Insight and Analysis

Earlier this year, the European Commission elections shook up the continents politics with the voters’ newfound support for broadly “Euro-skeptic” parties. As a result, the Euro-skeptics now make up about a fourth of the European Parliament. And while the traditional pro-Europe parties still have large majorities and control over the levers of governance, it is up to newly elected European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to steer Europe through a time of increasing frustration with the European project itself.

A major part of Juncker’s plan is the restructuring and redefining of the European Commission, with the goal of creating an entity more able to rally political support for the EU and its priorities. The Commission college will now be organized around project teams which are streamlined for what Juncker’s administration hopes will be greater government efficiency. To some observers, such a bold reorganization of the college is something that could “make or break” the European experiment.

Indeed, the incoming European Commission is attempting to redefine the tone of what a commission in Europe should strive for.

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This article is a contribution from James Le Grice, of our network partner Insight Public Affairs, based in London. Find more about them at http://insightpublicaffairs.com/

Five hundred years ago this August, the Ottoman Empire won a resounding military victory over Safavid Persia in a field near Chaldiran in northwest Iran. Turkish rule was extended into eastern Anatolia and the Persian Empire was gradually boxed into an area roughly corresponding to the borders of modern day Iran. The Turks could credit their victory to a deal they made with Kurdish chieftains in the region, who agreed to shift their allegiances to Istanbul. In return, the Kurds were granted autonomy provided they maintained militias to guard the Ottoman Empire’s eastern frontier from Persian incursion.

And thus the status of the Kurds remained for the next few centuries, until the dawn of the modern Middle East. The post World War One redrawing of the map saw Kurdistan divided between four countries and the independence of the Kurdish people repressed under the banners of Arab and Turkish nationalism. However, the last few years have witnessed something of a Kurdish renaissance, and now Kurdish entities are at a crossroads which may see them regain their historic position as quasi-independent buffer states.

Three conflicts have brought the Kurds to this point.

The first was the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the Kurdish region of Iraq had the protection of a no-fly zone since the end of the first Gulf War, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein gave the locals a final assurance against genocide. In the constitution drawn up after the invasion, Kurdish autonomy was reconfirmed and the role of president was granted to a Kurd.

Iraqi Kurdistan remained mostly immune to the violence that engulfed the rest of Iraq post 2003, and its regional government has been relatively stable and relatively democratic compared to the fractious federal administration in Baghdad. All of which has made Iraqi Kurdistan attractive for foreign direct investment. This has led to the exploration of previously untapped oil fields, the recent blossoming of a Kurdish petroleum industry and revitalized local aspirations for the establishment of a sovereign Kurdish state.

The civil war in Syria has likewise resulted in the growth of an invigorated and autonomous Kurdish region. While the first year of the Syrian conflict saw much infighting between Kurdish factions, an agreement was reached in July 2012 between the rival Party of Unity and Democracy (PYD) and the Kurdish National Council of Syria (KNC) to unite under a new Kurdish Supreme Committee and together expel Bashar al-Assad’s forces from Syrian Kurdistan. In the two years since then, Kurdish militias have won major victories against both Assad and the various Islamist factions fighting in Syria, and have exerted control over their region.

The Syrian war has not only raised the status of Kurds in Syria, but also those in Turkey. Turkey’s war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an internationally recognized terrorist group, over the status of Turkish Kurdistan has been one of the most vicious conflicts in the Middle East, though it has rarely received significant global attention.  Over 30,000 people have been killed in the past three decades of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey, which has been fraught with roadside bombings, drive-by shootings, hostage taking (including of westerners), and aerial bombardment by the Turkish Air Force in response.

However, in Bashar al-Assad, the PKK, which is aligned with the Syrian Kurdish PYD, and the government of now-president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which supports the Syrian opposition, found a common enemy and a mutual incentive for rapprochement. Erdogan’s government began clandestine peace talks with the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 2012 which led to promises of greater freedoms for Turkey’s Kurds and the retreat of PKK fighters from Turkey. The most immediate result of these negotiations has been the ceasefire that has remained in place since March 2013.

The peace process is tenuous, and despite the year long ceasefire Turkish Kurdistan remains a tense land of military checkpoints and armored vehicles on patrol. However, a lasting peace appears more viable now than at any other point in the history of the Turkish Republic.

Whereas the 2003 Iraq invasion and the Syrian Civil War raised the profile of Kurdish entities, the conflict against the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) in Iraq has propelled them to a position of international power and influence. Immediately prior to the Islamic State’s takeover of northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was in deadlock with Nouri al-Maliki’s government over the export of Kurdish oil. The KRG had independently reached an agreement with Turkey to pump oil through a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. In May, the first shipment was loaded onto an oil tanker which set sail only to halt in international waters without a destination to deliver to.

Baghdad had declared the export illegal and threatened litigation against any country that purchased it. The United States sided with Maliki, and no one was willing to be forthcoming about importing the oil.

However, once the Islamic State seized Mosul and Tikrit, and the Iraqi Army crumbled in its advance, the international profile of the KRG was transformed from contraband oil dealer to freedom fighter almost overnight. The Kurdish Peshmerga became the frontline defense against the Islamic State, and its fighters seized the opportunity to take over the disputed city of Kirkuk. KRG President Massoud Barzani announced a referendum on Kurdish independence, which received vocal support from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US put pressure on Maliki to resign and began supporting the Kurds with military advisers, then air strikes, and has announced its intention to supply weapons to the Peshmerga. Similar announcements of military assistance to the Peshmerga followed from France, the UK, Italy and even Germany, which has opposed supplying arms to conflict zones since the end of World War Two.

Thus the status of the Kurdish forces in the eyes of western powers is beginning to resemble the status the Ottoman Empire afforded them five hundred years ago at the time of the Battle of Chaldiran. The West is under no illusion about the threat posed by the Islamic State, and policymakers in Westminster and Washington alike know that air strikes alone will be insufficient to defeat it. However, there is no political appetite to commit “boots on the ground.”

Unlike the Free Syrian Army, whom the US and Britain were reluctant to arm for fear of weapons falling into jihadi possession, the Kurdish Peshmerga is seen as a safe pair of hands. And unlike the Iraqi Army, loyal to a political leadership with close ties to Iran, arming the Peshmerga will not risk helping one of the West’s most prominent enemies extend its power.

These factors give Kurdish leaders, both in Iraq and elsewhere, significant bargaining power to achieve greater independence – but a return to “buffer state” status may not be in the best interests of the Kurds.

Iraqi Kurdistan, with its growing oil industry, is arguably the most prosperous Kurdish region, and this prosperity came largely as a result of sustained peace. If the Peshmerga are left to be the forward vanguard against the Islamic State, this peace will be lost and not likely regained for a very long time. As the experience of Algeria in the 1990s, Israel’s struggles against Hamas in Gaza, and the American and British interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, a war with Islamic extremist groups is not one where victory comes swiftly.

Even with such a swift victory, there is not yet any guarantee that the alliances formed, both between rival Kurdish factions and between Kurds and Arabs, will hold once the war is over. Points of division that existed before the present conflicts in Syria and Iraq remain beneath the surface, which underscores the importance of backing up military assistance to the Kurds with significant and sustained political intervention.

The Kurds are at a crossroads, and it will take a combination of international diplomacy and military aid to help them take the right turn. 

When US President Barack Obama arrives in Cardiff, Wales, for the upcoming NATO summit, it will be at a time of turmoil for Europe. Indeed, the challenges facing the Alliance are unprecedented since the fall of the Soviet Union. After two decades of enlargement and an ongoing struggle to reorient itself after missions as far afield as Afghanistan and Libya, NATO is now faced with the specter of Russian revanchism in its near abroad.

It is a big moment for the United Kingdom, as the Wales gathering represents the first NATO meeting in the UK since the 1990 London summit – and it will be the largest single gathering of international leaders in the Kingdom’s history. In addition to leaders of NATO’s 28 member countries, including President Obama, Germany’s Chancellor Merkel, and France’s President Hollande, heads of state or senior ministers from some 60 countries will be in attendance.

Wales itself is ramping up to take advantage of the event. From a global positioning standpoint, the territory is hoping to highlight its lesser known advantages within both the UK and the EU – a strong manufacturing sector, growing commercial tech and science industries, and touristic potential.

But the summit, taking place from September 4-5, comes at something of a crossroads for NATO itself.

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In 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic declared that the descendants of undocumented Haitian immigrants who were born in the country since 1929 were not legally Dominicans. This left thousands of citizens without a nationality, and led to a series of protests both inside and outside the country. The Dominican government was confronted by a wave of criticism in the international community, which argued that the ruling was a threat to human rights, and was based on racism against those citizens born in the Dominican Republic who are of Haitian descent.

The ruling effectively rendered a huge swathe of people stateless, disenfranchising them and preventing them from participating in their country’s political processes and formal economy. Persons of Haitian descent were denied identity cards, meaning that they could not enter the formal workforce, open bank accounts, apply for universities, marry legally or register the births of their children.

To make matters worse, since many of the people affected by the ruling are Spanish-speakers born in the Dominican Republic, they couldn’t return to their “country of origin” even if they wanted to.

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The Scottish Independence movement will come to a crucial referendum vote on September 18^th, as Scots answer either “Yes” or “No” to the question, “Should Scotland be an independent country?” This vote offers an interesting character study of a country that is trying to ensure its voice in an ever globalizing world.

Scotland isn’t alone in balancing greater independence with the advantages of belonging to a world power like the UK. Indeed, this is a question that countries and territories all over the world have grappled with, and it will likely continue be a thorny issue as the world becomes increasingly defined by globalization and interconnected economies.

The example of Scotland is significant for the European Union, especially because it is in many ways a radical departure from the traditional path to secession.

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In the wake of the May 25th elections to the European Parliament, the European Union has been struggling with the next step in the continent’s governance: the selection of candidates to fill the most important positions in the bloc.

Indeed, the process of choosing the EU’s leadership has been the most turbulent in decades, demonstrating the still precarious nature of European politics in the aftermath of the economic crisis – and potentially foretelling deeper disagreements on issues such as fiscal integration, economic policy, and a common response to Russian belligerence.

These disagreements – over who should lead the EU’s foreign policy, the European Council, and the European Commission – come just a few months after newcomers shook up Europe’s political scene. An energetic mélange of political forces, by turns nationalist, far-right, proto-populist, anti-immigration, and generally Euro-skeptic, surged to electoral victories – in particular in France and the UK. While the centrist, pro-Union conservatives of the European Peoples’ Party retained their control of the parliament, the rise of extremist parties has pushed previously submerged schisms to the fore.

The starkest example of divisions within the EU became apparent in the fight over the appointment of the next European Commissioner.

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Thanks to Alessandro Tommasi of our network partner firm Cattaneo Zanetto in Rome for his insights

This past February, Italian politics were rocked by a series of changes which eventually led to the youngest government in Italy’s history. The changes began last December when the 39 year old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, was elected the head of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on a platform promoting change and new blood in Italian politics. The PD was also in power at the national level, having replaced Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia led coalition with Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Renzi rose to the top spot through internal turmoil within the PD. In February, Prime Minister Letta’s coalition fell from power after a vote of no confidence. Subsequently, Renzi, who had never been elected to Parliament – and is, in fact, younger than the minimum age of forty required by law to take a seat – received votes of confidence from both the Italian House and Senate. He was then able to put together a somewhat unusual coalition which included members of Berlusconi’s party as well as members of the anti-establishment 5 Star movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo.

Observers both inside and outside of Italy were concerned after Renzi’s rapid ascent to the Palazzo Chigi; however, the markets and public opinion soon calmed and a massive win in the EU Parliamentary elections for the PD in May sealed the government’s legitimacy.  As mentioned, the government is the youngest ever formed in Italy, which was previously best known for a series of gerontocracies. It also contains the most women to ever assume Ministerial positions.

The Cabinet is composed of eight male and eight female Ministers. Two especially notable ministers are the Foreign Minister, Federica Mogherini, and the Defense Minister, Roberta Pinotti. Mogherini has been discussed as a potential replacement for Catherine Ashton as the next EU foreign policy chief and Pinotti is the nation’s first female Defense Minister – and who, Italian pundits say, could take the place of 89 year old President Giorgio Napolitano due to her well known her capacity for political maneuvering and leadership skills. Both women are young – 41 and 53 years of age, respectively – and represent a new Italian generation.

If nothing else, the amount of women in positions of power symbolizes true change in Italian politics, despite the accusations of critics that Renzi is playing the “pink card” and blatantly appealing to women voters. Prior to the Renzi government, Italy had suffered one of the most unequal gender representations in European politics.

As noted, the European Parliament elections, which the PD won with 41 percent, legitimized the party. Others, such as Grillo’s 5 Star party, which took less than expected with 18 percent of the vote, stumbled. This gave the Renzi government the opening to consolidate its support, and granted Italy as a whole more clout within the EU, since the Italian PD bloc is now one of the largest within the EU’s centre-left ruling coalition.  In Italy it is hoped that this will enable the country to finally influence EU policy, instead of being influenced by it.

In particular, Renzi has argued that austerity is not working, and that Italy should move away from it and towards more growth-stimulating policies. This will, however, require coalition building within the EU to change other nation’s opinions. Thus far, the Renzi government appears to have much better relations with both the French and German governments than its predecessor. This is partially due to the legitimacy which the recent elections brought and partially due to the new energy and young faces in the government. The PD’s win occurred immediately before Italy took the rotating EU presidency and so there is hope that this will also enable favorable policy changes.

Yet among these apparently positive changes there are concerns. The most pressing is the issue of whether the Renzi government has the ability to push through much needed reforms within Italy – much less impact the course of European policy. So far the government has announced many such reforms, but few seem to be moving forward; by announcing reforms publicly before discussing them with other branches of government, some argue, Renzi is trying to strong arm opposition into agreement.

One of the most complicated reforms would be the restructuring of the entire government by dismantling the bicameral system and reducing the number of parliamentary seats. Currently, between the House and the Senate Italy has 1000 Deputies for its 61 million people – the 314 million people of the US, by contrast, are represented by 535 total congressional representatives.

This reform is meant to streamline the Italian government. Under the current laws, the House and Senate have the same powers and each has to approve every law and amendment, leading to massive delays. Removing the Senate and devolving its powers to the regions could reduce much of the red tape bedeviling Italy’s political process, but reform is, predictably, moving slowly.

One of the smaller and odder recent efforts of the government has been the nationwide “bonus” of 70-100€ (on average 80€) each month, paid out through workers’ pay checks. Launched on May 27^th, the money is supposedly left over from over taxation, and the government hopes it will stimulate the economy. In early July, the Italian media was reporting widely that many Italians said that they looked forward to spending their bonus during the summer sales.

The bonus policy is ultimately representative of the state of Italian politics: both optimistic and opportunistic. Some cynical observers have noted that the first bonuses were distributed just two days after EU elections in which the PD emerged triumphant. In a country beset by deep structural problems, such a short term fix begs the question of whether Italian politics are truly changing, or if they have simply put a younger face on an old game.

On July 15^th, the leaders of the five BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – met in Fortaleza, Brazil. With Fortaleza already in the spotlight of the World Cup, this summer summit turned the city into a testing ground for the relevance of the BRICS group.

That is due to the long-awaited announcement of a campaign to establish what has been termed a “BRICS bank,” organized and funded by the leaders of the “global south” – in implied contrast to the Bretton Woods institutions. This New Development Bank (“NDB”) is scheduled to begin operations in 2016. The Bank’s mission: to operate as an alternative lender-partner to its member states in the hopes of one day rivaling the IMF and World Bank. It remains to be seen whether the Bank’s mission will be to directly compete with current international lenders – both large development banks and existing national banks.

This New Development Bank has the potential to demonstrate to BRICS skeptics that there are genuine reasons behind the grouping. Its predecessor, “BRIC,” was an acronym coined in a 2001 academic paper, when it first entered the global economic vocabulary. Given that the member states span several continents, very disparate political histories, language families, and social customs, their commonalities are few but important.

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On August 4th, the Obama administration will make history. This date marks the first US-Africa Leaders Summit and the first time a US President has held a bilateral meeting with roughly fifty African heads of state. The inaugural Summit’s theme, “Investing in the Next Generation,” centers the three day event on building trade and investment relations, the promotion of democratic development, and America’s role in African security.

Many Americans believe that the United States is already committed enough to the social, economic, and security development of Africa. Some argue that little more could be done than what is being done already. To them, this Summit will be just another high profile meet and greet—handshakes, vague resolutions, and a lack of concrete, actionable steps that will all be forgotten when the summit concludes.

Thankfully, this isn’t the case.

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This article is a contribution from James Le Grice, of our network partner Insight Public Affairs, based in London. Find more about them at http://insightpublicaffairs.com/

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has left the American and British governments in an awkward balancing act between politics and national security. When polled, the majority of Americans have said they think the Iraq War was a mistake, and overwhelmingly supported President Obama’s troop withdrawal in 2011. Indeed, much of the President’s political capital stemmed from his consistent opposition to what he once labelled a “dumb war.”

Understandably, Mr Obama has been hesitant to deploy anything more than military advisers to confront Iraq’s current crisis. To say it would be a hard sell to American voters in a mid-term election year is a tremendous understatement. Likewise, if President Obama declares the prospect of a terrorist state in Iraq a severe enough threat to merit military action, he would commit the biggest volte-face of any president in recent history.

But if the appetite for intervention is poor in America, it is destitute in America’s main ally, where there is the added perception that Iraq was somebody else’s problem.

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