Tuesday, June 13, 2023
One of the core ideas that Sallux has presented and represented is the notion that we as EU and EU Member States need to cooperate with those outside Europe who try to implement fundamental freedoms. Based on our experience with North-East Syria we know that this is feasible in practice. Moreover we developed a number of benchmarks to define fundamental freedoms such as implementing freedom of religion, equality of women and equal empowerment of all ethnic groups. This is based on the notion that all human beings share equal human dignity. It is also based on the realization that when it comes to migration, that we can neither ‘stop everyone coming’ nor (de facto) ‘welcome everyone’. Beyond any moral consideration, both approaches are not feasible in practice. We cannot build a wall along the whole Mediterranean and all other external land borders. At the same time we see that there are real capacity challenges already in the EU countries of final destination (Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France). This applies both to the basic questions around immediate accommodation as well as housing, integration and education. Moreover the political and societal support regarding immigration and asylum is eroding fast. At the same time the increased immigration is creating tensions between EU Member States. Often the debate on immigration and asylum is framed in purely moral terms, disconnected from physical realities. This leads to standpoints on policy that are equally disconnected from reality which is ultimately not helpful for anyone. It is crystal clear that people are not committing a crime by trying to come to Europe and that we need to create decent accommodation for those who arrive here. However these facts are not solutions. In that sense, the compromise agreed by the EU Council only deals with the people who already arrived in Europe. It offers no solutions in terms of causes of migration. We need to ask a simple question: ‘why are people so desperately trying to come to Europe’? They flee poverty and oppression as well as poverty caused by oppression. We would do the same. Ultimately, the only solution that is within our grasp is a different foreign policy; one that supports fundamental freedoms and not an economy of extraction. One may however say that our approach to foreign policy may have an exceptional ‘real life’ example in one-third of Syria but that this is a historical quirk. There is a very popular and cynical notion that ‘there are no good guys out there’. So, the logic goes that we just need to ‘shut the borders’ and ‘just trade’ and nothing else. We should not cooperate with the right people as they will ‘all turn out to be equally bad’. This attitude may seem realistic and therefore attractive but it is deeply flawed on a fundamental level and in its real-life ultimate effects. At the moment we have a foreign policy that is an oxymoronic mixture of the attitude described above and a wholly detached opposite of it. Our foreign policy is both neoliberal and professing that it values human rights. To reconcile these opposites ‘human rights’ has been limited to imposing our views of sexuality (SRHR) on non-aggressive weaker nations and promoting notions as ‘dialogue’ and ‘civic engagement’. Subsequential, dictators and vested interests can count on security and economic cooperation. Those who represent the oppressed and/or alternative to oppression will struggle to be even heard, let alone get the support they need in terms of real political, economic or security support. Unless it is a cause that is backed by powerful nations and/or interests, there is little chance that it will receive the attention and concrete help it deserves. Anyone who ever tried to lobby for a non-powerful cause that represents the oppressed will be able to testify that this is the reality. Moreover at the moment that the oppressed manage to carve out any significant space, they will still be met with very great reluctance and will have to prove their positive intentions again and again before they receive any support that would help to bring systemic change. The same questions are simply not asked when it comes to dictators and vested interests of which we know that their actions and conduct result in misery and migration. The logic of ‘there are no good guys’ is in this way applied to the detriment of all involved. It does not mean that we should be naïve or apply no benchmarks. The problem is that there are no clear benchmarks as our Ministries of Foreign Affairs are simply not prepared to handle a situation in which the oppressed get some real power and ask for serious support. Even if (for example) a country, area or entity does implement women’s rights and equality for real (which has to be a benchmark), it does in no way guarantee a different attitude from a European Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This kind of benchmarks are only applied on the ‘soft end’ of foreign policy such as development aid and civic engagement programs. At the moment you suggest to apply them at the ‘hard end’ of foreign policy (economy and security), you are met with incredulity and rejected as ‘idealist’. In essence, we believe that good people exist outside Europe as long as these good people do not ask for economic or security empowerment. We have a foreign policy that therefore keeps the oppressed weak and powerless. Or do we really believe that people are only good if they are weak and oppressed? And why do we apply that apparent (contradictory) idea only to people outside Europe? We need to understand that we cannot continue with a foreign policy that is de-facto based on cynicism and big interests. Not just because it is morally wrong, but also because we simply cannot afford it anymore. We cannot afford to perpetuate a policy that increases misery in the world and therefore migration to Europe. The notion that ‘there are no good guys’ is even more problematic if we consider universal human dignity. The assumption that people outside the western world are inherently incapable of creating working governance that maintains fundamental freedoms means that we de-facto assume that white western people are ‘better’. If we analyse it like this we see that ‘there are no good guys’ is racism in other words. It is crystal clear that we need to reject that. This notion has also to be rejected based on current facts. Countries as South Korea and Botswana are just two examples showing that people outside Europe can indeed create and maintain free societies supported by working administrations. That is why we reject the idea that only dictators can ‘maintain order’ and ‘control’. That only ‘works’ for a while and then creates a much bigger problem. Moreover dictatorships often create instability beyond their own borders as we can see in the cases of Russia, Iran and Turkey (which is a de facto dictatorship only allowing skewed elections). As we can see, based on both principle and ultimate results, we cannot ignore oppression and (the threat of) violence outside Europe by appeasing dictators. ‘Trade and shut the borders’ is not working for the people both inside and outside Europe. It only works for multinationals and their shareholders who want to extract resources as cheap as possible, often aided by Ministries of Foreign Affairs. The costs of the ultimate outcome of that policy is paid by taxpayers. In that sense we need to redefine what economic interests are. Is it more profit for shareholders or less costs for the taxpayers? The notion that economic interests have to trump human rights is not true if we understand economic interests as less costs for taxpayers. This is why human dignity as foundation for policy making is not an idealist approach. It also has the ability to build bridges between positions that are now displayed as opposites (refugees/immigrants vs taxpayers for example). As the described issue is such a critical issue for Europe in the years ahead, we have included a clear oytline for foreign policy in our latest publication 'Relational Thinking as Renewal of Christian Democracy'. This publication describes how a relational understanding of human dignity offers Christian Democracy a way forward in Europe both in terms of political profiling and policy-making. We believe that Christian Democracy has in this way a future based on its own Christian inspiration and political approach derived from it. We also believe that this renewed Christian Democracy opens the door for policies that target the core challenges and, therefore, really deliver for the people. With sincere Christian greetings, Johannes de Jong
Sallux Director