Europe between The East and The South

Jacques Rupnik: the Arab Spring is sometimes likened to the 1989 European revolutions. You may wonder if this analogy is justified or perhaps this phrase was inspired by the hope awakened by the first stage of the Arab Spring?

Gilles Kepel: And has the European Union developed a policy addressed at its two neighboring areas, the East (former Eastern Europe up to Russia) and North Africa/the Middle East? Or are we rather dealing with something like a division of roles, quite informal, but accepted by all EU members, with individual countries initiating activities addressed at particular regions?

I have an impression that the latter is the case. United Germany, the leading European country, gives impetus to the development of policy towards Eastern Europe, which to some extent constituted for Germany a traditional area of expansion up to the border with the Russian Empire. France plays the role of the leader in Europe’s relations with the South or at least with the countries of the South Mediterranean. England is very poorly involved, not only because its foreign policy is much closer to the American one than the European one, but also for the complex reasons which are weakening the authority of the British government. The British believe that their well-being can be sustained only through gradual depletion of the exclusive prerogatives of the government; for example, the British navy is currently smaller than the French one, which in itself is a remarkable and significant development in this sphere. And Spain and Italy, two Mediterranean powers, have a smaller potential impact than France.

It seems to me that the question of the division of roles between the EU and the member countries must be invoked here, for it is connected with the difficulties in defining an efficient European policy. You have an impression that on the level of public statements there is an emphasis on a number of conditions regarding human rights and the standards of market economy, but beyond that there is no consensus or it cannot be expressed in a simple way.

In the East, Europe includes countries which have emerged from the Soviet system. Reforms there are introduced through European integration, for a whole series of standards—the whole benchmarking—is formulated here and the member countries have to adopt them under the threat of sanctions. This significant process is absent on the other side, in the South—in the Maghreb and the Middle East. These countries do not intend to adapt to the European norm, and they officially proclaim that. When looking for the fundamental principles of organizing their society, they will rather reach for their own traditions. It could be the primacy of Islamic law, the Sharia etc. An illusion has been created that these two developments—in 1989 and 2011—were similar to each other and that 1789 is in some way behind 1989. But this is not so.

As far as the so-called revolutions in the Arab world are concerned—not all these processes correspond with this term—we were in a way forced to view them in the light of two interpretative patterns, two Weltanschauungen of American origin. These two academically transmitted diseases could be called “Fukuyamosis” and “Huntingtonosis.” At first we believed that what was happening in the Arab world was fundamentally similar, structurally identical to what had happened in 1989, the only difference being that in the meantime the world has undergone digitalization. In 1989, there was no Facebook or Twitter, which appeared in the mid-1990s, so the Arab Spring would be a kind of “1989 2.0.”

The power of the Soviets and electrification!

Exactly! The year 1989 and information technology, which would play the role of electrification here.

The year 2011, the first year of the Arab revolutions, was marked by reaching for the concept of the general theory of the end of history, the Hegelian theory, according to which the young protesters from Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis, from Tahrir Square in Cairo, from Benghazi, from Pearl Square in Manama, from the vicinity of the university campus in Sana—the first five revolutions— and even those who, after March 2011, were to appear on the streets of Syrian cities, initially demanding democratization, and then the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, grew up on the same wave of democratic and anti-authoritarian enthusiasm which swept across Eastern Europe in 1989. We focus on the relatively well-educated youth, speaking two or three languages, having access to social networking and media and dominating in the perception of these social movements.

For example, when we look at Tahrir Square in Cairo, it seems to us that we see all of Egypt, although in reality we are looking at just one courageous and democratic segment of society fighting against Hosni Mubarak. In fact, Islamist groupings, initially not involved in the revolution, were able to take it over thanks to their very well organized structures and the ability to mobilize society, as well as to manage what the failed welfare states were no longer able to guarantee: that is the existing charities, health service, education, the network of mosques, social dialogue. The authoritarian regimes commissioned these tasks to them, while still banning them from participation in the political process. In Egypt there were two states functioning side-byside: the military state governed by Mubarak and a kind of “B state”run by the Muslim Brotherhood from below, with the regime making many deals with it, including financial ones. The weakening of the military regimes and especially the feeling that the West, especially the US, left them to their own devices, encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood “B states” to demand primacy for themselves and try to replace the former authorities.

The first factor differentiating 1989 from 2011 is the fact that this time no democratic model of institutionalizing the revolutionary process was adopted, which could ultimately lead to integration with the European Union, as it happened in Central and Eastern Europe. Instead there was a model based on native concepts, and even if it emerged as a result of a formal dialogue with society through organizing elections conforming to European standards, this model in fact upholds ideals of a different type. It was initially believed that 2011 was “the end of history.” Now, unable to comprehend the whole complexity of this development, we are (willingly or not) reaching for Huntington’s model, that is the theory of the clash of civilizations. In the first stage it was wonderful: people concluded that the Arabs were just like us, they had Facebook; away with bin Laden, away with Al Qaeda, away with terrorism, away with the niqab, with Kalashnikov and Jihad. In the second stage, that is from 2012 roughly of up to the summer of 2013, we take a different perspective: in fact we have nothing in common with the Arabs, they are irrevocably different from us. Their only destiny is the Muslim Brotherhood, the niqab, Kalashnikov, Jihad etc. This development will be accompanied by a process of growing fragmentation of society based on all rediscovered divisions, manifesting themselves in new forms.

The first division which coincided with the revolutionary process was the split between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Starting from the end of 2011, the Sunni-Shia conflict, in English known as sectarianism, has been finding its reflection in Syria, where the Sunni majority has been supported in its democratic efforts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad both by Western democracies (they did not provide resources sufficient for the emancipation of these movements) and the Sunni Persian Gulf states. The latter saw it as an opportunity not so much for strengthening democracy— the oil monarchies are afraid of democratizing processes—but for the weakening of the Assad regime, an ally of Iran.

In relation to the European question it is interesting that besides Iran it is Russia that is the main ally of Bashar al-Assad, and the game about Ukraine is seen in the Middle East as a sort of extension of the Syrian issue. Reaching for hard methods in the Crimea and supporting the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, Moscow is indirectly supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad while at the same time demonstrating its ability to maintain its great power status and opposing the processes of destabilization, which could undermine its control over the area of the former Soviet empire in the form in which Putin rebuilds it in mental sphere.

Iraq, which after the 2003 invasion appeared as a model of the American nation building, now found itself in a state of total collapse. A Shia state created by the United States paradoxically could be taken under its protective wing by Iran— American neoconservatives gifted Iran with the best foothold in the region, although formally the US and Iran remain in a state of acute conflict. In its turn, the Sunni state is now assuming a Jihadist shape. It erased the Syria-Iraq border established by the Sykes-Picot agreement, and its territory stretches from the suburbs of Aleppo in Syria to the Iraqi Fallujah, becoming something of a Sunni state/hinterland of the Fertile Crescent. All this culminated in the proclamation of a selfstyled caliphate of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (dubbed as the “Twitter Caliphate” in the Islamic camp).

In addition, also the Kurdish state is emerging. It had enjoyed autonomy even earlier but as a result of the Kurdish conquest of Kirkuk, the Kurdish Jerusalem, and thanks to the abundance of oil pumped by Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea, it now possesses all the features of a state. I always ask my students about the definition of the state in the Middle East. The correct answer is: any entity that can sign a contract with an international oil company, and if possible, has a capital city. So we see the pieces of the regional puzzle finding their place; this process suppressed the current processes of democratic nation. It looks nothing like what happened during the European revolutions, even if today it is obvious that Ukraine, Transnistria, Moldova and Crimea are also struggling with the processes of decomposition.

Tunisia is the only country so far which allows you to have a feeling that this whole process also has a democratic element. Its middle class, secular and French-speaking, partly Islamist and partly moderate, has managed to gain control over the constitutional process. This is the only country so far that has undergone such a change. Tunisia continues its profound dialogue with the European Union. It is not exactly the same type of dialogue as in the relations with the East of Europe, but one of its results is, for example, that ten members of the Tunisian Parliament are elected in France, as well as in other countries, but mostly there, because one tenth of the Tunisian population lives in France.

Various ways of interpreting events, those inherited from 1989, as well as those which emerged after 9/11, demonstrated their limitations. In the East, a triumphalist version of the end of history was promoted, and then a more pessimistic scenario which appeared during the conflict in the Balkans. With the war in the former Yugoslavia, Europe discovered that communism does not necessarily have to be followed by liberal democracy, for nationalisms and authoritarian regimes may also develop there. This situation, enclosed in the small space of the Balkans, was regarded as unique to the region, not to say as a regional aberration compared to the changes in Central Europe marching towards the European community, which was the key theme of the European narrative after 1989: the triumph of democracy over totalitarianism and a “return to Europe,” democratic transition and European integration.

This is where I see the fundamental difference: the 1989 revolutions, but also the color revolutions in Georgia in 2004, in Ukraine and Moldova, and more recently the Euromaidan in Kiev, have a European aspect. In Kiev there are two competing logics: the logic of Maidan occupied by protesters, or Maidan of contestation and “direct democracy,” and the logic of the presidential election of 25th May 2014, and more broadly speaking, of representative democracy. What is striking here is the idea of the modernization of civil society, which in the case of Ukraine is invoking Europe above all as method for distancing themselves from the corrupt authorities and the despotic regime sliding towards Putin’s model. So the reference to Europe plays a special role in this context.

These are leaderless revolutions. Neither the Egyptian revolution, nor the Ukrainian one, neither Tahrir, nor Euromaidan, produced a leader or their own representation. The 1989 revolutions in Central Europe were personified by Lech Walesa, leader of Solidarity, and especially by Václav Havel, the symbol of the “velvet revolution.” Dissidents were shadow political elite, which after 1989, however briefly, assumed power. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians rejected Yulia Tymoshenko, the heroine of the Orange Revolution of 2004, and the new president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, elected on 25 May 2014, is an oligarch, “the king of chocolate,” who worked for several administrations in the last 20 years. Anyway, the Ukrainians had the choice between a chocolate oligarch and an energy oligarch, Yulia Tymoshenko. Of course they chose chocolate.

Tunisia, a small country with a relatively high level of education and wealth, resembles Hungary in the first phase of transformation after 1989, the best student in the post-communist class, a small country where the transition did not involve violence and where reforms were quickly undertaken and a compromise was built around them. It seems that also Tunisia found some kind of compromise, not with the supporters of the old regime, but between secular and religious parties. Egypt in its turn is a large country and the center of gravity of the region, the equivalent of Poland. Without Poland the revolution in Eastern Europe would not be a revolution; it is the same with Egypt. The scale is comparable. Libya resembles Romania of Nicolae Ceausescu: we are dealing with a regime sinking in insanity and a tyrant killed in the gutter like Ceausescu, who after a summary trial ended with two bullets in his head and his execution was filmed and broadcast. You can draw further parallels of this kind, given that the Arab Spring inspires many associations with the situation and images from Central and Eastern Europe.

And then comes the time for questions about what was born from these revolutions and what type of states emerged in these countries. The paths of Central Europe, the Balkans and the post-Soviet Eastern Europe are very different in this respect. In Central Europe there had been established states, functioning states, with what the English call “state capacity.” Although Czechoslovakia broke up in two parts, its borders remained intact. Everything was done quickly and amicably. In the Balkans, and later in the East people wondered what the contours of the state should be. How do you build the rule of law, if you do not know what kind of state to build?

In order to have a democratic transition, there must be a consensus as to the territorial framework in which to fit these changes. The end of the German Democratic Republic is a milestone in this respect, for it was the first territorial change in Europe after the collapse of Communism. The question of borders aroused great concern in the West, and especially in France. The year 1989 in fact marked the end not only of Yalta, but also of Versailles. The breakup of Yugoslavia, the breakup of Czechoslovakia, the breakup of the Soviet Union… The map of Europe, which France actively co-established at the end of World War I, was unravelling.

The end of Versailles, to which you are pointing, corresponds in the Middle East today to questioning the clauses of the Sykes-Pickot agreement.

People soon found out, watching the war in the Balkans, what a questioning of the map established after World War I may lead to. The further we move to the South, the more perceptible is the difference between the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Sarajevo and Beirut were part of one empire. Turkey is looking for leverage in Bosnia and Kosovo. In 2013, in Kosovar Pristina, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the presence of his counterparts from Kosovo and Albania, said: “Kosovo is Turkey, Turkey is Kosovo.” He clearly wanted to reject the projects of “Europeanization” of the Balkans. It is not difficult to imagine the amazement of Brussels.

The state capacity model in Central Europe may be applied to the state capacity of today’s Tunisia. It is the Balkan model that this functioning in the Levant: Balkanization and Lebanonization. The model of post-Soviet Eastern Europe reminds me of what you called the Putin model. It has its followers also in the Middle East. Today it is quite openly copied, with an effective participation of Putin. In Arab countries this means aiming at restoring the order based on the military and police apparatus, Moscow style. Their actions are consistent with the logic of restoring order with a strong leader personally managing ministries connected with security. Your comparison is interesting, though we still have a tendency to notice only Prague or Warsaw, while in fact the model of Eastern Europe is much more complex.

You can connect the Crimean intervention with the support for Assad’s regime. The fragility of the regime, the possibility of uprisings blowing away the old regime in just a few weeks, was the most terrifying prospect for Putin in the Ukrainian case, and this brings us back to the Arab Spring. The Russian president wanted to demonstrate, very quickly and at a very early stage, that nothing like that could happen in Russia. This was his main concern, the other being the affirmation of Russia’s great power status on the international stage, as well as making the point that Russia played a necessary role in resolving the Syrian question.

The role of Russia in the simultaneous crises in Syria and Ukraine, at least at the very beginning, is related to the question of choosing between democracy and authoritarianism, and this faces Europeans with geopolitical challenges connected with their crucial relation with Moscow. Of course, Europe wants to support the changes in Ukraine, but what price is it ready to pay for that if it also needs Russian help in resolving the Syrian and Iranian problem?

The Arab Spring seemed to invalidate the choice (militarists versus Islamists) tacitly accepted by the Europeans. For Europeans, the Arab Spring was a third way, a third option: in the name of European values you must support the democratic transition, which shows that Huntington’s model was not right. Three years later, the outcome turns out to be so miserable that we have a sense of regression and we are almost reconciled with the fact that Assad, responsible for many unprecedented massacres and murdering 160,000 people, remains in power.

This leads us back to the topic of European realpolitik. The democratic moment, European support for democratic transition in its periphery, appears rather distant today.

An abbreviated transcript of a conversation held on 21st June 2014 at the Paris Centre for International Studies and Research.

The text is abridged version of postface to forthcoming book “L’Europe et ses voisinages. Géopolitique de la démocratisation”, Presses de Sciences Po.