Uncommon Decency

Across most of Europe, Green parties are middling political forces, periodic junior partners in coalitions or the occasion to cast a protest vote for disgruntled left-wingers. And yet in prosperous Germany, Annalena Baerbock could well be Angela Merkel's successor at the chancellorship. Formed at the dawn of the environmental and anti-nuclear geist of the 70s, the party was in principle opposed to capitalism, NATO and the very idea of having armed forces (Bundeswehr). Fast forward to today and the the Greens have become mainstream and established. In ten of the sixteen länders, they are junior coalition partners with the far-left, the S&D, the liberals or the Christian democrats. They even lead the regional government of the traditionally right-wing state of Baden-Württemberg, a proof that the once fringe party has the chops to seduce conservative voters. With the upcoming federal race in September, a return to the federal executive seems likely, perhaps even as a senior coalition partner. What's behind the Greens' surge, and what could it mean for the broader European landscape? Back with us to answer is Green MEP Reinhard Bütikofer and Sudha David-Wilp, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund's Berlin Office.

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Listeners may recall Peter Mandelson, the veteran UK Cabinet Secretary appointed EU Commissioner for Trade in the late 2000s upon helping orchestrate Labour's social-liberal pivot as one of Tony Blair's "spin doctors". Mandelson's incarnation of the party's notorious "Third Way" didn't just owe to his Europhile credentials and support for Blairite programs. By racking up a string of landslide victories in the northeastern constituency of Hartlepool, his career showcased Labour's potential to press ahead with market-based and socially progressive reforms whilst retaining its historic foothold in working-class communities. Fast forward to May 6th this year, and the party's gradual loss of its core electorate in the intervening decade was nowhere in better display than in the by-election that saw the Tories flip the Hartlepool seat with a voting share 23 points larger. The political realignment underway in British politics is often chalked up to Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn's radical neo-socialism. Yet its contours are in fact proving deeper and more lasting, as voters get to weigh Boris Johnson's promises to level up the North-South divide against Keir Starmer's declared reversion to centrist politics. Beyond local variations, the trajectory for the working-class vote is one of unprecedented disaffection with Labour. This week's episode gauges the causes, extent and nuances of this trend with Paul Embery and Nick Timothy.

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January 2013. Making its way through the dunes of the Sahel desert, a column of pick-up trucks is spotted approaching Mali's capital city of Bamako. The jihadists at the wheel, some of the region's most dangerous, have sensed an opportunity amidst the country's civil war. At the demand of its government, France launches Operation Serval and swiftly annihilates the coup plotters. This spectacular success of a counterinsurgency later gave way to Operation Barkhane, a longer-term effort to stabilize the larger Sahel, a region as vast as Europe itself, and prevent it from becoming a terrorist safe haven on the continent's doorstep. In spite of the bravery of the 5.000 French servicemen posted on the ground since, recent years have seen a return to instability. 160 people were murdered last week by jihadists in Northern Burkina Faso, whilst Mali is rocked by the second military coup in less than a year. Just as the US moves ahead with its scheduled withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, France seems embroiled in its own Sahelian version of "endless wars". French Ambassador Gérard Araud and leading West Africa expert Michael Shurkin help us parse where we go from here.

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On May 23rd, a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius is instructed by a military jet to land in Minsk as it enters Belarusian airspace, on account that Hamas has a bomb planted on board. One passenger in particular couldn't be fooled. Blogger Roman Protasevich, now jailed in his home country, is one of many political opponents to have fled Lukashenko's brutal repression. The strongman's authoritarian grip on the country has steadily risen since taking office in 1994, but the presidential race that rigged 80.1% of the vote in his favour last August has proved an inflection point. This latest feat of transnational airborne piracy on Europe's doorstep is again testing the EU's appetite for sanctions—and the Belarusian opposition's willingness to keep up the fight. Journalist Hanna Liubakova and Atlantic Council Fellow Vladislav Davidzon join us to unpack.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected].

As a generation, the under-30s in Europe have been fed by the textbook a worldview that sees the European Union (EU) as the sole conduit for enlightened, pacified and efficient relations among the nations of the continent. "Ideals" or "values" is the preferred term for those at the helm of the institutions sprung from these beliefs and a worrying lot of the public they've conscripted into them. That may be a distinction in kind with the deathlier forms of zealotry that the EU has replaced, but not in the degree to which said ideology is embraced. One belief system or another will necessarily come to govern the way power is apportioned and decisions are made in such an unwieldy locus of power as Brussels, and the one dominant at present demands a growing degree of signle-mindedness from its adherents. A few months upon the arduous conclusion of Brexit from which lessons seem yet to be learnt, the supranationalists closed ranks around the European Commission (EC)'s evidently disastrous vaccine procurement strategy, typecasting any critique as contrary to enlightened technocracy. Drawing on the best of the Uncommonly Decent contrarian spirit, we host two noted critics of European supranationalism to take stock of the past year—Anna Wellisz of the Edmund Burke Foundation and John O'Sullivan of the Danube Institute. Enjoy!

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If the West relies on external shocks to border up, Covid may be falling the test of criticality. If anything, the pandemic is exposing Europe's southern frontier as shockingly porous. As many as 8.000 migrants, predominantly Moroccan, have illegally reached the EU enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla over a record span of two days, swimming around the 20-feet, barbed wire fencing that Spain built in the 1990s to prevent stampedes, or walking the same route at low tide. The Spanish right cries out invasion whilst accusing Moroccan authorities of stoking the inflow. The southern neighbor's failure to police its side of the equation through beefed up patrols is arguably a riposte to the treatment for Covid at a Spanish hospital of a militant leader from the Western Sahara. This strip of flatlands on the Atlantic was hurriedly evacuated by Spain's military upon the death of military strongman Francisco Franco, with the militant group POLISARIO rising to claim independence against the heavily militarized grip of Rabat, which also stakes historical claims over Ceuta and Melilla. Unsettled as the backstory may seem, the images of young men erupting by the hundreds on Spanish beaches are already reminiscent of the refugee crisis six years ago. Though Europe's overall intake is still nowhere near 2015 levels, the migrant routes connecting North Africa to the continent are realigning eastward to Spain, with inflows into the country reaching 20-year highs. No guests on the show this week—just a detour into the latest flashpoint in Europe's unremitting migrant crisis by yours truly.

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A fog of war clouds the Israeli airspace as this episode goes to press. The country's ability to secure its citizens is once again being put to the test by the more than 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza over the past 40 hours. This reawakened quagmire sits awkwardly with the pacifying facade deployed a year ago by the Abraham accords normalizing ties with a select few Arab nations. A few weeks ago, France's high court ruling in the Sarah Halimi case had the effect of reconnecting Israel's "right to exist" with its commitment to secure Jews worldwide. In 2017, this 65-year-old Jewish Orthodox woman was cold-bloodedly thrown out of her balcony by a Jew-baiting, Quran-chanting Frenchman of Malian origin. The French judiciary's failure to impart justice for the murder reminds the European conscience of Zionism's noble aims, thereby helping rehabilitate Israel's mission in the moral order. As the Halimi family continues a desperate search for justice and Israeli civilians undergo the heaviest rocket fire in a decade, we sit down with Simone Rodan-Benzaquen—the American Jewish Committee's (AJC) Europe Director—and Einat Wilf—former member of the Knesset and co-author of The War of Return (2020), a widely noted polemic on the Palestinian refugee question. The episode would have been timely if only for the ongoing spike of anti-Semitic hate in Europe and Israel's role in combating it. The escalating conflict in the Gaza strip and around the recent evictions in Sheikh Jarra (Jerusalem) have added an unfortunate newsy touch. Enjoy!

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"Fair Greece! Sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! Though fallen, great!" Lord Byron published these lines in 1818 not knowing what a major figure in Greece's History he was destined to become. Three years before dying in its shores in 1824, the Greeks rose up against the Ottoman Empire to seize their national independence. The plight of the country of Plato and Pericles moved thousands of Europeans, including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and other luminaries. Well-read in the classics, this romantic generation saw the events of 1821 as a historic opportunity to repay Europe's cultural and intellectual debt to Hellenic civilization. French poet Victor Hugo would even have Homer and "mother" rhyme in his poems. In the Uncommonly Decent quest to trace the cultural and civilizational roots of the European order, History is seldom brought up. This year's bicentennial of Greece's national liberation commemorates one such rare European moment, providing us thereby with a chance to reconnect with our project's guiding mission. Stathis Kalyvas (All Souls College, Oxford), Thanos Veremis (Athens University) and John Psaropoulos (independent journalist) join the episode this week.

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"That is the secret of propaganda: those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in its ideas, without ever noticing that they are being so". These principles outlined by Hitler's master propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, continue to guide the propagators of hate in our times, albeit in service of a wholly new totalitarian ideology. At times vicious, at times more insidious, radical Islamist propaganda has taken the world by storm. From the execution of American hostages in orange suits to the pictures of a dreamland Caliphate where worthy men and women raise joyful families in faitful observance of Islam, the wedge driven by Jihadist propaganda at the core of European societies is real, deep and life-costing, with Europeans being led to assassinate fellow citizens in Paris, Manchester, Brussels and Vienna. If you doubt that ISIS' propaganda arm ought to be taken seriously at all, consider that its operators are paid on average 7 times more than those risking their lives on the Caliphate's battefront. What's the worldview of a propagandist? Who do they aim to recruit, and how are Europe's weaknesses exploited, including by enlisting the indirect help of adjacent civil society "gateway" organisations along the way? Jesse Morton of Parallel Networks and Hugo Micheron of Princeton are on the show this week to unpack.

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"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". If you've ever been introduced to a History of global power balances, this quote from the Melian dialogue in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War may ring familiar. And yet mighty states and alliances, at odds with this realist mantra, do not always muscle their way diplomatically to get what they want. Sometimes they may opt to lay low and bid for their time. This was admittedly the tenor of China's policy for years following the Tiananmen Square massacre. But a marked and rapid shift towards a more forceful form of Sinocentric diplomacy seems well under way, as China no longer fears strong-arming and threatening its critics in a post-Covid landscape rife with uncertainty and Western indecision. The "wolf warriors" refers to this new generation of diplomats, journalists and politicians taking us towards a nastier form of political and symbolic rapports between rival states. So to paraphrase the great Baha Men in their chart-topping single from 2000, today we ask—"who let China's wolves out?". Janka Oertel from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and Antoine Bondaz from the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) know a thing or two, so listen closely.

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