Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 11th annual restaurant of lecture, we're delighted to see several members of the Dondo family here as usual.
As you know, this was originally going to be Dr. Condoleezza Rice, but due to the impact of the coronavirus,
which has also impacted us in other ways, she isn't able to come.
We are absolutely delighted both for the subject and for the person that Dr. Norbert
Röttgen can deliver today's lecture because I think it will be true to say that second,
only to what happens in the United States next year,
what happens in Germany next year and what direction Germany takes is of huge importance for the future of the West.
Delighted in the person because Norbert Redken is not only one of Germany's leading politicians and expert on foreign policy and European policy,
the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag,
former minister of the Environment, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
He is also now a candidate to be leader of the CDU and therefore potentially the key to use candidate for chancellor when,
of course, no, but you would be the leader of the free world, as we were told Greece.
No, no, no, no, no pressure, no pressure.
Now, I felt it was too much to ask Dr. Rudkin to give a full dress lecture at five
days notice so he will be delivering what in German is called an impulse fall,
which does not mean an impulsive lecture or lecture given on impulse.
Why not just what you need when you are a candidate for the leadership?
It means a lecture which gives out impulses, intellectual and political impulses,
and to respond to the impulses were delighted to have Gideon Rachman,
who is, I think, one of the two most influential commentators on international affairs in the English speaking world.
The other being, of course, outstanding is alumnus Tom Friedman. That's the competition so far, be it from me, modest if.
He won the Nobel prise, the European press prise.
He's the author of two books Zero Sum World and most recently, Eastern Ization, War and Peace in the Asian Century, both of which,
like much of his commentary, gives us actually a pretty sobering view of the role of Europe and indeed the West in today's world.
I will then make a few comments. We'll have a discussion amongst the three of us and then we'll go into Q&A.
Last point. Hashtag trend of 2020. Feel free to tweet away with that, please join me in welcoming this year's round of lecture.
The Tim Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, and I dare to say, dear friends, thank you so much, Tim, for the introduction for the invitation.
Of course, it's a huge privilege for me to be here,
and I have to say that that I had to reorganise my schedules in the last and the last days and weeks,
but have never had to have cancelled trips abroad and something else.
But I have never put into question my participation in this Darren dive colloquium
because I've always seen this as a huge pleasure and an honour to be part of it.
However, I have to say that a main reason for sticking to this will to participate was because I was
so keen to listen to Condoleezza Rice and that now instead of listening to Condoleezza Rice,
that I have to listen to my own words. I have to say it's quite a disappointment for me.
I tried to limit the disappointment for you, but of course, there is a cost of this replacement of the lecturer and speaker.
So without further ado, I would give it a start and try to deliver some thoughts on the topic of Germany, Europe and the West.
I think I should do it in reverse order because, for example,
what a sensible role for German foreign policy is can only be understood if we
have a understanding of the state of affairs of Europe and of world affairs.
So I should start by giving some analytical remarks how I see the state of affairs of world politics, Europe politics,
and then I will give some ideas of how I could imagine and what I propose as the input and
impulse of German foreign policy regarding European and global politics and policies.
So I start with the West. If you want to understand the West in our days,
I think it would be a good idea to recall the great days of the West to understand
what the West really was about and what the difference is compared to today.
And certainly the great period of the West was the Cold War, a time when everything was at stake,
when it was about the survival not only of peoples of states but of mankind, because the ideological confrontation between the West and the East.
Well, that that it included that it included a military, the nuclear threat, and it included the destruction of the enemy.
And because this was a mutual threat, it included the self-destruction of mankind.
So the West and the East were part of a confrontation which brought about the very physical existence of people, people and mankind.
Both sides promised to deter, to contain and to defeat the enemy.
I think this was the glue which forged the West.
Of course, but also the shared values. But there were times when natal members were not democracies, they were not governed by the rule of law.
So the relation forged by having an enemy, which was perceived as a threat to life.
This was what forged the West. And by underlining this.
Characteristic, which constitute what all by underlining that the enemy constituted the West, we can see the very different situation we are in today.
So the question is the West has to answer.
Can the West, can we sustain without the enemy?
I consider this question dialectical, only seemingly paradoxical and only slightly provocative.
Perhaps you could object that the question has been answered throughout the last 30 years,
because in the last 30 years we did not have an enemy of the Soviet Union has collapsed.
The Warsaw Pact does not exist any longer, and they too exists.
The European Union exists. We have a G-7, so the institutions of the West have preserved.
However, I would object to this. That for four to five years of the last 30 years, it was not.
There was no necessity that the West defines itself again because the 20 of the
first 25 years of the last 30 years were characterised by the victory of the West.
The West had survived. We have seen we had seen then a unilateral Western order and the global question,
or the question of global order seemed to be answered by the West through the West and in favour of the West.
We thought that after the end of the Cold War in 1899, we had achieved perpetual peace in Europe, at least a perpetual peace order.
And I think nobody could have imagined had imagined during this time of 25 years that this
eternity would only last 25 years because we seem that we had learnt the lesson of history.
The lesson out of the first half of the 20th century, which brought about militarism, nationalism, two world wars.
So we thought that we had learnt the lesson of the first half of the 20th century.
But it is now for only six years, and it started with a new Russian foreign policy.
And then other events happened that the question of global order is back again on the table.
It's only for the last few six years that the order question is back,
and it is since then that we have started to ask ourselves again Does the West still exist?
Is the West the same? Can you imagine the West as a simple continuation of the success model of the post war era,
which is more or less the general implication and suggestion when we talk about the West that we generally assume and suggest?
Yes, we know what the West is, we know the Western values.
And so if there is the need to act as the West again, we just should do it.
However, it is not as easy of that because the geopolitical circumstances have fundamentally changed and it is not
the enemy which constitutes the West and defines the West as it was in the Cold War and the Cold War days.
What has changed is that we have seen and are seeing the unravelling of order.
We see conflicts and violations of international law, which would not have been imaginable during the Cold War days, for example,
of the intervention of one country into the into a neighbourhood country, the annexation of a part of a neighbouring country.
This would not have been possible under the circumstance of the Cold War because it would have been seen as a major escalation and it would end.
It was avoided and not perpetrated because of the threat of the of the adverse power.
So we see even more conflict. We see more a violation of international law human rights than in the Cold War days.
This is because as a consequence of the unravelling of order and because of the loss and disappearance of
the limits which the relationship of enemies has brought about that we see a new pattern of power conflict,
which is characterised by the emergence of great power politics.
I do not see re-emergence because I consider this to be entirely new.
So the emergence of great power politics,
which conflates with regional conflicts and which makes these conflicts nearly unsolvable and which leads to a two to wars and conflicts which do not.
No, any limits. And and any kind of limit in how to conduct these conflicts, we see it, particularly in the Middle East,
we see in our days in Syria war crimes on a daily basis, and there is hardly any response to even the fact that the war crimes are perpetrated.
What is part of the new geopolitical situation, which puts the West into doubt, is that the former leader of the West, the United States of America,
which had assumed a unique role in leading the world in shaping world order,
have in the person of the president of this country deliberately, voluntarily abandoned exactly this role.
So the West, without the former leader of the West, certainly is something different than before.
So what are the implications of the new geopolitical set of circumstances being fundamentally different
to the period when the West was forged and defined in a in a distinct way during the Cold War?
I want to elaborate on this question briefly from both perspectives, from the United States and from the European perspective.
As I've already mentioned from the angle of the incumbent as president,
he has given an answer and the answer of the United States president is America.
It's our country. It's Northern Alliance.
It's a zero-sum perspective on how to win at the cost of the others.
And it's not a concept of the West. However, I think this policy has not yet become the starts.
Isn't there is on that tour of this country.
It does not resonate in Congress, so it is not an entrenched.
Policy and definition of the country is not being part of a defining west.
The Western alliance, however,
we should not be in any doubt even if a candidate of the Democratic Party were to be elected president at the end of this year.
We, the Europeans, are certainly not to see any kind of a return of a status folding back or return of a status quo ante.
So definitely on a bipartisan basis in the United States,
there is a consensus that the Cold War is over and that the role the United States played
in cooperation with the European partners will not come back in present and future times,
perhaps. We, the Europeans, are going to see a new offer to the West to re-emerge by identifying an enemy successor.
Perhaps the Americans are close to offer a new enemy.
And of course, I'm talking about China. There is quite a bipartisan view in Congress and in the country that the Sino American
competition constitutes the new dichotomy and that this constitutes the new rivalry.
And perhaps we are asked to embrace as Europeans and allies.
We are asked to embrace a kind of new Cold War within you competitor, a new enemy.
I think it would be right to identify China as the single biggest challenge to the West in the new geopolitical environment.
However, I think the Europeans are not ready to embrace a new Cold War.
And I think we are not ready to engage in a relationship of hostility with vis-a-vis China.
China is, from a European perspective, a compelling argument for the necessity of the West.
But I think the European Commission, Mr President,
put it right by defining China as everything at the same time for us as a partner with with with whom we deal necessarily.
For example, when it comes to combat to combating climate change, it would be a a a a a a unwinnable battle against climate change.
If China would not be a part of this battle. China is a competitor for the Europeans, not always a fair competitor.
So this is our attempt, an endeavour to to a to insist on a fair relationship competitor relationship on the basis of reciprocity.
And China certainly is a systemic rival, and there is no other country in the European Commission or any other institution of
the European Union ever before has attributed the term systemic rival to anybody else.
But to be clear, this these three levels will remain essential for the Europeans in dealing with China and this the the Europeans
should bring in this perception and analysis of China and proposal how to deal with China into a trance,
a necessary transatlantic dialogue between the Americans and the Europeans on how to deal with China.
One of the intellectual and political challenges we have to do as homework in the transatlantic alliance is to conduct the dialogue,
the transatlantic dialogue on how to deal with China.
But apart from that, for the Americans,
irrespective of the party of which is represented in the White House and has majorities in both houses of Parliament,
there might be a possibility, perhaps a perceived possibility that they can go it alone.
It's different to the times of the Cold War, where the West was seen as necessary in the national interest,
where the West, of course, was also a vehicle, an instrument of projecting power.
Today, the question if the United States can go it alone and do not need the West to survive and sustain as a nation,
I think is not decided yet for the Europeans.
The existence of the West is a prerequisite not only for remaining relevant in the world,
but it is a precondition of self or a condition of self preservation without being
embedded in the West without a vivid and strong and viable transatlantic relation.
I'm quite sure the Europeans. Do not have the power and the sovereignty to sustain as a political entity.
So there is much talk about European sovereignty in these days, and there might be parts where sovereignty is possible, for example,
digital sovereignty by launching and implementing a 5G standard within the
European Union and at least including different countries of the European Union.
I think this is possible, but without the cooperation and alliance with the United States,
I can't see that even regarding that, even in our neighbourhood.
For example, speaking of the Middle East and of Northern Africa and the Sahel,
the European Union and the Europeans would be able to exert their influence and we would be driven apart.
So from it, you're not a from an American and European perspective.
The continuation of the existence of the West is different to the Cold War.
Times of a different existential has different existential dimension.
So my second remark is then in further developing the thought and the perspective of the Europeans,
given the description of their state of world affairs, unravelling of order,
abandonment of leadership, role of the United States, a different situation of interests we have seen,
there is no doubt that this situation should mean that this is the hour of Europe.
However, in this situation, which should be the hour of Europe to unite,
to bring our act together, we know that Europe is as divided and paralysed as never before.
Also that, I think, is only seemingly paradoxical because the same causes,
which leads to the unravelling of global order are the causes which shake European societies and Western societies to the billions,
the loss of certainties, the fragmentation of societies.
Imbalances, the lack of the nation state to wield power, to halt, to state and to to stay in control of developments.
All this has shaken our societies to the bones and has fundamentally changed the psyche of Western societies.
So this means that in the hour where and when we should come together, we are weakened.
And I would say even paralysed how to deal with this predicament.
Which is constituted by the sheer necessity that the West exists in order to sustain ourselves was a new contribution of the Europeans as part
of the West on the one side and on the other side that we have become so divided and even regarding the very foundations of the European Union,
which is our normative identity. Who are we?
The struggle between those who stick to the traditional identity and the definition of the European Union,
the liberal democracy and those who argue and fight for illiberal democracy.
And there is no compromise between liberal and illiberal.
You can't be a little bit liberal.
You can't be. You can't only have some portion of the rule of law.
So we are really struggling about what defines us in a fundamentally normative way.
How should we and can we deal with this predicament? In my view,
it's clear that the nation state and each individual European nation state
is overstretched with the global challenges we are facing on the other side.
I have unfortunately outlined that the EU 27 or the European Union, on the level of the 27 nation states,
lacks the unity and cohesion to address and act on a global stage.
I think the existential challenge for the European Union is to transfer itself from the very successful internal project into an external project.
In other words, the European Union has to become an actor in foreign policies, in foreign relations.
We have not to confine ourselves within our borders, but we have to define our role in the world and vis-a-vis the world.
How to do that. I think it can only be done by an avant garde group.
It can only be done by nation states who progress,
who agree on several on different points of a foreign policy agenda and start doing exercising a common foreign policy.
The shaping countries of the European Union, France and Germany.
And post-Brexit Britain, which unfortunately has left the European Union but not Europe, are asked and required to build the group,
which does not create new institutions but just start doing foreign policy on set on a selective agenda, for example,
in stabilising Iraq, for example, in agreeing on a on a on a common strategy vis-a-vis China and a few other things.
I think this is a format which is ambitious, but which is without any alternative and is at least doable.
It should not be confined to the E3, but it should be open to all members of the European Union.
We should do everything in order to get the Poles as a part of this format.
In order to avoid that, this foreign policy group could be criticised and disparaged as a Western First-Class European group,
so it should try to bridge the gap to the middle and eastern European countries.
So it should be E3 plus, perhaps not always, including the same countries.
Perhaps regarding Libya could be another group compared to other foreign policy challenges.
But it should in general be an E3 plus group. My final remark refers to Germany.
For Germany, it's a different challenge because we have the disruption in our history because in the first decades after the war,
nobody asked for a leading role of Germany in foreign policy.
Of course not.
It was about the hope and chance to reintegrate into the international system, but not in any way to assume any kind of international role.
And after the Cold War, after 40 years and we've developed to be a reliable front state and after that exercise after 40 years,
nobody thought that now the time of a decisive, active, strong, assertive foreign policy were there.
But instead of that, everybody thought now, as I mentioned earlier, we have achieved perpetual peace.
We can take the peace dividend, we can demilitarise, and we have done so in Germany and in other countries.
So for Germany, it's only for the last six years that we have been forced to face the demand that Germany is crucial.
That's Germany is important for the emergence of a possible European format in foreign policy because without Germany,
any kind of E3 format or any other imaginable format of acting together internationally is not imaginable is not conceivable.
So Germany is confronted to assume a fundamentally different role in our times than in the time before.
However, we have to accept this role because we have to accept the new reality, which consists in the fact that no other nation state is ready,
willing and able to fund the security interests of the Europeans, including German interests.
It is that the chancellor mentioned before the 2017 election, we have to take our security into our own hands together with our European partners,
not against the United States, but we have to bring in a stronger European pillar in the transatlantic relations, in the transatlantic relation.
So for that, we have to be, we have to assume a strategic role.
We have to be a driver in the development that Europe has to go beyond the borders in order to pursue our interests and to stand for our values.
This is of an existential importance. It's not only strategic,
but it is existential that Germany further develops its understanding and the idea of itself as a
European partner state to be a part of a foreign policy acting forward in the in the European sense.
It's difficult for us, and I want to close with comments regarding recent developments in Syria,
in the Middle East and in our southern neighbourhood by this,
but I want to describe the situation in order to underline how necessary it is that we have to assume a policy.
Otherwise, we will only be the objective and the receiving part of the problems in our neighbourhood.
And this is the emerging Syrian Turkish refugee crisis again.
This crisis has not come in any way at a surprise because when the Syrian Russian attack started,
when the two when Syria under Assad and Russia under Putin started to apply again,
their vortex, its tactics they already applied and perpetrated in Aleppo.
It was absolutely clear of what was going to happen. It was a it was a policy to bomb civilians to target civilians by air bombings in order to make
people flee away from the area so that the Assad's troops can better fight on the ground.
Now we have one close to one million refugees at the Syrian-Turkish border, and Europe has not assumed a policy until today.
A policy would mean that we have to address the political course of what is happening in Syria, and this is the Russian bombing behind the refugees.
If there were not a war, the participation of Russia,
we would not see a war in Syria because Assad would not be able to wage this war and
we would not see refugees causing problems for Turkey and for the European Union's,
for the European Union. So this is another example that.
The Europeans, Germany, France and others have to bring together their act in order to pursue a policy for our own interests.
It's difficult for us, but in order to stand up for European values and for our interests,
we have to further develop a European contribution to a Western policy.
This is what the historic situation we are in demands and requires what we have to do.
We have to talk about this. We have to make this a part of the public debate in order to inform our voters and people
what the historic challenge is for European nation states and for the European Union.
So the West is not only defined and cannot only be defined by the past.
The West will not be what it was during the Cold War days, but the West has to be redefined and the fundamentally new geopolitical circumstances,
and it has to be defined by a European nation states in order to further exist.
It's a question for the Europeans of to be or not to be.
Thank you for your attention. Came out of it for a very clear, strong and challenging impulse for Gideon.
OK. I mean, you know that?
Yeah, thank you very much. No, but I think we're all both sort of touched and impressed that in the middle of this important political fight,
you took the time to come to Oxford.
I'd like to reassure you that although some refer to Oxford as the home of lost causes in Britain, we prefer to see it as the route to power.
So this is the time.
But you gave a very stimulating account of of the challenges that we will jointly face in the West.
I was very struck by your account of what a suggestion do we need an enemy for this whole enterprise to hang together?
It struck me that we've actually been been through at least three potential enemies since the end of the Cold War.
I mean, I remember after 911,
the Americans trying to reinvent NATO and and the West as a whole as the key force in the battle against Islamist terrorism.
And indeed, that led to the commitment to Afghanistan, which is not ending well if it if it ends at all.
Then of course, you mentioned Russia plus Crimea.
And I think for many in Europe, certainly and in Eastern Europe, that would remain the central challenge.
That was that the old challenges, the new challenge, if you like. And then, of course, China and there.
I mean, I think that the current debate about far away in the United Kingdom is very interesting.
And I know you played a really important role in that debate in Germany because my expectation would
have been that the British would have almost automatically gone with the Americans on Huawei.
It's very interesting that they happened, and it suggests that if the Americans do have an idea,
you to kind of try to enlist the Europeans into a joint struggle against China,
that they're going to have to have difficulty because if even the UK, with its much vaunted special relationship,
won't follow them, who will, you know,
perhaps in the question and answer that you can elaborate on your own views on that because I know you've played and
continue to play an important role in the Bundestag in trying to prevent Germany getting too enmeshed with Weiwei.
Listening to you, though, I also wondered whether, you know, forth enemy one,
a rather more difficult one to unite against is ourselves in the sense that the challenge to the West may be coming from within.
You were, I thought, slightly dismissive of the idea that the West was about values.
I mean, I think you quite correctly said, look, in the Cold War was more complicated than that.
There were times, you know, most of the time Turkey was not a democracy, was an important member of NATO and so on.
Nonetheless, I think in our kind of self-definition, the idea of the democratic west against the totalitarian authoritarian ethos was crucial.
And the idea that the West represented universal values continued after 1989.
Famously, you know, the end of Australia.
And in a sense, I think that gave the West a brief sense of security that our values have triumphed and now that we're going to go global there.
But I think part of the significance of Donald Trump is that some of it you talked about,
which is the America First, which obviously is hugely challenging to the idea of alliances and so on,
but also that he has dropped the idea of America and by extension, the West as morally superior to their adversaries.
He doesn't really spend much time talking about human rights much,
some at already or aughts or saying, you know that he expects democracy to triumph in China.
None of that. On the contrary, he sees this as a great power bargain.
And I think famously, and you know, in some ways, I would say full marks,
but a couple of marks for honesty when he was asked in the campaign about somebody said,
But you know, the Russians who you seem keen to relaunch with, look at all the people they've killed.
And he said, Let me tell you, we've killed a lot of people. So he he actually could have his back against the idea of a moral difference.
And of course, he's not alone. There are now within the European Union.
There's the Hungarians, as you alluded to, that Orban's idea of a liberal democracy and indeed the EU now.
Is at war too strong, struggling with a couple of its members, both Poland and Hungary, over these issues of fundamental values.
And if the EU doesn't win that struggle, does it lose the sense of of itself or does it just have to try to reinvent itself as something else,
not as a union of values that we all phrase we often hear in the EU, and I think probably dear to most people here.
But just as an alliance,
a group of countries that happen to be next door to each other face common enemies and maybe whatever their political differences,
well, they'll just ignore those and they'll have to try to work together to push push back against them.
Or is that actually going to be not enough to keep the Europeans together because they're they
won't really agree on on what their common interests are if they're absent that glue of values?
I think the West also defined its power briefly and again.
You alluded to that. But this idea of predominance that we were with one not only won the Cold War, but we were then able to save the world.
And I think another thing that is eroding the sense of the value of the West is certainly in Europe,
a sense that that period is ending and the confusion about how to respond to that.
Do you adapt to a rise in China? Do you confront a rising China?
Do you confront a rising China with the United States,
even as the United States at times seems to regard the European Union as as much of a challenge as China, at least on the trade front?
So I think that is a confusion, and I just to end with this very intriguing suggestion you made of the E.U. three, which of course,
will be music to Britain's is at a time when the British are very worried about sliding off the kind of diplomatic relevant stage for that,
for a for a leading German politician to come over to Britain and say, actually, on the contrary, we want to incorporate you into an EU £3 billion.
But I wonder, I think there are obvious practical questions.
You know what, that split the EU?
How will the Italians and the Spanish and everyone else respond to that in making that effort reaching out to the UK?
Do you risk losing what you've already got, which is actually the unity of the European Union without actually gaining a functioning alternative?
I don't want to discourage you too much because obviously it's an attractive idea from the British point of view.
But I think a finished by coming back to the question that you started with, which is this idea of the common enemy.
Let's say you can get over the difficulties of the institutional difficulties, the organisational difficulties do.
The British, the French and the Germans have even this group of three countries have a common analysis of the challenges that they face.
And I don't think that they yet do. Maybe they will. But after all,
part of what led Britain to Brexit was that a large part of the Conservative Party
believed that the biggest threat to Britain was the European Union was indeed.
You know, if you talk to build parts of Germany, they may be getting over that and they may feel that they're beyond that.
But it's possible that if there's a very difficult struggle over this trade agreement,
that that antagonism to the European Union will continue to loom largest in the minds of at least some important Brits,
the ones who actually happen to be in government at the moment, then you know, for France, who do they really see as the threat?
You know, at the moment they're reaching out to Russia.
I think some of the old globalist ideas about equidistant between the United States and Russia,
Europe as a third force of coming back, maybe they make more sense in the modern context.
But I'm not sure that that is somewhere where Germany would would yet be prepared to go.
So the E.U. three would be a great idea, but I'm not sure that we yet have the common analysis that you need to underpin it.
And maybe it will require some big external event, a shock that that Britain,
France and Germany all interpret in the same way to make that a real, workable proposition.
Thank you very much.