The stakes couldn’t be higher for European leaders meeting in Brussels this week to discuss a common response to the flood of refugees pouring into Europe from Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Ostensibly the talks are aimed at convincing Turkey,
The stakes couldn’t be higher for European leaders meeting in Brussels this week to discuss a common response to the flood of refugees pouring into Europe from Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Ostensibly the talks are aimed at convincing Turkey, a major transit point for migrants, to close its border with Greece to prevent refugees from continuing their journey to northern Europe. But the real issue is the Europeans’ inability or unwillingness to absorb the newcomers despite the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on the continent’s southern flank. Unless the European Union can get its act together to address that crisis, the future of a united Europe without borders that shares a common currency and defense policy could itself be at risk. And that should be of significant concern to Americans as we elect our next president.
The rapid influx of more than a million refugees has undermined the fragile political consensus that allowed European governments to accept people fleeing conflict zones in the Middle East and North Africa and provide temporary food, housing and other aid. As the human tide has swollen, the cost of such assistance has soared, overwhelming the capabilities of countries like Greece and the Balkan states to respond. That in turn has led to the rise in popularity of right-wing political parties whose leaders denounce the migrants and demand that the institutions that made their arrival in Europe possible — including the E.U. and NATO — be dismantled.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it mirrors the situation in the U.S. that has arisen from the candidacy of Donald Trump as a contender in this year’s presidential election. Trump has made no secret of his antipathy to migrants from Mexico and Central America, who he claims are stealing American jobs and committing crimes when they enter the country illegally. It’s no coincidence that the authoritarian politics he espouses sound a lot like those promoted by right-wing European leaders such as France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
And make no mistake: Trump is no more committed to NATO and the E.U.’s continuance as a unified political entity capable of serving as a counterbalance to Russian aggression than are his right-wing European counterparts. They would all gladly see the end of the trans-Atlantic Western alliance that has helped maintain stability in Europe for more than half a century.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shrewdly exploited the European refugee crisis to further sow discontent and discord among the 28 E.U. member states.
Later this year Britain will hold a referendum on whether to leave the E.U., and next year France holds presidential elections in which Le Pen hopes to advance her party’s xenophobic vision of Europe’s future. Depending on the outcomes of those votes it’s possible other E.U. countries could also jump on the anti-E.U., anti-NATO bandwagon, in which case the eventual dissolution of the entire European project developed during the postwar era could be only a matter of time. It’s not too far a stretch to imagine that the migrant crisis could succeed in accomplishing what decades of Soviet intimidation failed to do. That is why the stakes in Brussels this week are so high for both Europe and the U.S., and why the talks on what to do about the gravest humanitarian crisis since World War II must not be allowed to fail.
