans countries, fully into Erasmus, Europe’s program for student and teacher exchanges.

Sanctions are biting Russia on the economic front; the issue is whether and when this translates into policy, given that domestic political support for President Putin is exceptionally high. History has shown that sanctions are only likely to succeed if they are underpinned by a targeted strategy and accompanied by actions on other fronts, including the diplomatic and the military. Russian countersanctions are likely to bite as well, and would do so unevenly in different EU member states. The Visegrad Group may support more robust sanctions if the burden is spread more evenly.  Think through the objective of sanctions relative to the strategic objectives of Western policy against Russia, in particular to deter it from attempts to change borders by force, and tailor/target the measures accordingly.  Draw a red line for triggering sectoral sanctions against Russia, and do not flinch.

globsec 2014 Executive Summary & Recommendations  Introduce more solidarity and mutual support between EU Member States to overcome negative effects of sanctions.

Energy. Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas has clearly restricted its political options in the current crisis.

Moscow has a track record of using oil and gas supplies to intimidate and control its neighbors, some of whom have learned their lessons. The gas cut-offs of 2009 have already led to significant improvements in Central Europe’s energy security. Proposals such as Poland’s idea of an energy union would boost domestic growth, reduce prices, and provide an important instrument of foreign policy. Given its overreliance on energy exports to sustain the national budget, including the modernisation of its military and security apparatus, Russia is sensitive to the prices of energy on world markets; it would be weakened if global supply could be increased, leading to a reduction in the price of oil. Increased US exports would also boost Europe’s energy security.  Build on Polish Prime Minister Tusk’s proposal for an EU energy union in order to advance towards a common energy market across the European Union.  Complete the outstanding interconnectors between the energy infrastructure of Central and Eastern Europe and in the EU’s North-South dimension to enable reverse flow and imports of energy from outside the EU.  The US should further explore the option of depressing oil prices through increased production, and keep it on the table as a bargaining chip with Russia.  Further promote energy supply diversification, both in geographic terms and in terms of the energy mix, including reusables and nuclear power.

across, including to Russians in the EU and inside Russia itself.  Experts in the security community have a distinct contribution to make in convincing the politicians and the publics.  While staying independent in their reporting, Western journalists must join ranks with governments and civil society activits in countering the contorted imagery and simplistic solutions produced by populist and Russian propaganda, including on Russia’s home turf.  A new generation of Atlanticists should be empowered to become a major agent of the necessary largescale transatlantic policy change.  Strengthen cultural, student and teacher interchanges across the Atlantic, including by creating a transatlantic student and teacher exchange program, inspired

by Erasmus.

2. NATO’S ADAPTATION Defence spending, capabilities, and posture. With Russia’s moves in its neighbourhood, NATO’s core function, collective defence, has arrived centre stage. The Alliance’s credibility, however, has been undercut by continued reductions in defence spending, furthering the gap between the US and its European allies and diminishing the value

Cultural and social issues, propaganda. Thanks to an effort unseen since the end of the Cold War, Russia has scored some important victories on the front of information war with its social conservative agenda and its own depiction of events in Ukraine. These successes included the fact that the European populist right ran for European Parliament on a “pro-Russia platform” and that European public opinion, most importantly in Germany, was deeply divided on how to deal with Moscow, with many Europeans supporting the Kremlin rather than their own governments. Efforts by Russian propagandists and their proxies in EU member states to reopen the issue of the nature of the European Union have been helped in no small part by the UK’s criticism of European integration. Russia will continue trying to undermine unity in the EU and NATO. The people-topeople underpinnings of the transatlantic bond would benefit from a fresh boost. However, too few young Europeans study in the US and vice versa; Erasmus only supports intra-European exchanges.  Show greater self-confidence in our values; they are our strongest way to shape the world.  The West must find better ways of getting its message Summary | 9

of NATO for its strongest member. The heavy operational tempo in both Iraq and Afghanistan has hindered investment in future capabilities and slowed defence reform. On the other hand, ISAF in particular has brought the Western armies to unprecedented levels of prowess and interoperability, which, if sustained, will serve NATO well in the future.

As ISAF winds down and Russia emerges as a potential challenger, NATO must tackle the issue of defence spending, kick-start the modernisation of its capabilities, and determine a new defence and deterrence posture. More nations, including here in Central Europe, have committed to holding the line and eventually increasing their defence budgets, which was well received. However, Slovakia in particular still seems hesitant to draw the necessary conclusions. Poland appears determined to lead a strategy shift in the region and in NATO. NATO must prepare for the future now; there are challenges beyond Russia.

Cyber defence. Would a “cyber 9/11” be necessary, specialists asked, to uproot the prevalent international complacency? In the NATO context, there is no Article 5 threshold for cyber attack, no planning for post-attack recovery, still very little money earmarked for cyber defence, and no obligation for NATO allies to even share information on cyber threats. After a short period, when cyber appeared as a key question, traditional security threats regained prominence in the public discourse.  The US and the rest of NATO should jointly reassure Allies on the Eastern border of the Alliance. Any doubt that Allies are prepared to go to war against anyone who attacks NATO territory under Article 5 must be erased.  NATO allies must stop defence cuts and gradually increase military spending to reach the NATO target of 2% of GDP. Spending should be directed less on personnel and more on equipment, skills and training to produce credible military capabilities. If anything is immoral in this context, as NATO Secretary General Rasmussen stated, it is free-riding on others; defence investment, too, is a measure of solidarity among allies.  NATO should use its summit in Wales to review its contingency plans and determine whether they are sufficiently resourced to remain relevant. Other key issues include the sensitiveness of NATO’s intelligence system, the relevance of command and control for producing quick decisions, and the preparedness of forces for rapid deployment.  Nations should accelerate the development of military and civilian capabilities to deal with hybrid warfare, including intelligence and early warning, special forces, police forces, psychological/information ops, and cyber.  Advance and resource NATO’s agenda on cyber defence, including the provision of collective assistance to Allies.  NATO nations should invest in the exercises, training and technologies offered by the Connected Forces Initiative to preserve the impressive achievements Summary | 10

in the interoperability between their forces. Central and Eastern Europe should join Poland in providing sunstantial contributions to NATO exercises.  Establish a NATO military presence for Poland, Romania and the Baltic states that would include a significant contribution from Central and Eastern Europe.  Pursue defence collaboration to make effective use of resources, using the EU’s pooling and sharing and NATO’s smart defence projects, and regional fora such as the Visegrad Four. The Visegrad Group must start delivering on defence cooperation with concrete projects in joint training and exercises, the common battlegroup, joint defence planning and acquisitions, in order to provide new military means to NATO and the EU.  In the run-up to the V4 battlegroup’s standby period in 2016, the contributing nations should adopt a mindset, and provide the resources, that would allow the real use of the joint force if needed, across the full spectrum of scenarios, even if this means stretching the current Battlegroup Concept. Meanwhile, conditions should be created for a more permanent arrangement between the four armed forces.

3. AFGHANISTAN BEYOND 2014 While the country’s future remains challenging, the true success in Afghanistan lies in its impressive economic and social progress, which has only been achieved through the sacrifices of NATO nations and the Afghan people.

It is emblematic of what NATO can achieve when it has a common vision and a set of values that it applies on the battlefield, said General John Allen, former Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. This narrative is completely missing in the current discourse, as ISAF’s mandate winds down by the end of 2014. The story needs to be told not just by NATO officials, but most importantly, by the leaders of NATO nations and of their allies in ISAF.  Rather than eyeing the exits, the Alliance must lock in the successes achieved in Afghanistan through a continued presence, focusing on training and the fight against al-Qaida.  Afghanistan should become NATO’s long-term partner, and a partner and possible model for other states emerging from dictatorship in Central Asia.

4. WHAT EUROPEAN UNION AFTER THE 2014 VOTE? A functioning, unified and strong EU is a precondition for the survival of its member states in the next decades, given the impending decline of their demographic and economic power in global terms. During the Eurozone crisis, the EU produced decisions without proper political explanation that, unfortunately, contributed to the rise of populism and extreme nationalism. The emergence of populism represents a fundamental shift in European politics that is bound to become permanent. The big challenge is the erosion of trust in political institutions,

globsec 2014 Executive Summary & Recommendations both nationally and at the EU level. This poses a particular problem for foreign policy, which relies on citizens trusting the capacity of their leaders to deal with crises.  National politicians should stop nationalising successes and brusselising failures, which has undermined the attractiveness of the European project to the citizens.  Europe’s leaders must spend more time addressing political matters. The primary challenge is to build a new, fundamentally political, narrative for Europe, taking into account the issue of what it would mean to have no Europe at all.  Europe’s leaders have the responsibility to address the legitimate concerns of European citizens that are now expressed in illegitimate ways by populists.  The new European Commission must reengage with nations in a more political fashion to explain its initiatives and gain local ownership.  Globalisation should be taken as an opportunity, not threat: “You either shape the world around you, or you are shaped by it.”  EU institutions must bring their weight to bear on substantial, strategic matters rather than dealing with too many small things.  Central Europe’s vision is a Europe led by effective communitarian institutions rather than a directorate of big countries; is able to select strong personalities to lead its institutions; prevents a drift between the Eurozone and the rest; promotes more democratic accountability by involving national parliaments and civil society; and remains open to new members.

 Government action in cyberspace, while legitimate and necessary, has to be strictly regulated in ways that conform to the values of the respective society.  New international laws and principles must be developed for the digital world. While seeking agreement on global norms, it is important to advance pragmatically; rules will emerge on the go in order to cover problematic areas.  While recognising their cultural differences affecting the use of the internet, democracies and dictatorships should start building common ground by pragmatically agreeing on two areas: on preventing the abuse of physical control systems and on limiting cyber warfare, as suggested by former US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.  Maintain and refine the current system of internet governance. The internet must be protected from big states or big business or other interests in order to remain an open, multi-stakeholder system for the use of future generations.  Devise new and democratic ways of controlling the collection of information in order to prevent its abuse.  Governments need to systematically look at the impact of proposed security measures on freedom, and on the credibility of open societies in the eyes of the world.  Strong leadership in a transatlantic framework is needed to fortify democratic principles and the resilience of our systems and democratic societies.

5. S ecurity and Privacy in a hyper-connected world “Cyber politics will be for the 21st century what geopolitics was for the 19th century,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said to the GLOBSEC audience. The rapid increase in broadband coverage correlates with economic and social development, creating enormous opportunity.

On the other hand, major challenges lie ahead, to include the reliability of electronic systems, security, privacy, and governance. The role of the private sector is major; it is in fact private business, not the state, who collects, stores and analyses the largest volume of data. A legal vacuum exists, internationally and nationally, which, however complex, has to be addressed because technologies are evolving rapidly, argued Marietje Schaake, Member of the European Parliament. The key challenge for a global order in cyberspace is cultural: the West should not assume that the right to communicate freely, which underpins our conception of the internet, is universally shared; other values may trump freedom of speech in other parts of the world. In the wake of the Snowden revelations, the rising public mistrust about security measures as such, but also about the US as Europe’s preferred partner, begs for political answers.

Summary | 11

globsec 2014 Full Report Official Welcome and Introductory Remarks The Bratislava Global Security Forum 2014 was opened

by Ambassador Rastislav Káčer, Honorary President of the Central European Strategy Council, who cordially welcomed all participants. He extended a special salute to the five prime ministers, the NATO Secretary General and to some fifteen ministers present at GLOBSEC this year. The Slovak Atlantic Commission had managed to elevate GLOBSEC to become a substantial regional platform for dialogue on all matters related to strategy.

Ambassador Káčer also acknowledged several anniversaries this year: the 10th anniversary since NATO and the EU opened doors to Slovakia and other new democracies; the 15th anniversary of NATO’s first post-Cold War enlargement, marked by the accession of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary; and the 25th anniversary of freedom in Central Europe, resulting from the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this context, Ambassador Káčer reminded that security, prosperity and freedom ought better not to be taken for granted. Unfortunately, the crisis in Ukraine vindicated those who, in spreading this message, had often been called “paranoid”. He also recalled the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, which was a strong memento that Europe did “go wild” in its past and that every individual should do their utmost to prevent it from happening again.

Káčer: “Security, prosperity and freedom must not be taken for granted.”

After thanking all the institutions that supported GLOBSEC, Mr. Káčer gave the floor to Miroslav Lajčák, the Slovak Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs. Minister Lajčák welcomed all guests to Bratislava. He called Slovakia a country that was firmly

Summary | 12

anchored in the core of the EU and NATO, a member who “believed in solidarity, but requested responsibility”. Recalling Prime Minister Fico’s commitment at last year’s GLOBSEC to play a firm role in stabilizing the Eurozone, Mr. Lajčák said that Slovakia delivered on the promise, including by bringing down its deficit to under 3% of GDP. European efforts to save the Euro had been successful, but challenges persist; the EU would have to remain operational and responsive to global trends and to the “growing multitude of interests of governments and citizens”. He argued for more democratic legitimacy; better EU legislation favoring competitiveness; and the promotion of unity rather than a multi-speed Europe.

Turning to Ukraine, Russia’s breach of international norms was unacceptable. This was a wake-up call for Europe, a time to reaffirm its values, defend its rules, and utilise its institutions. Slovakia was among the first to visit the new government of Ukraine as part of a Visegrad delegation; assisted with the recovery of Maidan protesters; provided development aid; was the first country to provide humanitarian assistance to the soldiers and their families resettled from Crimea; and recently signed reverse gas flow agreements to boost Ukraine’s energy security.

Europe also needed to draw wider conclusions from the crisis. First, revamp its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in line with the conclusions of the European Council. Second, complete the outstanding interconnectors related to energy security. Third, seriously rethink both the relationship with Russia and the Eastern Partnership, which Russia had never really accepted. Relations with Russia must not return to business as usual, but Russia must become a part of the solution. Moldova and Georgia were successful Eastern Partners that deserved to be “adequately rewarded” for their performance.

According to Mr. Lajčák, the crisis in Ukraine had enabled Slovakia to fully comprehend the importance of NATO to its security. Agression against our borders remained unlikely, he said, but we now lived in a far more dangerous neighbourhood. The steps taken thus far made it “crystal clear that NATO is dead serious about defending its

globsec 2014 Full Report

territory and that Article 5 is fully valid”. As a front-line country, Slovakia was aware of its responsibilities and ready to carry its share of the burden: “Increasing defence spending and capabilities will be a part of the solution.

The only question seems to be when rather than if.”

Lajčák: “Increasing defence spending and capabilities will be part of the solution. The only question is when rather than if.”

Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs János Martonyi, speaking in his capacity of GLOBSEC’s Co-Chair and on behalf of the Visegrad Four Presidency, congratulated Slovakia on the achievement that the GLOBSEC conference represented; it was “probably the most important flagship Forum for discussing security issues primarily, but not exclusively, from a regional perspective.” The Forum was important for increasing the weight of the Visegrad Group in European and transatlantic policies, which was a continuous ambition. The nature of this year’s anniversaries, Mr. Martonyi said, might suggest that the world was becoming better. Nevertheless, it continued to change, which gave cause to reviewing two conventional wisdoms. The first was that the world was flat, rational, and therefore predictable. In fact, the Ukrainian crisis brought home the realisation that the environment was highly unpredictable. The second was that territory no longer mattered and the post-Westphalian model had prevailed. In reality, however, territory did matter and had become a security issue again. Not only did it condition access to food, water and energy, but, for Russia at least, territorial space meant security. The key take-away, Mr. Martonyi said, was that peace, prosperity and security must not be taken for granted. Notions such as “cordon sanitaire” were making their comeback. This meant that NATO’s core function, collective defence, has become much more relevant, a line that Central Europe had long preached to its allies. In respect to the EU’s security, the Ukrainian crisis has fully exposed the “fundamental and strategic interest” of Central and Eastern Europe in strengthening the EU’s CFSP. As a concequence of this new sense of urgency, the completion of interconnectors was essential for ensuring energy security.

Martonyi: “The Ukrainian crisis has fully exposed the fundamental strategic interest of Central and Eastern Europe in strengthening the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.”

Minister Martonyi then spoke about the successes of Visegrad cooperation. By entering the EU and NATO, all V4 countries have strengthened their geopolitical and geoeconomic positions. Moreover, following their EU accession, the group had also become more cohesive, hence increasing its influence on shaping the European agenda. The V4 has also become much stronger in its external relations. While retaining a distinct identity, the grouping had progressively opened up to include other partners. These “V4 plus” formats, chaired by different Ministers, now allowed for pragmatic collaboration with neighbors, but also global actors, including the US, Turkey, Japan or Egypt. Defence was recently added as a new dimension of V4 cooperation, centered on the improvement of capabilities.

Ending on a positive note, Minister Martonyi said that Visegrad was now ready and able to live up to all its regional and global responsibilities.

Summary | 13

Gowing: “The Ukrainian crisis, once again, caught the West by surprise.”

the audience to recall the Russian leader’s speech in Kyiv on July 27, 2013, which made clear that Mr. Putin’s “war against Ukraine” was but the first step in a much larger conflict. In what Kremlin propagandists dubbed the “fourth World War”, Russia’s main strategic objective lay in decoupling the so-called Anglo-Saxon World (including Poland and the Baltic states) from Continental Europe and forging a new alliance between the latter and Russia. Former Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleh Rybachuk argued that Mr. Putin’s plan, apparently built on the expectation that he would be welcomed by half of Ukraine as a liberator, had collapsed. Confronted with the Ukrainians’ enmity, the alliance of Russian special forces and “terrorists” was now hardly able to sustain the conflict in “two rather small cities” in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. When asked whether the ongoing counterterrorist operation did not risk sparking a military confrontation with Russia, he defended the government’s course by recalling that staying peaceful when Crimea was being annexed sent the wrong signal to Moscow. Mr. Rybachuk exhorted Europe to remain united as a political union, rather than allowing itself to be reduced to an economic bloc, which he said was Mr. Putin’s “dream”. For Mr. Rybachuk, only a united Europe standing by a united Ukraine could provide a viable answer to the plans of the Kremlin.

In his kick-off remarks, Minister Rinkēvičs complained that despite a lot of talking taking place, the situation was not moving in the right direction; in the short run, a desirable course should include holding country-wide Presidential elections, stopping the fighting by separatist groups, starting an inclusive political dialogue, and withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border. Minister Martonyi admitted he was not aware of Russia’s exact objectives, which created uncertainty and unpredictability.

Europe needed continued firmness and unity, as demonstrated by the EU Foreign Affairs Council on May 12. What was truly at stake in Ukraine, said Mr. Martonyi, were the basic principles of global order. Probing the question of Moscow’s objectives, Mr. Putin’s former advisor Andrei Illarionov (Cato Institute, Washington) weighed in from

Timothy Snyder argued that the most significant development over the long haul, reinforced by Russia’s aggression, may be the reconstruction, or “disambiguation” of Ukrainian identity, including in the country’s East, with its originally less nationalist and more pro-Russian leanings.

To stress the magnitude of the challenge for the West, Mr. Snyder went on to say that if Russia’s attempts in Ukraine succeeded on a larger scale, the European Union would cease to function: “The European order now hangs in Ukraine in the same way that it hung in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s.” He warned that the idea of “Eurasia” is no less than a counter-vision to European integration. Masked as a trade agreement, Eurasia in fact represented a cultural, ideological and political challenge aiming to fragment the European Union into a group of states without, most

GLOBSEC Brainstorming on Ukraine The opening panel, the first in a series of exchanges about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, featured Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs János Martonyi and his Latvian counterpart Edgars Rinkēvičs, Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna Timothy Snyder, and former Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine and Chairman of the Centre UA in Kyiv Oleh Rybachuk. The session was conceived as a brainstorming in order to leverage the expertise of the audience as much as that of the panelists. Led by international broadcaster Nik Gowing, the first panel of GLOBSEC evolved against the backdrop of the first national Round Table held in Kyiv.

Quoting the Ukrainian Interior Minister as saying that Russia was now engaged in an information war against his country, which was “a lot worse than special forces”, Mr. Gowing noted that events in Ukraine were evolving very fast; the situation was complex, rife with paradoxes and difficult to understand. This crisis, once again, caught the West by surprise, relegating previous analyses “to the dustbin”.

Summary | 14

globsec 2014 Full Report importantly, a common energy policy, which could then be easily manipulated by Russia. This counter-vision was rejected for the first time by people on the Maidan; this was an unexpected setback for Mr. Putin and locked Russia and the West into a much larger conflict evolving faster than Moscow anticipated. Mr. Snyder did not expect Ukraine to disintegrate, since its national identity was now more robust and its internal problems were being addressed out of necessity.

Snyder: “Europe is only taking the first baby steps towards understanding the seriousness of the challenge of social conservatism and ‘Eurasia’.

Masked as a trade agreement, ‘Eurasia’ in fact represents a cultural, ideological and political challenge aiming to fragment the European Union into a group of states without a common energy policy, which could then be easily manipulated by Russia.”

Joining GLOBSEC from Moscow, Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, argued that at a minimum, Russia wanted Ukraine to stay away from NATO, introduce Russian as a second official language and “add an élite component through gubernatorial legislative elections in the regions, accountable to Russian voters in the South East”. In response, Mr. Rybachuk said he recognised the last condition from past talks with Moscow, but refused what he called the Russians’ “inherent right” to be represented by anyone other than people who stood and won in elections. He said that Russia would not accept Ukraine’s accession not only to NATO, but also to the EU. Mr. Illarionov interpreted this as Mr. Putin’s desire to either have Ukraine under his control or not to have it as a sovereign state. Mr. Rinkēvičs said that Russia was determined to keep Ukraine unstable at all costs. He did not think, though, that Russia wanted to annex any other territories of Ukraine beyond Crimea. In his view, Moscow’s goal was to prevent Ukraine from entering the EU and by way of the Eurasian Union, to recreate the Russian empire. This was supported by Minister Martonyi,

who pointed at the geopolitical, the geoeconomic and the “traumatic” psychological effects of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Russia.

On the question of Ukraine’s future, the speakers expressed confidence that the country would survive as a unified state. Mr. Martonyi noted that Moscow itself has not yet decided if it wanted to partition or preserve Ukraine.

In regards to the country’s constitutional arrangement, all speakers deferred the issue to the people of Ukraine, while noting that “decentralisation” was necessary and, in fact, useful. However, Russian idea of federalizing Ukraine was treated with considerable caution. Minister Rinkēvičs believed that the Ukrainians increasingly understood the lessons from the Baltic experience: the more Russia pushes its neighbors in some direction, the less inclined they are to accept such pressure. With Moscow taking all the decisions, Russia itself was hardly a federation, Mr. Rybachuk argued, which is a fact that needed the fullest public exposure. Mr. Snyder warned about the “toxicity” of the term federation as proposed by Russia, noting by way of an example a specific feature in Russia’s own federative model in that the regions could block foreign policy decisions. He also underscored that federations usually sprang from agreements between pre-existing regional polities rather than from centralised states devolving authority.

Moving on to further brainstorming between the panelists and the audience, Andrew Michta (Center for European Policy Analysis, Washington, D.C.) expressed concern that a discussion in the West about the merits of a federation for Ukraine, a concept not put forward by Ukraine itself, amounted to endorsing Mr. Putin’s attempt at imposing solutions on a sovereign country from the outside. (Applause from the audience.)

Michta: “Discussion in the West about the merits of a federation for Ukraine, a concept not put forward by Ukraine itself, amounts to endorsing President Putin’s attempt at imposing solutions on a sovereign country from the outside.”

Summary | 15

Germany. In terms of substance, Moscow succeeded in starting a debate about the structure of Ukraine and in “reopening the issue of the nature of the European Union”. For Mr. Rinkēvičs, the level of Russian propaganda “surpassed that of the Cold War”; the EU would have to find ways of getting its message across to Russians in the EU and in Russia itself.

Grabbe: “There is more clarity about Moscow’s objectives here in Central Europe than there is in Brussels.”

Among factors preventing the EU from taking a more assertive stance on Russia, experts present at this debate cited energy dependence, the rise of right wing ideology, pro-Russian sentiments beyond conservative populism, the fear of irritating Russia, and Russian propaganda itself.

It was pointed out that Russia would continue trying to undermine unity in the EU and NATO. Mr. Snyder said the European élite was only taking the “first baby steps towards understanding the seriousness of the challenge” of social conservatism and Eurasia. He also underlined that domestic politics was primordial in Mr. Putin’s adoption of an aggressive ideological and foreign policy stance since 2013.

Heather Grabbe (Open Society European Policy Institute, Brussels) said that there was more clarity about Moscow’s objectives here in Central Europe, given the historical experience with Russia, than there was in Brussels, where member states were struggling to define and reconcile their national views, especially those for whom energy was a major issue, including Germany as the key actor. Elaborating on the question of EU objectives vis-à-vis Ukraine, both ministers pointed out that consensus existed on the broad objectives, as reflected in the Council Conclusions in terms of “upholding Ukraine’s unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”. However, they readily conceded that differences existed on policy and tools, including sanctions and the eventual membership of Eastern neighbours in the EU. Mr. Rybachuk expressed his appreciation for receiving “important new signals” from Brussels, namely that the Association Agreement was not the last stage in Ukraine’s relations with the EU, and that the EU was now speaking with one voice.

While recognizing the clarity of objectives at the governmental level, Mr. Snyder said that Russia had nevertheless scored some important victories on the information war front, including the populist right running for European Parliament on a “pro-Russia platform” and the public’s deeply divided opinion, most importantly in Summary | 16

Turning to sanctions, Minister Martonyi argued that sanctions were biting Russia on the economic front, but it remained questionable whether this could be translated politically, given that domestic political support for Mr. Putin was exceptionally high. A much greater impact would come from reduced oil prices if production could be raised at the global level. However, as Russian countersanctions were likely to bite as well, and would do so in an uneven fashion in different EU member states, Mr. Martonyi called for more solidarity and equitable burdensharing in the EU. Hungary was against an economic war on Russia. Mr. Illarionov suggested that the Kremlin did not take the sanctions applied thus far seriously, since all possible losses were incomparable relative to what was at stake for Russia. He advised that the West think through the objective of sanctions relative to its strategic objectives in Ukraine and elsewhere, and tailor the measures accordingly. Mr. Snyder argued it was important to maintain the sanctions, even if their effect was unclear, as they gave the international community a measure of policy and a clear moral grounding. Mr. Rybachuk noticed that the West was learning fom the Ukrainian “test case”. In particular, he argued for stepping up the ongoing effort in tracking dirty money in Western banks: “Stop having our crooks as your VIP clients.” Minister Martonyi and Mr. Rybachuk agreed that a red line needed to be drawn for triggering the “third level” of sanctions targeting specific economic sectors. Mr. Rybachuk suggested the threshold should be breached if Russia directly invades Ukraine or brutally disrupts the upcoming presidential election. Marcin Terlikowski (Polish Institute of International Affairs, Warsaw) pointed to the importance of discerning the “devil in the detail” when considering sectoral sanctions.

Europe’s high-tech sector, for example, depended heavily

globsec 2014 Full Report on rare earth elements imported from Russia, to which only China might be an alternative.

Rybachuk: “A red line must be drawn for triggering the third level of sanctions on Russia against specific economic sectors.”

The speakers felt that sanctions should be supplemented by additional measures. Mr. Snyder said the EU should use its law enforcement tools to counter human rights abuses or money laundering. It should also forge a common energy policy. In his view, the current political momentum should be used for multiplying investment into technologies that would replace oil and gas over the long term, rendering Russia’s weapons of coercion obsolete. Mr. Rinkēvičs said that Europe must deal with its internal challenges, including its struggle over values and the EU’s institutional setup. It should also substantiate its non-recognition policy towards Crimea, e.g. by discouraging European investment or imposing visas on individuals from politics and business.

the Helsinki Final Act. Neither these rules nor the West itself had changed, she said, but it was President Putin who decided that these rules no longer applied to him.

Asked about Russia’s intentions, Mrs. Nuland asserted that Washington “stopped trying to read Mr. Putin’s mind long ago”. The question now being put to Moscow was why would a stable Ukraine, supported economically by the West and thus a good trading partner to Russia, not be in Moscow’s interest? Following the annexation of Crimea, Russia seemed determined to “take another chunk of Ukraine” in the country’s East, fueling concerns about where this would stop. If Russia continued to destabilise Ukraine in the run-up to the “critical” presidential

A Conversation with Victoria Nuland Featuring US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and moderated by Nik Gowing, the session focused on one of the Forum’s key topics – the crisis in Ukraine.

Nuland: “We’ve seen this ploy before. You light the fire, come in as the fireman and occupy the building.”

Mrs. Nuland confirmed that the ongoing crisis was a challenge not simply to Ukraine and the transatlantic relationship, but also to world order. Moreover, she emphasised that there was considerable concern about the stability of borders and their sustainability in other parts of the world. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been encouraged to undergo reform, which would allow it to join Western institutions. That presupposed adherence to international order based on rules such as

election of May 25, 2014, the US would lead a global drive for deeper, sectoral sanctions to deter further Russian action. The current sanctions were starting to bite: Russia expended USD 30 billion to prop up the ruble, suffered a capital flight of USD 60 billion, its bond ratings depreciated to “almost junk status”, and the IMF predicted a recession in Russia.

Asked whether the US was prepared to sustain a larger military footprint on the flanks of NATO Europe, Mrs. Nuland highlighted that the forward deployment of forces was now a NATO mission, with more than half of all allies offering assets. She said the mission would continue at least until the end of 2014, with a reassessment at the autumn summit. As regards Russia’s participation in a possible peacekeeping force on Ukrainian territory, she said it was hard to imagine that Ukraine itself would invite such a contribution: “We’ve seen this ploy before [in Georgia and Crimea]. You light the fire, come in as the fireman and occupy the building.”

Summary | 17

Session 1 – Snowed Under: Balancing Out Security and Privacy The next session was chaired by Jason Healey, Director of the Atlantic Council of the United States’ Cyber Statecraft Initiative. The panelists included Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Shlomo Shpiro, Political Studies Director at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, and two members of the Global Commission on Internet Governance: Marietje Schaake, Member of the European Parliament, and Michael Chertoff, former US Secretary of Homeland Security and Chairman of the Chertoff Group.

Minister Bildt argued that “cyber politics will be for the 21st century what geopolitics was for the 19th century”. The most significant current development was the rapid expansion of mobile data. Herein lied a major opportunity, he said, since the increase in broadband coverage correlated with economic and social development, as could be seen especially in Africa. First among the challenges was the reliability of the systems on which our societies depend. Secondly, security against criminality, subversion, attack and cyber war needed to be provided on the Net as much as on borders, with the state playing an indispensable role. The state had a responsibility for protecting its citizens, offline and online, but government action in cyberspace had to be strictly regulated in ways that conformed to the values of the respective society. The third challenge was privacy, as highlighted by the Snowden case, from the misuse of vast amounts of data collected by governments and private companies alike.

The Minister reminded the audience that the European Court of Justice rejected the Data Retention Directive on the preservation of metadata, which sent governments back to the drawing board and into a new round of public discussion. The digital world was in need of international laws and principles, Mr. Bildt argued, which should include, inter alia, proportionality, transparency, legality and privacy. Pointing to his efforts to launch such a discussion at international fora, he said this was easier to achieve in democracies than in closed societies, but well worth trying. The fourth challenge was governance. The current system of governance must be preserved and refined in the years to come. The internet, he said, had to be protected from big states or big businesses or other interests in order to remain an “open, multi-stakeholder system”. Mr. Healey commented that objectives such as reliability and the role of private actors were too often lost in the privacy-vs-security-dominated Snowden debates. This gave cause for concern, given the fact that these issues played a key role in ensuring that the internet remained available and free for future generations.

Schaake: “Privacy and security are not a zero-sum game. They are integrally linked.”

Professor Shpiro noted that the sources of political and military power had changed over modern history, from industrial capability, through conventional forces, to nuclear weapons. Since the end of the Cold War, energy was the dominant resource and wars centered around the Persian Gulf. A new transformation was now underway, with information becoming key to the power of nations. A third of humanity was estimated to be catalogued by the intelligence services. Real privacy was an illusion. In five to ten years, technologies currently under development would alter intelligence collection and social interactions at large.

Mr. Shpiro cited examples such as fingerprint recognition at a distance, face recognition, or nanotechnologies capable of altering substance and transfering information. Virtual identities/avatars, if created on a large scale, had the potential to impact politics. The distance between reality and virtual reality would blur. Given this context, several courses of action should be pursued: limiting the concept of privacy to the intimate sphere; building better defences to protect secrets; and devising new and democratic ways of controlling the collection of information in order to prevent abuse.

Mr. Bildt added on the last point that we needed to better define our secrets in the first place, which might prevent us from having to invest so much into their protection.

Marietje Schaake argued that privacy and security were not a zero-sum game; they were “integrally linked”. The NSA revelations raised important questions about proportionality; under the guise of providing total security came a serious erosion of democratic principles, which at the same time undermined the freedom of the internet. Global norms were needed, set and abided by a number of stakeholders. First, global companies must be held accountable for transparency and the protection of vulnerabilities in their systems, especially as governments increasingly rely on private actors in the provision of public goods. Govern-

Summary | 18

globsec 2014 Full Report

ments, for their part, should take responsibility to prevent a cyber arms race or a proliferation of tools intended to ensure more security, but in the wrong hands likely to pose a serious strategic risk. For example, the now ubiquitous CCTV camera systems, if hacked, contained information that could put more people in danger than they protected.

Ultimately, the citizens were the most vulnerable to being “snowed under”. Thus, governments needed to systematically look at the impact of alleged security measures on freedom, and on the credibility of open societies in the eyes of the world. The internet could facilitate the creation of networks with a huge democratizing effect.

However, after the NSA scandal broke, Mrs. Schaake said, the promise of internet freedom made by Secretary Clinton became hollow in the eyes of Arab democratic protesters, who now saw it as an excuse for the world’s superpower to eavesdrop on them. Moreover, the difference made by the NSA between gathering intelligence on US citizens and other nationals was artificial, insulted allies and created political, economic and strategic risks. There was a need for strong leadership, particularly by the EU, to fortify democratic principles and the resilience of our systems and democratic societies. There was a risk of rising public mistrust about security measures as such, but also about the US as Europe’s partner. Indeed, Mrs. Schaake said, the NSA scandal was already negatively affecting the negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. On the risk of public perception, Mr. Bildt contended that the Europeans were more secure, but felt less secure, which represents a political challenge.

Bildt: “Following the NSA scandal, the Europeans are more secure, but feel less secure. This is a political challenge.”

Michael Chertoff, in an effort to dispel certain misconceptions about the NSA, first explained that the agency did not operate without oversight, citing the activity of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Its Metadata Program in particular provided real value in the fight against terrorism and was under tight legal constraints. He also argued that any nation, not just the US, granted more privacy to its own citizens than to other nationals. While not denying that spying on allies should differ from spying on adversaries, Secretary Chertoff dismissed the idea of doing away with

intelligence altogether. It had always been an instrument of power; he cited a passage from the Bible where God tasked Joshua to send spies to the Land of Kanaan. More fundamental, he said, was that it was in fact private business, not the state, who collected, stored and analyzed the largest volumes of data. The largest market valuation today had companies working with information for commercial purposes in mind. But there was more: “All worry about Big Brother. I worry about Little Brother. We have all become surveillance agents of each other.” Individuals’ actions might be more worrisome to personal privacy; people taking pictures in public and uploading the information, and cloud companies having the capability and presumably the legal authority to aggregate data and build detailed individual profiles. The issue of overintrusion was a difficult one. In fact, privacy required security, as companies were responsible for protecting the data of their employees from being stolen. The problem of securing the internet was no less daunting. With countries having differing conceptions of security (and crime), could criminals be kept off the Net without this providing grounds for censorship? Lastly, Mr. Chertoff argued that creating a legal order for a globalised society required a balance between obtaining/sharing the information necessary to fight crime and showing respect for different national jurisdictions.

Professor Shpiro argued that deterrence and law enforcement, two of the key security tools that worked in physical space, became obsolete in the cyber sphere. Law enforcement was by definition national and did not apply to perpetrators falling under jurisdictions on the other side of the planet. Similarly, deterrence (and retaliation) did not work against faceless teenagers. Governments needed to find new methods of deterrence deemed more suitable to today’s cyber world.

Chertoff: “The world needs a new ‘Cyber Geneva Convention’.”

Mrs. Schaake pointed to a legal vacuum, internationally as well as nationally, which, however complex, had to be addressed because technologies were evolving rapidly.

For example, no export controls existed on European-made intrusive technologies, such as hacking or mass surveillance devices, that were now causing human rights violations and damaging Europe’s strategic interests. While seeking agreement on global norms, Mr. Chertoff said, it was important to advance pragmatically; rules would emerge on the go in order to cover problematic areas. The key challenge for the global order in cyberspace was cultural: the West should not assume that the right to communicate freely, which underpinned its conception of the internet, was universally shared; in other parts of the world, preventing defamation, for example, was more important than the freedom of speech. This being said, Mr. Chertoff suggested that democracies and dictatorships could and should pragmatically agree on two areas: on preventing the abuse of physical control systems (the Internet of Things) and on limiting cyber warfare. The world needed a “Cyber Geneva Convention”.

Summary | 19

Session 2 – Visegrad Up: Finding Common Grounds in Times of Crisis The opening session of the second day of GLOBSEC brought together, for the first time at this Forum, all four prime ministers of the Visegrad Group: Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Republic, Donald Tusk of Poland, and Robert Fico of Slovakia.

The exchange was chaired by The Economist’s European Union Correspondent and “Charlemagne” Columnist Anton La Guardia.

Prime Minister Robert Fico first welcomed all participants at the GLOBSEC conference in Bratislava. It seemed that Europe was walking from crisis to crisis, he noted. Young people in Central Europe have never been confronted with physical insecurity, but Ukraine showed that security could not be taken for granted. There could be no doubt about Slovakia’s security commitments as a NATO member to the defence of other allies. Having achieved its original mission of bringing the four nations into the EU and NATO, Visegrad was now experiencing one of its most productive periods, focusing on “strategic and sophisticated cooperation”. The secret of Visegrad’s success lied in its members’ ability to listen to each other, finding common ground wherever possible, while agreeing to disagree on some issues. In respect to the Ukrainian crisis, Mr. Fico said, the main priority for the region was ensuring energy security. He outlined the various projects aimed at better interconnecting the region’s energy infrastructure. Slovakia expected to sign a memorandum with Ukraine, adding an additional 10 billion cubic meters to Poland’s and Hungary’s capacity for reverse gas flow to Ukraine and hence bringing the total to up to 17 billion cubic meters. Slovakia welcomed Prime Minister Tusk’s proposal for an EU energy union, which was in line with Slovakia’s interests, namely when it comes to building neccessary infrastructure and introducing a solidarity mechanism between member states. The key issue for the region, the Prime Minister argued, was according a higher percentage of co-financing by the EU to those members that are the most dependent on Russian energy.

Fico: “The main priority for the region is energy security.”

Prime Minister Orbán outlined his vision for a “new Central Europe” which would entail four aspects. First, achieving the widest possible cooperation between the four countries. Second, becoming an “engine of growth” in the European economy, drawing on past successes. Third, developing specific means of managing the financial crisis in the form of what he called a “work-fare society“. Fourth, maintaining the image of Visegrad as a politically stable region. Central Europe needed three security guarantees: military (NATO and regional), transportation (cross-border and North-South), and energy. Hungary was unable to make its technical capacity for reverse flow operational due to Western Europe’s failure to meet its commitments.

Visegrad was also determined to achieve the acceptance of nuclear energy on par with other renewables and an unrestricted production of shale gas. Rather than staying mired in regulatory debates, the EU should work on swiftly and dramatically reducing the price of energy as a basis for its competitiveness, especially vis-a-vis the United States. Should Europe’s economic competitiveness drop significantly, it would raise security concerns.

Prime Minister Sobotka said that the crisis in Ukraine demonstrated that the security environment could change very quickly; we needed an improved capacity to predict such turns of events. NATO’s focus on inter-

Summary | 20

globsec 2014 Full Report national operations played a part in neglecting the mission of territorial defence. Visegrad cooperation might become “instrumental” to developing national capabilities, as demonstrated by the V4 EU Battlegroup flagship project being developed for use in 2016. In addition, the Long-Term Vision for Visegrad defence cooperation signed recently by the Group’s defence ministers contained clear ambitions in the field of education and exercises, as well as in respect to the acquisition of equipment. Indeed, maximum possible cooperation was necessary given the countries’ limited defence budgets, similar capability needs and associated timelines for their replacement or modernisation. Here, ad hoc groups could be formed based on the project at hand. Following a sharp fall of 23% in defence spending from 2008-2014, Minister Sobotka declared that the new government, based on a coalition agreement, would strive to halt the decline from 2015 onwards. Turning to Ukraine, Mr. Sobotka said that Visegrad should share its democratic experience with its neighbor and work on its full integration into the EU’s Erasmus program. On the “central” issue of energy security, further steps were needed to diversify supplies, both in Europe and in the region. Increased interconnections, including LNG terminals, would allow the region to import energy from outside of Europe.

Prime Minister Tusk pointed out that at the outset of Visegrad cooperation, it was not the sentimental notion of solidarity, but rather the realisation of common interests that had brought the countries into the EU. Over the years, however, it became clear that solidarity was the only effective principle and value that could bind the EU together, even at the cost that final common decisions did not necessarily reflect all national interests. The crises of Ukraine, in 2009 and again now, uderlined the fact that as a community “without solidarity, we are hopeless”. The same was applicable to the European financial and debt crisis. Today, the crisis was more serious; in war, people die. Europe would not be secure without energy solidarity. Nations must be prepared to pay a higher price than under normal, market circumstances. Similarly, without

NATO’s increased presence along its borders, solidarity would be limited to declarations. Across Europe, hypocrisy was the greatest enemy to achieving solidarity on energy and defence, Mr. Tusk noted critically. The source of the crisis was Russia, not Ukraine, and that was the number one policy priority. The failure to redefine Europe in response to Russian aggression would undermine its chance for success in the coming “brutal global competition”.

Tusk: “Our failure to redefine Europe in response to Russian aggression would undermine our chances for success in the coming brutal global competition.”

In reaction to what was said, Mr. La Guardia expressed doubts as to the coherence of the Visegrad Group on the issue of Ukraine; as the tone of Prime Minister Tusk’s comments suggested that Poland perceived a direct threat while the other countries, focusing on energy security, felt a more distant concern. Mr. Fico dismissed efforts at overplaying divisions in the region and in Europe, stating that Slovakia would show solidarity with Ukraine and with its European allies. At the same time, he pointed out that the debate on economic sanctions would be a divisive one. If the third level of sanctions is adopted, Central Europe would be hit disproportionately; Slovakia’s own economic growth would fall by 2,1%. He also said that practical policy was often out of step with official resolutions: “We are talking about solidarity, and the French are selling warships to Russia. On the same day that we adopted European Council resolutions on the help for Ukraine, Gazprom signed an agreement with an Italian and French company about South Stream, bypassing Ukraine.” Solidarity would need to come not only from Ukraine’s neighbors in Central Europe, but from all of Europe. Mr. Orbán, for his part, expressed full agreement with Mr. Tusk’s intervention. Russia’s conduct was indeed a great challenge to the EU. But given the uncertain future of Ukraine’s democracy, the EU must also clearly formulate its expectations from the government in Kyiv,

Summary | 21

terms for a return of the UK into the European fold. Additionally, Central Europe’s interpretation of EU enlargement, as well as its clarity on Russian actions in Ukraine, confirmed the wisdom of enlarging the EU. Indeed, not having a stabilised configuration of new member states facing Russia’s aggressive actions would in the current circumstances be “disastrous”, Mr. Monti said.

Monti: “Central Europe’s interpretation of EU enlargement, as well as its clarity on Russian actions in Ukraine, has confirmed the wisdom of enlarging Europe.”

Responding to enquiries from the audience, Mr. Tusk postulated that a rise in defence expenditure in other Visegrad countries and in NATO as a whole, however welcome, would not dramatically increase the region’s military power; that would only come with a major presence of NATO forces. Those who argued that such a move would increase the risk to NATO, Mr. Tusk said, were either making an incomprehensible strategic calculus, or lacked political will. Prime Minister Fico said there was no scope for increased defence spending in Slovakia in the coming years, calling it an “ethical issue” that would clash with areas of higher priority. The available resources would be used more efficiently, including for international cooperation.

Globsec Keynote: Standing Up for Freedom and Security because maintaining the economic viability of Ukraine would come with a “huge price tag” for Europe. Mr. Orbán stated that the Visegrad Group, as part of the German economic complex, had been interested in a larger share of the economic benefits of EU-Russian cooperation, which until now have favored Germany. In the wake of the Ukraine crisis, these plans had collapsed. He also sought to clarify his recent comments on the status of Hungarian minorities in Ukraine by saying that Ukraine’s laws had to respect the same democratic principles as the European Union. The degree to which the rights of minorities were protected would have bearing on Hungary’s evaluation of Ukrainian democracy. But Hungary would not define the minorities’ rights in their stead. Asked for his reaction, Mr. Tusk (who earlier criticised Mr. Orbán’s comments) said this position, delivered in English, now sounded “much better”. (Laughs from the audience.)

Speaking from the audience, Senator Mario Monti highlighted the contribution of the V4 to the overall development of the EU by not only being an engine of growth, but also an engine of ideas, as demonstrated

by Warsaw’s plan for an energy union, and an engine of renewed integration, as exemplified by Prague’s signing of the Fiscal Compact. The Visegrad countries, by virtue of their attachment to the free market, could also become an “engine of mediation” to help the EU create conducive Summary | 22

This year’s keynote speech was delivered by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The discussion was introduced and moderated by Ambassador Rastislav Káčer, Honorary President of the Central European Strategy Council.

Secretary General Rasmussen began by recognising that in just a few years, GLOBSEC has become one of Europe’s premier venues for discussing international security matters. He reminded the audience that twentyfive years ago, this part of Europe was the front-line in the fight for freedom. And freedom prevailed over force.

NATO’s Open Door policy and European Union enlargement, advanced our goal of a Europe whole and free. It did so not by threats, coercion or the use of force, but by the choice of sovereign nations and free people.

Rasmussen: “If there was ever any doubt in our capitals that defence matters, the Ukraine crisis has surely removed it.”

“If there was ever any doubt in our capitals that defence matters, the Ukraine crisis has surely removed it.“ What we saw now in Ukraine was a blatant breach of the fundamentals of European security. “Judging by Russia’s actions, the aim is clear: Russia is trying to establish a new sphere of influence, in defiance of international law and fundamental agreements that Russia itself had signed.” This

globsec 2014 Full Report European Union stronger. Multinational cooperation could help in multiplying individual efforts, but ultimately, he argued, credible defence and deterrence required credible investment.

Mr. Rasmussen concluded by saying that in the face of Russia’s aggression, we must uphold the principle that every country should have the right to choose its own future, including its relationship with the Alliance. NATO remained committed to its positive vision for Europe. It would deepen its partnerships with Ukraine and other NATO partners and keep NATO’s door open for those countries which see their future in the Alliance.

had profound, long-term implications for our security.

According to Mr. Rasmussen, NATO was both able and willing to do whatever was necessary for as long as necessary. It would bolster its collective defence. When the crisis broke, the Alliance immediately took steps including the deployment of AWACS surveillance planes over Poland and Romania, the reinforcement of the air policing mission and the naval presence in the Baltic region, and the deployment of land forces to participate in training and exercises. With regards to longer-term measures, the Secretary General outlined some of the strands of a new Readiness Action Plan that NATO was considering: strengthening the ability of the NATO Response Force and Special Forces to respond quickly to any threat against any Ally, including where we had little warning; reviewing our threat assessments, intelligencesharing arrangements, early-warning procedures, and crisis response planning to take into account a more unpredictable security environment; and examining our Connected Forces Initiative to make our exercises more frequent, more demanding, and more visible.

To have credible defence and deterrence, NATO needed credible capabilities, and those came at a cost. In contrast to Russian defence spending, which had grown by more than 10% in real terms each year over the past five years, many European NATO countries had cut their defence spending. The cuts have been particularly deep here in Central and Eastern Europe. Mr. Rasmussen urged the Allies to stop the cuts and gradually increase defence budgets to reach the NATO target of 2% of GDP. Spending should be directed less on personnel and more on equipment, skills and training. In order to bridge the gaps in military capabilities, NATO needed to stimulate further involvement in its multinational “Smart Defence” projects and promote closer regional cooperation. The Visegrad countries, Mr. Rasmussen said, continued to demonstrate that this was a pragmatic way to build greater security together in a way that would make both NATO and the

In response to Mr. Káčer’s concern about how willing NATO still was to use force to uphold collective defence commitments, Mr. Rasmussen acknowledged that the Europeans in general were less willing to use hard power to promote and protect their values and principles. But having said that, he presented some positive news.

Europeans had never deployed so many troops out of area as in Afghanistan. In Libya, within six days, NATO took the decision that it should take responsibility for the operation and achieved consensus among 28 Allies.

The bottom line, Mr. Rasmussen said, was that after some discussions, the Europeans were ready to step up to the plate when needed.

Rasmussen: “Multinational cooperation can help in multiplying individual efforts, but ultimately, credible defence and deterrence requires credible investment.”

Asked whether he thought it was immoral to invest more in defence, Mr. Rasmussen retorted by saying it was immoral to demonstrate a lack of solidarity. He reminded that being a member of NATO was not only a privilege, but also a duty. Every Ally would expect other Allies to help if needed: “You pay an insurance premium to get help when needed. And unfortunately, because of the new security situation in Europe, the insurance premium had now gone up.” On the question if the Alliance should be providing packages of military assistance and defensive equipment, perhaps even some intelligence assets that would boost Ukraine’s self-confidence in their ability for self-defence and complicate Russian military planning, Mr. Rasmussen said such issues should be addressed at a bilateral level between Ukraine and individual allies. The Alliance itself decided to enhance its partnership when it comes to defence reform, modernisation of the Ukrainian armed forces, more interoperability, including Ukrainian participation in NATO exercises, and other measures.

He also reminded that collective defence, according to Article 5, applied to members only. As regards NATO’s increased presence on the territory of its new members, he dismissed theoretical discussions about permanent or non-permanent stationing and assured that NATO would do what was necessary for as long as required. He said NATO needed more visible presence all over NATO territory.

Summary | 23

Session 3 – Wake Me Up When September Ends: NATO After the Summit In order to assess the Alliance’s agenda in the run-up to its fall summit, this panel brought together the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius, former Commander of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan General John Allen, Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Quai d’Orsay Justin Vaïsse, and Senior Fellow of the Institute for Statecraft Julian Lindley-French. The moderator was Editor-in-Chief of Internationale Politik Sylke Tempel, who introduced the session by saying that the crisis in Ukraine, contrary to Iraq or Georgia, seemed to have commanded unanimity among Allies about the gravity of this threat.

“How many wake-up calls does Europe need?” Minister Linkevičius asked, partially blaming the crisis in Ukraine on our excessive tolerance, negligence and “lessons not learned“ from the Georgian case. For a start, NATO should implement what it decided on, e.g. its demands on Russia after it invaded Georgia, of which none was respected, and yet relations returned to normal. NATO’s 1997 commitment of not placing substantial military deployments on the territory of its new allies was no longer valid, Mr. Linkevičius said, but not as a result of NATO’s actions, but of Russia’s violations. At the upcoming summit, NATO needed to produce tangible results regarding its Open Door policy.

Lindley-French: “Europe is so used to putting politics before strategy that we almost willfully ignore change.”

Julian Lindley-French confirmed that Ukraine was a major game changer, but the politicians were not up to the challenge.

Europe was “so used to putting politics before strategy that we almost willfully ignore change”. Ukraine was but the first instance of what would come next if Europe continued to overlook the fact that military power was a fundamental tool in shaping the environment. Europe needed credible investment in high-end military forces. How to get there? Countries Summary | 24

such as the Visegrad Four should lead the way towards defence integration in Europe. Ultimately, he said, this was a challenge for the mindset of politicians, because, citing Rob de Wijk, “geopolitics is back”. This was a moment for leadership; the political class needed to patiently explain to the skeptical publics that legitimate modernisation of armed forces based within the framework of legitimate institutions (EU and NATO) was overdue. The amount of defence spending outside Europe illustrated the dangerous change that was happening around us. For Mr. Lindley-French, the essential question, which was not being confronted, was whether the Allies were prepared to go to war against anyone who attacked NATO territory under Article 5. If the answer was yes, then the proper capabilities would have to be decided to make defence and deterrence work.

According to General Allen, NATO must review its contingency plans and determine whether they are sufficiently resourced to remain relevant. Serious questions needed to be answered in NATO about the sensitiveness of its intelligence system, the relevance of its command and control for producing quick decisions, or the preparedness of its forces for rapid deployment. The Alliance has to decide whether its relations with Russia were about partnership or about threat. This perspective needed to inform decisions about the continued relevance of agreements from the past 25 years, which presupposed a certain level of stability.

To General Allen, striving for peace in no way implied weakness or pacifism. NATO as an Alliance required credible investment in order to provide relevant defence for “a world order that provided predictable behavior with respect to sovereign states, freedom and security”. Referring to Prime Minister Fico’s earlier comments, General Allen asked where the “immorality” of spending on defence was in a situation where nations on NATO’s borders were being broken up because the Alliance seemed incapable of defending itself or extending its influence. This was an opportunity for NATO, at a critical time of ISAF’s end, to examine whether it was well organised and fit for the future. The rest of the world was watching closely; if geopolitics prevailed, decisions would be made in China and other places which favour military modernisation to a world order based on the freedom of choice for all states.

globsec 2014 Full Report

Allen: “Where is the ‘immorality’ of defence spending when nations on NATO’s borders are being broken up because the Alliance seems incapable of defending itself or extending its influence?”

For all the heat that was felt in the current crisis, General Allen advised to keep the channels of communications with Russia open and, indeed, create special channels to better understand Moscow’s intentions and to reduce the risk of miscalculation. He also warned about semantics: “If we call Russia an enemy today, it will ultimately act like an enemy over the long run.” The situation called for pragmatism, verbalisation of concerns about Russia’s behaviour, careful examination of our own possible mistakes, and the strengthening of our capability to deal with future crises.

Mr. Vaïsse picked up on Prime Minister Fico’s earlier criticism of the export of French Mistral ships to Russia, saying that the deal had been made three years before and France “had no legal choice but to honour its contract”. In October, the final opportunity would come to review the deal in political terms and, if necessary, stop the delivery. On Ukraine, Europe first needed to wake up on the question of defence budgets and how they were spent. There was no way of returning to normal after Crimea was occupied. The annexation itself should not be recognised, even if there was no intention in the West of instigating war with Russia. On basing troops in NATO’s eastermost states, which in the end might happen as a result of Russia’s behaviour, Mr. Vaïsse found irony in the fact that this was what Moscow had always tried to prevent.

For Mr. Vaïsse, there was no sharp contradiction between the core mission of collective defence and expeditionary operations; the general principles of force development such as deployability, sustainability and interoperability, as well as particular assets and capabilities, would serve the allies both in distant theaters and in Eastern Europe.

Mr. Linkevičius pointed to the current paralysis of the UN Security Council, the only body with the authority to manage international peace and security, as a result of an act of aggression by one of its permanent members. Recalling the

Kosovo crisis, he asserted that such situations would reoccur in the future, which raised a question about the enforcement of peace by legal means – another issue for NATO to address.

NATO enlargement and Georgia also figured prominently during the Q&A session with the panellists. Mr. Linkevičius said Georgia was ready for membership by all accounts and it only needed a political decision to be made. Reformwise, Tbilisi now had to keep itself in good shape with or without the Membership Action Plan (MAP), in order to be ready when enough political will accumulates in NATO. Most panellists agreed that Russia’s power play should not hinder Georgia from accession. Mr. Vaïsse, on the contrary, spoke against disbursing NATO’s Article 5 commitment “too generously”; in his view, “nobody” was prepared to extend security guarantees to Georgia with an unresolved frozen conflict on its territory. Speaking from the audience, Georgian State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Alex Petriashvili argued that the MAP itself did not entail security guarantees; it would, however, send a strong message to Russia that NATO honoured its commitments to Georgia’s and Ukraine’s eventual accession and was ready to advance in this direction.

Vaïsse: “NATO’s Article 5 commitment should not be given out too generously. Nobody is prepared to extend security guarantees to Georgia with an unresolved frozen conflict on its territory.”

On the issue of Afghanistan, Member of the Afghan Parliament Farkhunda Naderi voiced a plea that her country should not only be treated as a problem, but as an asset in the global fight against terrorism. Mr. LindleyFrench expressed his approval, but for this to happen, NATO needed a “new military” that could reach across six domains: air, land, sea, space, cyber and knowledge.

We needed to radically rethink the role of force in the spectrum of the instruments of power, based on the lessons of ten years of campaigning, in order to have adequate capability in the coming century. General Allen argued that the true success in Afghanistan lied in its impressive economic and social progress, which was only achieved through the sacrifices of NATO nations and the Afghan people. This narrative was completely missing in the current discourse. The story needed to be told not just

by NATO officials, but most importantly, by the leaders of NATO nations and their ISAF allies. Afghanistan needed to become NATO’s long-term partner and a possible model for other states emerging from dictatorship in Central Asia. Rather than eyeing the exits, the Alliance must lock in the successes achieved in Afghanistan, as they were emblematic of what NATO could achieve when it had a common vision and a set of values that it applied on the battlefield.

Turning to missile defence, redirecting the system against Russia would be a mistake, Mr. Vaïsse said, on both technical and political grounds. Politically, it would only reinforce Russian paranoia. Technically, the system would be of no real use against Russia’s strategic deterrent.

Summary | 25

A Conversation with Natalia Galibarenko and Bruce Jackson In lieu of Prime Minister Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, who was held up by events in Kyiv at last minute, this panel featured Ukraine’s First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Natalia Galibarenko and President of the Project on Transitional Democracies Bruce Jackson. The session was chaired by Edward Lucas, Energy Editor at The Economist.

Natalia Galibarenko started out by saying Ukraine made a “very serious mistake” when it gave up nuclear weapons and signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, relying on security guarantees by the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom. The then leaders of Ukraine “miscalculated” when they considered Russia a friend and guarantor of their territorial integrity or political independence. As a result, Ukraine’s own forces remained underequipped and underfunded. According to Mrs. Galibarenko, the Budapest Memorandum was no longer in force; Ukraine was now witnessing an “export of terrorism” by Russia. Moscow’s strategy was moving in stages: manipulating the fears of the people, then instigating so-called referenda, enforcing their results, and finally moving in by force. The misreading of Russia was not restricted to Ukraine; the US and the EU also thought that Russia followed a European pattern, while in truth, it sought to restore its power. Moscow readily punished Kyiv for daring to refuse the “Russian scenario” by signing an association agreement with the EU. Mrs. Galibarenko warned that this was a war not only against Ukraine, but against Western values and achievements. “Excusing Russia and blaming Ukraine” for the state of affairs was not acceptable; the conflict should be seen in strategic terms. Russia now expected the same outcome as when it invaded Georgia in 2008: a weak Western reaction that tapered off over time.

Mrs. Galibarenko recognised that Ukraine had not been easy to deal with, but now her country needed time and space for reform.

Galibarenko: “Excusing Russia and blaming Ukraine for the crisis is not acceptable. The conflict should be seen in strategic terms.”

Bruce Jackson introduced his comments by praising Prime Minister Yatsenyuk for holding his country together, which made him Europe’s “most underappreciated but most successful” leader. For Mr. Jackson, it was unclear which of the “four crises” related to Ukraine the West wanted to solve: the crisis of association with the EU, the crisis of revolutionary change against a failed political class, the problem of Russian aggression, or the problem of world order. Rather than a military confrontation, this was a crisis of legitimacy, Mr. Jackson said, a contest of values.

The presidential elections in Ukraine were a chance to reestablish legitimacy, which he termed as a “critical point” for the US. Berlin was key to Washington; Germany’s latest decisions to “get serious”, demonstrated by Foreign Minister Steinmeier’s visit of Ukraine and the appointment of Wolfgang Ischinger as the OSCE negotiator on Ukraine, “changed the game” in Washington, as they confirmed the gravity of the situation by a key US ally. According to Mr. Jackson, the outlines of an internal political deal existed, as proposed by Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, which did not preclude holding regional referenda if they respected the unity of Ukraine and sought political reconciliation.

Mr. Yatsenyuk was also open to a change in the constitution if the people voted for it, Mr. Jackson said. The East of Ukraine wanted to stay in a unified country and not break away. What the US was now seeking with Russia was not further conflict, but reconciliation, based on European standards. This “destination” was supported by all major presidential candidates in Ukraine and could occur by the end of the year, after presidential and parliamentary elections were held, Mr. Jackson concluded.

Mr. Lucas expressed his doubts that the Putin regime would tolerate a democratic and prosperous Ukraine, when it had a “fundamental interest” in destabilizing the country. Mrs. Galibarenko also showed significantly more pessimism than Mr. Jackson, pointing out that only Ukraine now followed the Geneva Statement of April 2014.

For her, good faith started with the immediate implementation of the agreement. Mrs. Galibarenko thus remained cautious about the prospects for any next meetings or new roadmaps in the Geneva format. The German initiatives for political reconciliation were appreciated, but Ukraine would like to see more pressure by Chancellor Merkel on President Putin. Responding to a question, Mr. Jackson said that a new generation of Ukrainian politicians needed to emerge to replace the current political class, which was tied to the post-authoritarian period of the 1990s. For Ukraine’s membership in the EU, Mr. Jackson argued, the question was not whether, but when.

Mrs. Galibarenko informed the audience about the current efforts of her government, which went far beyond the much-publicised counterterrorist operation in the East. She confirmed that a process of decentralisation was initiated, not to be confused with federalisation, to include financial autonomy for the regions in order to allow them to implement projects funded from local taxes. A new language law was in hand to accomodate the demands of minorities. The government was also ready to progress

Summary | 26

globsec 2014 Full Report to provide a clear European and Atlantic perspective for all Western Balkan nations. The EU and NATO members should intensify their support to local governments to help them pursue reforms, fulfill accession criteria and become full-fledged members in the near future. Đukanović: “The Ukrainian crisis now seems to be opening room for the destabilising policies based on misguided historical myths that caused so much tragedy in ex-Yugoslavia.”

on the EU association agreement, which was clearly a demand of the Maidan. However, such reforms could only be successful in a “conducive environment“, which was not there yet. In fact, Mrs. Galibarenko expected further destabilisation in the coming months.

GLOBSEC Chat In the next session, Milan Ježovica, Senior Fellow at MESA 10, a Bratislava-based think tank, interviewed the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović.

Reflecting on the achievements of his region over the past 25 years, Mr. Đukanović underlined that the Western Balkans have never been more stable and “European”, having progressed in economic reform as well as democracy building. However, he outlined three challenges inherited from the crises of ex-Yugoslavia which could still call into question the stability of the region.

First, while noting positive developments in the BelgradePristina dialogue, he said time was needed to make the relationship work. The second problem was the “insufficiently functioning” Bosnia. The third was the deadlocked on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia‘s path to NATO membership, owing to a conflict over its constitutional name with Greece.

Turning to the impact of Russia’s actions in Ukraine on the Western Balkans, Mr. Đukanović dubbed the crisis a wake-up call for all of Europe. The continent has taken stability for granted and turned its attention to Asia, rather than giving priority to addressing problems close to home. Russia’s long history of bilateral relations with each Balkan country was an important factor. Noting that after the success of the 1990s, when the nations in the region, for the first time in history, started to see their future in the same way, namely in respect to Euroatlantic integration, Mr. Đukanović warned that the Ukrainian crisis now seemed to be opening room for a restoration of destabilizing policies based on “misguided historical myths” that caused so much tragedy in ex-Yugoslavia.

The transatlantic community must join forces in order

Echoeing President Václav Havel’s comments from a conference in Bratislava in 2001 where Havel emphasised that refusing entry to democratic candidates from Central and Eastern Europe who freely choose to belong to NATO would amount to a denial of the underlying concept of the Washington Treaty itself, Milan Ježovica suggested that issuing an invitation to Montenegro was both logical and useful.

Agreeing with his view, Mr. Đukanović recalled his country’s image as an “oasis of multi-ethnic democracy” in the Balkans, a model that later spread throughout the region.

He argued that Montenegro was now close to meeting the outstanding eligibility criteria for NATO membership and called on the Alliance to issue an invitation at its upcoming summit. For this to happen, he said, attention needed to be raised in key European capitals. Mr. Đukanović expressed his appreciation for the unwavering support of all Visegrad prime ministers for his country’s invitation to NATO’s fall summit. In his view, it was important that all twelve new NATO member states achieved unity on the issue in the run-up to the summit, which he was determined to work for diplomatically. Quite importantly, inviting Montenegro would also help keep NATO enlargement alive, which Mr. Đukanović described as an imperative for European security. Montenegro was now leading a renewed push for regional cooperation, inspired by the Visegrad Four, which Prime Minister Đukanović hoped could be emulated in the Western Balkans. The key challenge for the region was economic and democratic development, which created “deficits of tolerance for diversity”. Turning to the EU, Mr. Đukanović similarly argued that the mission of unifying Europe should be in the best interest of all European countries, since it provided a necessary precondition for the EU’s competitiveness globally.

Reacting to a question from the audience, Mr. Đukanović dismissed concerns about Russian influence over Montenegro’s economy and politics, which he considered “absolutely overstated”. The Russian part of foreign direct investment in Montenegro reached its high in 2012 at the level of 14 percent (compared with the EU’s 45 percent) and later fell substantially as a result of Russians pulling out of the aluminum industry, their most significant sector, which went bankrupt and was reposessed by the state. Mr. Đukanović also reminded the audience of Montenegro’s long tradition of statehood and national pride, which precluded any nation from posing a threat to independent policymaking.

Summary | 27

Friedman: “Russia has survived its long history by strategic depth, which makes its preservation an essential characteristic of Russian strategy.”

Paraphrasing the Greek historian Thucydides, Mr. Friedman said there had always been a profound difference in the culture of Russia and the European peninsula: the first was landlocked, poor and strong like Sparta, the other was seafaring, rich and inherently weak like Athens. As a result, the needs and expectations of the Russians differed from the Europeans. Inevitably, the European-Russian border was a friction point, with Russia seeking to control Ukraine and Belarus, and Europe holding out Poland and Romania in its face. Rather than being a conflict between Russia and the West at large, this crisis was part of a historic struggle between Russia and the European powers, from the Hapsburgs to the Hohenzollerns. Since the 1990s, Russia had never believed the Western doctrine of cooperation; it continued to view the world through the prism of conflict and impending disaster. Given this mindset, the ousting of a pro-Russian President and the installation of a pro-Western government in a zone vital to Russia’s security triggered an intervention.

While the weakness of Europe and the United States was not inherent and was the momentary choice, Russia’s strength would last only as long as the other actors were weak. Its choice of founding its national power on the price of oil was “extremely fragile and dangerous” in a situation where the future price of oil was uncertain; the US had revolutionised oil production and China’s demand for the commodity has declined.

GLOBSEC Insight: Post-Crimea – A New Rift Between the West and Russia?

In this session, the Founder and Chairman of Stratfor George Friedman was interviewed by Damon Wilson, the Executive Vice President of the Atlantic Council.

Mr. Friedman pointed to three developments that heralded the dawn of the “post-Cold War world”: the American withdrawal from jihadist wars; the massive divergence within the EU between the South and the North, which created tension and indecision; and the return of China to normal and sustainable growth. Russia had the opportunity to rebuild its power “significantly, albeit not overwhelmingly” relative to Europe and relative to “the US at the moment”. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia continued to be bound to Ukraine by the need to feed its population on Ukrainian wheat, to support its military capability by Ukrainian defence production, but most importantly, by the need to assure strategic depth: “Russia has survived its long history by depth, which makes it an essential characteristic of Russian strategy.” No Russian leader could allow the loss of Ukraine as a result of its integration into Western institutions. The fact that Europe was divided and the US indecisive gave Mr. Putin “a year or two” to try to solidify Russia’s security.

Summary | 28

Looking ahead, the Russians would continue to be aggressive, but the US, supported by some allies, would respond in ways that Russia would find hard to withstand.

Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics and the Caucausus would become battlegrounds for a “petty Cold War”, in which Russia would seek to destabilise the region. Georgia was of vital importance, as it represented an alternative route for Azerbaijani oil. Ultimately, however, the Russian empire would dissolve for a second time, resulting from the continued inefficiency of Russian economy and the unsustainable cost of maintaining an empire.

Turning his attention to Central Europe, Mr. Wilson remarked that cleavages appeared in the V4 prime ministers’ discussion earlier that day. Given this situation, he asked if Mr. Friedman still thought that Central Europe would become a Polish-led major power in the future.

The speaker observed that for the time being, the region was only starting to realise that the Russian intervention was serious and that there was indeed a reason for having a common Battlegroup. From the very beginning, the Poles took the crisis more seriously than anybody else; the Slovaks were unsure if they could “contribute anything to anything”, the Hungarians attempted to “strike a deal with all sides and then double-cross everyone”, and the Czechs “thought they were Germans”. (Laughter from the audience.) However, Mr. Friedman said, there was a re-

globsec 2014 Full Report alisation that this was a historic moment and something serious would happen. He applauded Poland for having assumed the role of a leader, which contrasted with a Germany that put its gas imports above everything else and a US “making pronouncements that nobody understands”.

Mr. Friedman observed that in major conflicts, the US came in late and came in hard. The US strategy was to have those states that were the most affected pay the most in blood and treasure and wait until it was obvious that they needed US help. Historically, the US had operated in alliances, but its notion of alliance differed from its allies. We were not in a situation, as the Europeans usually expected, that the US would underwrite a check and send its sons in harm’s way. The US now expected Visegrad to take the hard, strategic, costly steps necessary to confront the situation. This was a strategic decision for the region to make.

He then pointed to the importance of Romania, the other power of Eastern Europe, which reacted to the crisis in ways similar to Poland. Turning to the Baltics, a “long bayonet threatening Russia”, Mr. Friedman said the region was difficult to defend if Russia chose to destabilise or intervene. Suggesting that NATO had no credible plans for this contingency, the question of who would defend the Baltics was a real problem; the US would certainly “not make its last stand there”. Mr. Wilson readily suggested that this was a case for permanent military installations.

For Mr. Friedman it was questionable if NATO was prepared to answer the challenges of today’s era. There was a sea change underway in both the Democratic and Republican parties on international engagement, but there was no one in Europe to engage with. Germany was the key to having a strategy in Europe, but its position needed to be clarified: was it a neutral body to the rear, a true engine of European defence, or a Russian ally?

Unless Europe showed unity, and the readiness to build a security structure, it could not expect Washington to have a meaningful European policy.

Friedman: “The very worst thing imaginable frequently does happen, particularly in this region.

Wishful thinking is not permitted to serious people.”

To conclude, Mr. Friedman confessed that his own life, that of a child of Holocaust survivors, had had the most profound effect on what ultimately became a geopolitical worldview: “The very worst thing that you can imagine frequently does happen, particularly in this region.

Wishful thinking is not permitted to serious people.” That is why he had no patience for the European Union.

Session 4 – Power Shifts: Renewing Western Leadership This panel had Liam Fox, Member of the UK Parliament and former Defence Minister, Pierre Lellouche, Deputy in the French National Assembly, Radha Kumar, Director-General of the Delhi Policy Group, and Kori Schake, Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, address questions related to the current state of Western leadership. It was chaired by the Executive President of the McCain Institute for International Leadership Kurt Volker.

Liam Fox kicked off his comments by diagnosing the West with a relative decline, which, however, was unlikely to be “terminal”. “We have grown fat and complacent on the long period of prosperity.” Peace and prosperity were not the natural state of affairs and needed to be fought for. What did the West need to do? First, get real about the world, and about the state of NATO. Referencing Mr. Friedman, he observed that in too many policy areas, wishful thinking took the place of critical analysis: “We have thought that in every dictator or terrorist, there’s a liberal democrat just waiting to get out, if only we’re nice enough.” Watching the West react to crises, from Georgia, through Estonia, to Syria, Russia came to the conclusion that it no longer had to care what the West thought. NATO, for its part, was not a healthy Alliance; it was too dependent on the US. Second, get proactive. We needed to stop worrying about provoking Russia by our actions. Third, realise that NATO was about values, not just military hardware. If the leaders of the West wanted their own publics to follow

James Sherr (Chatham House) observed from the audience that Russia’s real security dilemma lay in the fact that its conduct over the past 20 years has greatly aggravated every reasonable security apprehension that it might have, citing the example of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which was now vastly more popular than when it had first been tabled by President Yushchenko. In plain terms, Russia liked to shoot itself in the leg, and no lessons seemed to be drawn from this in the Kremlin. Mr. Friedman replied that each side was reasonably afraid of each other because it had good reasons to be. This caused overreaction to moves by either one of the parties.

Summary | 29

and other nations to respect their actions, the Western community must genuinely believe that its values, from democracy to capitalism, were better, not just different, to other alternatives.

Lellouche: “The West is in a values crisis and does not believe in itself anymore.”

Mr. Volker stepped in at Mr. Fox’s last comment by asking that if the West was not defined by values, what was it defined by? Could we pretend to lead anything if we did not know who we were?

Pierre Lellouche agreed with both colleagues that the West was in a values crisis and did not believe in itself anymore.

The Old Continent, as well as the two powers that “grew out of Europe”, the US and Russia, were in decline. The French doctrine of multipolarity, if anything, was fundamentally flawed in the assumption that it could provide more stability than the unipolar system, which it sought to replace. The world had accumulated an enormous number of problems, but America did not want to manage things anymore, and Europe had neither a plan nor leadership. Even France and the UK, the continental powers, were cutting their defence budgets; France was “totally on its own” in Mali and the Central African Republic. In addition, France had lost its drive, rendering the “moteur franco-allemand” dysfunctional. For Mr. Lellouche, it was up to Europe to find a deal with Russia on Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The present predicament resulted from ignoring Russia’s interests, e.g. over NATO enlargement or over granting independence to Kosovo. At the moment, however, there was no serious effort to talk to President Putin and the sanctions were “just ridiculous”.

Talking to Russia would not suffice, Mr. Fox reacted. What was needed were two virtues not practiced since the end of the Cold War, namely strength and consistency. Seeking to distance himself from Mr. Lellouche’s outlook about the future, the former UK Defence Minister challenged the West to show more leadership and self-confidence in its system

of values. Globalisation should be taken as an opportunity, not threat: “You either shape the world around you, or you are shaped by it.” However, “welfarism is doing more damage to us than terrorism or communism,” Mr. Fox argued. People in the West felt they deserved a certain standard of living without having to fight for it, which was the number one fallacy that underpinned our weakness.

Radha Kumar suggested that India might have provided support in a “coalition of pressure” in response to Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, if only the West had bothered to talk to New Delhi. Another missed opportunity for cooperation was Afghanistan, where NATO sought to accommodate Pakistan rather than to try to detach Afghanistan from its sphere of influence, arguably departing from the pursuit of a policy based on the freedom of states to choose their alliances, mentioned by Secretary General Rasmussen earlier. This could point to the lack of political will, or worse, to the lack of effort to develop political consensus.

This being said, Mrs. Kumar believed the emergence of new global powers was a chance for democracies to work together in Asia. The principles for the resolution of territorial conflicts or the setting of norms for state behavior on the high seas would be of common interest. The US was making an effort to forge bilateral alliances in the region, but issues related to the rise of China in particular should be dealt with in a strategic fashion on a multilateral level. Unfortunately, India, for its part, showed no more leadership than the West.

Mr. Lellouche came in at the last argument to call the international system a “zero-polar world”.

Fox: “You either shape the world around you, or you are shaped by it.”

Kori Schake presented the most upbeat picture of all panelists. While recognizing that the US was making bad near-term choices, including on debt, on retreat from the world during the Obama administration, and on the hesitance to embrace our values, which were “our strongest way to shape the world”. All of this came at the very moment that everyone in the world strove for what the West took for granted. We should definitely be more confident; doubt and pessimism were typical features of the US in particular.

History had proven repeatedly that the future would be different from the gloomy predictions of the present. Not only had the West a “huge” margin for error, but it “erred on the right side” of democracy and human rights, which was significant. “Russia is playing a weak hand very well, and we are playing a very strong hand badly”. Ian Bond (Centre for European Reform, London) outlined systemic deficiencies in Russia’s economy and society, which made him confident that “the cards would ultimately find them out”.

One of Europe’s predicaments, Mr. Lellouche observed, was the way of decisionmaking in Brussels, which has become “expert at overadministering trivial issues, such as the curve of the cucumber, but is totally absent anytime there is a serious issue”. In particular, there was nobody to coordinate energy policy and gas imports from Russia, which caused an uneven level of dependence among member states. Moreover, for

Summary | 30

globsec 2014 Full Report fear of being overshadowed, the European heads of state were unwilling to choose strong leaders for the Council President and the High Representative. Europe’s problem was different for Mr. Fox, who said he preferred the EU to do less and rather focus on economic matters. Diversifying energy resources belonged to national governments, not the EU, and more power should be returned to the nations.

The looming success of parties outside the European mainstream in the coming European elections supported this view, Mr. Fox claimed. He agreed, however, that too little attention was paid to strategic matters.

Kumar: “India might have provided support in a coalition of pressure in response to Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, if only the West had bothered to talk to New Delhi.”

Mrs. Kumar said Europe should stop bothering about its image in the world and start providing solutions. The West should also give more credit to others, and not claim success for itself, pointing to the fact that Afghanistan’s greatest partner in aid and civil society development was India. Mr. Fox confirmed that we had a very Westerncentric view of the world, perceiving both success and failure as our own, whereas other countries could be the prime movers now. Western policy, Mrs. Schake agreed, was the most successful when it helped other nations to sort out their own problems, which was the best basis for building enduring alliances. Those problems, however, might not be the ones that we felt as the most urgent.

Figuring out ways to support others cheaply and effectively would help re-engage the US in world affairs and overcome the current fatigue.

Schake: “Western policy is the most successful when it helps other nations to sort out their own problems. This is the best basis for building enduring alliances.”

Several speakers from the audience pointed out that the West had been inconsistent in implementing values in its foreign policy, e.g. in dealing with China or in withdrawing from Afghanistan’s more recent internal debates about the rights of women. There was also concern about overmilitarized responses. This might underly the angst about values, Neelam Deo (Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations) observed. Farida Allaghi (Libyan Forum for Civil Society) reminded the panel of her country’s decades-long struggle against dictator Gaddafi; the West, while providing uneven support to this struggle at best, now seemed condescending in its impatience to get immediate results. In response, the panellists agreed that short military interventions were rarely enough to bring any country back on track; these needed to be long-term endeavors, well resourced and grounded in values all along.

Most panellists agreed that Angela Merkel was the de facto leader of Europe, and a good one at that. They also noted that Germany was key for Europe’s ability to

Schwarzenberg: “German responsibility is reco­ gnised and appreciated. However, vision and the will to lead are a different matter.” confront its challenges. Nevertheless, Mr. Lellouche said, the Germans did not have consensus on leading politically and militarily. More broadly, Mr. Fox argued that the countries that had the most to gain from a globalised world, including Germany and Japan, did not recognise that they also had an obligation to contribute to the security of the global system. Ambassador Christoph Eichhorn of the German Federal Foreign Office, speaking from the audience, said there was reticence about the notion of leadership in his country’s political élite, in the media and in parts of the public, mainly having to do with Germany’s past. Instead, Berlin’s new foreign policy was better described as “more proactive/energetic/sustained”.

He then recalled practical examples where Germany took international responsibility, from the saving of the Euro, through destroying Syria’s chemical stockpiles, building the OSCE’s historic mission in Ukraine, to the frequent “tough talk” of Chancellor Merkel and Minister Steinmeier with their counterparts in Moscow. (Applause from the audience.) In response, former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said that German responsibility was recognised and appreciated, but the vision and the will to lead were a different matter. The example of Margaret Thatcher, who led an economically weak country, illustrated that leadership was also very much a personal quality. Mr. Fox added courage as the third ingredient for leadership. Mr. Lellouche observed that democratic leaders rarely had the qualities of statesmen, including the knowledge of history to the understanding of global issues: “All those years you spend to become Head of State tend to make you very parochial.”

Summary | 31

Minister Stropnický noted the unprecedented challenge in Ukraine of discerning what type of war was underway, given the unclear identity of the individual actors. He argued that unity was more important than robustness; the crisis was increasingly understood as an opportunity.

The US pivot to Asia was more complicated than was generally presented, but Europe certainly had to assume a greater responsibility for its own security.

Secretary Varga, speaking on behalf of the outgoing V4 Presidency, said that defence was brought to the attention of the Group’s prime ministers. Based on their tasking, a strategy for defence cooperation, the so-called Long-Term Vision, and a framework for defence planning were elaborated. The countries sought to harmonise their defence plans as a basis for common procurement projects. Progress had also been made in preparing the Battlegroup for standby in 2016. This would provide an operational tool for both the EU and NATO. Responding to one of the capability shortfalls, Hungary decided to provide close air support in support of the Battlegroup. The force would participate in Trident Juncture, NATO’s highvisibility exercise in 2015, to achieve certification to NATO standards. A Joint Declaration at the prime ministerial level in June would hand over the Presidency to Slovakia to prepare an Action Plan for further steps.

Session 5 – Setting the Tone for Regional Visegrad Defence Cooperation Chaired by Tomáš Valášek, the Slovak Ambassador to NATO, the first panel of the third day at GLOBSEC 2014 featured Tomasz Siemoniak, Minister of Defence of Poland, Martin Stropnický, Minister of Defence of the Czech Republic, Tamás Varga, Parliamentary State Secretary of Defence of Hungary, and Miloš Koterec, State Secretary of Defence of Slovakia.

Minister Siemoniak argued that by virtue of having cooperated for several years, the Visegrad Four was now ready to start delivering on defence. A “New Opening” initiative was launched, built around concrete projects in joint training and exercises, the common Battlegroup, joint defence planning and acquisitions. The goal was to provide new military means to NATO and the EU. Mr. Siemoniak said he expected the US to throw its weight behind Visegrad defence cooperation which was open to others from outside the region. The Alliance’s fall summit should focus on strengthening NATO’s military presence in Central and Eastern Europe and on “returning to the real level of defence spending”, which, albeit challenging, would be the right answer to the current challenge.

Summary | 32

State Secretary Koterec spoke of a “good personal chemistry” between the V4 leaders, which was as a prerequisite for deeper cooperation. Meetings were frequent in the past two years, spurred in no small part by the dearth of resources caused by the financial crisis. The list of proposals contained in the Polish “New Opening” would be transformed into an Action Plan. This would allow for specific and targeted steps during the Slovak Presidency, whereby Visegrad defence cooperation would move “from software to hardware”. A permanent working group would be established by the four Ministries of Defence to oversee the delivery of results.

Responding to a query from the audience, Minister Siemoniak argued that a changed strategic situation in Europe did not nullify the meaning of the EU Battlegroup.

Poland would lead its partners towards a mindset that would allow the real use of the Battlegroup if needed, even if it meant stretching the current Battlegroup Concept. The force must be ready to operate “in all imaginable scenarios”, on a possibly extended standby period.

Mr. Stropnický added that rather than being a one-off effort, the Battlegroup should have a follow-up.

Stropnický: “The common V4 battlegroup should not remain a one-off effort.”

On the subject of defence budgets, Mr. Stropnický said that his government was working on a defence-related political declaration destined to command cross-party consensus, which would include financial commitments looking out some 5 years ahead. The Czech MOD needed to prove that it was effectively spending the money it had, and

globsec 2014 Full Report only then could it expect any increases over the current level of 1.1% of GDP. The Hungarian government, Mr. Varga said, had made a commitment to not decrease defence spending until 2015. In subsequent years, by government decree, spending would increase annually by 0.1% of GDP. Additional funds could sometimes be expected, as was the case recently for close air support for the V4 Battlegroup.

Mr. Koterec informed that the focus in Slovakia was on a better use of the available resources. The potential for reaching “tangible results” out of the 1.1% of GDP allocated for defence was now “much higher”, including through regional cooperation. The Slovak MOD had managed to double the share of investment in its defence budget over the last two years and was committed to reaching the NATO benchmark of 20% as of this year. The government introduced the use of European funds for dual use goods, which could be useful for domestic crisis management and civil emergency planning. The MOD also counted on using public-private partnerships and was exploring the possibility of VAT-related savings. All-in-all, these measures would substantially increase the effectiveness of defence spending. Prompted by a question from the audience, Mr. Koterec said that the main challenge in his country was at the strategic level; cross-party consensus on the principles of defence was required that would allow for strategic planning. Mr. Siemoniak said Poland would like to see a higher level of defence spending across Visegrad. Over the last 5 years, the Polish defence budget rose by 25% in real terms, out of which more than 20% was invested in modernisation projects.

Siemoniak: “Poland would like to see higher defence spending across Visegrad.”

Session 6 – EU after the 2014 Vote: What Europe Do We Want?

The last session of GLOBSEC 2014 featured Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Lubomír Zaorálek, Senator and former Prime Minister of Italy Mario Monti, Vice-President of the European Commission Maroš Šefčovič, and Director

of the Open Society European Policy Institute Heather Grabbe. The debate was moderated by Anton La Guardia of The Economist.

Mr. La Guardia began by saying that European leaders had managed to arrest the financial crisis, but the economic crisis continued, with growth rates remaining low and unemployment high. Turning to the upcoming European elections, he worried that voter turnout had fallen steadily since the European Parliament was created in 1979 and that its likely new composition would give cause for concern. Slovakia, the moderator observed, had one of the highest rates of growth, but its turnout numbers were the lowest in Europe.

Grabbe: “The emergence of populism is a fundamental shift in European politics that is bound to become permanent.”

Heather Grabbe argued that the new process of proposing candidates for the post of European Commission President through the elections for the European Parliament had not been matched by pan-European campaigns that would make these candidates known outside the “Brussels bubble” and their own countries. It had also overshadowed the real issues, including how to deal with the economic crisis and with Ukraine. The emergence of populism was a fundamental shift in European politics that was bound to become permanent.

The “system” needed to provide new responses. The big challenge was an erosion of trust in political institutions, both nationally and at the EU level. This posed a particular problem for foreign policy, which relied on citizens trusting the capacity of their leaders to deal with crises.

Maroš Šefčovič argued it would be greatly disappointing for the voters in Europe, and would hurt turnout in the next term, if the European Council leaders were to immediately reject the “Spitzenkandidat” of the winning party.

The Parliament was certain to insist on strong democratic legitimacy of the new Commission President in the sense that he or she could command a majority in the European Parliament. Asked about timelines, Mr. Šefčovič said that

Summary | 33

unless the heads of state respected the outcome of Parliamentary elections, which would allow the new Commission President to take office before the summer, the negotiations might “easily” take until Christmas. He agreed with Mrs. Grabbe that the top candidates’ televised discussions had largely failed to frame the pre-election debate. The differences in national rules for electing MEPs made panEuropean campaigning difficult. No campaign, however, could reverse the effects of the continued “nationalizing of successes and brusselizing of failures”. He pointed to the dangers of not only populism, but also of extreme nationalism. The new Parliament’s challenge was to show that major parties could work together and to make more obvious to the voters who was pro-European and who was euroskeptic.

Minister Zaorálek argued that a functioning, unified and strong EU was a precondition for the survival of its member states in the next decades, pointing to the decline of their demographic and economic power in global terms. This was a major driver behind the Czech government’s decision to sign the EU’s Fiscal Compact, upturning the previous alliance with the UK. In order to counter the anti-European mood and speak to young citizens in particular, Europe required a new narrative, or perhaps the reinvention of an old one. The question of what Europe we needed should be supplemented by the question of what it would mean to have no Europe at all.

With Ukraine, peace in Europe has again moved to the forefront, which should be an integral part of the story.

Other themes should include solidarity, as well as the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

Former Prime Minister Monti informed that Italy was falling out of love with Europe. His country was home to several forms of populism, from the classical (Northern League) to the neoclassical (Beppe Grillo) to the populist transformation of traditional pro-European parties. A case in point was Forza Italia, a member of the European People’s Party, who was now blaming the leader of the EPP, Chancellor Merkel, for Italy’s problems. This phenomenon could also be observed elsewhere. If the populists suceeded in taking countries out of the Eurozone, a “populist paradox” might result: the supposedly anti-establishment parties would actually serve the establishment by removing the discipline that the Euro effected on national politicians through curbing overspending, debt and corruption.

Mr. La Guardia then asked the panelists what kind of Europe they wanted. Mr. Monti said he dreamt of a more political Europe; a Europe that engaged in building two bridges, one between the North and the South, and the other between the UK and the rest. He noted that during the Eurozone crisis, the EU produced decisions without proper political explanation that, unfortunately, contributed to the rise of populism. Europe’s leaders should spend more time addressing political matters rather than just those that “their finance ministers know at least as well as their bosses”. The Italian Senator expressed confidence Summary | 34

that cohesion could be established between the South and the North of Europe, based on everybody’s interest in creating highly competitive social market economies.

Two changes would need to occur, however: a greater recognition by the North of public investment as a legitimate driver of demand, and a common market in energy. The latter drew interest from the audience, but also concern about feasibility, public support, and possible sabotage by corporations. Mr. Monti argued that proposals such as Poland’s idea of an Energy Union would boost domestic growth, reduce prices, and provide an important instrument of foreign policy.

Monti: “During the Eurozone crisis, the EU produced decisions without proper political explanation that contributed to the rise of populism.”

Mr. Zaorálek argued for a Europe that was led by effective communitarian institutions rather than a directorate of big countries; was willing to select strong personalities to lead its institutions; prevented a drift between the Eurozone and the rest; and remained open to new members. For Mr. Šefčovič, the Europe of the future should be more open (promote enlargement and transparency), more democratic (involve national parliaments and civil society), more free (fight populism and nationalism), and more global (shape globalisation). Mrs. Grabbe wanted a political Europe, defined as one that responded to the legitimate grievances of European citizens, now expressed in illegitimate ways by populists. Europe must nurture open societies that protect marginalised communities, including the Roma, the LGBT, and migrants.

In the subsequent Q&A session, the looming specter of populism caused much concern. Mrs. Grabbe warned that if populists gained 25-30% of ballots, they could actually influence decisions. This might affect foreign policy areas such as the EU’s support for democracy and human rights worldwide, on which the European Parliament had a say. Mr. Monti pointed out that the populists did raise legitimate issues, but provided simplistic solutions. This was a failure by the establish-

globsec 2014 Full Report

ment and the media, because “we created an environment in which any idea longer than 30 seconds is not worthwhile”. The concept most significantly harmed by populism was integration, which, while being the most effective solution, was complex.

Accountability and democratic legitimacy of European institutions also featured prominently in the discussion.

Mrs. Grabbe argued that national parties, while it was them who took the big decisions on the Council on behalf of their governments, usually did very little in European elections; the public engagement by, and accountability of, prime ministers and government ministers on European topics would boost turnout and general interest. Getting rid of the impression that things were being imposed by Brussels, which was very present in national parliaments, was only possible through a more intense dialogue between the Commission and the nations, Mr. Šefčovič said. For this to happen, the next Commission would have to be much more political, with commissioners ready to engage, explain and gain local ownership. For all the talk about democracy, Mr. Monti pointed out that leadership was also necessary, and had been present since the birth of the European project; had the Coal and Steel Community been put to a referendum in 1950, 97.5% would have voted against. He also said, contrary to what he termed the Brussels consensus that the EU level would not benefit from the simple replication of national politics, and was in fact in some respects more democratic than many features of the French or British political systems, as reflected, for example, in the strong powers of the Parliament over the Commission. The necessary improvement of European institutions should therefore start with the recognition of the current acquis.

The panelists agreed with a challenge from the audience that EU institutions did too many small things and not enough big things. Vice-President Šefčovič conceded that the Commission sometimes should be brave enough to refuse to act on agendas for which it had no capacity.

He took Galileo as an example, where, absent anyone else willing to take initiative, “economists and lawyers are now running Europe’s space program”. Referencing another famous case, that of olive oil, he said the Commission should only engage where it could demonstrate clear added value, rather than replacing national or regional authority.

Closing Remarks and Summary In his concluding remarks, Róbert Vass, Founder of the GLOBSEC Forum and Executive Vice-President of the Central European Strategy Council, presented a few figures to illustrate the size and scope of the conference. The Forum had continued to grow, vindicating Zbigniew Brzezinski’s comment last year that it had become a “truly global exercise”. In attendance were over 800 participants from 65 countries. GLOBSEC 2014 was proud to host 5 prime ministers, the NATO Secretary General, some 15 foreign and defence ministers, and dozens of other officials, including, as Mr. Vass put it, “future ministers”. Indeed, the GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum brought together 35 young and talented individuals from around the world. A new press center was created for 200 journalists from more than 20 countries.

In an effort to reach out to the general public, the new public discussion format GLOBSEC City Talks brought the debate to downtown Bratislava, drawing the attention of an additional 400 participants. Moreover, 120 political, policy, business and media meetings took place. Social network posts related to GLOBSEC reached an historic record, with 1,500 Twitter posts and 3,000 followers on Facebook. A full 300 participants downloaded the tailormade cell phone application to help them navigate and interact at the Forum. Mr. Vass recognised the personal contributions of Foreign Ministers Miroslav Lajčák and János Martonyi, the Director of the International Visegrad Fund Karla Wursterová, and the NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.

A round of applause was given to the 100 organisers of the conference, aged 25 years in average, led by the Managing Director of the Slovak Atlantic Commission Milan Solár.

Mr. Vass thanked all participants for their contributions to GLOBSEC and expressed his confidence that the 2015 edition would raise the bar even higher; as it will be a celebration of the Bratislava Global Security Forum’s 10th anniversary.

Zaorálek: “EU Council meetings are too often detached from reality and favour continuity rather than bold policy changes.”

In order to deal with international challenges, Minister Zaorálek thought the EU needed a “more sophisticated and differentiated” approach to its neighborhood, different from the tools it had employed in Central Europe.

This could not be done without a frank discussion, but Council meetings were too often detached from reality and favored continuity rather than bold policy changes.

Summary | 35

globsec 2014 Night Owl Sessions In addition to the rich agenda of the main panels, which were streamed live to an international audience, the 2014 GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum also provided a venue for off-the-record sessions late at night. Fuelled by coffee, cookies and a desire to delve deeper into the intriguing issues topping the world’s headlines, a solid and attentive group of listeners gathered at each meeting

despite the late hour. This fact alone, repeated year after year, has testified to the Night Owl Sessions’ unique place in the array of GLOBSEC activities.

AFGHANISTAN: WRITING A NEW CHAPTER The session featured Radha Kumar, Director-General of the Delhi Policy Group, Mark Jacobson, Senior Adviser to the Truman National Security Project and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University, Abduljalil Ghafoory, Executive Director of the Foundation for Afghanistan in Washington, D.C., Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, activist and Member of the National Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Chaired by Julian Borger, Diplomatic Editor of The Guardian, the debate focused on the lessons learned from NATO’s historic mission in Afghanistan.

Securing NATO’s Borders General Vincenzo Camporini, Vice President of the Institute of International Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, Secretary of State for Strategic Affairs of Romania, Ian Brzezinski, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Ronen Bergman, Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs at Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth, weighed in on the issues surrounding missile defence. The session was chaired by Robert Stein, Senior Fellow on the US Defense Science Board and member of the US Missile Defense Advisory Committee.

PUTIN, RUSSIA AND THE REST This session brought together Andrei Illarionov, Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute and former Chief Economic Advisor to Presidents Yeltsin and Putin, James Sherr, Senior Fellow at Chatham House, Ivan Krastev, Director of the Center for Liberal Strategies, and Roland Freudenstein, Deputy Director and Head of Research of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

The moderator, Kadri Liik, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, led a discussion that sought to clarify President Putin’s objectives in Ukraine and beyond.

THE RISE AND FALL OF POLITICAL ISLAM The debate featured Nabil Fahmy, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, Pierre Lellouche, Deputy in the French National Assembly, Suat Kınıklıoğlu, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Communication, and Faysal Gouia, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Tunisia. It was chaired by Max Rodenbeck, Chief Middle East Correspondent of The Economist. Three years after the first revolutions swept North Africa and the Middle East, the event addressed the real potential of the Arab Spring for reform and change.

Summary | 36

globsec 2014 Dinner Sessions

globsec 2014 Dinner Sessions Furthering its dedication to facilitate informal exchanges and networking opportunities on the margins of this major international conference, GLOBSEC 2014 featured fourteen of these highly appreciated and endearing events. Held in restaurants across the Old Town of Bratislava, as well as on a boat on the Danube River, the GLOBSEC dinner sessions weighed in on various substantial topics. Over select specialties of Slovak and international cuisine, each off-the record debate was kicked-off by renowned subject matter experts and chaired by a seasoned moderator.

CEnergy: Visegrad’s Energy Needs, Means and Objectives The Crimea crisis re-opened the very sensitive issue of European energy security and especially of energy security in Central Europe, often described as a region with energy infrastructure but no energy market. Since the gas crisis of 2009, the V4 countries have explored possibilities for reverse flow and tried to find alternative energy supplies to hedge against a situation in which gas supply would be stopped again. The development of much-needed regional interconnectedness, environmental issues and the current state of the energy market, marked by low prices, were thus the crucial points raised during this discussion. Participants also mentioned the importance of nuclear power for Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and highlighted the further development of energy infrastructure as a key element for improving European energy stability.

One of the debate’s most significant conclusions was that Europe, and Central Europe in particular, should play a more active role in resolving the energy crisis caused by deteriorating Ukraine–Russia relations; the eyes of the world are upon us, and the international community expects not only a crisis management plan, but also concrete steps and solutions.

The discussion was concluded with a debate on public awareness about energy security issues in the CEE region.

The participants agreed that, ironically, President Putin can be credited for increasing the popularity of the topic of energy security among the broader public. This, in turn, forced governments into action and cooperation with each other, as well as with the business sector and other non-state actors.

CONSOLIDATING EUROPE’S SOUTH: NATO ENLARGEMENT IN THE WESTERN BALKANS NATO’s continuous engagement in the region of the Western Balkans has been vital to substantial progress in defence reforms, regional cooperation among the countries’ armed forces, and an increasing degree of security ownership among Balkan countries. As Montenegro, Macedonia, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina are currently aspiring for NATO membership, the dinner session discussion revolved around the readiness of these countries to complete their outstanding tasks on their individual membership tracks and analysed how they would contribute to the Alliance as a whole. The panel also sought to provide insights into how the rift between the West and Russia impacted NATO’s enlargement policy, which was now back on the agenda. One conclusion was that maintaining the Alliance’s open door policy was now more important than ever. Each candidate should be evaluated based on merit only. There was broad agreement that no country should be kept waiting once it was prepared for accession. There was also clear support for the principle that no third country should veto or influence decisions related to the entry of any prospective candidate country.

EASTERN PARTNERSHIP REALITY CHECK: BETWEEN TWO UNIONS? The recent developments in Ukraine have changed the situation in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood: the six countries of the EU´s Eastern Partnership (EaP) no longer

Summary | 37

find themselves between two unions, the EU and the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union (ECU), but rather simply between the EU and Russia, or, more precisely, between the past and the future. Despite the Crimea crisis, Georgia and Moldova, the two frontrunners of the EaP, remain committed to pursuing closer ties with the EU. Still, the November 2013 parliamentary elections in Moldova, the only EaP country with a visa-free regime with the EU, may give cause for some concerns.

The current conflict is the inevitable result of a competition between the EU and Russia for the same “customer” in their shared neighbourhood, which they approach differently. While the EU offers a do-it-yourself package of deep economic reforms, Russia has used a different set of instruments, including quick, flexible and nonconditional money offers, and played well at both the top political level and at the level propaganda. Yet both the EU and Russia have thus far failed to realise there is indeed a “customer” to whom they have to sell their projects. The quality of Russia’s strategic planning in its neighbourhood is overestimated; while President Putin’s project of the ECU is real, his recent actions in Ukraine are more of an action-reaction kind rather than part of long-term strategic planning. But that is the case of the EU too, and questions now arise about what will happen to its

EaP policy beyond the Riga Summit in 2015. From the beginning, the EaP policy was ill-conceived in putting six heterogeneous countries under one umbrella and in allocating very little money for major reform efforts. The EU has a separate policy on Russia, which has inevitably created two competing foreign policies, resulting in a disunited neighbourhood.

TAKING THE HIT: THE IMPACT OF THE US–RUSSIA RIFT ON THE MIDDLE EAST Until the end of 2013, President Obama’s vision of resetting US-Russian relations seemed to have been delivering tentative results, as the two powers managed to more or less agree and cooperate on imposing tough sanctions on Iran, disarming Syria of chemical weapons, signing the new START arms control treaty, and securing transportation routes from and to Afghanistan. Nevertheless, following Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea, the reset has definitively collapsed with vast consequences for these fragile results of US-Russia cooperation, particularly in the notoriously instable Middle East. As the distinguished dinner session speakers agreed, geopolitically, events in the Middle East and in Central and Eastern Europe are linked. With the growing tension over Ukraine, however, attention is shifting away from the Middle East when it comes to resources and staff. The EU’s policy towards both crises is chaotic and hardly visible. In many instances, the US-approach is not working either, e.g. after Washington distanced itself from the current regime in Egypt, it turned to Russia for arms.

MENDING FENCES: THE SERBIA–KOSOVO2 DIALOGUE The dinner session evolved around three main messages: First, this is not a done deal; persisting low scale violence is a testament to the fact that stability is not granted.

Second, dissatisfaction with agreements continues to grow. Third, top level EU involvement is urgently needed.

2

T his designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/99 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

Summary | 38

According to many observers, progress on the implementation of the Brussels agreement has been unclear or doubtful, despite the fact that dialogue does exists and tensions have decreased. Given that the EU promised short-term benefits, including visa liberalization, now is the time to deliver this support, even if there is little progress on the ground. Kosovo lacks a credible perspective, which is reflected by the growing fatigue among the people. The EU is being viewed increasingly critically and members of EULEX were fired on in the North, because of representing the deal broker. There was no consensus on the table as to who was primarily responsible for the situation. The Serbs in Northern Kosovo, for their part, have not been properly informed about the agreement, which may be a factor in their unexpectedly low participation in

globsec 2014 Dinner Sessions

the political process. Bad communications have also led to conflicting interpretations of the deal, but worse, to the labelling of those Serbs who accepted the Ahtisaari Plan as traitors. Sadly, the international community has left them without support. Among the majority Albanians, frustration is emerging as they too perceive to have gotten very little out of the deal.

Turning to Slovakia, one of the few EU members who have not recognised Kosovo’s independence, the issue is not subject to debate; it would have to be brought up by the parliament, as civil society is unlikely to do so.

In general, the session participants noted that Russia’s and Turkey’s influence in the Balkans is on the rise, with particularly strong Russian presence in Serbia. According to one observer, interest in the Balkans is rapidly decreasing throughout Europe. It was noted, however, that the Western Balkans would become a part of Europe eventually, despite the fact that no firm timelines could, or should, be expected.

THE FUTURE OF THE TRANSATLANTIC BOND The session participants agreed that the transatlantic bond was undergoing a crisis of confidence and that conflicts were now closer to home. Nevertheless, they observed that the feeling of transatlantic unity at GLOBSEC was the most positive in the last 5 years.

Maintaining a strong transatlantic bond meant that Europe had to increase its role. For all the talk about divergence, Europe and the US had been able to come up with common agreements, not only on Ukraine, but also on Syria, Iran and other issues.

Ukraine needed a complex effort; the requisite instruments would have to come from the political/military, but also the economic and social toolboxes. President Putin went for asymmetric solutions on Ukraine, as he realised that Western reactions by symmetric means would be far too dangerous for him.

The US administration’s top challenges were keeping a future presence in Europe, dealing with a “schizophrenic” American public (no more US presence abroad but a stronger US international role); and providing visible reassurance to allies, speakers from both France and the US argued. Indeed, as one observer noted, “Western” presence in the Baltic states was discussed for the first time; it was symbolic, but symbolism mattered. The US pivot to Asia, if it ever existed, was now over as we knew it; US policy would rightly be Europeanised, even if Washington still did not know how. “Asia’s pivot to Europe” was underway as well.

Overall, there was a strong feeling around the table that NATO was an indispensable organisation. But the EU and NATO were no abstract entities; all members had to contribute. Deterrence was as much a matter of capabilities as of the will to use them. NATO required more political will, more resources, and more structural reforms on spending.

In comments related to the prime ministers’ discussion, participants expressed surprise about the position of the Slovak Prime Minister on defence spending, but also positive appreciation of more politicians vowing to increase defence budgets. The responsibility of experts to convince politicians was highlighted in this respect. At the same time, a speaker warned that “Ukraine will not save NATO” as the crisis could not be counted upon to galvanise the importance of defence forever.

Summary | 39

EUROPEAN JIHADISTS: READY TO STRIKE “AT HOME”?

The dinner session revolved around the possible reasons behind the decisions of the young people who have committed terrorist activities on the home front. Homegrown terrorism is not a new phenomenon in the Western world; over the past few decades, European governments had to deal with both organised guerrilla armies (IRA, ETA, RAF) and the recently increasing trend in lone-wolf attacks (7/7, Breivik). Most recent terrorist attempts in Europe were prepared or carried out by local nationals (69% of perpetrators in the United Kingdom were British citizens and only 4% were from the Middle East).

A growing number of home-grown extremists is joining jihadist movements and engaging in battles in the turbulent Middle East, North and East Africa. The proportion of foreign fighters in these conflicts, particularly in Syria, is unparalleled since 1980s conflict in Afghanistan.

Most of the perpetrators are extremely young people, often teenagers, coming from a wide scale of socio-economic and educational backgrounds. Rather than religion, their motivations often include the search for adventure or for identity. These young people are often labelled as a “videogame generation”, since they are strongly influenced by the internet and social media. In Europe, there is an understandable concern about the return of these fighters, but the issue must not be over-politicised. Established nets should exist to help returnees reintegrate into society and prevent them from re-joining terrorist activities.

Understandably, much discussion revolved around lessons learned from sanctions elsewhere in the world, pointing to mixed results at best. In Belarus, a close Russian ally, little has been achieved over the years. Historically, sanctions have been the most effective at isolating regimes internationally and at starving populations, rather than addressing what seemed to be acutely needed in Ukraine at the moment: deterring the Russian leadership from taking further aggressive steps against its neighbour.

Some experts felt that the sanctions applied thus far masked a general indecisiveness in the West about how to deal with Russia’s flagrant behaviour. As to the possible imposition of sectoral economic sanctions, threatened by the West if Russia’s hostility continued, concern was expressed as to their hardly foreseeable consequences and potentially disproportionate effects on ordinary Russians. This would not only raise legal and moral risks, but also the spectre that sanctions might actually solidify domestic support for President Putin rather than create pressure to change his thinking and actions. A number of additional measures to complement economic sanctions were suggested, from countering the Kremlin’s neoimperial ambitions, e.g. through arming and training Ukraine’s security forces and providing support to countries in Russia’s neighbourhood, all the way to forcing regime change in Russia itself. A case was made for promoting greater European integration in energy matters, as well as for endowing the EU’s Energy Commissioner with powers to negotiate a unique price for oil and gas on behalf of all member states.

RUSSIA: WILL SANCTIONS WORK?

US FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AFTER THE CRIMEA CRISIS

Rather than producing an unambiguous answer to the question in the headline, the dinner debate suggested that sanctions were only likely to succeed if they were underpinned by a better defined strategy and accompanied by actions on other fronts, including the diplomatic and the military.

In the 1990s, NATO contributed to Central and Eastern Europe’s security, political plurality, and even progress in its EU accession. This was a “period of creativity” in Washington, mostly driven by the Democrats, but enjoying bipartisan support. This bipartisanship on foreign policy

Summary | 40

globsec 2014 Dinner Sessions

in general, but on Europe in particular, no longer exists.

Interest in CEE declined in both US parties, absent a geopolitical challenge. CEE is now free, independent, with established checks and balances and market economies.

But CEE’s interest in transatlantic relations also cooled, partially as a result of EU fund transfers to new members.

Moreover, wars in the Middle East have made the US public turn inward, resulting in isolationism.

Bipartisan support is reappearing after the annexation of Crimea, reflecting the seriousness of the situation. Washington is in a different place than it was just three months ago.

There is even debate on permanent presence in CEE, but what will the countries in the region contribute with? Why should the US make sacrifices when Europe, including CEE, is not willing to invest in defence? The recommitment of the US, one speaker argued, depends on how effective transatlanticists are in CEE (following the examples of Poland and Estonia). Indeed, the US probably expected more from CEE, which is “becoming a lot like the West Europeans”. Central Europe seems to lack self-confidence in values: there are few liberal parties, but more nationalist and populist parties.

Three-fourths of the V4 are now in agreement with France, Germany and the UK on sanctions. But there has been no explanation why not to impose strong sanctions after the invasion of a European country; this was a result of strategic short-sightedness. In this context, Russian economy was bound to suffer more from sanctions, being smaller (onesixth of the EU economy) and not fully globalised.

Third, work on energy security, with North-South interconnections including gas and transportation (which could be made a transatlantic topic). Fourth, address global issues together. Operations are still valid as a driver for defence reform, which required higher defence spending in Central Europe. Fifth, strengthen cultural interchanges. Too few Europeans study in the US and vice versa; Erasmus only supported intra-European studies.

IRAN: DID THE DEAL WORK? There was considerable scepticism around the table, although not shared by everyone, about the chances to negotiate an agreement with Iran. Iran had zero credibility in the eyes of the discussants. The minimum we need, it was suggested, is to have full access to Iranian facilities and a commitment they will not engage in indigenous enrichment of uranium. Other voices said that everything should be done to reach agreement, without preconditions, as long as there is a “transparent” deal. “There is no good solution, there are only bad and worse solutions.” If we accept Iran as a nuclear country, there will be other countries in the Middle East trying to get nuclear weapons, too. Indeed, Saudi Arabia could have nuclear weapons sooner than Iran. Keeping the sanctions in place, on the other hand, will slowly destroy the country and throw it into chaos, the consequences of which are difficult to predict.

It was pointed out that America needed a lot of time to digest the new situation, as US-Russian relations further worsen. In Europe, by contrast, too many people think that Putin “needs a psychiatrist instead of a countervailing power”. But debate in Germany is not over, one voice observed, so hope still exists.

It was pointed out that in the case of Iran, quite exceptionally, the sanctions worked, targeted as they were on the blockage of trade ships and bank transactions. This has pushed the Iranians to the table. Views varied as to Tehran’s current nuclear activity; from keeping still in order to obtain a deal, to continuing production but without testing (“nuclear ambiguity”).

A few “to do” items emerged in the interest of reviving the transatlantic bond. First, reassure the East (Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Georgia). Second, continue enlarging NATO by taking in Montenegro, pressing Greece on Macedonia and continuing the process with Georgia.

As regards the conditions and consequences of a possible military attack, the view was that Iran was now doing everything to get rid of sanctions, but they might go right back as soon as the sanctions were lifted, which is when Israel was likely to strike right Summary | 41

away, because “the maximum of what Iran is willing to give falls short of the minimum that Israel is willing to accept”. History has already proven (in both Iraq and Syria) that for Israel, the threshold for a pre-emptive military attack against nuclear installations in the region is much lower than that of the US; the Israeli Defence Forces think about themselves as “the last line before the next Holocaust”. It is clear that the West does not want a military confrontation: “Iran pretends not to produce nuclear weapons and we pretend to believe it.” It was, however, believed that the US would strike if it had to, referring to President Obama’s warnings that the US would not let Iran have nuclear weapons and the fact that Washington has never taken the military option completely off the table.

As to the consequences of a military attack, the debate’s primary concern was whether this would unite the Arab world. Some voices warned about this effect, but most speakers were sceptical about Islamic unity, citing the general Sunni anger at Tehran’s actions in Syria and the Palestinians’ perception of Iran as a major threat to stability in the region: “The Palestinians have as much love for the Iranians as for the Israelis”. There would also be “very critical” reactions in “half of Europe”.

Iran might not retaliate against the US or EU directly, but would attack the energy infrastructure in the region.

Droning Away: The Pros and Cons of Robotic Warfare The military use of unmanned aerial vehicles, mainly as a part of a broader strategy of fighting terrorism, currently rate among the most controversial topics, posing an important political, military and social challenge for both national governments and the international community.

Experts, decision-makers, as well as the broader public, are torn between, on the one hand, supporting the use of drones, an instrument of targeted killings, helping the United States fight terrorist groups cheaply and with little risk of human losses, and, on the other hand, condemning them as an immoral and illegal means of killing people.

The debate delved into the associated challenges and controversies, the most difficult of which concern civilian casualties, target acquisition, and cooperation with the host countries.

Drones must be coupled with high-quality intelligence services, in order to spare innocent lives and achieve the operational goals, the speakers agreed. An issue worth considering is technological progress and the potential proliferation of technology towards regimes and groups whose possession of military drones would do more harm than good to the fight against terrorism and international stability. Nevertheless, the most controversial point in the drone debate remains the legal framework for this new method of warfare. It seems necessary to create different standards for the usage of drones. There are no clear answers to these questions yet, but a broader debate has to take place in order to create an appropriate framework for the military employment of drones, which should be made transparent, effective, and legally defined.

GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE This session featured a special selection of speakers: the heads of the analytical departments at foreign ministries of the four Visegrad Group countries and Germany.

There was no special strategy guiding the development of German-V4 relations; cooperation was channelled Summary | 42

globsec 2014 Dinner Sessions

bilaterally and through EU mechanisms. The debate showed that common interest could lie in topics such as increasing competitiveness; Eastern Partnership; and issues concerning the Western Balkans. Slovakia, by virtue of being the V4’s only Eurozone member, might be in a more advantageous position in terms of cultivating economic links with Germany and there was some indication that this might in fact motivate other members of the grouping to speed up their accession into the euro area. A stronger leading role of Germany, as well as its more active political engagement in the region, were clearly desirable. Celebrations of the 100 th anniversary of World War I were expected to confirm that any negative apprehensions in today’s “Mitteleuropa” were a thing of the past. German inaction, it was pointed out, could result in instability in the wider Central European region.

THE PACIFIC POWER STRUGGLE The dinner session focused on the US pivot to Asia, its influence on China and other regional players, and their perceptions of current and future regional developments.

At the beginning of the session, speakers looked at the current situation in geopolitical terms and noted that the Pacific was rapidly becoming a contest between America and China. They also pointed to the territorial dispute in the East China Sea between Japan, China and South Korea, which had recently captured much attention. Nevertheless, when it comes to oil and gas shipping, the South China Sea and the issue of China’s map with the nine-dash line are much more important. The nine-dash line shows which areas China considers its offshore territorial waters in the South China Sea and this causes concerns among regional players, as well as the Americans. The emerging power contest puts Australia in an uncomfortable position because it has to choose between a security patron (America) and an economic patron (China). The choice will not be an easy one.

Towards the end of the session, the speakers agreed that both China and the US are committed to avoiding the

kind of rivalry that leads to conflict or even war. Compared with the US, China is still a developing country in both economic and military terms and there is a clear understanding on both sides about the need for a constructive partnership based on mutual respect and benefit.

CYBER SECURITY The dinner session dealt mainly with cyber defence: the current capabilities, the planned developments and areas where further cooperation was needed. The main problem outlined by participants was that there is no Article 5 threshold for cyber, and no planning for post-attack recovery. There is a little to no operational planning, and still very little money earmarked to deal with the question. It is not mandatory for NATO allies to even share information on cyber threats.

After a short period, when cyber appeared as a key question, traditional security threats regained prominence in the public discourse. The single biggest problem is that 85% of critical infrastructure is owned by private companies. Therefore the state and the private sector have to create a sustainable relationship, which is especially hard due to lingering mistrust, the issue of sensitive data, and the protection of business confidential information. Despite common perception, it was argued, only countries can take other countries down. Without the backing of a state actor, no individual group has the capacity to inflict permanent destruction. Participants agreed that only a “cyber 9/11” would be able to change the current international complacency. Many suggested that this might not be a distant prospect, as there are hundreds of thousands of cyber weapons ready; even though “defence capabilities are also doubling every 6 months”, the holes of vulnerability in the private sector are large enough to cause substantial damage should conflict occur.

Summary | 43

globsec 2014 Policy Sessions GLOBSEC 2014 was more than just a place for meetings and exchanges of views. It was also a venue where policies were shaped – where representatives of the public, NGOs and business identified key security, foreign policy and economic challenges and suggested policy responses to address them. In 2014, policy sessions were again an integral part of the Bratislava Global Security Forum.

Neighbourhood Policy of the Visegrad Group The dramatic developments in Ukraine and the unclear future of the European perspective of the rest of the region have highlighted the need for an increased, and better targeted, assistance to the individual countries of the Eastern Partnership, which are currently under strong pressure from Russia. Understanding that prosperity, and respect for human rights and dignity, are the only precondition in overcoming national tensions, the EU must stick firmly to its values and come with a bold action plan that

Summary | 44

would support democracy, rule of law, strong civil society, democratic political parties and the elimination of corruption. Without such bold action, the democratic world risks that the border between democracies and oligarchic autocracies traces the EU’s Eastern border. The Visegrad Group, as the immediate neighbour, must take the lead in the EU’s efforts to rescue its Partnership with the East, and overcome any narrow national interests. A common V4 approach should be drawn not only in democracy support and sharing transition experience through various V4 channels including the IVF, but also in the area of international security, the fight against terrorism, and the support of independent and objective information channelled through various free media. Organised by the Central European Policy Institute (CEPI) in cooperation with the International Visegrad Fund, the session was led by Jiří Schneider, Senior Fellow at the Prague Security Studies Institute.

Changing Frontiers? Stability and Sustainability of the Present Borders in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and North Africa The unfolding crisis over Ukraine resuscitated debates on the character of the international system, as well as on fundamental principles of sovereignty and international law.

While multi-ethnic states in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East continue to be challenged by a combination of re-awakened nationalisms, religious revivals and neo-imperial consolidation – Russia’s annexation of Crimea is just one example of how the post-Soviet boundaries in the CEE and the Sykes-Picot post-World War I boundaries in the ME could again become challenged. As has been the case throughout the 20th century – whether as the consequence of the world wars, crumbling colonialism or the fall of the Soviet Union – will multi-ethnic states crumble and maps continue to be redrawn in the new millennium with similar intensity? Is the disintegration of the Soviet Union into 15 quasi-nation states, the break-up of Yugoslavia or even Czechoslovakia a permanent outcome?

Or, as ‘in war the result is never final’, have we overlooked

globsec 2014 Policy Sessions

the enormous potential for ethnic and nationalist unrest potentially leading to further fragmentation? Is Ukraine just an isolated and radical example, or do problems in the Baltic states, Moldova, the Caucasus, Syria, Yemen or Iraq pose a similar challenge? If so, how can one balance the principles of states’ territorial integrity with those of the right to selfdetermination? Such questions were tackled in the closed session moderated by Shlomo Avineri, Professor of Political Science, Hebrew University and former Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel.

Security Sector Reform Trends and Challenges: Intergovernmental and Regional Approaches to SSR Security Sector Reform (SSR) is an extremely complex and multidimensional process. Requirements for its successful implementation differ, depending on the character of the environment where it proceeds. The debate highlighted the lessons learned from SSR processes in regions such as the Western Balkans and countries like South Sudan, Mali or the Central African Republic and identified how the international community and international organisations in particular could enhance their support to SSR processes.

Several recommendations emerged from the session. First, further work is needed to develop SSR doctrine, with a focus

on security sector management. A greater evidence base is required to reinforce the economic case for supporting security and justice reforms. Second, consideration should be given to creating a forum to facilitate horizontal coordination between the regional and multilateral organisations. Ensuring coherence in doctrinal terms will be essential, while looking at lead roles and areas of core expertise amongst organisations is worth exploring. AÂ more systematic mechanism should be considered to exchange good practice. Third, further work is required on how to measure progress and define success in SSR terms. The need to be realistic and pragmatic in assessing what is a long term transformational process was underlined.

Fourth, taking the example of the recent joint conflict assessment undertaken by the EU and UN in the Central African Republic, consideration should be given to developing similar joint instruments on the security sector front. Fifth, joint training of personnel, including at the political and technical levels, would help facilitate cooperation and coordination of activities, and develop a collective community of practice between regional and multilateral organisations. Sixth, further support is required to reinforce the capacity within regional/ international organisations to support SSR processes.

The policy session was organised in cooperation with the Slovak Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and chaired

by Mark Downes, Head of the International Security Sector Advisory Team at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

Summary | 45

GLOBSEC 2014 Gala Dinner The GLOBSEC 2014 Bratislava Global Security Forum Gala Dinner took place at the splendid Reduta building, home of the Slovak Philharmonic. For the third year already, this Gala Dinner featured a presentation ceremony of the Czech and Slovak Transatlantic Award (CSTA), an initiative implemented since 2012 jointly by the Slovak Atlantic Commission and the Jagello 2000 Association from the Czech Republic.

Within this initiative, the two non-governmental organisations biannually recognise Czech, Slovak and international personalities who have significantly contributed to freedom and democracy in Central Europe, to the integration of the region into Euro-Atlantic institutions and to the strengthening of transatlantic relations.

Today, our peace and security as well as our membership in the Euro-Atlantic structures are taken for granted by many, often forgetting the hard work, leadership and determination of those who contributed towards these historic changes. As the whole region found itself at a crossroads, vision, mentorship and hard work of personalities who believed that Central Europe might once

become a region of stability and a safe home for millions of people, was much needed. Many times it took much boldness to stand up for such determination. Few people had the courage to defend the idea of integrating Central European countries into Euro-Atlantic institutions; the CSTA initiative aims to recognise such figures. The Award laureates are selected by the CSTA Honorary Committee, made up of eleven individuals from the Czech and Slovak political, defence and diplomatic communities.

In 2014, the Award resonated with the special symbolism of the 15 and 10 years, respectively, of the Czech Republic’s and Slovak Republic’s NATO membership. The two personalities celebrated in Bratislava on this occasion were Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Karel Kovanda.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen was awarded for the support he extended to the Central and Eastern European countries’ NATO membership aspirations at the 2002 Prague NATO Summit as the Danish Prime Minister, for his contribution to the strong transatlantic bond and for the unequivocal action over the crisis in Ukraine as the Secretary General of the Alliance. Ambassador Tomáš Valášek, in introducing the Award, further recalled that as Prime Minister of Denmark, Mr. Rasmussen presided over the European Union’s Copenhagen summit, where the EU made the memorable decision to enlarge to ten new

Summary | 46

GLOBSEC 2014 Gala Dinner

countries: “It was there that you have, in an important way, helped to change the life of the Czech Republic and Slovakia forever.” In his acceptance speech, Mr. Rasmussen noted the achievements of both NATO and the EU in building a “new Europe” since the end of the Cold War. And then, pointing to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, he set out the principles for action: “If we make the wrong choices, we have a lot to lose. But with the right choices, we have a lot to gain. That is why we must continue to stand strong, and stand up for our values. For a Europe that is truly whole, free and at peace. Firmly grounded in the European Union, and firmly connected with our North American Allies through NATO.” Karel Kovanda was recognised for his instrumental role in the integration of the Czech Republic to NATO. As a Czechoslovak and later Czech diplomat, Ambassador Kovanda led the Czech UN Delegation, Prague’s NATO negotiating team and was the Czech NATO Permanent Representative when the country joined the Alliance in 1999. In a moving and personal laudation, Ambassador Martin Bútora highlighted one of the formative experiences of Mr. Kovanda’s long and distinguished career as diplomat and democratic activist, when the Czech Ambassador became the first diplomat, on the floor of the United Nations, to openly call the violence in Rwanda a genocide. Indeed, Mr. Bútora noted, Immanuel Kant’s

categorical imperative “has been the leading principle of his life”. In response, Ambassador Kovanda presented two overarching lessons from his years as a diplomat. The first had to do with the toxic character of divisions based on tribe, religion, nationality, language, which brought immense suffering in places such as Rwanda, Iraq, Bosnia, anti-Semitism, and most recently in Ukraine. Overcoming man’s natural urge to kill the person who is different from us, Mr. Kovanda said, “is what civilization is about”. In the second lesson, he referred to the unexpected events that have repeatedly occurred in history and changed its course: “The one thing we need our Alliance for, in the long run, is for it to be prepared to cope with future Black Swans. Be ready for everything! Expect the unexpected!”

Since 2012, the Award holders are: Ron Asmus (in memoriam), a US diplomat and analyst; Alexandr Vondra, former Minister of Defence of the Czech Republic; Jozef Stank (in memoriam), former Minister of Defence of the Slovak Republic; Gen. Klaus Naumann, former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee; Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, Poland’s former Prime Minister and Minister for European Integration; Oldřich Černý (in memoriam), former Head of Czech Foreign Intelligence Service; Gen. David H. Petraeus, former ISAF Commander and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Eduard Kukan, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia.

Summary | 47

GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum 2014

GLOBSEC 2014. Most GYLF sessions took place on the GLOBSEC Boat on the Danube river, which was chosen to symbolise the driving force, energy and dynamism of the next generation of world leaders.

On May 13–16, 2014, the Slovak Atlantic Commission, with support from the NATO Public Diplomacy Division and the Embassy of the United States of America in Slovakia, hosted the GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum 2014 (GYLF 2014). The event ran in parallel with the GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum.

GYLF 2014 featured several innovative formats designed to foster interaction, such as the Twinning Lunch, a workshop on leadership, the City Talks sessions, and the GYLF Pub Quiz. In cooperation with the Afghan Deputy Ministry for Youth Affairs and Kabul University, a public book collection for pupils and students in Kabul was organised, resulting in more than 250 books donated to this cause.

GYLF convened an impressive group of 33 emerging leaders from more than 20 countries for four days during which they engaged in off-the-record sessions with distinguished speakers. Aged 25 to 35, the participants came from a variety of professionals and academic backgrounds, which included elected officials, CEOs, academics and military personnel. The gathering presented a unique opportunity to discuss the most pressing international security and foreign policy issues and to network with fellow participants. Flowing in and out of the formal GLOBSEC Forum schedule, the youth event introduced a number of different formats to connect the young professionals with seasoned diplomats, policy-makers and experts participating at

Using an online discussion platform in the run-up to the conference, participants elaborated ideas and recommendations for the main panel sessions of the GLOBSEC Forum, including:  GLOBSEC Brainstorming on Ukraine  Afghanistan Check-List: Writing a New Chapter  Power Shifts: Renewing Western Leadership  Wake Me Up When September Ends: NATO after the Summit These recommendations were sent to the chairs of these sessions prior to the Forum in order to incorporate the young leaders’ ideas into GLOBSEC’s main program. Youthful voices could also be heard from the audience at most sessions, which contributed to the overall success of GLOBSEC 2014.

“This forum is not just about networking. We also give you an opportunity to be fully involved in the Forum’s meetings, initiatives and research. You are encouraged to interact with the Forum’s wider multi-stakeholder community. Be aware that you have a powerful role at GLOBSEC 2014, so make the very best of it,” said Róbert Vass, the founder of the GLOBSEC Forum and Vice-President and CEO of the Central European Strategy Council. Addressing the participants at the welcome dinner on the first day of the Forum, Róbert introduced a new Strategy Council ALUMNI Programme. The

Summary | 48

GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum 2014

informal opening allowed participants to get acquainted with each other in a friendly atmosphere, to learn about their jobs, the projects they work on, and the initiatives they could undertake together.

Ambassador Rastislav Káčer, Honorary President of the Central European Strategy Council, officially opened the four-day GYLF Forum on the next day and welcomed all participants not only to the event, but to the GLOBSEC community as a whole. The following keynote discussion on the challenges for the transatlantic security relationship featured Ambassador Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy. The speaker assured the participants of her support for their activities towards strengthening the transatlantic bond and highlighted the importance of a strong and vibrant role for NATO. The Forum culminated with a lunch at the residence of H.E. Theodore Sedgwick, U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia. The Ambassador welcomed all GYLF participants to Bratislava, but also invited other distinguished American guests, including George Friedman, Founder and Chairman of Stratfor and author of The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years; Ian Brzezinski, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and others. Having the opportunity to engage with such esteemed personalities contributed to the fact that many participants ranked the lunch with Ambassador Sedgwick and his guests amongst the Forum’s most valuable and memorable experiences.

During the following two days, GYLF off-the-record discussions featured Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies; General John Allen, former Commander of the ISAF and US Forces in Afghanistan, Ambassador Kurt Volker, Executive President of the McCain Institute for International Leadership, Kathleen Koch, author and former CNN correspondent, Heather Grabbe, Director of the Open Society European Policy Institute, and many other respected experts in the field.

The Forum’s discussions revolved around the following topics:

 Redefining NATO’s Role  The Living History of the Iron Curtain: Fragile Freedom on the Eastern Front  Great Expectations: ISAF’s Mission Revisited  Russian Geopolitics: Let Putin’s Games Begin?  10 Years after the Big Bang: Reflections on the EU as a Foreign Policy Actor in the Neighbourhood  The Bitter Sweetness of Leadership  The Arab Spring Three Years On During the closing session, all GYLF participants were awarded certificates of attendance at the GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum 2014, reflecting their entry into the wider GLOBSEC community and their commitment to contribute to the strengthening of transatlantic relations in the future. Ambassador Rastislav Káčer concluded GYLF 2014 by challenging these active young Atlanticists to become the main “movers and shakers” of the necessary large-scale transatlantic policy change.

Summary | 49

globsec 2014 Special Events Strong mutual interdependence in a globalised world, new security and economic challenges in a time of austerity and general political instability mean that traditional security providers have increasingly turned their look to the private sector to devise new, innovative solutions. Private businesses have been part of this endeavour, reflecting their active interest in keeping the region stable, secure, prosperous and free. By bringing various actors and institutions into GLOBSEC’s dynamic community and allowing for the exchange of ideas between policymakers and private actors in an informal setting, this year’s Business Fora again sought to find answers to the international challenges of the day.

DAV4 Defence Industry Forum The DAV4 Defence Industry Forum held at GLOBSEC 2014 kicked-off the third stage of the region’s flagship research and advocacy project, carried out by the Central European Policy Institute (CEPI). The two-panel roundtable featured the region’s high-level ministries’

officials, national armaments directors and industry leaders. After its first high-visibility report on the fundamental principles of the Visegrad defence co-operation (VIDEFCO) published in 2012, the DAV4 expert group released follow-on reports on joint regional units and cyber defence co-operation last year. In its third iteration, the expert group is going to examine possibilities of industrial and acquisitions co-operation among the four countries, and analyse prospects of co-operation in the field of military education. The quadrilateral expert group which commenced its work at GLOBSEC will produce recommendations to the Visegrad governments by the end of 2014. It will have to pay special attention to close co-operation with the defence ministries to ensure that its reports effectively complement the already intensive intergovernmental preparations.

Energy Forum The GLOBSEC Energy Forum scrutinised some of the most pressing issues of the current energy debate. At the panel on competitiveness and green ambitions, speakers discussed the question of rising energy prices within the EU as traditional energy companies are experiencing serious economic losses and public budgets are burdened by green energy subsidies. At the same time, it analysed the energy and climate policy debate in Europe in light of the US’ newly-gained competitive edge resulting from massive investment into the shale gas sector. Moreover, the Forum introduced a debate on the changing landscape of the European energy market, which, according to some, is experiencing the “worst structural crisis in the history of energy supply” and has led to growing concerns about the future prospects of ensuring generation adequacy and security of supply.

Present experts and policy-makers debated what road the EU (and the US) should take, as well as whether the market was more important than the security of supply and sufficient generation capacity.

Cyber Security Forum Held under the auspices of Peter Pellegrini, State Secretary and Digital Leader of the Slovak Ministry of Finance, the half-day Forum analysed the reality and prospects for V4 cooperation in the field of cyber and information security, as well as the security of its critical infrastructure. In the morning session, speakers focused on effective V4 collaboration and best practices in the field of cyber and information security; analysed common emerging threats; discussed open and big data; as well as how to ensure an effective exchange of information among V4 countries. The Forum’s second panel sought to identify the most vulnerable sectors of critical infrastructure; discuss simulations of crisis situations; analyse frameworks, standards, guidelines, and best practices; as well as the management of cybersecurity related risks.

Summary | 50

GLOBSEC 2014 City Talks The Slovak Atlantic Commission, in close cooperation with the City of Bratislava, hosted a series of GLOBSEC City Talks, which were organised on the side-lines of the GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum. The objective of GLOBSEC City Talks is to discuss key foreign policy and security issues publicly with a broader professional audience, including secondary school and university students, young professionals, civil servants, business and civic society representatives, members of the diplomatic community and the media. Over two days, GLOBSEC organisers arranged five dynamic, in-depth debates with prominent policy-makers and expert figures.

GLOBSEC City Talks focused on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine; the most challenging current security threats; the future of investigative journalism; the global outlook for the next decade; and Slovakia’s role in NATO 10 years after accession.

The GLOBSEC City Talks were officially opened by Róbert Vass, founder of the GLOBSEC Forum and Vice President and CEO of the Central European Strategy Council, and Milan Ftáčnik, Mayor of Bratislava, who warmly welcomed all speakers and participants.

The first City Talk, entitled The Battle for Ukraine, featured five distinguished panellists, Linas Linkevičius, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, Zsolt Németh, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Ian Brzezinski, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., Oleh Shamshur, Foreign Affairs Advisor to Vitali Klitschko and Andrei Illarionov, former Chief Economic Advisor to Vladimir Putin. The panel was chaired by Konstantin von Eggert, Editor-in-Chief of the Kommersant FM Radio in Moscow.

Oleh Shamshur kicked the panel off by answering the question whether there was a Battle for Ukraine or a battle inside Ukraine. He explained that the conflict raged on many levels and the internal dimension was often neglected. The speaker stressed the need for more dialogue with the civil society in Eastern Ukraine and added that the West had an obligation to stop further Russian aggression.

Andrei Illarionov discussed whether Russia’s strategy towards Ukraine was something new or if it was in development for some time. He stated that there was an overwhelming support for Putin and his imperialist mood and that his plans for Ukraine had been in development at least since May 2013: “Mr Putin made it very clear.

Ukraine should be either under himself or Ukraine should not exist as an independent or sovereign nation.”

Linas Linkevičius presented his view on how the West should react to the situation in Ukraine. He stated that reacting was not enough and that it too long to do something. In his opinion, a unified message should be sent to Russia. His closing remark was that “an oppressive Russia can only be defeated by a free Russia”.

Zsolt Németh focused on the nature of the conflict and what was at stake. He stated that this conflict transcended Russia and Ukraine and had a global effect. While the conflict was internal so far, its consequences were most definitely not. While at first glance the issue might seem as a question of security, it was also a question of democracy in Russia and Ukraine. Dialogue with the civil society is needed, he stressed. However, there should be no dialogue with terrorists. The ultimate goal of Russia, Mr. Németh concluded, had always been the unification of all Russians in one state.

Ian Brzezinski was asked about Washington’s attitude toward the crisis in Ukraine. He stated that there was a constant avoidance and giving Putin a way out. The USA was not willing to use military force. According to Mr. Brzezinski, the West and the US should change course.

There are three basic objectives that the West must accomplish: to prevent further aggression and punish the actions committed; to provide for Ukraine’s self-defence; and to provide help for long-term reconstruction. The Summary | 51

current effort was focused only on the last objective. Mr. Brzezinski believed that the focus should be on military objectives.

The next City Talk, focusing on emerging security threats, was chaired by BBC’s Nik Gowing. This debate featured

by Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and Robert Kandra, former CIA and FBI officer.

The panellists focused on the types of security threats that modern states are currently facing. They agreed that cyber warfare was slowly starting to replace conventional warfare. Nevertheless, old fashioned military threats are still rampant. Terrorist groups or any other kind of illegal groups will try to use every tool at their disposal to try and topple a state. According to the panellists, the US has been effective in getting ahead of what terrorists do, but the danger is always there. They also discussed the possibility of a state using financial threats; the use of such methods, however, would prove self-defeating, as such actions by national economies may adversely impact the global economy.

The following day started with a discussion entitled Journalism's.Not.Dead, which was chaired by former CNN correspondent and author Kathleen Koch. The panel featured Ronen Bergman, Senior Correspondent

for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, Julian Borger, Diplomatic Editor of The Guardian, Edward Lucas of The Economist, and Andrei Soldatov, Editor-in-Chief of agentur.ru.

Edward Lucas started the exchange by trying to answer the question whether Edward Snowden was a hero or a traitor. He defended a country’s right to conduct espionage, and information regarding espionage on a dictatorship conducted by a democratic state should not be revealed. He added that Mr. Snowden was a perfect person to be recruited by Russia’s intelligence, as the Russians are good at recruiting people who have negative connotations in the US. Mr. Borger stated that the Snowden case was an embarrassing oversight on the part of surveillance agencies.

Mr. Soldatov explained that even though Mr. Snowden took refuge in Russia, Russian journalists are very much critical of Mr. Snowden. When he landed in Moscow, he did not want to talk with Russian journalists. Mr. Bergman talked about Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and his conspiracy theories. Much of what Mr. Assange claimed turned out to be correct after Mr. Snowden revealed his leaks.

He asked how one can justify hacking into the e-mail account of the chairman of an animal protection association: “They do it because they can.”

Thereafter, the discussion moved to investigative journalism and its role in society. Mr. Bergman explained that investigative journalism still had a huge role in society. He gave an example by stating that Mr. Assange went back to journalism because journalists are the ones who can publicly interpret documents. Edward Lucas asked how you could know that a document was true, or how you know whether it was a forgery. A document stamped SECRET by itself means nothing; real journalism is talking to people and making a story from what they say. Human investigating still remains vital. Mr. Borger agreed with this opinion by stating that a document by itself means nothing; it has to be put in context.

The final topic of discussion was about the future of investigative journalism. Both Mr. Bergman and Mr. Soldatov

Summary | 52

GLOBSEC 2014 City Talks had similar opinions in this regard. They are facing constant censorship in Israel and Russia, respectively. Mr. Soldatov added how hard it was to get reliable information about what was going on in Ukraine these days.

The third City Talk, titled A Global Outlook for the Next Decade, was chaired by Tod Lindberg, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. George Friedman, Founder and Chairman of Stratfor and author of The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years, began the discussion by talking about the private forecasting company Stratfor and its founding. He stressed the use of intelligence as a method. For Mr. Friedman, intelligence did not mean espionage but analysis. Stratfor does not do what it does for Washington, but for the citizens.

Mr. Friedman then continued to explain the methods; Stratfor analysts focus on quantitative data, as anything else is unmeasurable.

Mr. Friedman also gave some insight into the current global geopolitical situation. The US, the EU and China were the post-Cold War pillars. According to Mr. Friedman, the EU was unsustainable, the US was not retreating from the Islamic world as a victor, and China would not be able to surpass the US from an economic standpoint. However, given the weakness of the EU, Russia had that opportunity.

He also talked about the current situation in Ukraine.

Mr. Friedman stated that “nothing significant” had happened as of yet. The Russians had so far taken a huge beating throughout the Cold War and now. Mr. Friedman warned that Mr. Putin was a tactician and knew how dangerous the world was and how quickly it changed.

NATO’s problem was that there was “no allied army, but only the US Army”. Mr. Friedman expressed doubts whether other nations would lend their support if the conflict in Ukraine escalated to a higher level.

The GLOBSEC City Talks ended with a public recording of the renowned TV debate “Večer pod Lampou”, which focused on NATO and its role 10 years after Slovakia joined the Alliance. The distinguished panel consisted of Rastislav Káčer, Slovak Ambassador to Hungary and Honorary Chairman of the Slovak Atlantic Commission, Tomáš Valášek, Permanent Representative of Slovakia to NATO, Alexandr Vondra, former Minister of Defence of the Czech Republic, Jiří Schneider, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and Martin Bútora, Honorary President of the Institute for Public Affairs. The debate was chaired by Štefan Hríb, Editor-in-Chief of the leading Slovak current affairs magazine .týždeň.

The panellists were deeply concerned about the current state of NATO and its members’ ability and willingness to face the ongoing security crisis. Alexandr Vondra pointed out that NATO has been in persistent crisis since the Bucharest Summit in 2008, when the potential of membership for Ukraine and Georgia was rejected by some of the allies. Jiří Schneider pointed out that joining NATO was a crucial step for both countries, Slovakia and Czech

Republic, and we should strengthen and deepen our engagement within the Alliance. Tomáš Valášek reassured the audience that NATO’s Article 5 collective defence commitment was still vital and the Allies were ready to come to each other’s defence.

GLOBSEC City Talks welcomed more than 300 participants during two days, which confirmed its relevance, as well as the public interest in discussing acute foreign policy and security issues.

Summary | 53

Tweets GLOBSEC @globsec Slovak FM @MiroslavLajcak at opening of #GLOBSEC2014: We live in a far more dangerous neighbourhood than we previously thought.

Carl Bildt @carlbildt Cyber politics will be for the 21st century what geopolitics was for the 19th century.

AndersFogh Rasmussen @andersfoghr Just landed in Bratislava. I’ll attend #GLOBSEC2014 and meet #Slovakia’s leadership.

EAD @ead_diplomats Excited to be leaving for #GLOBSEC2014 and participa­ ting in the GLOBSEC Young Leaders’ Forum. Will be great to see old friends and meet plenty of new ones!

PISM @pism_poland To be a member of NATO is not only a privilege is also a duty - @AndersFoghR. Andrew A. Michta @andrewmichta Arrived in #Bratislava for #GLOBSEC2014. Excellent organization. --@GLOBSEC is getting more efficient with each iteration.

J.S. Lindley-French @FrencLindley Visegrad the beating heart of Europe. If V4 can speak with one voice the whole will be much more influential than sum of parts.

Heather Grabbe @heathergrabbe “Federalisation” of Ukraine is a trap, not inclusive federalism as in US or EU. Great debate on Ukraine in Bratislava at #GLOBSEC2014.

Vladimir Vano @vladimirvano MarosSefcovic: “We must prove it is better done on the EU than on national level, before acting.” piotr smolar @piosmo Le PM Fico: “On parle de solidarité (sur l’Ukraine) et la France vend des navires de guerre à la Russie.”

Martin Ehl @martinczv4eu Solidarity is the only value which unites EU countries in time when decision could not respect individual interests -- PL PM Tusk at #GLOBSEC2014.

GLOBSEC @globsec Shlomo Shpiro: Key to political & military power now is information. Third of humanity catalogued by intelligence services.

Summary | 54

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin @ase Former Homeland Security Sec Michael Chertoff quotes bible to suggest spying is inevitable/necessary.

Marcin Zaborowski @mazaborowski @AndersFoghR CEE must spend more on defence otherwise it’s freeriding.

Annabelle Chapman @ab_chapman For me personally, main feeling emerging from #GLOBSEC2014: rift between Poland & Germany over Ukraine.

Daniel Bartha @bartha_daniel PM Orban: We have to have sensible cooperation w Russians. The current crisis is the greatest danger for EU competitiveness.

Damon M. Wilson @damonmacwilson Orban switches to English to doubly underscore his point that a democratic Ukraine must respect Hungarian minority.

GYLF @youthglobsec Corruption in CEE is like Nokia - it connects people.

Simona Kordosova @simonakordosova Tim Snyder believes European order now hangs in Ukraine. It’s a test case for Europe, the same as in 1938, 1956, 1968.

Ayman Mhanna @aymanmhanna @LiamFoxMP West’s mistake: thinking inside every dictator there’s a liberal democrat waiting to wake up if we’re nice to him.

GYLF @youthglobsec GEN John Allen to the young leaders at GLOBSEC: I can’t do anything about having a 60-year old body. But there’s no excuse for not having a 5000-year old mind. Good leaders know history.

Kathleen Koch @KathleenKoch1 Leadership workshop 4 @YouthGLOBSEC was fun!

Such a bright, insightful group of young people. Bravo #GLOBSEC2014 for launching this program!

Edward Lucas @edwardlucas #GLOBSEC2014 was a great event. Many thanks to all the organisers for hospitality, efficiency and good humour.

Milan Nic @milann_sk Progress in V4 defence cooperation more dynamic & ambitious than in W. Europe. Stay on track 4 more tangible outcomes and 4 more recommendations in our DAV4 project.

About US

The Central European Strategy Council is an independent non-governmental organisation built on the foundations of a 20-year history of the Slovak Atlantic Commission. It is a regional multipli-er of its core mission, which is to strengthen the voice of Slovakia and Central Europe in Europe-an and global affairs and define and support the strategic role of Central Europe in international politics. The organisation connects key Central European personalities and experts in foreign and security policy.

The Central European Strategy Council associates three organisations – the Slovak Atlantic Commission (SAC), the Central European Policy Institute (CEPI) and the Centre for European Affairs (CEA). The three well-established organisations created a new umbrella entity in 2013. Central European Strategy Council has 30 members of staff who run 60 projects in 18 countries.

Slovak Atlantic Commission

The Slovak Atlantic Commission (SAC) was founded in 1993, shortly after Slovakia became an independent state, by a group of diplomats. SAC supports transatlantic cooperation and actively shapes the security and international policy debate in Central Europe and beyond by fostering dynamic involvement of the Slovak Republic and Central Europe in international affairs.

The activities of SAC consist of three core programmes: 1. The Strategic Forums Programme provides platforms for advancing Central Europe’s point of view in European and transatlantic foreign and security policy-making through events such as GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum, the Chateau Béla Central European Strategic Forum, the GLOBSECchat and several other meeting, roundtables and discussions.

2. The Transfer of Know-How Programme reaches out to transitional nations in Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Its mission is to provide assistance and inspiration to transitional nations on their path to democracy and stability.

3. The Youth Leadership Programme assists young professionals in the field of international relations, secu-rity and politics in achieving their leadership potential and improve their academic performance. It seeks to enable them apply their experience in areas of their professional activity.

Centre for European Affairs

The Centre for European Affairs (CEA) was founded in 2011 as a sister organisation of the Slovak Atlantic Commission.

Now it is a member of the Central European Strategy Council. CEA focuses on economic, financial and political aspects of the EU integration and strategic EU policies. Its goal is to present and support credible Slovak and Central European platforms for European policy-shaping, particularly in respect to the upcoming Slovak EU Presidency in 2016. CEA also organises the National Convention on the European Union in cooperation with the Slovak Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. Its other major projects are TATRA SUMMIT and QUARTETORIUM.

Central European Policy Institute

The Central European Policy Institute (CEPI) was launched by SAC in February 2013 with the mission to help decisionmakers in Central Europe craft joint responses to current challenges and improve the quality of their contributions to the EU and NATO debates. The work of CEPI is built on five pillars; Security and Defence Policy, Central Europe, South-East Europe and Eastern Partnership of the EU Programmes are already operational. The Energy Programme will be launched soon. Its main projects include Defence Austerity in the Visegrad Region (DAV4 II), Central Europe in the European Union (CEEU) or Serbia-Kosovo Dialogue.

Amb Rastislav Káčer Honorary President, Central European Strategy Council; Ambassador of the Slovak Republic in Budapest

Róbert Vass Executive Vice President Central European Strategy Council Founder of the GLOBSEC Forum

Milan Solár GLOBSEC Director; Managing Director, Slovak Atlantic Commission

Summary | 55

Exclusive Partner

General Partners

Content Partner

Main Partners

Partners

Mobile Event App

Venue Graciously Provided by

Media Partners

Organizer

Strategic Partners

Main Institutional Partners

Institutional Partners

Klariskรก 14 811 03 Bratislava Slovak Republic Phone/Fax: +421 2 544 106 09 sac@ata-sac.org

www.globsec.org | www.ata-sac.org